Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, and/or their otherwise respective owners.
Author's Notes: So I came up with this a while ago and I was like, "no, I'm not gonna write that, I already have a fem!vamp!Peter" story. But recently I decided that life is too fucking short for that bullshit, I wanna write this, so I'm gonna write it. And then this chapter just kind of spat itself out at 7k words LMAO.
So, this story is beginning...I don't want to say in medias res, but there's been a bunch of shit that has happened to Penny before the start of this. I've referenced a lot of it in this chapter and the tags on AO3, but this universe is not compliant with basically any movie post-Avengers (well, any movie at all, really...). A lot of the important plot stuff happened, but differently. So if things seem confusing, that's why. Tony's also younger in this, born in 1980 instead of 1970. Not really that relevant rn but I thought I'd mention it because I imagine him differently than he looks in canon because of it.
I'll get around to catching you guys up to date on why everything is this way...eventually. For now, the big stuff/trigger warnings you need to know are that Penny is a survivor of CSA and abduction, and that obviously has a big impact on the story, and there is also a lot of murder going on because of what she is, which is featured at the beginning of this chapter. If murder ain't your thing, go down to the next bolded sentence after the beginning of the chapter, but the allusions to past CSA and abduction is throughout, so I can't really do anything about that except give y'all the CW now.
Oh, and of course, the story title comes from Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) by Kate Bush! I'm not a fan of Stranger Things, I just found the song on my own and thought it fit the vibes I'm going for. :)
Anyways, I'll try to get the next chapter posted soon. Until then, I hope y'all enjoy,
~TGWSI/Selene Borealis
~running up that hill~
~running up that hill~
~chapter 1: Penny~
If there was ever a phrase that could accurately describe how Penny often felt her life went, it was three lines of that one song by Kate Bush: "Just when I think I'm king, I must admit...Just when I think everything's going great...I get the break!"
...Except, the break wasn't something that was good.
The early September night was nice and cool as she ran down the streets of Brooklyn, laughing that laugh that she hated so much as she chased after tonight's catch. The two guys were running as fast as they could, but it wasn't taking her any effort at all to keep up with them, to stay right on their tail. Technically, it wouldn't take her any effort at all, either, to run just a bit faster and close the gap between them, to end it here and now.
But, she had a character to play, she always had a character to play while wearing this suit, and that character was like a cat: she wouldn't catch her prey without playing with it first.
It'd helped a little that she caught these guys in the act, as she caught all of the other criminals who she hunted in this way and didn't leave as a nice treat for the police. They'd been raping a beta woman, but as soon as they'd heard her signature laugh and seen her in the light of a streetlamp from across the street, they'd knowing that she'd been coming after them, which led them to the here and now because they'd started to run away. She'd been chasing them for three or four blocks now, and really, she was starting to gain on them despite her not even trying just a little to, because they were tiring out. She could even hear one of them say, spending the precious energy that could've been otherwise conserved to give him the illusion of a better choice of escaping had he kept his mouth shut, "Where are...the Avengers...at a time like this?"
Penny kept up with the laughter. "You're in Brooklyn now, honey!" she called out to him, using one of the common names that jerks like him liked to call beta women and omegas against him. "The Avengers aren't going to help you now!"
Well, again technically, if any of the Avengers had been in Brooklyn right now, she had no doubt that they would've. It had happened before, after all. But even if they were in Brooklyn tonight, they weren't in the area, she could tell by the lack of the patterns of their heartbeats that she'd committed to memory. Had had to, for her own survival and safety.
Although she was prolonging the chase of her own accord, Penny was secretly glad when the two guys ran into an alleyway off of the empty street, because there was nowhere else for them to run or hide. Unfortunately for them, she knew the alleyways of New York City like the back of her hand now and knew that the alleyway that they had chosen was one with a dead end. She heard one of them let out an expletive as they realized this, and they turned around just in time to see her appear in the mouth of the alleyway. Their faces were almost as pale as the silvery moon shining above.
Before she could give one of her signature sarcastic remarks – the other thing that her mouth was known for, besides the obvious – the guy on the right, shaking like a leaf, said, "P – please! We know what we did was wrong, but – "
"Oh, do you now?" Penny crooned. She hated the tone just like she hated her laugh.
"We have families!" his partner-in-crime followed up. "Don't do this to them!"
"Oh, I'm not doing this to them; I'm doing this for them," she snarked, and it was something that she didn't feel bad about saying, before she shot off several thwips of webbing. In the blink of an eye, both of them were webbed to the ground, with webs over their mouths to prevent their screams from being heard. "Your children will be better off not raised by rapists like yous."
Without further ado, she sauntered into the alleyway, feeling her fangs drop down from the roof of her mouth. She knew what she had to look like to them as she did: the Angel of Death, or Death incarnate, the last thing that they would see before they went off to the afterlife if it existed – as unlikely as she knew that was based off of her previous experience. She was the last thing that everybody she caught saw.
Just like every other single time that she caught one of these rapists or murderers, though, she felt that guilt pool and churn in her stomach as she made her way forwards. And although she didn't really believe in God, again because of her previous experience but this time in more ways than one, she still sent up a prayer to him. If there was one thing that Matt could say he had ever taught her, it was that.
Please, God, forgive me for what I'm about to do...
Once her prayer was over, she pulled down the muzzle that obscured the lower half of her face from view, but her eyes were still hidden by the goggles that helped her see better by dimming the world and putting it more into focus, so it wasn't like her identity was in danger of being revealed – not that it would have been in danger of that anyways. She grinned wickedly.
Both of the guys gave muffled screams.
"I think I'll go with you first," she purred to the guy on the left. "Since you're the one who said that you wanted me to think of your families. Even though they won't know it – " I'll know it and " – at least I won't have put you through toomuch suffering. It is what you deserve, though, don't you think?"
She didn't give him a chance to reply...not literally speaking, since he literally wasn't able to. Lifting him up from the ground and making sure to re-web his arms for good measure, she sunk her fangs into his neck. The taste of blood, the only thing that tasted good to her anymore but was also the taste that she hated with a deep and long-lived passion, was recognized by her brain as it gushed into her mouth. Coppery, tangy, and sickeningly-sweet.
God, she hated how much of a monster she was.
Penny tried to think about the good things as she consumed her meal, because it wasn't like thinking about the bad would amount to anything productive. She'd found two victimizers who had become her victims tonight, and not only was that good because of the fact that it would mean it would be four or five nights until she would have to do this again instead of the usual two or three when she wasn't pushing it (which she still had a tendency to do, even after Matt had taken her under his wing), but it additionally meant that she would be better prepared and less of a danger towards the general population than usual tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow was a good thing, too. It was something that filled her stomach with dread and butterflies at the same time, which wouldn't have been a good thing while she was in the process of slurping down blood if not for how she didn't have a gag reflex for blood, but whatever. Tomorrow was an opportunity that she hadn't been afforded in so long, it was something to look forward to.
...Granted, that was provided that everything went well.
But she wasn't going to dwell on all the endless possibilities of how it couldn't right now. Good thoughts, good thoughts.
It took her twenty minutes to drain the first guy. When she was done, she let his body, now ashen for an entirely different reason, fall to the ground with a thump as she wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand. Maybe not the most hygienic of practices in the world, but she was going to have to wash out her suit anyways when she got back home, as she always did when she killed somebody on a night of patrol.
The other guy wasn't looking at her as Penny looked up; his eyes were squeezed shut. That figured. Coward. "Your turn," she breathed to throw one last spike of fear into his heart, unable to stop herself from doing it.
As she expected him to, he let out a whimper in response. Besides a gargled scream when her fangs sunk into his flesh and the sounds of death afterwards, it was the last noise that he made.
Another twenty-two minutes later, as she went through the process of cleaning up, her ears prickled as she heard a heartbeat approaching. At first, Penny tensed, but then she recognized the heartbeat as one of the others that she had memorized – and in a nice way. Her shoulders relaxing, a smile played out on her still unmasked face.
"Aradnea," a voice said from behind her.
She turned around with an exclamation of, "Robin!"
The other vigilante of NYC that was her age, because Cloak and Dagger were a few years older than them, gave her a grin, the only part of her face that Penny could see because of how the upper half was disguised by her mask. Even so, with how the moonlight illuminated her and the deep purple color of her suit, the female alpha – her soulmate – was as beautiful as ever to her.
Penny was running over to her in a second, and she let out a laugh as Robin – Kate, albeit they didn't call each other by their real names when they were in their suits – pressed a kiss to her cheek. Not her lips, because it was clear he'd just been in the process of her meal, and while Penny couldn't get sick from blood-borne illnesses anymore because of her biology, that didn't mean her very un-enhanced soulmate/girlfriend couldn't.
"What are you doing here?" Penny asked her, curious. "I thought you had that gala thing with your stepdad tonight."
"Well, I was going to come ask you if you wanted to get a 'bite' to eat, but I can see that you've already gotten it handled," Kate teased. As Penny rolled her eyes with exasperation, she clarified, "And I did. But I was barely there for an hour before he was telling me that I looked too much like a 'lovesick puppy' and to get out of there.
Penny giggled. She'd never met Jacques before – and truthfully, she didn't have much desire to, which she knew wasn't fair because it was entirely based on his primary and secondary genders – but he did seem like a nice person from how Kate spoke about him, if not a little too accepting of the fact that his stepdaughter was the soulmate of and dating a serial killer. "Well, tell him that I told him, 'thank you,'" she said.
"I will," Kate promised, before her smile turned sheepish. She grabbed Penny's hand gently, pulling her along. "Come on; all they were serving at the gala when I left was hors d'oeuvres, and I'm starving."
After a trip to McDonald's, they were sitting on top of a low-rise in a way that they couldn't be easily seen from below, staring out at the city. It didn't need to be said how bad it would be for the both of them if it was found out how close their vigilante personas were to one another beyond the occasional team-up, especially now with Kate's "internship."
Even though it was through their statuses as vigilantes that they'd originally met.
Kate tore into the two McCrispy™ sandwiches, fries, and milkshake that she'd ordered in a manner that, quite frankly, fascinated Penny, and not just because of how she couldn't eat food anymore. Even Before the spider bite, Ski – he hadn't been allowed to eat fast food for two years, but from what she vaguely remembered of it, it didn't taste all that great.
"So," the omega said to the alpha, drawing out the one syllable into multiple. "How was your day?"
Kate shrugged. "It was fine. Classes were boring. I think my Spanish teacher's gonna give me a 'C' on a quiz again."
Penny winced in sympathy. She knew that Kate's Spanish teacher this year hated her because of her mother. Eleanor Bishop had harmed a lot of people – indirectly, yes, but still – in the three short years she'd worked under the Kingpin, as Penny and Matt called him (Kate now, too), and while she had rolled over on a lot of people once she'd been arrested in no small part due to Kate's help, that had caused harm and anger, too. So was the case of the Spanish teacher, whose brother-in-law had been one of the people arrested because of Eleanor.
"But what about you?" Kate asked, bumping Penny's shoulder with her own gently. She didn't ask how Penny's day had gone as the first question implied, however – because she knew the answer: Penny had slept in until almost noon before she'd lazed about, not needing to study for a change, until Matt had come home at six. The studying on the weekdays included, it was the routine she'd had almost every single day for the past year and a half...until now – but followed it up with, "Are you excited about your first day at Midtown tomorrow? Your first real school in almost five years?"
Penny diverted her gaze, taking her bottom lip into her mouth. It wasn't a problem for her to do that now, since her fangs had gone back up into the roof of her mouth where they belonged. "I'm...excited," she said. But the doubts that she had been trying not to think about – good thoughts, good thoughts – were creeping back in. "I'm also nervous."
Kate snorted. "I figured that." She took a sip of her mostly-depleted milkshake, swallowed it, and added, "I think anybody would be. But...you know that Daredevil will be there if you need him to, right? And we're not gonna blame you if you're not ready yet."
"I am ready!" Penny snapped back. As soon as she realized what she had done, her cheeks flushed, which for her had the sensation of cooling rather than heating up. "Sorry," she mumbled, bringing her legs up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She corrected herself with, "I want to be ready. I mean...it's not like I have a whole lot of time left for a semblance of a normal education again...a semblance of a normal life." She let out a puff of air, watching how a piece of her hair floated in the small breeze.
"Hey," Kate protested. When Penny glanced up at her, she saw that her soulmate's expression was humorous, but with a serious edge. "You're a normal human arachnid."
Penny rolled her eyes again. "If you define 'normal' in this scenario as 'the only one in existence,' then yeah, I suppose I am."
"Good," Kate said. "Then we're in agreement."
She gave a snort of her own, as Kate had intended. But there was silence afterwards, as the alpha waited for her to elaborate further.
"I'm just nervous that something's going to go wrong," Penny spoke finally. And then, the words were tumbling out of her mouth of their own accord: "It's – it's just, so much good has happened in my life in the past year, you know? And so much good hap – happened Before, and then he came into my life, and then I found along with the rest of the world who my other biological parent was because of Black Widow's HYDRA data dump, and then the spider bit me and...gave me these powers. But now I have Matt, and I have you, and I'm going to be going to an actual school for the first time since elementary school tomorrow and I'm just waiting for the next thing to happen, right? Because life now...it's not perfect, but how can it be this good when I'm a – "
She cut off abruptly, because even though she knew that she was a monster, it wasn't a word that she was supposed to say out loud. Tears burned in her eyes, but she blinked them away.
"Hey, it's alright," Kate soothed. She didn't touch Penny, undoubtedly because she was afraid of turning the venting into a panic attack, but her words were comforting enough alone. "And it's gonna be alright. But even if it's not, Daredevil and I will be there for you then, too. We'll protect you."
Not if I accidentally reveal who I really am to people, because then you won't be able to protect me. I won't let you, Penny thought, fear seizing her un-beating heart. Especially not if the Avengers – my mom, biological omi, and his other two soulmates – are the ones who –
But that subject was one that was not only well-rehearsed to the point of death because of so many circumstances, but one that she could also push down because of that. "I know you will," she sighed, tilting her head to look up at the sky, starless even though it was night. That was the price of living in a place like New York City. Silence reigned over them again.
Penny reflected on those many, many times After, but before the spider bite had granted her freedom at the cost of so many other things. The times that she had watched others live through the front windows of the living room to that garden apartment, unseen by others because of the brick wall in front of most of it, and, to paraphrase that same Kate Bush song, had seen life work for them. She'd seen them, and she'd wondered what she had ever done in her life to deserve it going so horribly wrong, why she couldn't go outside and experience the same things that they did beyond just his alpha orders. She'd pondered on this same train of thought many times after the spider bite, too, especially because of how she'd realized even with him dead that she couldn't go home, that she would have to let her mother, biological omither, and the rest of them keep on believing that she was dead, because the alternative –
But, that wasn't the point. The point was just as she had said: she couldn't and would never be able to have everything that she wanted, but with every good thing that she now had, she was scared that finally achieving another good thing if it went well meant that everything else was going to fall apart.
No, she wasn't just scared of it.
She was downright terrified, like one of her victims before she took their life.
So much for the good thoughts, she mused bitterly.
Eventually, sometime after Kate had finished up her meal and set the bag containing all of her trash aside, Penny let her legs dangle back over the ledge of the rooftop they were on. It was then that Kate finally deemed it acceptable to touch her, reaching out to grab her hand, and Penny inhaled deeply to make the female alpha's scent of jasmine and sandalwood that only she could smell that much more potent. Neither of them spoke.
This was how they were found by a second familiar person at an even later time, probably one that was nearing two o'clock in the morning, if not already after it. As much as Penny loved Kate, the other girl should've been home by now, and they both knew it.
So did he. "Aradnea, Robin," he said. "You two know you need to be more careful."
Kate craned her neck so that she was looking over her shoulder. Smiling, she waved, regardless of how redundant it was, letting go of Penny's hand. "Hi, Daredevil," she responded. "Yeah, we know."
The older vigilante gave her a look that contained heavy exasperation. "Well, just so long as you know."
Penny stood up, getting the hint. Kate grumbled, but moved to do the same, grabbing her McDonald's bag in the process. "If you want to come to my house after school's over, you can," the alpha offered then, smiling tentatively. "My stepdad won't be home until late, and I'll text him to stay away."
Penny laughed, a genuine laugh that didn't sound so terrible, and reached up to kiss the air next to Kate's right cheek. "I'd like that."
"Everything's going to be fine; I know it," Kate insisted. And before they could rehash everything that they had already said, she gave a two-fingered salute to Matt that he couldn't see with a smirk and added, "Bye, Aradnea. Bye, Daredevil."
Then she was running over the rooftops, taking off into the night.
Penny sighed, and turned around to see that Matt was "eyeing" her, his head slightly cocked. "Did you get something to eat tonight like you were planning?" he questioned her.
"Yeah," she responded. "Yeah, I did."
The edges of his mouth lifted upwards. "Good," he said – and how weird this interaction would have been to the average person living in NYC, she thought, that Daredevil had said her killing two people was "good." "And Robin is right, you know."
She didn't answer him immediately, instead choosing to stalk past him with balled fists, headed towards the north. "Let's just go back to Hell's Kitchen," she replied. Back home. But because it wouldn't be wise for them to be seen together in the suits for long, just like how it wouldn't be wise for hr and Kate, she had to tack on: "I'll meet you there."
When they got back home to their apartment just after three o'clock in the morning, reaching it at the same time in spite of Penny's webs (she'd taken some detours, okay), she went straight to bed, albeit it proved to be a futile effort. She tossed and turned for almost two hours before falling asleep at around five o'clock – only to be woken up an hour later by the alarm on her phone.
Thankfully, because of her abilities, she could thrive on an hour of sleep without any real issues every once in a while, but it still sucked.
She got out of bed and went into her bathroom to begin her new morning routine. She'd never had one before besides just brushing her teeth (a complicated process these days), as there hadn't been a point with him nor afterwards when the spider bite had stopped her acne and her body's oil production altogether.
But in order to go to school, she would have to look presentable, which mainly meant hiding the evidence that she was Aradnea with copious amounts of makeup: homemade concealer and foundation to hide the purplish bags under her eyes and the veins crawling up the side of her neck because her skin color was too pale for store makeup anymore, lipstick to cover up her lips' hypoxic blue color, and etcetera, etcetera. Of course, she did most of this after putting on her clothes for the day, which were all black, but that wasn't so untypical. There were plenty of actually normal teenagers who dressed that way.
When Penny looked in the mirror of her bathroom after all of the makeup was applied – a time-consuming process, so it was fortunate that she didn't and couldn't eat breakfast anymore – she thought she looked...normal. Normal enough, at least. Normal enough that most people wouldn't question her, and if they did, she'd just tell them that she had a chronic illness. It wasn't technically a lie.
(Depression could be considered a chronic illness. So could c-PTSD.)
But there was one thing that she had left to do to ensure even the few among those few who were not the most didn't have a reason to not believe that excuse. Going back into her bedroom, she grabbed the device that she had made from where it was on her nightstand, turned it on, and placed it on her chest and under her shirt with a small thwip of webbing from one of her web-shooters. The sound of a heartbeat began to play, a little fast because of how nervous she was – but that was good. If the artificial heartbeat was fast, it meant that the pacemaker was picking up on her body's cues as it was supposed to. Nobody would be able to tell the difference from the real thing...hopefully.
Matt was leaning against the counter of their kitchen when she left her bedroom with her bag slung over her shoulder, a mug of steaming coffee in his hands. "Do you have everything?" he asked.
Penny bit her lip again, before the awful taste of lipstick made her remember the dangers of doing that nervous habit today. She'd have to make sure she didn't have to reapply it on her way out the door. "I think so."
Unfortunately, Matt did not take this in the way that she wanted. "You have your laptop, your books, your notebooks, your pencil pouch, your – ?"
"Yes, Omi," she cut over him. "I do."
"That is not the insult that you think it is," he said with a beam. Then: "If you wind up needing me, you know I'm only a call or a text away."
"I know," she replied. She swallowed and headed over to the front door. "I need to make sure that I get there on time. Bye, Matt. See you after work."
"Bye, Penny. See you after school."
Penny was acutely aware of the other people of New York City as she made her way to the 42nd Street Port Authority Bus Terminal, a seven-minute walk, and then on board the E train for the thirty-five-minute ride to the station nearest to Midtown, and the five-minute walk after that. This wasn't the first time she'd been walking among them during the daytime and without her suit in the two years since the spider bite, but it was nevertheless nerve-wracking. It felt like at any moment somebody would recognize her just because of her hair, or her body language, but nobody did. Nobody even gave her the time of day except for two older alpha men on the subway who leered at her. But she ignored them as best as she could, staring straight ahead and thankful that she couldn't sweat anymore, otherwise her hands would've been drenched.
Sometimes, agoraphobia really sucked, whether it was justified or not.
Her phone buzzed on the train while she was listening to one of her playlists with wired earbuds after the alpha men had gotten off on their stop, and their absence made her anxiety a bit better. When she took her phone out of her jacket's left pocket, she saw that she had a text from Kate, along with an accompanying photo of the female alpha holding a to-go cup of Starbucks up close to her face with a pouting expression.
Kate: B thnkful u don't have 2 drink coffee 2 survive late nights
The quiet laughter that bubbled forth genuine once more, Penny took a picture of herself and sent it to her girlfriend, followed up by a text:
Penny: I am. How do I look?
Kate: Great! Can't wai later alligator xoxo ;)
Penny: After a while crocodile ;)
As she was walking from the subway station to Midtown, that song by Kate Bush began to play. No, not the song that Penny had referenced earlier, Sat In Your Lap, as that would've been fine for her to listen to, but...Running Up That Hill. The song that always made her even more depressed whenever she listened to it and she'd been meaning to delete from this playlist for a while now, though she'd never gotten around to doing it.
And she didn't delete it from the playlist now nor change the song, because with the blizzard of emotions that she was already experiencing, a little bit of extra depression wasn't adding much onto the pile. Plus, the song actually gave her an idea.
I'll make a pact with you, God, even though I don't really believe in you, she thought, the paradox making her lips twist wryly. Let today go okay, and I'll stop complaining too much about how horrible my life is, since I don't think I can stop entirely. I'll try harder to do as Matt and Kate say and stop calling myself a monster, too. Does that sound good? Capisce?
By the time that she got to Midtown, the song was over and she'd taken out her earbuds and put them away. The sight of the building that served as Midtown School of Science and Technology sent a jolt of thrill through her, because she'd wanted to come here for so long, ever since she'd first seen a segment about it on one of the local news channels at the garden apartment, even though she'd known it'd be unlikely that she ever would. STEM was kind of her thing...well, anything and everything that she could get her hands on to learn was kind of thing, but that was neither here nor there. STEM was what she liked the best.
And Midtown was a good school for her to attend for reasons beyond just having a chance to be normal and go to school, albeit she had no intentions of making friends here like most – that would simply be too dangerous. Midtown was a good place for her to hide in plain sight: it was a school for science and math nerds like her, so her intelligence in those areas hopefully wouldn't stand out too much. And it was in Queens, a part of the city that Aradnea didn't frequent as much due to how easy it was for her to find her meals elsewhere. Hopefully, that would mean that no one would think that she was attending school here...if she was even attending school in the first place, given her proclivities. Which was a fair point to make, since she hadn't exactly been until now.
But the sight of Midtown, as thrilling as it was, made her nervous. There was already a swarm of other students walking up or being dropped off at the building, and about half of them were boys...and of course, a good portion of those boys would be alphas. Three or four of the teachers were male alphas, too. She'd known from looking at their staff page online before she and Matt had worked on getting her in here inconspicuously.
But it wasn't like this wouldn't have been a problem at any other school she could have chosen...well, it wouldn't have been a problem if she'd decided to go to Spence School with Kate, since it was an all-girls school regardless of designation, but that would have undermined the whole point of trying to attend school as indiscreetly as possible.
More importantly, Penny also needed to do this on her own. She couldn't rely on her soulmate for everything.
So, steeling her breath, she reminded herself that the classmates of hers that were male alphas were only teenagers, and that they and the male alpha teachers weren't him.
They weren't him, because she'd killed him. He wasn't coming back from the grave except to haunt her through all of the trauma he had inflicted on her.
She walked into the building through the main entrance, which most of the other students were going through. Like the people on her journey to here, none of them paid much mind to her except for a few cursory and curious glances, most likely because they could already tell that she was new. They were all lost in their conversations and whatnot which, with the confined space, were loud, so much louder than what she was used to on a regular basis. But she focused on her fake heartbeat that was going miles and miles per minute as she walked down the halls, following the signs on the walls for the the way to the main office, gritting her teeth and boring through it. She additionally breathed through her mouth rather than her nose, because it should've gone without saying that a high school didn't exactly smell that great.
Although, that being said, there were two scents in the air that smelled kind of...good. In fact, they made her nose tingle in almost a familiar –
Penny reached the main office and entered it. There were two secretaries sitting at their desks, both of them older women, one a beta and the other an omega. She approached the one that was an omega subconsciously. "Hello, dear," the woman said, smiling at her nicely. "How can we help you?"
Penny pushed her tongue up against her teeth briefly before she spoke, reminding herself that her fangs were still where they belonged when she wasn't feeding. That was one accident that she couldn't afford to end up happening. "Hello, I'm the new student," she replied. "My name is Penny Murdock."
The secretary's eyes brightened. "Oh, Penny Murdock!" she exclaimed. She looked at the paper bin situated right next to her computer and pulled out some of the many papers resting on its top shelf; the ones that she pulled were stuck together with a paperclip. The name Penny Murdock was scrawled on a post-it note on top of the first page. "Let's just get you situated here..."
She gave Penny her schedule with notes on where her classrooms were and a form that she needed all of her teachers to sign. It was all painfully mundane and, given what Penny was, reminiscent of a certain poorly written young adult novel, but mundane was a good thing. Mundane meant that everything was going well so far.
Penny looked down at her schedule as she exited the main office and made her way from there to her first class of the day, AP English Lang & Comp. Most of her classes were AP ones, actually, but that tentatively excited her: since she'd already been reading college textbooks for her independent studying that had functioned as her education up until now, that meant that the classes had the potential to be a bit of a challenge, right?
...Right?
There were only a few minutes left until the first bell of the day rang by the time she got to her first period. She walked up to the teacher nervously while the rest of her classmates trickled in and got settled if they hadn't already. Here in the classroom, where it was now obvious that she was a new student, all of the eyes were on her. Even in a school with over a thousand students, she was notable.
"Mr. O'Hara?" she asked, her voice quieter than she would've preferred. But, you couldn't blame her: he was one of the teachers that was a male alpha. "Hi, I'm Penny Murdock."
"Penny," he said, repeating her name. He gave her a smile that made her want to shrink back, even though there was nothing sinister about it. She gave him the paper with her right hand, congratulating herself silently on the fact that it wasn't shaking, which he quickly filled out before giving it back to her. "Nice to meet you, and welcome to Midtown. I have you sitting with Ned, if that's alright with you." He looked over towards the desks, which were designed for two people to sit at. There was one desk towards the back that had a boy who looked to be a beta sitting at it. He noticed that she was looking at him, having followed Mr. O'Hara's gaze, and smiled.
Things could be worse, she tried to reassure herself.
"Yes," Penny said. "That's fine."
"Good," Mr. O'Hara replied. "We're currently reading The Crucible. Do you have a copy of the book?"
"Yes, but...not on me."
"You can read over Ned's shoulder today," Mr. O'Hara told her. "But make sure you bring your copy with you tomorrow."
Her face flushing, but of course Mr. O'Hara couldn't see that (and thank God he couldn't) because of all of the makeup that she was wearing, she walked down one of the aisles of desks to where the boy she was pretty sure was Ned was sitting.
Sure enough, before she could ask him about that, he was already introducing himself. "Hi, I'm Ned," he said brightly.
"Penny," she murmured, sitting down next to him.
That first period was...fine. Mr. O'Hara introduced her to the class, but he didn't make her do anything more than stand up. She focused on writing down notes and reading over Ned's shoulder, who was more than happy to let her to do so. He was very exuberant, but he seemed to recognize that she wasn't, so he didn't ask her too many questions or push on her boundaries or personal space too much. She liked that, even though again, she wasn't here to – and couldn't – make friends.
After the class period was over, she walked through the hallways to her next class, AP Calculus BC with Mrs. Lagunov. That class was also fine; Mrs. Lagunov treated her the same way that Mr. O'Hara had, and the fact that she was a female beta made Penny more receptive to her. Penny was assigned a seat right next to a beta girl with a black headband in her blonde hair named Betty, and she was kind, just like Ned. One of the boys in their vicinity was not, as Penny felt his eyes on her for a good portion of the class; he was an alpha and she thought his name was Flash, which was a weird name to go by, since she figured that it was a nickname. But she gave him the same treatment as those alpha men on the subway, pretending to ignore his existence altogether.
But as she made her way through the hallways before and after AP Calculus BC and indeed, in the classroom for that class itself, she smelled those two scents again that she had earlier. They made her nose wrinkle and her body shift uncomfortably as she took her notes, which in turn made her frown despite the pleasantness of the scents, because they were an unwanted distraction that she just couldn't shake from her brain. They both belonged to alphas, she could tell by the pheromones that accompanied the scents: the one that smelled like blackcurrant and something that she could only describe as amber belonged to a female, and the one that smelled like the magnolia flower, but spicier, with a citrus that was not lemon, lime, or orange belonged to a male. The male one made her shudder, because no male alpha had any right smelling that good to her, not after him.
Penny tried to reason with herself that the two scents were caused by nothing more than powerful colognes. It wasn't hard for her to do; if there was one thing that she had always been good at, it was convincing herself that what she was experiencing wasn't real, at least not in the moment. It was the only way that she had ever been able to survive those parts of the garden apartment without her brain breaking, after all.
But a part of her recognized the truth after the AP Calculus BC class ended. "What's your next class?" Betty asked her as they both gathered up her things.
Penny looked down at her schedule, an inexplicable dread forming in her stomach. "AP Physics II with Mrs. Warren," she said.
Betty smiled at her. "Oh, you'll like her class. She's a lot of fun."
Penny was sure that she wouldn't have a problem with the teacher; Mrs. Warren, like Mrs. Lagunov, was a beta. And as long as she didn't take a personal vendetta against her like Kate's Spanish teacher did with her, they would get along just fine.
But, anyways, the reason why she recognized the truth was because after she and Betty parted ways, the other girl going down the opposite side of the hall, those two scents became more and more potent as Penny made her way towards her third period, her way towards her doom. And she knew it was her doom just as she walked through the door of the classroom, because by then the scents were so potent that her breath hitched as she felt a certain organ within her give a distinctive twinge.
Hers wasn't the only breath in the room to hitch, either.
No.
No, no, no, no...
Penny wasn't able to think much more than that, she wasn't even given the chance to run outside of being frozen like a deer stuck in the headlights, because Mrs. Warren was walking over to her with a kind and sympathetic visage. "Hi, there. You're Penny Murdock, right?" she asked.
Penny's brain reacted on autopilot – and not in the way that she wanted. "Y – yes, Mrs. Warren," she stammered out.
"Glad to have you. Can I have your form, please?" Again, the omega's brain acted for her in a way that it shouldn't have, handing the form over to the teacher. Mrs. Warren signed the form and gave it back to her, completely mistaking her terror for what it was. "I know first days can be overwhelming; don't worry, we've all been there. Unfortunately, I only have one seat left for this period and it's in the back of the classroom, but if it's too much of a problem for you to see the board, I can change things around for you. The seat's on the other side of Harley, and on his other side is Michelle. I'm sure that I don't have to point them out for you."
Against her will, Penny looked towards the back of the classroom just as she had in AP English. Her eyes felt like they were just about to drop out of her head, her cheeks heating as they paled. Her fake heartbeat was going even faster than it had before in the short time she'd had it on. She felt like she was going to be sick, even though it wasn't possible for her to be unless she ate food or drank water.
Because there Harley Keener and Michelle Jones were, the foster son of her parents and her biological omither's other soulmates, and the foster daughter of Natasha Romanoff, the foster children of the Avengers. The group of superheroes that her own parents were part of. The group of superheroes that she knew would throw her into the Raft if they ever caught her...even though it would mean that they'd finally find out her identity. She was too dangerous for them to just let go and live a semi-normal life like she was...had been up until now.
Because Penny could tell, by the way that Harley Keener's eyes had widened as well, and by the sound of their heartbeats, that they had already figured out what she meant to them. They already had to know that she was their soulmate, their scent-match, their primis.
Now, Penny didn't know how it hadn't occurred to her when she'd done the thorough research of seeing how many male alpha teachers there were at Midtown to also make sure that the children of the Avengers, especially now with the knowledge of who they were here, didn't go here to Midtown. The realization that she'd previously known they went to some fancy private school in Queens hit her like a freight truck as she recalled that information – and Midtown fit the description of that to a "T."
But that reminder paled in comparison to the other two things that she also knew:
That this was the break that she'd been looking for all along in her anxiety about today, this was the day where everything good in her life was going to fall apart, and that Kate had been wrong about it all going fine.
Her girlfriend had been very, very wrong.
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