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: Hi, everyone! I'm sorry for the time that's lapsed between the last chapter and this one. College life is no joke. Not sure of when the next update is going to be, as I have to go on hiatus for 3 weeks in a couple of weeks. Might be able to squeeze another one in before then, might not be able to update until ~late June/early July. We shall see.

Chapter title comes from The Pantaloon by twenty one pilots.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Until the next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~the heavy souls 'verse~

~life in technicolor ii~

~chapter 12: the pantaloon~

"Hi, Dad," Penny said as she visibly fought the urge to laugh. "Welcome home."

Tony felt his bag fall from his fingers and land on the floor at his feet. He couldn't even think properly for a second so he could formulate a reply, too busy trying to process what he was looking at.

His daughter was sitting on the couch with her legs crossed as she was watching the TV...except both of those pieces of furniture were on the ceiling. So was every other piece of furniture in the living room, in fact, with them being glued there by her synthetic webs. The paintings and pictures on the walls had also been turned upside down.

He closed his eyes, thinking that maybe, just maybe, his world would be righted when he opened them again.

He was disappointed.

"Penny..." he breathed, and he was unable to keep the tired, disbelieving laugh from creeping into his voice. "Penny, what did you do?"

"Um...I did some rearranging," she said. She let herself unstick from the couch, flipping as she fell down so that she landed on her feet. She gave him a small, nervous smile, but he could tell she was fighting down laughter even more now, undoubtedly from the look on his face. He could only imagine what he looked like right now. "Do you like it?"

Did he like it?

Did he like that she'd put every single piece of furniture in the living room – and who knew where else, as he knew his kid, and that meant she probably had to have more tricks up her sleeve than just this – on the ceiling?

It hadn't been what he'd been expecting when he'd come home. Yesterday had been a shit show. Ross was continuing to be a pain in his ass. Because Tony hadn't been caught up on that paperwork he'd mentioned before, they'd had to go over it during the meeting. Extensively. Until he'd felt like his ears would've burst if he'd been subjected to listening to the diatribe one more time.

And as if that hadn't been bad enough, among the many other parts of the agenda for the meeting which had dragged on and on, Ross had had another important piece of business. "Have you given any thought yet about what you're going to do when your daughter's identity gets revealed to the world?" he'd asked bluntly.

Pure, unadulterated panic had swept through him, so much so that Steve's eyes had gone over to him as Natasha had curled her hands into fists and Matt had clenched his jaw. "You said you wouldn't tell anyone about her identity," Tony had said, albeit he'd felt like he'd barely been able to say anything at all.

His non-sequitur hadn't done the trick. "I said that I wouldn't send her to the Raft," Ross had gruffed. But the man wasn't completely a monster. His expression had softened minutely. "I'm just as disinterested in the world knowing her identity as you all are. But the fact of the matter remains: her identity is going to become a public matter eventually. And while I doubt that she will be charged for her crimes like the Punisher will be when he is caught, given the nature of her biology and how she has not relapsed in months and hopefully will continue not to, there is still the court of public opinion. You need to figure out what you're going to do in that eventuality, as I won't always be here to protect you."

"Protect?" Tony had wanted to say. "You think that you're protecting us, when you were the one who made the wedge between our team wider, allowing it to be split apart? Almost at the cost of the world?"

But, back to the present.

"Yeah," he said. He let his laughter come out more earnestly now, let it shake his shoulders. "Yeah, I like it, Pen."

In the next second, she had her arms wrapped around him in a proper hug, squeezing him tight. Maybe a little too tight. He wasn't going to complain about that, however. "Really?" she asked, her voice muffled by his shirt. "You don't think I was being reckless with it or anything?"

He squinted his eyes. "Are you trying to get yourself in trouble?"

"No!" Penny yelped, pulling away. "I just – I thought that – Anne said you might be – "

Aw, he'd fucked up.

Way to go, Stark.

"Honey, I'm not mad at you, regardless of what Anne said," he reassured her. He liked her therapist, really he did, as otherwise Anne wouldn't be Penny's therapist. But sometimes he felt like her opinions were from a perspective that was a little too normal when their reality was...absolutely not. "Provided that you make everything right again – " he waved his hand at the evidence " – and whatever else you've done, you're fine, okay? It's not like you were Harley doing this y himself and just begging for an accident report to be made and Evelyn to scream at me for an hour."

"What about me?" the other kid asked, appearing from the hallway and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. As he took in Tony and the upside-down living room, his face crumpled. "Aw, dammit. I missed it, didn't I?"

Penny skipped over to him and kissed him on the cheek. "Don't worry, you didn't miss all of it. Besides, I'm sure FRIDAY recorded it."

"I did," said the AI.

Tony sighed, running a hand over his face.

Did he even want to know what the rest of "it" was?

. . .

. . .

"My bedroom, too? Really?"

"S – ha, ha – sorry, Dad."

"Right this room first. Please, for the love of God. Both of you."

"But, Mechanic – "

"Nope, I don't wanna hear it. I said it wasn't like she was you doing this alone. I know you helped her. You're just as responsible. Fix it!"

"Yes, Dad."

"Yes, Tony."

"What are you working on?"

"Not much," Tony answered, looking up from his project at the worktable. "Just making a few finishing touches to what Harley and I did today." The boy had just gone back home from his internship and weekend of pranks. Steve had gotten off pretty light with the rubber ducks when compared to him and Matt, who had threatened Pietro with payback for the wrapping paper all over his furniture. Tony was more interested in seeing that than was probably healthy, but come on: a prank by someone who was blind sounded fascinating. And hilarious. "Why? Do you want to help me?"

Penny bit her lip, crossing her arms to grip her torso. The actions immediately set him on edge: whatever this was, it had to be important to her. "No. I need to talk with you about something. Is that okay?"

He closed out the holoscreen. "Yep, that's fine," he said. He gestured over to the old couches in the corner surrounding the kitchenette. "Would you like to step into my office?"

She gave a weak huff. "Dad."

"What? Did you think a billionaire's office was going to be fancy and all that jazz?"

"I've seen your actual office. It is that fancy."

Sitting down on one of the couches as she chose the other one, he changed tactics to try and comfort her. "Whatever it is, you don't need to be worried about it. If it's something we need to get through, we'll do it together, okay?"

Penny patted her thighs, making a short little tune. "It's not something like that. Not really, I don't think. I already handled most of it." Tony felt the muscles of his face twitch in confusion as he watched her fidget. He knew he should be keeping his expression more neutral than that as encouragement, but...what was she going to be telling him? Why was an uneasy feeling already settling into his stomach at the thought? "Um...you know how Harley's birthday is coming up soon, right? His sixteenth."

"...Yes?" The word came out as more of a question when really, it was a statement of fact. "And your birthday is just over three weeks after that. I should probably be asking you about what you want for your birthday this year, shouldn't I?"

It was going to be their first birthday of hers spent together. For his forty-seventh – jeez – they'd had a small party consisting of them, the Keeners, May, Matt, Natasha, Rhodey, Happy, and Pepper, and it had gone over well. But there was something different about spending the day of her birth with her. He hadn't been there that day, had had no idea when she'd come screaming into the world at 1:17 AM that she was his. And he hadn't been there on any of the birthdays since, not even the one last year, which she'd spent alone. He had so much time to make up for. A cake to make up for, too, since she wouldn't be able –

"We're not talking about me," Penny told him. "We can talk about me later. I was just thinking..." That uneasy feeling grew in its intensity, because she was already smiling sheepishly. She clearly hadn't "just thought" about this, whatever it was, she'd gone ahead and done it without talking with him about it beforehand. Great."Harleysaidthathedidn'twanttobringMJandNedovertohisapartmentbecauseofmesoIthoughtitwouldbeanicegiftforthemtocomeoverhere?"

By the end, her chest was heaving. Tony stood up and, after receiving a nod that it would be alright for him to do so, sat down next to her on her couch. He maintained a good several inches of distance between them, but offered out his hand. She accepted it, squeezed it. "Penny, breathe," he instructed. She took a few deep breaths. Once settled, he said, "Yeah, I'm gonna need you to repeat that for me, kid."

She nodded. "Yeah, um." Her eyes darted away from him, casting down to her lap. "Harley told me a couple of weeks ago that he doesn't invite MJ and Ned over to his mom's place that often because he doesn't want them to find out about me. But I thought, if they knew...maybe they could? Maybe that could be my birthday present to him?"

Excerpts of dialogue repeated in his brain, both her words and Ross'.

Tony felt his pulse start to race.

"Penny, no," he spoke. "No. Please tell me that you didn't."

He'd checked in on her Friday night before he'd gone to bed, and had seen from her tracker that she'd been in Forest Hills, Queens. He hadn't thought anything more of it at the time. Forest Hills was where she'd lived with her mom, it made sense she would go there to patrol from time to time along with the rest of the city.

But Forest Hills was also where Harley and his family lived, as well as that Ted kid. Michelle was another matter, as he knew from his research into her and Ted, but –

Penny wilted at his tone. "I did," she acknowledged. Then her self-preservation instincts kicked in. "But I swear, it's not that bad! They didn't freak out that bad when I – !"

Tony had to get back to his feet. He buried his head into his hands as he let out a groan, walking, unable to keep still. "You told them?"

"Um...I kind of showed them, too..."

This was not happening.

This could not be happening.

His entire world was spinning. "What happened to you not wanting anybody to know you'd been found?" he demanded, tearing his hands away from his face. Only the sight of her expression kept him from devolving entirely into his madness, because he knew he couldn't do that with her, even if part of him wanted to. He didn't want to be like his father. More than that, he'd already sent her to her deepest and darkest point before, which had led to the events that had caused her (second) death. He wasn't going to let that happen again. "What happened to your mentality of no one can find out you're Spider-Woman, much less – ?"

He was not ready for how her eyes flashed with anger. "This is different!" she insisted, her voice raising.

Tony closed his eyes. He wasn't going to let this come to a fight.

Deep breath in, deep breath out.

In, out.

When he opened his eyes, though he was still angry, he kept his response to one word: "How?"

"Because..." Penny was flailing for words. Not because she wasn't sure of how to answer him, he didn't think, but rather she was trying to figure out the word order she wanted to put the answer in. Quickly, she became resolute. "Because Ned and MJ aren't just Harley's friends," she spoke, nodding to herself. "They were my friends, too.

"'Cause I sat with them every day at lunch for like three months, right? Back before everything happened with Mom. And I was mostly sitting with them for Harley, but I talked with them, too. MJ let me call her MJ. Harley said she doesn't let anyone do that except for her friends. And...she said I was still their friend when I went over to Ned's place Friday night, 'cause she was there with him. He said it, too." Her eyes were becoming watery. Sniffling, she wiped at them with the sleeve of the hoodie she was wearing. It looked like one of Harley's. "And they promised not to tell anyone! They're both willing to sign NDA to prove it. MJ kind of already had it figured out when I went over there, anyways.

"So please, Dad?" Penny requested. She was giving him those doe eyes again. The ones that made him want to surrender and wrap her in his arms, because dammit, the world had already been so unkind to her in her short life. "You can be mad at me for revealing the truth to them. But please, can you let them come over for Harley's birthday? Please?"

Most of Tony's resolve easily slipped through his fingers like water. Some of it remained on his hands, to go along with the metaphor. "Did KAREN record video feed of this?" As she gave him a shrug – because why would he have expected her to know in spite of her knowing that her AI recorded everything she saw through the mask and then some – he went, "FRI, connect to KAREN and get that feed from Friday night. Play it on the TV holoscreen."

"Yes, Boss."

"Dad – "

"No, I need to watch what happened before I make my decision," he said, cutting her off as he sat back down next to her. He raised a hand for emphasis. "I'm the adult and parent. I need to make sure, even with these promising you they're not going to tell anybody and their willingness to sign an NDA, that they're actually going to. I need to make sure that you're going to be safe. It's my responsibility."

The world couldn't find out about her being Lolita, not yet. With not even two years since Flash Thompson's death or a year since she'd stopped killing, the wound was too fresh. Ross was right. He needed to have been putting more thought into this before now, just like how he needed to make sure he didn't have to ruin two kids' lives in order to protect her.

Because he would.

Without a second thought, he would.

Penny hung her head, her shoulders lifting. "Alright," she agreed in a small voice. It made his heart ache. He didn't want to make her feel like she didn't deserve friends outside of Harley, Pietro, and Wanda, and he made a mental note to reiterate this to her later. For now, however... "I understand."

It was because of his not wanting her to think that she didn't deserve friends that he made his next decision. Well, that and again, he didn't want to be like his father, no matter if it meant him going overboard in the opposite direction from time to time. It helped that Penny had a good head on her shoulders, unlike him when he'd been her age.

(It helped, as much as he hated to admit it, that he didn't have her mother to co-parent with.)

"You're not gonna be in trouble for this," Tony told her before the footage, now on the holoscreen, could play. He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, half-afraid it was the wrong thing for him to do, but she didn't flinch. The action simply earned him a curious, if not morose, glance. "This was...I'm not going to lie to you, Pen, this was incredibly reckless of you, but I can kind of get it."

He watched her blink. "I'm not? You do?"

Tony chuckled. "You forget, Rhodey was my first friend. I was a lonely teenager once, too. And you wanted to do this for Harley for his birthday. I guess large, grandiose gestures as gifts run in the family – just ask Pepper." His Adam's apple bobbed at how his joke fell flat. She hardly reacted to it. "But you've got to promise me that you're not going to do something like this again without talking to me first, okay? Not because I want you to be unhappy – "

"But because you want me safe," Penny finished. She brought her knees back up to her chest, her cheeks flushing. "I know."

...They were going to have to talk about this more later, weren't they?

He exhaled softly. That was another problem for his future self to deal with.

"Alright, FRIDAY. Play the video."

To Tony's surprise, Ned and Michelle had taken the news rather...well.

Ned had at first been overly enthusiastic about having Spider-Woman – "You literally saved my life!" – show up at his bedroom window, which hadn't made him question why she'd arrived in the first place. Michelle had initially been more reserved, but that tracked with what Harley had told him about her. It also tracked with how, true to Penny's word, she'd suspected that Penny was Spider-Woman as well as Lolita all along. She hadn't wanted to scare away the girl she'd only known for a brief time period, as far as he could figure.

Nevertheless, Tony felt his palms become damp at hw this sixteen-year-old girl had been able to figure it all out so easily, her "only" suspecting or not. He knew from how Harley talked about her that she was rather remarkable, with extremeobservance skills and emotional intelligence. Her proximity with Penny before had given her several clues to feed into this: namely, Penny's inability to eat food having led her to not eating lunch at school, her history with Flash, the appearance of Lolita two weeks after his death, and then Penny's eventual disappearance. She'd just needed confirmation for the pieces she'd put together, which Penny had handed to her on a silver platter.

But for all these facts could be used to argue that Michelle was the exception to the rule, she was still a teenaged girl. If she could figure out that Penny was Spider-Woman and Lolita after knowing her only for a handful of months, who else could put it all together? How soon would it be until they did?

That was what made Tony worried more than these two individual kids on their own, as Penny was right and neither of them seemed interested in revealing her identity. "You did what you had to do," Michelle had said succinctly.

Ned had tumbled over his own words from how freaked out he'd been that not only had his missing classmate been standing in his room, but that she was Spider-Woman, and Spider-Woman was Lolita, but he'd agreed with an exuberant nod.

They were good kids.

But so many people out there weren't.

And when – "when," not if – one of those people connected the dots, they weren't going to be all nice about it like Michelle and Ned. No, it was going to be an outright –

"Dad?" Penny waved her hand in front of his face, her nose scrunched up. "Are you okay?"

Tony's entire body jerked. Here was one of the downfalls of being around enhanced people all the time: not only could they see from the look on his face when he was spacing out, but they could pick up on when he was spiraling due to his heartbeat, too.

He pushed those thoughts aside for the moment. "I'm fine. Fine, fine," he said.

Penny's face twisted. "So...you're not gonna let Ned and MJ come over?"

She was expecting the worst outcome. A Stark trait, that one.

His mind was currently so far removed from that question due to the sheer implications of everything else that it took him a good second to formulate a response. "I will be speaking to them and their parents about signing an NDA," he warned – and he had no idea how that was going to work, him convincing their parents they needed to sign NDAs without telling them about Penny. Maybe, if he got the lawyers to phrase it more about what they saw here and less than what they already knew, that would work? But that wouldn't put as much of an ironclad muzzle around the past as he would want it to – "and our conversation about your recklessness by doing this is not over, even though you're not in trouble, but...yeah. I think we can have them come over for Harley's birthday!"

"Thank you!" Penny squealed. She pulled him into another too-tight hug before bouncing away, heading off to the elevator. "Thank you, Dad! And – oh!" She spun on her feet, holding up a finger. "Don't tell Harley about this! I want it to be a surprise!"

"I won't," he promised.

She didn't pick up on the monotone tenor of his voice, disappearing into the elevator.

Thirty seconds after she was gone, he went back to freaking out.

Properly, this time.

"Fuck!" he shouted, letting his face fall back into his hands. "Fuck!"

Tony could feel a headache coming on. He needed some ibuprofen, or a drink, or somebody to vent to who was not somebody he felt like he could currently go to about this (Natasha, Matt, Rhodey, and maybe May, basically), somebody like –

"Nope, not doing that," he muttered, pushing himself up from the couch.

Ibuprofen and a drink it was, then. After that...

He'd need to start coming up with yet another backup plan – preferably one that didn't almost destroy the world again.

Word Count: 3,774

Next Chapter Title: true love