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: This chapter went through several iterations and I think I've got it just where I want it, but...yeah lol. Lot of work went into this 4.4k.

Chapter title comes from Helena Beat by Foster the People.

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

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~the heavy souls 'verse~

~life in technicolor ii~

~chapter 15: helena beat~

Penny didn't have a good feeling about her dad, Natasha, Sam, and Steve's trip to Argentina.

The bad feeling hadn't set in until after they'd already left. She'd woken up about three or four hours after that, tossing and turning in her bed, alone because it was a Thursday night and that meant Harley had been at his mom and sister's place and not at the Tower with her, her stomach feeling like it'd been twisting itself into knots. If she still had the ability to sweat, she'd had no doubts that she would've been breaking out in a cold one then.

"Penny, it is 2:06 AM on July 28th, 2017. You are in the Avengers Tower," FRIDAY had begun to tell her, apparently thinking that Penny had been having a panic attack. "Penny, it is 2:06 AM on July 28th, 2017. You are in – "

But Penny hadn't been having a panic attack. She just...hadn't had a good feeling, kind of like it'd been her sixth sense kicking in but also not because the feeling had been in her stomach rather than going down the back of her neck and her spine, so she'd cut FRIDAY off right there. "It's okay, FRI," she'd said. "'M not having a panic attack."

The AI had paused. "I am sensing panic attack-like symptoms from you."

"Well, I'm not having a panic attack," Penny had reassured her. "I just...had a bad dream."

The lie had felt hot and sticky in her mouth, but FRIDAY hadn't called her out on it. "Alright, Penny. Would you like me to play you some white noise to help you fall back asleep?"

"No, I'm fine."

Despite what she'd told FRIDAY, though, it had taken her a while to fall back asleep after that, which led her now to the present. Because now, upon waking up seven hours after initially waking up, that awful feeling in her stomach was still there. Groaning softly, she rubbed at her abdomen before she even opened her eyes. It felt like she had a sore stomach. In fact, if she hadn't known any better, she would've sworn that she was getting sick. As in, coming down with something or having some sort of food poisoning, not throwing up anything else besides blood or blood substitute because she couldn't eat anything else anymore. As in, sick as before she'd gotten bitten by the radioactive spider.

But that was impossible. Her enhanced healing factor combined with certain specific ways that her DNA had been changed by the bite meant that it was pretty much impossible for her to get sick nowadays.

"Penny – "

"I'm fine," she repeated to FRIDAY once again, resisting the urge to roll her eyes as she got up out of bed. The AI was only concerned about her, as a sister would be. She couldn't completely fault her for that.

It wasn't until Penny was in the shower that it occurred to her what the other reason in the past for why she'd had a sore stomach like this was, because indeed there was more than one. Back before the spider bite, before Midtown but after the car crash and her transferring schools, she'd used to wake up with a sore stomach every single morning, though she hadn't told her mother that. It had been from the dread. The knowledge of what was going to happen when she went to school and saw Skip, because there was only one thing that had ever happened when she'd seen him outside of music class.

But Skip was dead. She'd killed him. So why was she having this reaction now? Was it...was it because it wasn't a reaction for her, per se, but for her dad and the others? Was something bad going to happen in Argentina?

As soon as she'd thought it, she knew that had to be it. Another feeling, the feeling of being right, washed over her, just like the water from the shower head.

But she didn't want to believe it. Everything's going to be fine with Dad, Nat, Sam, and Steve, she tried to reassure herself. They've gone on dozens of HYDRA missions before...all of them before Ultron, but still! They know what they're doing, and Dad and Natasha told you this base has been abandoned for years. It's not going to be very dangerous. You're just worried and anxious. Worried and anxious over nothing.

Obviously, by her usage of the term "tried," she wasn't very successful in that regard.

After her shower and a change of clothes, she went into the kitchen of the penthouse to make herself breakfast. But as she stood at the counter, waiting for the thermos to heat up her meal, the utter silence from the lack of her dad and Harley in the entire building unnerved her, even though she knew that Harley was supposed to come back today despite how Tony wouldn't be back for his internship. She was especially looking forward to him coming back, in fact, because Anne had told her a month ago that they wouldn't be able to have their regular session today, and Penny hadn't wanted to rearrange for another day this week. She just hadn't.

But, anyways. Because of the silence, she took the still-heating thermos and the other carton of blood substitute she'd pulled out of her pantry and went downstairs to the communal floor.

The communal floor was quieter and emptier than it usually was at this time of day, even for a Friday, as usually Sam had a later morning than most on Fridays and/or Pietro and Wanda hung out for at least some time here most mornings, too. But Sam was gone and neither of the twins were in sight. Maybe they were on their floor or out in the city, she once more attempted to reason with herself. Just because she knew what they usually did, it didn't mean that they always had to do it, especially when most of the team was on a mission. The world did not revolve around her and how comforted she felt with routines.

But while they were gone, Matt, thankfully, was here. He was standing in the kitchen part of the communal floor at the island counter, his hands moving along what looked like a paper – one of several – with braille on it. Unable to stop the light sigh of relief that escaped from her mouth, Penny bounded over to him. "'Morning, Matt," she said, placing her thermos and carton of blood substitute on the counter. "What are you doing?"

"Good morning, Penny," he said back, smiling. "I'm reading some legal documents related to the Avengers." Well, that made sense. He jutted out his chin towards her thermos and blood substitute carton. "And I'd appreciate it if you would be careful with those and don't get them all over my paperwork."

He was only teasing, she could tell by his tone, but nevertheless her cheeks still heated and cooled at the same time. "I won't," she said, uncapping the thermos and bringing its lip up to her mouth so she could drink from it. "I'm not clumsy." Not anymore – back before the spider bite had been a different story.

Matt chuckled. "I know you aren't, don't worry."

They spent the next few minutes in companionable silence, she focusing on drinking her breakfast and he reading his legal documents. Finally, though, when she was about three-quarters of the way through the thermos, she asked, "Have you received any updates from Dad and the others yet?"

"They reached the jungle in Argentina," he said. "The reception there is relatively nonexistent, but they'll let us known when they've cleared the base and are going to Buenos Aires."

Penny swallowed uncomfortably. "Yeah," she said. Because as with every international mission, she knew that they couldn't come back home immediately upon completing their mission. They were going to have to spend at least another day in the Argentinian capital debriefing and playing the political game before they could come home. Hence why she'd made the joke about her birthday.

(But it didn't really feel like a joke to her anymore.)

Matt picked up on her tone. "What are you planning to do today, Penny?" he questioned.

It was his attempt at a distraction, she knew it was. But she decided to let it work. "I don't know, probably just mostly wait for Harley to get here since I don't have therapy today and then go out on patrol with you tonight," she answered truthfully.

He hummed in response, before saying, "I figured as much. I was going to ask you, though, if you wanted to spend the day with me before Harley gets here."

She perked up a bit, as she was sure was his intention. "Doing what?"

"Oh, not much. I'm mostly going to be busy today going over these legal documents," he said, gesturing a hand down at them. "But I was thinking that I could maybe teach you some braille while I'm at it."

Penny was always eager to learn new things. Always. And braille had been on her list of things that she wanted to learn for some time now, since Matt was kind of an uncle figure to her (it was hard for her to define just how she viewed him, considering she'd never had an uncle before, not one that had ever been in her life anyways. But the way she felt about him and Natasha was a lot like how she felt about May: they weren't parental figures necessarily, that title belonged solely to her dad, her mom, and Richard, but they were people she looked up to nonetheless. People that she didn't want to let down).

But.

She chewed her lip thoughtfully. "Are we going to hang out here on the communal floor?"

"That was the plan."

That was all that it took. "Okay," she agreed easily.

"Good. Oh, I should also let you know: May's coming over for dinner this evening."

The news made her feel even better. "Great," she said. The last time she had seen her aunt was at Harley's birthday party – which wasn't that long ago, but still.

The day was mostly a slow one. She and Matt went into the living room section of the communal floor once she was done with her breakfast. She made a brief trip back upstairs to collect one of the books that she had been assigned by her online school that she was now rereading, then made herself comfy in one of the armchairs rather than her usual end of the one couch. She and Matt made some small talk as they both read and he also did some work to go along with the legal documents, the TV on mute and playing the international CNN channel in case of – in case there was any news about the Avengers in Argentina that they somehow didn't get beforehand.

Not that anything like that was going to happen, the feeling in her stomach that wasn't really going away aside. It was only, you know. Just in case.

After a brief break for lunch, which was light on her part due to her late breakfast, Matt got to teaching her the basics of braille, using the legal documents (which probably wasn't legal, but whatever) to teach her the alphabet. It was surprisingly easy and simple, once she adjusted to the differences between it and the alphabet used by seeing people. Each letter was a block, for lack of a better word in her mind, that was comprised of two columns and three rows for possible raised dots, the raised dots showing what the letter was. The letter "A," for instance, was a raised dot on the first row and column. "B" was two dots, with the second raised dot being on the second row, first column. "C" was also two dots, but the second dot was on the first row, second column instead. "D" was...

Once she got the hang of it, she was able to read some of the words on the legal documents. She was slow at it, very slow, but Matt was still impressed. "You're a quicker learner than I was when I first started," he said.

"I have an advantage: I can see the dots," Penny pointed out.

He grinned crookedly. "Oh, you've been looking at the dots, have you? That's not fair," he ribbed. "Close your eyes. You're learning this the real way."

She laughed at that, but did as she was told. She became an even slower reader because of it, but Matt didn't mind. They wound up laughing as they worked through the legal documents together, before they decided to call it the quits for now. She'd definitely need some refreshers, more practice, and to learn the punctuation and other things like numbers, but this was a good start to her learning braille in the mean time.

Around half an hour later, Harley arrived at the Tower and Pietro and Wanda came back from their day of shopping. Penny didn't really understand how somebody could spend an entire day on shopping, but she wasn't sure if that was just because of her own interests or if the spider bite had made her even more of a recluse – pun intended – than before to the point that she was unable to understand. Regardless, the twins regaled her, Harley, Matt, and Vision with stories of the things they'd bought and seen while out in the city before May arrived about an hour before their usual dinner time. Thankfully, they hadn't seemed to experience any discrimination or harassment while out and about. Things in that regard had been getting better for them ever since all of the Avengers had signed the Accords; people were more willing to trust them than they had been after Ultron and especially after the Lagos incident.

When May came up to the communal floor from the elevator, the first thing that she did was go over to Penny. "Hi, bambina," she said. "How are you?"

Penny gave her a smile. "Good."

But...that was a lie.

Because no matter how much fun she'd had today, no matter how much more fun she knew she'd have while the others waited for their undoubtable takeout order to arrive and then they all ate dinner together, she still couldn't get rid of that feeling in her stomach.

Something in Argentina was going to go wrong – if it hadn't already.

About an hour after dinner, she and Matt put on their suits and went out for patrol as Spider-Woman and Daredevil.

It was a nice night, at least in terms of the weather. The air felt good on her skin through her suit as she sailed from her webs in the air and ran across the rooftops. The night wasn't that bad in terms of crime, either – there were some robbers that they'd had to stop so far, but they hadn't come across any attempted murders or sexual assaults and hadn't seen any signs of human trafficking like the last time she'd patrolled with Matt (and Natasha). Naturally, though, while Penny appreciated this very much for the people of New York City, since a lack of (visible) crime meant a lack of traumatic experiences for them tonight, she couldn't help but wish that there was...a little bit more action. Something to distract her from the dread in her stomach that was only becoming worse and worse and worse.

"Matt?" she asked tentatively as they were taking a quick break on a low-rise rooftop. She was sitting facing him while he was leaning against the wall of the rooftop access. "Have you received an update?" This was only the third time she'd asked the question, including that morning. She thought she deserved brownie points for that.

That wasn't mentioning how many times she'd checked her text messages with Dad and Natasha without even receiving a notification they'd texted her, however. That probably meant she had to lose those brownie points she thought she deserved, in particular because she'd been too anxious to text them about why they hadn't given them any updates.

"...No," Matt was forced to admit. She could once again tell by his tone that it bothered him, but not just by that. He also shifted his weight on his feet. "But I'm sure that they're fine, Penny."

"Fine."

Penny was starting to get tired of that word today, considering how many times she'd said it herself and not actually meant it.

"Come on," Matt suggested when she didn't say anything in response to what he had said, stepping away from the rooftop access wall. "Let's go back to patrolling."

They ran across the rooftops for several blocks – and now, finally, Penny got the distraction that she'd wanted. She spotted the Trust A Bro Moving Company moving truck first, the five – no wait, six guys wearing red tracksuits second. They were standing outside a corner store, looking primed and ready to rob it. Tracksuit Mafia. Thank God.

...Well, maybe not "thank God." Like the robbers that she and Matt had come across earlier tonight, the Tracksuit Mafia goons were rarely ever particularly smart, but they had larger numbers than the other robbers, who had been a group of one and a group of two. More people meant more of a fight time.

"Matt," she spoke quietly, crouching behind the ledge of a roof for cover. "Matt, I can see some Tracksuit Mafia guys!"

He quickly crouched down next to her. "How many?"

"Six – no, seven," she corrected herself as yet another guy walked into view. "It looks like they're going to break into a store."

"'Looks like?'"

"I know, I know," she grumbled. Innocent until proven guilty: just because it looked like they were going to break into the store, that didn't mean that they actually were. She and Matt, vigilante and Avenger though they were, shouldn't act until they had the proof, even though the Tracksuit Mafia was a crime syndicate, if a poor one.

They waited for several minutes from their vantage point, Penny watching the Tracksuit Mafia guys and waiting for the "proof," aka the right moment to strike. Because unfortunately, as was the Tracksuit Mafia's wont, they spent quite a while "dicking around," for lack of a better expression – and believe her, she wanted a better one, one that wasn't as sexualized or gender-stereotypical, but "messing around" didn't really cover what they were talking about. She cringed as she heard them talking about their girlfriends or other sexual partners, all but one of them using some not-so-nice terms (that one genuinely seemed to love his girlfriend, he was talking about getting concert tickets for Imagine Dragons for the two of them). They swung their weapons, guns and crowbars, around haphazardly as they spoke, which made her muscles tense more than a few times. But she waited.

Patiently, she waited.

Finally, after a couple of the guys also revealed why they were here tonight – apparently, this corner store was one of the ones that the Tracksuit Mafia "controlled," except the owners of the store had refused to pay their dues for this month, so they were sending them a "first warning" of sorts – the goons struck. Literally, as one of them swung the crowbar that he was holding into the glass windows of the corner store. It instantly set off the alarms of the store, which seemed kind of stupid, but then again she supposed there was a purpose. They wanted to make sure that their message was going to be seen in getting their suits on the camera, that the owners of the store understood just who it was that had "stolen" from them. And they definitely weren't planning on being around enough for the cops; they were planning to get in there, steal the cash, and then be gone.

Well, too bad for them Spider-Woman and Daredevil had caught on to their plan, right?

Penny hopped down from the rooftop, landing on the ground with hardly a sound. Because she landed in the alleyway instead of out on the open street, the Tracksuit Mafia guys didn't even notice her. Like she was Lolita – not "like," she was Lolita, though they of course didn't know that, she stalked out of the shadows. She heard Matt coming down from the rooftop at a bit slower pace behind her, but she knew that he wasn't going to be worried about her doing this. The Tracksuit Mafia guys weren't a hard problem to solve – as long as the Kingpin wasn't around, that is. But she'd never seen him before, had only heard about him from Matt and the Punisher.

"Hey, guys," she called out to the Tracksuit Mafia goons before her. "What are you doing? 'Cause you know what it looks like you're doing, right?"

"Shit, it's Spider-Woman!" one of the goons exclaimed – an expression she'd become used to, it was so darn common – before pointing his gun at her.

"Bro, what the hell are you doing?" the goon closest to him exclaimed, the one that had been talking about taking his girlfriend to an Imagine Dragons concert, grabbing the first one's gun and aiming its nozzle down at the ground. "She's just a kid!"

Penny didn't know whether to be grateful for the second goon seemingly caring about her enough to not want her to get shot despite not being a great guy himself, or annoyed at the fact that seemingly the only reason why he did was because he basically thought she was too young to be able to handle herself. The past over year and a half spoke just to the contrary, after all.

She decided to go with the latter. This wasn't the first time somebody had said that out loud to her, and that was the option she had gone with before.

"I'm not a kid!" she warned as she thwipped a web at where the second goon's hand was still on the first's gun, thus locking them together, because the first goon wasn't fast enough in trying to drop the gun before she did the same to hishand.

Bullets came at her from the other guys' guns, because they didn't seem to have the same problem with shooting a "kid"that the Imagine Dragons goon did. She dodged them all easily enough, the gunfire ringing in her ears just like the alarms from the store. The police were probably going to be here in a few minutes; even if she and Daredevil couldn't round up these bad guys – a borderline impossibility – they would only have to stall them for a little bit longer.

Like he was the devil himself being summoned, when the goons stopped shooting at her because she'd webbed up another one of their guns and had perched herself on one of the buildings in such a way that they couldn't easily shoot her, hiding behind its jutted out wall, Daredevil appeared from the shadows as well. Penny grinned so hard it felt like her face was going to crack in two as the goons comically looked from one of them to the other. "Oh, yeah!" she crowed out. "Did I forget to say that I'm not alone tonight?"

"We've got to get out of here!" a third goon exclaimed like something out of a cheesy movie. Then he shouted something in a Slavic-sounding language – which made sense, as most of the Tracksuit Mafia guys came from Slavic countries.

The remaining four guys who hadn't been webbed up split up in their quest to run away, two heading towards the van while the other two ran down the street for some reason. But she and Matt dealt with them quite easily; in the span of only maybe a minute and a half, the two guys that had gone down the street were webbed up, ready to be dragged back to the pile of goons that Matt had made. There were no broken bones or anything like that, don't worry; the biggest injuries that they had received were physical bruises as well as ones to their egos.

The cops arrived just as she and Matt had gotten the two goons dragged back to the others. There was only the one car that came initially, but she could both see and hear with her enhanced hearing one of the officers call for back up, as quick maths said that they would either need a van or three other cars in order to get all of the Tracksuit Mafia guys to the nearest police station for the night before they would be transferred to the Tombs in the morning.

"Spider-Woman, Daredevil," the other police officer, the one who had been driving, said as he got out of the car.

"Officer," Matt said with a nod of his head. "Good to see you."

Penny repressed the desire to snort. Ever since Matt had become an Avenger (although she hadn't really known him before that), he'd become much more willing to call the police officers out on their inadequacy.

"Sorry," the first police officer apologized, the second making a face which showed that he'd picked up on Matt's sarcasm. "We were just finishing up with responding to another call when we got this one as the closest in the area. Backup's on its way. So, did you catch these guys trying to break into that store or something?"

Very perceptive, he was. "Yes," Penny said. "Do you want our – ?"

She didn't get a chance to finish her question.

Matt's phone suddenly rang, the ringtone along with the robotic voice that always told him who was calling since he couldn't see the screen sharply piercing through the night air. "Tony Stark," the voice spoke. "Tony Stark. Tony – "

As both of the cops gaped at the fact that Daredevil was being called by Iron Man right in front of them, Matt took out his phone and flipped it open – he had a flip phone by necessity. "Tony," he said, his voice deceptively calm. He made no mention of how they'd all been expecting her dad or one of the others to have called already hours ago, just left it with a simple: "What is it?"

As Penny's abdomen felt like it had opened up and spilled out all of her guts onto the pavement, the bad feeling in her stomach that she'd been able to forget because of the Tracksuit Mafia making itself known again with a vengeance, she heard her dad say on the other line of the phone:

"...Nothing good. Steve, Sam, Nat, and I are all coming back tonight, I'm about an hour. There's been...a situation."

Word Count: 4,484

Next Chapter Title: lyin' eyes