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: We're probably going to have a slight delay for the next chapter again. It's not because of health issues this time, more so I need time to make sure of where we're going next because I'm adjusting some things again and a lot of shit happened over the past couple of days that hasn't given me time to do that. Happy joy for me. /s

Anyways, the chapter title comes from Big Love by Fleetwood Mac.

Thank you so much for following this story so far, even with the delays! I hope you enjoy this chapter. Until the next one,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~primis, omega, superhero, genius~

~no questions asked~

~chapter 10: big love~

To say that the press conference didn't go well was...definitely an understatement.

Penny watched it with Bucky, since he needed to be watched and Harley and Steve were both at the conference. This wasn't something she'd necessarily wanted. She'd had a feeling that it wouldn't be good for him to see it – which didn't turn out to be the case, she didn't think. Bucky watched the conference the entire time with rapt eyes, but he didn't seem to get as worked up as she'd thought he would over the questions that the reporters asked, even when they were about him. When she asked him quite a few times throughout and after how he felt about the entire thing, he told her that he was "fine," in English.

And she wanted to believe him on that, she did. But if he was lying because he thought that it would spare her feelings, she didn't want that, either. As she'd said before, she would always prefer the truth, even if it hurt.

But anyways, she also watched the aftermath on the news and read some of the many, many articles that came out afterwards. The public still wasn't happy with the Avengers as a whole. They did like Harley revealing himself as Iron Lad and his explanation about why he had done the things that he had, even if they were illegal. He received a fair amount of praise for his initiative and willingness to do what was right, including faking his death to make sure that HYDRA hadn't been aware of what he was doing. There were talks about him almost certainly receiving a presidential pardon if he ended up being charged with any crimes. That was still up in the air for all of them.

People wanted justice. They were still adamant that the Avengers should have figured out that HYDRA still existed before now. As the news was covering more and more information about Natasha from back during her Red Room and KGB days, she was the second person receiving the most backlash of them all.

The first, it shouldn't have needed to be said, was Bucky. The HYDRA files helped back up the Avengers' claim during the press conference that he had been a prisoner of war, brainwashed and forced to do pretty much every single one of his crimes against his will. But there were conflicting opinions on whether or not he should be tried in the court of law for his crimes, with most of them saying that he should be arrested for the safety of the American people. A fair number of them even not-so-subtly suggested that he should be locked away in a mental facility for the rest of his days.

(That wasn't going to happen. Not on her watch.)

Several representatives and senators said that they were wanting to put together a committee to have congressional hearings over this whole mess in the immediate future. This was complicated a bit by how the HYDRA files had revealed multiple congresspeople were HYDRA plants, including Senator Stern from Pennsylvania (Penny had never liked him anyways), but she didn't doubt that it was going to happen.

Natasha was not nearly as concerned as any of the rest of them were, including Clint, about all of this. "I don't understand," Penny remarked during the afternoon of the next day as the two of them were in the gym. They were taking a break from sparring each other to let out some of the tension. "Why aren't you worried? They're talking about arresting you!"

The female alpha gave a shrug of her shoulders. "They're not going to arrest any of us, even Bucky," she said. "You know why?"

"Do enlighten me," Penny mumbled, running a hand through her sweat-damp hair.

Natasha kissed her temple. "Because they need us. The world is a vulnerable place, and sure, we unknowingly helped make it that way. But we're the best ones qualified to defend it. But, even if they do want to arrest me after all of this is over, we'll find a way out of that, together. We're all family now. That doesn't count for nothing."

"Yes, I'm sure we can break you out of prison," the omega replied blandly.

Natasha smirked, taking her at her word rather than her spirit. "I don't doubt that you could, Ms. Fitzpatrick."

There were some questions on the public's part about just who her false identity, Eileen Fitzpatrick, was. She'd appeared solely to help out the Avengers take down HYDRA, and then she'd been gone just as quickly. Steve and Harley had said that they weren't at liberty to discuss her identity. Fury or Hill must've called in a few favors with the CIA, because somehow the agency had already released a statement confirming what they had said, and they never did things like that.

On the bright side, this meant that there wasn't much further conversation about "Eileen Fitzpatrick" with everything else in play, most of all theories about her and Spider-Woman being the same person.

That night, it was officially thirty-six hours since JARVIS had told her about letting her into Tony's lab. He'd hardly left it, according to his AI, and still hadn't gotten any sleep.

Penny walked into the elevator anxiously. She had a feeling that this was going to go either sort-of okay or very bad, and wasn't expecting anything more than those two options.

Tony's music was blaring at her even before the elevator doors opened. He was playing AC/DC, back from their Bon Scott days. "...You got problems in your life of love, you got a broken heart. He's double dealin' with your best friend, that's when the teardrops start, fella..."

...Yeah, that wasn't making her feel any more optimistic.

Tony didn't even notice the elevator doors opening and her coming out. He was too busy working on his suit. It looked like he was having issues, almost certainly because of his lack of sleep. His back was turned to her, but she could hear him muttering, "No, that's not how it's supposed to work...goddammit..."

She approached him slowly. He didn't sense it when she was right behind him. Looking at what he was doing, she saw the problem easily enough. She wasn't intimately familiar with his and Harley's suits like they were, but she knew enough about them now to keep up. "That goes there," she said, pointing at the piece that he was having trouble with and then where it was supposed to go.

Tony just about jumped out of his skin – which went even further to show how sleep-deprived he was. "Jesus Christ!" he muttered as he did a combination of turning around and backing away to look at her. He squinted his bloodshot eyes – she didn't smell alcohol on him, so it seemed to only be from being up for way too many hours – at her before he glowered up at the ceiling, from where the speakers had stopped playing his music. "JARVIS, I told you that I didn't want to talk to her right now."

"You told me that thirty-seven hours ago, sir, when she last asked. She has not asked since then."

The alpha blinked, sluggishly processing the information. "...It's really been that long?"

"Indeed."

"...Whatever," he sighed after a moment. He focused back on her. "I still don't want to talk to you."

Penny refrained from sighing herself. It wouldn't have resulted in anything productive. "I know, Tony, but please, if we just talk – "

He scoffed. "What, so you can tell me about some other fucked up thing Barnes has done?" He sauntered away from her, heading over to the kitchenette in his lab. He opened up the fridge, and she was briefly worried that he was going to pull out a drink, but all that he took out was an unopened bottle of water. The cap made a cracking noise as he screwed it loose, which to her ears was painfully loud, all things considered. "Like killing my parents wasn't the worst thing?"

Penny wasn't going to deny that was the worst thing Barnes had done to him, but she thought back on all of the other deaths people had found out that he had caused...including the assassination of a certain president.

Yeah, she wasn't going to mention that now.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry about how we sprung all of that on you and didn't give you a head's up that Bucky had done something like that before we came back with him. I'm sorry that I made you feel like you don't have a reason to be mad at him, because you most certainly do."

"Understatement of the century," he snarked.

She persevered. "I'm really sorry, Tony. I'm not – I'm not going to apologize for him being one of my other soulmates, because you know that's not something I can control." Not to mention, she didn't want to because that went against her instincts, it would set something that she couldn't take back, and more. "But I'm sorry about how this is making you feel. I'm sorry that I contributed to it. And I want to make this better, but I don't know how. So please, can you give me some sort of idea for how I can?"

Tony scrutinized her. "Fine," he said. "But I guess that asking Barnes to leave the Tower is out of the question?" He took a sip of his water.

Penny shifted uncomfortably. "Technically, it's your Tower, Tony. But...yes, I would really rather prefer that didn't happen. The tests that Dr. Chung and Bruce ran on him...the results weren't good. He needs help, and stability."

"Well, he's not going to get that here. No, I don't mean from me," Tony gruffed, the second part presumably coming from whatever look he saw on her face. He ran a hand through his hair. "I'm just saying: with everything that's been going on in New York City since really you appeared on the scene, although it got to its worst during the Battle, this place is far from 'stable.' And I'm presuming the public is losing their collective shit over everything he's done? I haven't been paying attention."

"That's one way of putting it," she admitted.

He was trying to deflect from the main subject right now by alluding to something else that he'd been thinking about. It was related, sure, but it was his intention that mattered. She could see it as plain as day.

Walking over to him, she was internally pleased at how he let her get up in his personal space. Albeit, it was a bit different with her and Harley, since he was romantic with both of them, Tony was never one for other people touching him. He was renowned for his comments about not liking people handing him things, had been long before he'd become Iron Man.

"Tell me what I can do, Tony," she said.

Tony gazed into her eyes, then sighed again and looked away. "I...don't know what you can do, Pen. I've never even heard of something like this happening before. There's no records of anything like this happening in the history of pack dynamics being scent-matched. I know: I checked." He closed his mouth, his jaw locking and his eyes hardening, before he went back to speaking. "The pack dynamics are supposed to make things like jealousy easier. But apparently, they don't do anything for hatred, because I'd fucking love it if I wasn't so angry at him. I don't want to see him, I don't want to be in the same room as him. Really, it'd make my day if I could beat the ever-loving crap out of him..."

Penny exhaled through her nose. "Tony..."

"I said it would, not that I would," he reminded her. His grip on his water bottle tightened. The flimsy plastic crinkled. "I watched the video. I watched him strangle my mother. How am I supposed to be all buddy-buddy with him after that?"

"I'm not saying that you have to."

"No, but I bet Rogers would," he said darkly.

He hadn't called Steve "Rogers" like that in a long while, maybe not since the Battle of New York. Sure, he called him by his surname sometimes playfully, but never like that.

There were a few barstools on the other side of the bar counter that separated the kitchenette from the rest of the lab. Penny sat down on one of them. "You know that he wouldn't."

Rather than continuing to argue with her, Tony's shoulders slumped. "No, he probably wouldn't." He stood across from her at the counter, putting his water bottle on the top. He rapped his fingers on the surface right next to it. "You said that Barnes' medical results weren't good?"

"He has brain and nerve damage," she revealed uncertainly. The sudden change of topic was almost giving her whiplash. "He remembers...everything that he did since he fell from the train; the rest is more complicated."

Tony's jaw locked. "'Course it is. Since when has anything been simple?"

She opened her mouth to say something to that.

He beat her to it. "I'll...look into that, see if there's anything I can do about it. There was a project that was going on in R&D about memory retro-fitting. I put it on halt after I had to fire the main guy that was running it. He was unhinged: kept on trying to insist to his supervisor that the technology could be used for 'better,' more extreme purposes. Didn't help that he was making borderline sexual harassment advances on his colleagues. I can't make any promises it'll work, but it might be something."

It was like a great fire, the kind you'd light in your fireplace or at a campfire, was beginning to ignite in her chest. Warmth was heating her up from the inside-out. "You'd do that for him?"

"I'd do it for you," he corrected her. "You're right: you can't help him being one of yours, so somehow we're going to need to make this as bearable as possible. Making sure that he doesn't end up in the loony bin is probably a good way to start that."

A smile played at her lips. Okay, so maybe now she could allow the deflection. "You've got other ideas in mind after that?"

"I was thinking of this before you came back with Barnes, I just didn't think it would need to be started so soon," he grunted. He turned on the holo-screen on the bar counter, tapping folder after folder until he found what he wanted. "We were always going to outgrow the Tower, once we started having kids – "

Penny's face blanched. "Kids."

She still wanted kids one day. Now that she'd accepted her soulmates, it was back to being a reality that she could. She wasn't destined to be a widow for all of her life like she'd planned after Harry's death. But kids felt like they were much further away than they had been before with him. She'd only been romantic with Steve, Clint, Tony, and Nat for almost five months. Harley was less than that, and Bucky had only entered the fold in the past week. They had to get all of their shit sorted out more than this before kids could even be an option on the table.

There was a bit more that she wanted to talk about on the matter than that, yet her mind short-circuited as Tony opened up his desired file. In front of her eyes were the holographic, 3D plans for a building – a collection of buildings, as there were more than one, and the main one was huge. It had to be four stories at least, and it was so expansive that there was enough space for a courtyard in the middle of it. It was connected by a suspended walkway to one of the other buildings, which looked to be a hanger. That one had the Avengers-style "A" on its flat roof.

"Tony, what – ?"

"Call it the Avengers Compound," he said, before he grimaced. "I don't actually like the sound of that, because it makes us sound cult-y, especially with most of us being soulmates, but I haven't been able to think of anything better. It's not just for us, either – I think Bruce would feel more at comfortable out in the countryside than he does here. Less complications if he was to Hulk out. There's already a place upstate that I have in mind for it: it's one of the Stark Industries warehouses. What do you think?"

If her pupils could've turned into hearts, they probably would've right then. "I love it," she replied earnestly. She grinned cheekily. "I mean, it is big, and maybe a little too futuristic-looking – "

He rolled his eyes. "I figured you would say that."

" – But it's nice. And you have a point: I've never imagined myself living anywhere except in the city, but maybe it isn't in all of our best interests," she summed up.

Oh, boy. Her younger self would be freaking out if she heard her acknowledging that, Penny knew it. By younger, she should also probably specify that meant only her months younger self. Funny how fast things could change.

They were only considering it for now, though. They'd still have to discuss with it the others before they even thought about committing to it. There was still plenty of time for them to change their minds and decide on something else about outgrowing the Tower, which they already were on the cusp of doing with Harley and Bucky, well before then.

"We'd all have less space to ourselves than we do now, only a room each. A good portion of the main building is public rooms and offices, like here. The other buildings besides the hanger are mostly storage. But it'd have multiple labs for all of us, a gym, shooting range, lap pool, private cinema, maybe a bowling alley if I can squeeze it in...and you do like it?" he double-checked.

"I told you that I did."

She watched his eyes nictate. "Right. Sorry," he apologized, before letting out a small yawn. "'Ve been awake for too long. Plus, I'm not exactly used to all my gifts going over well. Had to literally fight Rhodey while double-drunk before he would take his suit and Pepper..."

He didn't finish the sentence, probably for what he thought was her sake. It wasn't like she didn't already know the story of the giant stuffed bunny and the week from hell that led to the nail in the coffin of their relationship.

(Things between her and Pepper were remaining mostly okay. Penny's instincts were continuing to not view her as a threat. It helped that Pepper had casually expressed to her an absolute zero desire to get back together with Tony, and how it would've been that way even if he hadn't found his soulmate. They simply weren't compatible, she'd said. She loved him as a very close friend, someone who she had worked years for/with, nothing more than that.)

"I'm not her," Penny told him.

"I know you're not," Tony responded in a rasp. "'Doesn't stop me from being concerned sometimes that our relationship will end up like mine with her did, soulmates or not." He casted his eyes downwards. "I'm not exactly easy to deal with."

They'd reached the stage of his sleep deprivation where he became ridiculously self-depreciating, it seemed.

"You are fine," Penny insisted, standing up from the stool. She walked around the bar counter and leaned up to peck him on the lips. "You're you. I wouldn't have it any other way. You do need to go to bed, though. Come to bed with me?"

"Probably should. I've been up too long. Days." The crease between his eyebrows formed as he did the math. "But I would much rather if you came to bed with me."

Penny slept in the others' beds on their floors fairly often, though it was more likely for them to come to her in lieu of the other way around. She knew why he wanted it, too: he didn't want to see Bucky or even Steve currently, too rubbed raw by the revelations she had given to him.

After he'd literally locked her out for the past few days, she was willing to let him monopolize her like this.

"Okay," she said. "But I do have a requirement."

Tony let out a very uncharacteristic yelp as she scooped him up in her arms and carried him off to the elevator. "'Keep on forgetting that you can literally carry any of us," he said lowly. "It's hilarious to see this when it isn't me."

"Ah, well: with the great power to carry your alphas and theta comes the great responsibility to only use it sparingly."

He cackled in response.

Don't be fooled: things weren't automatically fixed between them after this. Apologies could be easy; forgiveness took time. That did little to say of how things were between him and Steve without Steve necessarily knowing of it, much less him and Bucky.

But she did feel hope that they'd talked tonight, and he'd showed her his plans for the Compound and reluctantly said that he would look into maybe helping Bucky.

It was a start, if nothing else.

Word Count: 3,604

Next Chapter Title: TBA