Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If anyone looked at Penny Parker’s life on a piece of paper, they would say that had suffered many losses in her life, but she had bounced back and was prospering. Thriving even. 

She was a straight A student in all the honors and a handful of AP classes at one of the toughest high schools in New York. (A school she had to take a bunch of tests to get into on a scholarship mind you).

She had a personal internship with the Tony Stark. A man who’s relationship with her had grown past the strictly mentor/mentee relationship that it once was, into a more father figure/daughter figure relationship and Penny was happy with that. 

She lived in The Avengers’ Tower and had become close to all of the habitants. She had grown pretty close with all of them. But she had grown really close to Natasha and Clint who had volunteered to train her the second they saw her form for a punch. (The punch might have been aimed towards one Red White and God Bless America man, but that's all semantics.)  

She loved to geek out with Dr. Bruce about science. Pepper had become her third maternal figure, with Nat as a close fourth obviously). And Thor was almost never there but he was always great for hours of storytelling and the god would always slip her Asgardian mead when he came to visit. 

She had two of the best friends anyone could ever ask for. Ned and MJ. Who never failed to make her laugh when she needed it. Or take notes for Penny when she was too exhausted from a night of patrolling to actually do any school work. 

And she was Spider-woman. Sometimes it sucked. Liked when the person she was trying to save died. Or she wasn’t able to stop a crime before someone was hurt. But Penny also found it thrilling and rewarding. She wouldn’t give it up for anything in the world. 

She should be happy. Right? Everything was perfect on paper, so Penny should be enjoying her life and have everything she wants out of it, right?

But that wasn’t true at all. Penny was suffering. Penny constantly felt like she was drowning and needed someone to help pull her above the water. She felt like she had this bar above her head she was constantly trying to reach but it was being pulled higher and higher as she was being pulled down. 

You see, Penny had a secret. A secret that only one person who was living or dead knew of. 

And that was the fact that Penny struggled with self-harm. 

It all started about six months ago. 

It had been the end of the school year and she had been struggling to keep her grades up and them all be at or above 93%. (Which at her school was an A). 

It was a stupid thing to be upset about, but throughout her whole educational career, she had always been smart. It had basically become part of her identity. 

“Of course she got an A on the test.” 

“Ask Penny, she always knows the answer.”

“If Penny didn’t do great on the test then we’re all screwed.”

“How did I get a better score on this than Penny?!”

It made Penny feel like she wasn’t valid unless she had perfect grades. And the worst part was, Penny didn’t feel like she deserved to be smart. She felt like it was just a fluke in the cosmos that she was smart.

And that’s when it all started. 

At first it really was just a coping mechanism for Penny. She would be having a bad day and all the voices would be deafening, and all she had to do was make a couple slits with her shaving razor and it would all be silent. 

But Penny knew that this wasn’t the right thing to do. So she stopped. She got one of those apps that would help her stay clean, and she told herself it was just a moment or two (or ten) of weakness and that she was okay and there was nothing wrong with her. 

Penny basically gaslit herself into believing that there was nothing wrong with wanting to hurt herself when things got hard. 

She even told MJ. MJ had always been one of her closest friends and when Penny told her about what had happened, MJ had confided in her that she too had also suffered with using self-harm as a coping mechanism. And Penny didn’t feel as alone. 

But then it got worse. Penny found a razor blade in a random tool cabinet in Mr. Stark's lab and she couldn’t help herself. She told herself it was for ‘just in case’ scenarios. And that she would never use it. 

But a mere two days after she had told MJ, she cut herself. 

Penny had also moved on from it just being a coping mechanism. Sure it still quieted the voices in her head. But she also felt like she deserved it. She felt like she deserved the pain. And when the cuts changed to little white scars on her hips and the top of her thighs, they were nice reminders of all the times she hadn’t been enough. 

Of all of the times that she had been a burden to everyone around her. Of all the times she had been a failure and let someone in the real world die because she couldn’t get there in time to save them. 

And throughout the whole school year and the start of her junior year, she cut. 

One time after she did it, she told MJ. MJ wasn’t disappointed like Penny expected her to be. And it was nice that someone knew. But the next time she did it, Penny didn’t tell MJ. 

Or any of the times after that. 

Penny knew she was suffering and that she should tell someone. She knew that it wasn’t a healthy way to deal with anything. And she knew that if she told one of her housemates, they would most likely be understanding and get her the help that she needed. 

But what if they weren’t understanding? What if they called her a freak and kicked her out of the tower? What if they told her she was just doing it for attention and made Penny feel even worse?

So Penny didn’t tell anyone. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.  

It was like a routine for her. Every Sunday she would cut. And any day during the week that she had a bad day, she would cut. Only two days in a row if it was a really bad two days though. 

It kept her grounded. 

Every time after she cut herself, she would tell herself that was the last time. But it never was. And the world kept on spinning. 

Penny sometimes failed to see the issue with her hurting herself. It wasn’t like any of the cuts were life threatening, they were just sort of there. A nice reminder of all the times she had done something wrong in her life. So Penny didn’t think she needed help. 

But Penny didn’t want to think about any of that today. Because today was Saturday. And Saturday meant family dinner day. 

It was her turn to cook and Penny decided that she was going to make some filling pasta seeing as it was now late October and winter was approaching. There hadn’t been any snow yet, but it was in the 40s most days. 

Penny had just gotten back from a pretty uneventful midday patrol where she hadn’t had to stop any high level crimes and had only had to get one cat stuck out of a tree. So Penny was having a good day. 

She entered through her bedroom window that she had FRIDAY open and was currently getting changed out of her suit. 

As she walked into her walk-in closet (that Pepper had filled with every style of clothes possible within the day that Penny had officially moved in), she caught sight of her scars in the mirror. 

Her stare lingered on them for a second before she walked into the closest and selected a pair of high-rise black leggings and her favorite oversized white crew neck that she might have stolen from Clint. 

Clint had the best comfy clothes.  

Penny walked back into her room and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked normal. The sweatshirt hid her larger than average muscles and the pants hid her scars. Everyone looking at her would think she was just a regular teenage girl. 

Even if she was secretly drowning.

Chapter Text

“Hey Pen, how was school?” Penny walked out of the elevator onto the main living room area and was immediately greeted by smiles and greetings of all the people closest to her. 

Natasha and Clint were sitting on the couch next to each other. Tony and Bruce were no where in sight so Penny assumed that they were in their labs. Pepper however was the one who spoke and was standing by Rhodey by the kitchen. 

“Hey Pepper! Penny ran over to the woman and quickly enveloped her in a warm hug. “It was great, how was yours?” 

“It was good honey.” 

Penny broke away from the hug and walked around the room making sure to talk to everyone. 

After that she headed towards the kitchen and started to cook, but she was met by the sight of an Asgardian god in an apron plating all the food.

“I thought it was my night to cook Thor?” 

The god in question hadn’t heard Penny enter but quickly whipped around at his favorite spider’s voice. 

“Ah Penny, my favorite spider! Alas I really wanted to cook the dish known as spaghetti, I hope you do not mind youngling.” Thor put on his best puppy dog eyes which looked much more funny with his ‘kiss me I’m Irish.’ apron on. 

Penny just laughed. 

“Of course not! Let me help you bring the food to everyone.” 

Penny then helped  do exactly that. And everything was great. They talked and they laughed and told stories all throughout the night. They even threw in a Mario Kart tournament, which Clint won. (He always won). 

THE NEXT DAY (Sunday)

Penny woke up the next day feeling energetic. She immediately out of bed and headed towards her closet to change. She selected her favorite pair of athletic shorts and a sweatshirt. The sweatshirt was a bright red and blue Spider-woman sweatshirt that MJ and Ned had gotten custom made for her for her birthday last year. 

It was Penny’s favorite sweatshirt and she put it on whenever she wanted just a sense of comfort. She found it hard to articulate why the sweatshirt brought her comfort. It wasn’t super soft, it wasn’t high quality, the sticker of her mask on the front was peeling off, but it just always felt so nice to wear it. 

Penny then picked up her phone from her bedside table to see that she didn’t have any missed texts. It shouldn’t have bothered her, but for some reason it did. When she woke up to texts or calls from her friends, it made her feel wanted. It was stupid but it was just how Penny’s mind worked. However, she ignored the feelings. Those could surface later tonight. 

The phone was slipped into the pocket of her sweatshirt as Penny walked out the door and and towards the elevator that she would take to the living room. She needed something to eat. 

*******************

“You want to do some training today?” Penny took a moment to fully chew the bite of toast she had decided on eating before answering Nat. 

“Sure, what type?” Something she had learned from training with Nat and Clint was that there were many ways to train. Physical and strength training was a large component, but so was mental and emotional. 

On bad days she would have to lie about how she was feeling. Or try extra hard to keep a smile on her face, but her training from the two spies had helped her get better at faking emotions. 

The spy tilted her head curiously at her spiderling. Almost like she was trying to read Penny. To her credit, Penny just took another bite of her toast and stared back at the famed Black Widow. 

“I think we’ll do some combat training today.” That meant sparring. Penny didn’t mind sparring. She just had to be extra careful that none of her scars would be revealed. 

“Okay, i’m just going to go change.” The spy once again regarded the teenager that was now walking out of the room silently. Looking for something.  

*******************

The Next Day - 7th hour of school. 

Penny’s legs were killing her as she walked into her final class of the day. Nat had not gone easy on her by any means in sparring. They had sparred for two hours straight without any breaks. Penny had only managed to pin Nat once, but she knew it was either out of luck or pity that she won it. She had lost twenty times.

So later last night, Penny had added twenty new cuts onto her hips. And here she was back at school, like nothing had happened. The cuts stinged whenever she moved or her pants rubbed against them awkwardly. But the pain wa grounding in a messed up way. 

She was getting better at pretending that everything was normal. Even though she knew it wasn’t normal to have to force yourself to laugh at jokes or pay attention to classes that used to interest her. 

“Allright class I’ll be handing your tests back in a moment. So make sure that you’re in your seats.” 

Penny had been talking to Ned and MJ on the other side of the room but they all quickly made their way to their seats. Thankfully the teacher had let them choose their seats so the three of them sat right next to each other. 

Penny thought she had done okay on the test. Probably not perfect, but she knew the material enough to get a low A or a high B. She knew that there was a least three questions on the test that she had gotten wrong, but she had tried her hardest and that was all that mattered. 

The teacher finally made her way over to the three of them. She placed their tests upside down on their desks and walked away. Penny flipped her’s over.

A 68%. 

She had failed. 

Penny looked to MJ and Ned to see that they had both gotten ninety-one’s. They both looked at her test and then shot her an empathetic smile. 

Well fuck. 

Penny was more quiet and reserved for the rest of the day. She was stuck in her own head. Trying to convince herself that it was okay that she didn’t do great. 

But she had failed. 

Everything from there on was just Penny acting on autopilot. When the final bell of the day rang signalling that it was time to be free from this hell, she said her goodbyes to everyone and even got invited to a party that would be going on all night. Penny said that she might show up even though she knew she would never go, and left the school. 

Normally she would just go straight to patrol, but Happy was there to pick her up. Which was odd. He never picked her up anymore. 

She quickly made her way to the very not inconspicuous car and opened the back door and got in. 

“Hey Happy, what’s going on?” 

“Boss wants to talk to you.” The driver supplied no other information.

This is getting weirder and weirder. 

**********************************

“How the hell did you fail a math test Penny?!” Mr. Stark was pissed. As soon as she had gotten to the tower FRIDAY had informed her that he was waiting for her in the kitchen. But when she had gotten their, it was obvious that he was pissed. 

Before she could answer he started to speak again. “I’m not even that mad,” Oh fuck that. “I just don’t understand how you managed to fail a test in a subject you had a 100% in. If only you had tried a little bit harder…you could’ve done better.” 

That broke Penny. She had tried her hardest. She had! How could he not see that?

“Go to your room, we’ll talk about this later.” 

The man she had looked up to for so many years was disappointed in her. And he left no room for argument. So she left. She walked to her room, locked the door, and broke downin tears. 

She couldn’t stand being a disappointment to him. To everybody in her life. But that was what she was. A fucking disapointment. 

Penny couldn’t stay at the tower. Everything felt like it was closing in around her. She had to get out. 

She went to her bathroom and grabbed her trusty razor blade and walked towards her window. She thought about taking her suit, but she knew there was probably hundreds of trackers in it. Same with her phone. So she left both. 

Penny also grabbed a bottle of vodka she had been hiding in her closet. Thanks to her metabolism, one of the only things that had any effect on her getting drunk was vodka. 

She then opened the window and jumped out. 

Chapter Text

Penny had swung around New York aimlessly until she found a random rooftop. She didn’t care where she ended up. She just wanted to be alone. Isolated and away from people.  

She had been wearing shorts so she moved them up her leg until she could see all the other scars. A wave of guilt crashed into her, but she ignored it and started cutting. She knew she would heal fast, so it didn’t really matter how much damage she did. She just wanted to bleed. She just wanted to feel something that wasn’t water rushing over her head.  

She found peace in the violence. However fucked up that was, it worked. It was a coping mechanism after all. Even though it was a really bad one. 

Once she was satisfied and the noise in her mind had quieted down, she opened the bottle she had brought and started drinking. The vodka felt good sliding down her throat. There was a small burn, but the pain was welcome. 

She just sat there. Blade in one hand, bottle in the other. 

The cuts slowly started to heal themselves and the blood started to dry on her skin as she just sat there staring at the sky. It was a pretty sight. The blue was changing to a darker red and orange as the sun was setting. And eventually it just went black all over with the moon and light from other buildings being the only sources of light. 

The temperature dropped but Penny barely noticed. 

She wasn’t sure how long she had been sitting on that rooftop, leaned up against the roof access to whatever building she was on top of, blood running down her legs, before she heard the footsteps of two people behind her. 

Penny didn’t have the energy to turn around and try to figure out a way to run away or escape. So she just closed her eyes and listened to the heartbeats hoping that it wasn’t anyone who could recognise her.

One was elevated and slightly erratic. Nervous. 

The other was less elevated but still louder than normal. Afraid

“Spidey?”  The voice belonged to a man. It was soft. Like they were scared that she would run away.

Fuck. She should run away. 

The voice belonged to probably the most famous and feared mercenary in the area. Fucking Wade. Which meant that the other one was Red. 

Her suspicions were proven right as they came into view on either side of her. Red on her right and Wade on her left. She didn’t have the energy to meet their eyes as hers started to droop. She was tired. She just wanted to sleep. 

“Holy shit.” Red must have been able to sense the numerous cuts. 

The last thing Penny remembered before passing out was the two of them crouching down next to her and lifting her up. Letting the bottle of vodka fall through her hands.

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Matt Murdock POV:

“What are we supposed to do with her Red?” Matt had never heard so much fear in Wade’s voice. Normally he played all of his fears off as humor with bad jokes. But he wasn’t joking now. 

Matt was terrified. Penny was like a little sister to him. Him and Wade. They both loved her and wanted to protect her. It was half of the reason that they made ‘Team Red’ as the public called them. So they could keep an eye on their favorite spider. But this wasn’t something either of them ever saw coming. She had been hurting herself and drinking and nobody had noticed. 

And maybe that was their fault. For not being able to tell that Penny was struggling. It shouldn’t have taken her passed out from blood loss with a bottle of vodka in her hands sitting on a random ass rooftop for them to notice it. 

Matt was pissed at himself for not noticing. 

About an hour ago Matt had received a very distressed call from Tony Stark saying that they couldn’t find her. He told her that she had run away. Tony rarely spoke to him so he knew it had to be serious. 

He had been on patrol with Wade and they immediately started to look for her. 

Matt was just happy that they found her before anything worse had happened. 

“We should take her back to my place.” Matt didn’t want to take her back to the tower right away. He wanted to talk to her first. Normally he would take her to Claire, but he knew that the cuts would already be healed by now. 

“Matt?” 

“What Wade?” 

The normally straightforward Deadpool with zero filter was hesitating. Wade glanced at Penny who now only Matt was carrying. She looked so small.  

“What if she was trying to kill herself?” Matt knew that this was a possibility. But he really didn’t want to think about it. But they had to entertain the possibility. 

“Then we give her hundreds of reasons to live.” 

They had to. 

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General POV:

Penny slowly started to come back to consciousness. She opened her eyes slowly and she couldn’t figure out where she was for a second. It didn’t click until she realized that she was on a comfortable couch with two vigilantes asleep in the chairs across from the couch. 

Both of them had changed out of their suits into jeans and sweatshirts. 

She was at Red’s place. She had only been there a couple of times before. 

She started to sit up on the couch. Someone had put a blanket over her and a pillow under her head. The couch was comfortable and seemed like a nice couch. Red had once told her that she could crash on the couch whenever she needed to, but she hadn’t taken him up on that offer yet. 

Why was she there?

It took her a couple of seconds to remember what had happened. 

The rooftop. The blade. The blood. Wade. Red.  

Penny looked towards the door. Maybe she could just run. She wasn’t sure where she would go. But she had to get out of here. She had to go. She had to get out of there before they started to ask questions. She wasn’t sure if she could answer them. 

“I wouldn’t run if I was you.” 

“We would just run after you, again.” 

Penny looked away from the door to see that both of them were awake now. Wade was staring at her with a nervous look. She could hear that his heartbeat was just slightly elevated. She looked at Matt who was staring directly into her eyes. He had the same look as Wade on his face. 

She dropped her eyes to the ground. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t escape them. 

“Pen, we need to talk about this.” 

“Do we really need to Red?” Her voice was small and breaking. She kept her eyes trained on the ground. 

“Hey, it’s okay. Look at me Pen.” She looked up to see that both of them had moved closer to her. Wade sat down next to her on her right and Matt sat on her left. She looked at Wade. 

“We’re not mad at you, okay? We just want to help you.” 

Tears started to roll down her face. No one could help her. 

She started to shake her head slightly. 

“What is it Pen?” This time it was Matt who spoke. She had never heard either of their voices so soft. She was used to the voices that terrified the people of New York. The voice of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen and the voice of Deadpool. Well, Deadpool when he wanted to be scary. dd

“You can’t fix me. I’m broken.” She started to sob. “I’m broken into a hundred pieces and I can’t put myself back together. I’m drowning and I’m just letting the water rush over my head. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do it.” The last part came out as a hoarse whisper but both of them heard it. 

The men exchanged a look of worry over her head and then both of them simultaneously got off of the couch and crouched down in front of her so that she would have to meet their eyes. 

“You're not broken Penny. You're just a little beat up and bruised right now. You just have to let others in. And let them help heal you.” Matt wanted nothing more than to just wrap her in a hug and protect her from the whole world. He would fight anyone who tried to hurt her. And he knew that Wade would kill them. 

“What if I don’t want to be put back together?” The thought had been going through Penny’s head recently. She had never spoken it out loud, but it was becoming louder and louder in her mind lately. What if she just stopped trying. What if she just let herself break until she was unfixable. 

Both Matt and Wade’s hearts broke a little bit more. They had been hoping that she would just accept their help. But they knew that it wouldn’t be that easy. 

“Then we are going to work on that Spidey. But you need to acknowledge that you need help. We can help you. Your family can help you. Your friends can help you. You just have to let them.” Wade couldn’t have put in any better.

Penny started full on bawling. She fell into Matt’s lap and he started to rub her head comfortingly. 

“I need help.” It was choked and full of unspoken emotion. But it was there. 

Both Wade and Matt let out a breath that they had been holding. That was a good first step. 

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Penny wasn’t sure how long they just sat like that. Eventually the tears faded away and she sat up again. 

“How did you guys find me?” Her voice was hoarse from crying for who knows how long, but she wanted to make sure that there wasn’t a tracker she didn’t know about.

“Tony called me asking for help finding you. I was on patrol with Wade so we just went together. It took us about an hour but we found you on that rooftop. Then we brought you here.” Penny nodded. At least there wasn’t a tracker embedded in her arm or something. 

“Wait, what time is it?” Penny just then realized that she never checked the time. She wasn’t sure how long she had been gone for. 

It was Wade who answered. “It’s two in the morning.” 

Shit. 

Penny had been gone for eleven hours. 

Matt seemed to read her thoughts. “I told Tony that you were okay and that we would bring you back when you were ready. It’s up to you to tell him about the cutting and drinking if you want.” Matt paused for a second. “But you should Penny.” 

She just nodded. She knew that she should tell them. She just didn’t want to. 

“I’ll tell them. Can I stay here for the night though?” Penny didn’t want to go home right now. Not when she was an emotional wreck right now. 

“Yeah of course Pen. Want to order in some food?”

“OOOOOO MEXICAN.” Penny smiled at Wade. His love for Mexican food knew no bounds. 

“We can do Mexican.” Matt smiled at both of them before pulling out his phone and texting Tony that Penny would be staying with him and Wade and that they would bring her back in the morning. His phone immediately started to blow up with texts from the man but he ignored them and turned his phone off. 

He knew Tony wouldn’t show his face. No matter what the billionaire said, he was scared of Wade. Who wouldn’t be?

So they got Mexican food and watched bad movies that Wade picked. And eventually Penny fell asleep and her two brother-like figures took up their spots on the chairs to watch over her as she slept. They would take her back tomorrow and deal with all the deep stuff later. But for now, they slept.

Chapter Text

General POV:

Avengers’ Tower

“Thank fuck Penny. Where the hell have you been?!” As soon as she walked into the living room/floor of the Tower she was crushed in a hug by Mr. Stark. 

Wade and Matt had dropped her off and then made her promise to call them after everything went down. After Wade threatened to kill any of them if they said anything wrong. 

Penny silently hugged the man back. She didn’t get hugs often. Even though her love language was physical touch, she hated asking people for hugs. It made her feel weak. Like she had to rely on others for her sanity. Also she knew that so many people hated physical touch, and she didn’t want to force anyone to do something they didn’t want for her sake.

“Penny?” It was spoken softly but Penny immediately recognised it as Natasha’s voice. She slowly pulled away from Tony and looked behind him to see that all of the Avengers and the people that she called family were sitting, or now standing, around the couches. 

Penny walked closer to them and noticed that they all looked distraught. They were worried for her. Oh. 

She took a breath and steadied herself. 

“We need to talk.”