Work Text:
Penelope bunches up the fabric of her shirt, heart pounding in her chest. The music is heavy, oppressive, blaring from speakers in all corners of the club. Spinning, multicolored lights splash across her face, glaring off her glasses. Black spots fade in and out as her blinks fail to clear her vision.
Sweat trickles down her back and she swallows thickly. She can’t hear her heels clicking on the dance floor. There’s no headset pressed against her ears, keeping her connected to her team. She’s not in her cozy, safe office.
The hand on her elbow is the only promise that she’ll walk back out of here.
Around the club, bodies flow, pressing together and pulling apart. Twenty somethings ordering drinks to impress their interests, security circling the dance floor, VIPs slipping past velvet rope. A bartender slides shots out to sorority sisters. A bouncer snaps a fake ID in half. The owner at the back of the room waves over a server.
Penelope keeps her eyes up, but tries not to focus on their movement. She isn’t here for them. She’s here to do her job. That’s it. No more, no less.
“Breathe,” a rough voice orders, breath ghosting through her hair. It’s not her natural look, happily curled. With JJ’s help, she teased the living hell out of it for an hour. Biodegradable glitter has been sprayed all over it. She got some in her eye and it still waters intermittently. Her skin is painted with a much more dramatic make up look. Big eyes and bright lips. Stand out in the FBI offices, but blending in at this place.
The cut of her blouse is much lower than she’s usually comfortable with, the length of her skirt much shorter. She chose these clothes, she reminds herself as wandering eyes wander a little too long. Emily gave the assignment, but Penelope executed on it.
Clubs haven’t ever been her scene, and certainly not since her Black Queen days.
The hot lights, the blaring music. There’s nothing she wants more than to curl up on her couch with a honey-heavy tea and the last book Spencer recommended.
(She misses Spencer more than she can bear to think. The things they left unsaid. The understanding.)
Forcing air in and out of her lungs, she tries not to let the sensory overwhelm get to her. All the little electron exchanges reaching out for her. The switches, the dials, the wiring. Ignoring their signals has never done her much good, bought her much time. Much better to let it all wash over her, tickle her synapses, and send them away.
The LEDs, the spinning disco ball, the TV screens boasting the menu all zip along pleasantly in the back of her mind while the after effects thud in her eyes and ears.
“You’re going to order at the bar,” Artemis reminds lowly. “You remember what to say?”
Penelope nods jerkily, keeping her face as pleasant as possible. Her nails catch on her skirt and she smooths it down one last time, wishing she could smooth over the aftermath of what her presence here means just the same.
The team hadn’t known. Twenty years, and not a single soul. Not a teammate, a unit chief, a section chief. Not even Spencer, not really.
But the case came across her desk. It’s her job to save lives and when weeks of investigating proved fruitless, when search warrants weren’t getting signed, she has to, she had to, say something.
There’s an error in her genes that gives her access to where their victims are disappearing from. Meta cases have crossed her desk before, but none like this.
Nothing like this.
Her stomach churns as Artemis guides her to the bar. Her friend’s eyes are sharp, almost slitted, as she tracks every movement, every body. Those same eyes had flicked to Penelope when they first discussed the idea of an infiltration.
No one knows, no one knew, and yet Artemis still looked to her.
It takes a moment to get the attention of the bartender, a burly woman with hair dyed pink and shaved at the sides. “What can I get ya?” she shouts over the music.
Penelope doesn’t look back at Artemis. Her friend is also dressed for the setting. Crop top and dangling jewelry and flared jeans. Broken in combat boots and her usual pony tail, but neither out of style. Even her face has lost the usual scowl, replaced with something friendly and intoxicated.
Penelope forgets how good of an actor her teammate it. Artemis is adept at talking down unsubs and working with victims, but there’s always a level of seriousness to her.
Even when spending time with Lian. Especially when spending time with Lian.
But now, it’s like all that severity has bubbled up into a natural levity. Something unable to be masked or ignored.
It makes Penelope feel emboldened, knowing the lengths Artemis is going to ensure her safety.
“Can I get a Moscow mule for my friend and a Caramel Eclipse for myself?”
The bartender doesn’t pause, doesn’t raise an eyebrow, doesn’t ask if she’s sure. She pays in cash. Across the counter, the register calls out to her. The drinks are set on the sticky top, hers is placed on a different napkin than Artemis’.
She collects the drinks, unable to thank the woman who has moved onto the next customer already. She hurries back to Artemis’ side.
“You’re doing good,” she soothes lowly, calm and assured. “Let’s find a table.”
Once again, her fingers wrap around Penelope’s elbow. Keeping her anchored, keeping them together. Penelope doesn’t want to think about what will happen if they get seperated now.
Artemis leads, maneuvering through the crowd so steadily Penelope doesn’t spill a single drop.
It was Luke who hypothesized that the unsub may be drugging their victims. Now, he leans against a far wall, shoulder brushing against Tara’s as he waits for Artemis to slip them a sample. Near the dance floor, JJ and Emily are smiling and laughing, their gaze heavy on her back. Dave is across the street in a generic plumbing truck that she can sense faintly, even as she’s battered by the electronics all around her.
She’s released again at a standing table, bar height, but a little too tall to lean against. The circle top wobbles as she sets the drinks down.
Artemis takes the Caramel Eclipse, sliding Penelope the napkin after only a glance at it. “Cheers,” she encourages.
“Cheers,” Penelope echoes. She doesn’t drink the mule, only bringing the cup to her lips for half a moment.
“Tell me about your cats.”
She can do that. Talking about the Black Queen and Sergio is easy. Where she can, Artemis is giving her the easy tasks. It’s not condescending because very soon Penelope will only have hard tasks left.
Artemis keeps her attention on the bar at large, even as she carries on the conversation with ease. After Penelope’s mind has almost forgotten the lone journey that awaits her a floor below, Artemis says, “These drinks suck, I’m going to get something else.”
That’s her cue. With one final steeling look, Artemis sends Penelope on her way.
The music quiets but the wiring does not as she follows the directions provided by the bartender via the napkin. A private venue. Metahuman only.
Her ability is covert, meaning she has to consent to the pinprick blood draw at the door and act giggly until the bouncer, whose breath frosts the air, opens the door.
Inside, Penelope is met with hazy smoke and the glassy eyes of designer drugs. There’s a bar here, directly beneath the one upstairs. A woman with scaly blue skin pours a drink for a twenty something with a buzz cut and blurring fingers.
Different music, brighter and edgier and more techno, fills the space. The dance floor is smaller and less clubgoers move upon it. The lights are dimmer, with more plush lounge spaces meant to keep paying customers around for longer.
As the door clunks shut behind her, she feels the faint tickle of an electronic lock sealing it closed. Penelope takes in a deep breath, then heads toward the bar.
“Leaving now,” Artemis reports in her ear. The little radio is hidden beneath her hair. She has to keep her nerves in check, otherwise she’s certain she’ll fry it.
She can’t respond, has been instructed not to, so she orders another cocktail, this one virgin, and watches out of the corner of her eye as it’s made. No sign of tampering, but the number of metas in this room means she has to account for invisibility, superspeed, transmutation.
She won’t drink it, not even though the action has the chance of calming her nerves. Instead, she continues to an empty booth as close to the VIP section as she can manage.
That’s her mission. Identify the staff and the regulars. Leave the second anything gets hairy. Listen to Artemis.
“Back in the van. Garcia, take a deep breath. Loosen your grip on your drink.”
She complies, feeling horribly predictable. They don’t have a button cam on her, too risky with how many metas are in the room. There could be another like her here, monitoring for unexplained electronics. Her comm is disguised as a hearing aid.
(She tries not to think about mind readers. About psychics.)
They don’t have a button cam, yet Artemis knew exactly where her tension was being held. From day one, Artemis has been a formidable profiler. Always read people like she can hear their thoughts.
Penelope had delayed volunteering her own meta status so long on this case because she’d been. Not expecting, but hoping, maybe, that Artemis would do so first.
But she didn’t. And she would have. Artemis West being so strikingly human makes her all the more intimidating.
“Take a look around the area. Count how many different sections there are.”
One, the entrance. Two, the bar. Three, the dance floor. Four, the lower booths. Five, the raised booths. Six, the backroom.
The backroom, which she can’t see. It’s the only other exit, accessible exclusively through the raised booths where a man with skin ripped in places looms, pink scar tissue still present despite the change not appearing to be recent. A shock of red hair on the top of his head too small for the rest of his body. He leans back against the pillar of support and Penelope swears she can hear it creaking. His eyes scan the space, a sick, pleased grin cutting through his strong jaw.
She glances away. Pretends to adjust her hair as she taps six times on the ear piece.
“Good,” Artemis states. She doesn’t praise. This isn’t her friend that tells goofy stories about Lian’s soccer practice or snorts coffee up her nose. This is her mission handler. This is the agent who will get Penelope out on the other side. “Focus on area one. Identify how many people are there.”
Artemis had fought to be Penelope’s handler for this infiltration. It should have been Emily or Dave. But she pulled their unit chief into her hotel room and spoke in harsh whispers behind the closed door until it was decided that Artemis would be the one leading her through the underground.
Penelope trusts every member of her team, but there’s an extra bolstering knowing that it is Artemis at her back. She’s friends with a homo magi. Will and Jade surely have introduced her to metas. It’s not just Penelope Artemis is looking out for. It is every metahuman inside these walls.
Between fake sips of her drink, Penelope surveys the whole room and relays limited information back to the van. There are sporadic updates from her teammates in the public club. Luke returns from his trip to the forensics lab to drop off the sample of her drink. JJ and Emily move closer to the bar. Tara completes a tour through the dance floor.
The whole time, Artemis is a steady presence in her ear. She’s speaking lowly about how to dispose of her drink when a shadow casts over Penelope’s face.
“Hello?” she greets, voice just as high pitched as the ambient whine of the electronics around her. Artemis quiets immediately.
The man towering over her grunts. So large his scarred body blocks out the strobing lights. The man guarding the raised booths, the VIP section, has approached her.
He grunts, once, unamused. “Sis said you look lonely.” His voice is low, rumbling. Penelope tries not to shrink back. “Invited you to her table.”
“Leave,” Artemis directs without hesitation. Despite not a single useful piece of evidence being gathered. It’s barely been an hour in the blaring music.
Penelope cranes her neck back toward the VIP section. There’s a slight woman there, stretched out in amusement. The same reddish hair frames her face, a sharp bob brushing her chin. She’s Artemis’ age, maybe a little older. Light skin complimented by a sleek black dress, slitted along the left leg. Her painted nails flick idly against a napkin. With each touch, it changes. Wood. Paper. Cotton. Feather. Smoke.
The man shifts back, barely, allowing enough room for her to slip out of the booth, but blocking the exit with his bulk.
“Leave right now. If you can’t do so safely, say the word, and we will come get you.” Right. The word. A single mention of techno and the BAU will storm this underground club.
She swallows, steeling herself. They haven’t collected the evidence they need. Penelope’s not one for the frontlines, but. She’s braver than she allows herself to feel most days. Her body is built for survival. The car crash that killed her parents enhanced her. Her palms buzz with the same power that reached through wires to give her just enough power to lower the window and crawl out onto the street, combusted gasoline on her heels. (The same power she would trade in an instant to get them back, to not have been joy riding with her drunk boyfriend that night.)
The twitching electrons in her nerves compel her to stand. To smirk. “Lead that way,” she instructs with the same teasing energy that confronted Shane in that computer café. That shut off all the power to the building with a flick of the wrist.
“Garcia,” Artemis warns. “You’re out of your league.”
“Be careful, Penelope,” Emily intones, all the permission Penelope doesn’t need as she strides uninhibited to the VIP area.
For decades, Penelope has had the luxury, the privilege of a covert meta trait. She’s hidden in anonymous chatrooms and the veneer of allyship.
Even with Spencer, their connection was always that of knowing smiles and darting eyes. A lifetime of ostracization has made Spence one for the shadows. A lifetime of protection has made Penelope one for misdirection. Two everpresent forms of camouflage.
She clutches onto her own now, just a little longer, content in the knowledge that her team, her family, holds no wariness toward her.
Her heels click against the three short steps into the VIP area. She lets a small amount of meekness fill her eyes even as the energy of the room thrums at her command.
She won’t use it, won’t play her hand too early. In private, in secret, she’s mastered her self-control. There are no radios exploding in hot-headed grief. There are no phones fritzing out in bubbling excitement.
Penelope feels every electronic in this room. She can trace the hum of the surveillance van down the street. She can pinpoint each comm in each teammate’s ear.
She knows where the security office in the club is by the concentration of relays. She knows where each camera is placed in this room.
There is power in her. There always has been.
Even when she ignored it, when she prioritized impressing Shane with her coding abilities, it was there.
It’s humming through every inch of her skin as she sits across from the red headed woman.
For now, Artemis is silent in her ear.
A new drink is set in front of her, placed by a girl with small, bony horns sticking out through her curly hair. She leaves as quickly as she arrives, never making eye contact.
She looks all too similar to one of the school photos that Penelope projected onto the TV screen back in Quantico.
Her chest aches and she uses that anguish to demonstrate fear.
The woman, their unsub, languishes in the booth. Her glass of deep red wine is smeared with her purple-tinged lipstick. She studies Penelope with unconcealed glee.
“You’re new,” she comments, a single nail tracing water dripped on the table. A thin line of blue wax trails after the small touch. “What brought you to the Eclipse?”
Penelope gives a clueless smile. “A friend mentioned it to me. If I was ever in town, she said the real fun happens down here.”
The woman scrapes at the wax, puffing it into smoke in small sections. “What a kind friend,” she intones. “Women like us have to stick together after all.” She doesn’t look at Penelope as she says it. “I’m Selinda,” she introduces, not offering a hand to shake.
“Penny,” she returns.
A smirk. “I hope my brother didn’t scare you. Underneath all that muscle, he’s a softie. Always looks out for me.”
“Mmm,” Penelope agrees. “My brothers are like that too. Always texting, checking in.” The opposite is true, but the lie is protective. If Selinda abducts her, it won’t go unnoticed.
The warning is accepted with ease, elegance. This is not their unsub’s first dance. Far from it. “What brings you here then?” A sip of wine that Penelope doesn’t mirror. “It’s lucky to go unnoticed. Baron doesn’t have that luxury.” Her eyes linger on her brother just a moment.
“Metas like Baron always make my heart hurt,” Penelope confesses. “How people judge without getting to know him. I’m sure he’s an amazing person, Selinda.”
“I know who they are, Garcia,” Artemis promises. A frown darts on her lips. How would she know? Penelope isn’t there to piggyback on the cameras. Their voices should barely be audible over the comms.
Artemis told her to leave after one sentence from Baron. She’d thought it was overprotective, but… I know who they are. Not we.
“The best,” Selinda returns. “It’s poetic, in a way, that he grew strong and I grew clever.” Her eyes flash. “Are you clever, Penny?”
She forces the creeping sensation aside. The van still hums several blocks away. The comms above have held position. They’re waiting for her, trusting her. “I like to think so.”
Selinda drags a small plate with crumbs still dashed over its surface. By the expediency of the wait staff around them, serving the few other VIPs that Penelope can’t focus on, the plate being here isn’t a coincidence.
“Women like us present in all sorts of ways. I, for instance, find the world quite malleable to my touch.” She taps the plate and gold spreads through it, crumbs and all. “Like Midas, without the curse. How do you bend the world to your will?”
She tugs her hair over her ears, not intending for her hands to tremble. It occurs to her that this woman could turn the oxygen in the room to carbon monoxide. That she could clutch Penelope’s wrist until her whole body is stone.
There is a small, insistent mania in Selinda’s eyes. In her periphery, Baron grins, feral and amused.
Her eyes flick to the only other exit in the room. The swinging door that the horned girl moves in and out of with food and drink. The distinct hum of kitchen appliances. There has to be a fire exit, another way out. But she can’t sense it. There are limits to what Penelope can do, to who she is.
The swell of confidence she felt when Baron towered over her has crashed at Selinda’s table. Artemis knew it the moment she heard Baron’s voice.
Penelope is hopelessly outmatched.
Selinda’s grin deepens the moment she catches the realization in Penelope’s eyes. She leans forward. “Or do you bend to its?”
She swallows, pressing her clammy hands against her knees to calm the shaking. “I’m a technomancer.” The first time she’s said those words aloud rather than typed them on a screen. She lets her back straighten, her gaze flatten. Pride staving off the fear just a little longer.
“Hold,” Artemis orders just as Penelope senses the comm units shifting above. Her gut clenches. No, no. She said the word. They’re supposed to rescue her now. Save her from her own hubris to think that someone who lived her whole life hiding from who she is can ever stand chest to chest with someone who has twisted their ability into a weapon. Penelope refuses the narrative that meta abilities lead to the madness of power.
Selinda has leaned into it.
She feels desperation rising in her throat. Artemis wouldn’t abandon her. She wouldn’t. None of her family would.
And she doesn’t. “Garcia, give Shimmer your earpiece. BAU, hold position. Garcia will be escorted out in five minutes.”
Selinda’s, Shimmer’s, mouth flattens when Penelope loosens the comm unit from her ear. “My friend wants to talk to you. The one who told me about this place.” True enough. It has been Artemis to deduce that there is a second, meta-exclusive club buried beneath the bar their victims disappeared from. Once again, her friend is more in tune with the meta community than Penelope has ever been. Another small mystery added to the thick novels she could write about their newest teammate.
The comm falls silently into Selinda’s hand, remaining the intricate engineering of plastics and precious metals.
At the steps, Baron makes a low noise of discontent. Selinda huffs in his direction, not nearly as close to him as she claims to be. Another commonality Penelope chooses to ignore.
The unsub rolls the small comm between her thumb and pointer finger. “And who is this friend?” she asks idly.
Artemis gave her a name. A different name than Penelope knows her by. She suspects one that was not broadcast to the rest of the team. One they’ll be talking about after Artemis delivers on her promise of rescue.
“Artemis Crock,” she states.
The name has more than the expected effect. Penelope was hoping for a glimmer of recognition. What she gets instead is a sneer of anger. The edge of the table turns to sand in her grip.
Baron takes a menacing step forward before Selinda glares him back. The horned girl scurries away instead of making her usual rounds.
With gritted teeth, Shimmer inserts the comm in her ear.
Now more than ever, Penelope wishes her affinity for electronics extended past her circuit breaker abilities. She’s always considered herself a remote control. An on-off switch that stretches further every year.
She can start her electric kettle from her bedroom and flick off the lights on her porch from the street. Maybe if Shane had known about her, he would’ve pushed her to stretch past what she knows.
But he didn’t. No one knew before this case.
Since the car crash that jumpstarted her meta trait, there’s only been a few times in her life in which her chest beat with the need to be more.
This is one of those times.
She keeps her eyes open, gaze steady on Selinda’s face. A calm has returned, knowing that Artemis has her back.
With it, returns confidence. She focuses on the comm in Selinda’s ear, draws all the eager electrons blanketing her skin toward her own.
“Crock,” Selinda growls. Her teeth are bared.
Penelope doesn’t flinch back. Draws all her bubbling power with the promise to evolve. The covenant of her body. Survival, above all else.
Ice spreads around Selinda’s clenched fists. “We found their accommodations too small for our tastes.”
She imagines how the comms function. The tiny speakers installed. The microphone catching the reverberations of the jaw. The magnet, the coil, the sound waves they create.
Selinda’s left hand breaks off a chunk of the table that has turned to foam. “You know nothing of consequences.”
She syncs the electrons. Mirrors the minute functioning of electricity, the way the amplitudes of sound are formed. Then.
“- more than you do,” Artemis snipes in her ear. Staticky beyond belief, but loud. Real. “I know more than you’ll ever understand.” She takes a breath. “Now. You’re going to have Baron escort my colleague to the door. Then your bouncer is going to escort her to the street. Do you understand?”
“And why would I do that?” she scoffs.
Artemis’ voice lowers, a threat, a promise. “Because if she’s harmed when my team raids this place, you’ll have far bigger concerns than the meta trafficking charges. You’ll have to contend with my gun in your face.”
Selinda pales. “Your team-”
“Escort her out. Two minutes. Now.”
The unsub stands abruptly. “Baron,” she barks. “Walk her to the door. Tell Gunther to take her to the front exit. Now.”
Baron opens his mouth to question his sister, but she interrupts. “Artemis Crock is here with her team.”
With that, he doesn’t hesitate. Penelope expects him to grab her arm and haul her out of there, but he seems afraid to touch her, herding her with urgent gestures. The aura of Artemis’ protection.
The cool night air hits her all too fast. The bouncer disappears behind the doors and Penelope finds herself walking forward without much thought.
A hand grabs her arm and she jerks out of their hold.
There’s a surprised huff of laughter. “Glad those self-defense lessons are finally sticking.”
Penelope blinks. Standing in front of her is Artemis. Steadfast, eyes scouring her for any sign of injury.
“Oh my gods,” she breathes, the panic in her chest finally feeling real. “Oh my gods.”
“Let’s get in the van,” Artemis instructs. She guides her with hands too cold for having just stepped out into the night. “The team’s moving in on the Flinders.”
“Who?” Penelope asks, allowing her friend to help her step up into the vehicle. Dave is gone, assisting with the takedown.
A level of seriousness not often seen in her teammate remains. “Selinda and Baron,” she clarifies in that severe tone.
She tugs off her leather jacket and wraps it around Penelope’s shoulders. A container of make up wipes is silently placed in front of her, along with a new comm. She never got hers back from Selinda.
Artemis monitors the takedown, offering limited orders as the team moves through.
There isn’t a fight. Not from Selinda, not from Baron. Not from any of the metas on their payroll.
They accept their fate and Penelope knows this is because of the threat that she wasn’t mean to know. That Artemis Crock’s team is here.
She muses on that as she watches the arrests on the small screen, buzzes of excited electrons all around her.
Her friend has never responded to her last name the way one would expect. It’s familiar to her, of course, and she’s never missed being called it. But when she hears West, there’s always a moment sorrow in her eyes, followed by a firming of resolve.
Penelope’s long suspected it’s a name chosen, not given. She’s never done more than a cursory online search for her teammate, even before she joined, but the biographical trail was a bit too easy to follow. Planted, she hadn’t wanted to think.
She’d thought about raising her concerns to Emily more than once, but never did. Something always held her back. The same understanding that flickers between her and Spencer has always been there between her and Artemis. Under the surface.
Artemis hadn’t been surprised when Penelope volunteered for this mission. Penelope hadn’t expected her to be.
A secondary unit arrives from the bigger city an hour away. Meta control devices are activated around the perpetrators’ wrists. Better than the collars that would have been used even two years ago, but still disgusting. Dehumanizing.
Artemis catches her disdain, muting her mic. “Shimmer and Mammoth are Justice League-level threats.” She keeps her gaze on the special units directing those paranoid bodies into a transport truck. “Even without their abilities, they’re dangerous.” A hint of experience in her tone.
“It’s still not right. We shouldn’t be treated like monsters.”
“You’re not a monster,” Artemis corrects all too fast. She takes a breath. “Being a meta doesn’t make you a monster just like it doesn’t make you a hero. It’s what you do with it.” She glances down at her hands. “It’s who you choose to be.”