NYR catching up, part one
So I'd had a thought in my head of posting commentaries for my NYRs as well. At this rate, if I do get to that, it'll be a while, so for now: Enjoy the fic.
Greatly Exaggerated
She doesn't know how near of a thing it was for a few weeks - but then, comas will do that. At least, Penny would imagine they do, considering how disoriented she is when she comes to. She really doesn't want to try having another one just to compare notes.
The hospital takes her disorientation in stride, but she knows the bill's running up and up every day, and she's probably screwed on that front; part-time retail and copious volunteer work aren't known for their health insurance coverage. But there's not much use in trying to figure that out while she's mostly working on getting better.
What sucks - and that's not a word Penny uses lightly, but it applies - is that she's doing it alone. There's no sign of Captain Hammer, and maybe that's a good thing after what he had to say at the shelter dedication, but Billy never shows up either. Maybe that's a good thing too; she doesn't know what to make of the whole Dr. Horrible thing. She'd at least like the chance to talk to him about it, though. She might be able to see where he's coming from, if she heard him explain it.
She recovers pretty well, once she wakes up and shakes off the disorientation; by the end of the week, she's feeling well enough to ask a nurse why no one's brought her a newspaper since she came around. The nurse hesitates, but Penny presses the point until she agrees.
The nurse starts with the papers from a couple days after the shelter opened, and Penny begins to understand when she sees the headlines.
It explains where Captain Hammer's been, at least, And she thinks she sees some cracks in the stories about Bill--about Dr. Horrible's exploits, which makes her want to talk to him even more. But mostly, the fact that she's been written off as 'Captain Hammer's girlfriend' and 'what's her name' pisses her off to no end. Really, couldn't anyone in this mess bother seeing her for who she is and not who she was dating?
(She thinks Billy was trying, at least. But considering she was dating his nemesis, she's not sure he really pulled it off.)
Three days after she starts catching up on the news, there's a knock on her door - not quite the tentative, 'in case you're sleeping' kind of knock the nurses use, but she can't think of who else it might be.
"Come in?"
A very curvy woman with dark hair opens the door, and smiles when she sees Penny sitting up in bed with an open newspaper. "Good. I knew you'd come through in the end."
Penny blinks. "Well, I'm glad someone did, considering..." She trails off, and eyes the paper's latest Hammerwatch, which seems to have completely forgotten he was even dating someone at the time he got... decommissioned.
"Oh, some of us know what's really going on. More so than that jackass and his fanbase do, anyway. He won't recover from this anywhere near as well as he'd like to."
"I guess not, if he hasn't been... out and about. But - really, if people think I'm dead, would it be that hard for them to actually research my life instead of writing about me like I'm a set piece?"
The woman rolls her eyes. "You were taking up some of Captain Hammer's precious limelight. Of course they weren't going to learn any more than they had to. But the question is, what do you plan to do about all these misconceptions?"
About the time the woman starts asking the question, Penny catches sight of the pendant around her neck. It's more of a dog tag, really, hanging from a ball chain and everything; instead of any written information, though, it just has an etching of an hourglass. But given that, it doesn't need to say anything.
"I don't know," she says - it's a little more snappish than she really means to be, but this was kind of the last thing she needed, at the moment. "Why don't you tell me?"
"Because you haven't made up your mind yet. Anyway, I can get you out of here, if you want."
"Why would you want to?"
Hourglass shrugs. "Because there's not much you can do to set things right from a hospital. Because with the state of the news, I doubt anyone else is really going to take an interest. Because while there's not really any hope for the idiot you were dating--"
"There's hope for everyone," Penny says, though it's more reflexive than anything; she is starting to wonder how much it applies in Captain Hammer's particular case.
"There is still someone you need to talk to," Hourglass says, as though Penny hadn't interrupted. "He won't come here, but he'd benefit from seeing you. I can make arrangements, and you can work on the rumors."
"But... why are you doing this at all? Aren't you..."
"I'm no hero, no, but some of us do look out for each other."
Penny thinks about it for a while, then sighs. "Well, it's not like I'm getting anything useful done here. All right."
***
Hourglass's apartment is a one-bedroom, larger than Penny's - well, her old apartment, she supposes. If people think she's dead, it's probably been cleaned out and rented to someone else by now.
Which means her job's long gone, too, considering she hasn't reported to it in a month. She can probably go back to the shelter without too much trouble, but that's only volunteer work, leaving the question of what to do about the looming hospital bill hanging in the air. But there are bigger fish to fry, first.
Hourglass mostly leaves her to her own devices, which she kind of appreciates. She doesn't know what to think of her improbable savior from the hospital, and the not-quite-avoidance lets her put off figuring that out. Penny's sure she'll come to some kind of conclusion on the matter eventually, but for now, she's content to ignore it.
Meanwhile, Penny sets about trying to... not reclaim her reputation, as such; she didn't really get damned by association so much as dismissed as unimportant. She writes a few scathing letters to the editor - unsigned, since she's not sure if putting her name on them would add weight to her point or just make the writer seem crazy - about their severe lack of research on their obituaries, and sends them to every newspaper she can think of.
Only two of them get printed - she almost wishes she could say that was a surprise - and only one draws any sort of response. It comes in the form of a letter on a series of post-its, asking who the letter writer is to make these comments a month after the fact.
She's trying to figure out how to respond when Hourglass walks in, takes one look at the unconventional stationery scatters across the coffee table, and says, "Oh, don't even bother."
"What?"
"That's the Yellow Journalist's calling card. No point you want to get across could possibly be worth the clusterfuck she'll make of it. She deals in getting tabloid news into the mainstream - and I think she's got a deal with Captain Hammer."
Penny's brow furrows. "Wouldn't that make her one of the good guys?"
"First, good is relative. Second, she doesn't care who she writes for, as long as they pay her well - which you can't really do right now. Besides, you've reached the person you need to. It'll be a few days before anything comes of it, so I recommend you find a way to keep yourself busy in the meantime."
Hourglass walks out of the room, and Penny sighs. She's getting a little tired of Hourglass's habit of treating the near future as ancient history, no matter how right she usually is.
***
She will grant that having something to do sounds a lot better than sitting around someone else's apartment waiting for something to fall into her lap, so the next day, she heads down to the shelter. The new building's buzzing with activity, which she's glad to see, considering it could have just as easily fallen by the wayside, after... everything.
Whatever else can be said for him - she'll figure that out some other time - Captain hammer did do everyone some good, in making sure the shelter could expand. She's a little tempted to knee him in the crotch for why he did it, if she sees him again, but still.
Anyway, she slips in and just starts helping out; it worked out well enough when she first found the shelter, so she doesn't see why it won't know. She's there about twenty minutes before her presence draws any unusual attention, and that comes in the form of a flying tackle hug from behind.
"Penny! Hi! Oh my god, I'm glad you're okay, it's been a total zoo around here, and the newspapers totally didn't do you justice. I wanted to go beat people's heads in, except you're the non-violent type so you wouldn't have wanted me to do that either."
"Ack! Hi, Grace." There's only one of the shelter volunteers who both talks a mile a minute and would leap to someone's defense like that - and Grace has the black belt to back it up. "I do appreciate the thought, but I'm glad you didn't beat anyone up."
"So am I. It really wouldn't have been worth the trouble. How're you doing? You're not... staying here, are you? I mean, if you're back to help, that's great, but if you don't have anywhere else to live, I can clean off my couch."
"No, I have somewhere to stay. But I'm pretty sure my job's gone, and sooner or later the hospital's going to throw that bill at me."
Grace frowns a little. "That sucks. I don't know that to do about the part where everyone thinks you're dead, but if no one actually declared you dead, that should help. I'll keep my ears open on the job thing - and you should ask here, Miss Social Work Degree. The director's been wanting to hire more people since we expanded, and you'd totally be a shoo-in."
"...Guess I'll have to follow up on that, then." Penny smiles. "Thanks. So, what have I missed around here, anyway?"
Grace proceeds to talk her ear off until lunch.
***
Penny takes a couple of days to settle back into her volunteer routine before trying to follow up on what Grace mentioned; she's more than a little out of practice, after all, and she feels better letting this build slowly. When she finally does bring it up, the director just smiles and holds out a hand for Penny's resume. There are other applicants, of course, but the director smiles like that so rarely that Penny thinks she's got a pretty good shot at this.
By the end of the week, her laundry pile is getting worrisomely large. She barely has time to eye it, though, before Hourglass hands her a basket and a roll of quarters and says, "You're five blocks closer to the laundromat than your apartment was."
"Are you sure?" her question has nothing to do with distance, but she's pretty sure she doesn't need to specify that.
"Very. He'll be there within the hour. And it's now, or he tries to have his henchman start the conversation for him - Moist's an okay guy, but I really don't think he should be forced to play middleman. Besides, I wouldn't have time to waterproof the apartment."
Penny suspects that's not as much of a non-sequitur as it sounds like, since this is part of the superpowers crowd Hourglass is talking about, but she still doesn't know what to make of it. In any case, she needs to get her laundry done, whether Billy shows up or not. And she's always found doing laundry soothing, so she might as well; maybe it'll help calm her down.
There's twelve minutes left on her washer when Billy walks in. He looks lost in his own thoughts, so she just keeps doing the crossword she brought with her. She's down to the last few clues, and she has a feeling she should at least let him start his own laundry before she approaches him.
Except when she looks up from filling in the last answer, she finds Billy staring at her, still pouring laundry detergent into the washer.
"I think you have enough soap by now," she says, and he jumps, nearly dropping the bottle in the process.
"Oh. Right. Um. Thanks." He puts the bottle down and starts the washer, all without taking his eyes off her. "I - you... I haven't really gone mad, have I?"
"Not as far as I know. You can come over here, you know, I don't bite."
Billy just stands there for a second, and then before Penny knows it, he's clinging to her like she's the only thing keeping him afloat. He pulls away just as abruptly, and says, "Sorry. I just... I'm sorry. I - you were never supposed to get hurt, ever. I--"
"I know, Billy. I know. And... your timing leaves a lot to be desired, and I don't know what I think of your motives yet, that part's going to take a while. But I don't hate you or anything, and I'm not going to hold what happened against you."
"Oh." Billy does that blinking thing, then smiles a little. "All right. Um. How'd you... I mean, it's like you knew I was going to show up, or something."
"Hourglass got me out of the hospital, so... I sort of did."
"Moist said she's been weird lately. Well, weirder than usual, for her. Guess it was... anyway. I - if you decide you can't... do this anymore, I get it. Long as you're happy. Just let me know? I don't think I can just... lose you all over again."
Penny can't help smiling, at that. "You're thinking way too far ahead. I've got a lot of thinking I need to do before I know what I'm doing. But - tell you what, how about we just start over? No secret identities or anything, this time, just two people actually getting to know each other."
"You..." Billy grins, rather than finishing whatever he was going to say. "I'd like that. A lot. You want to... get some frozen yogurt or something, when we're done here?"
"Sure."
"Good. Your... you need to put your clothes in the dryer."
"I do. I'll be back in a minute."
As she moves her clothes to a dryer, Penny's smile turns into a full-fledged grin. Whatever else may be going on, she's pretty sure there is still some good in Billy's heart - and it's not too late to bring that out.
Greatly Exaggerated
She doesn't know how near of a thing it was for a few weeks - but then, comas will do that. At least, Penny would imagine they do, considering how disoriented she is when she comes to. She really doesn't want to try having another one just to compare notes.
The hospital takes her disorientation in stride, but she knows the bill's running up and up every day, and she's probably screwed on that front; part-time retail and copious volunteer work aren't known for their health insurance coverage. But there's not much use in trying to figure that out while she's mostly working on getting better.
What sucks - and that's not a word Penny uses lightly, but it applies - is that she's doing it alone. There's no sign of Captain Hammer, and maybe that's a good thing after what he had to say at the shelter dedication, but Billy never shows up either. Maybe that's a good thing too; she doesn't know what to make of the whole Dr. Horrible thing. She'd at least like the chance to talk to him about it, though. She might be able to see where he's coming from, if she heard him explain it.
She recovers pretty well, once she wakes up and shakes off the disorientation; by the end of the week, she's feeling well enough to ask a nurse why no one's brought her a newspaper since she came around. The nurse hesitates, but Penny presses the point until she agrees.
The nurse starts with the papers from a couple days after the shelter opened, and Penny begins to understand when she sees the headlines.
It explains where Captain Hammer's been, at least, And she thinks she sees some cracks in the stories about Bill--about Dr. Horrible's exploits, which makes her want to talk to him even more. But mostly, the fact that she's been written off as 'Captain Hammer's girlfriend' and 'what's her name' pisses her off to no end. Really, couldn't anyone in this mess bother seeing her for who she is and not who she was dating?
(She thinks Billy was trying, at least. But considering she was dating his nemesis, she's not sure he really pulled it off.)
Three days after she starts catching up on the news, there's a knock on her door - not quite the tentative, 'in case you're sleeping' kind of knock the nurses use, but she can't think of who else it might be.
"Come in?"
A very curvy woman with dark hair opens the door, and smiles when she sees Penny sitting up in bed with an open newspaper. "Good. I knew you'd come through in the end."
Penny blinks. "Well, I'm glad someone did, considering..." She trails off, and eyes the paper's latest Hammerwatch, which seems to have completely forgotten he was even dating someone at the time he got... decommissioned.
"Oh, some of us know what's really going on. More so than that jackass and his fanbase do, anyway. He won't recover from this anywhere near as well as he'd like to."
"I guess not, if he hasn't been... out and about. But - really, if people think I'm dead, would it be that hard for them to actually research my life instead of writing about me like I'm a set piece?"
The woman rolls her eyes. "You were taking up some of Captain Hammer's precious limelight. Of course they weren't going to learn any more than they had to. But the question is, what do you plan to do about all these misconceptions?"
About the time the woman starts asking the question, Penny catches sight of the pendant around her neck. It's more of a dog tag, really, hanging from a ball chain and everything; instead of any written information, though, it just has an etching of an hourglass. But given that, it doesn't need to say anything.
"I don't know," she says - it's a little more snappish than she really means to be, but this was kind of the last thing she needed, at the moment. "Why don't you tell me?"
"Because you haven't made up your mind yet. Anyway, I can get you out of here, if you want."
"Why would you want to?"
Hourglass shrugs. "Because there's not much you can do to set things right from a hospital. Because with the state of the news, I doubt anyone else is really going to take an interest. Because while there's not really any hope for the idiot you were dating--"
"There's hope for everyone," Penny says, though it's more reflexive than anything; she is starting to wonder how much it applies in Captain Hammer's particular case.
"There is still someone you need to talk to," Hourglass says, as though Penny hadn't interrupted. "He won't come here, but he'd benefit from seeing you. I can make arrangements, and you can work on the rumors."
"But... why are you doing this at all? Aren't you..."
"I'm no hero, no, but some of us do look out for each other."
Penny thinks about it for a while, then sighs. "Well, it's not like I'm getting anything useful done here. All right."
***
Hourglass's apartment is a one-bedroom, larger than Penny's - well, her old apartment, she supposes. If people think she's dead, it's probably been cleaned out and rented to someone else by now.
Which means her job's long gone, too, considering she hasn't reported to it in a month. She can probably go back to the shelter without too much trouble, but that's only volunteer work, leaving the question of what to do about the looming hospital bill hanging in the air. But there are bigger fish to fry, first.
Hourglass mostly leaves her to her own devices, which she kind of appreciates. She doesn't know what to think of her improbable savior from the hospital, and the not-quite-avoidance lets her put off figuring that out. Penny's sure she'll come to some kind of conclusion on the matter eventually, but for now, she's content to ignore it.
Meanwhile, Penny sets about trying to... not reclaim her reputation, as such; she didn't really get damned by association so much as dismissed as unimportant. She writes a few scathing letters to the editor - unsigned, since she's not sure if putting her name on them would add weight to her point or just make the writer seem crazy - about their severe lack of research on their obituaries, and sends them to every newspaper she can think of.
Only two of them get printed - she almost wishes she could say that was a surprise - and only one draws any sort of response. It comes in the form of a letter on a series of post-its, asking who the letter writer is to make these comments a month after the fact.
She's trying to figure out how to respond when Hourglass walks in, takes one look at the unconventional stationery scatters across the coffee table, and says, "Oh, don't even bother."
"What?"
"That's the Yellow Journalist's calling card. No point you want to get across could possibly be worth the clusterfuck she'll make of it. She deals in getting tabloid news into the mainstream - and I think she's got a deal with Captain Hammer."
Penny's brow furrows. "Wouldn't that make her one of the good guys?"
"First, good is relative. Second, she doesn't care who she writes for, as long as they pay her well - which you can't really do right now. Besides, you've reached the person you need to. It'll be a few days before anything comes of it, so I recommend you find a way to keep yourself busy in the meantime."
Hourglass walks out of the room, and Penny sighs. She's getting a little tired of Hourglass's habit of treating the near future as ancient history, no matter how right she usually is.
***
She will grant that having something to do sounds a lot better than sitting around someone else's apartment waiting for something to fall into her lap, so the next day, she heads down to the shelter. The new building's buzzing with activity, which she's glad to see, considering it could have just as easily fallen by the wayside, after... everything.
Whatever else can be said for him - she'll figure that out some other time - Captain hammer did do everyone some good, in making sure the shelter could expand. She's a little tempted to knee him in the crotch for why he did it, if she sees him again, but still.
Anyway, she slips in and just starts helping out; it worked out well enough when she first found the shelter, so she doesn't see why it won't know. She's there about twenty minutes before her presence draws any unusual attention, and that comes in the form of a flying tackle hug from behind.
"Penny! Hi! Oh my god, I'm glad you're okay, it's been a total zoo around here, and the newspapers totally didn't do you justice. I wanted to go beat people's heads in, except you're the non-violent type so you wouldn't have wanted me to do that either."
"Ack! Hi, Grace." There's only one of the shelter volunteers who both talks a mile a minute and would leap to someone's defense like that - and Grace has the black belt to back it up. "I do appreciate the thought, but I'm glad you didn't beat anyone up."
"So am I. It really wouldn't have been worth the trouble. How're you doing? You're not... staying here, are you? I mean, if you're back to help, that's great, but if you don't have anywhere else to live, I can clean off my couch."
"No, I have somewhere to stay. But I'm pretty sure my job's gone, and sooner or later the hospital's going to throw that bill at me."
Grace frowns a little. "That sucks. I don't know that to do about the part where everyone thinks you're dead, but if no one actually declared you dead, that should help. I'll keep my ears open on the job thing - and you should ask here, Miss Social Work Degree. The director's been wanting to hire more people since we expanded, and you'd totally be a shoo-in."
"...Guess I'll have to follow up on that, then." Penny smiles. "Thanks. So, what have I missed around here, anyway?"
Grace proceeds to talk her ear off until lunch.
***
Penny takes a couple of days to settle back into her volunteer routine before trying to follow up on what Grace mentioned; she's more than a little out of practice, after all, and she feels better letting this build slowly. When she finally does bring it up, the director just smiles and holds out a hand for Penny's resume. There are other applicants, of course, but the director smiles like that so rarely that Penny thinks she's got a pretty good shot at this.
By the end of the week, her laundry pile is getting worrisomely large. She barely has time to eye it, though, before Hourglass hands her a basket and a roll of quarters and says, "You're five blocks closer to the laundromat than your apartment was."
"Are you sure?" her question has nothing to do with distance, but she's pretty sure she doesn't need to specify that.
"Very. He'll be there within the hour. And it's now, or he tries to have his henchman start the conversation for him - Moist's an okay guy, but I really don't think he should be forced to play middleman. Besides, I wouldn't have time to waterproof the apartment."
Penny suspects that's not as much of a non-sequitur as it sounds like, since this is part of the superpowers crowd Hourglass is talking about, but she still doesn't know what to make of it. In any case, she needs to get her laundry done, whether Billy shows up or not. And she's always found doing laundry soothing, so she might as well; maybe it'll help calm her down.
There's twelve minutes left on her washer when Billy walks in. He looks lost in his own thoughts, so she just keeps doing the crossword she brought with her. She's down to the last few clues, and she has a feeling she should at least let him start his own laundry before she approaches him.
Except when she looks up from filling in the last answer, she finds Billy staring at her, still pouring laundry detergent into the washer.
"I think you have enough soap by now," she says, and he jumps, nearly dropping the bottle in the process.
"Oh. Right. Um. Thanks." He puts the bottle down and starts the washer, all without taking his eyes off her. "I - you... I haven't really gone mad, have I?"
"Not as far as I know. You can come over here, you know, I don't bite."
Billy just stands there for a second, and then before Penny knows it, he's clinging to her like she's the only thing keeping him afloat. He pulls away just as abruptly, and says, "Sorry. I just... I'm sorry. I - you were never supposed to get hurt, ever. I--"
"I know, Billy. I know. And... your timing leaves a lot to be desired, and I don't know what I think of your motives yet, that part's going to take a while. But I don't hate you or anything, and I'm not going to hold what happened against you."
"Oh." Billy does that blinking thing, then smiles a little. "All right. Um. How'd you... I mean, it's like you knew I was going to show up, or something."
"Hourglass got me out of the hospital, so... I sort of did."
"Moist said she's been weird lately. Well, weirder than usual, for her. Guess it was... anyway. I - if you decide you can't... do this anymore, I get it. Long as you're happy. Just let me know? I don't think I can just... lose you all over again."
Penny can't help smiling, at that. "You're thinking way too far ahead. I've got a lot of thinking I need to do before I know what I'm doing. But - tell you what, how about we just start over? No secret identities or anything, this time, just two people actually getting to know each other."
"You..." Billy grins, rather than finishing whatever he was going to say. "I'd like that. A lot. You want to... get some frozen yogurt or something, when we're done here?"
"Sure."
"Good. Your... you need to put your clothes in the dryer."
"I do. I'll be back in a minute."
As she moves her clothes to a dryer, Penny's smile turns into a full-fledged grin. Whatever else may be going on, she's pretty sure there is still some good in Billy's heart - and it's not too late to bring that out.