Poetic Justice (Soft Robotics 2.0)

0.12(paradox)

"Really?" I ask.

"Yeah. Sorry."

I take a sip of my drink. Slowly. He finishes his business with the straw. I'm still watching him. He mixes his coffee even though it's black, clanking the ice around redundantly. Then he leans down to rifle through his backpack. He drags his laptop out.

I want to tell him about the motion sensor from last night before he gets too focused on work to listen to me. He's the only person I talk to, really. Without Colin, my days and nights would pass without note at all, completely unrecounted. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I'm afraid that if I don't speak anything personal aloud, ever, to anyone else, I'll stop existing.

"I think Meredith is feeling diabolical," I say conversationally, as he opens his laptop. "I'm pretty sure she has her security tailing me. I felt like there was someone outside my apartment all night last night."

"You felt like that?" he asks, eyebrows furrowed at his screen, already typing something. "Don't you always feel watched? No offense, but I think your instincts are off."

I set my americano down on his control panel and grab one of the crumpled straw wrappers. I twist it around my finger, watching it. Sometimes I remember that Colin is my only friend.

"Where are you from?" I ask him.

"What?" he says, the word coming out half as a derisive snort, like the question is so stupid it's funny. He doesn't take his eyes off the screen.

I accidentally rip the straw wrapper in half, so I crumple the pieces into a ball and flick it at Colin. It misses him by a foot and lands on the floor.

"You're gonna meet with Meridian with me later, right?" he asks. He looks up long enough for me to nod. Then he scrolls on the track pad with two long, bony fingers and spins his laptop around for me to see. "This will win you some points with Meredith. Did you see it?"

On the screen in his lap, there's a Forbes article with the headline, FORMER STARK RIGHT-HAND ENTERS DEAL WITH MERIDIAN.

There's a picture at the top of the article. Instead of any ID photos or professional head shots, they used one of 17 year old me in a graduation gown at MIT, hugging Tony around the waist, beaming into the camera, his hand on my head like he's about to ruffle my hair. My mom took that picture. I must have posted it on the internet somewhere. It gets circulated whenever I get 15 minutes of tech-world fame.

"Keep scrolling?" I ask Colin. He does.

Journalists also like to use the picture of me, age 11, in a staged scene in Tony's old Malibu workshop, studying a glowing holographic diagram of nonsense with him. Pepper arranged that photoshoot to publicize the fact that Tony was still mentoring his ex wife's kid. This was pre-Iron Man. I don't know what he'd done to need the wholesome PR that year, and I don't want to know.

Colin scrolls some more. I don't read the text of the article. There's another picture from when I was 13, the time Tony landed a helicopter on the roof of my high school to "pick me up." He had to climb down and find me because I was hiding in some bushes, trying to pretend I didn't exist, even as he was announcing my name from a loudspeaker. I was so embarrassed that I didn't talk to him for the entire 5 hour flight to California.

In the picture, he's steering me away from the bushes by my shoulders, and both of us are laughing. That's why they use it—it's the only candid picture they have of us like that. I don't remember what he said that got me to laugh at that moment. The way I remember it, I was scowling the entire time.

In my bag, on the floor, leaned against the workbench, my phone dings.

"Is that Tony Stark again?" Colin asks, perking up. He's a fan.