Poetic Justice (Soft Robotics 2.0)

0.16(epinephrine)

Release of norepinephrine and epinephrine causes the pupils to dilate for better vision of surroundings.

The feeds look clear. The campus is nearly dead. There are a couple of people exiting a bar on the main road and a few cars. Final exams are approaching.

I spend the whole walk checking the feeds. The airways open up to better oxygenate the blood. Breathing quickens and deepens. Blood pressure and heart rate increase, directing blood flow toward muscles. As I near my apartment, about to turn the corner onto its street, I split my attention between my own monitoring cameras and my own vision.

Rumlow crosses the sidewalk in front of my apartment.

He's gone. I flick back to the feed where I saw him clearly in the corner of the screen. Nothing. I keep flicking frantically, trying to re-locate him. He's nowhere.

Reminders of the original trauma are known to elicit a freezing response in traumatized rodents. I press my back to a building around the corner. What did I see again? I saw his face, didn't I? But the face I'm recalling in my memory can't be what I saw, because that face isn't burned. In my memory, I see Rumlow from two years ago flashing across the corner of the screen in an instant, a ghost in the green hue of night vision.

The camera that caught the image stores its most recent footage, but only on my home computer system. I can't access it until I get there. What did I see that my mind reconstructed? Just anybody walking through? A shadow? Or him?

I open Bucky's contact, thumb hovering over the call button. I don't press it. It was nothing. It was no one. I stand there, waiting for nothing and no one.

Footsteps. Approaching from the direction I came in. I jolt again when I see a shadowed figure, even though I knew it was coming. The pressure doesn't let up when I see that it's Colin.

He stands over me as I gasp for air, clutching my knees. "Whoa," he says. "Chill."

"I thought I saw someone," I say. My hands are shaking as I rake my hair out of my face.

"Even if Meredith's security is around here, it's not like they're gonna do anything. It's just some harmless spying."

I can't tell him about Rumlow. It's classified.

"I have this...abusive...ex..." I pant, trailing off, gesturing vaguely in place of a final word. "I think he might be stalking me."

"Huh," Colin says. "That explains a lot about you, actually."

I lock my phone again and close my eyes.

"Is that why you moved here?" he asks.

"Yeah," I say. It comes out as a whisper because I'm too drained to speak with anything except my scant breath.

When I open my eyes, Colin is nodding slowly. "Do you want to send security alerts from your system to my phone, too?"

I watch him silently, surprised. He pushes his glasses up with his knuckles self-consciously. "That way I can call the cops for you," he explains. "If I see someone going into your window or something."

I'm nodding before he finishes speaking. "Yes. Please. Yes."

I didn't see Rumlow. I know I didn't see Rumlow. Traumatized rodents experience a range of cognitive impairments. Colin walks with me all the way to my front door. I add his contact to the security alert system. I forget to thank him or even say goodnight.

Inside, I push the armoire in place for the night. Then I open it up and shove my messenger bag to the back of one of the shelves, behind a fancy candle I bought two years ago but still haven't burned. My heart rate settles. My breathing evens. As I shut it again, I imagine Tony and Meredith and Rumlow zipped up inside the bag, fighting each other for personal space, jostled and squished.