POV: GRACE
When Colin gets mad at me, I try to keep him blocked for a full 24 hours. He has to be in my lab to work, so during business hours, I hole up in my office with the door locked and the lights off. When he waits outside my lectures, trying to corner me as the class disperses, I approach a random group of students packing their bags, and I ask if they want to talk about resume building or networking or something. A lot of them are brimming with entrepreneurial sycophancy, so a group tends to gather around me in a sort of human shield as I walk out the door past Colin.
When the day is done, I spend the night in my apartment with the armoire securely in front of my door. Tonight, I'm re-fusing IVY. While I'm working, at 9:52PM, one of the motion sensors that I buried underground in the courtyard outside my apartment is triggered. But when I view the feeds from my hidden cameras—the standard ones, the infrared ones, the AI that I taught to recognize Rumlow's mugshot—there's nothing there. I reason that it must have been an animal, slithering too low or flying too high to show up anywhere else. Still, I sit cross-legged in front of the armoire while I blowtorch IVY, my back against the barricade as if I can hold it there with sheer stiffness of posture.
By 3AM, IVY looks good as new, which is to say, in one piece, but still not strong or flexible enough to demonstrate any progress to Meridian. I don't remember falling asleep, but I wake up again with the dingy carpet of my living room pressed into my cheek at 5AM. I go to work again.
At 6AM, Colin hammers on the door of the lab, knowing his 24 hours are up. I let him in because he yells that he brought me an iced americano.
"This is a hostile work environment," he says, handing me one of the two Starbucks drinks he's carrying.
"Sorry I went out the window again," I say.
"Sorry's not gonna cut it with Meridian later."
He dumps his backpack onto the ground and sits on his usual rolling chair. As he swings his feet up onto the workbench in front of him, he accidentally flips a control switch with the back of his sneaker, and the six foot tall robotic arm looming over him groans to life.
"Fuck," he mutters, planting his feet back on the floor, flipping the switch back off, and mashing the arm's emergency stop button next to it for good measure.
It powers off and he sighs in relief, leaning back in his chair again. That arm has inexplicably homicidal tendencies. It started as a university-backed project, and Colin's primary research focus, but I had to nix it when it swung at an undergrad. Colin calls it ANGEL, but I think that's a lazy joke. I don't find any humor in homicidal tech anymore.
"I think I'm gonna disassemble that thing and have it taken to the dump," I say, eyeing it. I sit down on the corner of his workbench and jam the straw into my drink.
He stops in the middle of tapping open his straw wrapper, hovering still in the process, blinking up at me. "I thought Dan said you and I could keep working on it? As long as students aren't within its reach?"
"Yeah," I say. "He doesn't know that it intentionally tried to choke you out, though. It's crazy dangerous."
He opens his mouth, then closes it again. He looks around, as if Dan the Department Chair should be around here somewhere to defend him. Then he snaps, "I've spent the past year on it, Grace!"
See, this is why I have to bolt from Colin so often. "Please don't yell at me," I groan. "Never mind. Do what you want. I don't care."
He sighs. Then he deflates. "No. It's ok. I'll get rid of it. Let me do it."
I blink. I'm suspicious. Or maybe I just think I'm supposed to be suspicious, because he's being nice. I can never tell the difference. I stare at his face. He pushes his glasses up his nose.
"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.
I stick my hand into the messenger bag, feel around until I find my phone, and switch it on silent without looking at it.
"Indeterminate if I don't look," I say. "Sort of a Schrödinger's phone call situation. I've convinced myself that I can keep Tony suspended in a paradox."
He turns his laptop back around. "I still don't understand why you won't talk to him. It's not a paradox; it's just denial."
"Okay, consider this:" I say. Colin is typing again, so I already know he's stopped listening. I continue for myself, "Tony is zipped in this messenger bag with a radioactive atom. 3,000 miles east of here, at the Avengers Tower, the AI manifestation of Tony's god complex has just become so self-aware that it developed its own god complex. Steve Rogers is running out of the Tower at thirty miles per hour with nothing to throw at the murderbot except a plucky spirit, a trash can lid, and Natasha Romanoff. In how many minutes will New York City be leveled to the ground?"
"I would simply unzip the bag," says Tony.
My stomach drops, and I spin around, but he's not there. Anywhere.
"Gracie, I'm in your system. You can't see me. Stop looking around. My voice is coming from your speakers."
"Is that Tony Stark?" Colin whispers to me.
"I'm not going to gloat about being in your system," Tony says. "You think I'm going to gloat. I'm not doing that. I am in your system, though, and I did find it very easy to do, and I could have done it at any moment in the past two years, although I graciously elected not to."
There's silence.
Tony takes a breath and continues. "To be fair to you, Gracie, this system is exactly like mine, every step of the way, so it's more like I just have a master key. But to be fair to myself, I will be suing you for theft of my intellectual property."
One of my machines creaks.
"Just kidding. Also, my name is on the building, so I kind of literally have a master key, too. I'll throw in a gloat about that as well. Ha. Does that haunt you? I mean, why would you go to Silicon Valley if you wanted to avoid me?"
I glance over at the window.
"...Gracie?"
"Mr. Stark, my name's Colin Cross, I'm over-educated and I am not committed to my current employer."
"You're not supposed to lead by telling me it'd be easy to poach you. You're supposed to play hard to get."
"I will work for insultingly low wages if you give me an opportunity to leave academia with upward mobility."
"You're a bad negotiator, kid. I can respect that," Tony says. "I need you to get out of here, though. I've gotta talk to Gracie. Classified."
Colin's already nodding as he stands up.
Tony waits until the door seals and the locks click back into place before speaking again. "Here's the deal, Gracie: Cap is telling me that Barnes told him that he briefed you on what we came here to brief you on."
I take another long sip from my drink. I take a long time swallowing.
"Nobody calls me Gracie anymore," I say finally.
"What do they call you? Window Woman? Dr. Self-Defenestration?"
"And Bucky briefed me," I say. "You don't need to follow up."
"Care to elaborate?"
"Why? You don't trust him?" I ask.
"I find it hard to believe that he didn't just grunt and stare at you. He's not big on full sentences. In my experience."
"I know that you guys want to protect me because you're afraid Rumlow might come after me. That's what he told me."
"Let me crash on your couch," he says. "Better yet, come crash on my couch. It was handcrafted in Italy."
"The one with the marble armrests?" I ask. "Ew."
"I also have guest bedrooms," he says. Then he pauses. "And that's just in California. There's also space at the Tower. You can have your old apartment back. Barnes is in it, but I'm happy to defenestrate him."
"I'm fine where I am. I don't need protection," I say.
"You know that you can come back to New York whenever you're ready?" His tone has softened.
I stir my drink redundantly. "Yeah."
"Gracie, there's something else. I've been seeing news about you and Meridian."
"That's not gonna affect your company," I say. "Nobody actually cares about me. It's just a headline for clicks."
"It's not that." Tony's using his serious voice. I can hear his eyebrows furrowing. "How well do you know Meredith Warren? You know she's got HYDRA ties?"
"Yeah, her parents," I say.
"They were SHIELD turned HYDRA turned back SHIELD, killed by HYDRA. You know that?"
"Yeah," I repeat. "She's pretty forthcoming about it. Why, is there something else?
"Not that I know of," he says. "Just be careful."
There's no indication of his leaving, so I can only assume he's logged out of my system when there's silence. I wish there was some click of finality, like the sound of hanging up a phone. Anything clear and conclusive.
Tony's never said he loves me before. I could always feel the lack of it hanging in the air when he'd end a phone call, when he'd drop me off somewhere, when he'd ruffle my hair, even when he brought me home after HYDRA. But it wouldn't have worked as a conclusion if he'd said it just now; it's too late. I'd probably cringe so hard I'd get diarrhea if he said it now.
I pull my phone out of the bag and check it. It was Meredith who texted me. Not Tony.
I've done all I can for you.
┉
Meridian Headquarters is a big octagonal fortress, so smooth and white and many-surfaced that the sunlight glistens off of it. It looks out of place, taller and wider than the buildings around it, with too many corners.
As we approach the building, I ask Colin if my hair looks okay. He tells me that it looks like shit, but that we're selling robots, not getting a modeling contract. I catch a glimpse of myself in the reflection of a Walgreens window and pause to assess. Earlier, I sleeked my hair into a low bun. Pepper taught me this hairstyle, and I wear it when I want to feel like a professional with my shit together. I don't know why Colin thinks it looks bad. Maybe it's because I left some shorter strands out in the front. He probably thinks that was an accident. Colin is stupid.
Meredith's security meets us out front as always. And as always, I can feel myself surveilled at all angles the second they lead us inside silently. I stare directly up into the cameras mounted along the walls, wondering who's in the control room looking back at me, deciding I'm not a threat, deciding not to kill me. I can't help it.
"What's with the damage?" Colin asks as we cross the Research and Development floor. One of the labs is taped off, closed for entry, and some techs are patching up what appear to be bullet holes in the hallway. The walls around us crackle, healing themselves with freshly applied nano-molecular bonding paste.
The guards don't answer. I'm glad, at least, that Meredith sent us the guys that wear neat suits and sunglasses, with their guns politely concealed. These are the ones who follow her closely, with a few of them constantly at her side. There are others who wear tactical gear, who tend to scope out wherever Meredith is heading, or else patrol the facility. Those guys remind me of the HYDRA henchmen who used to punch me in the face or hit me with the butt of a gun if I didn't follow their orders fast enough.
There are a couple of the tactical guys in this hallway. I feel their eyes following us. The suit guys are leading us toward the elevator that goes strictly to and from Meredith's office. Special access required.
Colin grabs my elbow, and I do a small shock/terror scream. One of the suit guys glances at me, so I apologize to him for some reason.
"You need to relax or you're going to run," Colin hisses in my ear.
"I'm calm," I say, shoving him away from me. He huffs as the guards stand aside to let us file onto the elevator in front of them.
"You'll die if you try to go out any of these windows," he mutters, both of our backs against the elevator wall, our arms crossed.
During work hours, Colin handles pressure better than I do. He takes his anxiety medication around 8AM. But he's not exactly helping by reminding me that the only quick exit from this fortress is death.
I tap my fingers against my thumb, one by one, in quick succession. I count in my head.
1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.
My mom told me to count like this when I felt trapped as a kid. It's the only advice she's ever given me, so I took care to remember it. I first tried it when I was 12, after I finished each section of the SAT in ten minutes, and I was stuck in that exam room waiting for time to run out, always convinced that the next exam booklet would somehow be indecipherable to me, that I'd become a disappointment to Tony and Mom and everyone else on the planet. People used to tell me I was supposed to change the world, so the stakes felt that high.
The elevator doors slide open.
Meredith's office is the size of my lab. It's sleek and modern, angular and grey. There are a pair of sharp couches around a sharp rectangular table with some crystal glasses that I'm sure have never been used—but they're strategically placed there with a water pitcher to look more friendly. There's another chair by the window overlooking the city, as if she might sit there, too. There's a vase of faux flowers with big white blooms on the sill.
She doesn't look up when we come in. There's a wide touch screen suspended over her desk, and she's reading it with an index finger poised to scroll up. I watch her eyes flicker in the blue light. Some of her eyelashes are clumped together with mascara. I wonder how long she's been awake.
Colin clears his throat. One of the guards shoots him a warning look. Meredith mouths words as she reads, focusing intently. Her hair is clipped back, not dissimilar to mine.
My heart rate's already picking up like I need to run. My thumb is still sore from IVY's electrical shock yesterday, and it stings each time a finger taps it. I really wish I could pick apart Meredith's eyelashes.
What's she waiting for? Colin stomps on my foot, and I wince under my breath.
"Sorry!" I blurt out. "I'm sorry."
Meredith looks up as I check my shoe for scuffs. I bend down and dust it off.
"Everyone out," Meredith says. "Except Grace."
The guards file out neatly, escorting Colin, who shoots me one last warning look. I straighten up.
When we're alone, she stands up from her chair. My fingers have glued themselves together.
Her heels click carefully as she circles around the desk and comes toward me. She pauses at the window, folding her arms, leaning a hip against the sill, and gazing out.
"I feel like I'm supposed to say something else," I guess.
"I gave you every opportunity," she says measuredly. "You didn't want to work in this building; I let you work independently. You needed time; I gave you time. You needed funding—"
She cuts herself off and turns fully toward the window like it's too painful to state the amount of funding she's put into my development of IVY. She bought all new equipment for me to jam into my apartment so I could work there. Earlier this year, I tried to quit, because I couldn't work in this building. I kept hearing Rumlow's voice roaring indistinguishably out of a faucet or an air vent. Or else I'd turn a corner, run into a guard without expecting it, and spend the rest of the afternoon crying and gasping for air on the floor of a bathroom stall, bright lights behind my eyes and my brain rattled. Sometimes I felt like I was hovering. In a bad way.
That's how I feel now, actually.
"I don't think I can do what you want me to do in the time that you want me to do it," I say. "I'm sorry. Just cut your losses with me. It's not—"
"Come here," she says.
I stand at the window next to her. I'm not sure what we're supposed to be looking at, other than the grey concrete of the building next door or the dumpster in the alley below us.
"You wonder why I keep a security detail," she says.
"No?" I lie.
"Yesterday, someone tried to kill me," Meredith says. "Right down there. An attempt on my life. An assassination."
"What?" I say, examining the alley with new eyes, as if the assassin might still be lurking there. "Oh my god. What?"
She turns toward me. "I suppose I see something of myself in you."
"Someone tried to kill you?" I ask, torn between the window and her penetrating gaze. "Oh my god, was that what the bullet holes were about?"
"You've heard of the Winter Soldier," she says. "He's returned."
"Bucky?" I ask, relieved. Some sort of misunderstanding. "Oh. No, Bucky's an Avenger."
"What does that mean?" she asks. "An Avenger."
She steps away from me, pacing slowly. The floor is black and reflective. As I watch her tall white heels move across the floor, I can see myself, too, mirrored back at me.
"What absolves an Avenger of his guilt?" she asks. "The name alone? It washes him clean?"
A white cat springs suddenly from the top of a filing cabinet onto the floor, startling me. She yawns and stretches after she lands. I asked Meredith her name once, and she said she didn't have one.
"No, I just—" I search for the words as the cat meows and slinks toward me. "Steve trusts him. His brain is back."
"Ah, Captain Rogers. One of those close friends whom you moved across the country to escape."
The cat hops up on the windowsill and rubs her head against the vase. I know it's not the appropriate time, but she likes me, and I don't think Meredith gives her much attention. I scratch her on top of her head, between her ears.
"That doesn't mean I can't trust him," I say.
"How long do you think it took HYDRA to infiltrate SHIELD?" She stops in the middle of the room, facing me again. "Don't you think allegiances can change?"
The cat is purring. She rubs her face against my palm. I wonder how she's so calm, even with Meredith's stern tone. She must be used to it.
"I know what you mean," I mutter, because I want her to stop talking. She can't know that she's just stirred the Rumlow pit in my stomach, no matter how targeted the question seemed. There's no way for her to know that story. I sit on the edge of the windowsill so the cat can hop onto my lap.
"I'm sorry to hear about Brock Rumlow," Meredith says. "Terrible."
She's snapped up my attention. I don't remember jolting, but the cat jumps off of me and runs back to her filing cabinet.
Of course Meredith knows Rumlow is out. He was held in Meridian Institute, the state-of-the-art prison for dangerous supervillain types, newly constructed on Alcatraz Island by Meredith's company. The jarring part is that she'd know I care.
"Apologies," she says. She paces again. "It's just that he's talked about you. Psych evals. Conversations among other inmates, among my guards. And I like to keep an ear open if a former HYDRA operative knows the name of one of my employees. No offense."
She gives me a thin, polite, almost sympathetic smile. My stomach churns. What has he said? No one knows everything. No one knows about before I was taken. Moments in stairwells. In his office. The times I sat on his lap and told him everything he could've wanted to know about when I was most often alone, when Steve and Natasha wouldn't be expecting me. The times he'd push my face down against his desk and fuck me painfully. No one. Except me. And him.
I can't ask her what she knows. I can't make my mouth open. I swallow, staring at her heels again. My reflection in the floor swims, and I realize I'm about to cry. I wipe my eyes and blink rapidly.
"We all have our nightmares. It's not a weakness," she says. "Yours is Brock Rumlow. Mine is the Winter Soldier."
I nod, my breath rattling. I want to leave. She crosses the room toward me.
To my shock, she takes my hands in hers. Her hands are freezing. She's taller than me, especially in heels, but she bows down slightly, looking me in the eye. "That's why I won't cut my losses with you," she says, hushed. Her eyes squint with meaning. "You know what it means to never feel safe. Always looking over your shoulder. Peering behind your curtains. You know what Andromeda would mean for the world."
I'm nodding. Andromeda. That's the home security system that IVY is supposed to be a part of. IVY could be so much. Search and rescue, a mobile fire escape, anybody's personal aid and right hand. Just the beginning. In Meredith's vision, homes should be invasion-proof, accident-proof, calamity-proof. Avengers-proof.
Meredith wipes one of my tears. "You can change the world—you know that?"
A/N: I am really into the idea of this book being called "Soft Robotics" from Grace's POV and "Poetic Justice" from Bucky's POV. Idk how to label it that way but like yes it has two names lol that's how I think of it. I'm gonna refer to it as PJ tho to distinguish it from the original SR