Two Sugars

Chapter Four

You stepped out of the coffee shop and took a deep breath, shaking off the indignity of having to literally beg your boss not to fire you. Unsurprisingly, she wasn't too impressed that you'd missed almost a week of work without so much as a call but, luckily for you, since the event employers had to give employees more leeway with "stress-induced absences".

In any other circumstance you would've felt bad for exploiting new laws forged as a result of citywide trauma but, by this point, you were skirting dangerously close to the brink of a stress-induced breakdown, fuelled by stress-induced binge drinking and stress-induced inhalation of any high calorie food that was unlucky enough to cross your path. You needed to be cut some slack.

Days came and went. You woke up, rode the subway to work, tried to make the day pass as quickly as possible and then travelled home. Your evenings mostly consisted of sitting on the couch, crying and eating takeout; you'd most definitely overestimated how well you'd adjust to a sudden return to normal life.

One thing that did keep your mind occupied, however, was a new game that had replaced Siblings or Dating? You now spent your days playing Spot the Spy. Bucky had said that they'd send someone to keep an eye on you, and that you wouldn't notice their presence at all, but you weren't expecting them to hire an actual fucking ghost. Despite hours and hours of searching, you never once spotted someone who seemed to be watching you.

That was, until the night when the subway station by the coffee shop was closed. It was undergoing major works, just like everything else in the city, and the nearest alternative station was a fifteen minute walk away through some incredibly seedy side streets. You optimistically checked your banking app but quickly realised you couldn't justify splashing out on a cab. That's what you get for ordering out every night for weeks.

You kept your headphones in your bag, turned the corner and hurried along as fast as you could move without running. It was only a short walk away, no problem.

You could only have been walking for a couple of minutes when you heard heavy footsteps behind you. Problem? You increased your pace to a jog and heard them do the same. Problem.

You started to run. Too scared to glance behind you and too short of breath to scream, it felt like your only option. Everything else just fell out of your head. You cursed yourself for being so caught off guard, after the amount of fucking self-defence classes you'd attended when you moved to the city, the amount of fucking money you'd spent to make sure every single bag you owned had a can of Mace insi-

The Mace. You pulled your bag off your shoulder and started frantically searching, not breaking stride as you did so. You were just a few short steps from the safety of the well-lit main street, fingertips about to grasp the small metal can, when a hand grabbed your shoulder and yanked you backwards. You were instantly knocked off your feet.

The shock of the impact winded you for a second but you still managed to push your feet against the ground and shove yourself backwards, away from the sinister silhouette back-lit by the streetlights. Your hand was still in the bottom of your bag. While straining your eyes through the darkness in a futile attempt to make out any of your attacker's features, you finally managed to grab hold of the spray, wrenching it out and pointing it towards them as confidently as you could.

You never got a chance to use it. Before the shadowy figure had even come close to being in range, they were intercepted, thrown violently against the crumbling brick wall by another indistinct body. You watched the two of them straining against each other for a few seconds, your whole body frozen in shock. The interceptor eventually landed a punch so hard that the crunching of broken teeth was clearly audible even from six feet away. As he did so, you saw the light from the street glinting off something silver, something metal.