𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐃𝐔𝐋𝐓𝐒 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆

𝐖𝐎𝐋𝐅 𝐈𝐍 𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐄𝐏'𝐒 𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆

For a kid who'd made it out of a Nazi owned organisation mere months ago, Jamie Campbell wasn't doing too bad. Sure, taking on a the role of a vigilante-esque personality probably wasn't the best for keeping a low profile, but the blip had left people desperate, and there was nothing more dangerous than a person with nothing to lose. Jamie dug his thumb into the palm of his hand, observing the world that seemed to keep moving without him.

Hurry. Everyone was always in a hurry, to get from one place to another, and right back again. Jamie thought that people were quite stupid to waste all their time doing that. Why not just stay in one place?

In this case, however, he was looking for one particular person in a hurry. A man, who he'd been chasing down for a long time. He pushed the too-big sunglasses, his very creative idea of a disguise, up his nose, the broken frame causing them to incessantly slip right back down. But hey, that was the best you could ask out of a pair of dumpster specs, wasn't it?

The guy who worked at that bodega down the street, what was it, Delmar's? Not him. A blond Wall Street douche who clearly considered drug-dealing to be a side profession. Not him either. Four, or was it five? Five kids, not much older than him, running like they couldn't be stopped. Running like they had nothing to lose.

Jamie was beginning to question the accuracy of his sources, but why on earth would that blind lawyer a couple doors down lie to him? Minutes ticked by on the large clock displayed on the wall across from him, each one cementing the thought of failure in his mind. Failure was unacceptable, failure meant punishment, and Jamie had had more than enough of that for a lifetime.

He wasn't a bad person, he didn't think. He wouldn't go as far as saying he was a good person either. He was stuck in this odd in-between, this grey mass that held him tight, refused to let him move on.

Move on. Interesting expression, wasn't it? How could someone just 'move on?' Jamie would have done anything to not have had to live the life that he was born into, but what had happened had already happened, and it was a part of him that couldn't be erased. It was a part of him just as much as the nose on his face was.

Sure, he could have lived without the mosaic of scars marring his pale frame, all the result of failure, all he believed he deserved, yet that had been his life. Who was he without Hydra behind him?

And there he was. There he finally was. Dark hair, a too-expensive suit, and flicking through a phone that Jamie could only dream of owning. There he was.

Jamie stood up, nearly vibrating from excitement, and the slight amount of nerves that he refused to acknowledge. His thumb dug deeper into his palm, and he winced as he pricked blood, but it was all that was stopping him from tackling the man he saw before him. And it didn't matter if he got hurt anyways. If he could get better, he could get hurt, and he always got better.

"Hey! Mister!" His voice called out, infuriatingly high pitched. The man turned around in surprise, his eyebrows raised high above his sunglasses.

"Don't do autographs anymore, kid." He replied, his voice so emotionless that Jamie was almost offended. And autographs? Who the heck did this guy think he was?

"Not what I want." He tried his best to mimic the deadpan tone of the much older man in front of him, but the high pitch of a pre-pubescent child didn't leave him very close.

The man's eyebrows raised higher than Jamie thought it was possible to go, and he advanced closer towards the bench on which Jamie had been seated on just seconds ago. Against his better judgement, he retreated as far back as he could, the cold metal of the rusted bench digging into the backs of his knees.