James Bucky Barnes, the former soldier, doesn't think he's got any gentleness left in him. But Grace Juniper Cunningham, the former child prodigy, strongly disagrees.
;
"𝘐 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘐 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯."
"𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴�...
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"Can I call her?" I asked Sam. I sat in a folding chair in the hostel room, my phone plugged into the wall finally. I was staring at the picture of Grace in the hospital. "Did you tell her about me? Would she...want to talk to me?"
"I think she just needs to see you," Sam said hesitantly.
"She knows about me?"
"We've told her. I think it's just not sinking in since she doesn't...know you."
"She hasn't asked to see me at all?"
"I'm sorry—it's hard. You know how jumbled her brain is right now."
"Yeah."
"She's a little shy. Scared. She's not talking much to anybody. Not really herself. Wanda's been trying to take her through Taylor Swift's discography, but she hasn't seemed very interested. Nat brought her some blankets she made. Um, Steve went into your apartment and got one of your shirts for her, since we couldn't get a hold of you. It's hard to tell if anything is jogging her memory or not."
"She didn't...what did she do? When she saw the stuff? Or heard the music?"
"Not much of anything."
"Does she remember anything?" I asked. "How do we know it's her if she doesn't remember anything?"
"It's her. I know it. We just don't have the—well, the concrete evidence. So we've got somebody in the hospital room with her at all times. It's pretty convenient they wanted to keep her there for a while, since we didn't want to tell her we're watching her."
"What? Is she alive or not, Sam?" I hadn't anticipated my voice cracking, like I wanted to sob.
"Okay. Maybe I ought to start from the beginning," he said. "We found her in a minor raid. Some of the escapees from the Nevada base had her. She was in a lab full of soft robots. Tony looked at them. They're all her designs. It's her trademark."
"That doesn't prove shit, Sam."
"I really, really think it's her in the hospital. Call it a gut feeling. Or chalk it up to the fact that nobody else on the planet is making those weird squid robots the way she does them." He paused. "But we need you. If you think it's her too, then that's concrete evidence for me."
"What does Stark say? Does he think it's her? What about Romanoff?"
"Nat swears by her mannerisms. Swears it's her, just a little more confused and shy than normal. Tony hasn't been in to see her yet."
