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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Days, then weeks, then a month.
I knew she was dead. I fucking knew it. But I was also systematically gutting HYDRA, kidding myself, pretending that she wasn't dead and that I'd would find her on a mission. There was nothing else I could do.
I really did try to accept Steve's and the others' offers to help take down HYDRA. They were working on it. But I kept finding ways to go off by myself. I let SHIELD and the Avengers supervise me, approve where I was going, but that was all the contact I needed. I asked for the messiest jobs they had, and a lot of the time I ended up on the other side of the world, throat stiff from lack of speech.
I hadn't felt this much like the Winter Soldier during the day in a long time.
The serum that Grace and Colin destroyed—that she died for—wasn't all the serum HYDRA had. Colin's last remaining duplicate had more. We thought he was probably the one making it in Nevada, too, the one she'd stayed back to try to save.
But he didn't want saved. I'd been watching him. He was making a deal, bringing the serum to Seoul to sell it to some Russian buyers. I figured he'd gone rogue after the base in Nevada went down.
So here I was in Seoul. Specifically, in a nightclub full of drunk expats in Itaewon. It was loud and dark enough to make the exchange covert.
And they even went into a private room, like they just wanted to make it easy for me to intercept. It took 2 minutes to take out the Colin duplicate and the three buyers and leave with 5 vials of serum in my jacket pocket.
I almost wished they'd made it harder. Now I had to walk back to my hostel, just trying not to think about Grace.
I felt a prickle at the back of my neck, a familiar shiver when I was weaving through the periphery of the crowd in the nightclub. Oh, good, I thought. I was being followed. That was something to think about.
I listened to the footsteps—were they even trying to be subtle? Did they think I wouldn't notice just because of the crowd?
Wait a second. I knew those footsteps, I realized.
I was almost disappointed. I ducked into a corner and waited for him.
"Were you trying to be subtle?" I asked when Sam pushed out of the crowd, beelining toward me.
"No. For some reason, I get this feeling that you don't like to be snuck up on."
"I don't," I agreed. "What are you doing here?"
"I can't talk about it here. I was hoping you'd let me crash with you in your hostel room."
"Get your own."
"It's booked! I hurried out here last minute," he said. "I can take the floor."
