Winter's War || The Winter Soldier

Chapter Twenty-Three: He's Like You

Music is "Behind The Mask" by Ivy & Gold.

Picture is Tatiana Maslany as Emma Barnes.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: He's Like You

"How the bloody hell are you still alive?" I ask as the doctor takes a shocked Natasha aside. She sits on a bench, still looking at Fury in awe and surprise. The doctor begins work on her shoulder, ensuring she won't lose any more blood.

"I shouldn't be," Fury states. He turns to Maria, but still speaks to me. "I'm not the only one that survived that shouldn't have."

My brows furrow, and Maria nods to her boss. She motions for Steve and I to follow her to an adjacent room, just to the left of us. The door is already open, and I see another cot inside.

On the cot, I see Grant's body. He's hooked up to a lot of machines, as much as the doctor could find I'm sure. Among them, a heart-rate monitor, a brainwave detector, and a IV bag of fluids. Neither the heart-rate monitor or the brainwave detector are showing any signs of life. He still looks as dead as he did in the hospital.

"Why is he here?" I ask before even entering the room.

Maria replies, "I brought him here with Fury before SHIELD--or HYDRA--could take his body. I don't know why they would, but I owed you that much. But that's not why I wanted to show you Grant. Watch the monitors."

I force the tears from my eyes as I wait a few seconds. Nothing happens. "I know he's dead," I mutter to the SHIELD agent. "I don't need a reminder."

"Emma," Steve's low voice states. He points to the monitor, eyes widening. "Watch."

I look closer, waiting another ten seconds before something happens. A little blip on the heart-rate monitor, a little wave on the brainwave detector. It's not much, but it's something. I move closer, and thirty seconds later, it happens again.

"Grant!" I exclaim, falling to my knees beside his bed. I grasp his hand, finding it still cold. I cup his face in my hand, allowing a smile. I turn to Maria with many questions. "What's happening? Why is he responding? How is he alive?"

Maria tries her best to answer all of them. "I have no idea. I really don't. The doctor moved him in this room, just to be kept, but he swore he saw his chest rise and fall. When we listened for a heart-beat, the doctor heard a feint one. He's alive, somehow. But he's not alive like Fury." She takes a deep breath in. "Somehow, he's like you, Emma."

I look from her to Steve to Grant. "How? I'm the only one like me. I'm immortal. I never had children. How is he like me?"

Maria speaks again, "Again, I don't know. Somehow he's in a comatose state of healing, just like you go into when you're killed. Grant seems to be doing the exact same thing."

"How long will he be there?" Steve inquires. "Emma sometimes took hours, sometimes months. Any guesses as to how long Grant will be like this?"

Maria shrugs. "We've never been able to test Emma's immortality, so there's little to go on. The doctor guesses that it will be a few months, based on the injury and his progress this far. But your guess is as good as mine."

"He's like me," I mutter, still holding Grant's hand between my own. "He's going to be all right."

"How is he aging?" Steve asks another question. "He was fifteen when I met him, now he's seventeen."

Maria breathes out heavily, placing her hands on her hips. "My only guess is that maybe he won't stop aging until he's matured physically. Or maybe he has a variant of Emma's immortality, something that allows him to age but will keep him from dying. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. There are so many weird people in the world now, mutants and enhanced and such, who knows what he'll be able to do when he wakes up."