Soft Robotics ✧ Bucky Barnes

(collision[2.16]);

I let go and walked toward the door. I scanned my fingerprint again, making it slide open quickly, like a hyper-efficient elevator. "Good luck," the corrections officer scoffed as I passed.

"Are you kidding me? Read the roo—" I heard Sam say as the door closed again and I was left in silence.

I stood on one side of the table, facing the door on the opposite side of the room, where they would bring him in. I didn't want to sit down until he was sitting too.

I felt like I was about to take the exam to end all exams, and I'd forgotten to study. I didn't know the first thing about interrogation. I felt woefully unprepared.

1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.

It was so quiet. When the counting didn't calm me down, I started singing under my breath and shifting my weight from foot to foot. I stay out too late. Got nothin' in my brain. That's what people say. I could picture Nat outside rolling her eyes at me ("Is she seriously singing Taylor Swift right now?" I imagined her asking) and I felt a little comforted.

The door began to slide open, and I shut up. He was coming.

The first thing I did when I saw Rumlow—handcuffed and in an orange jumpsuit, a corrections officer on either side of him—was smile at him. Definitely not the right move. I wasn't sure why my face did that. I was sure Nat was shaking her head.

I was that frantic kind of nervous where I just had to accept that I had very little control over what I was going to do, and that I probably was going to remember very little of this experience afterward.

"Grace," he greeted, nodding at me casually.

The officers led him to the seat and chained his handcuffs to a metal bar that was bolted to the table. They placed a notepad and sharpie in front of him for him to write down the location. They left me alone with him without ceremony.

I took the seat across from him. "Hey," I said. "Cool, uh, cool tattoo. That's new. What is it, like, a snake? Or a dragon?"

I'd talked to Martha about this. I didn't quite have a fight or flight instinct. Instead, I tried to make friends.

There was some sort of long, slithery beast looped around his neck, as if it was choking him, its deranged head almost meeting its tail, which disappeared down into his jumpsuit.

"A head of hydra," he said, still nonchalant.

"Oh. Never mind. Should've guessed that one. Not cool now."

"Think of it as a snake if you want to." He leaned forward in his chair, studying me carefully. I shifted uncomfortably. He had somehow gotten even bigger and more threatening in prison.

"You were going to, um, you were going to tell me about a base?"

"I asked to talk to you for a reason," he said seriously. "They think I want to kill you."

"Uh huh."

"Do you think that?"

"Do I...think you want to kill me?"

"Are you afraid of me now, angel?" he asked, almost teasingly, almost amused.

"I've always been afraid of you," I said honestly, matter-of-factly. I was doing a bad job at following Nat's instructions, I thought. But I was started to calm down. I used to have some twisted level of familiarity with him. It started coming back. "What was with that note you left me?"