Soft Robotics ✧ Bucky Barnes

(duality[2.10]);

A couple of weeks passed. Bucky tried to speak to me twice, but I was glad I didn't let him. I didn't want to let him pull me back.

Meanwhile, I was going crazy stuck in the Tower. And I felt bad taking up Nat's couch space. If we didn't figure out what was happening soon, I was starting to consider taking my chances in my own apartment.

The engineering department where Colin worked had a memorial service for him a month after his actual funeral. It was during the work day, in one of the spacious event rooms where Tony often hosted parties. It was planned around some folk rock band that Pepper had been able to book for an hour. They were somehow niche and famous at the same time. Colin loved them. I never saw the appeal when he played their songs, but I might have disliked them out of spite, since Colin always had something negative to say about Taylor Swift.

Tony, Bruce, and I went down from the lab to pay our respects. There was no way for me to get out of it, no matter how hard it would be. People would've expected all three of us there whether we knew Colin or not. The fact that he died in the building wasn't a secret, but the story SHIELD had come up with was that it was a lab accident on our floor.

"Get in, get out," Tony said, standing between me and Bruce on the elevator down. "Don't look a nerd in the eye too long or they'll start complaining to you about the scientific inaccuracies in Star Wars."

"Tony, this is a memorial service," Bruce said, only half meaning it. He still seemed amused.

"Full of nerds," Tony hissed.

I shot him a glare.

"Fine," he said. "Go ahead and mingle if you want to. It's your funeral. See what I did there?"

"You're horrible," I said.

"Uh, I've saved the planet about 200 thousand times, but sure."

"Steve would've handled it." I shrugged, just to get under his skin.

"Excuse me?"

"All those times you saved the planet. I just think Steve had it covered."

"I've been stopping bad guys since before Cap came out of the ice."

"Yeah, but, I just, like, think he would have handled it if you hadn't." I stepped out of the elevator in front of him, and Tony caught up quickly, Bruce trailing behind us.

"Gracie," he said, annoyed. "He was frozen."

"I just think Steve would've figured it out, that's all."

"You're not my daughter anymore," he said, breaking away from us to go to the front of the room, where he was supposed to speak, as we entered the service.

"I never was!" I called in a whisper to his back.

"Then I'm writing you out of my will! It's all going to Peter!"

Definitely not the thing to yell at a memorial service. Off to a rocky start already.

"Is Colin's family here?" I asked Bruce. I'd never seen them, and thinking about it, I'd never heard anything about them, either. Looking around, I only saw familiar faces, all people who worked in the building.

"I doubt it. There wasn't any family at the funeral, either."

I frowned. I guessed they weren't close, then. Maybe he didn't have any family at all. I couldn't remember if I'd ever asked.

I sat down at a table next to Bruce and half listened to Tony's speech. The band came on, and Tony found us. He sat down on my other side.

"Can we leave before his friends start speaking?" I whispered to Tony. "I can't listen."

"Sure, kiddo."

I could barely listen to the band, either. Colin would've loved to be here. There was a banjo player.

A few minutes later, I felt my phone vibrate. I was getting a call from a number I didn't recognize. I picked up anyway, slipping outside, into the hallway. Any excuse to get away from that music. Any excuse to distract myself from the familiar tug of guilt in my chest.

"Hello?"

"I'm watching a documentary about whales." A man's voice said, stilted, enunciating carefully. I'd heard it before. I froze in place, in the middle of the empty hallway.

"Colin?"

"I can't believe you answered a call from an unknown number in the middle of a Crooner Mike and the Rattlesnake Hike set," the voice said, relaxing. "At my fucking memorial service, no less."

"Is this really—"

"Also, shacking up with your ex over my dead body? Kind of a bitch move, honestly. At least wait until rigor mortis sets in next time. Jesus Christ," he was speaking flippantly, but I could hear in his voice that he was walking quickly, out of breath.

"What—Where are you?"

"Listen carefully. I'm trying to save your life. They're after us both. You and Banner and Stark have been trying to recover the footage from the elevator, right? Wait. Shit. I'm being followed. Fuck. God, how did they know I couldn't resist logging onto my computer to watch my own memorial service? Am I that predictable? I'm just gonna send the footage to you. There's a password. You'll figure it out."

There was a long pause. I didn't speak. It sounded like he was running now. I wondered if I would have time to trace the call. It was Colin—if he didn't want me knowing where he was, then it would be untraceable. I ran to the elevator anyway, hoping to make it to the lab in time to try it.

"Were you listening to that?" he asked, still managing to sound bitter. He caught his breath. "I know you zone out when I talk."

"Of course I was listening—Where are you? If you come back to the Tower, they'll protect you." I made it to the lab floor, running out of the elevator, right over where I had found Colin's body.

"They'll put me in a safe house, or in witness protection, and I'll get killed in a week. Not all of us can bat our eyelashes at a super soldier and get special trea—Fuck."

It sounded like he took off running again. I made it to my computer. It didn't matter. I had been right—untraceable. A burner phone. Modified. He didn't want anyone looking for him.

"If you don't hear from me again soon, I'm dead for real this time, and I want you to know that I really, from the bottom of my heart, think you're a bitch. Fuck—they definitely see me."

I heard his voice a second later, farther away from the phone. "Let's talk about this," he was saying to someone. "You guys know how much I love to talk. You beat the shit out of me for it last time."

He hung up the phone.

The doors to the lab burst open. Tony was there, Bruce not far behind him.

"What the hell, Gracie? I went to check on you in the hall and you were gone," Tony said, eyes scanning over the room.

"Colin," I told him, holding up my phone weakly. "He called me. Colin called me. I was trying to trace it."

"That's impossible." Bruce shook his head. "I saw the body. Up close. He's dead, Grace. It was him. There's no faking that."

"Then who the hell was I just talking to?"

A/N: hi ty for reading. I promise it'll all make sense eventually.💖💖💖