in the movie a little boy recognises steve at the captain america exhibit. it’s my headcanon that a little girl recognises bucky when he goes to the smithsonian exhibit to find out who he really is
because little girls have heroes too
“You should tie your hair back,” a little girl with pitch-black hair says to the Winter Soldier. He stares down at her, silent, but she continues undeterred. “Mommy says that we need to have our hair tied back or we’ll trip over things because we can’t see. She makes me wear these–” She displays her wrist, which is encircled by a rainbow of different hair bands. “–because mine keep falling out. You can’t fight evil if you can’t see it. I want to be a police officer when I grow up. Are you a…”
She trails off, her eyes steadily getting bigger. They dart to the large digital image of James Buchanan Barnes, then back to his face. The Winter Soldier’s eyes dart, too, over the exits and the crowd and the girl’s distracted mother–attempting to corral three other black-haired children–before landing back on the girl’s face, where an improbable grin has begun to grow.
“I knew it,” she whispers.
The Winter Soldier blinks down at her, thrown off by the delight in her expression. No one is ever happy to see the Soldier.
The girl reins in her wide grin and does her own scan of the crowd. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell. People can’t handle the truth. But I can.” She turns her shining eyes back to the Soldier.
Slowly, very slowly, the Soldier reaches out with hands that have broken, maimed, strangled, shot, stabbed, and ripped apart human flesh. His voice creaks out of him, rusty with disuse. “Can I have a hair tie?”
Without taking her eyes off him, the girl rolls a light blue one out of the rainbow and hands it over.
