The Hurt And The Healing: Bucky X OC

Chapter Five: Freedom Ain't Worth The Bullshit It's Printed On

Bucky hated therapy. The couch that he could never fully get comfortable in, the birch tree wallpaper that was supposed to make him feel at peace but only gave him a headache, and of course the therapist who swore she understood but between the two of them only one of them had been brainwashed by nazis for seventy years and it's wasn't the person with both of their arms and a notebook. That stupid notebook. Bucky had grown to hate notebooks.

And then there were the rules.

Rule Number One: You can't do anything illegal.

After seventy years of watching people get away with doing whatever they wanted because they had the Winter Soldier standing behind them, ready to kill anyone who got in their way, Bucky had lost faith in the legal route of getting things done. He set things up so that others could get things done the legal way, wasn't that enough?

Rule Number Two: Nobody gets hurt.

Bucky had made a minor amendment to this rule: nobody gets hurt badly. Occasionally it was necessary to hurt people, but only the worst ones and only when he had no other choice. Besides, this one was only needed when he was making amends by righting the wrong done by the Winter Soldier. Like with the senator this week. He might have given her and her fixer motion sickness and he might have scared the shit out of them, but relatively speaking to what he could have done, it wasn't that bad.

Oh, he did break the fixer's hand before knocking him unconscious. But he had tried to shoot Bucky, so that didn't count.

Rule Number Three:  "I am no longer the Winter Soldier. I am James Bucky Barnes and you're part of my efforts to make amends," followed by a smile that he worked very hard to make look genuine but was pretty sure looked fake.

Even though this one should have been the easiest for him, Bucky struggled to say those two sentences every time. On the one hand, he had never been the Winter Soldier. He thought of it as being a hostage, like Bucky was sitting in the passenger seat of his mind watching the Winter Soldier drive the car, unable to do anything other than scream. Sometimes he tried to grab the wheel, but every time he was beaten back into the passenger seat where it took him a year to start breaking through again. He had never been in control, it was never Bucky with that mask and that arm and those orders. But on the other hand, he still remembered it all. Every man, woman, child... Christ, he had killed children. No, he hadn't killed them, the Winter Soldier had killed them but he hadn't stopped the Winter Soldier and he could still remember every face and didn't that mean that he might as well have been the Winter Soldier? If he still had the memories didn't that mean that the Winter Soldier was still there, only this time he was the one driving and the Winter Soldier was the one stuck in the passenger seat, occasionally reaching over to grab the wheel and yank them into a ravine of nightmares and guilt that no notebook or apology could get him out of?

Bucky really hated therapy.

"So, you did it all right, but it didn't help with the nightmares," Dr. Raynor said, an eyebrow arched as if to really say "you are so full of shit, Barnes."

"Well, like I said, I didn't have any," Bucky replied. Of course they didn't help with the nightmares. Taking care of one dirty senator wasn't enough to wipe out seventy years of working for people far worse than her. Hell, it wasn't enough to wipe out one day.

"Look..." she began. Bucky slouched in his seat. This speech again. "One day, you're gonna have to open up and understand that some people really do want to help you and that they can be trusted."

"I trust people," he lied. Of course he didn't trust people. What reason did he have to trust anyone other than Steve, who was off on the moon for all Bucky knew, Sharron, who he only trusted because Steve trusted her, Sam, who he barely trusted because Steve trusted him, and- nope, that was everyone.

"Okay, give me your phone," Raynor said, finally setting down that notebook. Bucky masked his groan poorly and handed it to her.

"You don't have ten phone numbers on this thing," she said critically, beeping through his contacts.

Well, Bucky thought to himself, one of the three people I trust might as well be dead, one of them is on the run, and while I do have Sam's number I wish I didn't.

"Oh, and you've been ignoring the texts from Sam," she added, as if she could read his mind. He hated it when she did that.

She smacked her lips. "Look, you've gotta nurture friendships. I am the only person you have called all week. That is so sad," she snapped the phone shut and practically threw it at him. Bucky caught it with his right hand. If he had caught it with his left he might have crushed it. "You're alone," she continued. "You're one hundred years old, you have no history, no family-"

"Are you lashing out at me, Doc?" he interjected, knowing that the only way to get her off one criticism was to give her something else to critique. She looked taken aback, although they did this same stupid song and dance every week. "Because that's really unprofessional, you know? When did that start? Yelling at your clients?"

She grabbed her notebook and slammed it onto her knee. Bucky didn't jump at the sound this time. He had known it was coming.

"The notebook. That's great." He sighed and looked at the doctor, with her face all scrunched up in disapproval as she scribbled more jargon that translated to "broken." Just one more notebook in his life that was being used to control him. At least this one wasn't red.

"Alright, give me a break. I'm trying, okay? This is..." he sighed. "This is new for me. I didn't have a moment to deal with anything, you know? I had a little... calm in Wakanda. And other than that I just went from one fight to another for ninety years."

She looked at him almost pityingly.

"So now that you've stopped fighting, what do you want?"

"Peace." That was the first truly honest thing he had said this whole time.

"That is utter bullshit." Of course she didn't believe him.

"You're a terrible shrink." Second truly honest thing.

"I was an excellent soldier," still a terrible shrink, Bucky thought, "so I saw a lot of dead bodies and I know how that can shut you down. And if you are alone, that is the quietest most personal hell. And James, it is very hard to escape." He just stared at her. He had been in hell for over seventy years. "Look, I know that you have been through a lot, but you've got your mind back, you are being pardoned, I mean, these are good things. You're free."

Bucky wanted to say so many things to the utter bullshit he had just been forced to listen to. He did not have his mind back. Every time he closed his eyes he was reminded of that. He saw his reflection in the eyes of the victims as the light left them. And when he went to see their families, to say something, anything to make it up to them, he saw himself in their eyes again.

His pardon was also utter bullshit. The US Government had made him do those things. If anyone needed a pardon it was them, not him. A pardon meant that he was guilty. He wasn't. Maybe he didn't believe that every day, but Steve, and T'Challa, Shuri, hell, even Sam believed that. And if they believed that, then no senator with a well made suit and too much power was going to make him doubt his innocence.

And his freedom? His freedom to sleep on the ground only to be woken by memories of screaming faces every night? His freedom to find all of the people who had been hurt by the Winter Soldier and beg them for forgiveness for a crime that he did not commit but still felt guilt for? His freedom to know that whatever good he did as Bucky Barnes was outweighed by all of the bad done by the Winter Soldier? His freedom to do the only thing that would balance the scales and make sure that the Winter Soldier never came back? His freedom-

"To do what?"