peace [bucky barnes]

1

a/n - the majority of the dialogue here was taken from the first ep of tfatws, all credit goes to the writers of the show for those parts i've taken <3

*****

"So, Mr Barnes, are you still having nightmares?"

Bucky Barnes stared into the far corner of the room, not even reacting to the woman's voice, a blank expression cast across his features. His mind was elsewhere, wandering into murky depths like it always did, wishing he was anywhere but here.

"James, I asked you a question," Dr Raynor spoke louder, cutting straight through the confines of his mind. "Are you still having nightmares?"

Bucky allowed himself to look at her, pausing, deciding whether or not he should be honest or continue the façade he'd kept up for weeks now.

"No."

"We've been doing this long enough that I can tell when you're lying." She pursed her lips, impatience clear on her face. "Well, you seem a little off today, did something happen recently?"

He glanced away with a quick shake of his head, muttering, "No."

"Well, you're a civilian now. With your history, the government needs to know that you're not gonna..." She trailed off, lightly punching her fist in the air in a reference to his Vibranium arm and his previous assassin tendencies.

Bucky just nodded as if he understood, fighting the urge to roll his eyes at her; he didn't disagree with what she was saying, he just wished she wasn't the one assigned to say it to him.

"It's a condition of your pardon. So, tell me about your most recent nightmare."

He shook his head, irritated by her attempts to get into his mind, get underneath and figure him out. He was tired of it at this point; he'd spent years with people infiltrating his thoughts, he wanted to keep them to himself from now on.

"I didn't have a nightmare."

Dr Raynor let out an exasperated breath before she grabbed the pen resting on the notebook in her lap, raising it in the air and clicking it as if to prove a point. Bucky felt frustration bubbling inside him as he watched her, knowing that she knew it drove him crazy when she did that.

"Oh come on, really? You're gonna do the notebook thing?" He groaned, hating that she did all the right things to get under his skin. "Why? It's passive aggressive."

"You don't talk, I write," she shrugged, pointing the pen to the piece of paper.

"Okay, okay," Bucky sighed, giving in so she would stop, trying to appease her for the sake of his own frustration. "I crossed a name off the list of my amends yesterday."

She looked up at him, dropping the pen as he finally gave her something she could work with, something of substance. He proceeded to tell her the story - or a version of the story he wanted her to hear - of his latest efforts to make amends, one involving a Senator he had helped into office as the Winter Soldier who continued to abuse her power years later. What he didn't tell her was exactly how he had made amends, or the fact that he'd broken the rules she'd set in place for him, but in his mind she didn't need to know all the details.

Ending with the fakest smile he could muster, he hoped she wouldn't probe him much further on the specifics and that this would satisfy her constant prying for information, at least for this session.

"So you did it all right, but it didn't help with the nightmares?" Dr Raynor asked, pushing him to say something about them. She knew deep down he was still having them; she could see it written all over his vacant stare, guilt-ridden eyes, even in the nonchalant way he brushed off her questions, his mind clearly somewhere else. When he refused to talk to her, it made her job ten times harder and caused her more irritation as every session was wasted, him constantly continuing to refuse help. They were clearly not a good match for each other, and both of them knew it deep down, but neither of them cared enough to do anything about it; she was fulfilling her duties and he was fulfilling the condition of his pardon, both crawling toward the finish line to get the sessions over and done with.