Fragile - A Bucky Barnes Story

Your consciousness, my consciousness.

We finished a quick sandwich for lunch and quickly hurried down to the training arena that had been outfitted for our sessions. Bucky automatically brought out the fold out chair and placed himself on the platform and ran a hand through his hair, pushing it out of his face as I circled him, taking deep breaths through my nose and exhaling out of my mouth to try and ready myself for the mind invasion.

"This time I'm going to try something different, Bucky," I explained as I stepped up behind him and placed my hands on top of his head, smoothing back the baby hairs on his forehead as our eyes locked. His beautiful blue eyes boring into mine.

"What is it?" he asked softly, his voice reminding me of a scolded child.

"We're going to create a safe space in your head," I begin, my fingers treading slowly across his forehead. "It will be a hallway and we are going to file your memories away, the darkest ones will be placed in a box on a high shelf, where you can never reach it. It won't be wiped, it will not be dismantled, it will remain there untouched."

"How did you come up with that?" he asked.

"Something Steve said, I want you to imagine a long hallway, full of shelves and boxes, Bucky," I murmured as I closed my eyes, instantly taking a deep breath as I opened them again and felt my consciousness take figure in the middle of a long hallway lined with bookshelves, hundreds of boxes lined the shelves.

"How did you do this?" Bucky's voice was strong, I turned towards the sound and found him standing behind me, in the hallways of his safe space that I created in his mind.

"Your consciousness, my consciousness," I grinned as I flung my arms out and looked around. "Quite the team."

"This is," Bucky turned towards one of the boxes at eye level and read a description on the front. It read March 10th 1925. "My 8th birthday."

"Memories in boxes," I chuckled at my cleverness, turning to run my hand down a few shelves. "I've been looking through your intel file that Steve gave me upon initial contact, I didn't get a chance to memorize them all, but I did remember a few days of trauma and those boxes, will be going into a box," I pause at a date I recognize, the date of Tony Stark's parents murder. I glance over at Bucky, who is still mesmerized by the contents of his birthday box. "Bucky?"

"Yes?" he turned quickly, putting the lid back on the box before stepping down the hall to reach me.

"I want you to put this box away, on a shelf you cannot reach," as I spoke those words, his brows frowned in confusion.

"How am I supposed to do that?" he asked, reaching out to take the box from my hands. When he spotted the date, his face tightened with pain.

"Imagine it going into another, bottomless box that is so far up that even a ladder couldn't allow you near it," I spoke the words and placed my hand on his shoulder, trying to give him strength as his gaze bore into the tag.

It took him a few minutes, but the moment he closed his eyes, the box disappeared and the ceiling began to rise. I watched with fascination as it stretched and stretched, high above until I could no longer decipher what was ceiling and what was wall. When his eyes opened, he cautiously glanced up. "I did it," he whispered.

"And you will never touch those memories again," I smiled softly, patting his shoulder under my hand. "Let's do a few more before I get a splitting headache, huh?"

Eventually Bucky began sorting his own boxes without my help, he would search the shelves with furrowed brows and pull the boxes out, concentrating before the box disappeared out of his hands and up on that high shelf we couldn't see. Every box created a new throb in my skull.

He must have noticed my swaying figure, unstable with the bells ringing in my ears. "Get out of my head now," he called out, though it sounded harsh, I believe it was fear that drove it so deep as I was practically thrown backwards and down the platform onto the concrete floor with a loud smack.

"Fuck," I grumbled low. That was new, I'd never had that happened before.

"Lucky!" Bucky was at my side in just a moment, his eyes scanning me over as his hands weaved into the hair behind my head, feeling for any wounds or lumps. "I'm so sorry, I don't know what happened. You looked like you were about to pass out, so I told you to get out-"

"Its not your fault, I should have gotten out sooner," I sat up with his help, holding onto his arm as the room began to spin, making the near deafening heartbeat in my ear to throb around my skull. "That was new. Being thrown across the room. Your mind is a lot stronger than you think."

And that was the last thing I said before tunnel vision took over and I blacked out.