the team doctor || bucky barnes (EDITING IN PROGRESS)

75.

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ꜱᴏɴɢ: ᴄʀʏ ꜰᴏʀ ᴍᴇ - ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴇᴇᴋɴᴅ

"𝐋𝐞𝐭 𝐦𝐞 𝐚𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐝𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐡𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐬."

~

"THIS CANNOT POSSIBLY BE SAFE."

Valerie crossed her arms, momentarily feeling small underneath the stares from her colleagues who sat around the conference room.

"I'm still confused why he's here--"

"--And not locked in the cell."

Tony sighed. "I gave her clearance to let him out."

"What the fuck, Tony?" Sam snapped.

"I don't read any bad intentions on him," Wanda commented.

"Okay, violation of privacy." Cody lazily pointed to her.

"You don't get privacy here. You're still a traitor to this team," Sam retorted. "Valerie, you're seriously letting him help you? What if he gives you the wrong information?"

"Most of this process is informed by my own research. He's only helping with the words,"

"So he'll be in the cell with Barnes?" Bruce questioned.

Her lips pressed into a thin line before her eyes slid over to Bucky, who leaned against the wall in the back with his arms crossed. He gave her a quick nod of reassurance as the team began to piece together her reason for silence.

"No," Sam stood furiously.

"Val, come on," Nat added.

Steve simply shook his head, his hand rubbing his forehead in disbelief.

"He's not going in the cell." She confirmed.

An eruption of of dissatisfaction and refusal sounded around the conference room. She expected this, and so did he, which is maybe why he gave her a small thumbs up from where he stood. She shrugged, a half-smile tugging on her lips as the pair fixed their gaze on each other, as if no one else existed.

"You're not thinking straight," Steve spoke. "We get he's your boyfriend--"

"I'm not saying this as his girlfriend, I'm ordering it as his doctor."

They all fell silent.

"I know what's best for him, more than any of you do at this point. Putting him back in the cell under that persona will only breed thoughts and feelings of past trauma, thus interfering with the experiment. As Cody confirmed, if the Winter Soldier has no objective, he just exists as a person. From that baseline, we'll conduct tests to see how we can break him free from those words."

"So he'll just walk freely around the tower?"

"The idea is to introduce him to familiar places and see if he remembers it. Ideally, the two personas can become one, instead of two. If that's not possible, we'll just work on breaking him out," 

"Valerie," Steve tried. "I know you don't want to believe it, but he is capable of hurting you while he's under. He might not know you at all,"

She gulped. "I'm prepared for that reality. Tony has nanotech that will immediately subdue him if he attempts to harm me, or anyone else. In addition, he is underneath the jurisdiction of whoever speaks the words to him."

"And who is that going to be?"

"Me," Wanda spoke up.

"You're in on this too?" Sam sighed.