Project Elemental

Chapter 2

***Post Civil War, Bucky's POV***

The therapist reviewed her notes before looking back at me. "Mr. Barnes..." She said tentatively, "Is it possible that these girls were not real?"

I jerk my head up sharply, eyes wide. "What?"

"Is it possible that she isn't real? Our minds conjure things to help us cope in extreme situations. It's possible that your mind created this woman to help you deal with the torture and the horror and the loneliness."

I'm not impressed with her analysis, not that I ever am. It's why I had stayed silent for weeks on end, through countless therapy sessions. And then Steve had found out. And then I had been lectured. And so now I talk, if grudgingly.

And every time I do so I am questioned. It's not something I appreciates, considering the amount of time and effort it had taken me to recover some of my memories. I especially don't want to hear that the girls there with him under Hydra's control had been some figment of my imagination.

I sigh. "She was real. I learned German from her, how else could I have-"

"You know many languages, Mr. Barnes. Spanish, Russian, Romanian, on and on and on." Dr. Johnson says. "Is there some significance of Germany for you?"

Other than the fact that Hydra was a Nazi scientific organization? "Just them."

"What were their names?"

I reluctantly answer. "I don't know. Just numbers."

"Aside from these women, any relevance to Germany?"

"There's no other significance besides the war." I answer the same way I've answered many of her questions, and simply phrase "no significance" differently every time.

"Was your family German?"

"No," I grind out. "They weren't."

She's silent for a moment as she crosses and uncrosses her ankles. She's sweating and I know her finger is running over the panic button disguised as the button of her pen. In case I got violent. In case I might snap.

I know that the girls had been real. Memories invade my mind, consistently, of them.

"And what might their purpose have been? They had you. Why would they need another person, let alone people? And more curiously, women?"

I stay quiet, keep my eyes downcast. "I don't know." I lie.

"I see."

Something scrambles to the forefront of my mind and I squeeze my eyes shut. "She took my dog tags. I gave them to her. She always wore them under her clothes until they found them." That had been a particularly horrible day when they found her with my tags. She had been punished severely, I was made to watch. Her clothes ripped and tattered, and the screaming alone had been-

"You could have lost them. It was an identity piece to you and the loss of them could have been traumatizing. Therefore, when you realized you didn't have them anymore the girl suddenly had them. As someone to keep you identity alive and safe. " Dr. Johnson replies with an annoyingly logical answer.

I shake my head, "No. No, you don't understand. I distinctly remember giving them to her. My hand was strapped down and I had to convince her to grab them."

"But why would you give away something so key to your identity? It's much more likely that you lost it somewhere along the way, and your mind instead lead you to believe that you gave it to a kind person for safekeeping. Until you could retrieve it, much like your memories still hiding in your subconscious."