After She Left

dissect me

"If what you need is nothing

If what you need is no one near

If I can't give you what you want

What you need

I'll make the vacancy"

Son Lux's "Vacancy"

He made it to Dr. Raynor's office just in the nick of time. With seconds to spare – and he couldn't be late, due to it being court ordered. That, and he knew if he started showing up late, he would start coming later and later, and eventually... Well, he didn't want to slip into bad habits, not when he was going to therapy to fix things like that. The concrete steps were unforgiving as he rushed up them.

Waiting outside for Dr. Raynor to call him in, he leaned against the grey wall. A trickle of a small indoor fountain gurgled. A large painting sat behind the fountain, and a few stalks of bamboo sat before it, making it look almost three-dimensional. Bucky supposed it was meant to give off a calming atmosphere, but it just felt cheap.

His thoughts drifted to the package that was left at his door. What the hell could it be? And who knew where he lived? Sure, the government did – they kept every kind of tab on him that they could in fear that he would become the Winter Soldier again. He knew so much, knew so many secrets, and he had the ability to do something with that information. To them, he was a loose canon, and yet, they were still giving him another chance at this life thing.

But the government wouldn't have packaged something in cheap brown paper, had it delivered to his door, and scrawled his name on it with chicken-scratch writing.

"James," Dr. Raynor called. "You there?"

Bucky turned and spotted his therapist. They'd been speaking weekly since he came back to the country, and he appreciated she wasn't all flowery and nonsensical. She was blunt and honest with him, and that was what he needed. That was what O used to do for him, except she had a way of making it sound soft. Dr. Raynor didn't have that.

"Yeah," he replied, "Sorry."

She ushered him into the room and he took a seat on the couch he always sat on. In the back of his mind he always wondered why the couch was so uncomfortable. It was rock hard and made him feel like he was sitting on a park bench waiting for a bus. It was a leather seat, and it, like the concrete steps out front, was unforgiving.

"So, how have you been doing since our last visit?" Dr. Raynor asked, a book in her lap and a pen resting between her wrinkled fingers.

"Fine," he responded, as he always did. It never took her long to break him apart and make him say something other than fine, since it was evident that he was not fine. But, he didn't want to give in too easy. Playing hard to get, he supposed, was a protective coping mechanism.

"You seemed somewhat distracted today. Care to talk about that?" she inquired.

He cocked his head to the side. "Not particularly."

She clicked her tongue at him, then sighed that patronizing sigh she had. When she picked up the notebook and began to write, Bucky held off for another minute before relenting. "I wrote a list."

"Oh?"

"Of all the people who I hurt."

"And what do you plan to do with this list?"

Bucky shrugged.

"You obviously had intent behind writing their names down. Surely it was not just to punish yourself further," Dr. Raynor dug into it. "So, I'll ask again, what do you plan on doing with the list?"

"Make it up... to their family? I guess."

She didn't respond right away. A clock on the wall ticked by, each second growing louder and louder. Dr. Raynor shifted in her seat and placed the notebook and the pen down on the table between her and Bucky. It was better when she didn't write anything, it was always better when she had something to say. It felt like he was making progress when she said more than a few words to him. A new wall began to fall whenever it was that open and honest between them, even Bucky had to admit that, but every time it felt wrong at first.

He reflected in this moment of silence that dissecting what was wrong with him was hard. Easy in one sense, that he knew there was a lot going on inside of him, but hard because it meant pulling apart everything he was and inspecting it.

Only one person had successfully pulled him apart and put him back together properly.

"So, it's a list of amends," she stated. "This is a major step in healing, James."

He blinked at her.

"But we need to set some ground rules." As she dove into that, it felt easier for Bucky to agree to it all. It was a task, and he was good at those. Following orders was something he had always succeeded at, and this was an order. Sure, it wouldn't be easy, it was going to get ugly when he had to face certain people to apologize for their dead loved ones, but it was easier than a lot of things he had done in the past. And, it got Dr. Raynor off his back for the time being. He could put that buffer between them, explain how he had made amends, how it was going. Rather than going back to dissecting himself.

He knew it no time at all, she was going to find out about O.

As their session was wrapping up, Dr. Raynor let her eyes flicker to the clock. Then she looked back at Bucky and said, "Something was on your mind when you arrived."

The package at his door.

"There's a lot of stuff on my mind, Doc," he replied vaguely.

"Something you're not telling me."

"How old are you, Doc?" Bucky inquired.

Usually, she didn't play along with his games. Today, she indulged him. "Sixty-four."

"So, you've seen a lot, yeah?" Bucky asked redundantly, then went on. "In forty-two years, get back to me and let me know if you've figured out a way to clear your mind entirely."

She raised an eyebrow at him, then reached for the notebook and scribbled something into those pages. Briefly Bucky was floored with memories of writing in his own notebooks, his own journals with that level of ferocity. He pissed her off, but he didn't care. Their session was up in thirty seconds, she couldn't hold him late because there was someone after him. She could write down that he was being childish, that he was being rude, but unless he was aggressive -which he never was- nothing would happen to him because of it.

When she put the notebook down, she side-eyed him ever so slightly. "The longer you hold off opening up-"

"The longer I'm in therapy, yeah, I know."

"The longer it's going to keep you from healing."

He stared at her for a moment, then got up and headed for the door. "See you next week, Doc."

Ya'll didn't think I was going to reveal what was in the package so soon, did you?

Comment your thoughts, and let me know what you want to see in this book! I've gotten a few chapters written, and will be leading it into the actual show soon! 

much love.