Chapter 1
"Oh, for fuck's sake."
There was a psychiatrist crying in the waiting room of Dr. Christina Raynor's clinic.
"Was it Barnes?" Raynor asked her receptionist. She kept her eyes on Lou as he sat in one of the ugly plastic chairs that lined a wall of the waiting room and sobbed uncontrollably. She never would have taken him for an ugly crier.
"It was Barnes," Kate confirmed with a sigh. "He just left."
"Fuck."
When the U.S. Military had asked her to take on James Buchanan Barnes as a patient in her clinic, Raynor had been honoured.
She'd still been on active duty when Captain America had appeared, miraculously alive, at the Battle of New York. She'd been assigned to the city in the wake of that fight, helping traumatized first responders deal with Earth's first attack by actual goddamn aliens. Steve Rogers had shown up at the makeshift clinic they'd set up in Midtown one day as part of a good will tour. He'd spent several hours talking to both doctors and patients. She'd been impressed back then by his decency and integrity. So, when she'd been offered the chance to treat Rogers' formerly brainwashed best friend in her civilian practice, she'd jumped at it.
Problem was, Barnes had turned out to be a complete disaster of a patient.
She'd known going in that it hadn't been Barnes' choice to do therapy. That it was a condition of the pardon he'd been granted for his crimes as the Winter Soldier. And she knew that they'd come to her because he'd refused to work with the military's own psychiatrists.
She'd thought, however, that her clinic would be perfect for him.
After she'd retired from the military, she'd wanted to build on her work with people suffering from PTSD. She'd started this clinic as a way of doing that. She took on vets and first responders, abuse victims and addicts. Anyone who was dealing with trauma, she and the team she'd built up around her worked to bring them a higher quality of life. Half of the psychiatrists and counsellors at the clinic were former military. Given the sensitive work of some of their clients, all of them had security clearance.
She'd been positive that there was no better group of people to treat James Buchanan Barnes. And she'd figured that even if it wasn't his choice, once Barnes saw what therapy could do for him, he'd commit to the process.
She'd figured wrong.
The first therapist she'd assigned him to was Dr. Amy Taylor. Taylor was a veteran of Afghanistan and had worked with some of the toughest cases of PTSD at Walter Reed, men and women who'd had their bodies and minds shattered. She was smart and empathetic and the person she trusted most in the practice to work with delicate cases. She lasted with Barnes for a week.
"He's making a mockery of the process, ," Taylor had told her after storming out of her final session with the man. "He won't do the work. There's nothing I can do with him."
"Fine," Raynor had sighed. "I'll give him to Marc."
Marc Huot was less delicate, and more brutally honest in his approach. Raynor had served with him on her first tour, when she'd been a green officer, fresh out of med school. He'd shown her the ropes, taught her how to treat military men and women who thought treating their mind meant admitting they were weak. He was the toughest person she knew. He lasted two weeks with Barnes.
At the end of that two weeks, Marc came into her office, his hands shaking, his voice quavering with emotion.
"I can't treat him anymore," Marc had said, his eyes filling with tears he kept blinking back.
"What happened?"
"I've been trying to gain his trust and nothing was working. So on Monday I asked him to tell me the worst thing that happened to him. And he did. In detail." Marc stopped talking long enough to swallow back a sob. "I haven't managed a full night's sleep since."
"Jesus, Marc," Raynor had said. "Have you booked in to see your guy?" No one who wanted to last any time in this profession didn't have their own therapist to rely on.
"Yeah." Marc nodded. "And I'm taking a few days off next week."
"Take whatever time you need. We'll cover your patients."
"Thanks, Christina. But who's going to treat Barnes?"
"Don't worry," she'd said. "I'll give him to Lou."
Louis Hardison Winchester was a career military man from a long line of career military men. He was the blunt force weapon of her clinic, taking the cases that were the hardest, the patients that were the most resistant. Raynor threw him at the cases she knew might break the other people in her practice, because nothing broke Lou.
Lou had been treating Barnes for a month, but now he was weeping in their waiting room. She was just happy that they were between treatment times and there were no patients here to see the cracks in his usually impenetrable armour.
"I'm sorry, Christina," Lou said, his voice wavering in a way she would have said was impossible before she'd walked in the doors of the clinic this morning. "But Barnes is a lot."
"That is an understatement," Raynor said. She grabbed Lou under the elbow and pulled him to his feet. "C'mon. Let's talk, and then you can take the rest of the day off and whatever else time you need." She turned to Kate. "Can you reschedule Dr. Winston's appointments for today? Then call up Barnes and get him back here tomorrow."
"Who do you want me to book him in with?" Kate asked.
"Me," Raynor said.
James Buchanan Barnes might be set on working his way through every psychiatrist in her clinic and the five boroughs, but he hadn't run into her yet.
She was going to treat this walking disaster if it was the last thing she did.
When Barnes walked into her office the next day, dressed like a Brooklyn hipster in black jeans, a black hoodie and a black leather jacket, he scanned the room like he was looking for landmines and trip wires. After he'd taken in every corner of the room, his gaze finally landed on her.
He inspected her like he'd inspected the room, like she was an enemy combatant with a brace of weapons hidden in her blazer. When his gaze met hers, she held the contact, making sure she kept steady, no flinching, no sign of fear.
"Please sit down, Sergeant Barnes," Raynor said, nodding at the couch in front of her.
Barnes hesitated for a moment, hovering in the doorway as if he were trying to decide between bolting and attacking. But then with a nod, he took his place on the couch.
He didn't lean back on the cushions, didn't slouch. He sat up ramrod straight, both feet flat on the floor, his glove-clad hands resting lightly on his thighs.
Raynor shifted slightly in her seat, straightening her spine to match Barnes'.
"My name is Dr. Raynor. I'll be taking over your treatment."
"I don't need-"
"I know you don't want to be here," she continued, not letting him get started with the denials. "You made that quite clear to my colleagues. But the fact is you have no choice. Therapy is a condition of your pardon. No therapy, no pardon. And since you've made your way through almost everyone else in this clinic, you're stuck with me."
"I may not have seen half the things you have, but I've seen some serious shit. If you give me a chance, I can help you deal with your shit. If you don't give me a chance, I'm still going to be here, sitting across from you every week. If you waste my time, I'll waste yours. But I'm hoping we can do some real work here."
Barnes stared at her, blue eyes blazing. When she continued to hold her ground against him, he finally looked down and grimaced.
"Great," he said under his breath, clenching what she thought was his metal hand.
"What was that?" she said.
"I was just commenting on what a goddamn pleasure it's going to be working with you, Doc." He looked back up at her, his mouth pulled into an awkward, insincere smile that ended somewhere before his eyes.
"That's what I thought," she said. "Now, let's set some ground rules, shall we?"
She knew this wasn't going to be easy. She knew she didn't have Barnes' trust yet, might never earn it. But she was going to do what she could to help him. Because it was her job. And because privately, she thought it was utter bullshit that they'd done anything but pin a medal on his chest for surviving what he had and helping defeat that giant purple alien asshole who'd tried to kill half the universe.
She picked up the notebook she'd placed on the table beside her before Barnes had arrived and set to work helping this bastard become an actual functioning human being again.