"Let me make it very clear why you're here right now." Maria crossed her arms and leaned casually on the desk. She had temporarily taken over one of the downstairs offices to brief the shrink. "Pepper recommended you, which counts for quite a bit. Also, because Stark has better resources than Google, I found your thesis on memory loss and recovery. That is why you're here."

Dr. Erin Mockta, a pretty but serious looking woman with distinctly Native American coloring, smiled thinly. "Glad my university work is still doing some good."

"Mhm. I'm sure you saw the news a month ago when three flying aircraft carriers crashed into the Potomac."

"I think everyone on Earth, and some people a little farther afield, saw that."

"An accurate assessment." One of Maria's eyebrows ticked upwards. "Well, the people behind that whole fiasco had a hit man known as the Winter Soldier. The Winter Soldier is James Buchanan—or Bucky—Barnes, Captain America's childhood friend. He's in our custody, and he's been through hell. We're talking brainwashing, memory wipes, indoctrination. He's been put in cryogenic stasis, quite probably against his will. He's killed a lot of people, but not of his own volition. To top it all off, he was in World War Two. He's a mess. We're working the physical healing. Piecing his mind back together is your job and Stark is paying you an awful lot for it."

Dr. Mockta nodded slowly. "I understand."

"I warn you, he can get quite violent. He's been fragmenting, getting stuck in memories similar to how Alzheimer's patients do. We've had to sedate him several times to keep him from hurting people."

"Don't sedate him. I can't work with him if he's out."

"Doctor, he has a metal arm and superhuman strength. When he gets aggressive—"

"Ms. Hill, most of my work is with veterans. I'm no stranger to hot tempers, aggression, or metal limbs. Superstrength is a new one but it was a matter of time in this crazy world. I am ready to wait for him to calm down, and if he's not going to calm down, I'll leave the room. Sedating him is unhelpful and may even be harmful."

Maria nodded once. "Yes, ma'am. There's another difficulty in that he isn't reliably speaking English. Depending on where he is in his own head, he's been lapsing into Russian, German, and occasionally French. Sometimes if you start using English, he'll switch, but you can't count on it."

"Can you translate?"

"Yes."

"Then I don't see a problem." Dr. Mockta smiled.

#

Steve frowned at a bottle of mango flavored vitamin gummies in his hand. "What is this?"

Jemma glanced at the bottle. "B-complex." She dropped a tub of amino acid powder into the handbasket she was holding. "It's good for the brain. He needs good for the brain. Nerves need vitamin B to heal."

Pepper walked up with another bottle of gummies. "I can't find just zinc, but these are C plus zinc."

"Good enough." Jemma took the bottle and started explaining before Steve had a chance to ask. "Zinc is a methyl donor. It helps reverse the demethylation connected to PTSD. Honestly, you and Stark and even Barton and Banner should really be taking zinc if you aren't. I've been sneaking it into Coulson's food since I joined his team. He doesn't like pills, most agents don't like pills. It can be problematic. Anybody see co-Q-10? Bottle might say ubiquinol, two names for the same thing."

Steve scanned the shelves and found the correct thing. "Here it is." He handed it over. "People didn't used to buy stuff like this. We just ate."

"Generally speaking, you ate better than we do now. Fast food is a detriment to the health of the human race." Jemma looked around the vitamin section of the little healthfood store. "He's going to need much higher doses than they make these gummies in, but we can just give him lots of gummies. I think we've got everything he needs that they make in a form where you don't have to swallow a pill, so I guess we're done."

"Unless, Steve?" Pepper asked. "Does he have a favorite food we could pick up? Like you, he seems to need to eat more than average and it would be good to get something he likes. Make life easier for everyone."

Steve shrugged. "He's always liked lasagna but there's the problem of forks being weaponizable."

Pepper shook her head. "This place sells ready to shove in the oven lasagna and we can buy plastic forks."

#

Dr. Mockta let Maria close the door while she sat on the floor with Barnes. "Good afternoon, I'm Dr. Mockta."

He studied her and his eyes flicked momentarily to Maria before returning. "Are you going to ask me questions?"

"Some questions, yes."

"People keep asking me questions."

"Does that bother you?"

Barnes hesitated. "I don't like not knowing the answers."

"I'm here to help with that. Do you want me to help you?"

For a long moment, he considered her. "Yeah."

"I need to ask you some things so I can help, but then we can just talk, okay?"

"Okay."

Dr. Mockta folded open a notebook. "What's your name?"

"James."

The doctor's pen made a few loops across the page. "Well, James, what are you doing here?"

It took him a minute to answer. "Steve brought me here."

"Who's Steve?"

A slightly shorter pause this time. "My friend."

"Do you know what happened to you?"

The silence stretched out until Maria started to think they'd lost him again. Then Barnes took a breath. "Some of it. Not clearly."

"Okay."

He eyed her. "Do you want me to tell you about it?"

"Do you want to?"

"No."

"Then not right now."

#

Standing in front of the refrigerator case of ready made meals, Steve frowned. "How many different kinds of lasagna are there?"

"I'm counting six here." Jemma picked up a family sized beef lasagna and put it in the cart they'd replaced the handbasket with. "I've had others, though. People get creative with lasagna." She paused and looked at Pepper. "We've got two super soldiers, one of whom is healing, and five other grown men on hand."

"Two of whom are geniuses whose brains guzzle calories like hummers guzzle gas, plus you and me and Maria." Pepper turned to gently shoo away a couple of starstruck looking college kids then returned to the conversation as though nothing had happened. "Yes, we're a tough group to keep fed." She grabbed two other lasagnas. "Get one of each. Steve, you like pizza?"

"Pizza's good. Tony ordered pizza the night I got here."

Pepper made a soft sound of amusement. "We can do better than delivery." She reached up to grab a stack of ready to bake pizzas. "Might want to talk Tony into hiring a cook again—last three quit because Tony's houses kept getting attacked—but in the meantime, we have two perfectly good ovens."

Steve helped her get a dozen different pizzas into the cart. "I think we need another cart."

When they finally got to checkout, the poor cashier was a little overwhelmed. Considering she was faced with Captain America and the CEO of Stark Industries and two shopping carts worth of gummy vitamins, lasagnas, pizzas, potato salad, meatloaf, barbecue and at least a dozen other ready made meals, she had every right to be. She took the credit card Pepper handed her without question. She glanced tentatively at Steve and slipped a smartphone out of her pocket. "Would it be okay if, I mean, could I—"

Steve shared a look first with Pepper, then with Simmons. "You can take a picture."

The girl made a high pitched sound of excitement and darted around the counter.

#

Maria watched Dr. Mockta watch Barnes stare out the window. It had been been a while since he'd blinked and several minutes since he'd moved. The doctor, perched in the chair that used to go with the desk, had folded her hands in her lap and seemed content to wait. Maria was mildly impressed. When Barnes finally blinked himself back to awareness, Dr. Mockta clicked her pen open. "You back with us?"

He looked at her. Then the pillow from behind him went flying across the room.

It hit her in the face with a thump. She let it fall to the floor, holding up a staying hand to Maria, meeting her patient's gaze. "Feel better?"

He bared his teeth, chest heaving with agitated breath, and barked out a word in Russian. Maria bowed her head. "That was a curse word."

"I figured." Dr. Mockta leaned back in her chair without looking away from Barnes. "Do you want your pillow back?"

Barnes's eyes flickered momentarily to the pillow at her feet. There was a pause. "Nyet."

"Okay." She crossed her ankles. "Are you going to speak English?"

He actually smirked. "Nyet."

"That's fine, use whatever language you're comfortable with. Do you remember what we were talking about?"

It took him a while to answer. "...nyet."

"Baseball. We were talking about baseball."

He stared at her blankly.

She made a note. "Do you want to talk about something else?"

"Da..."

"Okay. What then?"

He studied her a minute. "Vy lyubite pivo?"

Maria suppressed a snicker and translated. "Do you like beer?"

Dr. Mockta grinned. "Yes, I do. Do you?"

#

With the tower's current inhabitants arrayed around her on the common room sofas, Erin Mockta steepled her fingers together and let out a breath. "Let's start with, that could have gone much worse. You're down an office chair and may shortly be down a bedframe but the worst he directed at me was a pillow, so that's good. You can't keep him locked in that bedroom, though. He needs opportunities to work out his feelings in safe, non-harmful ways. Non-harmful doesn't mean non-destructive, by the way. Breaking things can be quite therapeutic, especially for men since they tend to be more physical than women. It's a good way to channel aggression." She folded her hands in her lap and looked at Tony. "I would highly suggest re-furnishing his room with soft things. Beanbag chairs, mattress on the floor, no bedframe. Create an environment where he can lash out safely, because he is going to lash out, he needs to. He needs to process what's happened to him, what he's done, and what his situation is now. It's a lot to work through, and he can't really work through it until he's more together." She propped an elbow on the arm of the sofa. "He needs support. You all need to not treat him like a burden. I have other appointments." She stood. "But once he's settled down, unlock that damn door. Captain, since he's your friend, I expect you'll be working with him the most. Feel free to call me." She made for the elevator. "I'll see myself out."

After the doctor had left, Maria cleared her throat. "I think there's more online shopping to do."

"On it." Jemma picked a tablet up off the coffee table.

With a nod and a sigh, Steve got to his feet.

A/N: The character of Erin Mockta is being borrowed from my friend, Megan. Thank you, Megan, for letting her reality hop to my story.
Anyway, as always, reviews appreciated, questions welcomed.