Dr. Erin Mockta opened the door of Bucky's room and motioned to Steve who was waiting patiently down the hall.. "He had a great session," she said as Steve walked in. She turned to Bucky where he was lounging on his mattress on the floor. "You moved through your memories into the present pretty quickly, you've made huge progress since I last saw you, and you escaped from Hydra." She smiled. "Or, at least from the pressure chamber."

"It feels like I was rescued from Hydra." He looked up at Steve. "Guess I was, just not this morning."

Steve frowned. "I wish I'd helped you escape a long time ago."

"If you had," Bucky said, flexing the fingers of his left hand "I wouldn't be alive now."

Steve's eyebrows shot up. "I guess that's true."

"Sometimes there's a little sweet with the bitter," Erin said with half a shrug. "Like you winding up in the barometric chamber last night without sedatives affecting your system. That seems to have greatly magnified how much it helped you heal, especially your brain."

Bucky shrugged. "Healing fast is one of the few good things about being a human lab rat." He hesitated. "There was also Natasha, and Steve...and it really feels like I was rescued from Hydra."

"It's common for us to recreate situations and try to fix them." Erin held out her hands like a scale. "This can be negative, like when a child of alcoholics marries an alcoholic." She lowered one hand. "Or it can be positive, like someone who had a sickly mother feeling compelled to become a doctor." She raised the other. "Role playing can be a powerful recovery technique. If it doesn't trigger anything negative, it's fine for you to deliberately engage in some role playing."

Bucky snorted. "Like playing cowboys when we were little."

"Something like that." Erin held a hand out to Bucky and pulled him to his feet after he took it. "Let's do some more desensitization work with the pressure chamber. It would be ideal if you could sleep in it without being sedated. You come too, Captain."

As the trio walked down the hall to the bedroom with the pressure chamber in it, Bucky trailed his fingers along the wall. "This isn't what I was seeing when we came down this hall this morning."

"I know," Erin and Steve said in unison.

They went into the room with the technological glass and metal chamber in it. Steve flipped the lights on. Bucky hung back while Erin walked over to the big glass tube and put a hand on it. "Come on, James," she said. "Get more used to it."

He sucked in a breath and took a step back. "I can't."

Steve pushed on Bucky's shoulder. "Come on. When we were kids, we'd have been trying to figure out ways to sneak into this thing." Bucky gave him a look and Steve amended, "All right, you would have been scheming to sneak in and you would have talked me into it."

Bucky grinned. "That's about right."

"So you were the adventurer," Erin said with a grin. "Get Steve into trouble much?"

"Only as much as I kept him from getting his ass kicked." Slowly, Bucky reached out with his right hand until his fingers made contact with the cool glass. He ran his hand along the length of the tube and then fingered the control panel.

"The cryo chamber," Erin said, "was used to harm you. This barometric chamber is used to help you. Intent matters. A cut from a violently wielded knife is very different from an incision made with a scalpel wielded by a skilled surgeon."

"Both hurt," Bucky said.

Erin chuckled. "Oh, thanks, for twisting up the meaning of my metaphor."

"You don't have to get in there." Bucky waved in exasperation. "Nobody else faces that."

"Oh come on, Buck. I'll get in there." Steve climbed up on the hospital style bed and crawled into the glass tube and settled at the other end. "Heck, we could play cards in here."

Bucky rolled his eyes.

"That might be a good idea," Erin said. "You could play electronic games together using two little hand held game systems."

"Maybe." Bucky allowed Erin to coax him up onto the hospital bed. He crawled partway into the glass tube. It was rather crowded with both big men inside.

"This kind of reminds me of the play forts we used to make at your house." Steve reached up to press his palm to the glass above him. "We'd push furniture together and drape blankets over it, but our favorite spot was being scrunched up under the coffee table."

"Yeah it was. And I was a lot more scrunched up than you, punk." Bucky reached behind Steve and grabbed his pillow. He shoved it into the blond man's shoulder and face. Steve deflected it and pushed it right into Bucky's face unbalancing him. Bucky half fell over and hung off the end of the bed. He allowed himself to tip off the bed and stood up laughing.

Steve scrambled out of the tube. "Nowadays, I'd beat you in a pillow fight, jerk."

"I'd like to see you try."

Erin grabbed the pillow. "Children!" she admonished but she was smiling. She tossed the pillow back onto the bed. "So, tomorrow night, you'll try settling down in the chamber without a sedative."

Bucky stared at the glass tube and shoved his hair out of his face. "I'll try."

"Good. We can help you sleep using supplements like melatonin and GABA, and you'll practice those self hypnosis calming techniques we've been working on."

Bucky nodded. "And I want Steve to stay in the room with me."

"Understood." Erin looked around the spartan room. "I'll ask Tony to move another bed in here and do something to make this room more cheerful."

"I also want a lever or button or something in there with me so I can escape the chamber."

Erin nodded thoughtfully. "When the chamber's pressurized, you can't be released immediately. For one thing, you'd get the bends. So no panic button, exactly, but I'd think some kind of control device could be worked out."

"Thank you."

"And," Steve said, "we were wondering about adding more, newer pictures to the flip book."

"Hm." Erin shrugged and addressed Bucky. "Do recent pictures of you bother you?"

He shook his head. "Not as long as they're from my right."

"Fair enough. What about pictures from March?"

"I haven't seen anything from March."

"Okay then." Erin put a hand on her hip. "More pictures sound good. Steve, maybe find one from March where the news cameras don't make him look like a rabid raccoon?"

Both men snickered despite themselves. Steve nodded. "I can do that."

"Good deal." Erin checked her watch. "I'll see you boys Wednesday."

The two soldiers bid her farewell and she let herself out into the hallway to leave. She was almost to the elevator when Coulson caught up to her. "Doctor, can I talk to you?"

She turned to lookover her shoulder. "Sure."

"I mean, in a professional capacity."

She paused, her eyebrows raising and mouth falling slightly open. "Oh." She crossed her arms. "You and the cranky blond one, right? Uh, Clint. You and Clint."

Coulson nodded, eyes on the carpet. "Me and Clint."

"I have other patients after Sergeant Barnes, but I can come back this afternoon."

"Thank you."