"You couldn't tell me?" Bucky demanded as he burst through the door for his therapy appointment.

"Tell you what?" Alex asked as she looked up from her notebook.

"That you were going to be there."

"Fury called me ten minutes prior telling me to show up. I don't know why I was there," she said guessing that the 'there' in question was the meeting earlier in the day.

"Would you tell me if you did know?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Really?"

"This doesn't work if we don't trust each other," she replied as he stared at her skeptically.

Realizing it was pointless to bicker over how much she knew or didn't know about the meeting, Alex inquired if they could get on with their scheduled appointment. Bucky hesitated and quickly glanced towards the door. Instead of leaving, he turned back to Alex who had been observing him the whole time. Sullenly, he walked across the room to the chair opposite hers and plopped down. As Bucky settled back, their eyes met; his stubbornness had met its match.

"Did you have any nightmares the past few days?"

"No," he said shortly. It was the answer Alex had expected. She snapped the notebook shut and tossed it and her pen down on the floor.

"I don't feel like arguing over that right now either, so let's get back to your trust issues."

"I don't have trust issues."

"Not trusting anyone – including yourself – is an issue," Alex said.

"I trust Sam."

"Sam doesn't count," she said. Bucky exhaled loudly and rolled his eyes in frustration at her reply. "You started trusting Sam because Steve Rogers trusted Sam."

Alex's next request also unsettled him, as she thought it might. She asked him to tell her about enlisting for the war, being sent to Europe, and his time in the 107th infantry. When Bucky asked why, she told him that aside from being curious and she wanted to know about the people he had trusted with his life.

His cynical expression told her he had his doubts regarding her reason for asking. But after a slight shake of the head, Bucky focused on the floor and began telling her about his past. After recounting his last day in New York, he described going to Europe and being sent on missions against Hydra. Alex let him proceed at his own pace and only asked an occasional question about his day-to-day life at that time and who he interacted with closely. He then detailed the events the day his regiment were taken as prisoners of war or killed.

"I thought I was gonna die," Bucky said after disclosing the experiments he was subjected to by Armin Zola after falling sick while captured.

In a low voice, Alex told him to continue. Aware of Bucky's current mood and general demeanor, she was interested to see how much he was willing to share before stopping. He slowly related being rescued by Steve, becoming a part of the Howling Commandos, and the plan to find Zola. Their mission of ambushing the train and his fall from it followed. Bucky paused and looked up at her; Alex didn't comment or question but only mouthed the words 'keep going'. Through faltering sentences while concentrating on that spot on the floor, he told the story of being found by Soviet operatives of Hydra.

Bucky paused and silence overtook the room. He looked upwards, his eyes glassy. Alex asked if he wanted to proceed. With almost no hesitation, he nodded and took a deep breath. Although she did her best to maintain her composure, Alex was affected by his words. He had been through more than what ten people might experience in a lifetime.

When he continued, Bucky recounted being outfitted with a cybernetic arm and detailed going through the Winter Soldier programming. He mentioned the training, the missions, along with the memory wipes and cryogenic freezing in between. Alex listened and withheld her questions as she heard about the others who were given the serum and brainwashed. He told her about his last mission as a Winter Soldier, how it included shooting Nick Fury and fighting Steve Rogers. He briefly touched on being framed for murder and having his programming re-enacted by Zemo. Finally, as Bucky shared how he went to stay in Wakanda and disclosed that Hydra's programming had been removed, tears ran down his face.

"Have you ever told this to anyone before?" she asked and Bucky shook his head. They sat in silence for a minute or two.

"I know that was probably one of the hardest things you've had to do. Thank you for trusting me with it," Alex continued.

"Pretty sure it's all in my file," Bucky said with an edge in his voice. The wall that had slowly come down while he was talking was now going up again.

"A file is just words on a page… written by someone else," she told him. "You have seen and experienced horrible things. And you've been alone for most of it. People who said they'd be there for you haven't been, and others took your mind from you so you weren't there for yourself."

"And now you want me to think on how it made me the person I am today?" he asked with more than a touch of cynicism.

"You've been thinking for 70-odd years… that's long enough," Alex said sharply. Her tone was wholly unexpected and Bucky snapped to attention. "Make a decision right now. Move in a different direction or keep living the way you have been. You can choose to be here for yourself. And, there are people here for you that you can trust and count on. Me. Sam. Even Fury... on a good day."

"Wait. So, now Sam counts?"

"James Buchanan Barnes. Make. A. Decision," Alex said.

Realizing that she expected an immediate answer, Bucky quietly resolved to try to change. He then hesitantly asked what came next. Alex told him that trying to trust her and staying present during their sessions would probably be the easier part. "No staring off and going down rabbit holes."

"And the harder part?"

"You're going to have to be willing to confront your fears. Those things you push down, avoid, and choose to ignore... we're going there."

"It's not good."

"I'm not going anywhere, no matter how dark it gets," Alex told him and then asked if he had any questions.

"You really don't know why you were at the meeting?" Bucky asked in an about face which caused Alex's eyebrows to raise in surprise.

"Fury doesn't tell me much. If I had to guess it was to observe Walker. Whatever he's on is not good."

"What if, hypothetically, he was on was the super soldier serum?"

Alex told him to explain his hypothetical situation. Bucky recounted how John Walker had taken on him and Sam and just kept coming. When she asked if he had saw him take the serum, he shook his head and expressed that it was the only possibility that made any sense. She speculated that Fury probably knew or suspected the same thing, resulting in his indifference to Walker's actions.

"It's moments like this that I'm glad I'm not part of the chess match," Alex remarked.