"Are you ever going to tell me this theory you have about Barnes?" Fury asked Alex. The call came in a few hours after she spoke to Maria Hill. Although Alex was certain she was going to hear from him, this was not what the way she had imagined the conversation.

"Yes," she replied. "Hope your day's going well."

"I'm waiting," he said eschewing all pleasantries.

"I didn't say I was going to tell you now. I want to discuss it with him first."

"When is this discussion going to happen?"

"Undetermined."

"Alex," Fury warned.

"Nick, I know you don't want to hear this but his mental health is my focus, not you or my random theory. If I ask him to deal with too much at once, he's either gonna totally shut down or possibly disappear," she said.

Fury audibly groaned. He knew she was right. It didn't take a trained therapist to see that Bucky Barnes was traumatized. "How about you tell me why you wanted your office swept? Or do you need to discuss that with someone else first, too?"

Alex related her encounter with Dr. Raynor earlier that day. She shared that the psychiatrist's newfound interest in her schedule made her uncomfortable especially since they had rarely spoken before this.

"I know that Barnes was her patient, but she didn't put up a fight about being taken off his case. Why be so concerned about him now? You were going to look into that," Alex said.

Fury attempted to alleviate Alex's unease while avoiding giving her a direct answer. She reminded him that he wasn't at the office to see the day-to-day workings. "I know S.H.I.E.L.D. technically doesn't exist any longer, yet somehow, here we all are… working. They don't mind when we fly under the radar, but I think we're starting to piss them off."

He stated that he was used to pissing people off and impressed upon her that everyone was on the same team.

"I don't think that's quite true; I don't trust them," she said.

"Best not to trust anyone. Your office is clean; so is your phone and your laptop, by the way. We'll keep an eye on it."

That was as much of a confirmation from Fury of the current situation that Alex was going to get.

Bucky followed up on his request and contacted Alex as soon as he got back home. She walked into the office at their agreed upon time and found him already there. He was seated in his usual spot, leaning forward with elbows on knees and looking at the floor. It was a decidedly different mood than from when they ended their last session. Alex asked if he wanted to stay in the office or take it outside. Bucky glanced up at her with tired eyes and mumbled that office was fine.

She nodded and noticed that he wasn't wearing a jacket or gloves. Despite the ease and joviality from their last session being noticeably gone, Alex was happy to see that Bucky had made some progress. Avoiding the topic of the reason for his cancelling the last appointment, she dove right into things.

"Nightmares starting to get to you?" she asked walking over to the chair across from him.

"No," he said shaking his head.

"You sent me a message in the middle of the night because you couldn't sleep."

"You weren't asleep either," he matter-of-factly pointed out.

"We're talking about your nightmares," she said re-directing the conversation.

"How many times do I have to tell you? I don't remember them," he grumbled without looking up from the floor.

"If you don't remember, why are you so damn conflicted?" Alex asked sharply. Her question got his attention. Startled, he looked up. Bucky's eyes narrowed and they stared at each other.

"Serial killers aren't conflicted. Pretty sure they sleep at night. You don't," Alex said. Although he remained silent, Bucky's jaw clenched and his hands formed fists on his knees.

"Why do you keep punishing yourself? Are you a masochist, because we'll need to talk about that separately?" Despite the goading, she was met with silence and a sullen expression before he resumed focusing on the floor.

"How long do you plan on doing this to yourself?"

Bucky raised his head and asked quietly, "What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to forgive yourself," Alex said gently.

He looked at her with sorrowful eyes. "I can't. I remember all of them. Every face. Every word... when they realized why I was there."

"You were under someone's control when you did those things. It wasn't you."

"It was," Bucky stated directly and abruptly stood up. He walked across the room, as Alex watched with concern. As he approached the door, she would have bet that he was going to walk right through it, never to return. Instead, Bucky turned around.

"Making amends didn't stop them," Bucky said as he gazed out the office window. Alex asked if he meant the nightmares and asked for a bit more explanation of the reasoning behind his actions.

"Closure is overrated. Personally, I don't think it exists," she said when he finished speaking. Bucky looked at her with an exasperated expression as she made her pronouncement. "You can't change the past. You can't bring them back or undo any of it, no matter what you do or what you say. You're reliving the events, carrying out crafted plans to make amends, as you're reaching for…"

"Peace," Bucky said as he walked back to the couch and sat back down. He reassumed the position he was in earlier: leaning forward and looking at the floor.

"Peace. Mostly comes from within. Which leads us back to forgiving yourself," Alex said as Bucky sighed in frustration. "Forgiving yourself doesn't equate to you saying that you don't care what happened or that you aren't taking responsibility. It means that you accept your past along with the things that can't be changed. It also means giving yourself permission to live and move forward."

"I'm living," he argued.

"You're existing... and determined to suffer every minute," she countered.

Bucky ran his hands over his head before looking up. "I..."

Alex leaned back in her chair with a serene expression fully prepared for his argument. It never came. She presented him with a hypothetical situation where Steve Rogers had perpetrated all the Winter Soldier's missions and was now having a tough time dealing with the aftermath.

She asked what he would tell his best friend. When Bucky balked, Alex said she wasn't looking for a professional diagnosis. Alex agreed with his suggestions and recommended he follow some of his own advice. She advised that he not be so hard on himself. The things that happened in the past were out of his control.

Bucky contended her ideas wouldn't work and then sarcastically asked how long she thought it would to take until he forgave himself for everything. Ignoring his biting tone, Alex replied that she didn't expect him to have a major transformation by the end of their session, or even in a week; it was going to be an ongoing process. Over 50 years of traumatic experiences was a lot to unpack and accept. She suggested starting small and at the beginning when it came to forgiving himself.

"The beginning?"

"Forgive yourself for being captured in 1943. Forgive yourself for surviving Zola's experiments," she said.

Bucky wore a melancholy expression. "It's okay to let the guilt go," she told him.

"It's not that simple."

"I never said this was going to be easy. Are you going to feel bad some days? Yeah. Will you have nightmares? Probably, but maybe not as many. Look at it this way, if my suggestions don't work, you can have the pleasure of saying I told you so."

Bucky smiled slightly, "I'll never let you forget it."