As of now, the life expectancy for babies born with CF is 50 years, so the "CF Years" calculation is no longer accurate. But it would be for someone born when Steve was born.

Chapter 10: Dr. Raynor

That moment didn't last long. Many of the Avengers stayed late into the night, but as soon as they left, the gnawing emptiness returned with a vengeance. Bucky sat on the couch with Alpine until three in the morning, unable to fall asleep. He got stuck picturing all the future birthdays Steve would never get to see. Steve would be forever twenty-seven, but Bucky would age, and age, and age until he left his husband behind. It wasn't fair he would one day be an old man and Steve wouldn't age another day. He would've probably aged much more gracefully than Bucky, anyway.

Steve used to jokingly talk about his age in "CF years." Since the average life expectancy for CFers in his cohort was only about thirty-some, he essentially aged nearly three times as fast as a healthy person. Bucky's life would probably be shortened to some degree by the effects of his cancer treatment, but even if he only lived to forty, that was about a hundred and six in CF years. And thirty-four of those hundred and six years would have been spent without Steve. That was far too many.

As the sun came up, Bucky realized that sitting up all night doing hypothetical mental math about life expectancy was probably not a healthy way to cope with grief. If he kept this up, he'd wear himself down to a nub. He called Lamberg to let him know he wouldn't be able to make it to practice today and sifted through his nightstand drawer until he found that piece of paper in Peggy's handwriting.

Steve tried to convince him to go to therapy while he was still alive. Counseling probably would've helped Bucky through the pre-grieving and the horrid process of losing his husband, but he'd refused because an hour of therapy a week was an hour he didn't get to spend with Steve. But he left that list to help Bucky, and he'd be damned before he denied Steve this wish. With Alpine curled up beside him, Bucky found the website of the first name on the list and called to make an appointment. By some twist of fate—or some supernatural intervention, Bucky thought with a smile—Dr. Raynor had a cancellation this Wednesday and could fit him in.

"He's still looking out for us, Alpine," Bucky said wistfully. The cat meowed his agreement.

~0~

"Wanda, you know I love you, but I refuse to live in an exact replica of the Brady Bunch house."

She opened her mouth to retort, but Victor cut her off.

"Or the Dick van Dyke show. I do love a good sitcom, but I don't want to live in one."

"Okay," she agreed. Her proposal to build and decorate their house exactly like the Brady Bunch had been ninety percent a joke. Although, if Victor had said yes, she probably wouldn't have admitted that and instead just let it happen.

"Maybe some fifties or seventies inspired touches," he relented, "But not the whole house, okay?"

"Deal."

They'd already chosen a builder and were now working on finalizing the blueprints for what would become their forever home. Wanda had already gotten ahead of herself scrolling through furniture, window treatments, and knick-knacks that they wouldn't actually need for months. Victor loved the process of turning the empty lot into a house, but Wanda knew her excitement wouldn't peak until they got to turn that house into a home.

Though it was a little presumptuous, she had a tab open for nursery décor for the house's downstairs bedroom. Victor hadn't noticed it yet. They hadn't discussed children yet, not really, but Wanda could already see the family portraits on the walls. Her, Victor…and one or two little ones that looked a little like them. The arrivals of Carol May and Lanyon only fueled her baby fever.

"Are those cots?" Victor's voice asked from right behind her head. Lost in her daydream, Wanda hadn't noticed she had the nursery tab open.

"What?"

"Why are you looking at cots?"

"What's a cot?"

He pointed to the screen. Wanda thought she'd learned all the words that were different in British English, but clearly not. She laughed. "We call those cribs, Viz."

"No matter. Why are you looking at them?" His face turned suddenly red as paprika. "Are we going to need one soon?"

"No! No, definitely not that. I was just thinking that once we have this wonderful new house, we might want to expand our family." Wanda realized that his shock at discovering the cribs might be because he didn't share this wish. "What do you think? Is that something you would want?"

"Yes," he said without hesitation. "Watching you become a mother is the only thing on Earth that could ever make me love you more than I already do."

~0~

"Just go right in," the receptionist had said, gesturing to a nondescript gray door. "Dr. Raynor will be with you soon."

Bucky didn't particularly want to sit alone in the room where he was about to be emotionally torn open, but he didn't have much of a choice. He levered himself to his feet and followed the woman's direction to the door. Immediately, he was greeted with a wall painted to look like a spruce forest. It was probably supposed to be a calming nature scene, but Bucky found it rather creepy. The wall to the right of the painting consisted entirely of windows, half-obscured by shutters. They let in some natural light, but not enough to make the room cheery. That was probably for the best; a cheery, bright room wouldn't suit the occasion.

He quickly analyzed the seating arrangement: one gray sofa across from a gray chair and diagonal to another chair. The chair nearest to him sat next to a circular end table, and Bucky knew immediately that this must be Dr. Raynor's chair. A low, square table stood between the sofa and the other chair. He pondered for a moment where he wanted to sit. The sofa had its back to the stupid spruce trees, so he wouldn't have to look at them, but it also put him directly across from the therapist. In the other chair, he might have to look at the trees, but he'd probably feel less like he was being interrogated. He could also choose the power move of sitting in the therapist's seat. But Bucky didn't want that to be her first impression of him, so he sat down smack in the middle of the sofa.

It was on the low side, so with his feet planted on the floor his knees sat above hip-level. From here, he had a perfect view of the door through which Dr. Raynor would presumably arrive. There was also another table against the far wall, and on it sat the ugliest lamp Bucky had ever seen. It looked like the base was made of an empty whiskey bottle or some shit. He rested his hand on his knee and fidgeted nervously. Bucky wasn't one to talk about his feelings with strangers, yet here he was inviting a woman he'd never met before to analyze his most personal griefs. His throat grew dry at the prospect of talking to her about anything regarding Steve.

Bucky watched the door like a prisoner awaiting his executioner. Every footstep outside made his muscles tense up and his jaw clench in anticipation. He didn't even bother to check the time as the minutes ticked by, so he had no idea if Dr. Raynor was within the "acceptably late" period that doctors of all specialties seemed to operate within. The tension reminded him of waiting for Dr. Potts back at Gravesen, wondering whether she'd bring good news of tumor shrinkage or bad news of growth or metastases.

Despite his intense focus on the door, he still startled when the handle turned and it finally swung open. Dr. Raynor was an older, stern-looking white woman with dark hair pulled back in a loose bun. She wore an olive green button-down beneath a tan cardigan, and carried a notebook and pen in one hand. "Good afternoon," she greeted. "It's nice to meet you, James."

Bucky opened his mouth to correct her, then realized he actually didn't care what this woman called him.

"Nice to meet you too," he said robotically. Bucky wondered if she could tell just by looking at him how much he didn't want to be here. Yes, he made the decision to come here, but the concept of therapy and actually doing it were two very different things, one much more terrifying than the other.

"I'm Dr. Raynor," she continued, as if he didn't already know that from researching her and scheduling an appointment. Her name had been at the top of Steve's list of local therapists specializing in grief counseling. "If it's okay with you, I'd like to get to know each other a little bit before we dive into anything heavy. Do you have any questions for me?"

Bucky did not expect to be given the opportunity to ask first. He'd thought this appointment would consist mostly of her asking him questions. At first, he didn't think he had anything to say, but then he realized he did have a question, one that hadn't been answered by her bio on the practice's website. "Why did you choose to specialize in grief counseling?" It couldn't possibly be an easy field to work in, so there had to be a darn good reason she subjected herself to other people's losses on a daily basis.

"Why? That's a really good question. Without going into too much detail, the answer is that I've been there. And I wanted to help other people through that dark, often lonely, place."

Bucky suspected he'd get an answer like that. It reminded him of Steve's reason for becoming a child life specialist. "That's a pretty noble reason," he remarked.

She shrugged. "Lots of people choose careers based on personal experience. What do you do for a living?"

"I'm an athlete," he answered.

"What sport?"

"Soccer."

"What position do you play?"

"Goalkeeper."

Her gaze immediately flew to his left shoulder and her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Bucky always got this reaction if he didn't specify from the get-go. "Amputee soccer," he clarified. "My disability is actually a requirement for the position."

"I see. That's great." She wrote something down in the notebook of hers. A burning curiosity awoke in his chest and he restrained himself from leaning forward to try and see what she wrote. He didn't like knowing that he'd done something noteworthy without knowing exactly what it was.

"Where are you from?" Dr. Raynor continued.

"Brooklyn."

"When did you move here?"

"A little over five years ago."

"Okay. Now, what brings you here to my office?"

"Isn't it your job to know that?"

"No, it's my job to give you the tools you need to navigate grief. I can't do that if I don't know what you're grieving."

She made an excellent point. "I lost my husband about a month and a half ago."

Dr. Raynor didn't say, "I'm sorry for your loss," or any of that bullshit. She simply asked, "How have things been since?"

"How have things been?" he repeated the question because he couldn't quite believe she had the audacity to ask it. "How do you think? Shitty. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here."

"I wasn't asking if they were good or bad, James, I was asking you to tell me a bit about what the grieving process has looked like for you so far," she calmly explained.

That actually made a lot of sense. Bucky took a deep breath and described the past few weeks. "My friends kept up constant visitation the first week after. At least one of them was always in the house with me, which was nice. Steve—that's my husband—and I lived there just the two of us, so being alone in there is pretty terrible. After the funeral, they all started to get back to their own lives, so I adopted a cat. Having him around helps some, but it can't fix everything.

"It sounds like you have lots of supportive people in your life. That's a great thing to have."

"Yeah, it is. I couldn't be doing this without them."

"You don't have to talk about this if it's too painful right now, but if you can, could you tell me about the circumstances of your husband's death? Everyone grieves differently, and often that depends on a lot of factors related to the death itself."

Bucky hadn't laid it out to anyone yet. Everyone he'd interacted with in the past month and a half already knew all about Steve. He wasn't sure he could talk about it without crying, and he wasn't exactly comfortable crying in front of a person he'd only known for six minutes. "Maybe not right now," he admitted.

"Okay. What about Steve? Can you tell me about him?"

"What about him?"

"Just what he was like as a person. Why you love him."

Bucky could go on about that for days. "He was a stubborn asshole who put everyone else's needs before his own," he said with a smile. "Steve worked as a child life specialist at a hospital; he helped sick kids cope with the trauma of medical procedures and things like that. He loved and valued his job more than anything else, except for me and the rest of our family. Even though he's not the oldest, he's always been sort of the patriarch. Pretty much everyone he's ever met loves, or at least respects him. He was a brilliant artist, too. His drawings were some of the most beautiful I'd ever seen. He liked to draw people. We actually published a children's book together, and he illustrated it."

He was rambling, and he knew it. Bucky barely noticed Dr. Raynor scribbling in her notebook as he waxed poetic about his late husband. He could go on, but he didn't trust himself not to go somewhere that ended up making him cry.

Dr. Raynor sensed he was finished and said with a smile, "He sounds like a great man."

"Yeah, he was." Bucky swallowed back tears.

"How has your life changed since his passing?"

"In every possible way," he groaned.

"More specifically."

"I don't get to talk to him every day. Or kiss him and tell him I love him. I don't get to listen to him talk about his day, all the patients he helped. My bed is empty and cold. The house is quiet. I don't come home from practice to a kitchen that smells like whatever he's cooking for dinner. I never watch TV on the couch with his head on my chest anymore. I don't get to hear his laugh when I make a bad joke. We don't exercise together every morning, challenging each other to do better. Every boring chore that I used to do with him I have to do by myself or rely on a neighbor or friend's kindness." Bucky started listing things that had actually changed long before Steve died, but he didn't think it mattered. He'd never coped with grieving Steve's failing health as it happened, and was still mourning the life they used to lead when his lungs were strong.

He hadn't realized this as he was speaking, but he had tears streaming down his face. Thinking of all the things in life that he'd never have again must have dredged up some ugly emotions. Bucky swept frantically at his eyes to clear the tears. He'd told himself he wouldn't cry at his first session, and he'd only lasted like ten minutes. Way to go, Barnes. Dr. Raynor pointed out a box of tissues on the table beside him and Bucky took two, one to blow his nose and the other to dry his face.

"Your life's been turned upside down," she said matter-of-factly. "It makes sense that you're feeling just about every emotion under the sun. There's no one correct way to react to grief. The only thing you can do is work through those feelings and find ways to continue living meaningfully even without your loved one here."

Bucky nodded emptily along as she talked. He'd heard all of this before. "And you're gonna help me do that?" he asked skeptically. So far, Dr. Raynor hadn't done much except grill him and write down notes about his answers or his body language or whatever-the-fuck.

"Yes. But I can only help you if you want me to."

Bucky wanted things to get easier. He wanted it so badly that it hurt, and Dr. Raynor seemed like a person capable of getting him there. She wasn't overly placating or pitying, which he liked. Bucky didn't exactly feel better from this first session, but he felt like Dr. Raynor was a person he could see himself building a working relationship with.

"Okay."

"Great. Now, are there any coping mechanisms that you've used in the past month and a half? What's do you think has helped?"

"Having friends and family around definitely helped. It's hard though because they've got a lot going on. My one friend just had a baby," Bucky intentionally left out all of the details about Steve and Carol May, "And another friend had one even more recently than that, at the end of June. And another had heart surgery. It's been a hot mess of a month," he finished with a huff.

"I can imagine that makes this process even more difficult, having your loss juxtaposed against new life like that."

"Yeah."

"You also mentioned getting a cat."

"Yeah. That's actually something Steve asked of me. He was horribly allergic so I could never have one, but he wanted me to have one after he died."

Dr. Raynor scribbled something else down. Bucky realized that he'd just given a major clue about Steve's death: it wasn't sudden. Most people his age that lost spouses did so to car wrecks or other freak accidents. Steve's condition and slow decline certainly made Bucky's grieving process unique. Maybe next session he'd be ready to talk to Dr. Raynor about it.

"Anything else?"

"We kept a lot of photo albums. I like looking at those. And I wear his old T-shirts sometimes. Only around the house though. They don't fit me well enough to wear in public," he gestured to his left shoulder.

"These all seem like very healthy coping mechanisms. Are you eating well?"

Bucky shrugged. "Probably not as well as I used to when we were both working out all the time. Steve was always better at meal planning and cooking. But I'm trying." The stream of donated food had slowed, but his parents and the Rogers still dropped off at least a dish a week, and the freezer was still full of leftovers.

"Okay. How about sleeping?"

He shrugged again. "Not great. Not horrible either." Steve moved out of their bedroom months before he died to make the transition easier for Bucky, but sleeping alone in a bed knowing Steve was in the next room felt very different from sleeping alone in a bed in an empty house.

"Do you dream?"

"No," he answered, possibly too quickly. He was definitely not ready to mention that Steve's death had seemingly awakened every traumatic experience he'd ever endured. In the past weeks, he'd had nightmares about everything from having his arm chopped off to Steve's asthma attacks to Alpine dying on his chest. Dr. Raynor wrote something down. Bucky wondered if she was taking notes on his lying tells.

"Are you familiar with the five stages of grief?"

"Yeah," he grumbled. Bucky wasn't a huge fan of the concept. Dr. Wilson had talked to them all about it after Carol's death and Pietra's.

"Which stages would you say you've spent the most time in so far?"

Bucky ran a tired hand over his face. Rehashing his own emotions like this exhausted him just as much as feeling them the first time. "I dunno. Maybe depression?" He knew it wasn't denial, and certainly not acceptance.

"Have you ever received a diagnosis of clinical depression?"

"No." Bucky's medical history contained a long list of clinical diagnoses, but depression was not one of them. "You're not the kind of doctor that does that, though, are you?"

"No. I'm not a psychiatrist. Is that something you want to explore?"

"No."

"Okay. If you ever change your mind, let me know. I have a trusted group of psychiatrists that I refer people to."

"I'll let you know," he said flatly.

"Is there anything that you think I should know about you in order to help you as effectively as I can? Anything about your history, or personality?"

Knowing all about Steve and CF would probably help her more than anything, but Bucky didn't feel ready to talk about that just yet. "He's not my first loss," he decided to share. "I'm a pediatric cancer survivor. I made a lot of friends in hospitals…some of them weren't so lucky as me." He didn't tell Dr. Raynor any of their names, that seemed too much for a first session, but he figured that definitely factored in to how he processed grief.

"I'm so sorry to hear that. I can only imagine how difficult that must be. Survivor's guilt is a very real problem."

"Have you treated cancer survivors before?" he asked.

"Yes."

He knew he wouldn't get any more detail than that, but it was nice to know. The more he learned about her, the more his confidence in this woman's abilities grew. He'd already cried in front of her and he didn't feel like total shit. That had to count for something in a therapeutic relationship. She also seemed like the kind of person who took no shit from anybody, and Bucky had a feeling that he'd inevitably try to pull some shit over the course of this program. He'd need someone who would push back against his resistance.

Bucky glanced at the time. The session was nearly over. "Is that all for today?"

"Yes, unless you have anything else you want to share, that's all. Will I see you in two weeks?"

Bucky nodded.

I know a lot of people really don't like Dr. Raynor from TFATWS (rightfully so, I don't think she's a very good therapist), but let's just pretend in this AU that she's a good one, okay?