Posting another bonus chapter because I'm going to be switching my regular Saturday updates to post a short story that I'm writing. Mondays and Wednesdays will still be for Gravesen, though!

Chapter 28: Into the Darkness

Bucky didn't go to bed in a particularly bad place, mentally. He'd had a nice lunch with Mr. Nakajima, comparing stories of cancer treatment. It was actually really interesting to hear from a parent's perspective other than his own folks, and Bucky could tell that hearing from him was cathartic for Mr. Nakajima, the closest he could get now to hearing from his own son. That evening, he watched a few episodes of a new vet show with Alpine, and then went to bed. There was no reason for his brain to cook up such horrors, yet it did anyway.

"Bucky!" Steve screamed, reaching desperately out of the darkness.

"Steve!" he called back. Bucky dug his nails into the floor to drag himself towards Steve. A burning pain erupted in his left shoulder and he struggled to move. No matter how hard he pulled, he couldn't move. Bucky glanced back and saw that he was strapped down at the hips.

"Bucky!" Steve's cry was hoarse this time, and the shout abruptly dissolved into a raucous, wet coughing fit. Bucky struggled harder as he watched Steve flail and cough. When he spit out a massive spurt of blood, Bucky turned frantic. His nails scraped and bled against the floor, but he still couldn't move.

"Bucky!" another voice this time. Younger, weaker, more afraid. Bucky turned towards the sound and found Clint, also struggling against some invisible force. He surged in that direction, but still couldn't move. Clint watched him try and fail to help, then started crying.

"Bucky!" a female voice this time. She was directly behind him; Bucky couldn't turn far enough to even see her, but he recognized her voice. Carol.

Yet another voice joined the chorus, this one unfamiliar. Bucky turned to face him and recognized RJ from the photos that Mr. Nakajima had shown him.

"Bucky!" Steve cried.

"Bucky!" Clint wailed.

"Barnes!" Carol sounded downright angry at his inability to save them.

"Bucky!" RJ called.

"I'm sorry!" he sobbed, burying his head in his bloody hands. Steve's coughing turned to hacking, and Bucky opened his eyes just in time to watch a river of blood erupt from his mouth. A low, threatening growl sounded from all around, and all four people screaming for Bucky's help were yanked back into the darkness several feet. Now, their faces were obscured by black fog, but their cries were just as clear as ever.

"Please, help me!"

"Bucky! I need you!"

More sickening coughing. "Bucky…make it stop."

"Don't let it take us!"

The band around him tightened even further; now he could barely breathe, gasping and flopping like a fish. He redirected his efforts to loosening the restraint, but it was one smooth piece, no fasteners at all that he could feel.

"Bucky, please." That was Steve's voice, exactly as it had sounded in his last moments.

"I'm sorry! I can't!"

"Please." It was growing fainter.

Bucky screamed and thrashed to escape and run to his husband. The band scraped his flesh raw as he resolutely clawed himself forward. His back and stomach lit up with agony like he was being flayed alive. At last, he freed his hips, and the rest of his body slid through easily. Bucky scrambled to his feet and sprinted into the black fog. But he was too late. Steve's eyes gazed up at the ceiling, unseeing. More voices called to Bucky, but he couldn't bring himself to follow them. He gently cradled Steve's head and shoulders in his lap and ran his fingers—still scraped raw from his desperate escape—through his hair. The blood flecks dotting the blonde strands matched the trickle running down his chin.

Bucky awoke with a gasp, the image of Steve from his dream imprinted on the insides of his eyelids. The thought made him instantly nauseous, and he barely made it to the bathroom before he lost everything he'd had for dinner last night and then some. No nightmare he'd ever endured had disturbed him as much as this one. Bucky could have done nothing to save any of those people, so why did his dreams keep insisting that he did?

About ten minutes after he finally stopped heaving, he remembered that he had therapy after soccer today. Bucky groaned from a combination of exhaustion and dread. He hadn't told Dr. Raynor about this. Seriously, how many people had nightmares after their husband died? Specifically, nightmares about said husband begging to be saved? It didn't reflect well on him, that his subconscious considered him responsible, that it literally damned him for failing to save Steve. Bucky didn't need a therapist to tell him that these dreams probably meant he thought he could've done more, if not to prevent Steve's death, but at least ease his passing. Could Steve feel the tightness in his chest as he lay against it in those final moments? Had he been distressed, sensing how torn up Bucky already was about it? Bucky would never know.

He hauled himself to his feet and into the shower, turning the spray freezing cold to jar himself into wakefulness. Bucky brushed his teeth three times to eliminate the lingering taste of vomit, but it did nothing to spark his appetite. Instead of eating breakfast, he just filled his water bottle and waited on the porch for Josiah to pick him up for practice.

"You look like hell," he commented. "You sleep last night?"

"Not well."

"I'm sorry. Anything I can do to help?"

"Let's talk about anything else."

"Sure thing."

Even Josiah's distractions couldn't make up for the miserable night he'd had. Bucky was slow on his feet for the entire practice. By the second half of the day, he was nauseous again, this time from dread of facing Dr. Raynor knowing his sleepless night showed in the bags under his eyes. He even considered canceling the appointment, but couldn't bring himself to give in to that cowardly impulse. That's why, at five o'clock sharp, he found himself sitting on that uncomfortably low gray couch in front of the creepy looking spruce forest painting, his knee bouncing in nervous anticipation.

"What's got you so wound up?" Dr. Raynor asked.

"Nothing," he said quickly. Too quickly. She wrote something down in that stupid notebook.

"Did you sleep well?"

Clearly, his shower hadn't done enough to wipe the exhaustion from his face. "Not really," he said through gritted teeth.

"Did you not sleep, or did you sleep poorly?"

Unlike with Josiah, Bucky couldn't change the subject here. Dr. Raynor would know he was avoiding it for a reason and wouldn't give up until he shared the reason. She was tenacious like that.

"Both."

"Did you have another nightmare?"

Another? Bucky had never told her about any of them, how would she know if there were more than one? "No," he lied.

"You're lying."

Dammit. "How'd you know?"

"This isn't the first time I've seen you like this. I work with a lot of patients with a lot of different backgrounds, and yours, James, is rife with nightmare building blocks."

There was no escaping this now. She had him well and truly cornered. Why couldn't this stupid dream have held off one more night so he didn't have to deal with this? "Fine," he grumbled. "I have…bad dreams sometimes."

"Are they flashbacks or not?"

"A little bit of both."

"Tell me about your most recent nightmare."

Bucky was not ready to recount that experience. He shook his head, the nausea returning.

"Okay, then. Tell me about an older one. Try for the least scary one you can remember."

That…still sounded awful. But at least somewhat more manageable. He parsed his memory for the least horrifying dream. Not the one where the dog nearly bit his arm off. Not the one where Mr. Nakajima screamed at him to bring RJ back. Definitely not the one from last night. At last, Bucky recalled one that he might be able to describe without a panic attack.

"I had this one right around our anniversary…" he paused, partially to remember and partially to psych himself up. "I was in my oncologist's office, and she…she told me my counts weren't high enough to go to my own wedding."

Dr. Raynor frowned at him. "Sorry, counts?"

"White blood cells. If they're too low, it means my immune system is shot and I can't be around large groups of people."

"Oh, okay."

"I was so upset about not being able to go that I got sick to my stomach and…threw up until I passed out. I woke up when I passed out."

"That sounds really distressing."

"It was. I, uh…threw up for real after I woke up."

"Does that happen frequently after nightmares?"

"Not always. Just the ones that bring me back to…cancer times," he said vaguely.

"Okay. What are most of them about, generally?"

"People dying," he said grimly. "Usually Steve, but sometimes…others."

She nodded understandingly. "I want to try something. There's a technique called Image Rehearsal Therapy. It's sort of like…rewriting the endings of your nightmares so they're not so scary anymore."

Bucky was not particularly sold on this idea. How could he change the ending when the ending was something that happened in real life? Still, Dr. Raynor hadn't ever led him astray before, so he decided to at least let her try. "Okay," he agreed.

"Go ahead. Put yourself in the oncologist's office, picture yourself there like you were in the dream, and write a better ending. It can help to close your eyes. And talk yourself—and me—through it as you go."

Bucky closed his eyes and pictured sitting in Dr. Potts' office. He could so clearly see the diplomas, the cancer posters, and her stern face across the desk. It felt weird to talk out loud without being able to see Dr. Raynor listening. "Okay. I'm in her office. I can tell by the look on her face that it's bad news."

"Change it."

Bucky strained to picture Dr. Potts' good news face. He'd seen it before, when she told him his tumor was shrinking, when he was in remission, when his scans were clear. Once he pictured it, he latched on. "Got it."

"What's she going to say instead?"

What was the good news? Instead of saying his counts were too low, Bucky imagined her telling him they were fine. "I don't see any reason you can't go to the wedding," she said. Dr. Potts smiled. "Have fun." Now, Bucky let his mind drift to reliving his wedding day. He found himself smiling.

"You didn't say any of it out loud, but I can tell by the look on your face that you did it," Dr. Raynor said. "Where are you now?"

"My wedding."

"That's nice."

"Yeah, it is."

"Over the next few weeks, I want you to try this exercise with all of your nightmares. Start from the less scary ones and work your way up. If there's one that you're particularly hesitant to tackle, you can wait until our next session and do it with me."

"Okay." The one he just reimagined was definitely the easiest. But any that involved Steve dying…those would take more strength to delve into. However, Bucky was encouraged by the positive result of this dream.

"I also want you to continue to rehearse this one, and every dream that you reimagine. Maybe even write it down, so you have proof of a happier ending if the dream ever returns."

"Sure."

The first thing Bucky did when he got home was dig out a little notebook from Steve's drawing desk. He kept a bunch of them to jot down ideas for new pieces. Bucky found an empty one and deemed it his new dream journal. The idea of using something of Steve's to help him cope with this lack of Steve just felt right.

~0~

Despite the boys being born a few weeks early, they were both healthy as could be. The doctors cleared both of them and Wanda to go home after only one night in the hospital. Her parents flew in two days later, and she sent Victor to pick them up from the airport. Between Billy and Tommy, her breaks from nursing were too few and too short to leave time for much else. As much time as she and Victor had spent preparing for the twins' arrival, sometimes she thought they needed another nine months.

She barely had time to read the Avengers' reactions to the birth announcement. Wanda texted them pictures and names, which up until then had been kept a secret. William Kaplan and Thomas Shepherd. Their middle names didn't have any particular significance; she and Victor had just chosen what sounded nice. It was traditional to name a baby with the same initial as a deceased family member, but Wanda felt she honored that enough by choosing William and Thomas based on Simon and Pietra's middle names. Victor read her all the replies while she was nursing Tommy. They were probably just as excited as she and Victor to welcome these new additions to the family.

"Chcem vidět deti!" Mama proclaimed the instant Victor opened the door to let them inside.

"We're home!" Victor called from behind her.

"A hello would be nice," Wanda said. Of course her mother would want to see the babies before even greeting her.

"Hello, miláček." Mama pecked her on the cheek, but afterwards turned her attention to the baby in her arms. Both Billy and Tommy were supposed to be asleep right now, but Billy resisted going down. Wanda had been walking around the house with him for the past twenty minutes. She thought he'd finally conked out, but the new voices had his eyelids fluttering open. "Oh, he's so beautiful," Mama said. "Can I hold him?"

"Would you mind washing your hands first?" Victor asked. "Airports are notoriously germ-ridden."

"Of course. Where's your bathroom?"

Wanda pointed her in the right direction, suddenly realizing that this was their first time visiting her new home since its construction. Papa approached and also kissed her on the cheek. "You look radiant, miláček."

She nearly rolled her eyes, but quelled the instinct just in time. Papa wouldn't take kindly to that. "Thanks, Papa, but I'm pretty sure I look how I feel."

Victor, now standing behind her, said almost directly into her ear, "You look thrilled to be a mother."

A wry laugh escaped her. Her thrilled-to-be-a-mother meter dropped a notch with every hour of lost sleep and every time she learned the purpose of another item in MJ's post-partum care package. But at the same time, it skyrocketed up every time Billy or Tommy stopped crying when she soothed them, or looked up at her with gray eyes that she hoped would change to match her green or Victor's bright blue.

"Something like that," she said.

Mama came back from the bathroom with freshly washed hands and Wanda handed her Billy. She took him over to the sofa and sat down, delicately tracing his cheekbone with her finger. "Hi there, Billy. I'm your babička. It's so nice to finally meet you."

Wanda took this opportunity to sit down. She'd rather sit on an icepack, but was too embarrassed to do that in front of her father. Victor stood behind the armchair and rested a hand on her shoulder.

"You know, I never got to hold just one baby like this," Mama said.

Wanda had never really thought about that. She was having a hard enough time with two babies that could be separated when one decided not to sleep. If Billy and Tommy were joined at the head…nobody in this house would ever sleep. "How'd you do it?" she asked, now completely in awe of her mother.

Mama sighed nostalgically. "I let you and Pietra teach me how. There was no midwife or doula or anyone at all who could tell me how to parent you two."

Wanda couldn't imagine doing any of this without the advice of her friends and doctors. As much as she missed her life with Pietra, there were several years of it she couldn't even remember, years that must've taken a massive toll on both her parents. She ran her fingertips over the scar. "I can't even picture how you could've held us," she admitted. The only way she could hold both Billy and Tommy was one in each arm.

"Lots of practice." She smiled sadly. Pietra's absence in the room loomed like a shadow, casting all of them in darkness. Billy's light shone brightly enough that they could still see, but not even he and Tommy together could drive out the blackness of loss that hung over the Maximoffs.