Chapter 29: The Journal

After finding the notebook he would use as his dream journal, Bucky took a long time to work himself up to actually write in it. He ended up ripping out a few pages after aborted attempts to recount his more traumatizing dreams. Finally, a week and a half after that first session with Dr. Raynor, he sat down on the couch with Alpine and told himself he wasn't allowed to get up until he wrote out one.

I'm at lunch with Mr. Nakajima, and he starts talking about RJ. At first, it's his usual tone, all fond and paternal, but the longer he keeps talking the more it turns to anger. He starts raging about how unfair it is that cancer came along and took his son from him, how it had no right to do that and how he'd do anything for it to be him instead of RJ.

That was the part of the dream where Mr. Nakajima's rage redirected itself at Bucky. He'd yelled at him to bring his son back, how if he was really a good friend, he'd sacrifice his life so that they could be together again. Bucky scrambled to find an alternate ending. He spent ten minutes pondering it, when he remembered that Mr. Nakajima himself had already provided a happy ending to this nightmare.

All the yelling starts to tire him out and he's slowing down. I tell him that I agree it's unfair, and that I wish his son had survived. Mr. Nakajima looks at me and tells me he's glad that I lived because I've been a really good friend to him. I tell him that I'm glad we met so we could help each other. We agree that Steve and RJ might've helped us find each other.

There. That was a happy ending. And much closer to reality. Bucky knew he'd have a harder time with the dreams more closely based on real events. But for now, he rewarded himself by closing the dream journal for the night and digging a Firecracker popsicle out of the freezer.

~0~

I can't find Alpine. He's hidden before, but I've checked all his usual spots and he's not there. I start looking in more unexpected places. The weight room in the basement. Inside kitchen cabinets. Under rugs, even though that makes no damn sense. I feel like I've searched the entire house top to bottom twice over, so I start on the backyard. I look through the shed and end up cutting my left hand on the sharp edge of a rusted tool.

Bucky stopped writing. He nearly forgot he was supposed to be rewriting the ending of this to be happy. In this version, he wouldn't hear distressed, weak mewling from under a bush. He wouldn't find Alpine nearly dead and frantically carry him inside only for him to take a last miserable breath against his chest while Bucky frantically called the vet with his bleeding hand. Bucky thought for a few minutes about how he wanted this to end. He remembered how helpful integrating real-world events had been for helping him with the Mr. Nakajima dream and strived to come up with something equivalent for this one.

I run back inside to clean and dress the wound. When I turn around, Alpine is right there, safe and sound. He's sitting a few feet from the back door, just waiting to be let back inside.

~0~

I'm on a train. I don't think I've ever even been on a train in real life, yet here I am. Steve's here too. There's an air of danger about us. The train is speeding through a frozen wasteland, and we're right beside a steep drop-off. Something explodes, and the side of the train isn't there anymore. Suddenly, I'm right on the edge, hanging onto the wreckage for dear life. The wind whips painfully against my skin. Steve's screaming and begging me to reach for his hand so he can pull me back in. I strain to grab him, but my one arm isn't strong enough to pull my body weight any closer. He's just out of reach. My grip slips.

This is the part where he'd slipped, missed Steve's hand by mere inches, and plummeted to the bottom of the ravine. On the way down, his left arm got caught on something, but his momentum continued to carry him. The momentum kept the rest of his body going while his left arm stayed put, and it was wrenched from him at the shoulder. Bucky could hear, feel, and see his ligaments tear and blood spew from the site. The only way he could think to change this was avoid the fall entirely.

Steve lunges forward and his hand wraps firmly around mine. I know he's strong, but not this strong.

Bucky smiled as he wrote that. Steve's strength, both mental and physical, was something he'd forever been in awe of. Then, he decided to have a little fun with the ending of this dream, even if it meant he'd never read it to Dr. Raynor.

He yanks me back into the train with such force that we both fall, rolling over each other to safety on the other side of the train. I can feel Steve laughing beneath me. I'm also laughing. Maybe I almost died, but now we're all tangled up. My left arm is pinned under his weight, but I don't mind. My right arm is free to cup his face as I kiss him.

~0~

There were two dreams that Bucky didn't dare tackle alone. The one that messed him up so badly it led to Dr. Raynor asking about sleep and nightmares, where he was immobilized in the darkness as his dead loved ones screamed for his help, and the one where young Steve pet a dog and died of an asthma attack while Bucky was stuck behind an invisible wall. It didn't take a therapist to see the commonalities between these two. Bucky spent the entire first half of the week leading up to his next session with Dr. Raynor ruminating over those two dreams. That definitely wasn't in his best interest because it only made him more anxious, but he couldn't help it.

He showed up to Dr. Raynor's office that afternoon not at all prepared to dive into those more devastating dreams. His right knee bounced uncontrollably as he sat on the couch waiting for her. Every time he rested his hand over it to stop the nervous fidget, his entire arm just started bouncing along with it. In an attempt to soothe his nerves, he pulled out his dream journal and read through the ones he's already reimagined, muttering the words under his breath as he went.

"I see you've done your homework," she remarked.

Bucky instantly fell still and snapped the book shut. He didn't even know why; Dr. Raynor had already heard one of his dreams and she'd no doubt hear all of these eventually. "Yeah," he said sheepishly. "I got a few of them, but there are some I remember that are just…worse."

"That's okay. I'd like to start off today just by asking how it went with those you did reimagine."

"It actually went okay. I've read them over a few times and I haven't had any of those particular nightmares again since."

"That's great. Have you had any others? Or any new ones?"

"Yeah. The ones I haven't written about yet…the worse ones…I had one of those a few nights ago. No new ones though."

"Okay. Overall, have they been more or less frequent compared to before?"

"About the same." They were more frequent in the immediate aftermath of Steve's death, but had gradually plateaued to once or twice a week since then, with a drastic spike around the anniversary.

"Okay, okay. Anything else of note before I have you read one of your entries?"

Bucky shrugged. "I don't think so. Is there a particular one you want me to read, or can I just pick any?"

"Just pick any. We'll go through as many as you're comfortable with and that we have time for."

"Okay." He began with the one about Mr. Nakajima. It didn't take long to read the segment, but then they discussed it. Bucky mentioned that he found this one particularly easy because the 'happy ending' version had actually happened in real life.

"That makes sense. Are most of your dreams contrary to reality like this?"

Bucky vehemently shook his head. "No. The ones that are…worse, those are the ones that end like reality did."

"What do they end with?"

He didn't want to have to say it, but he forced himself to do it anyway. "Steve…Steve dying. But it's usually more…disturbing…in the dreams than it was in real life."

She nodded, writing something in her notebook. They went through the other dreams Bucky had already written before arriving at an impasse. There was nothing left to do except delve into the other dreams.

Dr. Raynor glanced at the clock. "We have enough time to go through one more, if you want. I know there are some that you find harder to talk about than others. Do you want to discuss one now or call it early and discuss it next time?"

Bucky pondered this for a moment. He only saw Dr. Raynor once a month now. That was a long time to put this off, but also a long time to evaluate how his work on the other dreams would affect his sleeping. "I'd rather wait. That way, I can get a better idea of if the treatment worked for the other dreams."

"I think that's a great idea. I'll see you next month, James."

~0~

"Papa, I told you I don't want to talk about this!" Wanda should have known that letting her parents help change the boys' diapers was a mistake. They'd timed their visit to encompass the twins' eighth day of life, though Wanda never told them that anything of import would be happening on that day. She thought she'd made it pretty clear that there would be no bris, but evidently not clear enough.

"Why?"

"Because, it's none of your business."

"It is my business, my own grandsons' being denied their faith."

"They are far too young to have faith of their own. It makes no difference to them whether there was a mohel or whether their grandparents were there to watch it happen. This is about you, not them."

He recoiled as if he'd been scalded. Victor and Mama hovered a few feet from their spouses, unwilling to participate in the argument but also unwilling to leave. Wanda knew Victor wouldn't speak up to take her side, which was probably for the best. Papa wouldn't appreciate a person raised Christian weighing in on this subject. She and Victor had agreed to have the twins circumcised—by a surgeon with proper anesthetic, without hordes of family watching—to lower their risk of cancer and UTIs. Wanda did care somewhat for the religious aspect of it, but not enough to go through the trouble of arranging the event. She and Victor had more important things on their mind, parenting newborn twins.

Papa scowled. "I knew I never should have let you marry a Christian man."

Wanda fumed. Victor brought his fingertips to his forehead and started rubbing; she tilted her head to Pietra's side. "Leave Victor out of this. He did not talk me out of anything. I told him what I wanted, and he agreed with me. We made this decision together."

"You would have made a different decision had you not been influenced by him for so long."

At this rate, they were going to wake the babies with all the yelling. "Papa, you don't control what I believe in. Just because I didn't abide by this one tradition doesn't mean I'm forsaking your religion."

"My religion?"

"Our religion. Whatever. It doesn't matter. I'll have you know that I don't plan to cut their hair until they're three. This is a kosher home. They'll have a bar mitzvah, which you will be invited to if you don't continue to question my parenting decisions."

She didn't think it would work, threatening to not invite him to an event thirteen years in the future, but Papa immediately backed down, clearly affronted. "Would you really?" he asked, equal parts desperate and enraged.

"There's nothing I wouldn't do for my children," she stated.

Silence. Ten seconds. Twenty.

"Why don't we all sit down?" Mama proposed.

"I'm going to go check on the twins." Wanda knew they were still sleeping, despite the ruckus right outside their door. The baby monitor remained dead silent. She walked into the nursery, Victor right behind her, and closed the door.

"Are you alright, darling?" Victor asked.

"Yes. You?"

"Your father seems very angry."

"He'll get over it."

"You didn't tell me he would be angry that we did this."

"I hoped he would respect our decision."

"I'm sorry that he didn't."

"It's alright. Thank you, though. Jewish people, especially from our part of the world, can be very…protective of their traditions."

"Understandable."

"Yeah. I firmly believe in most of them, but the bris is the one that always felt more off-putting to me than comforting."

"Have you ever been to one?"

"No. But my parents did. And I read about them while I was pregnant. That's when I decided I definitely didn't want one. But I was serious about all the other things."

"I know. I think they sound wonderful. Although, you'll have to teach me a bit about caring for long hair. I'm afraid I'm not very well practiced, and we can't have mangy toddlers running about."

That description made her imagine two little Cousin Itts running around their house, and she laughed so loudly she woke Billy. "Shoot," she muttered. Victor picked him up and began bouncing him soothingly. Wanda did the same with Tommy a few moments later when Billy's crying woke him up. "They're probably hungry," she said. Victor helped her get set up to feed Tommy, because it was his turn, while he bottle-fed Billy. When the boys finished eating, they carried them back into the living room.

Papa stood from the sofa with a guilty look on his face. "I'm sorry," he said.

Wanda had expected ignorance of the argument from him at best, a continuation at worst. An apology was a pleasant surprise. "Thank you," she said.

"Sometimes it's still hard for me to get my head around, that you're all grown up and independent. You're still my little girl, and I've only got one of those left."

She suspected Papa's controlling tendencies stemmed from that. Every ounce of overbearing that would have gone to Pietra and whatever crazy decisions she would've made in adulthood now fell to Wanda. Just a few days ago, she was all they had left in this world, until she brought Billy and Tommy into it. Babies really did bring out the best and worst in people. Wanda only hoped that, going forward, it would be more of the best.