I still have like another 12k words written, but connecting all the scenes is hard haha…Not sure how many of the newer Marvel movies I'll include, so this story will probably just be a branch off from Winter Soldier with "inspirational scenes" pulled from other movies like Civil War…

Chapter 33

"You can walk me down to my apartment, check under the bed and in the closet for monsters if you'd like," Clara smirked as she gathered her things. Honestly, she wouldn't have minded someone like Steve or Bucky poking through her apartment looking for someone…or things. So she didn't put up a fight when Bucky pushed himself off the couch where he'd been watching the news with Steve to go pull on his boots by the door.

"You're still welcome to stay here any time," Steve offered, muting the TV.

Clara smiled. "Let's just see how tonight goes, and I'll let you know." She pulled the strap to her bag tighter over her shoulder as Bucky straightened.

"I'll be right back," he muttered over his shoulder as he held the door open for her to leave.

"Don't disgrace your—" Bucky let the door drop closed, smacking the door frame loudly, but he could still hear Steve cackling on the couch.

"What did he say?" Clara asked when he joined her at the top of the staircase, he brows furrowed and eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Nothing, ignore him," he grumbled, nudging her down the steps.

Clara bounced down quickly ahead of him, eyes darting around the landing leading to her hall on the first floor. "Hard to remember he's this big hero when he talks like that."

"That's new," he grunted, stopping behind her at her door. "He wasn't like that before the war. The idea of holding a girl's hand was scandalous for him."

Clara giggled, pushing the door open but stepping back so he could enter first. She watched as he silently made his way through her one-bedroom apartment, opening and closing doors and cabinets, checking in corners and nooks she wouldn't have even thought to look.

"I think you're alright," he sighed, meeting her back in the entryway.

Her hands found his face, cupping his cheeks, and her thumbs ran over the corners of his lips. "You look so sad," she murmured, but her voice was like an echo and in a blink, a quick flash, Clara was replaced with Connie for a moment, before Clara returned.

"Stop," he winced, pulling away. He knew that memory, or how it started at least. He knew it was their goodbye and he wasn't ready to relive that part of his history yet.

"Bucky?" it was Clara that had called out in her accent, but it was Connie that he saw. He pinched his eyes shut and pushed away from Clara, taking a slow breath, willing the memory to die.

"Stop talking," he snapped, trying to take a slow breath, focusing on the hum of the air conditioning, the whir of electrical appliances around the quiet apartment. The things that were unfamiliar to him in the 40s were helping to ground him. After a few moments of silence, he opened his eyes again and looked at her, taking in her concerned face and clenched fists. "Sorry."

"It's alright," she frowned. "Did you remember something?"

"Tried not to," he grunted, dropping down onto her couch.

"That's not good," Clara mumbled. "I know you're not going to want to remember everything—but repressing memories is harmful, even as a coping mechanism—"

"It's nothing from when I was the Winter Soldier," he sighed, looking up at her. "The day I shipped off—"

Instant understanding washed over Clara's face and he frowned as he watched pity take over her features. "Painful as that goodbye with everyone must have been, you still shouldn't—"

"Just not here, not right now," he interrupted.

"Alright," she shot back. "But promise me something." She waited silently, eyebrows jerking up quickly to suggest she was waiting for him to acknowledge it.

He sighed in defeat. "What?"

"Go to therapy."

"No."

Clara crossed her arms. "Try it."

"No." Bucky shifted on the couch, an infinitesimal motion that somehow made him seem more powerful, dominant. Intimidating.

"For me?" she tried with a grin. He could try to use his arsenal to scare her aware from the idea, but she had an arsenal just as an intelligent woman that she could use to coax him towards the idea.

"Why is this important to you?" he asked instead. He sounded frustrated, but there was a softness that broke her heart a little.

"You're important to me," she explained easily, finally dropping her bag on a hook next to the door and toeing off her flats.

"Why? Because your grandma wrote about me in her diary?"

She dropped down sideways on the couch next to him, a leg curled underneath her. She smiled. "We've been through this," she said slowly. "I'm helping you because you're a friend. Because what Hydra did to you was awful. They stole from you irreplaceable time, experiences, friends and family."

A smile twitched on his lips briefly, and he picked up her hand that was resting on her knee and brushed a thumb across the dried skin. "Thank you."

"That's all I ever need in return," she grinned. "Now." Clara stood and held out a hand to help him up. "You need to go before my call starts. I'll be alright here by myself."

"Clara," he started slowly, frowning.

"Come back around dinner, okay?" she offered with a dramatic sigh. "If will make you more comfortable to sleep on my couch tonight…"

"Thank you," he said again, standing and surprising them both by pressing a kiss to the top of her head. She watched wordlessly as he glanced around the open living room and kitchen before nodding contentedly and leaving.

"Oh, my god, what is happening?" she asked herself, feeling her red cheeks flaming still, and she ran her hands through her hair as she stared at the front door.

-x-

Dr. Beck turned out to be a kind looking old man with a bald head and thick beard that reminded her of her grandfather. She knew talking to him would be the easy part…

"So, why don't you start by telling me what happened to you, in your own words," he started, shifting in his chair slightly.

Clara knew what that meant, he was going to assess the specific words she used to analyze her thought processes and feelings. "It's hard to separate myself from this," she grumbled.

He let out a chuckle. "I can understand. Just, try not to think about the why in regards to my questions, and just focus on your answer. Pretend you're speaking freely with a friend."

Clara nodded faintly. "Well, it started on a usual Tuesday. I was meeting up with a couple of my mates at a local café," she explained. "I had been working with one on some…PTSD related trauma. He'd been a captive of Hydra's. There was some extreme conditioning and shock therapy."

"He must be a very complicated case," he noted.

Clara smiled. "He's getting better slowly."

"Tell me about where that day went wrong."

"It wasn't anything I could have controlled, though," she admitted. "It was business as usual. I met Steve and Bucky for a bite and it all just fell apart rather quickly because of Hydra. Bucky is conditioned to react to certain phrases."

"Like brainwashing?" he asked slowly, Clara felt more for clarification than out of skepticism.

"Heavy conditioning over decades."

Dr. Beck nodded slowly, making notes. "Go through a few of the moments leading up to what happened."

Clara nodded slowly and crossed her legs beneath her. "Like I said, we met for lunch. I was asking Bucky about how he was adjusting to life in DC, what kinds of things he was remembering. Then there was just this voice on a PA system of sorts. He starts reading out these words in Russian. People were confused, but no one really reacted until the helicopters arrived."

"How many?"

Clara's brows furrowed in confusion. "What does that matter?"

"You're in DC, only a short while after it was attacked, after the helicarriers ended up in the Potomac," he explained. "You were in that accident as well, right? You have a scar on your arm."

Clara looked down at the thin pink line trailing up her forearm. She'd more or less forgotten it once the stitches had fallen out. "Yes."

"So, after the helicopters combined with this strange foreign announcement, people started to panic?" he asked.

Clara nodded quickly, realizing the point he was trying to make. "Yes, but Bucky was solely responding to the words," she insisted. "Both he and Steve have been through their fair share of wars and tough instances."

"Were you panicked?"

Clara pursed her lips, but she could only remember being worried about Bucky's response. The panic hadn't come until he'd bolted down the street. "I was when Bucky started to panic," she told him. "I was terrified at one point. The voice finished the phrase and the change in him…" She struggled to find the words to explain what she'd witnessed firsthand. "It was like resetting a machine. All the—the things that made Bucky him—it was like his personality was sucked straight from him."

"Why did that terrify you?" He tapped his pen against the paper, head cocked.

"I'd worked so hard—he'd worked so hard to get himself back, and in seconds all of that was gone," she muttered. "Also that he took a swing at me with his metal arm. Steve caught it, though."

"Alright, so Hydra got him back under their control, and that terrified you," he said, using her words. "What happened next?"

Clara explained trying to run, but running into a wall of three agents, and how she was quickly knocked unconscious. She told him with little emotion about waking up several times on the trip all the way to ultimately being frozen and when Bucky finally got her out.

"I thought I was hallucinating when he found me," she told Dr. Beck. "I was so cold, and I couldn't stop shaking. But he was there in front of me, taking off his sweatshirt to put on me. I thought I was dreaming…"

Clara ran both her hands through her hair, elbows on the table. She was hunched over in her chair, just as she had been before. "But there was something I didn't tell Bucky or Steve," she breathed.

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want to talk about it."

"With them?"

Clara paused at that, realizing that yes, it was just that she hadn't wanted to talk about it with Bucky, in particular. "Yes. I didn't want to tell Bucky about this."

"Can you tell me?" he asked softly. "If for nothing other than to get it out of your system."

Clara took a deep breath. "They…they unfroze me once," she started slowly, quietly, as if Bucky two floors up would hear her if she spoke too loudly.

"For what?"

"They didn't need me to tell them where Bucky was—they knew where he was the day they took me from DC. They unfroze me and took me into a room." Clara swallowed roughly and sat up straight. She took the time to cross her legs underneath her while she composed herself, remembering. All the while, Dr. Beck waited patiently. "They took me to a room and cuffed me to a table. The only time they spoke English was when they needed my cooperation."

Dr. Beck frowned. "Cooperation with what?"

"If it would be easier for me to do it as opposed to them forcing me," Clara explained quickly with a wave of her hand. "They never explained exactly what they did. They took blood a couple of times, even injected me with something."

Dr. Beck looked a little alarmed, his hand moving across a legal pad in front of him. "And you never found out what it was they injected you with?" Clara shook her head. "Clara, I really want you to go get some—"

Clara shook her head again, faster this time. "I'm planning to go see my regular physician soon. I just… Clara pursed her lips for a second, wondering if she should admit her next thought. "It might have been a little illegal, but I pulled Steve's file from the SHIELD database a year or so ago. I was interested at what about his physiology was different in him from normal humans. I wrote down some of the markers found in his blood work back then. It's in my notes and I plan to fully compare that to my own workup when I can get it."

Dr. Beck scratched his chin, still frowning. "I would still go get a full work-up," he suggested. "Just to make sure." Clara nodded and he made a few more notes before straightening again. "Is that all they did in that room? Take some blood samples and give you the one injection?"

Clara sat still, reliving those long, long moments. In total, she'd probably only been in the room for an hour or so. But it had felt like an eternity of fear and anxiety. "I got desperate at one point," she muttered. "I tried to bite the man that had been working on me. I knew I probably should have just cooperated, but I was losing my mind."

"In those kinds of situations, we rarely think about anything other than survival," Dr. Beck told her. "Your mind identified that these people would harm you and you tried to defend yourself. It's easy in hindsight to think, Oh, that wasn't smart, but in the moment, when you're that scared, it's difficult."

Clara crossed her arms and slumped in her seat, feeling the rewarded bruise she'd gotten on her back throb in protest. "Well, they beat me for it. I didn't even get a good chomp on 'im."

"And why did you feel you couldn't tell Bucky this?" he asked with a tilt of his head, pen tapping annoyingly on the desk.

"Because he went completely mental over me being frozen," Clara said, trying not to sound condescending. "He already blamed himself for the whole thing with only the knowledge that they froze me, I didn't want to know how he'd react to finding out they'd experimented on me in any capacity."

"Do you think you'll ever tell him what really happened?" he asked, unfazed by her tone.

"What would be the point?" she grumbled. "It's unnecessary knowledge."

"Is it?" Dr. Beck questioned, dragging his pen down his list of notes before continuing. "You said they injected you with something. What if it turns out to not be as benign as you thought?"

"Alright," she conceded. "In that instance, I think I'd have to tell him."

Dr. Beck removed his glasses and sighed. "Clara, I think you're well aware that the first step to putting all of this behind you is to get it all out of your system. Especially if you plan on pursuing a relationship with Bucky in the future."

He paused and pushed his glasses back up his nose, and Clara stayed quiet, knowing he clearly wasn't finished. "I believe you owe it to Steve and especially to Bucky to be honest with them about what happened to you in that room, even if it makes no difference, even if it changes nothing."

"Why?" she dared to ask.

"Because who knows? Maybe it'll give them some kind of insight as to Hydra's new motives. Maybe it'll be pertinent information somewhere down the line and help save someone else," he explained gently. "They're clearly experimenting on humans still, who's to say they aren't trying to reboot the Winter Soldier program?" He smiled gently. "Or maybe nothing. Maybe Bucky will be upset for a time, but I promise it won't last forever. You know that."

"I'm more afraid of him running," she admitted, pursing her lips in thought. She took a breath to ease the pinching behind her eyes. "I'm more afraid I'll tell him and he'll leave and run off to hunt down who knows…"

"Alright, let's table that for now," Dr. Beck announced, flipping to a new page in his book. "How about you tell me about the relationships in your life."

"My relationships?" she echoed, surprised by the turn in topic.

"What is your relationship like with your parents?"

Clara smiled at that. That was a topic that would calm her nerves from how tightly wound the previous topic had made them.