A/N: This hasn't been proofread, and I'm sure the dates are all wrong, so I apologize in advance for any errors. Standard disclaimers apply.
It was their fifth session with Dr. Roen. They were meeting in the Avengers common room, they were allowed to call her Samantha, she was wearing jeans, and Thor had brought mead.
"I understand that for this session you want to focus on team bonding," said Samantha.
Steve nodded earnestly while the rest of the Avengers groaned.
"Let's talk about events after the bombing in Vienna. Everyone was involved in the conflict that followed, but why don't we start with Bucky and Tony?
Tony crossed his arms in what he probably thought was a casual gesture. "We forgave each other. It was all very touching. Steve cried."
"So the two of you already discussed it?"
"God, no. We're men. We played Mario Kart Battle mode, where friendships are made and destroyed. I told you Steve cried. I didn't say why."
"Do you think it might be a good idea to discuss it?"
"What's to discuss? I've seen the mission footage. Barnes has seen it live. No need for a 'previously on.' We're all caught up and ready to binge."
"Bucky. Do you agree?"
Bucky hesitated. "With which part?"
Samantha looked down at her notes like they might explain what Bucky meant. When they didn't, she said, "What?"
"I saw the mission," he said. "Tony did not see all of the mission footage."
"I saw you kill my Mom and Dad. What else was there to see? The end zone dance? Because I could live without seeing The Winter Soldier do a hip thrust."
Bucky and Steve had both gotten very good at ignoring anything Tony said that they didn't understand. Five times out of ten, it was a pop-culture reference. Four times out of ten, it was technobabble. (The tenth time was instructions on how to turn off the oven, but the structural damage had been minimal.)
"I was sent to kill you," said Bucky.
"Wait. What? Wait." Tony uncrossed his arms and crossed them again. "What?"
The Avenger's turned their heads from Bucky to Tony, like DUM-E watching a tennis match. Thor had let his mead go flat.
"After I killed Howard and Maria, I was sent to assassinate you," Bucky said, in a voice flatter than Thor's mead. "The asset's abilities were not required, but I do not believe my handlers wanted to kill a child."
"I was nineteen!" Tony sounded more offended by that then the assassination attempt. "Anyway, I'm alive. Oh, my god. I'm Harry Potter."
"Don't be ridiculous, Tony. I doubt Hydra tried to curse you to death."
"Yeah, Hydra stopped trying to summon demons after December 23, 1944," Bucky said in a voice that would have been offhand if he had not been talking about Nazi demons.
"Wait a minute," said Tony, and Bucky thought he was going to have to get into the whole Hellboy thing, but then he said, "Cap, you finally read Harry Potter? I put Harry Potter on your Future To Do list months ago."
"Bucky does the voices," said Steve.
"He… does the voices?" Sam sounded shell-shocked.
"Yeah," said Steve, oblivious. "His best is Moaning Myrtle. He does a good British accent. He got a lot of practice teasing Peggy during the war. Although his French accent sucks, and he teased Dernier too."
"French... accent?" He had sounded less shell-shocked when faced with actual shells.
"Uh huh. For Fleur. She and Hagrid both say 'Arry instead of Harry, so Bucky got it wrong when Fleur said goodbye at the end of the book, and he had to give her a smoking habit."
Bucky gave them a look that dared them to ask for a demonstration, so of course, Tony opened his mouth.
"You—"
"Why didn't you complete your mission?" Samantha interrupted. During their first few sessions, she hadn't interrupted Tony, because therapy was about speaking your truth, but she was a fast learner.
"I don't know."
"I thought you said you remembered everything," said Tony.
Bucky clenched his metal hand like he would have been digging his nails into his palm if he had them. "I do remember, but I don't know. When I give missions reports now, you ask why. I don't know why. It didn't have why. It wasn't allowed to have logic. That was for people. It had programming, or it had a glitch."
Steve flinched a little, the way he always did when Bucky reverted to calling himself "it."
"That's okay," said Samantha. "That's what therapy is for. We'll figure out the why together. When you didn't complete your mission, was that programming or a glitch?"
"Glitch," said Bucky. "I knocked myself out."
"What, did you walk into a door?" asked Clint.
"Fist."
"You walked into a fist?"
"Are you saying that you knocked yourself out on purpose?" asked Samantha.
Bucky nodded.
"Had you ever done that before?"
He nodded again. "Many times, before they were satisfied with my level of conditioning. Sometimes afterwards, when I required recalibration. Hydra did not give me a cyanide tooth, because I was too valuable."
Samantha's face was more carefully schooled than Tony Stark. "You were trying to commit suicide?"
Yeah," said Bucky. "Sorry, Stevie."
Steve shook his head. Bucky didn't know whether he was rejecting the apology or reality.
"Well, we should probably cross Emo music off your Future To Do list," said Tony.
"I put one in myself when I broke free in '44," said Bucky. "They were distracted with Hellboy. I didn't try anything with the arm that time, because I thought I had a chance to get away for good. I meant to use the tooth if they ever came back for me. They were too fast."
"Is it still in there?" asked Steve.
"Um..." Bucky made a "say aw" sound.
"Don't check! we'll take you to a dentist."
"I don't like dentists." Bucky pouted, and yeah, Moaning myrtle. They could see it.
"You don't like their chairs. You can sit on a rocking horse for all I care, but you're going." Steve sounded more horrified than when he discovered "Stark Spangled Banner" fanfiction ("discovered," of course, meaning that Tony had told them about it). "I didn't know you got out."
"They lost me in Japan. I joined the Yamaguchi family."
"You joined the Yakuza?" asked Clint. "What, Sanrio wasn't hiring?"
"Is that another Yakuza family?" Bucky asked.
"No. Much stronger."
"Holy shit," said Tony. "Pepper, where's that book on organized crime that Obidiah gave me because he thought he was funny. Wait, what do I need a book for? I have the internet. My dad practically invented the internet."
"Did he also invent Toaster Streudel? asked Bucky,
"You guys watched Mean Girls without me?" Tony sounded genuinely hurt. "Look, there's a picture of the Yamaguchi clan from 1945. Right there. Bucky Barnes."
"They called me Hakujin," said Bucky.
"What does that mean?"
"White guy."
Steve took the book from Tony. "What are they doing?"
"Providing relief support after the bombing of Nagasaki."
"The Yakuza provided relief?"
"Oh, yeah," said Tony. "Earthquakes, tsunamis, you name it. They were often more organized than the government. Of course, they were still vicious criminals, but you know, the cuddly kind."
"I think that might be a conversation for another day," Samantha interrupted him again. "Bucky, are you ready to figure out the why?"
Bucky shrugged and clanked.
"Had Hydra sent you to kill a child before?"
"I was nineteen!"
"No, but I did not process it differently than any other order. If anything, I process it as easier, because the child would be unarmed. And a child." Bucky scrubbed at his face with his metal hand and it came away shinier than usual. "Jesus, Christ. I thought killing children was easier."
"Nineteen!"
"Not you." Steve put his hand on Bucky's shoulder. "If you were the kind of person who thought that, you wouldn't feel bad about it now. That was just how Hydra programmed the Winter Soldier."
Bucky took a deep breath. Samantha had assigned him daily meditation. She had tried to explain that how awareness wasn't about having no thoughts. It was about being aware that there was a self other separate from your thoughts.
She had seemed very sincere, and Bucky didn't have the heart to tell her that he understood it only fractionally better than Tony's technobabble. Mostly, Bucky just breathed because not breathing made it hard to do anything else.
After three or four deep breaths, Bucky said, "Thanks, Stevie."
"End of the line, Buck."
Samantha raised an eyebrow.
"It's their thing," said Tony. "Like "always" in Harry Potter."
"Not you too." Steve groaned. "The Howlies gave us so much shit about that. Especially when they found out we thought "the end of the line" meant the front lines. Turned out it was about trains."
"Well technically…"
"Too soon, Buck."
"Seventy years."
"Too soon."
"Do you have any theories about why you didn't kill Tony?" asked Samantha.
"Well, his music was very loud," said Bucky.
"You knocked yourself out because you didn't like Poison?"
"No, I'm pretty sure they took out the cyanide pill when they got me back," said Bucky. He knew Tony was talking about the band, (One of his handler had been a glam metal fan, "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" was almost as bad as "It's a Small World After All," and he wished to God he couldn't remember the outfit they had given him in '88), but for once there was something sadder than Bucky in the room, and that was the fact that Tony remember the song he had been listening to the night his parents died.
A/N: If you want to know why Bucky really didn't kill Tony, there might be an answer in "My Cat From Hell." I wrote it as a separate one-shot, but I think the two stories are headcanon-compliant. For an explanation of Stark Spangled Banner, you can read, "What's a Stucky?" or you can Google at your own peril.