AN: Sorry you had to wait a while again! I got really caught up in dumb life things. Hopefully you like the chapter and it makes up for the waiting! Thanks for reading!
There was blood on his hand. It was nothing new. The Soldier always had blood on his hand, yet for some reason this was different. He looked around him and saw reeds. Reeds and water. It was confusing.
He looked back to the blood on his hand with a scrunched brow. Seeing the red liquid brought him despair, his lungs felt like they were closing in and he couldn't breathe. What was wrong with him? Was he malfunctioning? Did he need extra maintenance?
He looked past himself to the unbreathing figure at his feet. The blonde figure dressed in blue and suddenly his heart stopped with the realization of what was wrong.
"Steve?" He whispered walking closer to his Captain. He was lying on the bank of the river and his chest wasn't moving. He just laid there, blood seeping from his body.
"No, no Steve you lived." He said dropping to his knees at the man's side and reaching out to shake him. "You lived! I saved you! No you didn't die!"
He received no response and the more he tried to revive him the more Steve bled. He bled and bled until Barnes was surrounded by red and there was nothing he could do as it covered him, as it flowed to the one who caused it to leave the man it belonged to, like it was blaming him for Steve's death.
Barnes bolted out of bed with a loud cry, his hand flying to grip his hair as he screamed.
It had been a dream. Steve was alive. He didn't kill Steve. Steve was breathing. He wasn't covered in Steve's blood.
The door to his room swung open and he lifted wide eyes to stare at Barton as he entered. Barnes's breaths left his body in heavy pants and he just stared at the archer, unsure what to do or how to react. He vaguely felt tears falling from his eyes, but was in too much shock and panic to realize what they were.
"Barnes buddy, hey it's okay. Was just another dream." He heard Barton say, but it was muffled like his ears were full of cotton.
Steve is alive. I didn't kill Steve.
'You didn't kill Steve.' James reiterated. 'It was a nightmare, a fear. Steve's just fine. Breathe Barnes. It's okay.'
He took a series of deep breaths and lifted his wet eyes to meet Barton's. "I killed Steve."
"Oh no man you didn't kill Steve. He's alive and kickin'"
"It felt so real." He shuddered and stared down at his hands. "I killed him and he bled out in my arms."
"Shit." He heard Barton mutter and felt a small dip at the foot of the bed as he sat. "What can I do to help?"
"I need to know he's not dead."
The other man hesitated for a second and then said. "Okay, okay I can do that. Stay silent okay?"
He pulled out his phone and pressed the screen a few times before the room was filled with the sounds of ringing. Seconds later the rings were cut off to be replaced by Steve's voice.
"Hey Clint!"
"Hi Steve! I just got some muffins from that bakery you suggested a while ago and made me think about you. How's your hunt going?"
The captain gave a little sigh. "It's really not. We have absolutely no leads really. It's almost seeming hopeless."
"Hey don't give up man! You'll find something."
"I hope so. I just want to find him so bad, make sure he's okay."
His Captain sounded so sad that Barnes had to physically bite his lip to stop himself from speaking out, and he shot Barton a desperate look.
"I bet he will be Cap. He's got you. Barnes is a strong guy right?"
"Strongest person I've ever known." He sighed again. "I hope we find him soon. I don't want to come back to New York alone. Anyway, enough of me feeling sorry for myself! How did you like the bakery?"
"It was delicious! Awesome recommendation, and don't worry man, you can go be sad all you need to. When are you coming back?"
"No idea. We should get some cookies or something together when I get back though. We haven't gotten to know each other near as much as I would like."
Barnes could hear the honest sincerity in his voice and smiled with Barton.
"Sounds awesome Cap! Just let me know when you're back in town. Should I let you go? Don't want to take up to much of your time."
"Probably yeah. Thanks for calling though Clint! It feels really good to know I've got a friend who checks up on me."
"No problem at all! Call anytime."
"Will do. Bye Clint!"
"Bye Steve. Talk to ya later."
He hung up the phone and looked over to Barnes. "See. Steve is just fine. Sounds kinda sad, but he is very alive."
He let out a breath he didn't even realize was being held and nodded his head. The past three days since leaving Stark's tower he had woken to screams, nightmares like the one he had just had plaguing his dreams, but this one was the worst so far.
"Why do these keep happening?"
Barton gave him a sympathetic shrug. "Lots of reasons. Nightmares are going to happen man, nothing you can do about it."
He glared down at the metal hand. "James thinks it's because of this thing. Since Stark is making a new one, all I can think about is what this hand has done."
"And last night it killed the guy you love. Yikes. Want me to see if Tony can speed up his plans?"
"No I don't want to bother him. I just need to get my mind off of it."
Barton grinned widely and reached over to briefly clasp his ankle. "Well I can help you there! I saw my therapist yesterday and she gave me an awesome thing to help you. Get dressed and we can get started?"
Barnes nodded and slowly pushed himself out of the bed. As soon as he heard the door click he tossed off his sweat soaked shirt and kicked away the pants carelessly. It didn't take him long to dress in a red cotton shirt and jeans so he could join the archer.
When he walked into the living room Barton was setting three large binders of paper on the coffee table. They were immediately intimidating and he eyed them suspiciously.
"What are those?"
"Therapy!" Barton cheered, gesturing for him to sit. "But like fun therapy! Penny suggested that you keep track of images and stuff that you remember so I thought we could start by finding more favorites of yours and seeing if they invoke memories like talking about the colors did."
"And all the paper?" He asked as he sat down.
Barton pushed over the yellow binder and opened it to a front tabbed section. "This one is for you to keep track of stuff. Like a memory binder. I separated it into five sections. The first is pictures and words that you feel are the most important and will look at for eh, five minutes daily."
He flipped out of the first one. "Next one are ones you look at twice a week, then once a week. The fourth is an optional one, where you can write stuff you start to remember or things that you want to jot down. The last are stuff you have fully remembered, make sense!"
Barnes nodded, impressed by the genius of it. "Yeah it does. What are those two?"
"Pictures and words." Barton beamed happily. "Ooh I already added something to your binder." He opened it to the last section where the word 'yellow' was written out in the color. On the back in Barton's messy scrawl was 'favorite color because of Steve.'
"See I put your new favorite color down! I also added blue and green to your once a week section to see if you can remember why you liked them before and maybe add some new favorites."
"Thank you." He said delightedly. "You are doing far more than I expected."
"I'm enjoying it! Besides, I did tell Steve you were going to be okay and I can't lie to Captain America." He winked at him. "So you wanna get started on some favorites?"
Barnes nodded after a moment and sat back into the couch. "Ready."
"Okay we're going to start with the best one! Favorite animal?"
"Um." He thought for a second and then said, "A dog?"
Barton laughed. "Man that sounded like a question. You sure?"
"I think so? I always wanted a dog but I also really liked those tall orange animals uh, giraffes!" He said happily, proud that he was able to pull blurry images to his conscious without James's input. "I think I saw a picture of one that was really funny one time."
"Dude giraffes are awesome! I mean, look at this!" Barton began riffling through one of the binders and then pulled out a square image. It was one of the animals with its head tilted to the side, its long tongue out, almost licking the camera.
A burst of laughter escaped him at the picture and he kept the smile it brought onto his face.
'Steve hated that thing.
That was right! He hated that its tongue was a grey color, said that it made it look like it was ill.
"Steve was freaked out by them. He said their tongues were weird and he didn't like the way they walked. We saw one in some picture we went to or something. I'm not sure but I remember his reaction."
"That's awesome! Oh god I am so buying him a stuffed giraffe."
Barnes grinned and reached out to take the picture from him. "I'm happy I remember that. I like being able to see him laugh."
"That's good. You wanna write something on it? So that if for whatever reason you're having a problem remembering it will help jostle it back?"
Barnes nodded in agreement and flipped it over, grabbed the pen on the table and wrote out:
Stevie really hates the tongues
He stared at it for a moment and then gave a startled jerk when he noticed the added 'I' in Steve's name.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing, I just, I called him Stevie."
'Because you were Bucky, he needed a funny childish nickname too.'
"Some dame asked why I went by such a kid sounding name, and I said it was because of Stevie. He let it go, but I was the only one who ever was allowed to call him that."
"Damn this is way better than I thought it would be!" Clint cheered happily. "She said visual stimulation is the best way to bring buried thoughts up, but I was a little dubious."
"No it is helping." Barnes assured him, staring down at his hand writing. "Should I write down something for Stevie too?"
"Do you think you need to?"
"No. I think this is good enough." He replied, opening to the last section and sliding the image alongside the word yellow.
"What's next?"
"Well you did say you liked dogs?"
"I think so? It might have just been a thought because most people like dogs."
"Wanna look through a shit ton of pictures of dogs and see if anything sparks?"
He raised a skeptical eyebrow and asked, "How much is a shit ton?"
Barton shrugged and pulled out over a hundred individual images and dropped them on the coffee table. "About this. Wanna look and I can get us some coffee going?"
He eyed them in slight intimidation and then shrugged. "Yeah sure. Wouldn't hurt would it?"
Barton just grinned and stood, moving to the kitchen and leaving him there to peruse the pile of paper. It took him a couple of minutes for one to stand out. It was a tall fluffy tri colored dog with happy eyes and almost a smile on its face.
"This one." He informed the archer when he returned. "Something about this dog."
Barton peered at it and grinned. "It's a St. Bernard! They're so friendly and fluffy. Not to mention huge! Do you know why it means something?"
Barnes continued to stare at it, expecting James to give some sort of incident into his mind but when the little voice was silent he just shook his head. "I have no idea."
"No biggie! Does it feel like a daily, once a week, or twice a week memory?"
He bit his lip and concentrated on the dogs friendly face before replying, "Twice," and then inserting it into the binder.
"I want one of those now." Clint remarked sadly, picking up the extra images. "I love dogs."
"Why don't you have one?"
"Don't know?" he shrugged and shoved the images away. "Never really had the lifestyle I guess." He flashed him a smile and then flipped to a random spot in his giant binder of images. "Oooh favorite holiday!"
"Thanksgiving." He answered immediately without any prompting. "Don't know why though. I don't even remember my family, or if I even had any."
'Three sisters.'
He nodded slowly at the reminder, trying to picture their faces but couldn't. "I guess I had three sisters."
"I have a brother." Barton supplied as he began to pull out a few images. "Well kinda. Anyway! Here are the pictures she gave me associated with Thanksgiving. Any ring any bells?"
He looked between the three images; one of Native Americans and pilgrims, one of a family around a table, and one of a turkey surrounded by all the typical foods. He took that one from the archer's hand and grinned lightly.
"Food. It was because of food. Every other day we hardly had enough to go around, but Thanksgiving my Ma always made sure we all went to bed full."
"That's a good reason to like the holiday." Barton remarked, handing him the pen, which he took gratefully.
Favorite holiday-we had food
He sat the utensil back down, stored the pen, and glanced back up at the other man with an expectant look on his face. "Next favorite?"
Barton laughed and then thought for a moment before exclaiming, "Ice cream!"
He frowned and stared down at his hands. "I don't know what ice cream tastes like."
"Oh? That's perfect! We can go by a whole bunch of kinds and have a giant ice cream pig out! The normal flavors like vanilla, chocolate and strawberry are a given but we could also get a ton of Ben and Jerry's best kinds!"
"There's that many types of ice cream?"
"Oh Barnes my friend you have no idea! We'll have such a blast!"
"I'll take your word for it." He stated, eyeing the other man in slight worry. "Next one?"
"How bout favorite place?"
"Coney Island." He had no hesitation again, the words coming to him in an instant.
"You been there a lot?"
"Just a few times I think? Steve and I went a couple times every few summers." He frowned as an impression of cold and wind came over him. "Maybe once in the winter? I don't know why, but I have fleeting thoughts of Coney Island and snow."
"Wanna go now?" Clint asked eagerly. "I've never been, and maybe going will bring back some memories?"
'Do it!' James urged when he hesitated. 'It could be really good for you to take in something you used to love with a clear head.'
Barnes nodded and gave Barton a grin. "Okay let's do it. Let's go to Coney Island."