𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐄 | 𝟏𝟖+

29 || third session

alexa, play do it for me by rosenfeld

DAY 29

        "Can we have a session?"

        Amelia's eyes flickered up from her copy of Jane Eyre in amazement as they fell upon James' figure standing in the doorway of her bedroom. His black t-shirt squeezed his muscular frame tightly, followed by his dark jeans and black, steel-toed boots, as he waited expectantly for an answer, arms crossed in front of his burly chest. His dark, messy hair was tied back in his usual bun today; his face extra stubbly from the lack of shaving. Mouth watering, as always.

        "Is everything okay?" she asked alertly, sitting up. "Did you have another nightmare?" 

        "No," James assured her with a friendly smile, his lips pulling into a thin line, as he entered the room. "You opened up to me last night, so ... I thought I could return the favor." 

        His words surprised her, but these days, everything he did came as quite a shock to Amelia. She had been fumbling around in her brain, wondering what could it possibly be about her that caused him to progress so much in just under a month's time span. She had never had a patient grow so much in such little time before. 

         "Really?" 

        His head bounced up and down assuredly as he took a seat at the end of her bed, his hands resting in his lap. "I want to show you that this means more to me than just ... you know. I want to be fixed, just as much as you want to fix me." 

        Amelia closed the book quickly, placing it on her nightstand table and swiftly replacing it with her own notebook, pushing her hair behind her ear as she adjusted her position until she was comfortable. Flicking open the journal to her notes about their last session, her eyes skimmed over everything briefly before she turned over the page to start anew. 

        "Then, let's begin, shall we?" she prompted confidently.

        James nodded once more. 

        "How are you feeling about everything today?" 

        James leaned back just barely, straightening his shoulders, as he glanced over towards Amelia's curious eyes with conviction. "Good enough to keep pushing forward." 

        "You have the incentive to want to be better now," Amelia noted, pleased, as she jotted down some fresh notes in her journal. "That's a huge improvement." 

        Bucky let Amelia's words shower over him, rush through his veins in realization - it made him feel good to be recognized. Her strong determination to make him feel better about the way he saw himself made all the difference. It was like having someone tell him that they were proud of him. 

        "Your suggestions and tips honestly do help," James admitted as he placed a strand of his hair back behind his ear. "I do everything you say, and it's like ... I-I don't know, like I can actually breathe again." 

        "Anger, stress, depression, it can all weigh you down," she explained in a softer tone, tilting her head sideways as she observed him. "Now that you have less of those things, you don't have so much weight sitting on your shoulders." 

        James' mind flickered back to one of his long, long nights in a beat up motel somewhere deep in southern Russia, awaiting to take out his next assigned target, feeling like those days would never come to an end. He never thought there would be a possibility for a future - to be just James Barnes. And now this angelic human being sitting next to him was making it all possible. 

        "What would you say that you value about yourself?" Amelia continued, breaking him away from his immense thinking, which she noticed due to his furrowing brow. 

        James winced heavily as he raised a questionable eyebrow in her direction. 

        "Even if it's just one thing," she prodded further, remaining as comforting as she possibly could. "What would it be?"

        He didn't answer for a few moments, genuinely unsure of what exactly to say. During all these years of enduring everything he had been through, he had always hated everything about himself. He made it a habit to critique himself harshly - he felt like he deserved it. 

        "My ... strength." 

        "And why do you value your strength?"

        "Because if I wasn't strong, I wouldn't have made it this far," he murmured, quieter this time, as his eyes fell down to his intertwined hands. "I'm not sure if I would have been here at all." 

        Something inside of Amelia's chest tugged firmly on the strings connected to her heart, the massive feeling of sadness washing over her body as she registered what he had just said. She couldn't quite imagine not ever getting to meet the man in front of her, not getting to know him the way she did. Amelia actually couldn't picture the world without Bucky Barnes. Or maybe she just didn't want to. 

        "You've had suicidal thoughts?" 

        "I had them every day for a really long time," James whispered. 

        Amelia refrained from reaching her petite fingers out to grasp his shoulder or caress his stubbly cheek, but instead took her pen inside of her mouth and chewed furiously at the tip of it. "And when did those thoughts stop?" 

        James remembered it perfectly - so clear in his mind that he could see it playing out directly in front of him. The moment Steve arrived in his corridors with the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on, confident in every aspect, as she sipped away at the coffee in her tiny hands. It was from that moment that he was too intrigued by Amelia to think about anything else. She was all consuming from the moment he met her. 

        "The day you arrived."