The Hurt And The Healing: Bucky X OC

Chapter Seventy Three: Missing Screws And Moving Boxes

A sinking feeling festered in Mara's stomach as she watched Bucky decide whether or not he would allow himself to try to be happy. If she had to give the feeling a name it would be resentment- not that that was a face on the simple magnet that they had completely abandoned the moment shit hit the fan. Mara did not like feeling resentful. That was an emotion for people who did not know how to express their anger. And Mara had always known how to express her anger. She figured out what was making her angry, she confronted it, and she scorched it to a crisp. It was a simple formula, but it worked for her. Except this time she had no target for her rage. No one to scream at or hit or even shoot dirty looks. All of her potential targets for her rage were dead. And that was infuriating.

Sitting through another conversation in which she had to convince Bucky to not run at the first sight of pain had been irritating to say the least. It was hard to not feel like this was becoming more routine for them than an actual date night. But she was not resentful towards Bucky. Even at his most frustrating she could never be resentful towards him.

No, she was resentful towards every piece of shit who had ever made him so much as wince. She was resentful towards his handlers who had literally made it their mission in life to break him. She was resentful towards the scum that had taken this good and kind man and tried so hard to warp him into something he was not. She was beyond resentful. She was burning with anger. But she had nowhere to direct it. Because the targets of her highly concentrated rage had the audacity to be dead before she could kill them.

The bastards.

Mara needed something instead of rage burning her from the inside out, so she tried to focus on love. On convincing Bucky that her anger was properly directed at the people who had hurt him and should not be directed at Bucky himself. It was painfully slow going, and she was amazed at her own self control to not grab him by the shoulders and shake understanding into him. Dr. Grover had a plan. The plan was apparently to outlast his inner demons in a good old-fashioned debate. Mara wanted an expedited version of the plan, but she went along with it. Because she was a patient woman.

Fine. She was a patient woman when she wasn't concussed.

"I am not breaking our promises," she said after the silence dragged on for what felt like half an hour but was probably just ten minutes. Bucky startled slightly at the sound of her voice and looked at her with wide eyes and a clenched jaw. "And I know that you won't either," she added. "So it's you and me, darling. Together forever."

She had never been one for cliches, but wasn't there also a cliche about how the cliches finally made sense when you were in love?

"You're really not going to let me go, are you?" he asked incredulously. She smiled and shook her head.

"Never," she answered with finality.

And then it happened. Something clicked behind those bright blue eyes and for the first time since Bucky had walked through her door last night Mara felt herself relax. He wasn't going anywhere. Not today. Not ever if she had any say in it. He was staying by her side and she was never leaving his. Bucky and Mara. Together forever. Cliches and dead bastards be damned.

The rest of the session was surprisingly uneventful. In a shocking turn of events to absolutely no one, Dr. Grover officially gave Bucky a PTSD diagnosis. It changed absolutely nothing and Mara found it anticlimactic. But Dr. Grover seemed to consider it a big deal and so Mara waited and listened and rested her head against Bucky's shoulder in an attempt to reduce her headache and nausea.

"This is an unusual case," the doctor reminded them for maybe the fifth time that morning. "Normally I would not make a PTSD diagnosis this early in the process, or recommend such an aggressive treatment plan. But, Bucky, if you had survived all of those horrible things and were not showing any signs of post traumatic stress disorder- well frankly I'd consider that to be a symptom of mental illness as well."