It's not all that surprising, most people aren't interested in sharing the grim and gritty details of their time overseas, let alone the baggage they brought back with them. Barnes has never been the type to fight tooth and nail against therapy, some men do it out of pride, stubbornness, toxic masculinity, whatever. Not him, he sees the merit in it and he knows they've all got issues to work through.
It's just that nobody's getting good counseling in god damn jail, are they? Anything other than the legal kind is second rate at best. They're dealing with shit, at least they can sort of deal with it together.
Plus, Steve called him Buck, and why dropping one single letter off of an already short nickname makes his heart feel fuzzy, he doesn't know. Either way, he opens up a dialogue with careful, calm words.
"I shot a kid once." He says, voice low and inscrutable. Not a brag, not a cry, just a statement of fact like he's distanced from it. A mile away, and pointing out the color of the sky. "Couldn't have been more than... twelve, maybe thirteen. They recruit young, they... grab kids, put guns in their hands, throw 'em out like nothing. There was this one... They put a vest on him, stuck a detonator in his hand, they sent him our direction... Everybody froze, nobody could take the shot. Didn't even give him a fucking helmet, they didn't give him shoes, I guess they were thinkin'... if he's just gonna... Why would he need 'em, if he's..."
Just going to blow, and take the shoes with him?
"So I did it. It was one of those... hand-release triggers where if you let go, it goes off. I took the shot, he looked at me, he dropped... I dream about that kid sometimes. Sometimes he blows. Sometimes he doesn't, and it turns out I was seeing it wrong, and it wasn't a vest at all, it was just some dumb kid who didn't understand why I did it."
no subject
It's just that nobody's getting good counseling in god damn jail, are they? Anything other than the legal kind is second rate at best. They're dealing with shit, at least they can sort of deal with it together.
Plus, Steve called him Buck, and why dropping one single letter off of an already short nickname makes his heart feel fuzzy, he doesn't know. Either way, he opens up a dialogue with careful, calm words.
"I shot a kid once." He says, voice low and inscrutable. Not a brag, not a cry, just a statement of fact like he's distanced from it. A mile away, and pointing out the color of the sky. "Couldn't have been more than... twelve, maybe thirteen. They recruit young, they... grab kids, put guns in their hands, throw 'em out like nothing. There was this one... They put a vest on him, stuck a detonator in his hand, they sent him our direction... Everybody froze, nobody could take the shot. Didn't even give him a fucking helmet, they didn't give him shoes, I guess they were thinkin'... if he's just gonna... Why would he need 'em, if he's..."
Just going to blow, and take the shoes with him?
"So I did it. It was one of those... hand-release triggers where if you let go, it goes off. I took the shot, he looked at me, he dropped... I dream about that kid sometimes. Sometimes he blows. Sometimes he doesn't, and it turns out I was seeing it wrong, and it wasn't a vest at all, it was just some dumb kid who didn't understand why I did it."
A pause.
"So if I'm kicking up here, wake me up."