Work Text:
Sometimes, he dreams about the ice.
He doesn't even know if they're real memories. Everything he's read has said that the conditions were cold enough that he would have frozen almost immediately - but that doesn't seem to matter much to his subconscious.
He dreams in blues. He dreams of light flickering through crystals that spread across his vision until they're all he can see. He dreams of a chill that wraps around his hands, his arms, his legs, getting heavier and heavier until even the strength granted to him by the serum isn't enough to push it back. He dreams of fighting to keep his screams locked behind his teeth, because if he lets them out, the cold will only reach inside. And he dreams that no matter how he fights, no matter how he struggles to get free, the cold always wins.
It's those nights that he's the most grateful for modern conveniences, when he can reach for the thermostat in his apartment to turn the dial warmer, when he can go to the kitchen for a cup of hot coffee and pull another blanket onto the bed. Or, if he's staying at the Tower, the nights that he's most grateful for JARVIS, who seems to know what he needs and takes care of most of that for him.
He's never told anyone about those nights. The others have their own share of nightmares, and if he tells anyone at S.H.I.E.L.D., it'll end up in his file, and he'll end up talking to another of their psychologists, and that's not really how he wants to spend an afternoon.
He wishes, sometimes, that he could leave the ice behind once and for all - but after another fall into more water, after he finds himself gasping alone on a bank, when that blue ice is replaced by an equally cold gaze, he thinks he might have preferred it after all.