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The first time Steve saw a SHIELD therapist who asked him to talk about himself, who he was before the war, that last fight with Schmidt, and after he had woken up the ice. Who he eventually wanted to become in this new century and how he would reach that place of mental peace.
That how talking about his feelings and his thoughts with them would help him feel better. That it would help him gather his thoughts into something more coherent for him to think about. Though he knows they are actually looking for things to hold over him when they and SHIELD might actually need to use the information against him.
About his mother.
Bucky.
Peggy Carter.
The Howling Commandos (what he was allowed to share about them).
It hurt to talk about any of them each time.
The following year somehow found him at a different therapist with the same apparent idea to talk some more about himself while there was some excuse as for why the previous therapist couldn't continue to see him. Something to do with Fury no doubt. He found however that the words just would not come. He couldn't talk about his past or his future without picturing one of the Starks by his side.
He did not find it easy to talk about what he wanted his future to look like without picturing, against his will, Howard or Tony or the others.
So instead he said nothing but thought of everything. Some days he just stared at the therapist almost lost in his memories, and they would usually stare back at him unafraid. Or at least trying to appear like they weren't. Sometimes they would usually ask the questions and they would have to ask them over again before his brain registered anything.
Once they asked him if he believed Tony. He saw the carefully guarded expression on their faces as they tried to dig for that one useful bit of information and decided then that he would not to return any of their phone calls.
When he does actually go, sometimes he talks about the differences he is able to find in both Howard and Tony, even bits about the similarities that he spots in Tony's behavior that would remind him of the man's father. Other times he talks a little about the other Avengers, about how he would like to know each of them better though he is not able to find a real middle ground between them and himself.
How does he relate and talk with master assassins who are hard to find on even a good day, an Asgardian prince, and a quiet genius who turns into the Hulk?
Then there's Tony Stark again. One of the few people that he actually knows he does have a sort of middle ground. One that the man actively refuses to acknowledge at times, because that middle ground happens to be the man who is his father and the man that was one of the few friends that Steve actually had during the War?
Though he's like Peggy, much in the sense that he knows that he has feelings for the man that would have been frowned on in his time and not quite sure how to approach the man to tell him how exactly he feels about him.
He does want to share this with Tony and find out if whether or not the other man even feels the same way about him.
At the same time, he's not that he really wants to find out the answer or leave himself wondering if he should find other things to talk about with the therapist.
