"I don't doubt you can, p-" The word partner gets stuck in my mouth and dies there. Saying, just thinking it, drags me back the all of twenty minutes to where- to when- we just were, and drives into sharp and terrible relief, again, what I just did, what I decided to do.

I've seen Post Traumatic Stress in soldiers, plenty of them, and it looks like this. I tell myself it's the magnitude of the trauma and the fact that it's so recent, that it'll pass. I know it will. It has to, and though I have no idea how I'm accomplishing it, I'm going to hold it together until it does.

I'm worried about Bucky though. This is nothing new.

"..." I clear my throat, quietly, and reach my hand over to lift the bottle again.

"I'll stay."