The office was too quiet.

Not sterile like a HYDRA lab. Not humming with machines. Just soft light, ticking clock, pen scratching paper.

And Bucky hated it.

Dr. Raynor watched him carefully. “So, Mr. Barnes, are you still having nightmares?”

“No.”

She didn’t blink. “We’ve been doing this long enough that I can tell when you’re lying.”

Across the room, curled beneath the small side table, a massive charcoal-and-silver wolf lifted her head.

Pandora didn’t growl. She didn’t move toward the doctor.

But her amber eyes sharpened.

Bucky felt it — that subtle shift. The way she keyed into his breathing. The slight tightening of her posture when his jaw flexed.

“I crossed a name off the list yesterday,” he muttered instead. “Senator Atwood.”

He talked. Raynor wrote. The notebook scratched again.

Pandora’s ears twitched at the sound.

She had been found years earlier — in the Siberian facility where HYDRA had frozen her in cryo alongside the other ghosts of his past. Larger than she should’ve been. Scarred. Enhanced. Preserved like him.

Now she stayed close. Always close.

When Bucky’s voice dropped while describing the car chase, the confrontation, the promise he made—

“Remember me?”

Pandora rose silently and padded to his side.

She pressed her weight against his leg.

Grounding him.

Raynor’s pen paused when she noticed.

“She’s allowed in here?” the doctor asked dryly.

“She’s registered,” Bucky replied. “Therapy animal.”

Pandora’s tail flicked once, unimpressed.

When Raynor asked about rule number three, about making amends, about whether any of it helped—

Pandora’s head rested on Bucky’s knee.

Her breathing was slow. Steady.

She’d learned that rhythm in 1943, during K9 training when she was just a stubborn four-month-old pup assigned to Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. She’d slept outside his bunk in England. Run recon beside him. Sat through artillery fire without breaking formation.

She knew when his pulse spiked.

She knew when memories dragged him under.

“You’re alone,” Raynor said bluntly. “A hundred years old. No family.”

Pandora’s head lifted.

Not aggressive.

Alert.

Bucky’s hand dropped automatically to her neck, fingers sinking into thick fur.

“I’m not alone,” he said quietly.

Raynor noticed that. The way his shoulders eased under his hand’s steady motion. The way the wolf never took her eyes off him.

“Now that you’ve stopped fighting,” Raynor pressed, “what do you want?”

Bucky stared at the floor.

Pandora nudged his wrist, just once.

“Peace,” he said.

“That is utter bullshit.”