Everything about the wipe is so sickening. This scene as a whole was the most horrifying thing I’ve seen in the MCU to date and yes, I remember Iron Man and Tony’s torture and no, this is still the most horrifying thing.
It’s not just the utterly sickening lack of agency, and the fact that he is half naked and injured and surrounded by men in swat gear with guns and rifles pointed at him. It’s not just the fact that you know he could take down everyone in this room without even breaking a sweat and yet he doesn’t. It’s not even just Pierce backhanding him, like he’d hit a broken toy to try and get it to start again.
It’s the fact that there’s something there. There’s something he’s hanging on to, desperately, there’s something clawing at him and it hurts because he’s remembering and he doesn’t know what it means, he doesn’t have parameters to deal with this, he’s overwhelmed and in pain and resigned that it’s going to be taken away from him but it’s too important to let it go. He speaks out of turn, “But I knew him,” he knows he’s going to hurt, now, his body remembers, he hyperventilates before the head piece is even in place, but someone gave him a name and that is too important, that he can’t let go, he can’t shove it back. And if you look here?
This isn’t resignation. This is defiance. This is emotional bleed. He knows he’s being lied to. He knows, just as he viscerally knew the man on the bridge. They’re going to try and take it away from him, and the last thing he can remember thinking as the headpiece slots in place is to hold on, just hold on, hold on to the name, hold on to that face, he can hold on, he can.
And he does. He fucking does. After Steve cracked him open, not even the wipe, not even the electroshock and the pain and the threat of what would happen to him if he failed was enough to shake off that bone-deep feeling that he knew him. The asset might’ve taken down Captain america, but Bucky Barnes would never, ever harm Steve Rogers. Hydra done and fucked up. They forgot these men’s identities, discarded them, regarded them as not relevant; but the moment Steve was able to break through and give Bucky back a doubt, a shred of sense of self, their whole programming collapsed like a fucking house of cards.
They forgot, banally, that there was still a person inside their beautifully carved weapon. And I can’t wait for the moment where James Buchanan Barnes reminds them. The time of reckoning is upon Hydra, and it’s going to be glorious.
“The serum amplifies everything that is inside, so good becomes great; bad becomes worse.”
I’ve been thinking about this fantastic post that discusses the scientific effects of the super-soldier serum on Steve Rogers’s brain. It’s based on info from the Avengers exhibit in Times Square, and what it concludes is that after the serum, “Steve just feels more.” Because of the changes to his amygdala, everything Steve felt would have been amplified – joy, pain, loyalty, all of it. What this made me realize is:
The serum would have increased everything Steve felt for Bucky.
Whether you ship the idea of a romantic connection between those two or not, Steve loved Bucky. Bucky was his person, 100%, ‘til the end of the line. They’d spent most of a lifetime developing love and loyalty and friendship. Steve might have had some hero worship going on, because Bucky was everything he wanted to be: strong, able to fight for the little guys, charming, loyal. But once he got hit with Erskine’s serum, everything – every one of those feelings – would have been amped up, magnified. If Bucky was his person before the serum, afterwards, Bucky would have been everything. This is why Steve was willing to risk his life, to disobey orders, to hop in a Jeep and go chasing across Europe by himself to rescue the man. There was never a possibility he could do otherwise, because every bit of love he’d built up over a lifetime was driving him forward.
The serum amplified all of Steve’s feelings, and his love and loyalty for Bucky would have become absolute devotion.
But Bucky got Zola’s version.
Whatever Zola did to Bucky before Steve rescued him, it was already acting upon him in fundamental ways – otherwise, there’s no way Bucky could have survived the fall from the train. But what if Zola’s version tended to increase the negative feelings more? I feel like we see some of this in the bar scene, when Bucky complains, “I’m invisible.” Sure, he’s joking, but he’s being pretty hurtful and taunting about how Steve had been treated in the past.
Maybe Bucky had always been a little envious of Steve, envious of the goodness he saw in Steve that he believed he, himself, didn’t possess. And now Steve has all of that inner perfection but has the outer shell to match; he’s caught up to Bucky in the one area where Bucky ever believed he had even the slightest advantage over Steve. And Bucky’s slight twinge of envy becomes a hot streak of jealousy.
Maybe Bucky isn’t feeling jealous, but possessive. Steve has always been his, exclusively – Bucky’s the only one who ever recognized his value. To Bucky, Steve was like that secret spot you find where you can sit and watch the sunrise in perfect isolation; only suddenly the rest of the world has discovered his secret place. With his feelings amplified, Peggy’s interest in Steve might have hit Bucky like a physical blow, because he’s being forced to share his Steve with everyone, just when he desperately needs him the most. And all Bucky can do is lash out – at Steve, who brought this on by taking the serum.
Or maybe, Bucky is truly angry. Because he’s just been through hell and he’s nowhere near recovered – look at the disheveled uniform, and the fact that he’s sitting alone tossing back drinks while the rest of the Commandos party and sing in the other room. He’s survived torture, and then Captain America sits down and asks him to rejoin the fight. And because of the serum…he can’t say no. His love and loyalty for Steve have always been stronger than fear; he’d take on any challenge to protect Steve. Now, even though the fear has been increased, so have the other feelings. Maybe, with the serum running through his veins, he literally can’t say no. Maybe he tries – his first response is “Hell no,” but he can’t stick with that, because he has to protect Steve. So maybe Bucky is angry – that he can’t make himself walk away – and hurt, that Steve even asked this of him. And all he can do in that moment is try to hurt Steve, too.
But what if it’s not a negative feeling being amped up? Maybe (hello, Stucky shippers!) what we’re seeing is Bucky’s reaction to all the love he feels for Steve being amplified out of control. Because Bucky has always tucked those feelings away; buried anything but brotherly affection, not about to taint Steve with feelings that Bucky has decided are dark and wicked. With the serum, he can’t deny it anymore, can’t hide from what he feels, what he wants. He tries drinking, and it’s not enough. Maybe he’s afraid he’s given himself away, by telling Steve he’ll follow him anywhere. So he tries flirting with Peggy, but it fails, because even she can see how magnificent Steve is, and Bucky’s heart wasn’t really in it anyways. Then Bucky does the only thing that makes sense to him – he tries to be mean, to push Steve away before Steve figures out that Bucky wants so much more from him than he ought to.
It’s heartbreaking to think of Steve and Bucky’s feelings for each other being amplified by the serums they’ve been given.
Because it just makes it that much more painful that Steve has to watch Bucky fall. That Bucky falls knowing he won’t be able to protect Steve any longer. That all of their feelings for each other – love and loyalty and respect and devotion – have been increased, and their ability to feel anguish and loss has increased right along with it. The serums made Steve and Bucky more fully themselves, amplified everything that made them who they were – and at the core, what made these two was each other.
While that theory is interesting, it takes away some of Bucky’s free will again. Bucky is…Bucky. Everything that’s happened to him is enough fuel to make him act like he does WITHOUT the serum. And the serum DOES amplify the good in him, HE just doesn’t know that. Even the Winter Soldier wasn’t a twisted wreck like Red Skull was. He was a functioning, efficient human. The same thing would have happened to Steve had he been captured and brain washed.
As for his “jealous” behavior…first off, he’s barely holding himself together because of the torture. Add to that his idiot best friend has done the EXACT thing he tried to get him not to do, only now he’s not just the idiot friend any more, he’s a rival in a different way than he ever was before. Little Steve was a handful, but Bucky could wrangle him. Bucky was always the lead. Bucky was the good looking, smart, friendly stud. Now Steve is that too. Bucky isn’t the “pretty” friend any more. He probably hasn’t even really thought deeply about it, but that’s unsettling. And it’s not so much jealousy (sure there’s a bit of resentment that he’s been tortured and lived in mud while Steve just waltzes in and plays the hero), as it is there’s a power shift.
So you’ve got PTSD from torture along with a massive power shift in a friendship, added to the fact that the idiot friend is STILL doing reckless stuff, only now Bucky has no way to stop him.
Bucky doesn’t need the serum to affect him. The serum working on STEVE affects him enough.
can someone explain this bc all i can come up with is because that’s where the heart is…….?
When Pre-serum Steve was with Bucky, He was partially Deaf, So bucky always had to stay on his Left side to talk to him due to his right ear not hearingthe best, probably from all the illness he had.
Bucky just naturally stays on that same side, even when Steve hears perfectly fine.
You wanna bet his trolling ‘on your left’ came from what Bucky’d do when sneaking up so he didn’t scare the shit out of him?
but you know what got me the MOST about that ‘i knew him’ scene tho?
not the childlike repetition of ‘i knew him’ and the confusion on his face, because if the winter soldier’s tunnel focus translate to carrying out his orders it also translate to his thoughts, because in that moment the single strain ‘i knew him’ is strong and strong enough to counter the programmed kill order
not that
(im kidding, that as well. i am a MESS about this scene)
but the sheer obedience in him. when pierce backhands him so hard the crack sounds and he turns his head – HIM, the perfect fucking human weapon, taking the impact of the blow like a man and not a machine – when he leans back, when he blinks fast a few times, when he puts the gag in his mouth and tightens his fist and readies himself for the pain that has happened before and will happen again, and again, and again, and again –
It’s interesting to see Steve’s insecurity about his friendship with Bucky. Bucky was his best friend, and presumably his only friend. Steve idolized him. As he told Natasha and Sam: even when he had nothing, he had Bucky.
But Bucky? Bucky had a family – parents, probably some siblings. He likely had friends from school, work friends, and friends from army training. He had endless girlfriends. We know he was popular. Bucky had an entire life, and objectively, Steve was only a part of it.
Before Captain America, Bucky was Steve’s world, but Steve may not have been Bucky’s. And because of that, you can see Steve constantly second guess Bucky’s love for him. During CATFA, he doesn’t know if Bucky will follow him into war. In the CATWS funeral flashback, he doesn’t want to intrude on Bucky’s life (even though if the situation were reversed, you know he’d never let Bucky ‘get by on his own’). Even during the final CATWS fight scene, he says ‘You’re my friend’ instead of ‘We were friends’. He’s horrified that Bucky died following him, because Bucky had a life outside of Steve.
I don’t think Steve realized how important he is to Bucky until he broke the Soldier’s programming, just by existing.
I feel like you just knew I was writing canon-compliant fic and you wanted to give me EVEN MORE Steve Rogers feels and now @elinimate is gonna hate you because I’m about to make shit painful for her
hannahbelleeeebackup 