(my exam is over so i’m here to unload some angsty thoughts on the dash)
The one thing that’s been haunting me more than anything else is Bucky. Like, we all know that Bucky’s life has been severely lacking in peace and happiness since like 1943 –– but it didn’t quite hit me how badly until after Infinity War.
In every movie Bucky’s ever been in, we lose him by the end of the movie.
First Avenger is pretty obvious –– that Train Scene™. Civil War, not only is he an internationally wanted fugitive but he’s also going under yet again, because he feels like he doesn’t have a choice. Infinity War, he gets dusted or disintegrated or whatever-the-fuck that was.
The happiest ending he gets––and by extension, the happiest ending Steve/Bucky gets––is the end of Winter Soldier, where Bucky disappears yet again, but at least there’s the implied sense that he’s coming back to himself and rehabilitating. At least there’s hope.
In Civil War, Bucky said “It always ends in a fight.” And it breaks my heart how he’s proven right, again and again.
Every time he manages to build some peace and a slice of home for himself, the fight shows up at his doorstep and forces him back into it.
He’s buying plums and smiling and relearning himself in Bucharest when Zemo frames him for blowing up the damn UN and the entire world is looking to kill him again. He’s finally free of his trigger words (presumably) and living quietly in a little hut in Wakanda and learning to be comfortable without an arm when Thanos tries to kill half the universe and he has to get back out there again.
He might be tired of fighting, T’challa says, right before offering Bucky his new arm.
And he’s right. Bucky’s been tired of the fight since 1943, since he got off of Zola’s table. But Steve needed him, and then Hydra had him, and then the entire world was trying to arrest him, and then there was the possibility of rogue Winter Soldiers, and then there was Thanos and the end of half the damn universe.
He doesn’t ask if there’s a fight, if they need him, if the world’s ending again. He already knows. He doesn’t say that he doesn’t want to fight, because for all that he might be so goddamn tired of fighting for 70 years, he can’t walk away when someone needs him, even if that someone a world that’s tried to destroy him ten times over and never thanked him for saving it.
Where’s the fight, he says, because what else can he say? He can’t run away from the fight, because it always finds him again, no matter how much he doesn’t want it to. He gives up, because he’s never going to be free, and he’ll be fighting until the day he dies.
I think it’s a possibility. smarter, more observant people than me have worked out meta on this. A few weeks ago I saw a post about Bucky’s bruising/bleeding after Steve rescues him in ca:tfa
and how it compares to Winter Soldier in the chair:
It’s certainly a compelling argument. Whether or not they tested a rudimentary version of mind wiping technology on him, there’s a lot to be said for the way Bucky dresses before and after his capture. There’s a deliberateness to everything he wears, both from the directors/costumer designers in the movie to Bucky himself, because his clothing certainly does tell a story. There’s been fantastic meta on Bucky’s clothing, too. Let’s take a look at the Bucky we first meet:
what a dapper motherfucker. So pristine, and (mostly) to regulation with his tie and collar just so, with just a little bit of charm and personality shining through with the jaunty angle of his hat. This is why most people agree that Bucky Barnes cares about his appearance, that he cares about it so much that he used his hat to set himself apart.
The next time we see him before he’s captured is the deleted scene where he’s wearing his helmet. Again, it’s at an angle, but whereas the hat choice is deliberate, I would argue the helmet was donned rapidly. The fact that it isn’t buckled bothered me (like he was being cavalier with his safety/had to look good in the middle of a war zone) until I saw American Sniper, where there was a very similar moment where the sniper finished sniping and then moved to put his helmet on, very quickly with the emphasis on getting it on rather than fitting it properly, and I went ‘ooooh, that could explain it’. Bucky might need to get it on and off quickly so it isn’t obstructing his shooting. I’m sure there’s also a possibility both are for movie purposes too, blocking and face shots etc.
This is the last time we see something on his head until he’s in the mask as the Winter Soldier.
Let’s take a moment to compare Bucky before he’s shipped off, to Bucky post-capture.
First of all, no hat. Second, compare this to Bucky done up in full uniform from the first scenes. We’ve all read the fantastic meta that talks about his mental state in this scene, and I agree with that. This is a Bucky who can’t bring himself to wear his full regulation uniform.
But take a look.
what
other
similarity there is
Bucky no longer wears anything tight around his neck.
Bucky no longer wears anything tight around his neck.
And suddenly, his outfit in the bar scene becomes more of a focused, deliberate lack of regulation uniform. He literally cannot bring himself to do up his collar or tie, and it doesn’t get better.
His jacket is never done up fully, just tucked in. It LOOKS dapper as fuck, and I’m sure he’s aware he looks good in it, but if he picked it out himself as we enjoy speculating, he also picked something he’d be warm in but could also get it away from his neck with a quick tug. Is this so he can breathe easier? Is it because he actually had something around his head and neck while tortured? We could get into the possibilities indefinitely.
brb crying over Bucky again
I just want to add that every scene we see him in after the rescue, he’s holding something he can use as a weapon. On the battlefield, it’s the guns. Specifically the big one he has taken to carrying like a baby, which I have no doubt he intends to use on Zola next time he sees him (he seems the poetic type to kill Zola with a gun taken from the place that tried to destroy him). In the bar, it’s the glass, which he only lets go of when Steve is present. He doesn’t want to ever be in a situation where he is bound down and shackled like an animal again, so he takes pains to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to get to him that way again.
Ye gods, this is perfect. And he’s so low-key about it that even though we see Steve carefully taking in the state of Bucky’s dapper uniform in the alley (“You get your orders?”), he spends very little time checking Bucky over once they’re away from the factory. Even in the bar scene, if I remember right, Bucky looks at Steve WAY more than Steve looks at Bucky. Steve doesn’t feel the need to examine Bucky closely—he’s always busy with something else—even as Bucky keeps his laser-focus on Steve.
Bucky slipped the extent of his trauma right past his best friend. Steve doesn’t seem to have any idea how fragile Bucky is, even though Bucky’s practically hanging a neon sign on it with these wardrobe changes.
(I’m so sorry I erased the original post I’M SO SORRY! You can read this without the visual aids on AO3.)
March 10, 1917 – James Buchanan Barnes is born, and we were all officially fucked.
July 4, 1918 – Steven Grant Rogers is born, and somewhere in Brooklyn Bucky’s mother wept …
June, 1924 – Steve’s mother is bedridden from illness associated with Tuberculosis.
September, 1930 – 12-year old Steve and 13-year old Bucky meet for the first time in Hell’s Kitchen, where Bucky scares off bullies trying to steal Steve’s money. What were they doing in Hell’s Kitchen? No one knows. Steve tells Bucky he’s been living in the orphanage ‘on 8th’ since his mother’s death. Which is odd since Bucky was apparently at her funeral when they’re both legal adults in a flashback scene from the Winter Soldier. For the purpose of this timeline, info from the movies will take precedent over info from the various tie-ins. Meaning Sarah Rogers is basically Schrödinger’s Ma for the next 6 years.
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