verysharpteeth:

What kills me about this is Bucky doesn’t WANT to die. That look isn’t rage or defiance or even resignation, that’s legitimate fear. The man who was broken and turned into death itself doesn’t want to die. This isn’t the reaction you expect from someone who has up to this point been a killing machine. He looks trapped and scared and YOUNG. It’s a look you didn’t even seen on Bucky when he WAS young. He thinks Steve is coming over to finish him, I mean it’s what HE would do. But for someone so intimately acquainted with death, he’s scared of it. Because all he’s known of people for the last 70 years is pain and abuse and it’s a look that expects more from Steve because that’s what people DO to him. People hurt him when he doesn’t function right and he KNOWS he’s not functioning right and if Steve doesn’t kill him, HYDRA will because he’s past his expiration date of usefulness and he’s failing…

But Bucky’s a survivor. He’s got more resilience than any other character is asked for. His drive is to live. When the machine is broken enough that a little bit of Bucky can get back through, even in the midst of an existential crisis and confused and frustrated, that bit of Bucky wants to live.

That’s what Sebastian brought to the character. He brought the humanity in the machine. The victim trapped in metal and leather who doesn’t WANT to be there. Who’s NOT a stone cold assassin. Who was kind and gentle and protective, not a death weapon. The part who has no idea why this was done to him and didn’t deserve any of it and is so confused as to why people are HURTING him.

The Winter Soldier is terrifying because Sebastian let you see the humanity in him. The part of him that we know would never be choosing to do what HYDRA made him do. They broke him and twisted him and he had no choice in the matter. Nothing that was done to him was deserved. Bucky’s tragic because he was the innocent victim who wasn’t just abused and had terrible things happen to him, but who was literally turned into his worst nightmare and who couldn’t do anything about it.

Tell me again that Bucky was the villain.

Here is the thing for me though – you can’t discount what the war did to him.  You have to go back further.  You have to go back to the kid in Brooklyn who made a choice to defend those unable to defend themselves. That kid went to war (setting aside the argument of drafted versus enlisted). He went to war well enough with his skills that he was a sergeant before he entered an active European campaign. He did well enough in Europe that he became a squad leader which means he was still that kid from Brooklyn who takes care of others and does what needs to be done.  

The US Army and the War and the Life Before twisted James Buchanan Barnes into a shape that was ripe for cracking open by HYDRA. The potential was there all along.

The Winter Soldier was always in Bucky and Bucky was always inside the Winter Soldier.