wintercyan:

amuseoffyre:

I had CA: TWS playing in the background at work today, and something caught my attention that I have idly wondered about before, but this time, it was like a great big flashing sign. So much so that I had to go back and replay the scene.

Pierce: The timetable has moved. Our window is limited. Two targets, level six. He already cost me Zola. I want confirmed death in ten hours.

I saw that then I watched the scene on the bridge. Watch the Winter Soldier. He comes in for the attack, and the first person he takes out of the equation is Jasper Sitwell. AKA the man who let the Lumerian Star get captured by pirates. AKA the reason Fury got the intel and had his suspicions raised. AKA the reason that the timetable was moved. AKA the reason they lost Zola.

I always assumed it was Steve and Natasha he was coming after, but no. Steve is Level 8.

Just watch the way TWS attacks. He doesn’t go for Steve or Sam directly. He takes out Sitwell, the easy target, first then aims through the roof of the car at Natasha first. And when the car crashes, he doesn’t go after Steve.

Instead, he fires towards Natasha, and only misses because Steve pushes her out of the line of fire. The blast sends Steve hurtling over the ledge. You would think he would be a priority target after that, but TWS ignores him. Instead, he calmly stalks after Natasha like a predator.

The other HYDRA operatives are firing like mad, shooting at everything, but he just watches for Natasha. He doesn’t fire until he has her in his sites. He only fires three times when she’s still on the bridge, and each shot only just misses her. (Speaking of, I love that the only thing that makes him lose his cool and fire as wildly as the other HYDRA agents, is when she manages to land a hit on him. That’s the one time he doesn’t aim)

When he gets given the machinegun, he also doesn’t waste his ammunition once she’s out of range. He hops over the edge of the bridge and goes after her on foot. The only time he actually bothers himself with fighting Steve is when Steve attacks him.

Also, I think this whole scene really demonstrates the difference between the design of the Winter Soldier as a weapon and the way HYDRA have used him. HYDRA tends to be very much smash in and “KILL THEM ALL WITH FIRE!” style, whereas the Winter Soldier is very much carefully aimed and positioned. Just watch the way he moves when he’s hunting. Or even when he’s firing. He is absolute stillness and quiet, compared to the chaos and destruction of the HYDRA boys. He just walks into a scene, lifts his gun, fires, and just like that, is gone.

This is a very good point! The Winter Soldier’s behaviour on the bridge makes much more sense when we presume he was after Sitwell and Natasha rather than Steve and Natasha – why would he go after Natasha and leave his team to deal with Steve, arguably the bigger threat, if she wasn’t, in fact, his second target? Logically, if he were sent to kill all of them, he’d take out his opponents starting either with the biggest threat (Steve) and working his way down (Natasha, Sam, Sitwell), or starting with the least threat (Sitwell) and working his way up (Sam, Natasha, Steve). Instead, he took out Sitwell, completely ignored Sam (because he wasn’t ordered to kill Sam since Pierce didn’t know about him?), ordered his handlers to keep Steve busy, and went after Natasha himself.

The only piece that doesn’t fit the puzzle is the ‘level 6′, because both Sitwell and Natasha were Level 7. It might simply be a continuity error, but I always assumed Pierce referred to HYDRA’s own system of threat levels rather than S.H.I.E.L.D.’s clearance levels. A level 6 threat, in this case, would be a trained S.H.I.E.L.D. operative – although arguably, Natasha was a bigger threat than Sitwell. Still, they’re both (more or less) standard humans, unlike Steve. It actually makes a lot more sense that the targets were both the same level if they were in fact Sitwell and Natasha, because Steve was both a higher S.H.I.E.L.D. clearance level (Level 8) and a higher threat level, being a supersoldier, than either Sitwell or Natasha.

Notice also that the Winter Soldier asked Pierce, “the man on the bridge, who was he?” Not “my target.” So I think you’re probably right!

But wait…

If this is true, it also means the Winter Soldier didn’t kill anyone he hadn’t been expressly ordered to kill. In Odessa, he was ordered to kill the nuclear scientist and left Natasha alive. On the roof outside Steve’s apartment, he was ordered to kill Fury and ignored Steve even though he had a high-caliber sniper rifle and a clear line of sight – remember that post about how the Winter Soldier shot Nick Fury by extrapolating from where Steve was looking, meaning he could easily have put a bullet through Steve’s eyesocket if he’d wanted to? On the bridge, he was ordered to kill Sitwell and Natasha, ignored Sam, and told his team to go after Steve knowing Steve would take them out. At the Triskelion, he’d been ordered to destroy the loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. air force which posed a threat to HYDRA’s helicarriers until they reached operational altitude, and then went after his target, Steve, after taking out Sam in a way which would give him a chance of survival, however slim, like Natasha in Odessa.

The Winter Soldier was actively opposing HYDRA by obeying their orders in the most literal sense possible. He knew he couldn’t disobey a direct order due to his programming, but given the opportunity to take out a threat to HYDRA, he ignored that threat if he hadn’t been expressly ordered to deal with it. He even had Steve’s shield, Steve’s most powerful weapon, and threw it back to him. 

All this time, we’ve been discussing Bucky in terms of loss of autonomy, how he was HYDRA’s brainwashed puppet, when in fact he was fighting HYDRA all along in the only way left to him – by sparing the lives of HYDRA’s enemies whenever he could.

HYDRA never broke Bucky completely.