I feel like we really downplay Bucky's progress post-TFATWS. Yes, he's still very likely to be haunted by his past (it's hard not to for someone who has a past like his), but he went to therapy, got elected as a congressman, and was able to say 'I love you, buddy' to Sam without throwing up the next second.
Bucky will always be my perpetual sad boy, but his sadness is different now. Less to do with 'I'm a horrible person' and more to do with 'so I'm here now, in this new world, but what do I do?'
Mentoring the Thunderbolts is him finding a sliver of that purpose that isn't dependent on preset rules and constructs, but rather on his own capabilities. Something that he does because he wants to. We see the first glimpse of it when he approaches Mel, taking things in his own hands. And then, throughout the movie, we see him consistently make these choices.
Yes, people think he looks miserable in that post-credits scene in Thunderbolts, but I think it's more to do with just the general chaos that comes with a team that he is surrounded by and less to do with him hating these people.
I mean, if Sam was mad at him, and he hated every one of the Thunderbolts, he'd be out of there in a jiffy. Not stay with the team (and undergo an entire makeover) for fourteen months.
All these years, he'd been looking for a purpose because he didn't know who he was if he wasn't Sergeant Barnes or Steve Rogers' best friend.
He believes in these people, just like Sam believed in him. And he doesn't want to give up on them, just like Sam didn't.
But being farther in a journey of redemption than the people he's working with, he finally seems to have found a place where he could be useful.
I mean Steve really could have in that moment and he decided chose not to, despite his feelings. That’s the difference between him and John. John was blinded by his rage and grief and did what he’d been trained to do by the modern us military, kill first ask questions later. Also the serum, "The serum amplifies everything that is inside, so good becomes great, bad becomes worse." John was already a punch first kinda guy as Lemar says pre serum. It definitely didn’t help those habits. I think the hate for him is understandable to a degree.
If Tony had succeeded in murdering Bucky, he’d be very dead. There’s no world that Steve would let him live. I mean, we all saw how Steve reacted to what he believed to be Bucky’s death in CA:TFA.
HII, not me just quietly lurking here lol , your posts are keeping me alive in these trying times
and since we’re already in a silly-angsty mood....
what if john and bob have a fight, and then bob (or the sentry, or the void) does something that really scares john? like bad enough that john actually flinches or pulls away when bob tries to come close after??
it’d be devastating. i’d never recover from that 🥀
hii i'm glad they're helping u we're all praying for ur safe return from tumblr war 🙏💖 and yes... yes... muahahahaha... i hope u can recover from this hurt/no comfort 🙈
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“I can control it.”
Bob’s fists clenched at his side, opening and closing like he ached to find something to hit. His voice was low when he repeated the same thing he’d said half a dozen times already, his jaw so tense John didn’t know how he moved it.
“No, you can’t.” John honestly couldn’t tell whether Bob was manic or delusional or just have an overconfident day. He scoffed and rolled his eyes. “You want to control them, but you can’t. Not yet. One slip up and you could cause unimaginable damage.”
“I won’t,” Bob snapped, hair whipping around his eyes as he paced. “I can control it, John. I can. I’ve been practicing. I can—”
“You could fucking kill yourself.” That was his biggest fear. Always. That Bob, somehow, would hurt himself when he lost control of his powers. That he’d do something to himself that he couldn’t take back. “You don’t know what your powers could do to you.”
A harsh, aggressive silence crashed between them. Bob’s chest rose and fell fast, his breaths loud and uneven. His gaze kept darting all over, unable to look at John—a clear sign of his intense anxiety and frustration.
“You don’t trust me.”
“I trust you,” said John carefully. “I don’t the Sentry and I don’t trust the Void.”
“I am the Sentry.” He’d phrased it badly. Of course he had. John wasn’t attempting to call them distinct from Bob, he was just expressing that nobody really understood what his powers were. “I am the Void. You don’t trust me.”
“Bob—”
“You’re supposed to love me, and you don’t even fucking trust me.”
John stepped forward hesitantly. He swallowed hard as he held a hand out toward Bob, trying to mend the gap they’d created. “I do love you, Bob. But you’re not in control yet and if you can’t admit that then I— you’re right. I can’t trust you when you’re using them.”
“How can you love me if you don’t trust me?” Bob’s voice was quiet but not sad so much as it was angry.
“I trust you here. I trust you as Bob. I don’t trust your powers. Even Valentina doesn’t understand what she did to you. Nobody knows how your powers work. Nobody. Not even you.”
“I know how they work.”
“No, you—”
“I can control it!”
All the ambient sounds in the room stopped for just a second. Then, in one loud snap, every lightbulb in the room shattered. John instantly knelt down and threw his arm over his head, protecting himself from the shards of glass and metal that rained over them.
His chest pounded hard, each breath scraping in his lungs. Somehow, the silence after the explosions rang even louder, his pulse thumping up to his ears. The room filled with the smell of burnt metal, abrasive and acrid. When he shifted on his knees, the carpet crunched as tiny, painful shards crumbled into his skin.
When he finally felt safe enough to lift his head again, all he could see in dim light were Bob’s eyes—wide, filled with an indiscernible mix of emotions as they shone bright gold. For just a second, Bob stared at John, breath trembling. Then he stepped forward, slippers breaking more glass as he reached an arm toward John.
But John, still painfully tense, recoiled at the gesture. He flinched back against the wall, inhale caught in his throat. Bob froze where he stood, his shaking hand still outstretched but giving way to gravity as he swallowed hard.
“I’m sorry,” whispered Bob, voice cracked and broken, devoid of all the anger it held before. “I’m sorry. I didn’t— I didn’t mean to—”
That was exactly what John had been trying to tell him. Bob didn’t mean to do anything, but he still did. John’s knees and calves were bleeding because of him. Mentally, he wanted to tell Bob that it was okay, that it wouldn’t change anything between them.
Physically, he was fucking terrified. His body wouldn’t unclench, wouldn’t relax, wouldn’t stop staring at Bob like he was a threat. Bob’s hand dropped to his side as his shoulders sank, his entire body folding in on itself as the light in his eyes dimmed to almost nothing. He looked less like Sentry, more like Bob, but he was still goddamn terrifying.
John tried to remind himself that he wasn’t scary. That Bob wasn’t a god or a villain; he was John’s boyfriend. He was the sweet guy who stole chocolate chips from his pancake batter and woke him up at one in the morning when he went to bed late and decided he needed cuddles.
But his instincts still told him to move, to run, to get the hell away before Bob—or the Sentry or the Void—did something even worse.
Bob opened his mouth but didn’t say a word. His breath shook as his gaze fell to his own hands, his tremors so bad that his fingers were shaking a full inch back and forth. A sob caught in his throat when he swallowed, a gasp left in its wake.
John’s chest pounded. He wanted to say something, anything, just to let Bob know that he wasn’t a fucking monster, but all he could do was struggle to breathe. All he could think about were the shards stuck in his legs, the lines of blood staining his floor.
“I’m sorry,” Bob whispered again, this time completely himself. No Sentry. No Void. Just Bob—human, broken, vulnerable. “I’m sorry.”
The floor crunched beneath his feet as he ran the short distance across the room. He didn’t look back once when he opened the door, allowed the smallest sliver of light to highlight his exit before he closed it behind him.
John stayed where he was, curled against the wall, struggling to catch his breath. A tear dropped down his chin as he glanced at the blood seeping into his sweatpants, at the empty space Bob had left behind.
He tucked his knees up to his chest and took one long, slow, deep breath. John was a superhero. An Army man. He could calm himself down.
But then he thought of Bob’s face, of his trembling hands, and shed another tear instead. He stared at the door, willing Bob to walk back through it, to receive the hug he wanted to give; but in the hour that he sat there, Bob never came back.
Bob, while manic, gets fed up with John constantly coddling him and inserting his own beliefs on what is best for Bob that he snaps at John to "not saying anything unless I fucking ask for it." Unfortunately, Bob unconsciously drew on Sentry when he said that.
Now John can't say anything unless he is responding to a direct question. Not a word, a whisper, or a murmur can pass from his lips unless someone asks.
It takes a long time for anyone to realize.
HELP this hurts omg. this concept is so interesting i love the idea of bob Not Knowing how his powers work. i imagine the whole team is used to being on their own and sometimes they just need space so any one of them being quiet/isolating for a few days isn't really a concern. so john stops talking and nobody really thinks about it. they just give him space. and bob thinks that john is mad at him and he doesn't want to make it worse. but really john can't talk and can't tell anyone 💔 godd poor john
here i wrote a little thing based on this concept i hope that you like it :)
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“Don’t say anything unless I fucking ask for it!”
The words burned as they left his lips. Bob knew that he was manic, but he couldn’t tell whether his irritation was justified. Sure, John had a point that the Zyns weren’t good for him, that he shouldn’t use them to combat the drowsiness from his meds.
But Bob was an adult. He didn’t need John to tell him about the risks he already knew; didn’t need John to try and usher him into bed when he didn’t want to sleep. Caught up in his anger, Bob didn’t notice the way John’s throat bobbed as he said nothing in response.
The silence carried into the next morning, and Bob knew what that meant. John was sulking, punishing him, giving him the silent treatment. So, Bob did what he did when he was manic, and he played up the brattiness tenfold.
He stomped into the kitchen, slammed every cabinet door, put things in the wrong places, and moved items John was working with. Normally, John would have snapped at him but that morning, he didn’t. He flinched but he didn’t say a word, didn’t even mutter to himself.
When Bob was a child, his mom’s silence had been a weapon. She’d refuse to talk to him for days, refused to crack until he fell to his knees and sobbed her forgiveness for whatever it was that he’d done. The worst part was that where sometimes it helped, sometimes it made it worse, made it stretch longer.
So, with John, Bob refused to crack first. For days, he let his chest tighten until it suffocated him, let John’s hurt stare burn into his. He stopped sneaking into John’s room at night, stopped shadowing him when he wanted attention. If he just waited, eventually, like Bob’s mom, John would crack.
But John didn’t crack.
Eventually, the silence changed into something not just painful but unbearable. Bob sat on the opposite side of the common area from John, watching as he folded laundry with military precision. He didn’t speak, didn’t whisper, didn’t even make the little jokes under his breath when he noticed garments were missing (having found their way into Bob’s hamper instead).
“Do you want to break up?” Bob asked, words fast and almost frantic. John froze, a jacket slung over his arm as he turned to look at Bob. “Stop staring and answer me.”
“No,” said John. Nothing more, nothing less. Just no.
“Then why won’t you talk to me?” He’d been convinced he was at the end of his episode with how much self-doubt he’d had since their argument. But John’s continued refusal to speak fueled his anger, reinvigorated that intense irritation. “John, just tell me why you won’t talk to me.”
“Because I can’t.”
“Why?” The silence stretched long enough for Bob to snap, “For fuck’s sake, answer me.”
John clicked his jaw as he set the jacket down on the cushion behind him. He took a deep breath, voice hoarse when he answered, “Because you told me not to.”
Bob blinked. It didn’t make sense as an answer. John was good at holding a grudge, but he wasn’t that petty. Especially when Bob was actively trying to talk things through.
But then he looked back on the last few days. He thought about his every interaction with John, and considered the times when John responded. It was true—he only spoke when Bob asked him to. Even around the others, he only spoke if Bob gave him permission first.
“This isn’t funny,” said Bob, unwilling to admit the horrifying truth. “I didn’t make you stop talking, you’re just doing it. Like how my mom would do it. You’re just— You’re punishing me. You can talk; you’re just punishing me.”
John shook his head, but he didn’t speak. He just stared at Bob, eyes wide and sad. He’d told the truth. Bob, somehow, had stripped him of his ability to speak. His heart pounded, breath caught in his throat as he stared at his hands like they were weapons.
“What the fuck?” he muttered, tears building in his eyes. Not out of sadness but of guilt, of fear. “What the fuck did I do to you?”
The only answer he got was a shrug. Because John hadn’t been given permission to speak so he couldn’t. He’d thought that John was withholding his words as a weapon, but he was being forced to keep them in. Bob was the one inflicting the punishment all along and he hadn’t even realized it.
At the very least, he could say his mom had never done that.
Bob jumped off the couch and walked over to John. He sat in front of him on the floor and took John’s hands into his, stared right into his eyes like it could somehow undo whatever he’d done.
“You can talk now,” said Bob, hands squeezing the life out of John’s. “You can talk. Please, John, talk to me. Just say something. Anything. I want you to talk. Please. Please, talk to me.”
“What do you want me to say?” The words were stiff, almost mechanical. They still weren’t John’s. They were waiting for a command, waiting to tell Bob what he wanted to hear.
“Fuck. No. No, no, no, I take it back. I didn’t mean that I— I was just mad. Just say something, please. You can talk again. You don’t need my permission. Please.” Nothing. No answer. Just John’s hands pulling away from his. Then they wrapped around his waist, pulled him into an embrace he didn’t deserve as he cried, “I didn’t mean to do this. I didn’t know I could— I want you to talk. You can talk. You can tell me you hate me, I don’t care. Just say something. Please.”
Bob’s head fell on John’s shoulder as he gasped for air from his rambling. John grasped Bob tightly, let out a slow exhale against his neck, and said softly, “I love you.”
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