Back on my ATTYPF Bullshit
This post is about All the Things You Prayed For by @marywhal and @anonymousalchemist and if you haven’t read it you should.
Sorry I’m feeling emotional about these BOYS after Chapter 29, but I’m losing it over this au and I have been for two weeks, and I have some Thoughts.
What I’ve been thinking about the Most in the wake of the three flashback chapters is just how much closer Taako and Kravitz were than I expected from any of the Taakitz foreshadowing we received in the previous chapters. I mean, firstly, it’s such a testament to the writers that they managed to surprise me so much with that - fanfiction is a unique genre in that we are not expecting, and many times, don’t care to be surprised. It’s a genre built on knowledge that the reader already has. I went into this fic expecting Taakitz, because it was in the tags, because I know canon and fanon for these characters and I was expecting a super spy overlay. So the fact that after 26 chapters of buildup and foreshadowing, they still had secrets that I was shocked to find out is amazing.
Taako and Kravitz didn’t just have a fling, they were together. They weren’t just together, they were in love. To the point that they broke countless laws consuming American culture and staying on missions suspiciously long and idealizing running away, which is entirely antithetical to their training. To the point that the Winter Soldier refused to be put in cryo again and Kravitz was like 2 seconds away from fighting the technicians off if the Winter Soldier decided to.
So I wasn’t expecting that level of commitment between them to begin with.
But it’s amazing to me how, when viewed in the context of what we learned from chapters 27-29, Kravitz’s behavior for the rest of the fic makes so much more sense. And it shows so much of his character.
Kravitz has been able to remember his relationship with the Winter Soldier this Whole Time. For the last fifty some-odd years, Kravitz has been thinking about the Winter Soldier, running over all the details of their relationship over and over again in his head. I don’t remember exactly when in time he met the version of the Winter Soldier who shot him in the gut, but it happened somewhere in there.
So when Kravitz sees Lup trying to reason with a fully Winter Soldiered Taako, and is so convinced that it’s impossible to break the WS’s training with words, it’s not just that he’s had experience fighting the WS, it might be that he’s had experience trying to do the same damn thing.
He’s been where Lup is, looking at someone he loves under the WS programming, and wishing desperately to be recognized. And if the Winter Soldier didn’t break programming for him, why would he for Lup?
(It makes sense that Kravitz, who was raised without a family, wouldn’t fully comprehend Taako and Lup’s relationship, to be sure, but for me it goes deeper than that.)
I mean, Kravitz isn’t stupid. While Barry and Lup are fully convinced that Taako is somewhere in there, Kravitz holds onto the idea that he’s pretending for so much longer, long enough that on my first reading of the fic I genuinely was wondering what the hell was wrong with him. I felt it wasn’t like him to be so stubborn in that way.
But in light of the flashback, it makes so much sense. If we imagine that maybe, somewhere in Kravitz’s past, he tried to pull the Winter Soldier out of his programming with a sort of “remember me?” thing like Lup did, of course he held onto the idea that it couldn’t be done. He had more information than Lup did.
But I think, even if he doesn’t recognize it, all this time Kravitz doesn’t want to believe that the Winter Soldier can break out of his programming.
Sure, he does from a human standpoint; I’m sure he doesn’t like to see people as human killing machines. But he also, in the flashbacks, is so stuck in the idea that he’s nothing more than a toy to the soldier, than a reward for good behavior. And hell, he feels that way in the modern day, at least outwardly. But he recognizes the WS’s petnames for him. He can tell when the WS cares about him.
Kravitz misses the Soldier. He never got over him. He’s still in love with him, fifty years after their relationship. Of course Kravitz wouldn’t want to believe that the WS could pull himself from his training for someone he loved. Because he didn’t do it for Kravitz. I think it’s very likely that in Kravitz’s mind, the fact that Taako was able to break his cascade triggers for the sake of Lup in chapter 17, the fact that he was able to break his programming at all simply because she asked him to, is the final nail in Kravitz’s coffin, if you will. It means that the WS programming can be overriden if only Taako loves you enough.
And it didn’t break for Kravitz.
Of course it’s flawed logic, but Kravitz, who has been largely without love for the vast majority of his life, who we know compartmentalizes his emotions with “logic” and treats things more and more clinically the more emotional he is about them, would absolutely come to that conclusion, I think.
And that, ladies and germs, has been fucking me up for days.
