#bucky stuff

[spiderculechronicals]

I know I've seen fic explore some aspects of this before, so I'm not alone in this/I'm not assuming this is revolutionary necessarily lol, but I wanna yap about the Canon Bucky Barnes "he was a prisoner in his mind the whole time Hydra was controlling him" thing apparently confirmed by the MCU filmmakers or whatever.

Okay yes maybe, but, what if it's nuanced and not quite that:

First of all, Technically it's not canon if it's only confirmed offscreen. So.

But more to the point: this is presented like the real Tragic Horror of what was done to Bucky, and like the root of his trauma and guilt was that he saw things he couldn't stop and will never forget... and it continues to affect him even now because he still has nightmares about it.

So. Okay. What if in a sense that is 1) Bucky's current lived experience in the vocabulary arrived at in therapy and 2) basically done to him in Wakanda in the process of breaking his programming with the trigger words.

Bucky is shown to seemingly have an imperfect memory of his past before Hydra. Right? Is it not the same guy struggling to remember Steve, why he knew Steve? Are we supposed to think there is an internal perfectly aware Bucky banging on the metaphorical glass behind The Asset's eyes? So why would this creature consciously remember the whole time everything that happens on every mission ever after?

He doesn't, not until he has his mind "restored" and handed back to him. That's why he's crying!

Now, okay, benefit of the doubt, the healers in Wakanda are not doing this to torture Bucky- they either are imperfectly aware of the full impact of the process, or they know that as a first step to recontextualizing and healing it is going to feel super bad because it involves confronting memories.

But then, wow, okay, Bucky has to go fight again. He knows that's a fighting arm they're giving him- and it is a beautiful gift, probably a million times more comfortable, but it is still a fighting arm. That's what he is.

Then Bucky gets shuffled around and dusted and restored, and then Steve leaves him... in the hands of Government Mandated Therapy.

Who are just making sure Bucky is a functional tool and not a threat.

Who ask him "still having nightmares?" As if there is any other answer Bucky can give that isn't answering the implied question of "If you stopped having them that would mean you're doing better, and you need to do better you need to cooperate and try, because if you are resistant and stubborn well maybe you need to be kept under lock and key for everyone's best interest. Are you still having nightmares?"

Bucky gets blamed, by implication, for his trust issues. And it is horrible because it is bad therapy but also so believable about what kind of therapy is often given to people who have no choice. The attitudes people in the military report on, when they come out traumatized.

Pilots aren't allowed to seek mental health treatment. For example. (Last time I checked, and this is commercial pilots, mind)

So Bucky... has been left with memories. And no support other than... you know. Get over it.

He didn't even have to go back in time.

He had a great past though, so he's fine.

[discocactusblogs]

I'm determined to make a Bucky Barnes / Winter Soldier hoodie... Will keep y'all updated on whether or not I do it

[autisticbvcky]

i keep questioning shit yet everything is so real. literally the only place that feels like home is an apartment in brooklyn that may or may not even exist :/

[buyxwarxbonds]

“What if she doesn’t remember you?”                                  “She will.”

[buyxwarxbonds]

@aghostamongthesoldiers

(continued from here)

If he’d thought that it was a mistake, if he wished he’d been able to take it back, the look on Bucky’s face — stunned, disbelieving and dumbstruck but with an electric flash of interest — put paid to it.  The look on Bucky’s beautiful face, the face that he loved more than any other, was everything he could have wanted in the most terrifyingly wonderful of ways.  God, Bucky’s face -- its planes and edges, the strong jaw and the almost pouty lips, the long dark lashes, the almost-too-pretty profile --  had haunted the edges of his thoughts, of his dreams, of every waking moment of his damn life for years on years now.  Had crept into his daydreams and his fantasies; was the first face he looked for in any room, the first face he hoped to find in every crowd.

Bucky hadn’t recoiled from the desire riding high in Steve’s voice — didn’t reject it or hate it, didn’t reject Steve or pretend it wasn’t there.  Instead, Bucky simply stared at him, eyes wide and with a soft gasp slipping from those gorgeous lips of his; not breaking eye contact, or looking away.  Bucky, face dusted with stubble and with that god damn toothpick between his lips, the sight of which sent a powerful wave of lust washing through Steve, strong enough that it nearly took his breath away.

Bucky, staring back at him across the leaping, dancing flames of the fire, taking the question and the challenge and all the implications wrapped up in Steve’s words and not just meeting them, accepting them and letting them lie, but returning Steve’s serve with an answering volley of his own.

Steve got to his feet, nearly dizzy, heart pounding in his chest as he moved toward Bucky, and he would have sworn on a stack of god damn bibles a minute ago that there hadn’t been more than ten feet between them.  But now that distance seemed to have doubled, tripled, exploded into a vast ocean of space and time because he’d been moving toward Bucky for forever, the world slip-sliding around him as he tried to keep himself steady, to keep his hopes and his expectations in check just in case this wasn’t going to go how he wanted (so desperately, deeply wanted) it to go.

It took a week — a god damn lifetime — to cross those few feet between his perch by the fire and Bucky’s on the other side of it, but he made it.  Somehow, he made it, and Steve found himself standing in front of Bucky, looking down at him, the sound of his own heartbeat huge and impossibly loud in his own ears, almost roaring.  Dark was starting to fall around them; true dark, the last stretches of pinks and oranges and violets in the sky deepening down to a smooth, inky indigo.  Soon even those last smudges of blue would fade, would slip away into the star-strewn northern night sky.

Already the shadows were tugging at Bucky’s skin, pulling at them both, and all of a sudden it seemed important — vital — that if they were going to do this (and god, how Steve wanted to do this) that is start now; that they didn’t wait, didn’t dance around each other until the last fading bits of dusk slipped away into the true-dark of night.  It was an almost superstitious need, something Steve didn’t quite understand; the idea that, sometimes, spells spoken and words whispered in the firelight, in the starlight, were like magic, and every bit as impossible and ephemeral — and that promises, even in gestures and touches instead of words, might be swept away back into dreams, back into fantasies, if they were made in the dark.  The thoughts came and went, swirling through him like a fever, and while later he wouldn’t remember the strange urgency those superstitious fears lent him or why they were so important at the time they were enough, right then, to keep him from backing down, from letting fear and uncertainty get in the way.

He reached down, plucked the toothpick from between Bucky’s lips.  Held it between his fingers for a moment, almost reverently, before tucking it behind his left ear.  Let his hand drift down slowly to stroke that well-loved face, the backs of his fingers ghosting over a stubbled-cheek, the play of Bucky’s five-o’clock-shadow against his skin a thrilling and entirely unexpected sensation.  His thumb traced the full, amazingly soft curve of Bucky’s lower lip, Steve biting his own in unconscious response.  Finally, seeming to be moving in slow-motion, he sank to his knees in front of Bucky, some inner, lingering echoes from childhood stirring in the back of his mind and yes, so what, who gave a fuck if it felt like he was kneeling in prayer, in communion?  Maybe he was; he didn’t know, didn’t care.  All he cared about right then was Bucky, was the electric currents swirling between them and whether or not Bucky felt them too, or if it was all in Steve’s over-heated mind.

“Show me,” he breathed, eyes wide and lips parted, sliding his hand into Bucky’s hair, fingers carding through those thick, dark strands like they’ve been aching to do for so long.  “No maybes, Buck.  Show me.  I want to know.”

[intermittently-ava]

How did you feel when Bucky proclaimed his name to be Bucky and not James? I know in a lot of fic authors had to think about the character and really decide for themselves if he would be Bucky or James or anything other. What did you think about that choice and do you think it will affect how you write in the future!

Ok, so for who didn’t see the beginning of this conversation, Nonnie asked about Civil War.

Well I think that when he corrected to “My name is Bucky" it was in response to Zemo’s repetitive naming. He could’ve used another name, and Bucky/James would have corrected him anyway.

And I think that’s because Bucky himself does not want to be a puppet, with the strings pulled by another.

He is not that anymore. “I don’t do that anymore.”

Holding someone’s name has a lot of power over an individual. How many times have I not been called by my full name in an accusatory (very subtle, very subversive, very manipulative) manner? A few times is enough, though, to cause repulsion to your own name when it’s yielded as a weapon.

As a punishment to keep you in place.

A tool for someone to use to dig into you, pull you out, step over whatever frail threads of yourself you still have.

Bucky naming himself is a matter of identity. Of standing up for himself.

It’s a fuck you to the shackles.

To the terror.

To the manipulation.

So it won’t change the way I write him. I have so many versions of Bucky/James drawn out in my head, with different personalities, different coping mechanisms, different thought patterns, which ultimately leads to variate world views and decisions. He’s a wonderful, versatile character. If he decides he’s Bucky in a fic and James in another, I’ll take it. :)

~

Thank you so much for this question. The moment I heard the line, I kept thinking about it. How he wants to be himself. So this is the best thing you could have asked, Nonnie. :)

[aurumnorthwood]

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Hold my hand Oh baby, it’s a long way down To the bottom of the river.

[ghost-story-barnes]

aaaaam i a bad person????? am i bad????