Fleshing this out as I write it, but: Bucky and Steve’s respective movements to the modern world through the lens of their respective fighting skills & styles
Because Steve’s never really changes all that much. He fought with a shield and sometimes a gun, then he got frozen. And the modern version dropped the gun partly partly bc of the weird line modern pg movies of how obviously you’re allowed to kill people on screen and partly bc he kept ending up in situations where he wasn’t fighting humans he was willing to kill, but despite all the angsting, there was still a place in this world for a supersoldier once he found it
But Bucky, he was a sniper. James Buchanan Barnes was a sniper, and the Winter Soldier was a sniper. I saw the winter soldier unmasking fight scene on here the other day, and he starts with guns. Starts with a sniper rifle, pares down to something closer range when he sees this’ll be a fight, and then it’s only when that stops being an option that he goes to knives and fists. Even when Hydra took him and brainwashed him and pointed him at his best friend, he still fought like Bucky would have - infinitely more dangerous, and against completely different people, but all the same skills.
But then he gets out of it. And he lays low for a while, and he’s no one there. But when the world comes for him again, he can’t be a sniper anymore. He’s not on a team, hasn’t been since he shook hydra. And the world’s changed in a way that makes who he used to be incompatible in a way that it didn’t for Steve. Because Steve can adapt, he can lose the gun and he can join shield, he can be a vigilante in the night. But what role does a sniper have in this world? Personally I’m a fan of the Bucky was drafted theory, but even if not, I don’t think he’d fit back into a military. Wouldn’t trust people, wouldn’t be able to take orders without feeling like someone else’s tool again. There’s no real role for a true sniper in the avengers, no time to sit and plan, no place where someone can be above the action.
And so what can Bucky do but become the Winter Soldier in a way that he never was when he was Hydra? In CW, in TFATWS, he’s fighting hand to hand. Going in with close range attacks, fighting multiple opponents at once. He’s a soldier, not a sniper.
Steve got flashed forward to a time where he didn’t quite belong, but could find a place. Bucky found his way to the future, but in living there was forced to become all the ways in which he had lost himself along the way.
