I wonder how badly it hurts Steve, once he wakes up in the hospital and gathers his bearings and has it explained to him exactly what happened after he dropped the shield and gave up the fight and fell from that ship in the sky.
I wonder how badly it hurts him, the absolutely gutting irony of it. That he had taken a seemingly fatal fall and yet, here he is alive and recovering because Bucky had followed him down. Bucky, who had renounced the memory of his own name, who had looked at Steve with blank, shuttered eyes and had driven a metal fist repeatedly into his face, but who had still chosen to dive out of the sky after him and drag him to safety.
I wonder how badly it hurts after Nat gives him that file and he discovers exactly what had been done to Bucky to turn him into a weapon. The realization that he could have prevented it if he had only gone in after him. How badly it must hurt him knowing that even a Bucky stripped of his identity and forcibly outfitted with a new one, implanted only with memories of violence, had chosen to follow him down and pull him out. How badly it must hurt knowing that even when he had nothing else left, there had still been something intrinsicâsome instinct or muscle memory that even Hydraâs very worst couldnât strip him ofâthat drove Bucky to follow him down and save him.
I wonder how badly it hurts to bear witness to the weapon Hydra forged in the hellfire to which his failure doomed his best friend, and to have to live afterwards with the knowledge that even brainwashed and broken, Bucky did not fail him. How badly it must hurt knowing that Bucky did for him precisely what he did not do for Bucky.
