Something that had already caught my attention when I first watched Captain America: Civil War, and that now receives my full love, is the scene at the end of the movie when Steve says “I can do this all day” once Tony tells him to surrender. While it is cool in itself that it mirrors skinny Steve from the 1940s, it is cooler to me for another reason.
As soon as Steve says “I can do this all day”, a heavily beaten Bucky lying on the floor, and devoid of his metal arm reaches for Tony’s leg, to stop him from hitting Steve. This mirrors the real Bucky, the guy who befriended Steve when both were children, the guy who always got Steve’s back, who didn’t care about Captain America but for the little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb to run from a fight.
To me that’s the crucial Bucky moment of the whole movie. That’s the moment when you know why Steve is fighting for Bucky. Inside of that broken, pretty dehumanised man, is still that kid from Brooklyn who couldn’t bare to see his best friend hurting.
The follow up of the “I can do this all day” scene in Captain America: the First Avenger is this:
They did go to the future. Yes, things changed and both of them changed, but at the same time they are still the same. The tiny, skinny, sickly kid who would never run from a fight, and his best friend, who would be with him till the end of the line.
Some time ago there was a post on my dashboard saying that the Captain America trilogy is beautifully symmetric, for Steve Rogers picked up the shield for Bucky and gave the shield up for Bucky, becoming Captain America and retiring from that position because of his friend. But to me that’s not it.
To me this trilogy is beautifully symmetric because of those two mirroring scenes I talked about above. Because Steve Rogers can expend his whole day, not to say his whole life, fighting for what he believes is right, and Bucky Barnes will always get his back, till the end of the line. Be it in the 1940s or the 21st century.
Captain America is Steve Rogers. A shield doesn’t make him. Being able to “do this all day” is what makes Captain America, be it in the past or in the future. From beginning to end Steve Rogers is not a perfect soldier, but a good man. At the same time, Bucky Barnes is not what Hydra made of him, what it made him do. He isn’t just a perfect soldier. Inside the perfect soldier “ready to comply” has always been trapped a good man.
The tragedy of this scene is that Steve isn’t allowed to articulate that answer. He says “it wasn’t you”, and when Bucky replies “but I did it”, he remains silent.
Later, as they’re about to exit the plane, Steve seems to realize that he still needs to say something, and he brings up that memory from their time together before the war. It’s certainly better than nothing, and Bucky clearly appreciates it. But what does it really mean to Bucky that after he’s essentially stated: “the person I am now is the result of the things that were done to me, the things that I was made to do”,
the only response Steve can muster up
is “but remember when none of those things were part of you yet? Those were good times”.
For Steve, Bucky is worth it all, no matter what. But does Bucky know that? Does Bucky believe it? Or does he remember Steve asking him coldly “which Bucky am I talking to?”, smiling at him only when a memory of the distant past is brought up,
telling him “it wasn’t you”, yelling at Tony “it wasn’t him, it wasn’t him”, and see it as proof that Steve is in denial? That he’s risking everything he has in this future because he can’t let go of the hope that the original Bucky, somehow, can still be recovered intact, untainted and unchanged, from the wreckage that is the Bucky of now?
And after coming to this conclusion, does Bucky feel like he owes it to Steve to be what Steve wants? When he says “
until they figure out how to get this stuff out of my head”, does he just mean the triggers, or does he mean ALL of it? Does he expect to be cured, or does he expect to be reset?
After one of the times I saw Captain America: Civil War in the theatre, minim-calibre and I were sitting in her car talking about this scene and shrieking like a couple of Beatlemaniacs at Shea Stadium. “Do you know what this means?” “They’re working together as a team, they probably practiced this in the war!”
It’s so amazing, you guys: Bucky sees the second flashbang come in, he remembers enough about Steve to know that if he kicks it to him, Steve can protect them with his shield. Despite all the faults of his memory, and trying to pretend he doesn’t remember Steve, when the grenades are flying, he instinctually knows what to do and what Steve is capable of. He trusts Steve. I feel like this is some kind of next-level Battle Boyfriends broccoli test shit, and I love it.
Now, flashbangs (stun grenades) weren’t developed until the ‘70s, because in wartime the whole point of a grenade is to, you know, kill the enemy, not disorient them with nonlethal means. And I’m assuming these are flashbangs both from the shape and the fact that we’ve seen that Steve could be blown off a freeway by an actual concussion or fragmentation grenade, and this would have less force on detonation – otherwise Steve might have been blown backward through those walls (and flashbangs can have lethal consequences, there are some really horrific instances of that happening). But I could be wrong!
Still, I have no problem with headcanoning that Howard Stark would see it as a fun challenge to come up with a stun-type grenade they could use to, say, clear an enclosed space without risking their personnel. There was a type of concussion grenade used in WWII but it was designed to actually produce casualties in close combat or used for demolition, so Howard could have cooked it up as just one more toy to add to their arsenal.
I can just see Steve and Bucky practicing all kinds of maneuvers, testing how far he could go before injury, driving everyone around them to fits with their dangerous shenanigans, etc. One of the few things I liked about Age of Ultron was Steve and Thor doing their hammer-shield tricks; I loved imagining them concocting all those ridiculous moves and probably accidentally clobbering each other unconscious all the time, or zapping each other with lightning until they figured out exactly how to make things work. And I love the fanon that Steve was probably always practicing shield tricks like the step and flip in the elevator scene in Winter Soldier; I especially love thinking of Bucky heckling him from the sidelines while he made up uses for it.
I just think it’s really obvious here that despite everything, Bucky trusts Steve to know what his intention is, that Steve will react quickly, that this exactly like they used to practice together in the war. They’re working together again, for this brief moment, before everything goes to hell. And I am so emotionally compromised by it, I just really need them to be Battle Boyfriends together again, okay?
I’m finally finished! I can feel the carpal tunnel creeping. Worth it. Me deepest regret is that I won’t be able to paint a Team Iron Man one in time for Ottawa Comic Con OTL
Zynn's Exodus 