hahahahhAHAHHAHAHAH
NO
B Y E
Everything about the wipe is so sickening. This scene as a whole was the most horrifying thing I’ve seen in the MCU to date and yes, I remember Iron Man and Tony’s torture and no, this is still the most horrifying thing.
It’s not just the utterly sickening lack of agency, and the fact that he is half naked and injured and surrounded by men in swat gear with guns and rifles pointed at him. It’s not just the fact that you know he could take down everyone in this room without even breaking a sweat and yet he doesn’t. It’s not even just Pierce backhanding him, like he’d hit a broken toy to try and get it to start again.
It’s the fact that there’s something there. There’s something he’s hanging on to, desperately, there’s something clawing at him and it hurts because he’s remembering and he doesn’t know what it means, he doesn’t have parameters to deal with this, he’s overwhelmed and in pain and resigned that it’s going to be taken away from him but it’s too important to let it go. He speaks out of turn, “But I knew him,” he knows he’s going to hurt, now, his body remembers, he hyperventilates before the head piece is even in place, but someone gave him a name and that is too important, that he can’t let go, he can’t shove it back. And if you look here?
This isn’t resignation. This is defiance. This is emotional bleed. He knows he’s being lied to. He knows, just as he viscerally knew the man on the bridge. They’re going to try and take it away from him, and the last thing he can remember thinking as the headpiece slots in place is to hold on, just hold on, hold on to the name, hold on to that face, he can hold on, he can.
And he does. He fucking does. After Steve cracked him open, not even the wipe, not even the electroshock and the pain and the threat of what would happen to him if he failed was enough to shake off that bone-deep feeling that he knew him. The asset might’ve taken down Captain america, but Bucky Barnes would never, ever harm Steve Rogers. Hydra done and fucked up. They forgot these men’s identities, discarded them, regarded them as not relevant; but the moment Steve was able to break through and give Bucky back a doubt, a shred of sense of self, their whole programming collapsed like a fucking house of cards.
They forgot, banally, that there was still a person inside their beautifully carved weapon. And I can’t wait for the moment where James Buchanan Barnes reminds them. The time of reckoning is upon Hydra, and it’s going to be glorious.
