one of my favourite things about the winter soldier though
in the original arc, it takes a deus ex machina to make a dent in the winter soldier’s programming. steve has to bend reality to get past the mix of amnesia, brain damage and brainwashing that prevents bucky from remembering. he thinks appealing to sentiment and emotions will be enough and he tells the winter soldier to shoot him, and the winter soldier shoots him in the face without a second thought. steve literally has to rewrite the fabric of reality itself with a magical macguffin to save bucky.
and then you have the movie. after two minutes of violent knifeporn and steve calling him ‘bucky,’ the winter soldier starts to crack. and then again, during their final showdown, he starts to crack through nothing more that the sheer force of steve’s kicked puppy eyes and bloody-minded miserable desperation and the power of friendship.
that’s it: this is steve roger’s superpower. heart.
