but you know what really gets to me? how deeply and instinctively steve associates bucky with solace. with love. with mutual devotion.
he sees bucky again for the first time since 1945, standing on the business end of a gun, and through the pain and shock of this earth-shattering revelation, what does he say? what is the only thought he keeps coming back to? "even when i had nothing, i had bucky." which is such a powerful and, and intimate line, it knocks the breath out of you.
he has a moment to himself to gather his thoughts, and where does his mind travel to? to the lowest point of his life. the day he had to bury the only parent he had ever known, and found himself entirely alone in the world. yet the focus of that memory isn't so much on steve's grief, as you would expect; it's rather on bucky's comforting presence, his support, his unconditional affection. it's bucky offering to be steve's home, both literally and figuratively, and reminding steve that this, this thing between them, it's forever, no matter what.
there's just, this unspoken but very palpable tenderness between them, that steve keeps calling back to throughout the movie.
even when bucky's actively shooting at him, stabbing him, punching him with all the superhuman strength in his arm, steve doesn't see a heartless killing machine that must be stopped. even beaten to a pulp and on his way to bleeding to death, when steve looks up at bucky, he only ever sees the boy who loved him. the boy he has loved his whole life.
and now, now bucky's the one who has nothing. bucky's been stripped of everything: his name, his humanity, his sense of self, his freedom, his past. his entire life. for the past 70 years, he has been nothing but a weapon passed from hand to hand, used and brutalized without remorse.
and steve walks into that helicarrier determined to show him that what bucky told him that day, all those years ago? it goes both ways. that even now that bucky's got nothing, he still has steve, even if bucky doesn't remember that yet.
steve takes his helmet off, and lets go of his shield, and lays himself bare to bucky's rage - makes himself vulnerable in every way he possibly can - to show bucky that no matter what, there is one person in this world who loves him, and always will. that he's not alone, not anymore. steve will never let that happen again, even if it costs him his own life.
like god, if that isn't tenderness, i don't know what is.
