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Bucky wonders sometimes if he was ever really a violent person. The Bucky of Steve’s memories was charming, laid back, funny. He knows he didn’t go to war on purpose. He remembers, half way, a childhood and pre-war adulthood at Steve’s side, remembers fights with stakes so low they seem like fairytales. But he doesn’t remember wanting them, doesn’t remember the burning that lurks somewhere beneath the skin.
He wonders if it's something they did to him, to make him the winter soldier, or if it’s something being the winter soldier did to him.
He hates it now, the fighting. He hates it, but he loves it too. There’s the lighthearted sort of love, when he’s by Steve’s side, and the memories feel close to the surface, following Steve close on the scent of bullshit like always. But there’s the other love, the love-hate, that he hardly ever indulges, the aching to let himself off the leash, to rage and destroy. He’s not sure where that came from, not sure if it belongs to him, or if it’s a part of him that still belongs to someone else, and he’s not sure which is worse.