#i am also emotional about transfem WS / bucky because of the ideas around being a girl who has that specter

[totallynotdead]

Transfeminine Bucky feeling lost outside of her role as Big Man On Campus Protecting The Little Guy. Slumping in the bar looking sardonically at her best friend, her best friend who doesn't love her, her best friend who loves this woman who is upstanding and courageous and perfect in ways she can't ever be. Transfeminine Bucky picked up out of the snow and strapped into that machine against her will, and also because it's how she already feels anyway -- like this big machine used for war, not only because of her skill for fighting but because fighting was the only way anyone allowed her to feel like she was being a good person, and here she is again, being made to be a machine, and does she really care that much? Same robot, different body. At least the Winter Soldier was a man that didn't leave her, which she couldn't say as much for Steve. "You've got him all wrong," she'd say, decades later, post-transition, stiffly turning away at Natasha's very impertinent question, late at night in the apartment. Natasha, wondering what the Soldier was thinking these days, and surprised that her friend would defend him now of all times. Wasn't he the man she never wanted to be? Wasn't he literally the boy she was forced to become? "No--shut up, it's not like I like him. Fuck. I'm saying he actually fucking stayed, which I can't say for anybody else."