#the whole thing would be absolutely shakespearean if it weren't so goddamn out of character

[5ummit]

Stucky used to be my comfort ship.

I used to think Steve and Bucky cared for each other so deeply and tragically that their love – even if only viewed as platonic – could not be denied by anyone. Not after Steve spent THREE whole movies, the entire Cap trilogy, proving how much Bucky meant to him over and over and over. Steve was willing to fight for him and die for him in every single movie. I used to think that even if Marvel gave Steve another love interest, even if he died in Endgame, it wouldn’t change or negate how devoted they were to each other. That they would still be friends “til the end of the line.”

Little did I know what awaited me in Endgame was a fate worse than death.

Steve left and in doing so rewrote everything we thought we knew about him and his relationship with Bucky. About who Steve is as a character entirely. It wasn’t just that he abandoned his supposed best friend, who he had been chasing and obsessing over for years. Who was there for him and looked after him ever since they were children. If Steve had left the Bucky he used to know in the 1940s for some love interest and a life without him, it would still be pretty out of character, but I would eventually get over it. 1940s!Bucky was confident, happy, and had family and friends who cared about him. Endgame!Bucky is not that Bucky.

Endgame!Bucky is broken and lost and just now learning how to be a person again. Endgame!Bucky has no friends and no family. Endgame!Bucky just spent the last 70 years of his life going from one fight to another, being brainwashed and tortured and manipulated and abused. Endgame!Bucky is clinging by a thread to the one and only thing he knows and values in this world: Steve.

This is the Bucky that Steve chose to leave.

If Steve was any kind of friend at all – if Steve was truly a hero and the morally upstanding person he’s portrayed as, a person worthy of wielding Mjolnir – he would know these things about Bucky, his best friend since childhood, and at the very least, would refuse to leave his side until Bucky had some sort of support network and seemed well-adjusted enough to handle it. But he doesn’t. Even in their farewell scene when Bucky (looking like a kicked puppy) says to him “I’m gonna miss you” Steve won’t even echo the sentiment. He just says “it’s gonna be okay,” as if he’s aware of the pain Bucky must be in and essentially tells him, “don’t worry, you’ll get over it.” And I’m not even going to get into the terrible way Steve treated his other best friend, Sam, by keeping him completely in the dark about his plans for absolutely no reason and abandoning him as well.

Marvel didn’t just make Steve act out of character in Endgame in an effort to no-homo him and create a ~surprise twist~. They didn’t just make him a bit selfish and a bad friend. They straight up made him a villain, and I will never ever forgive them for it.