Bucky, much as he tries to engage his rusty, broken, tampered, refurbished old brain from time to time, is oblivious to what he's done, how he's made Arthur feel. He's singularly focused on the task, and he's utilitarian in his thinking. Where Arthur can contribute, like getting them into the hospital even though Bucky could have gotten himself in if he made something up about wanting a consultation about a prosthetic or whatever, he would let Arthur take the lead. But where he perceives a blind man stumbling around potentially drawing unwanted attention to them, somebody he has to babysit rather than being able to provide value added services, Arthur has to sit in the car like a sulking teenage boy. And obviously Arthur understands this transactional way of viewing the world, the way everyone who has used and abused and activated and discarded their Siberian asset has always viewed the world, so it's definitely nothing personal, and there's no hard feelings.
And Arthur, unfortunately, is stuck with someone who has gotten beaten when he questions orders, has come to expect that orders will be followed when they are given. Someone who has operated on a need-to-know basis for 80 years and had his curiosity and most of the other quirks of his old personality systematically burnt out of his rusty, broken, tampered, refurbished old brain. And someone who has over the years figured out that if something is happening to him and whatever his warped sense of understanding of agency is, whether it's an intimate violence cut and carved into his body or being a pawn trapped in someone else's chessboard with restricted fields of movement, he doesn't actually want to know what's happening to him, or why. It's psychologically and emotionally safer this way.
To Bucky's credit, he'd make a great Uber driver. But he's a poor companion to an inquisitive blind man. He tilts his head to look over Arthur's shoulder in case he missed something, but the car looks intact and there's no one else around. The headtilt sort of stays locked in place and his eyes narrow a bit as he tries to figure out why his passenger is so pissed off.
"I thought I told you to stay in the car."
Nailed it. Complete with calm-but-lowkey-patronising dad voice and everything.
no subject
And Arthur, unfortunately, is stuck with someone who has gotten beaten when he questions orders, has come to expect that orders will be followed when they are given. Someone who has operated on a need-to-know basis for 80 years and had his curiosity and most of the other quirks of his old personality systematically burnt out of his rusty, broken, tampered, refurbished old brain. And someone who has over the years figured out that if something is happening to him and whatever his warped sense of understanding of agency is, whether it's an intimate violence cut and carved into his body or being a pawn trapped in someone else's chessboard with restricted fields of movement, he doesn't actually want to know what's happening to him, or why. It's psychologically and emotionally safer this way.
To Bucky's credit, he'd make a great Uber driver. But he's a poor companion to an inquisitive blind man. He tilts his head to look over Arthur's shoulder in case he missed something, but the car looks intact and there's no one else around. The headtilt sort of stays locked in place and his eyes narrow a bit as he tries to figure out why his passenger is so pissed off.
"I thought I told you to stay in the car."
Nailed it. Complete with calm-but-lowkey-patronising dad voice and everything.