He was lucky. It didn't often feel like it, but he really was lucky. Sure, he had slept for over seven decades, but when he woke up, he was still himself. He could still think for himself, make his own decisions, choose his own path to take. He made a few friends, even more enemies, fought evil, and reported it all back to a commander, just like he'd done back in 1945. He didn't have to, but he chose to anyway.
Not so with Bucky.
Bucky had no choice. He had woken up to brainwashing and complete control. He missed as much time as Steve, but the difference was that when he woke up, his future was already decided for him. What he did in this new century - this new era - was not up to him. It was up to his masters.
Commanded and tortured by Hydra, hunted by everyone else with a price on his head, he came back into the world a wanted criminal fugitive. No chance to make friends and allies, his enemies already chosen for him, he was controlled as effectively as one might control an android.
Even when he was lucid, even when he remembered snatches of his past life, there were the trigger words. Always, lurking in the back of his mind, the trigger words, waiting to release that other side of him. The side that wasn't Bucky Barnes. The side that was the Winter Soldier.
Was it little wonder, then, that he chose to return to suspended animation? Could he be blamed for making that choice, the choice to hide from what he had done, and what he might again do? Steve certainly couldn't hold it against him, though it didn't make his friend's decision any easier to bear.
As he watched the ice creep up the glass tube, freezing his friend and preserving him in cryosleep, he thought back to their old life together. Bucky was always the strong one, rescuing Steve when he got beaten up - again - giving him support and encouragement when the smaller man was gripped by depression, looking out for him and being his shield against the rest of the world, while at the same time trying to propel his small friend out of his shell.
It was strange, the super soldier reflected, how absolutely the roles had been reversed. Now he was the strong one, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Now he looked out for his friend, protecting him from his enemies and holding him up when he was about to shatter. He was the shield, and now he always would be.
The ice crusting the glass hid Bucky from his view, but he stood there a moment longer, staring at the tube that contained his best friend. Who knew when the WWII veteran-cum-agent of Hydra would return to the land of the living. Steve had a pretty good idea, and it made his heart as heavy as the train from which Bucky had fallen, almost eighty years previously.
He would not come out of the cryosleep 'til Steve was dead and gone, and the world had all but forgotten the person known as the Winter Soldier. He would return to the world when the world no longer hunted him, when he was just another man and not a universally hated murderer, when Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. had faded from fact to legend to myth, and where his exploits of this century had been forgotten. Captain Rogers knew it, and it filled his heart with a leaden weight - not only because he would never see Bucky again, but because he knew that, wherever and whenever his friend awoke, he would never belong. Just like Steve didn't belong.
He would always be the man from a different century - the man caught out of time.