Bucky + Peggy
"You know, I don't know. I bet you could have a lengthy discussion with my therapist about that one. Just don't bring out your book and start taking notes." Bucky shuddered. He'd hated when the doc had done that. He'd say something or, in most cases, not say something and there she'd go clicking her pen, jotting down something passive-aggressive about his attitude. But for Peggy's sake, because she deserved a genuine heartfelt answer to that, Bucky dug a little deeper. "Maybe I'm just so used to feeling more like an object than a person, it's where I'm most comfortable."
Zemo had confessed to him in their first conversation at the hotel, after a gulp of liquid courage, that he saw a good heart in him. It'd been difficult to believe that Zemo saw more to him than a super-soldier. The Winter Soldier. He had been the means to an end, he'd said. Zemo had used him. Bucky had turned around and done the same right back to him. Strange then, wasn't it, how they started to see each other as something more.
Then, Peggy took another shot at him.
What would he do? "Steve's allowed to ...dabble. He's kind of the one who started it." He hadn't held what happened in the kitchen that day against Steve but it'd stuck in his mind for awhile. Maybe that was why he'd let himself stray. "I wouldn't ask him to do something I wouldn't be willing to do myself for him. If he chose you, if that was what he wanted, well I already accepted that fate once before. I could do it again."