He thinks he understands why Bucky went off the grid and refuses to be found after DC – after the Potomac.

Actually, Steve knows why Bucky has become a ghost again.

In the mural painted with deep reds and blues, depicts the former Bucky Barnes. Younger, unscathed, unburdened, this is Sergeant Barnes who is still just a kid from Brooklyn. He is an only son, an older brother to four younger siblings, and Steve Roger's only friend – his best friend.

This Bucky is the man who protected him from schoolyard bullies that picked on him for his health ailments or tried to take his lunch money his mother scraped to get. Bucky is the man who encouraged him to pursue and develop his artistic skills. The same man who tried his hardest to find a suitable dame for me.

This is the Bucky who never abandoned him and treated him like an invalid because of his medical history.

Bucky Barnes was the first person outside of his mother to see him, to see Steven Grant Rogers.

The man he is staring at who in his opinion deserves the recognition more than him like the other men who supported him – fought with him. If it wasn't for them, he wouldn't have been able to disable many of the Hydra's bases back in the 40s.

If it wasn't for them – Bucky – he is sure he wouldn't be the Captain America people know.

Steve's eyes trace over every inch of the painting to the point he daydreams it will miraculously solidify and Bucky will walked out from the wall. His blues eye wouldn't be cold and detached. They would hold the determination to complete a mission, but Steve decides to overlook it for a moment. They would be the sky blue that made Steve believe the sky wasn't the limit when it came to his dreams. They would be the inspiring hue that he was sure Bucky regretted sometimes encouraging considering all the lectures Steve received after every fight or rejected enlistment card.

The Bucky before him is the guy who lit his sister's doll on fire for ruining one of Steve's drawings. Steve could admit it was a bit dramatic, but apparently Bucky really liked the drawing.

The young Sergeant is the man who would care for him like a brother. The man who let his mother pass in peace knowing there was someone out there caring for her only child.

This is the Bucky before the fall.

Maybe Bucky knew this after he pulled him from the river. Even in his confused state from him trying to pull him back from Hydra's abuse, he knew.

After all, this assassin, The Winter Soldier, resided in him longer than he was James Buchanan Barnes.

For 70 years, he was trapped inside an identity forcibly given to him. Knowing Bucky, he knew he didn't go down without fight. He read the file Natasha gave to him. The memory swiping gave away how they stripped Bucky's self and autonomy from him. He quickly honed in on the terminology they used to describe Bucky. He wasn't even a person he was it, Asset, Soldier. He didn't even want to think about the treatment that wasn't cataloged in the file.

Steve's stomach lurched from the thought he was frozen inside ice while his friend was frozen – trapped – by the enemy he thought he got rid of moments ago in that plane. Maybe he should have listened to Peggy inside of performing that sacrifice. If he listened maybe he would have found Bucky instead of Soviet agents. Maybe he should have went down to those ravines himself and searched for his friend.

Steve shook his head as he heard Peggy's voice telling him it wasn't his fault as she did in that depilated London bar in '45. He even heard Natasha telling him not to pull on that thread as he looked at the mural of his comrade.

He wonders if Bucky came to this exhibit. If Bucky recognized him or most importantly himself, but Steve thought that would be worse to see himself on a glass wall and not to even recognize his own face – his own name.

Sadly, Steve deduces he had too and that was why he wasn't here with him.

He knew Steve was looking for the Bucky memorialized in glass and on a wall. The Bucky that he had stored in his memories he thought he lost in that cold winter in 1944.

Maybe Steve was.

A part of him was.