He tried to be conscious of how these decisions would weigh for Bucky, what he would need to feel safe. He had been so long without agency, without the right to choose, every decision concerning him made by someone else without thought to his desires or needs or well-being. It was horrifying to try to imagine what that must have been like, and the idea of being another sort of keeper to Bucky was viscerally sickening.

But at the same time Steve was aware that their bond gave him a right and responsibility to look after his friend. No one other than Bucky himself could know better than Steve what his needs were, when he was exhausted or in pain, when he felt afraid. There had to be trust, he thought, stroking Bucky's cheek, drawn to the sweetness of his mouth and his soft sigh, the open, generous way he responded to their intimacy. Bucky was trusting him, just as he trusted Bucky while he was in the reach of that metal arm and all the damage he knew the Winter Soldier could do. Steve wanted desperately to prove himself worthy of it. "I can get in touch with Natasha, see what she can find," he said quietly. "Unless you know a place for us, Buck. I'll go with you."

He'd hid himself for two years, after all. Wherever he'd been, whatever kinds of conditions he'd lived in, it had to have met his needs for solitude and safety.

Steve didn't like thinking about the helicarrier, but he followed Bucky's train of thought back to it, the moment that desperation and horror had given way to clarity: he was ready to die because there was no living in a world where Bucky was his enemy. "I knew it too. That was why I--I stopped fighting." How could you fight the one you were bonded to? It was like rending your own soul into pieces.