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It pains me to think about Steve before the serum...
I was just thinking about the few scenes that we've seen of Steve before the serum, especially the scene were Steve has just come home from his mother's funeral and Bucky is trying to convince Steve to allow him to help. Sure look at the scene, watch the action, but then go back and rewatch it and look at the surroundings...how very poor Steve was, how very little but Bucky Steve had. How could anyone think that Steve - for one second - would not protect Bucky after everything that Bucky did for Steve. That one line - Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky - it is so very vital to everything that means anything to Steve....




Yeah. Thinking about that hurts my heart.
That one scene just grabs my heart and it hurts!
Depression era kids right there: their parents scraped a living out of 'round the block bread lines and soup kitchens, Hoovervilles, and half the topsoil of the great plains falling on the city as red clay rain. You learn the value of loyal friends when you live in crisis-poverty like that, and you never throw anything of value like that away. You learn how to repair, rewire, patch, and rescue everything you possibly can, including and especially friendships and allegiances.
Strive could no more abandon Bucky knowing there would be no one in the world on his side, than he could have left Natasha to die when Pierce bombed the Fort Lehigh bunker.
It's really heartbreaking but it's sad that many don't really don't seem to take into account how really difficult Steve's life was before the serum or the fact that he lived far more of his life that way than "post serum". I almost wished they'd spent more time on that in TFA or in Russos flashbacks, we just got the barest glimpse of the fact that he was viewed as an easy target and either patronized or sneered at much of the time, just so it would the hardships of his life would carry a bit more weight because Steve himself is mostly never going to complain or talk about them and as a result I think sometimes people ignore what a big part of who he is they are- despite TFA making it the basis of why HE was the perfect candidate for the serum experiment. "Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky" is probably about as close to talking about how desperately lonely and hard his life was as Steve's gonna get.
He was, and always had been, poor and once his mother died(and tuberculosis usually was not a quick illness, she likely suffered for at least a couple years and spent at least a few months in charity sanitoriums like The Brooklyn Home for Consumption and Steve probably didn't get to see her very often then, they usually didn't allow much visiting). Most likely she hadn't worked much during that time either, I can't even imagine how difficult it would have been. Not to mention scary - he's 16, 17 years old, his mother is sick with a frequently fatal disease, they have no money and probably have rely almost completely on charity for her healthcare, he himself isn't even close to being a well person so even if he manages to scrounge up some sort of job, after school because obviously education was so important to his mother he graduated high school rather than leaving school after 8th or 9th grade to add to the family income like a lot of teens did, the pay is going to be terrible
Bucky really was all he had. Steve was 18 years old, poor, ill and alone - except for Bucky.
Even if it hadn't been the "right thing to do"(and IMO it was because Bucky was framed, tortured, brainwashed, etc, etc) of course Steve was going to protect the one person in the world who had probably made his life worth living, who was kind when so many people weren't, who treated him like he was worth something when to most people he probably wasn't.