Thank you! Please allow me, if you will, to spew some meta. I decided that for the premise to really work, Bucky had to be functional and reasonably engaged, so somewhere between his 616 and MCU versions. I couldn't have him sitting in the cell with Steve and just totally zoned out or completely lost at how to deal with people. It wouldn't really work, and they wouldn't have much in the way of meaningful interaction so it'd be boring and never move. He had to know a little bit, at least enough to get by and pretend, or else Steve would figure everything out too quickly. He had to be smart and considering variables constantly, and if he was going to be smart enough to work through all of this and read Steve and adjust his approach accordingly, then he had to believe he had more agency than he did. Like Pierce appealing to his sense of duty in TWS; he doesn't really have a choice, but Pierce wants to convince him that he does because loyalty is more powerful than fear. So he believes initially that these people he's punishing have earned this, and that his role is enforcing something important and hopefully accomplishing something good down the line, or else why would he be committing these atrocities? And that's one of the things he's slowly realizing and going to have to come to terms with. So there had to be enough humanity for that to work and Steve is the one sparking it, but in sort of a gray way where it's all wrong but sort of unavoidable so he just tries his best to mitigate it.

Which is to say, uh, there will definitely be consequences for the Soldier, but they may not be what you think.