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Bucky awoke to the sound of running water and a sharp pain around the crown of his head. His whole body was soaking wet and when he cracked his eyes open, it was early morning and he was lying facedown in the pebbles by a river. He strained his ears, but they were mostly filled with water and blood so he rolled himself over, his armor clanking louder than he would have liked, and stuck his head in the shallow river beside him.
The prince rinsed his ears, his hair, and his face and then pulled himself up onto his hands and knees. His right knee shot pain down his leg and a bit up into his thigh, but it was covered by his knee guard so he gritted his teeth and tried to focus his attention elsewhere.
He vaguely remembered the night before. He’d been captured by some of their enemy during the battle. They’d carried him off, half-conscious (he couldn’t remember if he’d banged his head before capture or they’d hit him during) and bound around his wrists and ankles, but he’d been able to slip out of his restraints sometime in the middle of the night when his enemies had been attacked. His first thought was that he was saved, that his own men had come for him, but realization soon came that he was anything but safe when the attackers got close enough for him to get a good look at them. Bandits. They’d shown up silently in the night, slitting throats and stealing any precious metals and weapons they could get their hands on.
Bucky was tied to a wagon and surrounded by knights so he’d slumped against the wheel and did his best to look unconscious as the raiders came closer. He was already covered in blood. He hoped he could possibly even look dead, but whatever he looked like must have worked because one of the bandits looked him over, cut his wrists free to get better access to his sapphire and diamond ring, and pulled it from his finger. For a half a second, his heart rate sped up at the idea that the man may cut his finger off to get the thing, but it had come off easily enough, the sweat and blood on his hand obviously helping aid the bandit in the theft.
Bucky had been praying they wouldn’t notice his breathing when the bandit paused, knocked Bucky's boot sideways to get a good look at it, and then grabbed one and slid it from his foot. Bucky’s eyes remained shut, but he guessed the man measured the boot size and then pulled the remaining boot from his other foot.
Then the bandits did the one sure thing someone can always count on bandits to do- they ran like hell.
The remaining enemy imprisoning Bucky encountered some more bandits on their way back, however, and were entangled in a mess. That’s when Bucky made his escape, untying his ankles and scrambling away to the edge of the woods to hide himself among the trees. He didn’t know when he’s passed out, but at least he seemed to have been following the small river back home.
Bucky stumbled again almost as soon as he got to his feet and landed on the slope of the embankment. He tried to push himself upright, but his stockinged foot slipped in the mud and didn’t propel him forward even a bit.
“Dammit,” he cursed under his breath, head pounding. He rolled himself over just in time to see more men coming his way, waving the red and golden flags of his enemies. He let himself go limp, trying to appear as a casualty of some previous encounter, but the men all stopped at the river.
Low hanging branches seemed to obscure him from sight for a while, the men more focused on letting their horses drink their fill and cupping their hands to get water for themselves, but Bucky must have made a sound or one of them happened to look the right direction because then one of them said, “Your Grace.”
For half a second, Bucky thought they were addressing him, but when another voice responded, he realized his folly.
He was in no condition to fight and there had to be at least ten or twelve of them in the enemy prince’s company so Bucky closed his eyes and tried to appear dead. It had worked for him before.
The sounds of boots stamping over wet ground sounded and then the footfalls came nearer to his head. Bucky wanted to fight, but he was weaponless. He wanted to growl, but he was breathless. He wanted to beg for mercy, but he was too prideful.
A foot nudged him and he knew he reacted. They had nudged the knee that was in pain. Words Bucky could barely understand as his head throbbed were spoken; “alive” and “blood” both filtered into his brain.
He wanted to laugh and make a sarcastic comment, but he couldn’t even think of one clearly enough in his head, much less get those words past his lips.
A moment later, hands were on him, pulling him upright and he blearily opened his eyes to see the crests of noble families he did not know emblazoned across armor and shields.
“Uhhh....” was all Bucky could make his mouth say. He had been clearer-headed than this just moments ago, he was sure of it.
“Head looks pretty bad,” one of them said more clearly and Bucky wanted to open his eyes to look at them, but couldn’t.
Someone slapped his cheek and his eyes came open quickly.
“Keep them open,” a man told him. Bucky registered a beard and deep blue eyes on the man, but as he tried to nod, he had multiple men yell, “No! No!” all at once.
“Get him up. Quickly!” came the command. Bucky was slumped onto a horse before he could register the full movement. It didn’t even hurt. Then he could feel the warmth of the animal beneath him as they began to move away from the small river.
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Some time later, he awoke with a cry. He was on the ground, hitting shoulder first and falling over into a crumpled pile atop that.
He couldn’t open his eyes then. They wouldn’t cooperate. His ears were failing him and he wondered if they were filled with blood like they had been earlier.
There was shouting from all around and then he realized the ringing in his ears was a byproduct of the pain. His shoulder felt like it was on fire. Bucky watched through tear-filled eyes as the enemy soldiers surrounded him. He made a helpless noise, rolled onto his uninjured side, reached for the foot of the man nearest to him, and fell face first into the wet grass.
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
When Bucky awoke sometime later, he was on a moving pallet of wood being dragged behind horses. He barely had time to register his circumstances before he lost consciousness again.
The next time, he was awake for even a shorter amount of time, only recognizing that they had stopped and that his body was being jostled about.
He awoke next from searing pain. Someone was holding him. Not a comforting kind of hold either. Someone has his arms restrained from the top and his legs restrained from the bottom.
“Be still. Be still,” came a voice he didn’t recognize, but it sounded kind. Bucky couldn’t understand that. The pain was coming from everywhere and when he tried to lift his head to look, he noticed he was mostly naked which felt wrong because he was burning up and there were multiple strangers around him.
“No,” he tried to say, tried to pull away, but no one would listen to him, except the voice of the man holding his arms returned to say,
“You’re safe. Don’t fight. Be still.”
Bucky didn’t believe he was safe for a second, but he could close his eyes and focus enough feel his skin being pulled tight somewhere around his knee and he could feel the burning of hot water being poured over the the wound above his brow and then the steady feeling of the skin there being sewn back together.
He fell into it, the steady feeling of the various small pains, none of them as bad as the all-encompassing pain he had been feeling for hours.
“Okay, work with us, Your Highness,” someone said in that same difficult accent from before. He didn’t know they were talking to him until he felt someone placing a foot against the side of his upper ribs and pulling his arm.
Bucky screamed, eyes flying open at the flaring pain, and then a pop and jolt of his shoulder.
He looked at the man who had been pulling his arm, the same bearded man he had saw for mere seconds before at the riverside.
“That’s all? Shuri, that’s all?” the man asked a woman next to him and she knelt down next to Bucky, looking upward at the bearded man.
“It’s back in socket now,” she said and Bucky wasn’t sure if she was telling him or the man standing, but either way, she looked at Bucky and said, “Rest. Heal.”
More strangers came and moved Bucky’s whole pallet to the side of the unfamiliar tent.
The bearded man followed with a cup that he held up to Bucky’s lips.
“You surely have your whole kingdom in an uproar,” he said very gently. “They must be looking everywhere for you, Your Highness.”
Bucky jerked back from the cup he was being offered and the man laughed quietly.
“I wouldn’t have brought you to a hospital if I intended to kill you, now would I? Relax.”
Bucky didn’t relax, but he did seem to think the man had a point.
“Get some rest, Sir. I’ll send word to your family,” he said and he gently pushed Bucky down onto his back.
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
It was sometime the next day when Bucky awoke to something more cognizant than the flashes of consciousness he had been getting.
He carefully pushed himself upright to see that he had been clothed in unfamiliar, dark red garments made of clean and lavish velvets.
“Steve,” a voice across the tent said and soon, the bearded man was approaching Bucky with a smile.
“Good evening,” he greeted as he lowered himself to sit beside the pallet Bucky was lying on.
“Where?” Bucky managed, voice hoarse and mouth dry.
“A hospital?” Steve replied as if the answer were obvious. “You’re in my country now. It was the only place I knew was safe to take you.”
Bucky’s brow furrowed.
“Can you sit up?” Steve asked and Bucky noted how appealing the lilt of his accent was when he spoke.
He began to move his left arm only to see that it was bandaged and strapped to him so he pushed upward with his right hand instead.
“It’s James, correct?” the man asked, and Bucky wanted to nod, but something about the situation made him answer truthfully.
“Only on documents.”
The man smiled. “I understand. I’m the same. Please call me Steve.”
He reached out a hand to shake Bucky’s good hand it took a second for Bucky’s brain to reach realization.
“Crown Prince Steven?”
“Only on documents,” he corrected, mimicking Bucky. “It’s just Steve like this. What shall I call you?”
“Bucky.”
Someone brought Bucky some water and he reached out and took it gratefully.
“They’re making dinner just outside too,” Steve told him. “Care to venture out for some fresh air?”
Bucky began to move to get off of the pallet, careful of his full cup, but Steve slowed him down. “Let me help. Don’t put a lot of pressure on that knee. They just put stitches in it yesterday.”
Bucky looked down, but the knee was wrapped in clean bandages.
“That head injury scared us all a bit,” Steve told him as he came around and helped support Bucky’s weight. He led them just outside to a series of stumps that had been brought around to serve as seats. “You were losing blood and wouldn’t respond to anything we asked you.”
“I don’t remember,” Bucky admitted as he took one of the makeshift seats. Steve took the one next to him.
“If I had realized how unstable you really were, I never would have put you on the back of my horse. The fall was entirely my fault.”
Bucky barely remembered the fall, but he looked down at his bandaged arm.
“It was dislocated,” Steve told him. “From the fall. But doctors instructed me on how to fix it.”
“Thank you.”
“To forced it back into place, there has to be someone taller and stronger than the patient,” Steve told him. “And most of those are serving on the front.”
“I’m glad you were here,” Bucky admitted, watching some men off in the distance repair their swords- the sparks from the fire mixing with the lights of fireflies, making it appear that the sparks from the fire were magical as they floated and blinked away.
“Do you ever-“ Steve paused mid-sentence to really think about what he was about to ask. “Do you ever get tired of fighting your father’s war?”
“You mean my grandfather’s?” Bucky laughed. “Or my great-grandfather’s?”
“Yes!” Steve agreed quickly. “It’s so unfair. I feel like this meeting is fate. We could have met on the battlefield, but we didn’t. I mean, I don’t know about you, but you’ve haunted me all my life.”
“No, I know what you mean,” Bucky said, wincing a little when his excited expression pulled at the stitches on his forehead. “Just knowing there was some other prince your age in the next kingdom that you were supposed to vehemently oppose because your ancestors couldn’t make peace.”
“When we’re kings,” Steve said confidently, “We should broker peace between us, let past slights die and build an alliance.”
Bucky sat there watching the sun begin to sink below the distant hilltops. He had thought this man intended to kill him multiple times, but now here the enemy sat proving not to be his enemy after all.
“We could broker peace before then if we really tried,” Bucky told him.
“Oh?” Steve seemed interested. “Is your father more sensible than mine?”
“No, by-“ Bucky reached outward and carefully caught a firefly in his hand, watching it blink on and off. “Marriage?” he asked.
“You’re talking crazy now, Your Highness,” Steve replied with a smirk.
“No, no, I’m not.” Bucky held the firefly out on his fingertip toward the other prince. “In the absence of a ring or other fine jewelry, please accept this firefly which I’m sure will depart any second as a sincere bid for your hand.”
Steve laughed outright then as he watched the firefly spread its wings and fly away again.
“Would this be better?” Steve asked, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing a familiar sapphire and diamond ring.
Bucky reached out. “My ring. How did you?”
“A handful of bandits thought to take advantage of us while we were bringing you here,” Steve answered with a sly look. “We took care of them and relieved them of things that looked suspiciously like they had your name engraved inside them.”
Bucky laughed and took the ring back, sliding it onto his finger. “Thank you. I’ve only had it my entire life.”
“Such a suitable gift for an infant.”
“It didn’t fit till just a few years ago!”
“I’m glad I could return it to you.”
“So that I could give it to you for my marriage proposal.” Bucky was about to slide the ring from his finger again.
“I’ll make you an agreement,” Steve replied, stopping Bucky’s movements. “I’ll pledge by that firefly or that ring or anything you decide, that if you still want our marriage by the time your head wound has healed that I’ll honestly consider it.”
“I can agree to that,” Bucky said as a servant brought them both bowls of stew and Steve nodded his thanks.
Then Steve moved his stump a bit closer so he could sit nearer to Bucky as they both ate their dinner and watched the sun set, war far from their minds.