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Longyearbyen, Svalbard Archipelago, Norway
"Shooting them is only allowed in self-defence," Loki countered. "I wasn't in any mortal danger."
Flabbergasted, Bucky could only shake his head. "It was going to eat you, Odinson. I don't know any kind of danger more mortal than that."
"Aw, Wolf. I didn't know you cared," Loki teased.
"I don't," Bucky grumbled. "I just don't want your Brother to execute me for failing to keep all your pieces in one piece."
"Please," Loki sneered. "I did not ask you to join me on this hunt in the capacity of a shield brother or a hunter. Merely a companion." Almost as an afterthought, "Is that what you think we do? Execute people?"
Bucky decided now was as good a time as any to change the subject; the younger Asgardian prince tended to get a bit defensive whenever people talked shit about his big brother.
"We need to get off this island. I have no idea if polar bears track their prey by the scent of blood around these parts, but you're bleeding pretty bad."
Loki glanced askance at his leg, the dragging marks on the snow. "It's stopped."
"The bone's still showing though."
"Of course it is. Were you not a military man? Are you truly not aware of what happens when a bone breaks?"
"Thought you were a fast healer," Bucky returned the taunt, shifting the weight of Loki’s arm around his shoulders for the tenth time. It could just be a product of his imagination, but Loki seemed to be getting heavier and heavier by the minute. "You couldn't stop bragging about it when we first met."
Something in Loki's demeanour changed. The anxiety in the glassy green eyes was unmistakable. "It didn't break right."
"What?"
Loki suddenly dropped like a stone and Bucky almost slipped on the ice catching Loki’s waist on the way down.
"Odinson!"
"I can't go on," Loki gasped, his face pallid and slick with sweat. "It hurts."
"Don't be such a baby,” Bucky growled. “This can't be the first bone you've broken! What are you, a thousand years old?"
Loki's chuckle was full of humour, but his eyes were filling quickly with tears. Of sadness or of pain, only Loki knew. "I'm afraid my journey ends here."
"I'm not going to leave you here in the middle of nowhere!" Bucky balked.
"Wolf."
"That is not my name," Bucky snarled.
Loki turned his head away as if slapped. He quietly answered, "You never call me by mine."
"I am not leaving you," Bucky said furiously. "Didn't you say we're not allowed to die here?"
"Buried," Loki corrected. "We can die anywhere we choose. We just can't be buried here."
Bucky barked a laugh, "You're going to argue semantics with me? Right now?"
Something tugged at the back of his mind like an unpleasant memory.
It didn't break right, Loki had said.
What did Loki mean by that? Bucky wondered. Is that what's stopping Loki from healing?
Intuition forced his hands soon enough and Bucky dropped onto his knees next to the fallen prince. He fumbled with the knots tying the plank of wood splinting Loki's broken leg as best as he could; his human fingers had long since gone numb from the cold.
Bucky's heart nearly stopped at the gory sight before him. "Shit. Shit, shit, shit - "
The gash had scabbed over where the shard of broken shin bone had punched through flesh and sinew, but Loki's entire lower leg was swollen to the point of cyanosis, the slim ankle Bucky had dotted with kisses just this morning an ugly shade of mottled blue.
"What is it?" Loki asked through chattering teeth.
Bucky did not answer. He had been unlucky enough to see this before on the battlefield all those years ago, but lucky enough to have never experienced it. His comrades who had survived it said it was the worst pain they had ever felt.
"Barnes, I can't feel my leg," Loki said in a wobbly voice. For all his years, Loki suddenly looked so young, and never sounded more scared.
"Shh. It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay," Bucky chanted breathlessly, groping the side of his ankle for his knife, nearly dropping it into the snow in his panic. "I can fix this."
He uttered a silent prayer and sank the tip of his knife into the side of Loki's bulging shin. Starting from an inch under the bend of the knee, he slit the fascial compartment open lengthwise along the line of the muscle fibres, releasing the burgeoning pressure inside.
Blood and serous fluid seeped through the cut, splattering the snow.
Bucky could feel his stomach turn, but galvanised by the promise of relief judging by the sound of Loki’s sigh, Bucky did the same on the other side, and on the back, scoring Loki’s calf boldly.
Just like cutting the casing of a sausage, his army surgeon had once said.
“That’s enough, Wolf,” he heard Loki whisper.
The knife slipped out of Bucky’s hand and onto the snow.
He waited with bated breath for the bleeding to stop.
When it finally did, they fell backward onto their backs, Bucky in exhaustion, Loki in sheer relief.
Bucky nudged Loki’s temple with his nose. "You should have just let the bear have me, Odinson."
"And have you lose your one remaining arm to that beast?" Loki shook his head firmly. "No."
"So you offered it your leg instead?"
When Loki did not answer, the anger Bucky had been suppressing since the incident earlier in the day boiled to the surface and he sprang to his knees. "What the hell is wrong with you? You could have lost your leg, you idiot!"
"It is only a leg," Loki said flatly. "It is nothing."
"It's not nothing, Loki! It's - "
"Nothing. Compared to the pain of losing you."
Bucky's knees wobbled and he dropped heavily onto his rear end on the blood-soaked snow.
"I can't lose you, James." Loki turned his face heavenward and looked Bucky in the eyes. "Not when I have just found you."
"Everyone else calls me Bucky."
Struggling to rise, Loki walked his elbows across the snow and pawed his way up Bucky’s rigid torso. "I'm not everyone else."
He rested his head against Bucky's shoulder, the metal of his human lover's arm blessedly cold against Loki's fevered skin. “Am I?”
The uncertainty in Loki’s voice jarred Bucky to the core.
"No. No, you're not."
With the hand he only still possessed because of Loki, Bucky seized the precious head and tucked it fiercely under his chin. "I love you, Loki."
"And I, you, James."
“But the next time you crave elk meat, we’re buying it.”
“Oh, fine.”