Princess Shuri of Wakanda is born on a warm and sunny day in the beginning of the summer season, when the weather is still comfortable and the grass is still fresh and green and not yet brown and wilted. She is born to a loving mother and an attentive father. She's even born with a protective older brother, 16 years older to be exact, who's ready to protect her at any moment necessary. It only gets a little annoying in the future, but the love between the two stays strong even though the worse of situations.
Princess Shuri is also born with a soulmark, something that's not uncommon between soulmates with an age difference. It just means that Shuri's soulmate is older than her. Like her parents, they're soulmates with nearly 20 years difference between them and T'Challa's soulmate is also younger than him. Him having had received his soulmark when he was just a year old.
But T'Challa met his soulmate young. He was only nine years old when he met Nakia, the only daughter of the River Tribe leader. Who was only eight at the time.
Shuri grows up proud of her soulmark. How could she not? It's a beautiful soulmark. Unlike her brother's who's soulmark is boring in her young eyes. His soulmark is just the family panther emblem (colored black) surrounded by two rings, well circles really, light green and gold and located smack dab in the middle of his chest.
Shuri's soulmark is different though and better in her opinion. It's the most beautiful soulmark she's ever seen. The mark is on her right shoulder, a vibrant pale yellow sun-star hovering over a pale silver-blue crescent moon shape. Stemming from the ends of the sun-star are bright gold ribbons wrapping around the whole mark like it's hugging it.
She feels like her soulmate must somehow represent the moon, because Shuri knows she represents the star shape; bright, stunning, warm, and happy.
Shuri yearns for the day she'll meet her soulmate. She's heard all the stories about it from those who have already met their soulmate.
Upon skin-to-skin touch; their soulmarks will glow, burn a little into their skin, setting itself deeper to appear more faded so that they will know that they are soulmates. Then a feeling like no other will be shared between those destined to be together and they'll stay together, forever, until death do they part and their reincarnated selves are born again and with a new soulmate.
Shuri is six years old when she begs her mother to let her attend public school because she knows that everyone older than in her already in attendance at her private school aren't her soulmate. She spent a whole lunch break testing them.
Thankfully her mother gives into her silly idea, being a romantic herself, and also having had a hard time finding her soulmate who was older than her significantly, she allows Shuri to change schools for her second year in school.
Shuri is seven years old when her idea fails.
Though there aren't a lot of schools in Wakanda, since the population is always at a steady growth to allow for only a few schools to actually be up and running in the entire country, Shuri's parents won't let her switch schools every year just to see if her soulmate is any one of the older students in her new school of attendance. They think the idea is silly and tell her to let fate take it's course, so that she can meet her soulmate when the time allows it.
Shuri is eight when her parents realize that she's far too advanced for the curriculum of even the most advanced primary schools in the country, so they pull her out of school and hire her a private tutor from one of the best universities in Wakanda, but still allow her time to socialize with kids her age.
Shuri is 11 when she manages to meet every citizen in Wakanda older than her, only to learn none of them are her soulmate. But she doesn't tell her parents about her experiment. Afraid that her father won't allow her to have a soulmate who's not Wakandan.
Shuri is 18 years old when her father dies and when her brother nearly dies a week later when her cousin, who she didn't even know existed, tries to take over the kingdom.
Before that though, T'Challa brings in a man so gorgeous that Shuri has to control herself and keep herself from staring at him. She doesn't want to scare the guy anymore than he already is.
He's put under cryostasis almost immediately after arriving in one of her above ground medical labs and then Shuri is tasked with helping to fix this broken white boy her brother dragged in from the devastation of almost killing an innocent man.
But after everything with her cousin, Shuri is able to resume her work with Sergeant James Barnes. She has to retrieve the trigger words from his head so that he can no longer be turned on into Winter Soldier Mode. It's a fairly simple task, she figures, like switching back to factory settings on an electronic device.
It takes her seven months to get the trigger words completely erased from Sergeant Barnes' mind and to bring back some of the memories he lost to his captors.
Helping a man so damaged brings an unexpected toll to Shuri's emotional state. It's hard not cry while watching all the sequences of events, leading him to now, in his memories.
She sees blurry white and red images of his half alive corpse being dragged in the freezing snow after his traumatic fall. Gruesome shots of some self-proclaimed surgeon roughly sawing off the remains of his infected and frost bitten left arm. Fuzzy and slow movements slowly turning violent as he tries to choke one of the doctors with his own metal arm.
A metal arm that would only ever represent oppression and pain to him.
She watches cold visions of his own reflection in the window of his old cryo-tank, freezing his face into an expression of complete and utter terror as his body is painfully zapped frozen in front of his own tearful eyes. And images of men and women yelling at him, hitting him, electrocuting him, wiping his memories, and breaking him bit by bit until he's turned into nothing more than a ghost walking in a hard and cold metal shell.
When she wakes Sergeant Barnes up, she makes sure to not touch him, worried that she'll hurt him when she's supposed to be helping him. She makes sure all her technicians ask him for consent before doing what they need to do to help him and makes sure that they talk him through the procedures as gently as possible. She doesn't want him to be in the dark like he had with Hydra.
Seeing the horrifying medical procedures done to him through his eyes has made Shuri extra aware of how she needs treat Sergeant Barnes. She even makes sure he's dressed comfortably and with as much coverage as he wants. She doesn't want him to feel exposed like he had with Hydra; naked and afraid, unsure of their next move. She tries to remove herself as best as she can, she knows better than to get too emotionally attached to a patient.
She needs to be strong for his sake.
When she and her lab assistants are fitting him for a new prosthetic, she makes it a million times more soft and comfortable than the previous one. She makes sure he can feel with it and not worry about causing someone else pain. She wants him to no longer feel like just a weapon.
While she designs the arm she wants it to be unique to Sergeant Barnes the best it can be. She does this first by removing the oppressive Red Star from the shoulder. Then, thinking back on the art classes she's taken over the years, she remembers the Japanese art form of Kintsugi.
She designs the arm with Vibranium and Gold. Vibranium so that its strong and cannot be shattered again in a fight and Gold to embrace and highlight the history, struggle, and repair of Sergeant Barnes' life; for that is where the true beauty lies.
Six months later when Shuri is 19 years old, Sergeant Barnes asks her to call him Bucky along the riverbank of one of River Tribe villages outside the city.
The sun shines on his face as he speaks to her, giving his once sickly-pale skin some color. He looks brighter, healthier, and happier. And only after just a few months of treatment and therapy. His hair has grown, the kids love to braid and bun his hair to resemble the style of a Disney Princess. It's long, thick, and a beautiful shade of dark brown. His eyes that are usually set in stone in a sad expression have lightened up. Now the color of his irises are a beautiful, sparkling bold shade of blue-grey.
Shuri stops her staring for a moment to see Bucky smiling at her and she smiles back, agreeing to call him Bucky for now on.
She walks away, her hand reaching out about to touch his shoulder as she does, but she stops herself before they can make contact, she doesn't want to upset him and instead, has him follow her, and takes him for a nice walk through the city.
Shuri ends up becoming friends with Bucky once he no longer needs her as his primary physician. They're close friends too, always going out to eat in the city and then going for a nature walk afterwards around the grassy plains of the Boarder Tribe or the leafy marshes of the River Tribe. They talk the whole time they take walks, talking about likes and dislikes, non-depressing life experiences, or even saying absolutely nothing sometimes; letting the pleasant silence stay between them.
Sometimes Shuri will have Bucky over at the palace and other times Bucky will have Shuri over in his little hut along the boarders, where he happily resides; herding goats and making friends with everyone coming and going into the country.
It's on a cool spring morning when Shuri goes to visit Bucky for their usual meet-up.
Shuri meets Bucky outside his home and together they take the long walk towards the city, enjoying the scenery and light exercise. Shuri notices right away though, that Bucky is acting strangely. His strange behavior worries her. He's quieter than usual, standoffish, and his expression is colder. She wonders is she's done anything to upset or hurt him.
"Are you okay?" Shuri quickly asks, turning around to walk backwards so she can have a face-to-face conversation with Bucky.
"M'fine." He says, shrugging off her question like it's nothing.
"I may not be an American but I do know that when one says they're fine it actually means that they're not." Shuri states, crossing her arms.
"It's really nothing Princess." Bucky says offering her a small and unsure smile.
Shuri isn't having it though.
"Bucky, please, talk to me." She says, stopping in her tracks. Her arm reaches out to touch his but she quickly recoils it, knowing unwanted touch could aggravate him more.
Bucky's frown darkens, he looks up at Shuri then looks down at her arm and sighs.
"At first I thought it was a cultural thing, but now I think you're just scared of me." Bucky mutters.
"Scared of you?" Shuri questions, taken aback by the accusation. "I'm not scared of you Bucky." She assures gently. She wants to touch his arm, give him that physical reassurance as well, but decides against it.
"That! That's why I think you're scared of me!" Bucky shouts hand moving to refer to her own.
"What? What is?"
"You don't ever touch me!"
Then he snaps shut his mouth but his eyes grow wide.
"No-wait-no I-I don't mean like that-I just meant-I mean-you-you always pull away whenever you try to pat my shoulder or something within that nature. I don't mean touching me in a sexual way that would be very inappropriate." He says and lowers his head in shame, hair falling in his face.
Shuri's heart breaks at the realization that her sudden jerky movements to keep herself from touching him and upsetting him has indeed done the opposite.
"No." She sighs. "No, I'm so sorry...I just..." Shuri pauses watches at Bucky lifts his head, tears welling up in his eyes. He looks like a hurt puppy and all she just wants to do is wrap him in a soft blanket and cuddle him. But obviously that's not such a sound idea at the moment.
"No I'm sorry...I shouldn't have said anything." Bucky says. He sighs again and turns around to walk away.
But Shuri stops him by grabbing his hand.
A burning sensation stabs lightly at her right shoulder and she winces as it happens. But then there's a feeling of warmth like no other radiating through her whole body, starting with the hand she's holding Bucky's hand with. The sensation travels through her veins, filling her with a feeling like no other. She can't even describe it properly. It feels like happiness and love melted and mixed together in some sort of hot and rich emotional concoction, she can't find one word to represent it.
"What-what was that?" Shuri and Bucky say at the same time.
He felt it too, Shuri realizes.
"I-Can I explain myself real quick?" Shuri says. "I pulled away and never touched you because I was worried about hurting or upsetting you." She tells him. "When I-when I helped you remove the words and gain some memories I saw-I saw all the things Hydra subjected you to through your eyes, Bucky."
"Shit."
"So when I saw all that, I just assumed that any unwarranted touch would upset you and I never wanted that to happen. It's why I had my lab assistants always ask for consent and had them talk you through every procedure I had them do on you. I was emotionally compromised with helping you and I'm so sorry for making you think I was scared of you."
"Shit. Princess...I'm sorry you had to see all that but I can handle a friendly handshake, hug, or pat on the back." Bucky mutters, looking down at his feet and pinching the fabric of his clothing with his fingers.
"I did what I had to do to help you." She says and slowly extend her arms out toward him.
Bucky sees the universal sign for a hug and smiles, extending his own arms and giving Shuri the hug of a lifetime.
The hug feels nice, warm and comforting. That slight singe in her shoulder no longer persists, but that unidentifiable feeling is still there.
"So, I guess I must be really touch starved Princess, my arm feels like it's burning." Bucky says when they pull away from the hug.
"What?"
"Well my shoulder, but what's the difference."
"Bucky, take off your shirt."
"Well-uh-that's pretty forward there Princess?" Bucky's eyes look like saucers and Shuri huffs in frustration.
"No. I mean." She lifts up the sleeve on her dress, reveling her soulmark on her shoulder.
It's deeper now, and is now a slightly faded pale yellow sun-star rising over a paler silver-blue crescent moon with lighter colored golden ribbons wrapping around the mark.
Bucky's mouth drops and he quickly shucks off his shirt, reveling his own mark, the same faded mark.
They stare at each other in awe.
They're soulmates.
"I-I remember when Hydra found out I had a soulmark." Bucky says quietly, breaking the sudden silence. "They tried to cut it off my arm when they found it."
Shuri feels a fierce and protective rush of emotions flood her body. She hates everything that Hydra did to him, but trying to remove his soulmark? Unacceptable.
"I was born with mine, I figured out when I was young that my soulmate wasn't from Wakanda. I never told Baba, either, he would have freaked out if he knew."
"I never had one before the fall, I just figured I wasn't ever going to have a soulmate." He says sadly.
Shuri frowns and extends her hand out to touch his mark; engraved beautifully into muscular shoulder.
"You have one now."
Bucky smiles, brightly, and nods.
"Yeah, I do." He says. Shuri chuckles happily, nodding and intertwining her fingers with Bucky's.
"Let's go home, so I can tell Mama and T'Challa that I finally found my soulmate."
"Can I put my shirt back on first?" Bucky asks and Shuri throws her head back, laughing loudly.
Shuri is almost 20 years old when she finally finds her soulmate, who is older than her by more than a decade and who isn't Wakandan or dark skinned. But the age difference, cultural difference, and racial difference won't keep them apart.
At least not any longer.