[Personal Log] Risa, Rescuing Akito

It hadn't been much of a vacation to begin with. Steve had just gotten back to the Enterprise, only to discover his long-lost best friend and his new partner had known each other. In the Biblical sense. Up until now, part of him believed the Bucky who showed up on the ship was from an alternate universe, a universe where he didn't die. Believing Bucky was dead was easier than knowing he left him there to get captured and turned into --

He doesn't want to think about it. Which is what brought him down to the planet to begin with. The people he'd talked to said it was a beautiful place; perfect weather, warm beaches, friendly natives. Steve wasn't in the mood for sipping mai tais, but any place was better than the ship so long as things between him and Nat remained awkward, and going for a run along the beach was less hazardous than doing it in the hallways. He didn't expect to see Akito.

Or what happened next.

They always say after a disaster that things just happened so fast, which is true to a point. The cliffs along the beach were beautiful but steep, which made them ideal if you were into daredevil activities like skating up and down them (which is the best description Steve has for what Akito had strapped to his feet, though no normal rollerskates would have defied gravity like that). Something went wrong, that was easy enough to see even before the kid started falling, but the worst part of it was the one thing that didn't happen nearly fast enough was Steve. He couldn't get there in time.

"Akito!" he called out, running at full tilt. The kid was motionless, and as Steve got closer he could see ribbons of blood curling through his hair. No. No.

He wished he could say the next half hour was a blur, but he remembered every second of it in striking clarity. Akito couldn't be roused, but he wasn't dead. Not yet. Steve gathered his limp body up, so small and frail it was like cradling a feather, and ran back to the resort as fast as he could without aggravating his head wound even more. He moved in on the first Starfleet officer he saw, who called up to the ship for three to beam up.

Steve will never forget the look on Dr. Crusher's face, or the sharp words she had for him as soon as he'd transferred Akito's body to a biobed.

Why wasn't someone with him?

Steve didn't know why.

But he was with him now.

He was a lucky kid, maybe luckier than even Steve knew he was given the few things he overheard in Sickbay while the doctors patched him up. He'd been through worse. He was a fighter. And the medicine on the Enterprise was unlike anything Steve had ever seen, even with S.H.I.E.L.D. They got him stabilized, stopped the bleeding. He would make it, but he was in a coma and there was no telling when he'd come out of it.

"I'd like to stay," he'd said, twin lines between his brows and all of his focus on Akito. And, just in case Dr. Crusher mistook that for a request, he moved to Akito's bedside and took a chair next to him.

He didn't know why he had been alone on Risa, or why no one else had come to him in Sickbay, but he wasn't going to be alone again. Steve was with him.