Elena had chuckled at the movie. Smiled and chuckled. Bucky had had yet to hear her chuckle, so it felt like a good sign.

"Did you like it?" he questioned as she cut the food on her plate.

"It was beautiful," the princess looked up at his face. "I loved it. Thank you, Bucky."

He smiled openly in response, leaning closer to her direction.

"You're welcome. It was indeed a great movie, we should watch it again in the future."

She nodded, eating more. He'd chosen her dish that night, still reminding her of how her body was still adapting to normal food but not staying in the subject for too long.

"I would like it very much."

Bucky didn't like silence very much. He was a chatter and almost never felt comfortable when the room fell into silence. Elena, on the other hand, was the polar opposite. She enjoyed silence, white noise always comforted her when she needed and the princess wasn't one to speak much, especially when in a crowd. The princess was in the public eye too much and any word she said could turn against hi at any moment if misinterpreted. Besides, one of the lessons her mother had left her before her death was that 'if you don't have anything useful to say, silence is the best option'.

"Tell me something," he said after long minutes. "What's your favourite colour?"

Elena frowned, tilting her head to the side.

"Beg you pardon?"

"Your favourite colour."

The redhead shifted on her seat.

"Blue," she decided.

"Favourite flavour?"

"Sweet."

He nodded, thinking a bit more and his eyes fell on her hand, where a diamond ring rested above her wedding ring. It was her engagement ring, but also something deeper. The ring was one King Anthony had given him to give Elena when they became an official couple, but it had once belonged to her mother, the late Queen Virginia.

"Tell me a childhood story," he asked in a soft voice. "Something you may miss. Anything."

The princess made silence for a moment before resting back on her chair and cleaning the corners of her mouth.

"When I was seven, two years after my mother…" she interrupted herself. She wasn't ready to talk about her mother yet. "There was an oak tree the boys used to climb, it still exists somewhere in our garden. One day they were climbing it as they would usually do, scream 'I am the king' and then go down. And I was around, I was walking in the gardens and I saw them and said, 'You can't be the king, my father is the king and then I will be the queen', they weren't having it, though."

Bucky listened carefully, he could see where it was going but was interested in how Elena felt about it.

"And then one of the boys said that I couldn't be the queen because queens are only married to kings and are only there to give birth to children. They said a woman couldn't be head of state."

His eyes widened in surprise.

"Oh," he muttered. "That was very rude."

Se nodded.

"Yes, and they also said I couldn't climb the tree because girls were too weak."

"Really?" Bucky questioned. "What did you do?"

"I climbed the tree," she shrugged. "All 25 feet up. No one else was able to go that high."

He stared at her in surprise, smiling openly.

"And did you say anything?"

"Oh, I did," the princess nodded, looking around with a rather pleased look on her face. "I screamed 'Queen Elena, the first' and I think the world fell into dead silence."

He just continued to smile openly.

"Really?" he chuckled. "What did they say?"

"Nothing," she shrugged. "They were too surprised and then my nanny came desperate and told me to get down."

Bucky started laughing discreetly and she rolled her brown eyes as the corner of her lips curled the slightest, trying to hold back her giggles.

"I can just imagine her face," he looked around.

"Oh, she was desperate," Elena tried to keep herself from smiling as her voice changed to mock her old British nanny. "Get down, Elena, this is not ladylike."

Bucky opened a huge grin and the princess couldn't help herself, finally opening a full smile and letting out the smallest of the giggles.

Yes, a full smile. Finally! A full smile.

"When we're home, you definitely need to show me that tree."