Timeless

Chapter 30

And she couldn't handle that.

So Kathryn took that pain and that grief and that anger and that self-hatred and she just swallowed it down once more. She let it boil underneath the surface and left it there. She did what her brother did best and she just let things bottle up. And that would still come to a fallout eventually. But not yet.

After a moment of wallowing and self-pitying and closing in on herself, Kathryn Egan picked herself up and she grabbed a pencil. "Come on then," Kathryn insisted on it, drawing something on the ground.

Annie blinked from her place in the cabin, looking up from her book. "Have you lost yer damn mind?"

"No, I'm just making hopscotch," Kathryn stated in a very matter-of-fact tone.

Tina's jaw dropped and she hopped down from the bed, eyes wide at her. "You're batshit crazy—"

"No, hopscotch!" Kathryn gestured at the ground.

"Umm—" Inez started. She leaned forward, placing a hand on her forehead. "You don't have a fever—"

Kathryn swatted Inez's hands away from her gently. "I'm not sick! I just—" Kathryn's voice seemed to die in her throat for a moment. "I just need a minute where we're not in this damn camp. Where we're just playing a game."

Silence for just a moment. Then Annie set down her book and dusted off her pants, rising to her feet. "How do we play?"

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If there was one thing that Buck and Bucky hadn't been expecting when they got back to the bunkhouse, it was to find the men, the Tuskegees, and the nurses all involved in the world's most intense game of hopscotch all over the empty floor space of the bunk.

And hands down the best part of the whole thing was seeing Kathryn Egan leading that charge, an unusual grin on her face that almost made them think of the way things used to be. For just a golden and shining moment, Buck Cleven thought that he saw his Kathryn. There was a light in her eyes that he hadn't seen that entire time—

He was suddenly reminded of the time that she had created a game of hopscotch back on Thorpe Abbot. She had been with all of those kids and she had been so happy and full of life and hope and in that moment, under the summer sun—Gale Cleven had absolutely fallen headfirst into loving Kathryn Egan from afar.

It was jarring though—the sheer difference in then and now.

But he sat down with Bucky and he cheered the game on and when it was said and over, he felt lighter than he had in weeks. So when he finally got up and he tapped Kathryn on the arm and whispered in her ear—she was more than surprised.

The simple fact of the matter was that she was confused . She didn't fail to notice the small patterns of twine—twisted into flowers and other little things—that found their way onto her pillow when she returned at the end of the day. She didn't fail to notice that her bowl always seemed a little more full than anyone else's and that he kept a careful watch over her when he thought she wasn't paying attention.

How could she not be paying attention though? He meant the world to her. She followed him outside into the hallway—which was the closest either one of them would really get to any privacy in this godforsaken place. They both took a seat on the ground of the hallway, sitting closely by one another.

For a moment, Kathryn just sat there in silence. She wondered, silently, if he was waiting for her to speak first. But then he was speaking. "I'm not mad at you, if that's what you're wondering."