Cruel Summer

Chapter 36

A/N: We've still got a FEW chapters to go! But please, enjoy the fluff of this chapter :) And as always, let me know what you think!

Chapter Text

June 1945

Meg Lewis officially became Meg Egan on June 16th, 1945. Marge and Sandra had flocked together, helping Meg get ready for the wedding. It was by no means a traditional wedding, but Meg was decidedly wanting a full wedding—white dress, in a chapel, done by a priest, the whole nine yards.

Bucky would have been fine with just the elopement. But what Meg wanted, he would give her. She could have asked for the moon and the stars itself and he would have tried to find a way to make it happen.

"You are a regular Helen of Troy, you know that?" Sandra questioned, applying the last of the lipstick onto her face.

"Oh hush—" Meg said, letting a light blush dust her cheeks.

"Well she's right, you know," Marge insisted. She bounced Flo excitedly in her arms, placing and arranging a flower crown in the little girl's dark curls. "You do look beautiful, and so does this little angel," she blew a kiss onto Flo's cheek.

Flo giggled and tugged on a curl from Marge's hair. She did look angelic, with the little baby blue flowers on her dark tuft of curls, accenting against her blue eyes and dimples. Meg couldn't help but split from Sandra's makeup work for a moment, tickling at Flo and bopping her daughter on the nose. "Hi sweetheart!"

Her daughter had been babbling for a good month, but not actually speaking yet. But as far as Meg knew, that was on track for a little girl who had just barely arrived at her first birthday. They had thrown a birthday party before returning to the states, making time for flowers and lemonade and summers.

It felt strange, being back at home in Wisconsin. Back in the United States, back in the place where she had grown up and changed. It felt even stranger, being in a wedding dress that she had picked out a whole lifetime ago—back when she was first engaged to John Egan at the age of 18. Had she stayed, she would have been married for more than five years now. It just felt so out of reach.

But when she looked in the mirror, when she saw herself standing there in that dress—that damningly haunting white dress —Meg could almost pretend that she was still that girl again. "It feels weird," Meg murmured, adjusting her veil in the mirror.

"What does? Getting married?" Sandra questioned, narrowing her gaze.

"Being in this dress. In this house. In Wisconsin," Meg mumbled. "Just a strange thing, you know? I'm not that little girl anymore."

"No, you're certainly not," Marge murmured. "But you're a hero to so many people and you're...you're so much more now than you were then."

"I guess so," Meg replied. A lifetime ago, she would have wanted her mother by her side for the wedding, would have wanted her father to walk her down the aisle. But now? Meg was her own woman. She didn't need the people that had given her life— she had earned her own rights .

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Meg wouldn't qualify herself as overly religious anymore. But standing in the hallway outside of the chapel, stained glass windows above with sunlight streaming through, Meg felt at peace . It was an odd amalgamation of worry and exhaustion and calm.

So when she walked out by herself into the chapel, just behind her bridesmaids, Meg was utterly pleased. Most of the men of the Hundredth had shown up for the wedding and her father was even present. Meg felt like everything was absolutely fated to turn out okay. If you had told her six years previous that she was going to still be marrying Bucky Egan one day, she wouldn't have ever believed such a thing.