A/N: I just finished the fic....so I appear to take pity on all of you poor souls. That being said—please give me all of your bucky/oc thoughts because I'm PLOTTING and super excited about my next book!
September 1946
Silence.
Space.
Hurt.
October 1946
Silence.
Space.
Hurt.
November 1946
Silence.
Space.
Hurt.
December 1946
Four months of silence—of barbed wire and fences so high that no one could climb them—and Kathryn finally felt like their marriage was wilting. It was what she wanted, after all. She wanted him to hate her. Wanted him to let her go so that he could have what he wanted. Wanted him to have what he wanted so that she could be free to sink in her grief and pain.
Those four months were just the two of them living totally separate lives together. They went through the motions of what a marriage was supposed to be. Kathryn still made dinner, they still cleaned the house together on Saturdays, they still went to bed in the same bed—though half of those nights, Kathryn ended up down on the couch to avoid Gale.
He continued getting her flowers—always daisies. She kept the piece of twine on her finger and he kept his—the way that they always had. He kept an eye on her when he thought she wasn't paying attention. Maybe he was concerned about her words, about the craving for death. And that was very real. But they did not talk about it. He did not bring it up. He didn't bring anything up, actually. Talking to one another outside of the monotonous routine? Not a chance.
She didn't talk to her brother either. No, there was a breakdown in the codependency of these three. Because Bucky and Gale were still talking to one another, but Kathryn was barely able to stand talking to either of them.
The one neutral party in this entire mess was Josie. And Josie seemed to most often be trying to get Kathryn to soften. Kathryn was fully aware of this situation—and she ignored it most of the time. She could soften herself around Josie, but any mention of Gale or her brother and Kathryn was going back to the ice of the war.
One fine afternoon the week before Christmas, Josie invited Kathryn to go last-minute Christmas shopping with her. Truth be told, Kathryn wasn't even certain how they were going to celebrate Christmas this year, or if they even would. After all, Josie was due in two weeks at the first of January and surely, Bucky would want to spend Christmas with his own family. And why shouldn't he?
Christmas just seemed so far away from Kathryn's radar at the moment. It almost felt like that Christmas without them, when she had been on Thorpe Abbot. Going four months without really talking to the only person that understood her on a deep spiritual level was taking a toll on her.
She was tired of it all .
But she needed him to just let go of her. Needed him to try and move on so that she could see him be happy.
"What do you think of this, Kath?" Josie questioned, hands brushing over a nice scarf in the store.
Kathryn snapped back to herself, gaze falling on the scarf. They weren't much into winter anyway—not after those marches. "Bucky has always liked scarves."
Josie beamed at her. "Then I'm getting it!" She exclaimed, snatching it off the rack and dragging Kathryn along with her. "Have you seen anything that you think Gale would like?"
A damn baby.
Kathryn just shook her head, forcing a stiff smile onto her face. "Not really."
Josie's expression grew pointed as she let out a huff and stared at her sister-in-law. "Now, Kath, I really think you oughta give Christmas a chance. It always brings families together."
"Not in my experience."
Something seemed to soften in Josie's gaze. "Kathryn, Bucky really misses you."
Kathryn wasn't amused by the shift in conversation. "Josie, I really don't think—" But then Josie was gripping Kathryn's arm in pain and letting out a groan of pain—and then something wet was splashing all over their feet. And Kathryn's gaze went wide at the sight of the liquid on the ground. "Holy shit, did your water just break?!" Kathryn exclaimed in horror.
"Yes?!" Josie breathed out. "But the baby's not due—"
"I don't think the baby is on your timeline," Kathryn breathed out—and then she was centering herself and entering her clinical state of mind. She was a doctor—not that kind of doctor —but she could help Josie for now. "We need to get you to the hospital."
"But Bucky—"
"We'll call him once we get you there!" Kathryn insisted.
And then Kathryn was guiding Josie to the car, keeping a cool head and calmly having Josie practice breaths as she drove them to the hospital. Kathryn was honestly surprised—she should have been panicking because pregnancy terrified the hell out of her. But at the sight of Josie's panic and stress, Kathryn could not do that to her. She loved her brother and Josie too much for that.
It took them 20 minutes in the snow to get to the hospital. Luckily, they were already in the city. But the snow was starting to come down much harder than Kathryn had thought. So when she reached a phone to call her brother, it felt like an eternity waiting for him to pick up.
"Egan Residence—"
"Josie's in labor, you better get your ass over here now!" Kathryn exclaimed.
"Holy shit—" The phone wasn't even disconnected and she heard Bucky frantically running around in the background. She hung up and then Josie was getting wheeled down the hall and calling her name.
Kathryn hurried to her sister-in-law's side, immediately finding her hand grasped by Josie. "Did he—"
"He's on his way," Kathryn reassured her, a warm smile crossing her features.
Before Josie could even respond to that, she was letting out a sound of pain and a nurse's eyes went wide. "We need to get her into a room. Her contractions aren't that far apart!"
"I—" Kathryn started.
"Stay with me?" Josie begged, eyes flickering between Kathryn and the lonely hospital room that awaited her. And everything in Kathryn wanted her to turn tail and run away from this—because God , it hurt to think about a baby in any capacity.
But Kathryn steeled her shoulders and nodded, following them into the hospital room. It seemed like an eternity later and Josie was just starting to push when her brother appeared in the doorway, snow coating his head and shoulders and looking like he had just run a mile.
"I told you he wouldn't miss this," Kathryn let out a breath of relief at the sight of him. Gale had appeared in the doorway behind Bucky, also coated in snow.
"What, did you stop for coffee?!" Josie demanded, letting out a screech of pain.
"The roads were closed—too much snow," Bucky apologized, rushing to her side and pressing a kiss to the top of her hair. "I'm here now though, you're doing great, baby."
At the sight of the two of them, Kathryn felt a pang in her chest. She made a move towards the door—because surely since her brother was here, there was no reason for her to be here—
But Josie's hand latched around Kathryn's wrist. "I want you to stay. I couldn't have done this without you, Kath," Josie breathed out. "Besides—I want our child to know who will always have its back. And that's its godmother."
Kathryn was so absolutely frozen in terror at the thought. But she stayed. She stayed and she helped Josie—despite the fear and the panic from even being in a hospital. Despite the flashes of Hausmann in the corner of her eyes. Despite the fact that being with a woman giving birth was salt in the deepest wound of her soul.
And then when it was all said and done—and Josie was cradling a tiny baby girl to her chest and breathless and everyone in that hospital room was beaming—it was all Kathryn could do to hold herself together. She could feel the fractures spreading across her body like spiderwebs and this facade, it was failing.
Her brother had only been holding his daughter for a short time—and then his gaze was flickering between his sister and his daughter. And he knew the only way to extend an olive branch was to do it in this moment. Because he hadn't been there when the water had broken—he had almost missed it, but Kathryn hadn't. Kathryn had taken care of his entire world . And he knew that it was probably killing her.
"Do you want to hold her?" Bucky's voice cut like glass into her ears.
But she couldn't help the fact that she wordlessly nodded. And then her feet were moving on their own accord and Bucky was placing that tiny bundle into her arms and Kathryn suddenly felt totally and completely whole . A warmth for the first time since she had fallen in her own kitchen seemed to spread across her body and began to melt at the icy wall she had placed up.
And when Bucky ducked into the hall to grab Gale—and Gale walked into the hospital room to see Kathryn holding her niece—something in him fundamentally shifted. Because staring at her in that bright light of the hospital room, and watching the softness in her eyes and the tears pricking in the corners of her eyes—he knew .
He knew that he had been wrong .
Because the woman standing here was his Kathryn—in all of her raw hurt and grief and pain that she hadn't allowed herself to feel. Because of course she had wanted a baby. It was so clear at the warmth in her gaze and affection and care in which she held that baby. She wanted a baby so bad that she had shoved that want far below the surface so she wouldn't have to hate herself more.
And it broke his damn heart .
Bucky gave a gesture with his head and Gale suddenly panicked. Because he had messed up. He had said things that had hurt Kathryn—and how much of what she said was true, he had no way to know. And he didn't want to hurt her even more.
But he took those steps and he stepped as close to her as he dare—gaze falling on the darling baby with dark hair and blue eyes. "She's beautiful," Kathryn murmured, glancing up at Bucky and Josie, who were both grinning at them. And Kathryn ever so softly let her shoulder brush against Gale's— a silent 'I'm here.'
"What's her name?" Gale questioned curiously.
Josie just looked expectantly at Bucky. Bucky clapped his hands together, letting out a soft breath. "We uh—we wanna name her after her godmother."
Kathryn froze, eyes flickering to her brother in total and utter devastation . "What?" She could barely squeak out the word.
"Her name is Cathy—with a C. Cathy Egan," Josie said.
And when Kathryn handed her namesake back to Josie—and she hugged her brother for the first time in months, letting a few tears slip down her face—Gale had a feeling that things were going to get better. That maybe—this was the softening that they all needed to move forward. To find one another again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When the roads were finally plowed—nearly halfway through the next day—Kathryn and Gale went home. This time, Kathryn had let the tension bleed out her shoulders and was relaxed for the first time in a long time.
So when Gale extended a hand in the car—a silent invitation for her to come back to him, to come back to them—this time, Kathryn took the hand and she just held him like he was her solemn prayer and oath.
It was a quiet car-ride. The words were just swarming around in their heads, and they were just trying to make sense of everything—of how to fix what they had broken. When they got inside, Kathryn pressed a kiss to Meatball's head and then set down her coat, glancing over at Gale.
"Do you want a late breakfast?" Kathryn questioned, broaching conversation tentatively.
Gale was still taking off his coat as he glanced in her direction. "That would be great. Do you...want help?"
She gave a half-smile. "You do the eggs and I'll do some toast and bacon?"
He gave a nod and she supposed that it was all she was going to get for right now. They found a quiet and gentle routine in cooking together again—and this time, Gale did not burn the eggs. It was quiet as they cooked, quiet as they ate—and even quiet when she cleared the plates and brought them over into the sink.
Kathryn needed to just keep moving. Needed her hands to be doing something. Because the minute that she stopped, she knew that the dam was going to break and nothing was going to stop the flood that she had been holding back for months. So she started washing the dishes—and when she glanced up, she found Gale standing beside her and silently drying each dish with care.
He had kept an eye on her. He had stayed close by her. He was gravity and she was flickering dangerously close back to his orbit and it scared her.
She was halfway through scrubbing one of the plates clean when her gaze just fell on the water. And maybe it was the fact that Gale was a gentle presence standing close by, maybe it was the fact that it was the most things had been relaxed between the two of them in months—but whatever the reason, Kathryn cracked .
And the second that she cracked, Doctor Kathryn Egan retreated for good .
Setting down the plate, Kathryn felt her lip tremble. " God, I really wanted that baby," she whispered. Her chest was bursting with emotion and she had no sooner let out a choked sob that Kathryn was being pulled into a gentle hug.
Kathryn Cleven found herself in Gale's arms , the way she had always been finding her way to him. He just held her as she sobbed for a moment, tracing gentle patterns on her back, reassuring her that he heard her—that he understood—that he finally knew what she meant.
His hand trailed up to her face and gently wiped away the tears as he pulled back to look at her fully. "I'm sorry I thought you didn't," he murmured. Maybe she was finding herself in his eyes this time.
And for the first time since the miscarriage, Gale Cleven found his Kathryn fully. "I'm—I'm sorry—" Kathryn could barely form the words. "I was just— it hurts ."
It took several more minutes before Kathryn had calmed down enough to form coherent sentences that weren't full on sobs and tears. And they sat there on the ground of their kitchen, in the exact same spot that it had happened. Kathryn's hand entwined with Gale's. Her head on his shoulder. Silence between the two of them again.
"Did you mean that? That you wanted to die?" Gale's voice was quiet, a flickering candle in the night and darkness.
Kathryn felt the weight in her shoulders again. "When I woke up in that hospital...and all I could see was Hausmann," Kathryn murmured. "All I could see was those kids that I killed in Germany...I wondered if it was supposed to be me. It would feel better than—than—"
"Than what, honey?" Gale asked softly.
"Than you hating me," Kathryn murmured.
"I could never hate you—"
"But—" Kathryn could scarcely let out a breath, let alone say the words. "I wanted you to. Hate me, I mean. Because I do. I hate me—I didn't ever want you to resent me for not giving you what you wanted."
"Honey—" Gale just sucked in a breath and took her face in his hands gently. "I don't want a baby because I want to be a father. I want to have a baby with you because I love you . And if we don't have any kids, then that's alright with me."
"But you'd be a really damn good dad," Kathryn whispered, tears pricking at the edge of her vision again.
"And you— God , you'd be an amazing mother," Gale said, pressing a kiss to the corner of her eyelid where the tears were leaking out.
"I was just...so...so mad..." Kathryn murmured. "But not at you—"
"At Hausmann," Gale realized softly.
She gave a nod, desperate for him to know that she loved him. "It just felt like—like he took my justice—and then he took this from us—and I couldn't be me, because I'm fragile enough —"
"You're not fragile," Gale said in a firm tone. "And you're not broken, baby. You're...you're just you."
"I didn't kill your wife?" Kathryn murmured out the words and he felt them like a dagger straight to the chest.
"No. I was just hurting too. And I really missed you."
Kathryn just took his face in hers, pressing her forehead against his. "Gale Cleven, I will love you until the day that I die. But I'm gonna be frustrating and messy and complicated. And that's just—"
He lifted his head ever so slightly to press a kiss to her forehead. "And that's just fine with me. We're gonna face all of that together. It's you and me, Kathryn Cleven. And I will love you until the day that I die."