Timeless

Chapter 48

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."