Cruel Summer

Chapter 12

A/N: Buck is the one with the braincell in the relationship of Meg/Bucky. That being said, I'm looking ahead towards more domestic times for those two! So give me all your thoughts on their life post-war! It can be anything from angsty to spicy, I just wanna hear from you guys! Thank you :)

Meg felt as though she were a burning candle, flickering and melting away into nothing. She hadn't meant to tell him any of the things that she had said. But she was lonely, so damningly lonely—it felt as though she had always been alone and would never be able to find anyone who actually wanted her around.

Maybe it was better that way. Because with her line of work? She was a curse, she was certain of it. An omen of death, a surefire sign of darkness and impending doom. Everyone she knew had been hurt by her and not a single person had escaped the knife's edge that she seemed to walk every single day. She was fated to be alone for the rest of her life, always wanting and desiring for people to want her, to love her—but never to have that.

The rest of the hours they spent in London were spent alone and in silence. Meg could not bear to even look at him, to even be near him. She had told him about the things she had suffered and she regretted it sorely . There were things that he shouldn't have to know.

So when they took the trip back to Thorpe Abbotts that afternoon, the tense silence was back. Both Bucky Egan and Meg Lewis were absolutely wrecked in different ways by the things that had happened. By the fact that they had nearly slept with one another and surely if she had not cried, she would have been in bed with him—by the fact that she had slept in the same bed as a man, the very man that she loved more than she wanted to be alive—by the fact that they had gotten drunk and shared too much .

She wasn't used to telling people things. It was one thing for her father to know about her exploits and the abuse that she had endured because of her reports. It was quite another to tell Bucky Egan in a drunken effort to connect . And for him? It was one thing to know that she was a spy; it was quite another to hear about the abuse that her husband had put her through and the fact that her father and mother hadn't cared enough to get her out of that situation sooner.

No, it made his blood boil. Because Meg certainly did not deserve what happened to her and he wanted to take her far away from this war and keep her safe. He wanted to give her the life that she deserved even though he had no idea how to get over the fact that she had broken his heart because she loved her brother enough to do so.

Because in his mind, if her father or her mother loved Meg even a fraction of what he felt for her, they wouldn't have let her suffer for a single second. Six whole years of suffering, all in order to help the war. But it wasn't worth it in his mind. Not if it had torn Meg apart piece by piece and buried the woman that he loved—so far out of reach that he had no idea how to find her again. How to get her back.

Bucky needed to give this time. Needed to give her the space and autonomy to make her own decisions. To figure out what the hell she wanted .

So that's what he did. The minute that they got back to Thorpe Abbotts, he determined that if she wasn't the one to come to him, to want to talk, to want to do anything—then he could not start something. Not when she was emotionally compromised. It wouldn't have been fair to her, and in a way, it would be just as manipulative as everything else she had suffered.

Meg had only been back on base for a short time, unpacking her stuff into the personal quarters her father had given her. It was a modest room, with only a few clothes in the closet, three books on the nightstand, and not a single personal effect anywhere in sight.