Kathryn Egan just wanted to follow her brother over to Europe. She didn't intend on making waves in the medical field and she certainly didn't intend on falling in love with her brother's best friend, Gale Cleven. She should've known that a love lik...
A/N: I know I said Sunday...but I couldn't just leave you with THAT haha.
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The minute that Kathryn Egan had unceremoniously arrived in camp was the exact minute that Gale Cleven could attribute to everything going horribly wrong. It was nothing that she had done, per say. But it was that her presence had absolutely turned everything upside down and there was nothing he could do to fix that.
Hearing from the boys that there were nurses in the camp was one thing—and to show up and find his damn fianceé standing there looking like she was some sort of torture victim was quite another. He swore that his heart stopped the minute that his eyes landed on her. Because he had thought about this moment a lot—the moment that he'd see her again.
And the thing was that he had it all planned out. He imagined that they were back at the Royal Air Force Base of Thorpe Abbot and he had been given time to shave and clean up. She would be wearing one of those dresses she liked so much (probably the blue one) and she would be smiling. They'd get to hug and he'd hold her close and tell her that she was the reason he made it through all of it.
But this wasn't that.
No, if there was a God, this was cruel irony and humor and its finest.
Because Kathryn didn't look like his Kathryn. Her hair hung loosely around her face, still stained with some crimson. She had some sort of bruise on her jaw—from what he didn't know. Her face wasn't the part that scared him. It was the eyes—the absolute emptiness that he saw every time he looked at Bucky. They seemed to have matching emptiness in their eyes.
She looked tiny in that oversized coat, hugging it close to her body for warmth. And it wasn't that she was short, by any means. But she certainly looked thinner from what he could tell and the scowl on her face wasn't going away. That was all he could tell from here—but the thought of someone bruising her at all just made his blood boil.
The other nurses looked about the same and as he stood there blankly, wondering just what they had been through to end up here. Finally, the words came tumbling out of his throat. "Kath?"
Kathryn's scowl only softened ever so slightly as she glanced in his direction. "Hi, Gale."
Ouch —he wasn't even given an opportunity to respond to that, because the next thing he knew, those nurses were asking a million questions. "Wait, wait, wait, this is your brother?" A distinctly midwestern accent questioned.
Kathryn let out a huff of air. "Yes, Teen. That's my brother. Tina, John Egan. John Egan, Tina. Now can we please get the hell out of here and somewhere else?" Kathryn's voice had an unnatural bite and edge to it that wasn't there before.
Buck glanced over at Clark who just put his hands up in the air. "You've got this, Egan? Cleven?"
"Yes, sir." Both of them mumbled at the same time.
