#bucky barnnes series

[ladyeliot]

Prologue [B.B / S.R.] 40s

Series:  Portraits of our last summer 

Pairing: Bucky Barnes / Steve Rogers x Fem!Reader

Summary: It was the summer of 1942 when your life changed forever. Before you left for college, you wanted to enjoy your last summer of freedom. The United States had entered the war in December 1941, no one knew what was going to happen, so everyone wanted to enjoy any moment of peace.

Warnings: None.

Word Count: 2034

A/N:  Inspired by the novels of Nicholas Sparks. Sorry for my spelling and grammatical mistakes, English is not my native language, I am learning.

When was the moment when you stopped looking at life with those eyes of innocence and became a woman? During the summer of 1942 many events took place in your life, creating a before and after in your free spirit, but it was not until much later, when you read those words in that letter that you realised that you had changed and were never going to meet again that laughing young girl who saw the world bathed in colour.

But to understand your story, the story of Emily Lawton, you have to understand the way your childhood years were. You were born on October 16, 1924 into a wealthy family in the town of Greenville, your father, Mr. Lawton, owned one of the largest tobacco companies in the region, and was extremely popular with the crowds, regardless of their social status, as his business generated a great demand for employment, which was a welcome development in these times. On the other hand, your mother was more socially aware, she liked decorating and was a much-loved member of the Greenville ladies’ club, which used to do a lot of charity work for the underprivileged. However, all this didn’t capture your attention at all, perhaps because you had grown up in both circles, and therefore your curiosity was lessened.

Your parents had taken it upon themselves to provide you with the best education possible, and thus had faith that you would be able to enter one of the best universities in the county and possibly the country at the age of 18, a fact that on the one hand pleased you, because it would mean leaving their side and starting to see the world through your own eyes, but at the same time irritated you, because your mother still intended to plan your whole life. For you, life was not meant to be planned, things came at the right time, without waiting for them, but it was clear that such an imaginative vision did not belong to a woman, as your mother used to remind you, but to a girl, something you would learn in time.

You used to spend long evenings attending social events hand in hand with your parents, which at times could seem a bit presumptuous, especially when in 1939 the war began on the European continent, but you could hardly notice it because of the bubble in which that society lived, but as the years went by and the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, the lives of all Americans were cut short, on several levels. Your 17-year-old mind still held the innocence and naivety, which you tried to hide with your chatter, your mischievous smiles and your laughter, but all you did was to show it even more. A young man, a William Craig, from a family of bankers, asked for your hand in marriage in the spring of ‘42, just before he was due to join the army and leave for the Primary Training Centre where he was to be trained as a private, but although it almost broke your heart to refuse him, for your future plans were far removed from any romance, you did.

It’s not that you weren’t romantic, nor had you flirted with the occasional young man - on the contrary, you loved it, you used to - but you had love so idealised that the distance between flirting and loving someone were complete opposites. Although that used to confuse young people, because your candid facade attracted them to the point of believing that you were madly in love with them and that you wanted to marry them, a confusion that became more extreme when you quickly lost interest in them.

Now, let’s talk about that summer of 1942. There was a moment in your life when you thought you were the luckiest person in the universe. You held the window down on that Willys Americar Sedan, sticking your face out of it, causing the summer wind to blow subtly against your eyelids and the curly locks of your brown hair to flutter freely. Your eyes watched as the setting sun broke through the treetops, letting in the last rays of sunlight of that first Sunday in June. The drive was shared with several flocks of sparrows that began their flight as the car’s engine invaded their quiet, while on the horizon, the Kiawah River showed its presence, informing you how close the end of the drive was.

You found that you enjoyed breathing in the peace of Wadmalaw Island, quite contrary to the effusiveness of Greenville, where you and your parents used to reside for the rest of the year. The last time you set foot on that land you were only 13 years old and your youth was just beginning to blossom, but now you had returned at the age of 17. Before leaving a residence you had thought about how you wanted that summer to be, your last summer before going to university, your imagination had recreated numerous scenes and events that could happen, but what was clear to you was that you wanted to enjoy it, the world was going down the drain and before yours went too you needed to live it.

You barely remembered how comforting it was to look out over the landscape, for it had been five years since your family, the Lawtons, had summered on the coast. In the old days it was traditional for you to set out for the southeastern part of South Carolina in June, arriving in the vicinity of the small town of Rockville, established in 1784 and only a few miles from Charleston. Its scenery was magnificent, you used to describe it as “a canvas of the natural landscape of Southern life”, which you would contemplate for the rest of your life.

But owing to the outbreak of the war and some setbacks in your father’s business, your presence was required during all the summers, yet things turned out most favourably, as your father used to report at dinner parties, for tobacco, it seemed, was the greatest leisure that soldiers could be offered at the front. Unlike your father, or your father, you had no interest in the family business, you thought it was devoid of art and colour, too banal for your taste, in short, dull, and you used to shy away from anything dull, you used to keep looking at life from a romantic perspective, still with a girl’s eyes, even if you thought you were a woman.

The journey took shape, the green landscapes gave way to a set of paved streets and an unusual urban movement, a few meters ago a sign provided at the side of the road had informed you of the beginning of the town of Rockville, but you hardly remembered that this town of a little more than a hundred inhabitants had so much movement.

“Why,” you said, peering curiously through the window, “you didn’t know that Rockville was now the new Charleston.”

“Looks like it,” whispered your mother, looking out her window. “Oh, I think it’s the county fair.”

“Looks like everyone’s having a good time,” you commented, resting your chin on your hands as you watched small groups of young people laughing. “Connie’s probably around here somewhere, if the Dawsons are here yet.”

“I spoke to Mr Dawson just yesterday,” your father looked at you through the rear-view mirror.

“Well?” you were genuinely interested in his answer.

“They arrived Saturday night,” he reported, “apparently his wife wanted to visit Charleston and so they moved up the trip.”

You nodded, Connie was one of your childhood friends, back in the day the Dawsons bought a property near yours in Rockville to enjoy summers together, unlike you, the Dawson family hadn’t missed a single summer. Connie was an incentive to enjoy those three months, she knew how to have fun, she offered that rebellious imaginative edge that you both shared within your allowed limits, so you looked forward to meeting her again to begin your new adventures.

You continued looking through your rolled down window, leaning your head on your arms that were supported by the car door, on the left side there was a sort of enclosure lined with wooden fences, in which numerous booths offered the best pastimes for those people who were there to forget everything that was happening around them. Your gaze was distracted, analysing the fairground, watching how people entered and left with ice creams and sweets in their hands, perhaps you expected to spot someone you knew, but it was not like that, evidently you did not know anyone there, however blue eyes rested on your face. A young man, of an age correlative to yours, was watching you leaning on one of the wooden fences, the car had stopped at a pedestrian crossing and the boy was delighting in the view he had of you.

On several occasions you had been the centre of attention at the social events you used to attend in Greenville, many boys had laid their eyes on you, but never in such a daring way as that young man was doing. If it had happened any other way you would have offered him a smile, and if you had liked the young man you would have moved with the wind to find out in the most subtle way who he was, but when you saw that he was being so brazen you turned your face away and rolled up the window.

The drive continued and the town of Rockville was left behind to take you back into the beauty of the countryside. White picket fences opened the way to a wide road backed by magnificent oak trees on either side. At the end of it was Lawton Plantation waiting to welcome its owners. The surroundings had not changed at all, but a sense of longing came over you. You were about to venture into your last summer before your departure for university and you felt that things were about to take a new turn. However, as you gazed at the porch surrounding the colonial-style house in the distance, your thoughts returned to their usual bliss. The house had known its heyday during the 19th century, being one of the highest-yielding cotton plantations in South Carolina. It had been built in 1790, sitting on over four thousand acres of riverfront land, but over the years its history had been left to memories, especially yours, for you wondered if the previous owners of the house had also marvelled at its surroundings.

The instant the car stopped, the back door opened, letting your excitement run free. It took you barely a minute to reach the inside of the property, offering a quick greeting to Mr. and Mrs. Fulton, the keepers of the house in your absence, and discovering that your belongings were still in place, surrounded by that peculiar scent of wood. You used to have two favourite places in that house. The first was a small room dedicated to painting, located on the main floor and which had a private exit to the porch through a glass door. That corner was equipped with all the necessary material to be able to escape from your thoughts and express every feeling and emotion inside. It was your father, with whom in some respects you shared similar tastes, who, on discovering at the age of 11 your interest in art, decided to encourage your fascination by creating that room for you. On the other hand, the second favourite place was the stables, or horse stables, which were the gateway to a new universe for you, which would allow you to enjoy those places hand in hand with your beloved Savannah, your mare, who had arrived a week before you.

That first day was not much more than rediscovering every corner of that property, rediscovering your old self from five years ago, reminiscing about remote times and preparing yourself for what was to come and what you would begin to experience the next day.

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