(So you guys get two Steve and Grace fanfics here today actually haha. This one also starts out dark and emotional, but I did my best to end it on a nice sweet note. I hope you enjoy! Also I forgot to mention the story preceding this "A Night Terror" is set a little bit after Captain America Winter Soldier and this one is post Captain America Civil War. I own nothing but my OC.)
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"Hey!..Wake up freak!" Grace flinched when a rough pair of hands jerked her forward from her previous slumped back position against the back wall of her cell.
Her arms and hands still completely immobolized by the partially adamantium straight jacket she was locked in tensed together even more as the guard who had woken her from her uncomfortable nap, grabbed her by the hair and jerked her head to the side to expose the side of her neck.
"Oh is that time already?" Grace grumbled sarcastically though her tiredness superceded most of it helped her to ignore the sharp discomfort in her scalp.
Without answering her, the guard grunted to his partner who jabbed the needle of a filled syringe into her neck, deploying the strange clear pinkish concoction directly into her bloodstream.
Grace winced slightly at the sting, but she clenched her jaw and refrained from letting out any cry or noise of discomfort.
Not only did the raft guards not care if they were hurting her, but the sting would soon be the least of her worries once the sedative fully kicked in.
Shutting her eyes, she resigned herself to wait until the guards left her alone again when she heard the door bang open.
"Is she ready?" Another voice grunted, making Grace open her eyes again. A large burly man she didn't recognize walked across the room when one of the guards nodded and Grace turned her head as much as she could towards the one who was standing closest to her.
"Who is that?...What's going on?" She tried to demand, but her voice came out weak due to the multiple dosages of serum she'd received and none of the men in the room bothered to answer her.
A gasp instead was drawn from Grace's lips when the large man grabbed her by the back of the neck and roughly hoisted her up from the ground.
"Wait! We're supposed to wait until the serum kicks in. Otherwise her freaky powers could come back and overpower us." One of the guards spoke up.
The man who was holding Grace sneered at him. "You two have been doping this one up for days. Her powers aren't coming back!" He tightened his grip and turned to drag her from the cell. The other two guards followed.
Grace struggled vainly against the restraints of her straight jacket as her captor dragged her mercilessly down the hall past the other cells where her friends were being held.
Sam turned and stood, kicking over the stool he was sitting on when he saw her being dragged across the floor.
Clint shouted something inaudible at his window. Scott gave her a sorry look while Wanda...Wanda's cell was empty.
"Wait! Where's Wanda? What did you do to her?" Grace started to scream, but again the guards paid no attention to her until they reached a room around the corner and three feet away from the detention hall.
Grace's eyes widened when she realized it was an interrogation room. "Get her on the table!" A man clad in lab coat, protective eye gear and rubber gloves growled before turning to load something that looked like a gun.
A brief yelp escaped from her as she felt herself being tossed up on the cold metal table like a sack of potatoes.
Before she could regain her senses, she felt rough hands grab her legs and restrain them down to the end of the table while the man who tossed her up pulled a third restraint over her chest to keep her upper body immobile.
"So...this is one of the super enhanced ones." The man in the lab coat stepped up to her right side, still holding the gun object in his hand.
"Aye, the less dangerous one so we were told." The burly man responded staring down at Grace as if she were a piece of meat waiting to be carved up.
"Oh well then this should be a cinch." The scientist revved up his weapon making Grace break into a cold sweat despite the blank look she had on her face as the serum she was injected with earlier began to take effect.
Suddenly an ear-splitting scream pierced through the room, making Grace flinch and two of the men who were holding her captive to whip their heads briefly to the left.
"Wanda..." Tears sprang her eyes as she recognized the scream.
"Hmm. Seems like the other one isn't talking." The burly man grunted.
"Well maybe those screams will make this one loosen her tongue faster." The scientist leaned over Grace's face with the gun pointed over her head.
"Tell us where Captain Rogers and the fugitive Mr. Barnes went and you will be free to leave this place." The man in the lab coat purred into Grace's ear making her stomach turn.
"You and your friend in the next interrogation room."
As another scream burst through the air, Grace clenched her jaw, staring the mad man in the eye before turning her head until she was staring up at the bright lights on the ceiling above her.
"I will never...tell you anything." She breathed as her body began to feel heavy. A sudden searing and shocking pain being pressed into the exposed side of her neck jolted her, drawing a scream of agony and surprise as the scientist shocked her with the weapon he had prepped upon her arrival.
"Care...to re-evaluate that statement? Miss Collins!" The spat out her name as he yanked the tip of the gun off of her skin.
Trying and failing to stifle her whimpers of pain, Grace squeezed her eyes shut and tilted her head down towards the injured side, saying nothing in response to her tormentor's words.
The scientist leaned down so far that Grace could smell his putrid breath.
"I asked you a question, Ms. Collins." He waited for a second before jamming his electro-gun into the other side of Grace's neck, making her scream again and flail her limbs against her restraints.
This time he electrocuted her for a little longer before pulling his instrument of torture away.
"Well, Miss Collins?" The scientist asked in a low menacing tone.
Grace gasped when the burly thug grabbed her by her scalp again and yanked upwards so that she was forced to look up at him and her interrogator.
"The exact location of your dear lover...and his unfortunate friend." The scientist almost hummed the words as if getting some sort of sick pleasure from his victim's pain.
Swallowing hard, Grace glared him as hard as she could in between pants of air, pressing her lips together hard to show her tormentors that she would never give in.
The scientist's expression darkened at the look on her face until he no longer seemed human.
Before Grace could finish speaking, he reactivated the electro-gun and jammed it as hard as he could into the very middle of her neck.
Grace screamed and flailed until she thought she felt a vocal chord pop.
"They say the level of electricity I can shoot from this, is enough to fry out your nerve endings...make it impossible for you to ever use those freaky mutant powers again...maybe even...kill you." The scientist snarled, taking the weapon away after what seemed like a millenia.
Grace struggled to catch her breath. "Then...kill me!" She hissed as the thug kept pulling up on her hair.
"You'll never get me to tell you where they are!..." She gasped, tears dripping down her face. "You'll never find them!...Never!"
Her tormentor raised an eyebrow at that. "We shall see, Miss Collins." He snarled, powering up the electro-gun again.
With a speed that seemed almost inhuman, he lunged down towards her heart.
...
"Steve!...Steve you need to get up!..Rogers!" Natasha beat incessantly on the door of the room Steve was staying in, stopping only when she heard a groan and the thump of feet hitting the floor.
"Natasha?" Steve spoke blearily, letting out a yawn as he opened the door and saw his disheveled friend standing in his doorway with her arms crossed across the thin t-shirt she was wearing as pajamas.
"Wha...? What's going on? Why are you up?" He grumbled, rubbing at his eyes until the former assassin grabbed him the arm to get his attention.
"You need to come back to the room with me. I think Grace is having a night terror and I can't snap her out of it." She said lowly with an urgency that couldn't be missed.
Steve quickly snapped to attention upon hearing that.
"Hey, what's going on?" Sam's sleep ridden voice sounded from behind Steve though neither of his friends paid any attention to him.
"Is it really bad?" He asked, swallowing hard as he waited for Natasha to answer. Nat nodded. "I woke up to the screaming. When I tried to wake her up, one of her legs flailed out and she nailed me right in the thigh." She gestured to the small bruise that had formed just above her knee.
Steve frowned. "It's like she's being tortured or something...almost like she's going through a nightmare version of whatever happened to her in the Raft." Natasha continued.
Without waiting to hear more, Steve dashed out of his motel room and sprinted down the hall to the room Natasha and Grace were sharing.
Natasha jogged to keep up with him and barely managed to scan her card into the door before Steve yanked on the knob.
"Grace!" He called into the room after flinging the door open. Natasha slipped her arm around behind him to flick on the light and Steve blanched when his eyes fell on the screaming and writhing form laying on the disarrayed bed.
"Oh my God! Grace!" He rushed over to the bedside and placed one knee up on what was likely Nat's side of the bed before reaching to shake her by the shoulder.
"Grace come on! Wake up!...It's me! It's Steve!...You're all right! I promise!" He called desperately to her as she flailed away from his touch, crying out again.
Feeling the scream pierce through his chest, Steve bit his lip before reaching for her again, this time scooping her up from the mess of bedclothes and pulling her into an embrace.
"You're okay. Shh!...Wake up! Come on!" He started to rock her as his desperation grew trying not to hold her too tight as she continued to writhe and flail around.
"You're not there. It's not real!...Just wake up, Grace! Please!" He begged, feeling tears well up in his own eyes.
Suddenly, the screaming and flailing stopped. Steve looked down to see that Grace had gone completely still, laying as limp in his arms as a boned fish until just as suddenly, she sprang back into consciousness nearly hitting heads with Steve as she sat up gasping for air and sniffling.
"Shhh! Shh! Shh! It's okay Grace. It's okay! I've got you!...You're safe." Steve tried to soothe as he kept his arms in a supportive and comforting position around Grace's torso, using one of his hands to rub a soothing circle on the small of her back.
Grace let out a couple more sniffles and grabbed at the material of Steve's shirt with shaking hands while her eyes darted around her immediate surroundings, no longer seeing the cruel people or nightmare apparatuses that were present in her nightmare.
"Breathe. You're okay." Steve repeated in a soft voice. "You're in an old motel with meme, Natasha, Sam, Scott, Clint, Wanda and Vision. You're not in the raft anymore. You're with us...You're with me." He continued to hold her, looking at her flushed, tear-streaked face and hoping she'd look up at him soon.
"You're safe, Grace."
At this, Grace finally lifted her head, her breaths still coming out in little teary hiccups as she raised her eyes and met the soft bright blue ones above her.
"Steve?" She croaked as if not believing he was really there with her. Slowly Steve nodded his head and shifted his other hand to wipe away some of her tears.
Looking around Steve's shoulder, Grace looked around her surroundings, taking in the sparse features of the little motel room she was in until her sub-conscious felt sure that it was really real.
She was here in an old motel room on a musty smelling bed with a bench, a small wardrobe, dresser with a TV and a door to the bathroom.
She was not in the raft being injected with sedative serums, being tortured with unspeakable horrors or listening to her friends scream.
She was here. She was safe. She was here with...
"Oh Steve!" A lump rose through her throat and Steve instinctively gathered her back into an embrace as she cried again into his chest.
"Shh...I'm here Grace. It's all right." He soothed, glancing up to see Natasha pushing herself off of the doorway where she had been leaning and watching him try to comfort her friend.
"I'll go find her a bottle of water." She said quietly before stepping out into the hall presumably to find a vending machine.
Steve nodded and shifted to lean up against the headboard still cradling Grace against him.
...
"Did that really happen to you?...In the Raft Prison?" Steve asked with some hesitation after he and Grace had sat in silence for awhile on the bed after the latter had finished crying and confessed the details of her nightmare to him.
Grace sniffed and rubbed at her nose one more time with a tissue before tossing the thin sheet into the trash can on the other side of the bed.
"They did come to regularly dose me up every hour with that serum to keep my powers down." She stretched out her hands and grimaced when a spark shot out of her fingertips instead of the small forcefield she was used to being able to conjure.
"But the only ones they took for interrogation were Clint and Sam. Probably because they're not as dangerous as me or Wanda and Scott barely has any connection to you." Grace sighed and lowered her hands.
"Sam was in the cell next to me and the only thing he ever came back with were bruises. No electric burns..." Her chin quivered as she spoke the words.
Steve's frown darkened as he took this this information. Taking in a deep breath, he shifted so he was sitting facing Grace's direction.
"Well it won't happen anymore. None of you are ever going back to the Raft Prison or any prison again." He said reassuringly, reaching to take her hands.
Grace sniffed and looked up at him with narrowed eyes as she felt Steve's larger calloused hands close around her trembling ones.
"You can't promise that, Steve."
"Why not?"
"Because we're fugitives now! Any moment someone could find us and bring us in again to pay for not signing those accords!" Grace snapped, making Steve recoil the slightest bit.
"They'll drug up me, you and Wanda so we can't use our powers or your enhanced strength, they'll beat the rest of our team black and blue until we all agree to the accords and divulge Bucky's location AND...even if we make it that far they'll strap trackers on anyone who's enhanced so that every time we use our powers without permission it'll-!"
"That won't happen! They won't do that! I won't let them!" Steve finally found his voice and cut Grace's ranting off, squeezing her hands and shuffling onto his knees on the bed as if to punctuate his point.
"We're off the grid, Grace. Tomorrow, we'll be out of the country and no one will ever be able to put you in a prison or inject you with anything or torture you ever again! I promise!" He softened his voice, pleading with her to believe him.
"I promise Grace. I won't let them hurt you again."
Grace bit her lip. "How? How can you promise that?" She asked in a voice so small, Steve hardly recognized it as hers.
"Because...because I...Because I love you, Grace." Grace stiffened at this admission. "What?"
Steve pulled Grace closer to him. "I love you...And I am never leaving you behind like I did in Germany ever again. I don't care what's happening. I don't care what it costs me...from now on, you and me will always be together..through everything." He said sincerely.
Grace sighed and shook her head. "You can't do that, Steve."
"Do what?"
"You can't just tell me you love me within days of the woman you dearly loved passing away." Grace insisted, starting to pull her hands away.
Steve tightened his grip to keep her from moving away from him. "No, it's not like that. Grace I-!"
"She was your first love, Steve! You lost your chance to be with her because of a war and no matter how much I grew to care for you, I know I can never take her place. So please Steve! Don't make this any harder than-!"
"Grace! Just let me explain! I do love Peggy!" Steve cut her off. Grace turned away from him. "Peggy was someone very special to me and I'll always cherish her and her memory in my heart." With another sniff, Grace nodded her head.
"But Grace!..." Steve continued, stroking his thumbs tenderly over the tops of her hands. "I haven't loved Peggy the way I love you for a couple years now...I love you more than I've ever loved anyone. From the moment you saved me from getting shot off a helicarrier to when you yelled at me after our last meeting the Secretary...Even when you coughed out your drink on me because Tony made some offhand and almost inappropriate remark about your dress at a party."
Grace coughed out a weak laugh at that. "Steve..."
"You have no idea...how much it killed me to have to leave you there at the airport after you and Wanda saved me and Bucky from getting crushed. If Buck and Nat hadn't talked me out of it, I would have jumped right back over to get you out the moment I heard you scream." Steve leaned in close, feeling encouraged when Grace finally looked up at him again.
"I..love you Grace. I love you so much and I promise you...I'll never leave you again. I'll always...do my best to watch out for you and make sure no one ever treats you the way those people at the Raft prison did again. I'll turn myself in first." He swore.
The slightest hint of a smile briefly curled the right side of Grace's face at that. Steve's shoulders slumped.
"But...if you really can't love me back...If my past with Peggy is going to get in the way then...I'll understand." His lips quivered as he loosened his fingers the slightest bit.
"I'll always love you no matter what, but if you can't-." Steve trailed off, nearly toppling over backwards on the bed when Grace lunged forward, clasping her hands around his cheeks before pressing her lips passionately to his own.
Taken aback for a moment, Steve finally managed to return the kiss raising one hand to cup against her still wet cheek until she pulled away, panting a bit with emotion.
Taking in shaky gulps of air himself, Steve looked down and tentatively put an arm around Grace's shoulders as she leaned against his chest, clutching at his shirt again as she attempted to regather herself.
"So...should I assume by that kiss that you love me too?" Steve asked after the silence stretched between them for awhile.
Grace nodded with her head still on his chest. "From the moment you fell on me in the lab when Loki attacked the helicarrier." She managed a watery grin.
Steve snorted at that.
"So, how did this kiss compare to our first one in Leipzig?" Grace continued, sitting up a bit so that she wasn't leaning on Steve anymore.
A bright red blush spread across Steve's cheeks at the question.
"Well, it was equally as spontaneous as that one for sure." He answered. "Except of course, you kissed me first this time." He smirked.
Grace smirked back. "You know...Peggy called me out my feelings one of the last few times I visited with her before S.H.I.E.L.D. fell." She shook her head affably at the memory of her time with the older woman.
"It's no wonder she was a top founding agent. I thought I was doing well, keeping my personal feelings at bay and focusing on helping her...and you."
Now it was Steve's turn to shake his head. "She called me out too. Just a couple weeks before...before she died, she told me to get my feet unstuck from the past so that I could reach for the future." He chuckled dryly, running a hand through his hair.
"I guess she knew what she was talking about. She moved on after all. Just look at Sharon." He gestured with an arm. Grace nodded though her smile turned a little sad.
"I'm still sorry you lost your chance with her." She said softly, fiddling with the fabric of the large t-shirt she was wearing until Steve took her hand to make her stop.
"Don't. Peggy had a really great life...and so did I." Gently, he interlocked his fingers with hers and brought it towards his chest again. "Still am."
Now it was Grace's turn to snort out a laugh. "Oh so being fugitives on the run from our own friends and country is a great life?" She teased, grinning impishly.
"I didn't mean-." Steve started to correct himself until Grace waved him off.
"Steve, I was joking." She yawned. "All things considered, it's been great spending the last few years with you too. I never imagined when I ran into that poor frightened man on the streets of New York what I would be getting into, but I'm glad I decided to jump in and throw a wrench into poor Fury's plans." She smirked at the end of her yawn and Steve smiled back at her.
"You may have a big head and stubborn to a fault, but you have a good heart Steve. There's not enough people like you left in the world." She said thoughtfully while rubbing at her eye with her free hand.
Steve's smile widened the tiniest bit. "Well thanks, but I'm not sure the rest of the world shares your sentiments right now."
Grace shrugged a shoulder. "I don't care." Her eyes fluttered closed for a second and Steve sighed as she blinked up at him sleepily.
"All right, I think we both need to try to get some more sleep now. We move out early in the morning to try avoid any unforeseen complications." He let go of her hand and started to get up from the bed when Grace hung onto him.
"Can I kiss you one more time...before you go?" She asked, gazing at Steve so hopefully that with a light chuckle he leaned back over the bed.
"Goodnight." Steve murmured carefully getting off the bed once the kiss had ended.
"I love you, Steve." Grace replied to which Steve paused at the door and smiled affectionately at her.
"I love you too, Grace."
