Wakanda
Hours Later

Sam watched over Teagan for the rest of the day and evening, trying to gauge how she was able to relate with the others. For someone who had been held captive for so long, he was glad to see that for the most part she was able to at least accomplish small talk with them. He remembered the videos of her withdrawing into herself and rocking, but it seemed that she could overcome that given the chance to interact with people.

If asked a question she would usually answer or contribute if she knew something about what they were discussing. He had a feeling that she had heard a lot of Hydra intel, but that either she didn't understand the significance of it, such as Project Winter Soldier, or had just forgotten it. Some of it was probably before Project Insight anyways and may not be of any importance anymore thanks to the internet file drop.

Eleven years of interrogating agents had to have been tough on her, especially once her powers evolved.

They all talked until T'Challa returned very close to dinner time, joining in with a couple of his own stories dealing with outside bandits trying to enter his country.

Sitting down at the table for dinner, he noticed a wide smile on Teagan's face and asked her what had caused it.

"Look," she told him, holding up a fork perfectly in her hand. "I can do this."

He was happy that the shots were working but it also saddened him that such a simple task had been taken from her to begin with. She was so proud of the accomplishment, and he wanted to make sure that later on he thanked T'Challa again later on for helping her in this way.

Steve and Bucky slipped away after dinner to have a few more hours of quiet time together before they were separated again. He had explained more of Bucky's story to Teagan after she watched them leaving the group for the outside patio seats. Not long after, the two of them were gone, probably headed down to the waterfalls again. Bucky had mentioned how much he had enjoyed them so Sam guessed that was where they were.

T'Challa had taken a quiet moment to inform him that he had spotted Teagan out at the waterfalls by herself very late into the night. Sam asked if it was a problem for her to be wandering around, and if so, he would either tell her that she needed to stay inside or join her to keep an eye on her.

But T'Challa only said that if she wanted to wander the grounds that it was fine. He only wanted someone else in their group to know in case this became a habit of hers once they were on their own again.

The group had now split up to get some sleep before they left tomorrow morning. He was walking with Teagan since her bedroom was right next to his. And maybe he had actually enjoyed sitting next to her as they all had watched a raunchy comedy movie. Even though everyone else in the group had seen it before, for Teagan it had been her first time so listening to her laugh at the jokes had made them new again.

"How are your hands doing?" he asked again for probably the third time since dinner. She had been fidgeting with her fingers all night as they healed. During the movie, she'd played with her popcorn more than eating it. "Still feeling better with no side effects?"

"They feel totally hatchet, better than they have in a long time," he could hear the happiness in her voice using the strange Irish slang. "I think that if they keep up this way, that I might be able to play the fiddle again someday."

Sam smiled at hearing that. He had introduced her to YouTube earlier today by having her name a few of her favorite songs and finding videos of different group playing them. If he had to guess, she might have enjoyed seeing those videos more than the movie they just had.

Reaching her door, he glanced inside as she opened it, noticing that there was something odd.

"Teagan, where are your pillows?" he asked nodding his head towards her bed.

She turned around and he saw her eyes widen a bit as she bit her lower lip, as if trying to figure out what to tell him.

"Um, they're in the closet," she finally managed to admit in a low voice.

Sam knew from other stories that he'd heard from veterans why they were there.

"You slept in there last night to make sure that nobody could sneak up and get to you, right?" he asked hoping that she would be honest in her admission.

"Yeah," she wouldn't make eye contact with him and even looked around as if to make sure that nobody heard. "But I did start off in the bed."

"I knew a few soldiers that would do the same thing after coming back from overseas. They would have to find a place to sleep out in the field sometimes and needed to secure it so they couldn't be ambushed. When they returned, they would continue the habit until they were comfortable with their location. Is that what you were doing?"

Teagan stepped inside of the room before answering, "Kind of."

He followed her inside as she made her way over to the closet and opened the door. Reaching just inside of the door, she pulled out the pillows and a blanket before moving to put them on the bed. He could tell that she was having a hard time admitting the full truth.

"I had a bad dream last night," she started as she sat down on the edge of the bed. He moved to sit down not far away. "I was back in my cell at the Raft. Keeling showed up and used the pole on me. He said he was there to take me back to Hydra."

Sam hated that even though she had been free from this Keeling guy for at least two years that he still haunted her dreams. Nat had quietly told him just before dinner that she had found the Project Cherry Tree file online. Since the group had gone from there to the den to watch the movie, he had not had a chance to go through it and read up on Keeling or whatever horrors Teagan had been through. He had figured with the long flight home tomorrow that he could read it then, not wanting to take the chance that it gave him his own nightmares.

"So this morning when I asked how you slept, your answer of 'good' was not exactly accurate?" he asked her jokingly while leaning over to bump her shoulder with his.

Teagan dropped her head at being caught but he could see a wary smile on her face.

"Maybe, but I'm guessing that most people don't have a real easy time sleeping on their first night free?"

He hated hearing how she had to word that question. Usually it ended with 'first night back home', but that was not the case for her.

"Not really," he did agree with her. "But, I don't want you to feel that sleeping in a closet is your only option. We're going to be spending some time together. If you wake up like that again, and you need to feel safe, just come over to my room. I don't want you to have to deal with nightmares alone. I don't care what time it is, you come talk to me, alright?"

Teagan's face pinched up with emotion at his offer, and she almost looked like she wanted to cry at being just given the offer of help. Sam reached over and took her hand into his, this time she didn't flinch at all.

"When we leave here tomorrow, Steve and I will be there any time that you need us," he told her. "There's nothing that you should have to feel that you need to keep bottled up. If a simple hot chocolate at four in the morning will help keep the bad dreams away, I'll make sure we have a ready stock available."

Teagan gave a laugh at the offer.

"I'm more of a hot toddy girl, or at least I used to be," she told him. He felt her fingers twitch so he let her hand go, not wanting to force a touch onto her.

"Hot toddy?" he asked.

"Warm Irish whiskey, cloves, lemon, and sugar," she listed off the ingredients. "It's guaranteed to put you to sleep, or knock you out depending on how much whiskey you add to the drink."

With a smile, "It sounds like it. But watch out if you drink with Steve. Alcohol doesn't have an effect on him anymore. He can drink anyone except maybe Bucky under the table."

"I used to be able to hold my own, but I know a few guys back home that would love to put that challenge to the test," she told him.

This his mind began to calculate out when she was taken.

"What were you doing drinking at such a young age?"

Her eyebrows rose in response to the question.

"America still has that high legal drinking age, don't they?"

"High age? Twenty-one is high?"

"I used to have a stout on my birthdays and at celebrations by the age of fifteen," she told him, making his jaw drop a bit.

"Fifteen?" he asked, guessing he knew the rest. "So you started sneaking drinks?"

Now she was actually shaking her head at him.

"My parents gave it to me. There's no legal age to drink in private, only to buy. Besides, it was me family that owned the pub. They did'na care if I had a pint or two."

"So then, would you have any good drunk stories?" he asked with a smile.

"Maybe," she answered before her smile fell.

"What's wrong?" he gave her hand a light squeeze.

"I just remembered one of those stories that happened with the band. I don't even know if those guys are even still alive, or if they even still play on the weekends," she admitted.

"Give Natasha a few weeks to see what she can come up with. We'll try everything possible to get you safely home," he knocked his knee against her leg as he hoped that he was not giving her false hope.

Teagan began to focus downward to his arm resting next to hers. Reaching over, she placed her hand back into his, making him curious as to what she was doing.

Looking up right into his eyes, he wondered if she was about to use her powers on him, but then she said something that he had not expected.

"You're not scared of me touching you?"

Sam knew that her powers depended on skin to skin contact, but there was no real reason for him to have been worried about that. He was not threatening her and she didn't seem scared right now.

"No, I'm not," he said giving her hand another light squeeze. "Why would I be?"

Teagan broke eye contact then, before telling him, "Keeling was. He would only touch me if I was restrained in at least one other way, but usually more. He also made sure that all of the agents around us knew that they should be scared of what could happen. They were ordered to…punish me if I ever touched anyone, no matter if it was accidentally, or even their own fault."

Sam recalled how when they were on the Quinjet just after leaving the Raft how there were a couple of times when someone, himself included, had sat down next to Teagan and she had recoiled away.

"Is that why you sometimes flinch away from anyone touching you? Like on the Quinjet when someone sat next to you? Because you thought that you would be punished for touching them?"

Teagan only nodded her head in agreement as her answer. Sam felt his stomach drop.

Looking at their hands still holding each other, he said, "But you don't seem to mind this?"

"No," she was hesitant but continued, "My friends and family were very affectionate, always hugging, or piled up together at the pub holding each other up on the stools from falling off so we could keep drinking. It reminds me of them. And I'm not scare of you anymore."

Sam knew his eyes grew wider at hearing that.

"You were scared of me?"

With a nod, "I'm still a wee bit scared of everyone of ya."

"Why?"

"All it would take is making a' one of you angry for me to end up back in a cell."

There was no disguising the fear in her voice at the very open admission.

"Teagan," he said reaching over to now take her other hand also into his. Turning them slightly, they now were face to face. "Not a single one of us will ever put you back into a cell for any reason that I can think of. I don't care how mad one of us might get, but that is not something that you ever need to fear. What you've see of us for the past two days is how we generally are…a crazy, mismatched group of people who have the strangest bond of friendship you'll find on this planet."

"None of you ever get mad at each other?"

Sam though back to only a few weeks ago for the perfect example.

"Think of it this way…back during the fight at the airport that we told you about, Clint and Natasha ended up fighting each other for a bit. They started off on opposite sides of the conflict. Wanda then ended up separating them, tossing Nat with her powers into a luggage truck."

He could see her recalling how the three of them had been joking and enjoying each other's company yesterday and today. She also knew that they were all going back to Clint's for a while since Wanda had agreed to go after dinner tonight.

"See?" he pointed out. "None of them are even mad at the others."

"So when Steve said as long as I didn't become a threat…"

"He was only trying to point out that he will make sure that his friends don't get hurt. And I think that for the past two days that you've shown us that you will not be a threat."

Teagan seemed to accept his assessment and began to nod her head in agreement.

"I don't want to hurt any of you, especially after what ya did for me. Thanks to Ross' measures, I never would have gotten off of that base if it wasn't for ya deciding to take me," she told him, making him curious as to the wording of it.

"Base? You mean the Raft?"

"Yes."

"Technically, the Raft is a prison, not a base," his mind then began to go over details of his own stay. "Teagan, didn't anyone there explain exactly where you were?"

Shaking her head, he could see her curiosity at his question, "Not really. They told me 'at the Raft' but I just figured that was the base's nickname. It's not like I got me a tour 'round the place."

"Nobody ever explained to you where the Raft is?"

"No," she shook her head. "Why? Was there something special about it?"

"The Raft prison facility is usually housed under the ocean somewhere in the north Atlantic. The rumbling you felt every so often was it rising out of the ocean to open the top to allow aircraft to land inside of it," he explained as her eyes grew wide.

"I just figured the shaking was a larger plane landing, or maybe a helicopter. So even if I had gotten out of my cell, there was nowhere to run to?"

"No," he told her. "You would still have been trapped underneath the ocean too far down to swim to the surface."

"Ross or Ryker never explained that to me," he saw her shoulders slump a bit. "They were always so careful about what I could see when they moved me around. I just thought they never took me near windows, just like another one of my Hydra rules…no windows to let me know either time or location."

"Didn't they take you out for the exercise hour?" but as soon as he asked, he remembered how she had been detained. He didn't think they would keep putting the restraints on and off of her each day. Would they?

"Exercise hour?" she was shaking her head. "The only places I saw were the interrogation room, the medical bay, and my cell. The only exercise I got was walking the halls between the three."

There had not been any video's listed as security footage from the gym, but it hadn't occurred to him at the time about the missing footage. Sam's teeth noshed together and his jaw felt a low pain at how hard he was clamping his mouth shut before he began a string of curses at Ross. Teagan noticed the change in his body's posture and stood to take a few steps away from him, not understanding why he was suddenly angry.

Raising his hands, he held them up before him, "I'm sorry, Teagan, it's not you. It's Ross. I can't believe what all he did to you. Even though the Raft is considered solitary confinement, all prisoners are supposed to get at least one hour a day in the gym. It's supposed to be a break from being in the cell, to help with the detrimental effects of the isolation on the mind, even if they didn't use the equipment."

"Gym?" her face was curious. "I never saw any type of gym."

Sam put his elbows on his knees as he continued to sit there stewing about how Teagan had spent the past two years. Then when he considered how Ross liked to keep her restrained, he should have guessed that of course she didn't get 'released' every day to use a gym.

"The moment that Ross first found out about you, he should have freed you. Instead, once he found out that nobody else knew about you, he took it upon himself to become your new captor. To try and get you to work for him. The nerve of that egotistical man is beyond measure."

Teagan made her way over to the bed and sat back down next to him.

"Even without the gym, and dealing with Ross' punishments, my time on the Raft was considered a holiday compared to my time with Keeling."

Sam didn't think that his gut could fall any further, but it just had.

"That was better than Hydra?"

"Yeah, as you heard some of today, but I don't want to…" she shook her head to let him know that she did not want to discuss that time with him right now.

Maybe eventually she might need to get it off her chest, but it was probably still too fresh in her memory, especially if Keeling still gave her nightmares. He had heard a bit earlier with the group when it came to just a bit of the testing, and that alone sickened him.

"I understand," he told her as he placed his hand on hers. "It's getting late and I'm sure the group will be getting up early, anxious to get home."

Standing up, he walked over to the open bedroom door, hearing faint laughter coming from the den area that sounded like Steve and Bucky. At least their conversation was about a much happier topic.

"I'll see you in the morning," he told her taking hold of the door handle to shut it. "And remember, if you need someone in the middle of the night, just come get me."

"Thanks," she told him with a weak smile.

"What's got you so riled up?"

Sam paused his next strike at the punching bag as he heard Bucky's voice from the doorway behind him.

Glancing over his shoulder, he and Steve were making their way into the room dressed as if they were about to do a full workout. He had hoped to have a bit of alone time to work out his frustrations at Ross on the punching bag. He had laid in bed for only a few minutes before deciding to head down here.

"Ross," he simply stated.

"That cocky little guy from Berlin?" Bucky asked putting down his water bottle as Steve did the same with his. Seeing him like this with his missing arm, Sam took another punch at the bag but this time in honor of Tony.

"No, different Ross," he stated throwing a punch again thinking again of that conniving ass.

"If I guessed that this has something to do with Teagan, would I be right?" Steve asked him coming over to steady the bag for him.

He could see the seriousness on Steve's face as he asked, but not on Bucky's. If anything, the smile on his face right now was the same one Steve had mentioned to him when he had been the butt of Bucky's jokes.

"Wipe that grin off your face before it freezes that way," he told him punching the bag. "It's not like that."

"Then what is it that brings you down here so late?" Steve asked as Bucky sat down on the bench press to listen.

"We got to talking a bit more about her time on the Raft," he started to explain. "It turns out that nobody ever explained where or what the Raft really is. She thought it was just another land base that she could possibly escape out of if given the chance."

Steve and Bucky exchanged a look and he finally saw that grin leave his face.

"After she mentioned something else, I went back and looked for something in her file and found it. Ross ordered her only privilege on the Raft, the daily use of the gym, to be removed since he was so mad at her stunt," he took a couple of quick gabs before continuing. "Ross didn't even allow her that one hour of leisure like all the prisoners were supposed to be allowed to do, claiming that since she wasn't officially there that standard protocols didn't need to be followed. That asshat really did keep her in a type of solitary confinement, even beyond the restraints he had on her."

"She never figured out something was off with the place?" Bucky asked. "Didn't she notice that there were no windows to the outside?"

Taking a few more hard punches before answering, Sam tried to calm himself.

"No. As it turns out, another Keeling rule was that she was never to be allowed to see out of a window to know where she was or if it was day or night. To her, it was just like every other Hydra base she had ever been at."

As he punched the bag a few more times wondering what other rules she hadn't gotten around to mentioning yet, the two super-soldiers were glaring at each other. Bucky's time with then did not include such rules, just mind-wipes and brainwashing.

"Well, she finally free of both Hydra and Ross," Steve pointed out as he took a few more punches, feeling a bit better after being able to physically and verbally vent for a while.

"I'm going to make sure that Nat does a check on this Keeling guy that was in charge of Teagan," he told them giving the bag a final punch. "I need to know if he was at least one of the Hydra agents captured after D.C."

"That's a good idea," Bucky told him. "If he was, letting her know would probably help with her sleeping habits."

Sam bristled a bit at that, wondering why Bucky would have picked up on something so personal like that.

"Why do you say that?" he asked, also a bit worried...jealous...that he may know more that he did.

"Because of how late it was last night when she finally went to her room after staying outside alone for a while. Later on I heard a door slam shut before she started crying. Her room is between ours, but I'm almost sure that she was in the closet," Bucky simply stated.

Sam dropped his head, a bit saddened that he had not thought about the crying.

"She admitted to having a nightmare about Keeling finding her and taking her back to Hydra," he explained so they knew what to expect, but mostly for Steve's benefit since it would be the three of them for a while. "She told me about sleeping in the closet so nobody could get to her."

He then heard spoken so faintly from Bucky that Sam almost doubted himself, "I know that one."

But Steve's head dropped so he knew that he really had spoken.

"I told her that if she needed to, that she could come to either of us once we leave here," Sam told Steve, who nodded in approval.

"Also try to watch out for any signs that something you would consider normal is scaring her," Bucky told him, drawing his full attention. "She'll be going out into the public sometimes, and she's not used to being surrounded by people, crowds, anymore. They're all strangers, possibly Hydra. Her mind may tell her that a simple bump into someone is a threatening action."

Steve calmly watched Bucky as he had spoken, and Sam knew that neither one of them liked how he knew to give that advice. He was using his own experiences as examples for them.

"I'll keep that in mind," Sam told him starting to unwrap the gloves on his hands. "What are the two of you up to, being here so late?"

"A little race," Steve couldn't hide the smile that appeared.

Glancing between the two of them, he could tell that there was something more.

"Why?"

"He was so proud with how fast he could run after the serum during the war," Bucky started which had Steve dropping his head and sighing. "I just pointed out a little while ago that he's not that fast to me anymore. And if he was faster, then he would have caught me in Bucharest. I'm just taking up his dare of seeing who's faster."

Sam crossed his arms as he held in his own grin, remembering how he had first met Steve.

"As much as I would love to see anyone put Steve's damn 'on your left' ass in place, you do realize that your body's weight and posture are going to be thrown off balance?" Sam nodded his head toward Bucky's shoulder and the missing limb. He'd talked with other veterans who discovered the problem not long after coming home. "But if he beats you, you can always pulled the disabled card."

"If?" Steve sounded heartbroken that Sam was pulling for Bucky to win.

Picking up his towel and water bottle, Sam held back his own smile at the jab he was able to give.

"Have fun, you two centenarians," he said tossing a wave over his shoulder.

"What the hell is a centenarian?" Bucky asked Steve.

"I'm not exactly sure but I think he just insulted us," Steve answered.

Author's Note: Thanks for the continuing positive reviews. I wanted to point out to a couple of readers that have all considered the same thing...that possibly Teagan could just command Bucky to ignore the command words. That will be brought up in a section very soon and you will have your answer. I hope you like how it is handled.