South Dakota Safe House
Moments Later

Teagan sat underneath the willow tree that was at the edge of the tree thicket that kept the house safely obscured. In her panic at the realization of what she had done, using her powers on Sam, running from the house...escaping...had been her only thoughts. But now that the was alone and hidden from sight, the past few minutes came rushing back to her.

How could she have done that to Sam? He was probably so mad at her.

Had badly had she messed up? Would he tell Steve that she couldn't be trusted and needed to be put back in a cell?

There was no way that she could go back into the dark. If she did, Teagan didn't think she would last long. Even on the Raft, she knew that eventually the guards would come with Ross' offer again. But Steve and Sam? They didn't want to use her like he had, so for them, they could just make her disappear.

She needed to formulate an escape plan before it was too late. It was just the two of them. When they came after her to lock her away, she might have a chance to get free from them using her powers. She had the money Shuri had given her. She could take the truck and just drive. It had been years since she'd driven but there was no way to get anywhere nearby without a vehicle. They were too far from everything.

Why had she panicked like that at just a simple, nice touch?

Sam had never shown any fear at touching her, but that was probably now over. Lifting her hand to look at it, she was still able to feel the ghost of Sam's warm touch on her skin. Feeling Sam holding her hand, running his fingers gently across it had reminded her of the last time anyone had done so, back during high school. It had been so nice as she began to recognize the distant squashed feeling as it started to grow. Then considering the way he had been looking at her, a genuine affection towards her that she'd never really had before. But how could he or anyone even have feelings for her after…

It had been so long since she had felt anything like the warmness that had started in her chest that it took a few moments for Keeling's image to creep into her thoughts. Reminding her of all the horrible times he had abused her throughout the long years. She had quickly learned the meaning behind the void of emotion in his eyes when he stepped into her cell, what was going to happen no matter how much she fought and screamed for help. To just give in and submit as he stood behind her and pinned her in his painful grasp, to allow him to touch her.

The feeling of his cold hands as he held her down. But they were nothing like Sam's, which were warm and gentle.

Hell…the two of them had absolutely nothing in common. And yet, her mind had conjured up Keeling.

Knowing that Sam and some of the others had probably read her project file, she guessed that Keeling never mentioned what he did to her once she was back in her cell. Why would he? She knew that others inside of Hydra were aware of what he liked to do with her but even they had not tried to stop him. At least he had never passed her around, probably afraid that a guard would be careless and somehow give her the chance to demand her freedom. She still didn't understand how she'd never become pregnant unless he'd done something to her body. With all the painful medical procedures over the years, there was no telling.

Drawing her legs up, she wrapped her arms around them, trying to become small and invisible just like she used to do when she was hoping that Keeling would forget about her for just a bit longer. Maybe if she hid out here for a few hours alone…

"Teagan," Sam's calm voice was only a few feet away.

Hearing him already so close, it startled her so that she backed away from the direction he had approached from. It was too late to run.

Quickly glaring through the hanging limbs over her shoulder, she wanted to make sure that Steve had not snuck up from behind her. Were they already here to lock her up?

The leafy tree limbs parted like dangling beads in a doorway as Sam slowly and carefully invaded her private hiding space. She didn't see any sign of her restraints in his hands and there was still no sign of Steve nearby.

"Teagan, it's only me," he said crouching down only an arm's length away from her. If she needed to, she could easily reach him. "Are you alright?"

She could only stare into his eyes with the strange question lingering in the air.

"Me? Alright?" she shook her head, not understanding.

"You took off pretty fast back there. And I know that something frightened the hell out of you, but I really hope that it wasn't actually me. I also didn't get a chance to apologize to you."

The possible meaning of what Sam was saying continued to elude her.

"Why would you need to apologize to me after commanding you the way that I did?" she told him as panic of a possible future began to overtake her.

Locked back in the chains, a dark cell, screaming for help that would never come. Ragged breaths heaved in her chest surrounding her pounding heart. Her body tensed up, drawing in on itself, trying to seem as insignificant as possible. The words began to spill out faster than her mind could keep up.

"I'm so sorry…please don't lock me up again…I'll behave…I didn't mean to...I'll obey…I wasn't thinking…I promise never to touch you again just please don't lock me up in the dark again."

There was no way to stop the flood of tears that began to spill as her voice cracked behind choked sobs of fear.

Sam was instantly next to Teagan on the ground, carefully pulling her into an embrace as he began to gently rock her. Even though she had just been worried about touching him, she never tried to draw away from him in fear. It seemed that even with the panic attack she was experiencing that she was letting him try and calm her down.

Or maybe she was just trying to not get into any more trouble, as she saw it. Hearing the pleading sound of fear in her voice with the troubling words coming from her hurt him on the inside. He thought that by now she at least trusted them enough to know them better than that.

"You are not in trouble and we would never lock you in a dark cell, no matter what you've done," he informed her between her sobs. He felt her entire body shaking with fear. This was the first time she had experience anything of this magnitude. All of her previous crying episodes were due to nightmares about her past, not anything relating to a current event. She needed to be able to see past what had happened so that it no longer worried her. "I'm not angry at what you did. It was an involuntary accident. You were frightened and for you, using your powers is a natural response. I can't fault you for that. And neither does Steve."

Between sobs, "I wasn't trying to hurt you…", stuck on that part.

Releasing her enough so that he was able to use his hand to lift her face so that she could see his, "Teagan, I know. And you didn't hurt me. I've never worried about that and I never thought that you would."

Her eyes were red and swollen as they darted around looking for something.

"What is it?" he asked glancing at the surrounding area in case she had heard something he had not. He released her in case he needed to move if someone was approaching.

"Steve…he's not with you, waiting to…"

"Waiting to what?"

"Put my restraints on me."

He hated what all she had been through for that to be a fear. Even only having been with them a short time Sam had hoped that she felt at least relaxed enough around them to know that they wouldn't do that to her.

But he had to remind himself that she was frightened and not thinking clearly.

Shaking his head, "Teagan, we don't have your restraints. They got tossed away back in Wakanda. We don't have any type of restraints to use on you."

The look of disbelief on her face would almost be comical if not for the true fear she'd had moments ago.

"Why not? What about when I mess up again? Next time…"

"If there is a next time, then we'll talk through it just like we are doing right now," he told her hoping to calm her down. "A week ago, you were locked in a cell, and harshly restrained in a way that nobody ever should be as an unnecessary punishment. Neither I nor Steve expect you to just suddenly readjust to any type of normal life without having a few setbacks. And we are not going to be like Ross, or Keeling, and punish you even if they do happen."

He visible saw her shudder at hearing Keeling's name and he wondered how much of her current fear had been created by him. Maybe he just needed to come right out and ask her.

"Teagan," he made sure his voice was calm and soft, "what scared you up in the bathroom? I know that it was just more than our hands touching because we've done that a couple of times since we met."

Her body began to draw in on itself, pulling a bit away from him and trying to hide at the same time.

"Please, tell me. I can't help you get over anything in your past if I don't know Keeling did, even though I have a very strong suspicion of what you might tell me."

That was when her crying escalated to where he was getting concerned for her. Moving over so that he was next to her again, he put his arm over her shoulders and leaned Teagan into his for support. He wasn't sure how aware she actually was of how her arms wrapped around his chest, squeezing as if she needed him to support her upright. He placed his other hand over her bare arm while letting her violently sob against him.

The fact that she had become like this after asking such a question led him to believe that she probably had in fact been sexually assaulted. They sat there together as he waited for her to have enough time to become brave enough to tell him this part of her story.

After a few minutes of just being there for her, allowing Teagan to take his hand to hold onto, Sam heard and felt the changes as she began to finally calm down.

"He…Keeling…he did...things to me. Sometimes it was as a punishment, sometimes because he just wanted to. Since he was in charge of me, there was nobody to stop him. If I obeyed, did what I was instructed, he'd tell me that for him to not…do that…was for my good behavior. So I made sure to obey, to not make him angry. But he…"

Teagan grew quiet so he just sat there with her until she reached a point where she could continue.

"There were others, Hydra people, which would contradict him sometimes with how he handled me. He would then take it out on me. There were a few times when I would beg and scream for help from them, even with the gag in. I knew that they understood what I was saying, but they never helped me."

What Keeling had done to her was so bad that she asked for help from others inside of Hydra? And of course she didn't get it. He felt is gut drop.

Sam closed his eyes and took a deep breath, wishing that he got the chance to put his fist right across Keeling's face. Having her confirm his suspicions made him want to go a hit something even more than he had back in Wakanda when he couldn't sleep, and that was just finding out about the Raft. Soldiers coming back with PTSD usually didn't have to deal with any issues on the unique level that Teagan did. He could help her with certain issues but it might take more than just him to help her get past what might have been eleven years of sexual abuse.

"What about the Hydra guards? Did Keeling let them touch you?" he hated to ask.

Shaking her head in the negative, she explained, "At our home base, after a while he decided to rotate out the guards after only shorter times of being there. They were mean, trying to prove themselves to Keeling but they didn't force themselves on me. At other bases, there were too many others around or they knew of the consequences of getting caught potentially hurting a Project."

Really hoping that a specific jackass had some morals, "Did Ross ever do anything to you…like that?"

Teagan gave a weak laugh as she sat up a bit straighter. Her eyes were puffy and red from the breakdown but he knew that sometimes that letting it all out was a good start to getting a foothold on mending. It had also made her freckles stand out more, a shade darker than usual.

"No, he was too scared of me. And I learned quickly which of the guards would like to 'help' me with bathing during my punishments weeks, so it was easy to avoid them."

"Help?"

"When the cuffs were on, they would have to come into my cell to help me use the toilet since I couldn't remove the jumper. After learning their voices, I would take a shower every few days, but only if it was one of the guards that didn't like to touch me more than was necessary to get undressed."

Sam now felt like invading the Raft to punch a few more people.

"I hadn't really considered you needing help to do such simple things that we were able to."

"Compared to what I had already gone through, my time on the Raft was a breeze. My favorite and only real pastime while in the dark was fighting with the guards when they came into my cell. That's who I thought you all were when you first showed up," she told him sounding much more relaxed about it than he felt.

"They didn't hurt you for putting up a fight?"

"Not as badly as Keeling did or threatened to do if I disobeyed his rules. The shock collar was annoying but it gave me a bit of a nap to help the time pass quicker," he could hear the amusement in her voice. He would not have looked at it that way. "Since I had to pass my punishment times doing something, I figured why not make the guards suffer too."

"That is not something to joke about," he told her a bit more firmly than he had intended.

"Seeing Ross punching his own bollocks was absolutely worth it," she had a wide grin now. "I know that you watched that video a few times yourself."

Sam now couldn't hide his own smile since she was right. He then thought about what else she had just said.

"Teagan, you said that Keeling would threaten you...for fighting him?"

"Yeah," she wiped at her face again. "I made a mistake once of doing that so a new rule was issued. Not long after he started...raping me...I kicked him. After that, he made up the rule that the repercussion if I ever did it again would be that he would have my feet cut off. I have no doubt that he meant it."

Sam couldn't believe what he had just heard. This Hydra asshole was that cruel, that he would punish her by amputating her feet? Would his superiors have actually let him go through with something to vicious? With Hydra, Sam knew that there was always a chance.

"Do you at least now believe that neither I nor Cap'n Crunch in there are going to lock you back up?" he asked her seeing that the sky was a bit darker than when they first came out here. He was glad to hear her finally laughing again, even if it was at Steve's expense.

"Yes," she sounded genuine. "I think just getting that part of me past out there to anyone else helped."

"Are you feeling up to heading back inside? I'm sure Steve is sitting in that kitchen staring at that pot waiting for us."

"Oh, janey. The stew! It needs ta' be stirred or it'll burn to tha' bottom!" Teagan then jumped up and reached out to take his hand. "Come on!"

Sam felt a swelling of pride as he let her guide him through the limbs, out of the trees and into the house, her fear of touching him once again gone.

The Safe House
During the Next Week

Sam made sure to keep an eye on Teagan to see how she was doing after the incident. He could see that she withdrew a bit, probably still worried even with their talk. After dinner that night, she had retired to her room early with the tablet they had gotten her so that she could download books to read. Her light had stayed on for a few hours, which he noted by the glow under the door as he went upstairs to do unnecessary tasks. The small load of clothes he'd started to wash at past ten o'clock at night could easily have waited until morning.

After talking with Steve, but not going into detail with what he had learned from her, the two of them decided to try and help build her body back up to where it should be. She was very underweight and her stamina was almost non-existent. Sam also hoped that it would be a distraction so that she wouldn't have time to think about Keeling or Ross.

So starting the next morning, Steve had gone from being a captain to a sergeant…a drill sergeant.

Steve had taken the two of them and formed his own very little platoon. Using his own training, he and Teagan found themselves doing jumping jacks, push-ups, and running laps around the tree-enclosed yard. They had agreed that until she seemed to build up enough endurance that they needed to keep her close to the house.

By the time they stopped after a two-hour training session, Teagan was cursing in Irish under her breath as Steve then took off for his own additional exercise. He had joined in with them, but it was nothing compared to what Steve was normally able to accomplish. To make her feel a bit better, he pulled up some of the videos and pictures of younger pre-serum Steve to refresh her memory.

Except for her being taller than he had originally been, Steve had been right about their bodies being frighteningly similar.

That day before lunch they had driven into the larger town again to get more groceries. Steve compiled a list of specific items to get, full of protein and vitamins that would help her body grow healthy again. That didn't mean Sam put back the bag of potato chips she tried to hide under the lettuce. Teagan had seen his expression and pointed out that being Irish meant that she of course had to eat potatoes. He grinned at her logic and let it go, adding a box of chocolate chip cookies to the basket himself.

But close to the end of the week, Sam had noticed a major improvement in Teagan's resilience. She not longer got winded as easily, she managed to make multiple laps around the short running path that he and Steve took on a daily basis, and he was also informed that she had put on three pounds…a lot for her. In the afternoons, Steve worked with her down in the small gym that Nat had, showing her simple boxing moves and letting her use the weights to build up her arm muscles.

The only thing that continued to disturb him about her progress of adjusting was the crying. Sam was sure that every night he heard Teagan crying at some point, midnight, later, or even early morning. There had even been one morning he and Steve had found her asleep on the couch downstairs for some reason. All she would tell them was that the room had more exits.

He could only hope that as the days passed and she felt safer around them and at being at the house that the bad dreams went away.

/… she couldn't close her eyes to hide the accusing ones staring at her from across the table…
...her body jerked at the crack of the gun going off…
...wetness splashed over her face…
...droplets of tears ran down her cheek freshly streaked with his blood…
"Back to the cell with her. Clean this traitorous mess up."
"Should we clean her up too?"
"No. It's only blood. Let her have a reminder of how good she performed."
"Good?" the word crawled from her throat…
...his eyes, Keeling's eyes, narrowed on her…
"You dare to contradict me?"
…she stood up to face him as the cuffs released her from the chair and table…
...guards covered entirely in uniforms pulled her back from him…
…staring at Keeling across the room, she uselessly demanded, "Let me go!"…
...she fought so hard the guards threw her to the ground…
…pain as her arms were pulled up behind her back…
...the device was locked onto her again, trapping her here…
"You are mine! Don't you ever forget that!"
"I'll see you rotting in hell one day!"
…screams were now formed from the pain in her arms…
"Oh, you will?" he sneered...
…down the grey hall crying black tears she was dragged…
...the black cell was so close now…
"Yes, not only because I'll be the one to put you there, but since you've damn my soul,
you fecking bastard, I'll be there waiting! Ya turned me into a murderer!"…
…they locked her hanging into place…
...his laughter at her words echoed in the hall...
...the gag was roughly shoved in her mouth...
...the cell door slammed shut…
...darkness absorbed her muffled screams…/

"Murderer!"

Steve was startled awake by the single screamed word sounding like it was being forcefully, painfully pried from the speaker.

Teagan!

Jumping up from his bed, he opened his door to find Sam already in the hallway throwing open her bedroom door with a gun in his hand. There were no other sounds coming from anywhere in the house, so if she was being attacked, it was only by one opponent. Crossing the hall as Sam stepped inside the room already bright with the lights that Teagan left on every night, they could see that she was the only one in the room.

"Teagan!" Sam, seeing the room safe, held the weapon behind his back for Steve to take, which he did, before sitting on the edge of the bed where Teagan was struggling with a nightmare. Her arm was swinging out as if trying to hit someone before her so Sam grabbed a hold of her hand before she got him instead. Just as she started to scream, Sam called out to her, "Hey there, girl. Wake up, Teagan. It's just a bad dream. Teagan!"

Steve watched her eyes finally open, focusing on Sam next to her before moving over to him, seeing that both of them had come to help her. Glancing around the room, she confirmed that the nightmare was actually gone. Teagan then broke down and began to sorrowfully cry. These were not little tears. Her entire body was shaking as Sam wrapped his arms around her, whispering comforting words that did not have any immediate effect on her.

For the past three weeks, they had slowly become used to being woken up from her crying out in her sleep from nightmares, but this was the first time that she had used such a specific word. Murderer. There was something horrible that had made her scream that out.

Staying in case Sam needed him, after a few minutes she began to calm and Steve heard him ask, "Teagan, do you remember what you were dreaming about?"

Her head began to furiously nod.

"We came to check on you because we heard you scream out 'murderer' in your sleep," Sam told her so she knew why they had come running. "Did you think someone was here to murder you? Was it Keeling?"

Shaking her head, "No, not really. I was dreaming about the first time…" she then hesitated.

"The first time what?" Sam calmly asked, now rubbing her back.

Her voice was weaker as she told them, "The first time he made me kill. When he turned me into a murderer."

Steve felt his heart drop hearing her explanation. Sam looked over at him, not sure if Steve could help her with this problem, but he at least wanted to try. Walking to the foot of the bed, Steve sat down as Teagan's fearful eyes glared at him, as if worried he agreed with her.

"Teagan, neither one of us would ever consider you a murderer. I don't believe that you would have gone out and just killed a person for no reason…and I know Sam agrees with me. You did what you had to do to survive as Hydra's prisoner. But you are free from them, and Keeling, and you'll never have to do anything you don't want to ever again."

"It doesn't matter. I'm already dammed to hell thanks to him," she raised her red, tear-streaked eyes to him, and then Steve really understood. Sam's curious expression told him that he didn't.

"Were you raised Catholic?" he asked her, to which she closed her eyes and nodded.

"Teagan, I don't think that God is going to condemn your soul because of what Keeling made you do," Sam told her. "I would hope that any higher power would know what you've been through and know that it wasn't the real you."

"It does matter. Just as if I had been the one to actually pull the trigger. I ended their lives. No penance will change that."

"Penance?" Sam asked either of them.

"An act of goodness to repair the damaged to the soul caused by sin," Steve gave as a simple explanation.

Sam got a sly smile on his face as he then commented, "A get out of jail free card."

Teagan was now a mixture of crying and laughing at his funny way to look at it such a serious topic to her.

"It doesn't exactly work like that," she told him wiping the tears from her face.

"Well, if I have to go through the bible until I find a line that says it does work like that so that you don't have this fear anymore, then I will," Sam told her.

Looking up at him, Sam gave a nod so he knew they were good. He stepped into Sam's room, placing his gun back in the nightstand.

Steve then made his way across the hall to his own room, leaving the two of them as they began to have a talk about religion and Sunday school. It was quite a while later when he finally heard Sam closing his own door, and for the rest of the night it seemed that the nightmares didn't plaque Teagan.

Author's Note: Thanks for the continuing positive reviews! I'm so glad that you have found the story interesting. Teagan was able to get a bit more of her past out to Sam and his calmness is definitely helping her. We'll start slowly skipping forward in time over the next few chapters, showing the more interesting scenes during their time in hiding.