PART TWO OF TWO

Walking into the kitchen, Sam saw Teagan standing at the top of stairs leading into the basement. In her hands was a basket of her dirty laundry, the muddy ones from a few days ago catching his eyes and making him smile at the memory of the mud fight. Giving pause for a few seconds, he realized there was no movement from her at all. It was if she was transfixed on the narrow, creepy stairs leading down to where the laundry machines were located. The underground bottom level was little more than a rough concrete floor and brick walls. He knew she had been down there many times, so why was she hesitating this time?

"Teagan?" he finally asked as he took a few steps closer.

It was only when he put his hand on her shoulder that she was startled from whatever thoughts had trapped her in place.

"What?" she asked trying to focus on him, her eyes slightly glazed over.

"Are you alright?" he asked glancing down the simple wooden steps. "Tell me what's wrong?"

"I…it's…it's dark…" she then turned back to the doorway.

Reaching over, he flipped the light switch but found that the bulbs at the top of the stairs and close to the bottom were burnt out, making him realize the problem she was having. It was too small of a dark space for her to handle this soon. He knew she still liked to leave at least one light on in her room during the night.

Taking the basket from her hands, Sam started to take a couple of steps downward.

"Sam, I don't think I can go down there," Teagan called out to him.

"It's alright. Right now, you don't have to. Just wait right there and give me a minute," he told her as he reached the bottom.

He put her clothes into the washing machine, getting it started for her. Next, Sam went over to snag the spare light bulbs on the shelf which he had gotten at the hardware store weeks ago. Grabbing a box, he began to change out the few others were out in the lower basement.

Sam figured he was taking too long for Teagan's liking as he heard her call out, "Sam, are you okay?", making him a little elated that she was so worried about him even though it was not necessary.

"Yes, I'm almost done," he called out to her, not wanting her to worry. He made quick work of the final lower bulbs.

Walking to the bottom of the stairs where she could see him, her body physically relaxed once he was in view as Teagan watched him from where she sat on the floor in the kitchen. She was intently glowering down into the basement as if she were mad at it for being in the house she was probably starting to feel safe in. He changed out the two in the staircase as she quietly watched him.

If she were worried for him after only a minute out of her sight, Sam knew he would have to find out a bit more about what scared her of the dark so much. She had mentioned a black room cell, but so far she had not brought it up in their talks. He was slowly going through her file, having to take brakes or skip over the details of some of her 'testing' due to becoming sickened by it. But as for her actual fear of the dark, there had to be something so minor to Hydra that they had not felt it worth of putting into writing. It would be up to her to tell him that part of her tale.

"I changed out every burnt-out bulb I could find," he told her coming up the stairs. Teagan stood as he offered her his hand.

Hesitantly, she took the first couple of steps as he helped her finally reach the bottom. Looking around, he saw her eyes darting to the few remaining dark corners, as it something…or someone…might be there.

"Thanks," she told him walking over to the machines and seeing her load already going.

"Changing out a few bulbs was nothing," he told her.

"It is to me," he could barely hear her whispered words, the meaning behind them making a warm glow in his chest.

Coming back from his run, Steve could hear the sounds of Celtic folk music drifting from the safe-house. All of the windows were wide open, and the screen doors on the first floor were in place. After he had burnt dinner last night, the house still had a smoky scent this morning so everyone agreed to let it air out for a bit since the day was so nice.

Looking in through the front screen door, Steve spotted Sam just outside of the kitchen watching something, or someone he really figured, inside of it. That was when he heard the singing accompanying the music. Teagan was singing along in Gaelic.

Opening the door quietly, he was able to make his way to just behind Sam without him even noticing his arrival. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Teagan working with the ingredients for the dessert she wanted to make, Irish Porter Cake, on the kitchen table with her back to them.

Backing off a few feet until he reached the stairs, Steve's movements finally caught Sam's attention as his head turned towards him before he quickly made his way over to the couch. Steve couldn't remember any previous time that Sam had been embarrassed for doing anything.

But silently watching Teagan cooking...? Interesting. Maybe he was going to loose that bet with Nat.

Leaving the bar, the group was laughing after spending the past two hours of hanging out, drinking and playing pool. He and Teagan had finally gotten Nat to join them in a couple of pints while Steve kept to sodas. After a few beers, Sam had heard Teagan telling the bartender to start making sure that Steve's cola was changed to Shirley Temples. As they were leaving, Steve had just commented on how he liked the strange drink he'd ended up with, causing the laughter to echo over the parking lot.

They were all distracted by the funny comment so they didn't closely play attention to the patron walking towards the front door until he pulled out the gun.

"Give me your wallets," his eyes darted between the four of them.

The quiet of the night quickly returned as they glared at the man with the shaky hand.

Sam gave a sideways steps so that he was now partially giving Teagan cover.

"You don't realize how bad your night just became," Nat calmly told the guy.

"Shut up!" he turned the weapon towards Nat. "Wallets! Now!"

"There's no way we're doing that..." Sam started to tell him.

A second later, a hand with a wad of cash appeared from behind him where Teagan was.

"Here you go," her voice was eerily happy. Why would she find being robbed amusing?

Taking a step around him, Teagan cautiously approached him with her hand extended so he could see the money she offered.

"Smart girl," he said reaching out with his free hand for the offering.

"Teagan," Sam whispered her name, worried as to what was happening.

But a moment before her hand made contact with his, Sam figured it out.

As her hand touched his, they heard her state in a very clear voice, "Do not fire that gun. Do not yell or run away."

Teagan was using her powers on the robber.

"Hand your gun over to Natasha," she instructed him, the robber instantly complying.

"When we part, you will forget ever meeting us. You will go directly home, go to sleep, and when you wake up you will slap yourself in the face, tell yourself you were luck that you changed your mind so nobody got hurt, and then you will never think about robbing someone again," she continued to tell him.

Releasing her hand from his, Teagan took a step past him so he and the others did the same. Nat had put the gun away out of sight.

"That could have been dangerous, Teagan," Steve's firm voice broke the silence as they approached the car.

"He was more interested in the money," she pointed out. "Besides, I don't look as intimidating as the three of you do. At least he won't be robbing anyone else."

"Just keep yourself safe," Steve told her opening up the truck's door and getting inside to drive, while Nat took up the rest of the front seat.

Standing with Sam next to the closed door, she asked quietly, "Do you think he's mad at me?"

He knew that Teagan was once again worried about them locking her away, even after all of this time together.

"No," he told her taking her hand into his. "I think that he was more worried that the gun might have gone off and that you would have gotten hurt."

He saw her once again starting to bite her lower lip as she considered his words.

"Ok," she then said with a nod of her head. "Next time, I'll let Natasha handle it. I wouldn't mind seeing her fighting against someone else besides you or Steve."

"Trust me when I say that will be a very short fight," he told her opening up the truck's back door.

"Are they still out there?" Steve asked emerging from the kitchen as she watched Sam and Teagan through the front window.

"Of course," she told him, sounding very happy, as if she knew something that nobody else did, but then this was Nat who always sounded like that.

Teagan and Sam had begun arguing this morning over which was better, baseball or cricket. So, after driving into town today, the two of them had returned with lunch and a bat, ball, and gloves. All four of them had taken turns hitting at the ball while another pitched, but he and Nat had grown bored first. Or at least claimed to have. The two of them were still going at it.

Steve had also agreed to cook hot dogs on the grill for dinner again and he had just finished gathering up his supplies.

"I'm glad that Teagan seems to have come out of her shell," Nat wanted to point out to him, as they headed back into the kitchen.

Nodding his head, Steve told her, "It's easy to be calm when you're surrounded by good people and friends. Any sign of Keeling?"

Nat had to unfortunately shake her head as she grabbed up all the condiments for the table out back where they were going to eat next to the grill.

"Nothing," she sighed aloud as they headed outside together. "After going through more of her file, I wouldn't mind getting my hands on him for a few hours. It's been a few years since I've had anyone I felt was deserving of some of my more special talents."

"Nat, that's not what you do anymore," Steve tried to chastise her, but it sounded empty to even his ears.

"I know you feel the same way, so don't try to lecture me," she knew him too well.

"At least I don't say it aloud," he stated as they crossed the grass.

"All that does is prove that you're more considerate than I am," Nat told him putting the items down on the table as the sun started to set in the distance.

"Are the both of you drunk?"

Sam looked around the dark kitchen until his heavy eyes fell on Steve standing at the bottom of the stairs.

Teagan tried to stifle a laugh before exclaiming a bit too loudly, "Maybe!", causing him to follow suit. That had to answer the question.

They had been down here for probably about an hour now after he had been woken up by the sound of a gentle knock on the wall. Teagan had another nightmare and had used his sign that she needed company. The two of them had silently crept downstairs and she had proceeded to make the two of them Irish Hot Toddies. They were now on either their third or fourth one.

Or was it the fifth?

"You're just jealous since you can't get drunk anymore," Sam slurred while finishing off the last of the flavorful dark liquid in his cup.

"Of course it has nothing to do with the two of you loudly giggling at four a.m. and waking me up," Steve pointed out taking a seat at the table.

Teagan reached over to the stove top, taking the small kettle off the low-heat burner that was keeping the whiskey warm for the next helping. Grabbing a clean mug from the drying rack, she began to assemble three more servings with the ingredients on the table, before pushing Steve his own to join them.

Raising her mug, Teagan offered the toast, "Here's 'ta a randy leprechaun taking too good an interest in Keeling bum!"

Sam didn't bother stifling the laugh as he recalled their conversation around drink number two or three.

Without hesitation, she began to slam down the entire mug as he joined her. Finishing off his own, they both looked over at Steve, who was watching them very wide eyed.

"Ya had to be here earlier," Sam explained, to which Steve jerked his head before going after his own drink.

"So, I'm going to guess that neither one of you are going to be up for our morning run in a few hours," Steve pointed out.

Teagan's face went all serious as she leaned forward over the table to tell Steve, "You'll be lucky if I wake up at all tomorrow," as she started to prepare the next round.

"What? That's it? Where's the rest of it?" Teagan anxiously asked sitting upright on the couch, her eyes wide with anticipation. The music from the season finale of Game of Thrones was still going on the television screen.

"Still being filmed," he told her, sitting up himself to stretch his arms over his head.

From his right side, Sam listened to a string of curses in Gaelic as Teagan animatedly swung her arms around before falling back on the couch with a cute pout.

"At least they are still going, unlike some other t.v. shows," he pointed out.

"I can't believe that Arya Stark fed that man his own sons," Steve finally managed to speak up.

"She's my favorite character," Nat chimed in, too big of a smile on her face in his opinion.

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me," Steve chided her. "Of course you would like the assassin."

"You should too, considering who your best friend is," she goaded back at him, taunting him with Bucky.

"Arya's mine too," Teagan interjected. "I really like the idea of the list she has for who needs a bit of justice in their lives."

Sam was a bit worried about how she pointed that out. He decided to take it a bit more on the jovial side, hoping for more details before he became worried.

"Do you have a list like that? Mine only includes Ross," he put some humor into his voice.

"Keeling, of course. And then there's the base commander from where I was held," she told him. "I think that my little stunt with Ross might have been enough. But let's not forget all of Hydra."

"So, then it would be useless to hand you a small sheet of paper to write their names on?" Nat asked her.

"No, but it's just wishful thinking anyways."

"Teagan, do you know the base commander's name?" Steve asked, probably hoping for something else to help lead them to Hydra.

"Not really," she told him with her smile disappearing. "Keeling would call him Henry but he told me to only address him as Sir whenever he was there. I never heard a last name."

Sam might have to see if over their new few 'sessions' if he could try to talk her away from any vengeful thoughts. They could start to mar her progress if she really became too consuming for her. Hopefully, her comments were only because of the ideas in the show and that the fun-loving person he now knew she really was stayed around.

"So, what's the next show we should binge watch?" he asked, steering the conversation away from revenge. "Should we go for a comedy...?"

"Another round!" Sam called out to the waitress cleaning off the table near theirs.

The small town bar was mostly empty since it was a Thursday night, so their small group of four had the place mostly to themselves. Which was a good thing considering how he'd planned on them celebrating the first birthday Teagan would have in thirteen years. They had gone to a local restaurant, the same one they'd been to for Steve's birthday, and had dinner. But instead of a quiet night at home like he had wanted, Teagan had chosen to go out drinking, just like he figured she would.

So a few weeks ago, Sam had taken to browsing the internet to order special Irish inspired shirts for all of them to wear tonight. For Teagan, her shirt was a leprechaun pulling his pants down to expose his butt cheeks with a four-leaf clover tattoo with the words, 'Kiss my Shamrock!'. After finding it wrapped as a present, she had practically jumped into his lap to give him a large hug.

Steve's shirt bore the words, 'I'm not drunk, I'm Irish!', which they all found amusing considering his parentage and the fact that he couldn't get drunk anymore. His own shirt displayed, '0% Irish', and he felt it was funnily appropriate.

Nat, who was the hardest to buy for, actually had appreciated hers, which had a large four-leaf clover in the center with 'Pinch me and I'll punch you' surrounding it. That way, depending on how tonight went, nobody would be able to say they weren't forewarned if they hit on her.

"I want to thank all of ya for doing this for me," Teagan told them as the waitress walked away.

"You deserve to have a great birthday," Steve told her, raising his glass in the air as a salute before downing the little bit remaining.

"That's right," Nat agreed. "I'm just sorry that it can't be with your real family yet."

Hearing that made Sam's mood drop slightly, knowing that it meant that possibly some time in the future that Teagan would be leaving them to head back home. It wasn't that Steve and Nat weren't great to hang around, but he found himself enjoying his times with Teagan more.

"That's fine," Teagan told her. "Just being here after..."

They all watched as she paused whatever she had been about to say, just as her eyes took on a deep sadness that he had not seen from her in a long time.

Scooting his chair closer to hers, he wrapped his arm around her shoulder, hoping that his closeness would help stop the upcoming emotional burst. He knew that everything she had been through was still too fresh sometimes. Just having a birthday after so long, he knew that this might be a possibility.

"We understand," he told her as she wiped away the tears before they actually fell.

A few moments passed before she spoke.

"For so long, I never thought I would even have another birthday. So, this...being here with ya," she looked around the table at everyone, "It means more than you'll ever know."

"We're happy to have you with us," Steve told her as the waitress appeared with another round of stout Guinness beers.

"And Steve," Teagan got his attention, "I don't think that I ever actually told you thanks for taking a chance and getting me out of the Raft. If you had thought me too dangerous, I'd still be sitting in that cell."

Steve looked like he had no idea how to respond to such a comment. Instead, he lifted his beer, motioning for everyone to do the same.

"Happy birthday, Teagan," he toasted, all of them clinking glasses before drinking away.

Sam sat across the kitchen table from Teagan who was lying the bread dough into the pan. In front of him was the pumpkin that he was almost finished carving out. It was Halloween, but she had insisted that everyone call it by its proper name of Samhain. On the table in front of her were three objects that she had taken to making sure they were clean before she pushed them down into the dough.

"What are you doing? Hoping to choke us to death?" he joked with her.

Sticking out her tongue at him, "I would think that a grown boy such as yourself could handle a child's game," she told him.

"What game?" he asked.

"Each of the items represents something. They'll be easy to spot when you get a slice of the barnbrack bread," she told him while moving the pan into the oven. "The coin means you'll be prosperous in the coming year. The piece of rag means just the opposite. And the ring means that you'll find romance or happiness."

Sam smiled at how Teagan lit up while explaining to him. This was obviously holiday that meant something to her. During the forth of July, they had all gone into town and watched the fireworks display, but to her they had just been pretty. They had celebrated Steve's birthday by going to a chain restaurant for their Firework Burgers, a one-day specialty. Their simple disguises kept the three of them safe, Steve's beard having filled out enough to cover his face. Then there had been her own birthday, accompanied by many rounds.

Steve and Nat were outside in the backyard working on getting the small bonfire ready for later tonight. After hearing Teagan talk about how back home people would put a lock of hair into the fire so they would dream of a future love, Nat had practically demanded that they uphold that tradition. It wasn't often they saw Nat take such an interest in something, so they had all gone along with it.

"I'm still not going to eat that colcannon that you're making," he informed her, the smell of the boiled potatoes, onions, and cabbage infecting the kitchen.

"Eating it has never killed anybody that I know of," she told him while shaking her head.

"That's because some people are very good with hiding the bodies," he jested.

Later that night as they all sat around the bonfire, his flame grinned jack-o-lantern smiling at them from the porch, Teagan brought out the barnbrack bread and sliced everyone a piece, reminded them about the objects inside. Since there were only three of them, and an entire loaf, Sam was surprised when he carefully bit down on something hard. Everyone watched as he pulled the small ring from inside of his mouth.

For some reason, Sam thought that the very smug look that Nat gave him was more than a bit suspicious.

Sam hated the idea that Teagan was getting emotional as she sat on the couch looking over the file that Natasha had put together for her. But she was the one who had specifically asked Nat for the information. He had tried to point out that she might not like what she found out about her parents, relatives, and friends from back home. Teagan told him that she understood that they all would have continued on with their lives while thinking that she had died, thanks to Hydra's deception. But he could understand her wanting to know what had happened to them.

"What's the date this pictures taken from?" Teagan asked Nat as she paused on one of a larger gathering of people. Sam knew that it was her aunt and uncle's pub after seeing other shots taken from it.

"Just about a month after you went missing," Nat told her after pulling up the date.

"It's my Month's Mind," Teagan absently stated as she zoomed in on a few of the faces.

He could see the mixture of happy and sad expressions on the people attending the gathering.

"What's Month's Mind?" he asked her as she stopped to look at her parents sitting down off to the side, their expression somber.

"It's an event held one month later to remember the person who passed," Teagan started to explain to him. "Family and friends would go to mass and then gather for a meal. Seamus and Colleen held it at their pub."

Sam, Nat, and Steve sat with her as she pointed out all of the different people from the pictures. There were a lot of ones from her musician friends, including a few videos, that Nat was able to find online. They played and sang a few songs that they knew had been Teagan's favorites as others drank toasts to her. Sam could tell that she must have been very special to all of them with how many people had shown up to attend the event. They all got a kick out of seeing a video of Father Hanagan partially drunk leading the sing along for a song called Willie Taylor, about a woman dressed as a man looking for her lover at sea.

Seeing a couple of young men that looked more on the hooligan side, he asked her who they were.

"Liam, Craig. Guys I went ta school with," she told him indicating each. Pointing at the final guy whose arms had large tattoos, "And that's me cousin Quinn."

"I remember you mentioning him," he stated as the three guys toasted to the belated cousin.

"He hasn'a always been on the right side of the law, but I tried to keep him in line," she told him, but sounding amused. "I don'na know how much he's in it now, but if Quinn's still alive, I'd be pretty sure he's mob now."

Sam's eyebrows perked up at hearing that. Teagan didn't sound angry about the possible criminal in the family. It was almost like she expected it, if anything.

By the end of the night, he and Teagan found themselves outside on the rocking chairs as she told him a couple of more stories of her friends, along with a few antics that they had done. She'd had an angry cry over Hydra and Keeling not long ago but she seemed to have gotten past it for now. He expected her to have a fitful sleep tonight after seeing her loved ones for the first time in so long. He hated that she was still being kept from them, but he'd heard Steve and Nat talking alone earlier about how as long as Keeling might be out there, that he knew where she might eventually go…home.

Unless Keeling was out of the picture, Teagan might never go home.

Sam then felt his own stomach roil a bit with the next thought that hit him.

A contentment that Teagan was going to have to stay with them for a bit longer…because even though he knew going home was what she wanted, he was starting to like being around her and didn't want her to leave.

Author's Note: Translation - amaideach - Irish for 'silly' (found in part one).
Now that the group has gotten to know each other much better, time for them to actually do something, don't you think?