Surrender : Book Two // Steve Harrington X Reader

𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓

"We have to start small." Your hushed voice calls across to Steve who was ducked down by your side. You'd been walking through the forest in search of some of the smaller creatures so you could test your - his - theory.

The rest had helped you feel a little more alive and you hoped with all your being that this would work.

Especially since you didn't really have many other options.

By now, your clothes and body are already dirty and caked in a mixture of soot and grime. You weren't sure how much time had passed or how much you had left so you knew you had to work quickly to prevent being stuck down here.

"Like... with the bats?" He asks, equally as quiet and you nod. He had a permanent frown on those thick brows of his, a mixture of concern and internalized frustration that you were the one who had to do most of the fighting. Much like most men who had been raised a similar way, Steve believed it was the mans job to protect his family. That he should be the fighter, and you the protected damsel at home instead of right here in the thick of it.

But that wasn't the way things were for your family. 

Of the two of you, it was obvious where all the power lay and that was with you. Not that Steve didn't have his own abilities, of course. Over the years, he had taken classes in various self defense methods and safe gun control so that he wasn't entirely unprepared if this kind of thing happened again. 

He could at least hold his own.

But you had the excess ability of the powers given to you from the experimentation on your parents. It gave you the edge that would inevitably be your advantage in the battle to come. 

"There.." He reaches out a lean arm, sleeves rolled up as he points at one of the winged creatures crawling up a thick tree trunk nearby. You inhale deeply to steel yourself as you creep a little closer.

Fingers twitch impatiently at your side, eager to test the theory and if it would work. If so, it would be a monumental advantage. If not, it could alert Henry to your presence for no reason.

It chitters and trills as it uses its clawed appendages to grip to the hollow oak. The branches of it were crooked and void of life, black vines slithering up it and consuming any beauty it might have had in your world. 

You step closer, your foot crunching on a fallen branch that cracks loudly, alerting the beast to your presence.

With sharper reflexes than you remember having, you stretch out a hand and catch it mid-flight with your powers. Its wings were halted at a strange angle and it screeches at its own imprisonment, confused about what was happening.

Okay. So far so good.

You could feel Steve's watchful gaze on your back as you take another step closer, your palm flexing and sending your powers into the bat to keep it in place. In your mind, you think back to everything Henry had taught you in that God-forsaken laboratory. 

He'd always said that anger and rage and despair were the key to your powers. That those awful traumatic memories were a key element in what he did when he needed to tap into the side of him that held the most emotion and power.

Your lids flutter closed as you envision the animal breaking in the same way your poor siblings had when Henry so brutally dispatched them when you were a kid. 

A slow exhale, to steady yourself.

There was a droplet of fresh blood slipping free of your nostril but you ignore it as you pull at the life within the animal. You pull and pull until its bones crack and shatter, grotesque popping sounds filling the air as it screeches and writhes in your invisible grip.