I'll Keep This Secret For You

Chapter 74

Steve's POV:

Now feeling an entirely new weight on my shoulders I head back inside back to Luke and (Y/N).

"You okay?" I ask disheartened to Luke as I pick his mother up and carry her bridle style out of the room, her body limp and her head lolling around.

"I think so." He mumbles and looks down.

"How much did you see?" I ask him.

"Too much," he says quietly.

"Can you tell me what happened?"

"Isla and I heard noises so we came to check and all I saw was dad strangling mum up against the wall so I ran and jumped on him. He threw me off of him against the wall and I hit my head. It hurts but I think it's okay," he says and touches the back of his head, wincing a little. I don't remember some stuff after that but he was choking her for ages and then when you came he just dropped her and that's when I went to her but she was already unconscious."

I think about everything he's telling me.

"Okay." I huff. "We will get your head checked out. Hopefully that's okay."

"I don't know where Isla is." He suddenly looks at me in realisation.

"She's hiding. I came because she called us. Peggy is looking after her and you're brother. We will go find them now."

"Oh, few." He sighs.

"You know your dad didn't do it on purpose right? I know that might be confusing, but that wasn't him. You have to understand that," I try to explain.

"I know," he says, his voice trembling. "I know what the bad Hydra men did to him before. Is that why this happened?"

I nod. "Your dad when through something very traumatic. It's going to stay with him for a very long time. And sometimes it gets so scary for him that it causes him to snap back to those times and the bad men manage to take over him again."

He thinks about this looking sad.

"It shouldn't happen very often though and we are doing our best to stop it at all. You don't need to be scared of him."

"I'm not. It just gave me a fright. It hasn't happened yet so I just wasn't expecting it. Where is he now?"

"I don't know." I shrug and exhale. "You're very brave Luke."

He smiles at me sheepishly but I can tell that despite everything he's saying he's still very shaken and some trust will have been lost between his father and him, understandably so.

"Peg?" I call out.

"In here!" I hear her reply quietly from the bathroom so I head in that direction, guiding Luke to follow me.

He just keeps looking up at his mum with worried eyes.

I carefully push the door to the bathroom open to find Peggy sitting down beside the bath with Sarah, leaning over and holding Isla's hand who looks utterly terrified, curled up in a ball in the corner of the bath, sucking her thumb while tears stream down her face. Theo sits in the empty bath too and grizzles although he doesn't know what happened so he's probably more annoyed that his sleep was interrupted.

Peggy grimaces at the sight of (Y/N) and Isla only begins to cry harder.

"Mumma?!" Theo stops his complaining and looks up at us with wide eyes.

"Mum's asleep bud." I lie.

"What happened?" Peggy asks as she shuffles to stand up, Sarah stirring only slightly.