Some Things Never Sleep

Chapter Fifteen

Emma decided in the first few minutes spent in the facility that she hated nursing homes. There was a certain smell to it that immensely bothered Emma as the scent invaded her nose. It reeked of death and illness so much that it made Emma feel almost sick. She clenched her fists tightly as she tried to ignore the smell. She stared hard at the linoleum floors as she struggled to focus on anything besides that awful smell.

It had been three months since Emma left Hydra and she could finally say that she might've been improving even if the improvement wasn't significant. There was still a long way to recovery after her past with Hydra or so Sam told her. There was quite a lot of information that she had shared with Steve. They talked over lunch in their apartment sometimes or even when Emma was hanging out in her bedroom and Steve would walk in. It seemed very therapeutic for Emma but that didn't mean that she told Steve everything. There was one thing that Steve still didn't know and it was perhaps the biggest problem that still haunted Emma. She just didn't have the heart to tell him and more specifically she didn't know how to tell him. A part of her was terrified of what he might think of her and another part of her just wanted to forget that the whole thing ever happened.

So there Emma sat in a cold and empty hallway as she worried about her past that still haunted her. At least she didn't have as many nightmares these days. The place that filled Emma with so much dread, as she waited outside a room, happened to be an ordinary nursing home that sat in the heart of Washington D.C. After spending months settling into her new home at the tower, Steve had decided to take Emma on a road trip to D.C. so that she could reunite with her grandmother. The same grandmother that she barely remembered. Steve was currently breaking the news to her grandmother as Emma waited outside her grandmother's room. Emma assumed that Steve probably didn't want to give her poor grandmother a heart attack which the elderly woman would surely get if she saw Emma with no warning at all.

"I think she's ready to see you." Steve said as he stepped out of the door of her grandmother's room. Emma looked up at him before getting up from her seat. She felt a bit sick as she did so mostly because she feared how her grandmother would react to her. Her grandmother had thought she was dead for many years after all. It must be quite a shock to be told that Emma had been alive all these years. Emma knew that Steve most likely wasn't going to tell her grandmother where exactly she had been all these years. Probably a very filtered version of the truth that wouldn't cause the elderly woman any discomfort.

Emma followed Steve into the room hesitantly before she surveyed the new environment. It was a rather plain looking room, she couldn't help but notice. There was only one bed in the entire room and Emma was sure that once you got to a certain age you earned your right to have a room all to yourself. There wasn't much in the room aside from an old looking TV on the wall, a wardrobe, and a door that Emma could only assume led to a bathroom. A nightstand was placed next to the bed and the nightstand was littered with a few picture frames containing pictures of a younger version of Peggy Carter with various other people that Emma didn't recognize. The only picture she did recognize, however, was a picture of her parents.

Emma stared at the picture, a bit stunned by it, as she looked at her mother and father. She hadn't realized how much she had begun to forget what they looked like. Her father, whose facial features she didn't remember at all, was grinning at her mother in the picture. Emma's mother was smiling at the camera as she held a two or three year old child in her arms that Emma could only imagine was herself. Even her mother had started to fade from her mind in recent years. Her mother's face becoming a blank space with two emerald green eyes poking out and surrounded by red hair. The red hair and green eyes were the really distinct features that she could still remember. Everything else was blurry but it all came back to her at once as she stared at the picture. Steve could've showed her pictures of her parents but Emma hadn't wanted to see them, afraid of what memories it might bring back.