Coming Down ➢ Steve Rogers

twenty three

Chapter Twenty-Three
(apologies once again for bad action sequences)

"You deal with my father!" Delaney barked to Cristina. "Only I can take on my mother."

Being invisible didn't stop Sara Esquivel from having a brain. In such close proximity, there was no way Delaney couldn't sense Sara's presence. Though she didn't know the exact position of her mother's body, she could guess due to the position of her mind.

She could deal with that. Cristina could only deal with what she could see – and that was Robert.

"You got it!" Cristina ground out from between gritted teeth, and ran toward her father, guns equipped and firing.

Delaney willed herself to block out all other noise and distraction as she focused solely on her mother's mind. She let her mind guide her, not her vision – that would only distract her.

Though Delaney could sense the presence of her mother, she couldn't see her body, which put her at a disadvantage. She didn't know what weapons her mother held, and knew that the best thing to do would be to fight from a distance. She did not want to risk being knocked out. If that happened, all would lost, since Cristina couldn't see her.

Delaney hurled a knife in her mother's direction – which only missed. She heard Sara cackle in delight as she forced her daughter to continue retreating, with no ability to fight her hand-to-hand.

Delaney felt her mother approach at an alarming rate and ducked, though it wasn't enough. A hand grasped the collar of her shirt. Delaney cried out as her mother held her in a choke hold, and her access to air rapidly decreased.

"Oh, sweetheart," Sara crooned as Delaney struggled. "You really didn't think you were a match for us, did you?"

Those words, ironically, were the ones to make Delaney calm down. Delaney forced herself to calm down. Natasha and Clint would be disappointed in her. Escaping a choke hold was a basic of S.H.I.E.L.D. training. She knew she could do this – if anything, her mother had just signed her own death.

Delaney pretended to go slack, all the while searching for another knife from her belt. Her mother's breathing increased in anticipation, as though she could see the goal she had envisioned within reached.

Delaney felt her fingers close around the hilt of a knife.

"I learned a few tricks when I was free from you," she breathed, and before Sara could react she yelled, burying her knife in Sara's thigh. Sara screamed and Delaney kicked herself free, turning once again to bury her knife in her mother's body. The air flickered and soon Sara's ability to remain invisible disappeared and she was collapsing on all fours, blood blossoming from the wound in her stomach.

Cristina dumped Robert's body beside his wife's. Sara and Robert Esquivel trembled on the ground before their daughter. For the first time in all her years, Delaney's parents were terrified.

"You're our daughter," Robert gasped.

Delaney glared at them, as though they were nothing more than vermin. "You never treated me like one," she spat, acid flying from her words. She crouched down to their level, eyes ablaze. "You know what you saw when you looked at me? A weapon. Someone to be used. You didn't love me, you loved that I could be used for your personal gain. You brainwashed me, locked me away..." She spat at their feet. "I'm my own person now, and that's what terrifies you. Because I can't be controlled. Because I no longer belong to you. I belong to me. And I'm about to show you what I can do."