HIS OBSESSION

Part 18

AN: thank you all so much for your patience with me and updates. I've loved writing this and the comments, positivity and kudos is wonderful encouragement xx
Warnings: violence, sexual violence (not rape/penetration), knife violence. Talk of abuse. All mistakes are my own and the devil dyslexia xx

16.

Megan.

I can hear Nat saying my name on the end of the phone, then Steve taking it from her and repeating it before he begs me to talk to him and tell him where I am. I am telling them, only silently. He'll realise soon enough, not soon enough for me to hear the desperation in his voice and for it to break my heart a little. I mute the phone and drop it just inside the main door of my old apartment building. It will take Tony about 30 seconds to locate it with the line open and they will come. Bucky said they would come for me, I'm holding him to it.

I am fully aware that Parsons did all this to get my attention, to draw me out, to get me where he could get to me. What he doesn't realise is that it draws him out too. It doesn't just put me in the line of fire, it put him in my boys line of sight. I almost feel sorry for him, almost. I listen at the foot of the main stairs, I can't hear anything not even the neighbours, its as if the whole building is empty. Its most likely not, but it all seems too quiet.

The door to my apartment is unlocked and I push it gingerly. Without any effort it swings open. The main sound that I can hear is the pounding of my heat, the deep drumming of my pulse as it thrums through the entirety of my body threatening to escape out of my chest or my ears, or even my brain.

Taking deep, shaky breaths I cross the threshold, the room is dim, the air stale. Nothing is different, but then everything is or at least the woman coming back here, to this small place that once felt like Sanctuary is different.

I think I'm stronger, I hope I'm stronger. It doesn't matter really, all I have to do is get through this, be here and leave this monster on a silver platter to be devoured, to realise that there's always a bigger monster, and it's hungry for him.

Bucky.

Eyes glued to the screen in front of me watching the images again and again. I can't make sense of it, there has to be a pattern or a clue to where she went. Stark has been tracking the phone she had while I look at these infuriating pictures again, as Steve paces behind me. He is so on edge, scared, so am I. There is a small thing in the back of my mind screaming at me, making me doubt, telling me we've lost her or we're about to. I can't believe that.

"Got it!" I turn to stark as Steve does, but Tony just looks confused. "Its her apartment, she's in her apartment..."

I look back to the screen. "There's a photo, her bedroom, there's a knife sticking out the bed. Maybe its a message or something only she'd understand I dunno..."

Nat meets my eye. "She said something about him liking to 'cut' her..." she shrugs apologetically.

Steve cuts me off heading for the door his blue jacket flailing behind him from the urgency in his steps. "Does it matter, lets go."

Megan.

Standing, I'm just standing. Mainly because I can't move. He's here. Once again in front of me robbing me of breath, of conscious and intelligent thought. My chest rises and falls, but I can honestly say I'm not breathing, my body is simply doing the bare minimum to keep me alive. At some point soon it may or may not need to work a little harder.

"Took you long enough." He's sitting back in my old battered armchair. His long fingers picking at a warm patch on the arm. Leaning back, slouching tiredly almost, his Jean clad legs splayed open as far as they can go. He's got two day old stubble, longer than he would normally and his eyes are sunken a little. He does, in reality look tired. The balls of green burn into me though, his intensity not dimmed in any way by whatever fatigue his body is betraying.