Suck it up Lover - Nick Fowler AU

Part 26

two weeks later

A loud scream made Nick start up from his deep sleep at two in the morning, in his bed.

His heart raced and in a panic he tried to see something in the darkness.

After blinking a few times, he spotted a huddled Megan sitting in the corner of the room in the light that the city cast inside.

She had drawn her knees up to her chest and was hugging them tightly with her arms. Scattered strands of her dark brown hair hung in her frightened face and beads of cold fear sweat stood on her forehead.

Nick immediately ran to the frightened Megan and sat down next to her on the floor where he wrapped her in his arms.

"Hey. Hey. It's all right Buttercup - I'm here. It was just another one of your dreams," he whispered to her while holding her in his arms and tenderly stroking her tousled hair.

Ever since Megan was released from the hospital, nightmares haunted her every night.

Nightmares in which her subconscious mind processed what she had experienced and replayed her two weeks of horror imprisonment.

Each time the dream began the same - she woke up in her cell in the basement of the nondescript family home and she could hear the other woman's screams.

She could hear the other woman struggling as the kidnapper dragged her down the hallway - fighting for her life, while Megan, unable to help her or herself, sat chained in the cell, just hoping the man wouldn't come for her that day.

Each time she dreamed of the moments she had spent on the operating table just hoping that it would all go away quickly.

During the first week of her captivity, she still had the will to live. She was determined to take the kidnapper by surprise and free herself from captivity.

But by the second week, the perpetrator's mind games and passive torture had caused Megan to lose her will.

She was aware that if she would have had the opportunity, she would have put an end to it all.
All her powers had left her at this point and she just wanted some peace and quiet.

The only possibility that had remained to her, was that she had fled into her own world.
In her own small, perfect fantasy world where she was happy and free, where her mother was still alive and where she herself had a husband and children with whom she lived on a small farm.

In the first days after her imprisonment, which she had spent in the best hospital in Washington, it seemed that Megan had coped incredibly well with all the experiences of the last week, but the rude awakening came when she was released.

Once home, she began to withdraw - she enjoyed the peace and quiet and would have preferred to sleep at least 20 hours a day.

For a few days this worked, but when Regina started to push her more and more to leave her room and to go to town with her, for example to go grocery shopping, Megan's patience wore thin.

She knew that her best friend only wanted the best for her, that she had no evil ulterior motives and that she probably just wanted to have her best friend back, but Megan could not.

She had packed a few days ago, head over heels as much as she could fit into two suitcases and had asked Nick for asylum.

Even though Nick was the person she couldn't stand for the first few months and had argued with before she had been kidnapped, Nick had also become a kind of safe place for her.

She felt safe in his presence and when she was about to have a panic attack, all she had to do was look into his steel blue eyes and she noticed her racing heart calm down.