James could hardly believe what he had witnessed. He couldn't quite comprehend what he was seeing as he wandered through the aisles of a supermarket. He was about to move to the other side of the bread aisle to give the woman coming towards him a wide berth. But there had been no need to do that. He looked to the selection of bread rolls next to him but then when he turned back around, the woman had vanished. He was confused, uncertain what was happening as grey specks floated into the air. And then he heard the screaming.

The yells were so loud that he doubted he would ever forget them. Dropping his basket to the ground, he ran towards the end of the aisle and looked into the open space. There were discarded shopping trolleys, spilled food and abandoned purses. Shaking his head, James whirled around on the spot, struggling to comprehend what was going on.

"What's happened?" one woman asked, her voice rising in hysterics at what she was witnessing.

James shook his head. He couldn't answer her that. She moved onto the next person, but they couldn't answer either. No one had any notion of what was going on. His hand went to his pocket and he reached for his phone. His fingers unlocked the screen and he found Amelia's number in an instant. Pressing the phone to his ear, he could hear it ringing.

"Come on," he urged, moving towards the exit and trying to drown out the screams of fear and anguish. "Amelia, come on."

But she didn't answer. The call went straight to voicemail, her soft voice telling him to leave a message. "Amelia, are you alright? What the hell is going on? Just call me, alright? Call me as soon as you can."

He hung up and stood in the car park, looking to the sky above and wondering just where Amelia was.

…

He returned to his own apartment and looked at the wall in the guest bedroom that he kept closed and locked. Glancing at it, he sat on the edge of the bed, hands laced together and anger coursing through him. It had been a week before anyone came to terms with the fact that no one was coming back. Half of the earth's population had been wiped out by some mad titan named Thanos. The Avengers had been unable to stop him. And his plan was to bring balance to the universe.

James had scoffed at that and shaken his head. Balance to the universe sounded like bullshit to him, but what could he do? He had no superpower. He had nothing except for his brain and his ability to lie easily.

Picking his phone up once more, he scrolled through his call list. He'd called Amelia over a hundred times, but there had been nothing. There had been no response from her whatsoever and he began to think that she had been taken. She had to have been. Where else could she be? He had looked into Lukas's family and had easily made contact with them. He knew about her former fiancé before Sokovia had been destroyed. Lukas's family had practically been socialites in Sokovia.

He had tracked down his mother and found that she did have an apartment in Paris. He'd managed to get in touch with her online. Her Facebook account wasn't entirely private. But she told him that there had been no family reunion. There had been nothing of the sort and she hadn't seen Amelia since she had left. She then informed James that she wanted nothing to do with the woman who had almost been her daughter-in-law. She viewed her as nothing but trouble after hearing the rumours about her and Helmut.

Helmut. James rolled his eyes as he thought about the Baron locked in some German prison cell. He knew that he was the reason why Amelia hadn't completely opened up to him. She still had feelings for him. She still cared for him. He was well aware of that. But he didn't push her. Besides, he couldn't get to the Baron even if he wanted to.

Standing up, he dropped his hands to his hips and sauntered closer towards the wall. His eyes scanned over the newspaper cuttings in front of him, her face peering back at him. Some of the images saw her smiling, looking happier than he had ever seen her. The others were of her that day he had helped her through the press pack and into her apartment. His eyes landed on the photo of her smiling on her graduation day, draped in a black robe with a red sash, cap on her head. Moving a finger to her cheek, he stroked it softly and tilted his head.

"What are you hiding, Amelia? What are you hiding?"

…

Hacking into her computer had been easy. He had gone to her house considering she left him a spare key whenever she went away, asking him just to check on things for her. He let himself in and made his way up to the third bedroom that she used as a study. There was a bookshelf against one wall with a notice board above her desk that housed her new and fancy desktop computer. There were papers neatly clipped on the mahogany surface and the chair was a plush leather one with a high back and lumbar support.

Firing the computer to life, he knew that it would be password protected. But Amelia, in all her naivety, had told him the password to her laptop when he had asked her if he could order the takeaway on it while she went to shower. He hadn't snooped and clearly there had been nothing on it that she was worried he would look at. But her password for her laptop was the same as the password for her computer.

"Silly mistake," he whispered and loaded the home screen up.

It was a generic background: a picture of a lake with mountains behind it. There were multiple folders on the desktop, none of which seemed interesting. House Accounts. Admin for university. He opened up her email inbox, pressing on the little envelope on the bottom of the toolbar. It sprung to life and he saw she had over five hundred emails in her inbox. Most of them were spam, others promotional offers and some from shops she had used before trying to entice her to spend more money with them.

But then he saw the email he was looking for. It was from a budget airline, inviting her to check-in for her flight in advance of arriving at the airport. Clicking onto it, he leant back in the chair and knew that his suspicions were correct.

"Lying to me, Amelia?" he whispered, seeing that the flight she had booked wasn't to Paris. It was to Berlin. "Not a good idea, baby."

Pulling out his phone, he didn't need to do anymore research to know where she had been when she had disappeared. Calling her phone again, he suspected that no one would answer, but it still didn't stop him from trying. Only this time, someone did pick up.

…

Helmut had been in a daze ever since Amelia had disappeared. He had found out what had happened and couldn't quite believe it. He had heard how the Avengers, still disbanded with some of them living in exile, had failed to stop Thanos. He would sit on his bed and he would look to the ground, remembering how she had been sat there with her legs crossed, her skirt flowing around her and a smile on her face. If he closed his eyes then he could still picture her.

He began to wonder if this was his true penance. He had lost his wife. He had lost his son. He had lost everyone, but her. She had still come back to him, even when he had been locked up. She had come back, not because she forgave him for what he had done, but because she felt sorry for him. He didn't know if that was worse. But he only knew that he enjoyed her visiting him. And now she had been taken from him too. His nightmares consisted of that day, replaying it over and over again, seeing her being taken. He wanted to forget, but he knew he couldn't.

He would wake up in a cold sweat, the cover twisted around his body. If it wasn't a dream about Amelia then it would be a dream about his family. There was no escaping the nightmares.

Sitting at his desk, Helmut was reading Emma for the fifth time since his incarceration, unable to ignore the fact that the title character reminded him of Amelia. He was flipping onto chapter five when he heard the door open and he turned his head to the side. A guard had permitted a man into the room. He was looking around it, clearly unsure of where he was. He was tall with strong shoulders. His hair was neatly trimmed and he had a handsome face. He looked younger than Helmut too. He was dressed in a green jumper over a dark pair of jeans, quite the contrast to Helmut's grey sweatshirt and joggers.

"I don't believe we've met," Helmut said, placing his bookmark into the book and closing it, settling it down on his desk. He turned in his chair to give the man more of his undivided attention.

"No," the man responded as the guard left him alone. "We haven't."

Helmut eyed him for a few moments. He seemed to be looking anywhere but at the Sokovian Baron in front of him. He moved to the chair behind the line and sat down on it, spreading his legs wide and resting his hands on his thighs. Looking around, he nodded thoughtfully before speaking. "Nice place you've got here."

"Who are you?" Helmut wondered.

Something wasn't quite right. He could sense it. He knew how to sense danger. He'd grown accustomed to it.

"Do you want my real name or the name I gave her?"

Helmut moved to his feet. He knew that the man in front of him would have been patted down before he entered the cell. He would have been searched. He didn't pose a threat to him, but that didn't stop Helmut from seeing him as exactly that. He moved towards the glass as their eyes finally met.

"James," Helmut said.

"So she has been here," James nodded thoughtfully. "I knew she was lying to me when she said she was going to Paris. Then again, I should have known better than to trust her."

"Who are you?" Helmut demanded.

"Well, I suppose there is no point hiding it now," he sighed and ran his hands along his thighs. "She's gone and I doubt there is any chance of her coming back so you might as well know the truth. I'm not James…no, I hate that name. I'm Andrew. I never even lived in her apartment block until she came back to it, but she still believed she'd seen me around. I guess I must have one of those generic faces."

And then Helmut saw him. He looked at him and he had the same eyes that he had seen before. He had a similar jawline too.

"Edgington," he spoke and the man clapped slowly and sarcastically.

"Got it in one, Baron," he said, laying his hands back on his thighs. "Amelia never got it, but I suppose she's just so eager for affection that she looks past the obvious. Did you find that with her? She acts tough and independent, but really all she needs is someone to love her."

"You've been playing her," Helmut stated.

"Ever since I found out she killed my brother, I guess you could say I've made it my mission to track her down…but I like revenge to be sweet," he responded. "On the night you snuck into my brother's party in Paris, he sent me your photo. He asked me if I knew who either of you were considering he'd discovered your alias' were fake."

Helmut was quiet, his pulse racing. But nothing would happen. He couldn't do anything to him. He couldn't do anything to Amelia because she was gone.

"He told me that he was meeting with her to get the truth out of her, but the next thing I heard was that he was dead…his head bashed in and his face barely recognisable," he seethed, the anger clear in his gaze as it darkened. "I knew that it had to have been her. I started tracking her down, but she made it all too easy when her face was plastered over national news."

"Your brother would have raped her, do you know that?" Helmut questioned from him.

But the look on his face was neutral. He made no comment and he made no movement. It was almost as though he wasn't bothered in the slightest about what happened to her.

"She still killed him."

"To survive."

"No," he snapped back. "She took his life and he was the only family I had. He raised me…helped provide for me…gave me a normal life when my parents couldn't. William was everything to me."

Helmut shook his head slowly. "And what did you intend to do to her?"

Andrew shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. "Toy with her until I had her where I wanted her," he said. "I had considered trying to get her to fall in love with me before ripping her heart out, but that was never going to happen. She's still far too in love with you, but it didn't stop me trying."

Helmut said nothing and Andrew observed him, seeing how he looked away awkwardly to the ground. Chuckling at the sight, Andrew leant back in his chair, slipping down it slightly and then crossing his arms over his chest.

"And you're still in love with her, aren't you?" he asked. Helmut didn't even deny it. And Andrew couldn't resist winding him up even more. Moving from his chair, he knew not to cross the line. He only hoped that no guard was watching as he did so, stepping closer to the glass so that it was the only thing separating him and Helmut, the men inches from each other. Andrew could make out every freckle on the Baron's face.

"It must have killed you to lay in here at night and know that she was with me. She never let me touch her, not really. I tried…came close…but she was too frigid," he said, managing to get his rise out of Helmut as he glowered at him, hands clenching into fists. "That didn't mean she didn't do other stuff. I wonder if it was because she felt bad for not letting me sleep with her? But seeing her on her knees…and that mouth…almost made me consider not killing her."

Helmut banged his fist against the glass, anger now coursing through him that someone could use her in such a cruel and callous manner. He couldn't accept it. He wouldn't accept it. The anger he felt was coursing through his veins. He didn't know how to quell it or even what he could do. Andrew chuckled, clearly finding the entire situation amusing.

"You really do love her, don't you?" he drawled. "You know, they called her Helmut's whore behind her back. Quite apt, I think."

"She is anything but that," Helmut retorted, shaking his head firmly. "You know nothing about her."

"I know as much as I need to know," he retorted to Helmut. "I know everything that matters and I know that she is lucky that the Blip took her before I could."

"Why are you telling me any of this?" Helmut demanded to know from him, not stepping back and giving him the satisfaction of letting him see how he was getting under his skin. "What purpose does it serve?"

"It stays with you for the rest of your life," Andrew said. "Besides, I just had to come and see the legendary Baron Zemo for myself, see who it was that Amelia was so hung up over that she froze whenever I touched her. I've got to say, you're shorter than I thought you would be…and nowhere near as handsome as your photos…I'm almost insulted that she didn't let me anywhere near her now."

"And do you think that you would have been able to hurt her?" Helmut questioned from him. "She's smart. She'd have figured out who you were eventually."

"I wouldn't be too sure," he retorted. "And even if she did, I'd have hunted her down. She wouldn't have gotten away. You know what it's like to be consumed by revenge, don't you? It wound up with you in here, living a miserable existence while the woman who loves you is alone…vulnerable…and you couldn't protect her."

"You would be surprised at what I can do, even locked in a cell."

"That's an empty threat."

"Would you like to find out?"

Andrew laughed again and stepped back behind the line once more. He clearly wasn't taking any of this seriously, Helmut sensed that much. It was another few moments before he spoke.

"You really did a number on her, I'm not going to deny it," Andrew said, holding his hands up. "But she's gone now and I have to live with the knowledge that some mad titan took the opportunity for revenge out of my hands. You're locked up in here…and killing you would achieve nothing. No, I think living like this, knowing what I've done to Amelia…would have done to her…that's punishment enough for you."

"For your sake, you best hope that I never get out of here," Helmut whispered and Andrew smirked.

"I think I can handle myself," he said. "Anyway, as much as I would love to stay and chat, I really do have to get going."

"What a shame," Helmut drawled sarcastically.

He stayed by the glass, watching as Andrew moved to the door and banged on it. He waited for the guard to open it, turning his gaze over to the Baron for one final time.

"I almost pity you," he confessed. "But if Amelia ever somehow reappears…tell her that she can run, but she most certainly cannot hide."

He left with a wolfish smile still on his face. The silence engulfed Helmut once the door had closed again and he sank down onto the bottom of his bed, legs shaking slightly at what had just happened. It was only now when he began to think that, perhaps, Amelia was better off wherever she currently was.

...

A/N: So I hope you enjoyed this chapter! As we know...the Blip does end! What do you think might happen? I'm bringing another character back into the fray when it does! Please do leave me your thoughts - they really help keep me motivated!