I felt good that this part of the plan had gone through; that now Peter had my number so he could contact me for whatever- he'd also seen that I had healing abilities so I assumed he would contact me so he didn't go back bruised and battered after a night out catching bad guys. But for now it was a matter of patience and waiting. A few things had to play out before we got to the bridge battle- well, rescue more like- and then things would move along.

Speaking of moving along, I sped up my pace as I dodged between the throngs of people on their way to their destination. They'd said there was going to be a big storm later on and I could already see the dark, ominous clouds rolling out across the city. Really didn't fancy being caught up in that so it was now a race between me and nature.

Thunder rumbled overhead, so I made the final dash towards the building and got inside. As I waited by the door, catching my breath I heard the first drops of rain splash down and allowed myself a moment of victory. Walking over to the elevator, I had a feeling that something was wrong and looked about. There was nobody else in the lobby, but Nat had drilled this into my head about being alert and she always told me that just because I couldn't see anything did not mean there was no danger.

Comforting, I know. I turned back to the elevator and pressed the button. It didn't light up.

"Fuck," I muttered under my breath, pushing it again and again. It made no difference, obviously, which meant I now had to look forward to a long trek up the stairs with a little voice in the back of my head telling me that something was off. Maybe I could kidnap Peter back and see if his Spider Sense picked anything up; it wouldn't falsely alert him because he spent the whole night up with Loki watching a variety of horror films that left him extremely paranoid.

Muttering complaints to myself to break the silence, I headed over to the stairs and began the long walk up. Each one of my footsteps echoed, my imagination remixing it to sound like I was being followed and I had to look back several times just to reassure myself that there was in fact no-one following me.

"The drawbacks of an overactive imagination," I said with a sigh. I wondered if my follower thought I was stupid and then mentally smacked myself- I was not being followed! No matter what Nat said there was no way that somebody could be following me and I couldn't know about it. Maybe in the lobby because there they could hide; but not on the stairs unless they somehow managed to stop at exactly the same time I did and without being able to see me.

Time seemed to slow down and it felt like hours had passed by the time I reached my apartment. Still that feeling had not faded and it was slowly beginning to drive me crazy. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my keys, flipping through my collection of key rings to find the one which would open the door and putting them to the lock. As luck would have it though the slipped out of my hands and fell to the ground with a clatter. More expletives left my mouth as I ducked to pick them up.

There was a loud thud above me and I looked up to see the cold shine of a knife embedded in the door. A knife whose target had clearly been my head. I jumped up and swivelled around at the same time, my magic flaring into life at the threat and coating my fist in the blue flame-like substance.

"So the girlie has some tricks?" laughed the man who had thrown the blade, a wide grin on his face and with that target mark it wasn't hard not to know who he was. "This'll be fun then."

"Who sent you Bullseye?" I asked him, contemplating whether or not to just blast him out of the window he stood in front of. The assassin didn't even seen bothered that I knew who he was, instead preparing his other knife to be thrown.

"Like I'm gonna tell?" he snorted, throwing the other knife just as I fired a blast of magic and knocked the blade over the banister. There was sort of a pause as we waited for it to land, which I ended as I sent out another blast of magic straight at him. He dodged it with ease and it shattered the window behind him. "I though you guys had morals about shooting an unarmed guy?"

"Not when we were going to be stabbed in the back," I countered, going to fire another blast when my magic flickered and faded out. "Oh crap."

I dodged out of the way as Bullseye ran over, swinging his leg to hit me in the gut and knock me down the stairs (In retrospect I should have dodged the other way). I was dazed, my head ringing for a few seconds before I managed to get back to my feet. By this time Bullseye had pulled his first knife from the door and thrown it at me. This time it hit me in the thigh, knocking me back a bit and giving the assassin time to leap down the stairs, hit me in the gut and push me down the next flight of stairs.

I heard his laugh as he came down to fight me again and with a struggle reached down to pull the knife out of me leg. I got back to my feet as reached the bottom and lashed out, and more by luck than design cut him across the chest. He just grabbed the knife back from me, taking advantage of my disorientation and walking up to me, whistling a tune as I slowly backed off. It was his mistake though because it gave a chance for my head to clear and for me to summon up my magic again. I quickly blasted him in the chest with both hands.

"I do like it when they're feisty," he said with a laugh, getting to his feet and laughing again when my magic faded out again. "What's up girlie? Scared?"

Of course I was scared, which was maybe what was throwing off my magic- it wasn't the same as in the warehouse when Loki was there, and that was the only other time I'd used my magic like this. Of course, it could also be the fact that I'd taken several blows to the head today. Either way, I needed to stop this now and deal with my leg before I bled to death. It hurt so goddamn much and the amount of blood running from the wound didn't look good either. If I went into shock then there wasn't going to be much of a chance of me getting out alive.

"I would have brought more weapons if I knew you were going to be this much fun," Bullseye said, as though he were praising me, turning the knife in his hand slowly. "You spy guys are usually so easy to kill I was beginning to think that I'd never have a decent fight."

But this wasn't much of a fight, not really, he was just playing with me and I was attempting to survive long enough for S.H.I.E.L.D. back up to arrive. This wasn't like fighting a bunch of idiots on a train, or some nut with a wrecking ball and no clue how to use his powers. This was a highly-skilled assassin, and unless I stopped messing around I was going to be dead. Sure my fighting skills were nowhere near his standard, but if I could just get the knife away from him then I'd –probably- stand enough of a chance to keep him occupied for however long it took. After all, it didn't look like he was in a rush to finish me off.

Quicker than I could follow he threw the knife. My instincts kicked in before I could even realise what had happened and I dodged. I did register the loud thud though as the knife buried itself in the wall. Now all I needed to do was to stop him getting it back.

A stand-off followed as we each waited for the other to make a move. He chose to go first, swinging his fist at my face which I blocked with ease. In retaliation I dropped and swung my leg around to knock him off his feet. He jumped back, coming back as I got to my feet and bringing his knee up to hit me in the gut. I dodged to the side, preparing to hit him in the head and see how he liked it when there sudden and intense pain in my back. I dropped to the ground, letting out a cry as he twisted the blade before pulling it our and coming to stand in front of me with that wicked grin on his face.

"Sorry, I'd have loved to play longer but you lovely spy friends will be here soon," He said with a dramatic sigh. "It's a shame-just when we were getting to the good part. Cheerio!"

He waved his hand at me before whistling and making his way downstairs, leaving me to struggle in vain. I needed to heal my wounds fast, before I lost consciousness, but moving my arms felt like an impossible task now. He obviously didn't know about my healing skills, but also obviously made it so the S.H.I.E.L.D. medics couldn't help me and probably only wanted e to live long enough to tell them about him.

My arm slowly shifted around to touch the whole in my back and I tried my best to concentrate and heal the wound. However he'd hit something major again and the blood loss was beginning to get to me. I had to heal it and I had to heal it fast. Ignoring the pain which screamed at me, ignoring the confusion that was beginning to settle on my mind I put all my though into healing and nothing else. Heal. Just heal.

A/N: Sorry if I didn't get Bullseye right! I don't know much about him other than what I was in the film Daredevil (I chose not to use that) and the few times I saw him in Dark Reign and Siege. So please feel free to have a go at me if I got him wrong.

Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, alerted or favourite the story and I hope you continue to read. ^-^