A VERY long chapter
* Again, absolutely bastardizing the meaning of Runes and how it would equate to magic. Please look on in indulgence.
March 5th, 1945 - Day of the Attack on HYDRA Headquarters, Swiss Alps
"I know that look on your face, and I don't like it," Peggy whispered softly. Her voice was barely audible over the sound of the roaring plane engine, the chatter of the Howling Commandos and Erik on the other end, and the rushing wind outside.
Hermione stood next to her friend on their way to HYDRA's base, refusing to meet her eyes. "I've no idea what you're on about."
"You've planned something."
Hermione gestured to the plane with a lazy wave. "We're following the plan."
"You're lying."
Hermione's head snapped up. There was no forgiveness in Peggy's voice and a steel severity burning in her cutting gaze.
Choking down the guilt that threatened to rise, because Hermione did have a plan and it differed from the reckless one Steve had planned the night before, she folded her hands behind her back and answered with a forced air of composure and peace. "What do you want me to say? You heard him last night, he's going to get himself killed."
Peggy's jaw tightened.
Hermione pretended not to see.
Her fellow Agent reached forward and clutched the felt jacket sleeves beneath Hermione's shoulders, roughly pinning her in place. Hermione's eyes widened at the physical outburst. An outward betrayal of calm they'd always upheld. What was she doing?
Peggy's eyes were wide and they held an edge of desperation. She might not have known Hermione's ideas, but they both knew that any deviation from the already laid strategy was sure to leave a messing ending. "Don't," she pleaded.
"Two minutes out Cap!" someone yelled.
A motorcycle roared to life on the other end of the plane.
Hermione could feel their rapid descent by the popping in her ears.
Peggy's hand clenched harder on her sleeves, and it shook Hermione from the sour moment of light-headed disbelief. "Whatever you've put together, don't do it. Trust the plan."
"He's tight walking between complete abandon and some sort of American conviction," Hermione spit back. Did she purposely not see? Was Hermione the only one paying attention anymore? He was asking for death with his plan. Playing that fine line of bravery and arrogance. Her mind was already made up. She was doing this.
"You don't get to make that call," Peggy argued in a whisper, just as heatedly.
Hermione didn't care, she couldn't anymore, and she shut her eyes against Peggy's words. "He's worried about the rest of the world, not himself right now, I have to."
"Then who's going to look after you?"
Hermione tried not to flinch. She swallowed. No one would. Her magic. Herself. There was no good answer to that, and she knew it. "Don't try and stop me."
Peggy got closer, her voice edging from frustration into rage. "You're worried about Steve getting himself killed, but can you imagine what he'd do if you died? He's already lost Bucky and is overlooking a cliff. If you go too, he's jumping."
A mix of guilt and justification filled her. Hermione understood that. She loved him as well, which was why she had to protect him before he threw himself in the line of fire. Before he took all his hurt and pain from losing the only brother he'd ever had, his lifelong friend, and recklessly throwing himself into the world as a human shield. "I'm doing this for him."
She tried to jerk her shoulders away, but Peggy's grip was unrelenting. The taller woman yanked her back and shook her like she could physically jar her perspective into Hermione. "You're doing this because you fear losing another person you love, just like him right now."
No. No.
Hermione shook her head, brown curls teasing her cheeks.
"Ninety seconds!"
The witch leaned away, uniform taunt around her skin. "I have to say goodbye," Hermione whispered, voice no longer as steady and breaking at the end. "Please, I have to go."
Peggy heard her and reluctantly released her grip. Her shoulders pushed up and down from heavy breaths beneath her uniform. She looked panicked behind the calm exterior of her 'Agent' persona. "Come back," she pleaded again, nearly a demand and blinking furiously. "You kiss him goodbye and you come back. We'll do this together."
Hermione held Peggy's hands, nodding. She met her earthy brown eyes, taking in the strong jaw, the red lips, the curled hair, and the powerful self-assurance of her oldest friend here. She couldn't confirm Peggy's begging request, because then it would be a lie, but she didn't want to leave, perhaps for the last time, without calming her either. "I'll see you soon," she settled on, smiling with the corners of her mouth for her benefit.
Peggy saw the truth anyway. She was always very good at that, and her expression crumpled. "Please, don't."
"We'll celebrate after," Hermione promised, pulling away. She held her tears back, because they would do nothing for her now, and squeezed Peggy's hand once more.
Shuddering breaths kept her immobile for a heartbeat. Two.
And then she turned away and kept walking.
She didn't see as Peggy dashed her eyes with the back of her hand, forcing herself to exhale and take a deep breath, and then straightening. Or then as Peggy turned abruptly on her heel to find the Colonel, as Hermione's eyes were already fixed ahead of her, settled on her fiance.
Steve was at the back of the plane, seated on the upgraded motorcycle Howard had built with his shield strapped across his back. His cowl was not yet covering his face, but his hands gripped the handlebars tightly and she was willing to bet that his knuckles were white over the metal and rubber. His attention didn't leave the hanger door, like he was counting down the seconds, running fake scenarios through his mind.
He softened slightly when Hermione got to his side and he released the death grip on his bike. There was a solemn moment of silence amidst the rumbling and clanging of the war preparations around them.
Steve broke their flimsy bubble by reaching over and taking her hand in his. "This is it," he stated. His eyes trailed down her face. Memorizing and holding on to their fleeting last moments.
"Sixty seconds!" someone yelled again, and the plane rumbled as it lowered into the waiting forest below.
Hermione couldn't answer him. Not yet, but she saw Erik from the corner of her eye, watching, next to Happy Sam Sawyer. She motioned him over with her free hand. He left the Howling Commando immediately, and Hermione tucked him into her side when he got close.
If this was going to be their goodbye, then let them all be here for it. Something to remember, and something to fight for.
They could have this, she reminded herself almost desperately, this slice of domesticity after the years away from home. A family to cherish and go back to after everything. They just had to finish this. She had to do this for them.
"I'll see you real soon, bud," Steve nodded at Erik, attention wholly on their charge. A gloved hand came over his short hair and gently rubbed the nine-year-old's head.
Erik looked back at him with a broken innocence of knowing, a look tainted with fear. He understood exactly what the stakes were as he could not be hidden when he was as immersed in it all as he was, and he was aware that both 'parents', 'caregivers', … his future were leaving without him.
"I know. Bye, Steve," he answered firmly.
Hermione and Steve smiled together. Erik no longer called Steve, Mr. Steve anymore, solidifying the foundation of change and trust between them. It was a step, months worth of trust, and setting up for the rest of their lives.
"Be good for Peggy and while we're gone, alright? Soon as we're done, Hermione and I will run back and get you."
"Okay," Erik answered again. This time nodding his head.
Private Fury had volunteered to watch Erik as a personal guard while Steve and Hermione were wrapping up Hydra. He would be with Erik in a mobile secure location that could move in or flee within moments. The best that Hermione could put together under the time constraints she had. Hermione felt grateful for the extra pair of eyes during the confusion and chaos in the hours ahead.
"You'll love America," Steve continued, smiling warmly. Erik seemed to forget his fear for a moment and brightened under his attention. "We'll get a nice house away from everyone, take you to the cinema, show you baseball and rollercoasters…"
"We'll make it as a family trip every weekend," Hermione added in, squeezing Erik around the shoulders and the hand that she still held Steve's hand in.
Her charge smiled. Something warm, and completely different from the fear and confusion he'd exuded only a few weeks ago.
"Thirty seconds!"
Erik jumped, Hermione flinched, and Steve's eyes brittled.
Hermione squeezed them all, one last time, determined to remember this if anything went wrong, and then bent down to Erik's height.
He looked back at her with a coldly blank face, now hiding everything from her. Trying to copy the adults around him.
She kissed his forehead and held the back of his neck. His skin was warm under her hands, he smelled of campfire and northern pine needles mixed with something electric and strong. "Go find Private Fury and stay close to him until we're back okay?"
He nodded once, entirely with forced determination, and she did the same back.
"Go, we'll see you soon," she said, holding back anything other than calm focus.
He didn't need to be told twice, he was a good boy who trusted everything Hermione said and went off with only one more memorizing look back at her face.
And then it was just Steve and Hermione.
"Fifteen seconds!"
"I'll see you when we're celebrating," he tried to joke, voice warm and low just for her.
She didn't have the heart to stop it. "Maybe I'll get that dance we keep talking about?"
"Ten! Nine!-"
The hanger doors were opening down from the plane.
Merlin, this was it. "I love you," she said because it was the truth and the foundation of everything. "Be careful."
"I love you too. I will," he answered because that was all the time they had left.
"Four! Three!"
Hermione nodded, keeping her eyes locked with his, and then leaned forwards and kissed him.
It was swift and it filled her senses. With heat. The smell of his hair pommel. The taste of this morning's coffee. The sense of him filling her senses and stealing her thoughts.
She didn't breathe when she opened her eyes and forced herself to take a step back.
Steve pulled his cowl over his face.
The doors extended and stopped.
There was one last, lingering look between them. Filled with love, and fear, and determination to finish this -
And then Steve turned forwards on his bike, gunning it, and flew through the open doorway onto the ground below. Gone.
"Eagle out. I repeat, Eagle out," Dum Dum Dugan said into a handheld radio, stepping up beside her.
Hermione watched as the speck of Steve's motorcycle vanished amongst the trees of the forest.
This was it.
She had to move out soon now too.
Steve was set as bait for Hydra to grab and take to Johann, and the ground team was poised to follow after him. Hermione had to beat them all there and take care of the Staff before it could be used against them. Before Steve could get face to face with the homicidal maniac weaponized with a mind-altering, out-of-this-world power that could delegitimize the serum forced through his veins and ultimately kill him. He was not built to handle magic, but Hermione was.
Maybe she wouldn't be able to take out Johann by herself, maybe she could, but at the end of it, she could remove the Staff, the Tesseract, as a weapon. That was her mission, and she had to do it before Steve - reckless, hurting, Steve - tried to do it himself.
She fixed her gaze at the trees far ahead. She didn't have the luxury of a motorcycle like Steve, because she wasn't even supposed to be part of the first or second wave, and she wouldn't steal a car or a Jeep because it would hinder other soldiers actually following the plan, so she did with what she had. She used her magic.
Her wand fell from the holster under her jacket and into her waiting hand.
No one noticed her strange stick. Dum Dum Dugan turned to look at a soldier behind him.
The words of her Apparition Instructor from Hogwarts filled her mind. "The three D's!" He had said all those years ago.
Destination.
The tree line farthest ahead, to the right of Steve's trail of contact.
Determination.
They were five miles out from the estimated opening of the Hydra base. Hermione had never been there before, so she would be apparating within line of sight as she followed after. A highly dangerous practice, completely forbidden from newly licensed witches and wizards, as it didn't give them the appropriate amount of time to execute all three of the D's, but Hermione was nothing if not extremely determined.
She would not splinch herself in this. She would not.
Deliberation.
Her eyes narrowed. She breathed out, feeling the twist in her gut and-
"Agent Granger!" Colonel Phillips's voice rang in her ear, full of authority and warning.
-But it was too late to stop now. She spun on the spot and leaped. Feeling as though she was being forced through a very tight rubber tube, she 'popped' out of existence and reappeared somewhere far away surrounded by trees and snow.
The icy bite of the Alps consumed her legs, nearly thigh-high within the freezing mounds surrounding her, and she glanced over her shoulder. Far down her line of sight, she saw the outlines of landing planes and disembarking SSR Jeeps. She turned back to the sound of gunfire ahead. Again. Destination. Determination. Delib-
She 'popped' out of existence.
Three more times she had to do this, once nearly ten meters away from the back of Steve's motorcycle, until she saw the Hydra base ahead.
Steve was now not far behind, her last jump had put her several minutes in front of his motorcycle, and she could hear the explosions of his enemy's vehicles behind her. Unfortunately, her new perspective also gave her the perfect view of the Hydra Mini Tank blockading the only opening of the base's massive concrete entrance. The walls around it were a car's width in thickness, and at least 8 meters high. Nearly impregnable, just like they'd thought.
She bent forwards, hands on her knees, and heaved in and out. She tried desperately to catch her breath from the marathon of dangerous jumps while blinking her eyes and focusing on the stretch of land behind the impending tank. She would have to apparate again behind the concrete walls, find the door to get inside, and then break into the base itself. All without being found, shot at or killed in the process.
One last jump.
She tapped her face with the tip of her wand, casting the Disillusionment Charm, and leveled her eyes at a small opening across the base entrance. Behind an immobile tank. The perfect spot. Easy to hide and to find her next move. Her breath came out shaky, but she grit her teeth and spun on the spot for the last time.
When the world came into focus and she felt her feet touch the ground, she knew immediately that something was very wrong. A burning, a pain, unlike anything she'd ever experienced blinded her in a haze of white-hot agony. Her left leg, at the thigh... her eyes dropped to the area. She knew before her mind could fully process what had happened, that she'd splinched herself.
The wound was the size of her palm laid high on her leg, a gaping gouge of flesh that flowed red down her skin, completely bared to the outside elements. It looked as if she had just left a chunk of her leg behind, uniform, stocking, muscle tissue, and all. She could barely breathe.
Half of a sob, an exclamation, and a scream tore through her throat.
The injured leg gave out, and Hermione had to pinwheel her arms and lean back against the tank so that she wouldn't fall forwards and land on her face. The sound of her 'thump' against the metal, and her strangled scream alerted the defensive Hydra guards. Booted footfalls and a stream of German commands echoed in her ears.
The Disillusionment Charm could disguise her as the surroundings, leaving them blind to her location, but not for forever, and not if the muggles had reason to look more closely at a certain area. Like the ground, where blood from her wounded thigh was starting to pool.
Hermione clenched her teeth and with a shaking, shock-ridden hand, waved her wand over her thigh. Little spells she had learned with her time in the Front poured over her lips. The blood stopped. The area bandaged. But the skin beneath would take more than a set of spells to truly heal and she didn't have the time. So she numbed the area, made sure it was disinfected, and then braced herself for the oncoming soldiers.
Thank Merlin for her training, because she finished just in time.
Two soldiers rounded from the other side of the tank heads whipping from one side to another, looking for the creator of her screams. Hermione answered their mystery by raising her wand to the first soldier and flicking it upwards. "Defetigo extum," she whispered. The Heart Attack Spell.
'Dark' magic, as classified by the Ministry, but Hermione felt that in a war such as this, certain exceptions would have been allowed.
The Hydra soldier fell to his knees, gasped, and then his screams choked in his throat. His companion turned to him in confusion. Hermione's spell made the first soldier clutch at his breast. His fingertips dug into his uniform, trying to stop the clenching fist of pressure around his heart. He dropped forwards getting to all fours, and his neck arched upwards as if that would save whatever moments he had left. But then her spell ended, and with it, took his remaining moments.
He fell to the ground dead in the same amount of time it took Hermione to rebalance herself and point her wand at the remaining soldier. This next bit would never have been Ministry approved, but she wasn't in a world where the Ministry mattered anymore. She had to save her family.
"Imperio," she said.
The effect was instantaneous. The confused remaining soldier paused, then straightened slowly, as if he was in a trance.
"Lead me to Johann Schmidt," she ordered. The soldier had no choice and turned on his heel. Hermione cast another Disillusionment Charm on the dead body left behind so nothing would raise suspicion, and then the soldier leading her.
They passed through a platoon of waiting Hydra soldiers holding tesseract powered guns and M2 flamethrowers undetected to the side of the building. Her soldier pushed a code into a side door farther down without notice. Then they disappeared inside the base as echoes of the Hydra Mini Tank fired its first shot at the approaching American super-soldier.
Hermione followed around corners and hallways, then through doors and past lines of other marching Hydra soldiers getting ready for their attack. In no time at all, Hermione and the Imperio'd man stopped in front of a pair of steel double doors with four soldiers standing before it as guards. This must have been the place.
Without a word, Hermione dispensed of the guards and then of her own guide. She walked over the bodies without care, eyes fixed on the doors ahead. Beyond them was the first person she had ever met in this new world. The one to show her true fear and disgust. Who stood between her and her peace.
This was no place to freeze or rethink her plan. She swallowed her fear and raised her wand. With a flick, the double doors crashed outward and open. She marched into the room with her head held high. Steel equipment and walls of hexagonal-shaped metal panels surrounded her. A fine wooden table and a decanter of something expensive sat upon one on the opposite side. Following the trail of absent wealth, she found him immediately, and he - her in the same moment.
"Hermione Granger," Johann greeted, his skin just as blood red and shiny as she remembered him last.
"Johann Schmidt," she answered plainly.
He wore dark clothing, a black shirt tucked into black trousers, laced up into black boots. The only color he wore aside from the tint of his skin was the blue powered length of steel clamped around his hand. The Staff.
As tall as he, and looking like the engraved elder markings were burning with power on its surface, the staff shone between them. Hermione could feel its deadly twisted power in the air. How wrong it felt.
His eyes dropped to her wand, flaunted in his presence. He took a step forward in his study and his black-colored uniform shifted with his gait. Hermione struggled not to take a step back. He truly did look skeletal and otherworldly after the serum's harsh reaction. "I see the rumors have not been exaggerated. You hold zhe power of the future in your hands."
Hermione did not need to look down to know he was talking of her wand. Somehow, someone had seen her using her wand and had told him of it. He thought it a tool exclusively from the future. She didn't move to correct him. "I am not here to trade words with you. I want the tesseract and the Staff you've created with its power."
The side of his thin red mouth lifted up in a caricature of a smile. "Such arrogance," he mocked. "Clearly not uniquely an American trait then, as you so-beloved Captain America seems to show."
She would not fall into his laid bait. Time was ticking. "Give up the Staff and surrender quietly. The Captain is already on his way and you know that we bring the end of Hydra."
The Staff switched between the Red Skull's hands, releasing a furious 'screeetchh' as he scraped the base of it across the floor. "There are limits to what even you can do, Time Traveler, against zhe power of the Gods and it will be me who offers you leniency. To give you redemption for my new world." He held his arms wide as if to embrace her. "Bow to me. Join me in zhe remaking of this planet, and I will give you everything. Any knowledge you ever want to study, any nation's loyalty you want bending to your feet. Give me your mind to use, and I'll even let him live- your Captain. "
She grimaced. Disgust rolled through her stomach. Hate filled her words. "I would not accept your kindness if we were the last two people in the universe. I would not bow to you if I had no knees to bend or a head to lower. You are a plague. The cost of countless innocent lives. Surrender!" she demanded, thinking of Bucky, of the bodies on the beaches of Normandy, of the experimentations in the Hydra factories, and of Erik who would never see his parents again. "And I will make your death painless," she hissed. "The only mercy you'll ever receive from me."
Fury, as red hot and potent as the surface of his skin, passed over his face. He looked ready to spit at her. "Then you leave me no choice."
Hermione raised her wand. There was never a choice coming into this, she already knew that, and she was ready.
The Red Skull stabbed at the air, swinging the Staff forwards, and a brilliant flash of blue energy shot out from the end towards Hermione.
"Protego!" she yelled, her wand slashing down. An invisible force of magic flew up before her, and she dove to the side. Not a moment too late, because as the tesseract energy and her magic combined, the blue energy broke through her shield like it was made of wet paper, barely slowly its projection. It hit the opposite wall and disappeared, but the moment had already been acknowledged.
Hermione's magic could not stand solely against the power of the tesseract.
The Red Skull grinned. Hermione's brain went into overdrive, planning a way to physically wrestle the Staff from his hands. "You see?" her enemy laughed. "The power I wield is far greater than even zhe future!" He leveled the end of the Staff at Hermione, his blue eyes glinting without remorse. "Goodbye, Fräulein Granger."
Hermione grimaced and then didn't give him the chance to fire again. "Impedimenta!" she screeched, and a flash of turquoise flew out and hit him in the chest. His arms stiffened, his legs refused to move, and his body slowed as if he were deep underwater. It didn't completely stop him as it ought to have, but Hermione wondered if the power of the tesseract was somehow interacting with her magic.
She rolled to her feet and brought her wand down again. "Expelliarmus!" Scarlet magic flew and hit his weakened arms, but the Staff did not drop from his fingers.
Instead, his fingers gripped the metal tighter, and his left foot moved backward, already shaking off her jinx. An impossibility for any normal muggle.
She'd have to make a run for it then.
"Coepia!" she hurled. "Astrice! Jierda! " She sprinted towards the Staff with every spell she cast, blindly trying to get Johann to drop the weapon. A Blasting Curse. A Stunning Spell. A Breaking Jinx.
Nothing worked, and the more that she threw her magic at him, the faster he broke her spells. He sidestepped her latest jinx, fully throwing off the Impediment Hex.
Oh fuck this, she thought. She was less than two meters from him now and she raised her wand without regret. "Avada Kedav-"
Johann extended his arm and swung the blunt end of the Staff round. She barely saw it coming from the corner of her eye, and when she realized what was happening, it was too late. Thick metal crashed against the side of Hermione's forehead. A dull 'thud' that snapped her face to the side, flinging her body with it and foiling her momentum.
She collapsed to the ground. Her wand fell from her fingers. Ringing crescendoed in her ears, taking up all the space in her head and the meaning of time. The world was blurry, and black dots crawled over her vision. Everything was loud, overwhelming, and it hurt. This was it. No matter how hard she screamed at herself in her head to get to her feet, her body wouldn't move. She couldn't do anything. A concussion, her brain supplied.
The base of the Staff slammed into the ground centimeters from Hermione's face. Where was her wand? Her eyes focused up at the villain. Dizziness and nausea rolled through her stomach and up her throat.
The Red Skull smiled down at her, a wicked satisfaction igniting his eyes. Blue light glowed from the Elder Futhark runes and they illuminated the dark gouges of the Hydra leader's face. The malicious joy he had of her pain and near surrender.
If only she could get up.
"A challenge, I'll give you," he whispered down to her almost tenderly. "But a waste. If I can't have your willing loyalty, I'll have your soul instead." He sneered through broken lips. Fear shot through Hermione like an arrow down her core. He turned his head and started to lift the weapon over his head.
She couldn't let him point the Staff back at her. Panic clouded the rational passing thoughts of her mind, making them shuffle rapidly. If the tesseract magic hit her like it had the two times before - once when she was transported to this reality, and secondly when she had met the Ancient One in her dreams - who knew how the tesseract would react with her magic on the third time.
Three was a magic number. A part of her schooling and culture from her life before. Her magic itself was something this universe responded strangely to as well So for the tesseract to behave as it did the first two times around -
Maybe her magic and the tesseract would do what the Staff had cut into its core and take away her free will.
Maybe instead it would transport her back to another universe, where she would have to start over, again.
Maybe it would just kill her as it did the rest of the muggles here.
None were acceptable to Hermione, she had a life to get back to with people who needed her. She would not be a slave to a sociopath or a whim in a roll of dice. This would not be where her story ended. Shoving aside her overwhelming dizziness and nausea, she used all of Peggy's training from when she'd first arrived all those years ago, and reared back. She didn't hesitate, and he didn't see her strike forwards. She kicked as hard as she could, using the full weight of her leg, straight at his knee cap.
Something 'crunched'. Johann howled and fell forwards. He crashed to the floor next to her, and Hermione kicked the Staff away from him, watching as it roll beyond their reach. That was also when she noticed the thin piece of wood a hand space above her head. Her wand!
Johann pushed himself to his elbows, grasping in vain after the Staff, but when he knew it was beyond them, he turned back to her and bared his teeth, looking like a vicious animal. "You little-" he spat with hatred.
Hermione flung her hand above her head and clutched her wand. The wood warmed under her fingertips, and she screamed with all of her wound up hate, "Avada Ke -"
Johann punched her in the throat. His aim was off, and the force was not nearly as terrible as it could have been if he'd not been crippled on the floor supported by his elbows, but it was enough. Hermione choked. Her spell cut off. She couldn't breathe, and the pain- the pain of knowing you were suddenly suffocating, filled her.
Johann rolled away. She watched as he crawled to the Staff and used it to help him to his feet.
Hermione gagged and tried to force herself into relearning how to breathe. She still had her wand, she could perform silent spells - most of them - but casting a silent Unforgivable was out of the question now. She didn't have the experience of doing so before, and she was not going to bet her life on a failed spell if it didn't work.
Johann, apparently, was tired of their back and forth. He stabbed the front end of the staff at her without warning. Hermione scrambled back behind a black leather sofa sitting in the middle of the room. Her injured thigh screamed its protest. She ignored it and got to her feet, crouched so he wouldn't see her.
Johann was following after her like a predator stalking its prey, and she could hear the limping footfalls of his booted feet as he got closer. "Let us end this," Johann demanded lowly.
Hermione's wand twirled between her fingers. Her eyebrows lowered. "With pleasure."
Johann released another blast of blue and Hermione jumped to the side. A low standing coffee table stood between them, each end of the war on opposite sides, and both lifted their instruments at each other in the same moment.
Destroy that Staff.
"Hermione, NO!" someone behind them, Steve she thought distantly, bellowed.
The sound of many boots at the entrance echoed.
But it was too late. Her mind was focused on only one thing in this moment, and it consumed her. She could see, nearly trace the illuminated runes on her enemy's weapon, and the sight of it burned into her core, her obsession, and her sanity. An inverted 'Hagalaz', she recognized the rune engraved at the top. Usually meaning: Catastrophe, Crisis, Radical Change, Acceptance, Surrender, or Opportunity. Inverted, it meant: Broken, Forsake, Hand Over, Submit, Repel, or Fate. It angered a part of something deep within her because magic was hers. Her birthright, her culture, and it was intimately ingrained throughout every part of herself. How dare he twist it into such evil without knowing wholly what it even was? Just for the sake of power?
She would end this.
A blast of blue flew forward from the Staff.
Hermione's anger guided her wand in the same moment, and a white tinged force exploded from the tip of her wood. She did not say a spell, she was too lost in her mind, but she did think- and ultimately used intention as she thought of the rune Hagalaz.
Perhaps that was why her magic reacted the way it did. Perhaps it was the only explanation for what happened next.
Hermione's magic and the energy of the tesseract met in the middle, colliding into one another and hovering above the coffee table. They mixed, boiled, outstretched, and lashed, a furious combination of energy that started to expand like an exploding sun. It was devastating and brilliant. Hermione took a step back, her mouth dropping open in horror.
Johann didn't seem to find the sight impressive or fearful, as his face scrunched in rage and he lifted the staff again, preparing to throw more energy at the already unstable mesh.
Hermione lifted her wand to deflect the attack somehow, someway, but it wasn't needed. Following the planned timing of Captain America, three Howling Commandos broke through the back windows from ziplines and landed into the room behind Johann.
Automatic weapons fired from both ends. Bullets sprayed. There was chaos.
The Red Skull snarled and swung his Staff round in a furious circle, ignoring everything else, and pointed the end directly at Hermione. She thought she heard her name called again. Maybe by several people.
She barely had time to raise her own wand. This time, the Red Skull's energy blast flew straight for her, and she didn't have time to put up a shield or to dive away. The tesseract blast collided with the ball of aggressively melding energies, and they as one, flew at Hermione and her outstretched wand.
"Absolvo Ancile!" she thought desperately in the split second it took for everything to happen. The light of her spell barely lit the end of her wand before the mass of everything hit her.
She could see it like it was in slow motion. Second by agonizing second.
The mix of energies reached her wand first, and like it was a poison being sucked in, the mass of blue and white power dug deep and sunk into the core of the magic instrument within. It illuminated every strand of wood, making her wand look transparent. Her dragon heartstring core seized and expanded within from the attack. She could see the energy overpower her lifelong companion, and then the splits, breaking like stone and appearing over the outer layer of her wand like a shattered boiled egg. They drove deep, in great chunks, and without stopping. The inside shone brighter, harsher than a military flare, and as everything grew to a blinding crescendo, it CRACKED.
Breaking apart like a puzzle. The pieces of her wand fell apart in her hand, and then without power or magic, to the floor below. Mundane and unfixable. Forever broken, and ending.
Hermione didn't have time to cry, to grieve over a lost part of her identity, or then even to scream because it just kept coming.
The energy wrapped around her. An anaconda with millions of arms that sledgehammered her from every side, pulling her up from the ground by her chest and filling her with blistering lightning. The energy - the mix of tesseract and her own magic - attacked her, razing every neuron in her body, overloading every atom. She was dying. She could taste blood, hear her own heartbeat, and her own screams. She was dying, and it was pulling her apart by the foundation of her very being.
Nothing else mattered except for the pain. The pulverizing excruciation that enveloped everything she was. She was dying.
Gods, Merlin, whatever there was, just let her die.
March 5th, 1945 - Day of the Attack on HYDRA Headquarters, Swiss Alps
STEVE
He knew something was wrong the moment that the Hydra soldiers led him to the doorway of the Red Skull's location. As in, the double metal doors were wide open and unmoving guards were littered on the ground in front of it.
Someone, somehow, was already here.
The plan had been going well up until this point. Howard's improved motorcycle had gotten him to the front, he'd 'surrendered' to the soldiers attacking, and was now being led to the big Red Man himself.
This- whatever this was, was not in any of his many backup ideas and he didn't know if he should be more suspicious, or a little relieved. Maybe there was infighting, or someone snuck in from a separate division and-?
Steve's thoughts were quickly dissolved when his guards noticed that the other guards weren't doing too well. They stopped and the grip on his arms became harder. The soldier behind him that had a glowing gun pressed to his lower back, got antsy. "Breach! Secure reinforcements!" he said in German. Someone from the back went running.
Steve was about to take advantage of their lost concentration when his extra sensitive hearing picked up something from deep inside the Hydra room. Something so faint that normally, he would've let the extra noise go, but it froze him for a moment. Because- No. No- he knew the feminine lilt of that voice and the aristocratic tang of her European upbringing. Like the back of his own hands, he knew instinctually and with overwhelming clarity, exactly who was there.
"With pleasure," he heard.
Oh, God.
Fear. Panic. Worry. Anxiety and every other dark feeling crept in at the same moment. He wasn't aware he was moving until the guards surrounding him started laying on the punches. He ducked, punched, kicked, and rolled his way clear, taking every opportunity to get this over with so could get into the next room.
Because she wouldn't - she couldn't be there. It had to be a mistake. She wouldn't just go off on her own like-
One of the guards shot at his feet and he jumped forward with a swift kick to his chest. The Hydra agent rebounded off the opposite hallway wall and crumpled to the floor, chest piece caved in. Steve didn't give him a second glance. However, that guard that had run earlier? It sounded like he was back, and he'd brought those reinforcements. Steve hesitated for a split second, thinking over his next move. Stay and fight, or go to Hermione?
The second ended. Hermione won. She always always would.
Steve turned tail and sprinted into the next room, his shield high and above his head in case any - anything came hurling into his entrance. He skidded to a stop a couple of yards in, nothing bouncing off his defense, and he lowered his arm. His eyes widened. His gut dropped straight to his feet, worst fears come to life.
Hermione and Johann, the two opposite sides of the spectrum, were raising their respective weapons like a wild west gunfight, ready to strike the other down. Hermione, beautiful and brave- hurt Hermione, Steve could see blood trailing from a wounded leg and from the side of her temple, held her thin stick of a wand with a sure hand and deadly calm. Johann, the Red Skull, and leader of Hydra was on the other end of a coffee table of all things, holding up the sketch of nightmares come-to-life. The Staff. Glowing in hateful power and spitting dangerous energy from where even Steve stood, all-around bad, and pointing straight at Hermione.
He couldn't help himself, he couldn't do anything more except- "Hermione, NO!"
But even his yell, his prayer to whoever was listening, his plea to his best girl - nothing could stop what was already happening. Both sides released their power. Hermione and her spell, Johann and his bright flash of blue.
Hydra reinforcements came crashing into the room behind Steve.
Glass shattered and cascaded to the floor behind Johann as James Falsworth, Dum Dum Dugan, and Gabe Jones burst through the observatory windows from ziplines outside, right on schedule.
And then Hermione and Johann's power collided.
Steve didn't have the chance to see much else as Hydra gun flashes and bullets filled the air. He was spinning and ducking, twisting and pounding, taking down every Hydra agent in his reach. "Hermione!" he called again desperately, trying to get her attention, or another prayer to be ignored, he wasn't sure, but he couldn't get to her from where he was.
Gabe, Dum Dum, and Joey musty have heard him, because they echoed her name - in confusion, then alarm and distress.
"Absolvo Ancile!" he heard, screamed. Ripped from her throat, full of despair, like the fight was already over. It ran him ice cold from crown to toes. He jerked his head back, desperate to look at her, to see what was happening-
Oh, God. No- No.
Because it really was over. The energy- the mix of whatever was hanging in the air, was on Hermione. It destroyed her wand in her bare hand, breaking like pieces of fine china to the ground and dissolving into nothing before it hit the metal floor, and then it all hit her.
It sucked her in, a swirling mix of color and power like it had a soul of its own, enveloping her wholly and sinking into everything it had. He watched as Hermione's body jerked up, her feet lifting from the ground, and then as a seizure ripped through her frame. Her head tipped back - jaw unhinged like she was screaming silently, fingers curling into fists that could hold nothing, and back arching like an invisible claw was secured around her chest. Her eyes were open wide, glowing unnaturally blue, enveloping everything from the whites to the pupil, and shining like car headlights. It was under her skin, power rolling across everything that made Hermione her, and making something - destroying something - new within her.
His heart broke. It sunk into the deepest depths of him. She was dying- hurting- and he couldn't do anything. He kicked someone into another Hydra agent and threw himself at her, but he knew it would be too late. It was already too late. She was stretching out and getting higher into the air every second. She was twitching and seizing, and screaming nothing and bleeding - he reached for her, jumping with everything he had off the coffee table, into the air, and-
Everything went white.
Power, reminiscent of the tesseract and Hermione's own energy, exploded out from Hermione's prone body. It was like a tsunami wave of detonation- a red hot swell of agony and raw other that threw Steve like a rag doll clear across the room. Bodies flew. Glass shattered. Furniture and equipment tumbled. Steve hit the far wall, bounced off, and dropped like an anchor to the floor. His ears rang, and his vision tilted. He couldn't think straight, but worry bloomed in his chest- not for himself- but for the last thing he saw.
He forced his head up, straining against every hurt and inconvenience, and searched the room. Looking for that beautiful head of curly chocolate hair, those big brown eyes, the pale skin he could identify in a crowd, the-
He choked. Something in him died. The back of his nose burned and the world went blurry because - there, just there she was. A crumpled mess of loose curls and slacken limbs.
Something unearthly tore through his throat. A noise somewhere between a sob and an animalistic roar. He rose to his feet, moving with only one purpose and destination to the other side, at her side, and he dropped to his knees beside her.
He didn't want to see- he needed to- but this couldn't be it. This couldn't.
Her hair had come undone. The vibrant streaks of chestnut and tawny mixed in her corkscrew curls were spread around her downturned face. He hadn't been able to see those undertones of color before his transformation, and every time he'd seen her afterward with her hair all the way down, it'd mesmerized him. It always would. His fingers were gentle as they pushed her hair away. Her skin was cold, like the life- god no- the heat had been leached from them, and when his skin brushed hers, he could feel no heartbeat.
His chest curled and sunk, hurting and twisting, but still. He had to know for sure.
"Hermione?" he called softly. She didn't answer, and he brushed the back of her head, fingers in her curls. He kneeled closer to her face.
"Hermione, doll, say somethin'," he begged, curling a finger under her chin and turning her his way. "Open those eyes for me and look at me." The world was teary at the edges and maybe his nose was starting to leak, he didn't know, but she wasn't moving.
Not her. God-
"Hermione, dammit, look at me!" It was a yell, desperate and angry, but she didn't open her eyes and he couldn't feel anything under her skin. Steve's other hand went under her neck, getting her closer, but her head fell back and her parted lips gave so sign of breath.
"Oh, God. No. Not-"
Someone behind him shot off a round, it echoed in his ears, and he should care. He knows that he should care about it, but he's in the middle of a war, the place to end it all- but he can't because she's - God help him, she's gone. She's dead, and gone, and she's died-
"Take care of zhis."
The Red Skull's voice broke through the shock, the agony, and the impending haze of everything lost. He could feel it in the back of his mind, the hopelessness, because now he's alone- he's lost- he can't go home- But it all came to a cold stop when he heard that voice. Now, it's a target.
His head snapped up, locked onto the man with the red-tinged skin, and then he's running. Someone passed him his shield, said his name, bullets echoed, but then time got funny.
He remembered running through the Hydra base, a Hydra agent filling the hallway with flames, Agent Carter's face- and somehow saying, "she didn't make it" before turning away, and running until he thought his heart was going to jump out of his chest. Then there was getting onto the tarmac, Colonel Phillips and Agent Carter driving him as the Red Skull's plane drove down the runway, and Agent Carter's tear-filled eyes as she said, "She loved you."
But Steve couldn't think about that for too long because then he'd spiral, he knew that, he'd done so with Buck-
And that thought hurt even worse because they're both gone now, so Steve shoved it all down, way back where he can't feel anything for anything, and he jumped on that plane.
Nothing matters anymore except the mission.
He was made for this. She had died for this. They both had-
He was going to finish it.
It doesn't all become real again until he was creeping into the pilot's room and saw the tesseract behind the Red Skull's chair. Glowing that awful, gut-wrenching glow.
"You don't give up, do you?" Steve heard from behind him, and he turned with his shield held over his face. It's a good thing too, because a blue-colored shot smashed against the vibranium and deflected across the hull.
"Nope," Steve said back, because he's done playing with words.
They exchanged blows, Steve threw his shield at the tesseract machine to just make the whole thing stop, but then Johann picked up the cube and was sucked into space. Gone. Forever. A death if he'd ever seen one, but too quick. It left an unsatisfied feeling within, and everything only got worse when he got to the control panel and figured out that he couldn't land the plane. He'd have to force it down. Over open water when no one else would die because of it.
Hopelessness and weary resignation filled him. This was it, huh? To command and to serve.
"Please, don't do this. We have time, we can work it out," Peggy's voice came over from the radio.
Steve stared out at the expanse of sunlit clouds around him. He felt for her, he really did, he wasn't the only one who had lost someone today, but what other way was there? He had multiple city-reducing-bombs waiting to go off in the back. "Right now, I'm in the middle of nowhere. If I wait any longer, a lot of people are gonna die."
There was silence on the other end.
"Agent Carter, this is my choice." His only choice to make sure that it all ended the way it needed to. So that the people who'd left hadn't died in vain. He swallowed and reached into his pocket.
He brought out his compass, the one thing that he'd always had on hand, and opened it so that it showed the smiling face of his best girl. Her bright eyes, her dark hair, the smirk she was saving for the moment. He wanted to remember her this way- not dead in his arms when he hit the water. Her love and mischieve, her stubbornness and compassion, bright across her face.
He pushed the steering controls forward. The plane dipped and the wind rushed his ears.
"Peggy?" he asked.
"What about Erik?" she answered.
Regret hit him over the head like a metal baseball bat. It drowned him in a moment and filled his exhausted sigh out. Somewhere ahead, he could see the white ice of an abandoned landmark coming into view. The perfect place with no one around to get hurt.
"You tell Erik-" his voice broke and he shook his head. What could he say? He'd lost everyone too. What he'd had and what he was going to have. It wasn't fair on him either. On anyone in this situation. "You tell him that I wanted to be everything we'd talked about. We didn't get much time, but I wanted to be a father and I wanted that with him. We wanted him as a part of our family, and you tell him this isn't his fault."
The ice shelf got bigger, filling this field of vision, and the icy wind tore through the hull.
The radio crackled. "I will."
"You tell him that we loved every moment we got with him, and that I'm sorry I couldn't bring her home."
"Steve-"
"I loved her," he couldn't help but say.
"I know," Peggy said back immediately like it was a universal truth. Something acknowledged and built upon for every other person to understand, and he liked the sound of that.
The icy mountain was all he could see. It expanded across the length of his windshield, and he could see individual lines of the icy rock face.
"You tell Erik I said good-"
But then it was all over.
Peggy closed her eyes, tears falling down her cheeks, and sobbed.
Colonel Phillips stared at the ground for a moment, eyes lost and shoulders down, and then he walked away.
Erik, standing behind Peggy's chair, turned before anyone else could see his tears and ran from the control room. He didn't stop running until he was outside, somehow navigating the twists and turns of the emptied Hydra base, and then released a soul-wrenching scream into the air.
It vibrated through the abandoned court, echoed out over the snowy trees and hillsides, and went on for as long as he could breathe. When he was done and had opened his eyes, exhausted and emptied, he saw a wreckage of crunched cars, bent metal walls, and twisted metal railings. Every metal object he could see surrounding him was wrecked and ruined.
His eyes widened and he took a half step back. His hand covered his mouth like he was about to scream, and then he heard the pounding boots of an SSR soldier from within the base. Coming for him. For what he'd done.
His hands closed into fists, coming close to his chest, and he looked out over the snowy terrain, considering.
When the first soldier made it out to the yard and saw the wreckage, he stopped and stared with a dropping jaw. "Holy shit."
But Erik didn't hear that, as he was already running. Out through the trees and away from the echoing of boots following the first soldier. He kept running until he couldn't run anymore, and then ran again. And again, and again, for years.
END OF PART 1
Welp, there it is my dears.
If anyone is a little confused as to how the magic worked as it did in this chapter, feel free to comment. The chapters ahead will also be explaining some things, but ya know.
Spells Translated: (Made up mostly - Alphabetized)
Absolvo Ancile - Extremely Powerful Shielding Spell
Astrice - Stunning Spell (Literally 'I strike')
Avada Kedavra - Killing Curse (Unforgivable)
Coepia - Blasting Curse
Defetigo Extum - Heart Attack Spell
Expelliarmus - Disarming Spell
Impedimenta - Impediment Jinx
Imperio - Imperius Curse (Unforgivable)
Jierda - Hit/Breaking Hex
Protego - Shielding Charm