Chapter 23: Graveside Manner
Pierce takes in her silence, thankfully showing no disappointment in her lack of eagerness. He smiles somberly, and Hermione's just glad her tongue didn't act on its own accord and shout no. No, she couldn't kill Natalia. Perhaps…God, she feels ill, but perhaps Rogers even though it makes absolutely no sense for him to die right now.
Her superior puts and arm around. "Let me show you something."
He takes her to his private elevator and after he overrides the AI regarding her presence, she manages to wrap her head around his order.
It was always going to end bloody with her and Natalia, Hermione knows this and has known it since the woman coughed her up to S.H.I.E.L.D.
She just…thought there'd be more time.
"The abrupt deaths of Captain America and Black Widow will raise all kinds of repercussions. An astronomical amount of scrutiny will be directed at S.H.I.E.L.D. which is definitely something we don't want. We're lucky Stark found nothing in his data breach two years ago. You think he wouldn't do it again more thoroughly if his friends bit the bullet. And I'm sure the NSA and CIA and the Secret Service might want to meddle—"
"We're prepared for that. You'll be accompanying Alpha S.T.R.I.K.E., Rogers, and Widow to your old stomping grounds in Moscow. They got a mission to apprehend a turncoat and his ticket that'll keep him out of prison. We already have intel from FSB. They're planning a counter measure at the rendezvous point. Rogers and Widow will die in the struggle. S.T.R.I.K.E. will be your backup in ensuring that, but I put the responsibility on you."
"Why?" But even as she asks, she knows why. He doubts her. She's lost his trust. She's grown comfortable. Lax in her service to HYDRA.
"You do this," Pierce says and takes her hand, thumbing her bracelet, "HYDRA will have its own captain after the unveiling."
He couldn't mean it.
Her breath catches. "Sir?"
"I know you care for HYDRA. It's almost all you've ever known. Still, I sense you're tied down to your memories from before. Your parents, even at your young age, probably instilled certain naïve ideals."
"I hardly remember th—" she attempts to lie.
"Removing two of HYDRA's greatest threats will show me and the council you were the girl for the job after all and with a bit of coaxing, we were able to make the malfunction work."
Hermione internally winces at being regarded as The Malfunction and wonders how different things could've been if Natalia hadn't knocked her head into the barre all those years ago. Would another blow to the head which would've inevitably come along rattled her childhood loose?
The elevator levels, the door sliding open. Techs and engineers fill what will be the hanger of the most deadliest and ambitious weapons. Hermione follows Pierce into the mass of chattering bodies, people parting for him like the Red Sea. He takes her up a flight of metal stairs, so they can look at the excitement from above, and he points at cluster of computer technicians manipulating 3D holograms of the crafts projected from a smart table.
"You're familiar with the algorithm behind the crafts, I assume."
"Of course."
"Zola created an algorithm. Equations and formulas we were unable to make sense until the explosion of the internet and even better, social media. We're able to pinpoint threats to the world using his design and programmed it into the mainframe of each ship. You see that chip?"
A tech minimizes a craft and expands a rendition of a rectangular shape.
"We're not quite there yet in technology, but in four years, we'll be there. The chips will be hardwired in gathering precise data and exploiting those who are and will be a threat to what we work so hard to achieve. But," he smiles grimly at her, "these ships need a captain, and I plan to make it out alive after the unveiling although you never know, do you? I need someone young and fresh to take the baton. It won't hurt that you're pretty, too. People…often find your appearance comforting and if they don't, you can make them comfortable, can't you?"
Hermione insides turn to ice.
"Sir, give me time, and I could have anyone warm up to me—"
"You can stop the charade, Agent. I know you're capable of forcing someone's hand, and I applaud you in keeping it under-wraps for so long."
"Sir," she grapples.
"Yes?" he replies patiently.
"I wanted to tell you—"
"No, I don't think you did." He waves dismissively. "At first I wanted to be angry. I did consider you've never used this power against me or any other of your superiors." He pauses, brows arched. "Have you?"
"Absolutely not, sir," she flat out lies. "I wouldn't dream of it. Only in the field. Every once in a while…"
He waves dismissively at her. "And you never even considered using this incredibly convenient talent on Rogers."
"Oh, I did." This is truthful.
"So why didn't you?"
"Because I'm a lot of things, but not a rapist." She looks down at her feet, her cheeks suddenly feeling very warm. "Sir." Her gaze flickers back up for a brief second. "How did you know?"
"I didn't." He cracks a smirk, and he might as well have smacked her. "I'm glad you didn't try to lie too much. It gives you points in my book." He pats her on the shoulder. "You're a good liar. Trained by both HYDRA and KGB. You're going to have to be the best when it's you up in that office."
A buzzing sound interrupts the tension. Pierce retrieves his phone from his suit pocket which allows Hermione to check out of reality for a second and take a breath because Jesus Christ, she thought…
Oh, God, she thought it was over. She thought she was done and that it was all a ruse to make her eyes light up, only for Pierce to snatch his pretty words back and throw her deepest secret in her face. And, then oh, by the way, have a high-ranking S.T.R.I.K.E. member repel from the ceiling and shoot her dead.
"She's with me, Nick, don't you worry." Pierce winks at her. "Well, you've got your favorite ex-KGB assassin, I have mine."
Ah, Fury.
"All right, all right. I'll give her the message. She'll be in New York in two hours." Pause. "Of course, she's rested. She slept on the flight here. Listen, I have to go, but dinner at my sister's this Sunday. See you then."
He hangs up. "Fury wants you with Rogers. He's in New York."
Hermione looks down at the techs, a revelation hitting her. "He and Romonva die on a mission, and I'm the one who lives, Fury won't buy it."
"You let me worry about that."
Her stomach is a boiling mass of acid. All she can imagine is the inevitable. A bullet in Natalia's face. Hermione takes in a shaky breath, eyes transfixed on the streets of New York as her driver navigates through heavy traffic. She doesn't absorb anything or anyone.
Her thoughts fly to Pierce's promise, and she's so flattered because isn't this what she wanted and arrogantly wished for as a child? To rule HYDRA. To purify it. So wasteful and greedy she saw her superiors and peers be. She could fix it all with a little more than a snap of her fingers.
But the cost.
It's a price needing paid, though a price she doesn't want to be the one to make. And possibly may not even have had to. A lot of shit would happen after the unveiling of HYDRA. Maybe even a battle of sorts. There wouldn't necessarily have to be reason Hermione should be the one to pull that trigger. Her death then would be abstract and then it wouldn't hurt so…
It'd still hurt.
The only difference would be that Hermione would be the one to take her life. To see her life leave her.
For a foolish moment, she tries to fester up the old wound of Natalia betraying her. Tries reliving the blow, but the memory doesn't stir her because she accepted years ago Natalia did what she thought she could to save her. So she wouldn't have to be the person to put Hermione down in the end.
Hermione can't return the favor.
Her phone rings.
It's Natalia.
Her chest aches, and she doesn't want to answer, but it's probably about the mission.
"Hey," she answers.
Pause. "You sound strained."
"I'm in New York to fetch Rogers without a break from my last mission. Can you blame me?"
Nat sighs. "I'm calling about what's coming. This is our first op together since the KGB. I haven't even seen you properly interrogate someone. All your vids and recordings are classified as Level 8 which means even you don't get to re-watch them…"
Hermione continues to listen, and Natalia doesn't usually talk this much over the phone which shows how much she really is anticipating being back out in the field with her. Short and to the point sentences and then a goodbye.
"Anyway, you get those tickets?" asks Nat.
"My guy's working on it," Hermione replies distantly.
"Rogers is going to kiss you."
That's enough to rattle her to get with it. She even manages a chuckle. "Yeah, I don't think he's going to be that grateful, so don't worry your paranoid self. He's still yours for the taking when you're ready." Her driver pulls up to the curb in front of the building. "I've got to go. I'm here. I'll see you late tonight."
"Stay with me tonight."
"I didn't get lucky in Israel, so I just might." The thought of slithering into bed with Natalia days before killing her makes Hermione ill.
The phone call ends, and Hermione darts through the revolving door and takes the elevator to the eleventh floor. Where Fury said Rogers would be. When she reaches the floor, she immediately has to show her S.H.I.E.L.D. badge to several different people before even getting escorted to the set. And there he is, uniformed and standing tall and internally screaming like a wounded banshee between a white backdrop and a rolling camera.
"Hi, I'm Captain America. Here to talk to you about the most valuable traits a soldier or student can have. Patience."
Leaning against the table of the vanity, Hermione grins at Rogers. His blush still shows under the thick pancake foundation the makeup artist smeared over his face. He takes off his cowl and wipes angrily at his cheeks with a cleansing cloth a PA handed him.
"This is so embarrassing," he grumbles.
"Kids will love it," she chimes. Even more so after he's dead.
"What're you doing here?" He grabs another cloth, the old one completely soiled in beige.
"Fury called. Said you could use a friend."
His sigh is jaded and annoyed. "I thought I was done with this shi—stuff."
"Would it make you feel better if I dressed up as a star-spangled chorus girl."
"No."
And he really meant it. He thought a lot of those women were airheads. Very little substance. No personality. All wishing and waiting for the war to end but also hoping they'd score a husband along the way throughout the basecamp tours.
Rogers holds Hermione in the highest regards, and the corners of her mouth quirk just a little. He doesn't consider her a best friend but a close one, and he thinks she's so strong and so smart. And though he's not attracted to her, he likes the symmetry of her face and wants to draw it but nowhere near ballsy enough to ask. If he did find the courage, what if she misread his intentions?
"Hey, you're thinking too hard," she tells him, running a hand through his mussed hair. "You need a break. Let's get out of here."
"I got plans with Tony—"
"Cancel them. I'm here now. Besides." She whirls around and studies her reflection. Maybe she'll borrow a smudge of makeup to work miracles on those rings underneath her eyes. "I think you're going to enjoy a date with me rather than fueling those romance rumors alongside Stark."
They go to Coney Island.
The experience is bittersweet for him. She senses his melancholy the entire way there, but when they arrive, she makes a show of eyeing the rides with keen, possibly child-like interest.
"I've never been on a roller coaster before," she tells him, sliding her arm through his. "Or any fairground ride." She almost added 'or just a fair', but that would be too many cherries on the sundae.
Like that, Rogers throws his metaphorical Barnes in the imaginary closet and takes her by the hand. They've never held hands before, and she hates how small hers are in his. It's a reminder that it doesn't matter how little she is compared to him, she's capable of hurting him. Of killing him. They're both enhanced, highly trained in weaponry and physical combat. But it's her other abilities giving her the edge.
Smelling of popcorn and frying oil, Hermione quietly enters her apartment. Natalia's bedroom light is still on, and Hermione peaks her head in, seeing the bedroom empty but hearing the bath running from the bathroom.
"You won't want me tonight," she calls from the hallway. "I ate two overpriced hotdogs, drank a large milkshake, snacked on popcorn, and threw everything up after the fifth time on the teacup ride."
Natalia pops her head into the bedroom, smirk forming her lips. "And you got your face painted. An apple. Cute."
"Did you see the picture I sent you of Rogers?" Hermione picked a gigantic black widow spider to be painted on Rogers face. Once the artist finished, Hermione sent a photo to Natalia with the message:
Remember that time you drank too much and confessed how badly you wanted to sit on his face.
The woman rolls her eyes dramatically and disappears back into the bathroom. Hermione follows, stripping off her clothes and getting the shower ready as Natalia sinks into her eucalyptus-smelling bubble bath. Her stomach twinges at the scent, knowing Natalia has been hurt on her last gig and won't be fully healed for the mission in a few days. She won't even be at her best.
Hermione twists the knobs of the shower. "I'm going to shower."
"Your apple will wash off."
"Well, sometimes good things have to come to end." Her hand stills on the knob. She shouldn't have said that. The hairs on the back of her neck spring to life. She can feel Natalia's eyes on her.
Later when they're in bed together, Hermione tries not to let anymore show. She hopes Natalia doesn't taste finality in their kisses or in their movement, but the anguish inside Hermione can't be stifled. She can't do what Rogers managed to do for a few hours and shove it into a closet in her own mind. It's too prominent, and there's so little time. She can't climax no matter what Natalia does.
Natalia kisses her way up Hermione's stomach and then rises, gesturing to the drawer of the bedside table. "If you want, I got—"
Hermione shakes her head. She turns on her side and opens her palm. Natalia then lays down face her, interlacing their fingers.
Whatever you think is going to happen, it doesn't have to, thinks Natalia as her eyes flutter shut. I love you.
Moscow
It's a little after two o'clock in the morning at the compound. Hermione leaves Vasiliev in the interrogation room, closing the door behind her. The neighboring door opens, and Natalia steps out, lips parted in surprise and green eyes glittering. Even she can't contain her amazement.
"Oh, my God. I forgot how..." She shakes her head. "That was incredible. You got it right out of him—"
The power goes off. The sound of a door being kicked in down below cuts her off. Voices fill the property. Natalia instinctively removes her gun from its holster, and Hermione grabs her wrist, snapping it and covering her mouth to stifle the grunt of pain. The gun falls to the ground, and Hermione pushes Natalia against the wall roughly.
"Don't move," she says. The demand comes out choppy. Unconvincing.
Natalia's training overrides her shock. Her hurt. She bites Hermione's fingers and knocks her arm away, and Hermione planned for what was next.
The fight and the inevitable.
Which doesn't happen the way she imagined.
Natalia does indeed, collide her good wrist with Hermione's side, forgoing the neck and activates her Widow's Bite device. But after that, Natalia runs and as Hermione cups her side, she watches the woman's shadow touch the side of her head.
"Agent Abegglen has gone rogue. She's the mole. I repeat, Agent Abegglen is the mole—"
Hermione grabs her gun and fires, hitting Nat in the shoulder and cursing at herself for not taking a kill shot. Why prolong the inevitable? Why torture her?
Natalia falls the floor, gasping in pain. She clutches her shoulder and violently maneuvers herself up against the wall. "I've been hit! Steve!"
It's a scream for help. Natalia's not even using protocol. She's calling out her savior by first name and Hermione knows S.T.R.I.K.E. will take their time getting to her, but Rogers won't. That'll work in Hermione's favor. She stands over Natalia, gun aimed. The woman stares up at her, and she's in pain, but her wounded shoulder is the furthest thing from her mind despite it being the thing keeping her from furthering engaging in hand-to-hand combat.
"You never gave up Mother," Natalia says in Russian. Her teeth are clenched. "Did you?"
Hermione stills. Something's wrong. Something's off. The mole. Natalia mentioned the mole. Like there'd been wind of one and everyone knew it but didn't know who.
Hermione can't read between the lines just yet. She hears the shield's near-silent whir before it hits her gun. The aim of Steve is so careful. It doesn't nick her hands nor trigger her fingers to fire the weapon. Her gun is knocked out of her grasp and out of reach, and Steve's grabbing her. His arms around her, he's trying to subdue her.
"What are you doing, Milas?" he hisses.
She doesn't know. Her mission was so clear. She had orders to kill both him and Nat, and she hesitated and not just because the op is personal. There's a missing piece. Nat knows something she doesn't and from the sounds of it, so does S.T.R.I.K.E.
This doesn't bode well with Hermione.
In the dark, she can still see the blue of Rogers' eyes and the cowl rimming them. Those eyes hold a mixture of disappointment and fear. He's so afraid to kill her. He doesn't want to. He doesn't think he can even though she's…
Hermione scratches a landmine inside his brain and is blindsided by the explosion of information hurled at her. Her blood runs cold, and she nearly throws up. But like Natalia, her training kicks in as does her instinct to survive.
She needs to leave.
Run.
She wriggles uselessly in Rogers arms before wrapping her legs around his waist and head-butting him. The cowl takes most of the blow, but it's enough for him to let go. She falls the floor, curling her spine and rolling backwards and then onto her haunches. She spares a glance at Natalia who's out-cold and losing blood fast.
"Let me go, Rogers. Take care of her," she says quietly. "There's a lot you don't know."
There's a lot I don't know, she internally adds.
He doesn't budge, hand wrapped around the handle of his gun strapped in his holster. "When I said we should spar, this wasn't what I pictured."
His shield is embedded in the wall three feet behind her. She moves quickly, yanking it out to take the blow of Rogers' gunfire before throwing the disk at him with all her might. The gunfire stops, so he can catch it. In her peripheral, she sees him catch his shield and stumble backwards, a perplexed frown on his lips.
The shock of her strength wares off fast, and he's on her tail. She comes to a metal staircase and wants to take it but can't. S.T.R.I.K.E. is down there, and they're not her friends anymore.
For a moment, she ponders the idea of Brock shooting her because could he really? After everything they've been through—even not being together anymore—could he really order one of his men to kill her?
Hermione doesn't take the stairs because she can't answer that question, and the only way to go is up. There's another staircase, this one of concrete steps leading to the roof. When she gets to the locked door, she breaks the barrier off it's hinges, not breaking her stride. There's a neighboring building, lower in structure. She leaps off the roof and onto that one, rolling as to cushion the blow. The moment she's on her feet, Rogers is there, too, and he's throwing that fucking shield at her again. She ducks, and he misses, but it bounces off a sturdy pipe, and she gets hit anyway.
Blood rushes painfully to the side of her thigh where the shield hit her, and she's almost laying flat. Rogers is stalking towards her, and she had tried shaking him for a reason. She didn't want to fight him. She didn't want to kill him. In the last five minutes, the game has changed. But if he tries to stop her from fleeing or even attempts to kill her, she will put him down.
"Let me go," she says, climbing to her feet.
"You betrayed S.H.I.E.L.D." He sets his jaw. "You betrayed Romanoff."
You betrayed me, he wants to say, but she can hear it loud and clear.
And he isn't wrong about any of those things. Still, he can't see the whole picture, and she's not going to show him. There's no time. It's not safe. Death and reapers lurk in the shadows. They call her name. There's not a person in the next building who thinks she'll live through the night.
"You were FSB this whole time," he accuses. He takes a step forward. "They experimented on you, didn't they?"
"No." She stomps on the rim of the shield, and she grabs ahold of it. "They didn't."
He's not able to catch the shield this time, and it falls between the space of the two buildings, clattering to the ground. Hermione attacks him, first stomping his instep and then his opposite knee. A fist to his gut and then to his kidney. He's trying to dodge her hits, but his martial-art technique is behind. He's not sure what do with his legs, and Hermione had seven godawful years of figuring that out.
She uses his knee, hipbone, and shoulder as stepping tools to wrap her legs around his neck and twist him until his spine gives, and he's on his back. She puts as much pressure on his throat as she can, but he's waving and thrashing his hands and arms at her neck and face before diggings his fingers into her legs, bruising and rough. He's using all his arm strength to free himself, but Rogers has yet to learn firsthand the strength of women's thighs.
He chomps down desperately at the tender meat beneath her suit, and she releases him. He gasps for breath and coughs as she rolls off him. She cups the tear at her suit and feels wet warmth on her fingertips. His teeth tore through the mesh of the suit and scraped her. Not a tactic she pegged him for, but desperate times for desperate measures. She was going to crush his windpipe, after all.
"Ow," she mutters, giving him a half-hearted shove with her boot before crawling a few feet away from him and then coming to stance. There's an attached ladder she can slide down. From there, she can run for miles or she can steal a car. She rakes her fingers through her hair, the braid coming lose through the fight. The tips hit something lodged behind her ear, and it feels like…
A Widow's Bite.
"Sorry, kid," gasps out Rogers. He pulls Nat's Bite bracelet from a flap in his pants and presses the button.
She wakes up in the back of a squad van, shackled. She blinks several times and sees Brock in his gear sitting on the metal bench across from her. It's just them. The doors are open, and she can see tarmac. They're at an airport, and there's a quinjet in the distance.
She knows she won't be getting on it. Rogers and Nat are probably already gone. Back to D.C. for the debrief.
It'll be one hell of debrief, she imagines.
"Why?" she asks Brock. It comes out more like a choke.
"You know why." Brock's voice is quiet yet firm.
Does she?
"You chose Romanoff over HYDRA."
"That mission?" She snarls. "Was five years ago, and they're going to kill me for it now!"
"That mission," spits Brock, "was a slap in the face to your superiors. Especially when Pierce found out what you did to him." He chuckles mirthlessly. "You think he wouldn't eventually?"
"I did it to clean up my mess. It was my fault for not killing Abid. He got ahold of Cruz-Gesenko—"
"You did it to save Romanoff. You risked exposing The Asset and HYDRA to save her—"
"I'm loyal to HYDRA. Brock," she interjects. "Robert, you know me. All of me. Every part, and you know I would never betray HYDRA.."
He shakes his head. "That mission was your first of many red flags. You moved in with Romanoff out of choice. Sure, you gathered intel on a few of Fury's projects but nothing substantial. Couldn't even give us decent information about the Avengers Initiative project. You failed in almost every way when it came to Rogers."
"You have no sufficient evidence I—"
"You're compromised, Hermione." He leans forward. "And you know it. And you have been since the Red Room."
She swallows. Her true name echoes inside her skull like a mantra, stirring unhappy memories. "Then kill me."
He sighs, leaning his head back.
"That was the mission, wasn't it?" she fires. "It was never my mission to kill Rogers and Romanoff. This was all just a setup. Killing two birds with one stone. Taking down an FSB unit and then getting rid of me. Making it look like I've been feeding them information behind the scenes, so no one in S.H.I.E.L.D would be none the wiser."
"You were supposed to kill Romanoff," reveals Brock. "That was true. But Rogers was supposed to be the one to take you down."
She shakes her head. "It should be you."
"Yeah, not happening."
Her question from before is answered. "I wouldn't want anyone else."
"God, Milas. Aren't you even going to fight or, shit, deny further that you betrayed HYDRA?"
"I tried running just now. It went well as you can see. But even if I had gotten away—"
Brock grabs the back of her head, crushing her mouth to his. It's a punishing kiss. He's angry at her disloyalty but most of all her stupidity. When he releases her, he tells her what's going to happen.
"Your cuffs. I'm not supposed to know you can break them. The rest of S.T.R.I.K.E. doesn't either. You're going to do that, beat me until I'm unconscious, ditch her fucking bracelet, and then you're going to run. Really run, kid. And throw yourself into a hole where no one can find you."
"That's your plan—"
He backhands her, using all his strength. Her head snaps to the side and annoying bloom of warm pain spreads, across her cheek. Before she can recover, he does it again to her opposite cheek. And when he goes for the third time, she gets the gist. He's a sentimental sap, and he can't kill her, nor can he watch her die. Not after everything they've gone through together.
But it goes both ways. She can't just beat him…
His third blow lands even harder than the first two. "I was the one who told the Soldier to take that shot on Romanoff," Brock says. "Back in Odessa. Then I went home. Cooked dinner for a date who never showed and let you suck me off."
She breaks her cuffs.
Somehow.
Somehow, she makes it to Amsterdam, but she's got only a few hours because she'd been spotted in Zaandam, and she needs to make her next move. And she knows what she wants to do, but it's suicide. There's no way she'll make it out there alive, though it's been nagging her since the airport in Russia. After she left Brock bloody and regretful. He called her Hermione and not for the first time, yet now England calls her.
She never got closure. Not really. She accepted what happened and what her parents did, but closure and acceptance don't always go hand in hand. She needs to see them. Before she throws herself into that hole Brock mentioned, she needs to really put this behind her.
As she enters the internet café, she adjusts her ballcap and orders a coffee before sitting down in front of screen. She pulls up Google and types in in the search engine Daniel and Helena Granger Surrey England.
She is unprepared for the results.
Surrey
Hermione sips at her tea, checking over her shoulder out of fear, habit, both? She lost HYDRA back in Berlin, but she can never be too careful.
A print out of an old newspaper rests beneath her saucer and biscuits. Obituaries of a couple from eighteen years ago. Her parents. Dead in a freak accident. Gas leak in the house of all things.
Across the street, Hermione's target leaves the pub. He's waving down a cab, and she bolts from the table. Sprinting in front of cars so she'll catch him in time. When he opens the back door of the taxi, she digs the muzzle of her pistol into the base of his spine.
"Care if I join you," she whispers into his ear, "Officer Gillian?"
He bristles, and she's able to coax him into the backseat. She snuggles right up to him, smile charming and sweet at the cabbie as she says the address. Her expression doesn't change when Officer Gillian stares at her. Stares at the face beneath the Yankee's baseball cap. He's trying to memorize her features, but her cap his low, and the hood of her raincoat his up. She's wearing glasses, and underneath that ballcap is a honey-blonde bob.
The gun is trained at his hip now, obscured by the sturdy fabric of their raincoats. With her opposite hand, Hermione squeezes Gillian's knee out of warning. Don't tip the driver off in anyway. She carves the muzzle deeper, and he stifles a whimper. He's already starting to sweat.
"I didn't want to spoil it," she says, thrusting her flawless English accent at him, "but I just can't contain it any longer, sweetheart. There's a surprise for you back at the house."
"…oh," he manages. Barely a squeak.
"And don't you worry yourself about how you're going to repay me." She rests her chin on his shoulder. His chin trembles. "You deserve every bit of it."
They pull up to the address, and he's darting his eyes around the neighborhood. Quaint. Middle class. Quiet. Familiar. When he and Hermione climb out of the vehicle, he almost screams. She wedges her way into his mind and silences him. He touches at his throat, bewildered. Using the gun as motivation, she shoves him up the pavement to the door.
"Open it," she orders, dropping the accent.
"You don't have do this." He's allowed to speak now and touches the doorknob. "I have money if it's what you want—"
"Oh, I know you have money, Officer Gillian. You're practically sitting on a gold mine. Open the door."
She senses the cogs in his brain working. He's putting the puzzle pieces together but still doesn't have the complete picture. He's doing his best to figure it out, though.
"Do you recognize this place?" she asks.
"N-no," he stammers.
A terrible lie.
She pistol-whips him. He lets out a pained grunt, and she watches dispassionately as he falls to the floor. He rolls onto his back, staring up at her, frightened and horrified. Gun aimed at his chest, she lowers her hood and removes her cap. Next is the glasses and the wig. With a tug of a pin, her dark curls tumble down her shoulders.
The pain is forgotten. Blood drains from Gillian's face.
"Do you know who I am?" she asks.
"It's…" He shakes his head. "It's impossible."
She looks just like her mother, he thinks.
"You'd think so, right? But here I am, and you will tell me who bought your silence on the Grangers' case, or I will get it from you in other ways. Believe me." She shakes her head. "You don't want that. I won't be gentle, and it'll make a bullet feel like a tickle."
"You have to understand. They threatened me and my family."
"And who is they?"
Hermione knows, but she needs to hear it from him.
"I can't." Tears leak down his cheeks. "I still live in fear. They swore to kill me if I told anyone."
"You'll die now if you don't." With her free hand, she flexes her fingers, using her abilities to carefully prod at sensitive brain tissue, evoking a skull-splitting migraine.
"S-Strucker! Oh, my God! Wha…" He vomits and gags and resides into a fit of sobs. She slightly retracts from his mind. "That's the only name I was given! Please! Please don't kill me!"
Hermione silences his agony, repeatedly striking in the same spot in his brain until blood pours from his ears, nose, and eyes.
The rain pours, heavy and loud against the house. She stares at the unused gun in her hand and considers turning it on herself because everything had been a lie. Pretty much her whole goddamned life, so what's the point anymore? She's ruined and past the point to start over. Strucker. He lied to her. He planted false memories in her. He made her believe her parents didn't want her. Wouldn't miss her because she wouldn't let go of them. She wouldn't yield, so he found a way in between The Chair and propaganda reels in that forsaken facility to make her.
He made her rotten. HYDRA made her rotten.
Hermione had begun this journey to the past as way to settle the past and completely come to terms with what her parents did when she was a child. She'd check on them and their well-being and then go to Greece. Broken and economically-collapsed Greece. She'd hide well there. For a while, at least and then on to South Africa. But her plan went wrong. She hadn't even considered her parents wouldn't be alive. Why wouldn't they be? They'd only be in their fifties, not even retirement age.
At that internet café in Amsterdam, she looked up Daniel and Helena Granger.
Not even three minutes later, she was printing off the obituary and researching more about the incident, even going so far as to hacking into old archives of the Surrey Police and obtaining names, coming across Officer Gillian who'd been over her parents' unfortunate incident. He declared it as such and was somehow able to avoid the two bodies receiving autopsies. They were laid to rest at Sutton Cemetery.
However, this was not his first dealing with the Grangers. He'd been over their daughter's missing person case. The notes on the case were exquisitely detailed until they weren't. Her parents were distraught at the news of their daughter disappearing from the institute. They hadn't seen her in while at the request of her doctor who stated she as a patient needed time away from them. Her doctor. A forgotten name popped up that had her seething.
Doctor Dalton Lawrence.
Who now lays dead in his cozy, three-bedroom flat in downtown London. When she broke into his flat and revealed herself to him, she saw a flash of fear and then acceptance. He knew he was a dead man. Acted like he'd been waiting for her show up the last twenty-three years and kill him.
Lawrence had been the first one to pay off Gillian. Strucker the second.
After the mention of Lawrence in Gillian's notes, his reports turn spotty. Vague. Even offhandedly mentioning that the parents might be involved in the child's disappearance but who's to really say? There's no proof. Hermione Granger likely ran away with her fellow peer Robert Ballies and got snatched up by traffickers. The case had gone cold.
Her parents hadn't liked that. They hired a private investigator Marta Ingles. Three weeks later, Ingles' mother died, and she had to leave for Dublin. She never returned, and Hermione's parents passed away because of an unfortunate gas leak in the house.
The deaths of Lawrence and Gillian mean nothing to her. They don't fill her chest will relief that her parents' have been avenged. They haven't. Strucker is alive. HYDRA, too. They took everything from her and her parents.
Hermione gives a lingering look at her gun. Not yet, she tells herself. Not yet.
Sutton Cemetery is within walking distance. The rain drenches her, but she doesn't care. She needs to see her parents. She's going to look at them as she calls Strucker. She'll promise him he'll burn. They all will. Him. Pierce. Malick. HYDRA is going to end. No child will be taken again by them to be warped and misused and shaped into a weapon.
Finally. Finally. She can see clearly. They were the enemy all along. They all have agendas, not to shape the world into something better, but to purge those who dare to. And she helped them for so long to get them as far as they had.
No more. No more.
Hermione sinks between the two gravestones and breaks, her hands curling in the wet grass over her mother.
"Mommy. I'm so sorry."
Staring at the engraved cross on her mother's headstone, Hermione's never felt more unclean or unworthy. She's dirty. Filthy and brimming with sin. She's lied, stolen, killed. She's killed so many innocents. Her hands are gushing red, and she's digging them into her mom's sacred, hallowed earth. It's obscene.
Hermione pulls out her burner phone, her thumb clumsily pressing the numbers that'll connect her with Strucker. The line rings only once. He answers fast like he knows its her and has been waiting for her to contact him for the last thirty-six hours. She opens her mouth to curse him and HYDRA, but nothing comes out.
She changes her mind.
She won't give him the satisfaction or the opportunity to prepare for what's to come. She won't be there to see it, but that's okay. It really is. That bullet will taste like freedom when she turns the gun on herself.
She hangs up and dials the number Ross gave her back in Saudi Arabia, her opposite hand curiously reaching for the beautiful, shimmering wreath in front of her dad's headstone.
Her fingers touch it. Everything shifts, and she's tumbling through the sky like she got shoved out of an airplane. The sky morphs into four solid walls, and her body hits a cobbled-stone floor. She scrambles to a sitting position and then crawls over to the closest wall, climbing to her feet. Her back rests against the barrier, her hand jumping to the gun in her pocket.
What the hell just happened?
To be Continued...
A/N: *cackles all evil-like and skips away* Sorry, not sorry!
Oh, and uh, what do you guys think about an Erik Killmonger/Hermione Granger fic? Obviously completely separate from this one. Not offended if it's a no, but just curious on opinions and stuff.
