(A/N): Hello! Hope you all are doing well! I myself had a semi-unproductive weekend because I was marathoning Criminal Minds. It's relaxing watching a show that I don't have a plot bunny going for. (Cross your fingers one doesn't spontaneously pop-up).
Thanks to PIPhoenix, Westcoast222, Ash, DOAWOTA, Pterodactyl1993, Sora Loves Rain, hypercrazyx3, alexaguamenti, Catzandbookz8, smilin steph, Nessa Kane, KittyWolfM, Loneata, luxetverita, Adharablack85-2, General Mac, sailorxbloom, nastume1994, and Guests for reviewing! I'm so happy that you all loved the last chapter! I was kind of worried that you guys would be hesitant about just how much she laid into Harry but I'm glad you enjoyed!
I'm going to say this upfront: I know this isn't exactly what you were looking for. I'm giving you hints of what was said with the Wizengamot but whenever I tried to actually write out the full confrontation, it just wouldn't work. I did the best I could with this so I hope you enjoy what I ended up going with. This scene does bring in a character for CA:CW but the city I used was randomly chosen- literally. I asked someone to name a city and that's what they went with. The Russian you see in this chapter was translated using Google Translate so I apologize for any inaccuracies you see.
This chapter was beta read by the lovely sailorxbloom. She's so freaking helpful guys that I just can't even find the words!
Thank you all for reading! Enjoy!
"So," Hermione had started, "I heard you lot are having a bit of a population crisis."
The dark-haired man dressed in a muggle suit leaned against her chair and smirked, acting as though he didn't have a care in the world despite the many eyes on him. "Have you finally realized that only fucking your cousins isn't the way to go?"
Everything had devolved from there. But while the others sitting near him seemed to be enjoying the show, Neville saw beyond the cutting words and the gleeful light in Hermione's eyes.
"Perhaps if you hadn't spent so much time trying to pretend that the rest of the world didn't exist, you might have realized that sooner. Too bad," she mocked.
Hermione wasn't okay.
Neville could see that, even if no one else could. As he watched Hermione- who looked younger than she should be and yet also far older in her eyes than the rest of them combined- happily rip her way through the Wizengamot while they tried to force her to answer their questions, Neville wondered what had happened.
Someone asked Hermione about the Hogwarts register and the missing muggleborns, making her laughed. "I know it's a strange concept to you, but have you ever considered the idea that maybe the muggleborns decided that staying in Britain wasn't the best thing for them and just left? After all, there's a whole Wizarding World out there that would gladly welcome them into their ranks. And their governments aren't full of bigoted, backwards idiots that are so inbred that it's a miracle they can walk and talk at the same time."
He wasn't wondering about her disappearance because he couldn't care less about that. No, Neville was wondering what had happened to push Hermione to her breaking point. Glancing around the room, he knew that no one else would be able to see just how badly Hermione was doing but he could. After all, he'd seen it several times before.
It was something in her eyes. He'd seen a hint of it during those first few months when they'd started at Hogwarts and Hermione desperately tried to validate her presence, even as everyone else ridiculed and belittled her. In their second year, when she'd frantically searched for the monster attacking muggleborns. Towards the end of their third year, when Harry and Ron and turned their backs on her and she struggled under the weight of too much work for too little reward. Their fourth year, as she'd done all she could to keep Harry alive. In the Department of Mysteries, walking straight into the trap she'd known would be there, and being forced to fight for her life. And finally, in their sixth year, as she'd watched Harry becoming less and less like the boy she knew and grow more into Dumbledore's soldier.
Neville had stared into her eyes all those times and seen a girl that had been close to reaching the end of the line. Staring at her now though, Neville was scared that maybe she'd finally passed it.
Hermione smiled brightly at Percy. "It's flattering that you think so highly of me but come now- I know I'm amazing, but even I couldn't possibly be responsible for every bad idea that's popped into your heads during the last decade. You have managed to do what no one else in the history of Wizarding Britain has ever been able to do: start the downfall of Magical Britain. Be proud of yourselves. I know I am."
Hermione Granger was always seen as clever and unbreakable; she was a force of nature. But that look in her eyes always said something different. It wasn't the look of someone who was going to keep taking the hits- going to keep getting knocked down and getting right back up. Before, it was the look of someone who was close to reaching a point of no return. Now, it was the look of someone who had been dealt another blow and wasn't going to take it anymore. The look of someone who wasn't worried about getting back up but instead focused on making sure she took you down with her.
The look of someone who was already dead and just taking care of their unfinished business before going.
What had happened to make her finally crack? What had caused her to decide to stop fighting and instead focus solely on making sure all her enemies were bleeding out before she went? Neville didn't know, but he wished he did. He wished he could help her, but he knew he couldn't.
All Neville could do now was watch, and wait, and worry.
"God," Samuel groaned after they had returned to MACUSA headquarters. "I thought Brits were supposed to be all quiet and stodgy. Why the hell were those people so freaking loud?"
Mia was almost bent double as all the laughter she had been repressing came spilling out. "Did you see their faces?" she finally wheezed. "I thought a few of them were literally going to keel over with fright."
Pepper didn't share in her amusement. "On a scale of one to ten, how bad was that?" she asked Michelle, obviously worried about what might happen to Mia now.
"There is literally not a scale for how bad that was," Michelle answered bluntly. "The British media is going to eat her alive and the Wizengamot will be out for her head."
"You mean the British media that is literally read by a thousand people at most?" Tony interjected. "The majority of which are super old and set to die any minute now? Excuse me while I tremble in fear."
"He's got a point," Rau nodded in agreement. "Wizarding Britain is on the verge of collapse; they're a dumpster fire waiting to happen. I really wouldn't worry about it."
Samuel rounded on his Vice President. "Why do you talk?" he demanded. "For the love of Merlin- we are in public! There are people here!"
"How did you two get elected?!" Pepper questioned, though part of her really wasn't sure she actually wanted to know.
Rau shrugged. "Sam's really charming so the public loves him and I've been instructed that, while in public, that if I have nothing nice to say then I should keep my mouth shut."
"And how did that work out for you?" Tony asked, honestly curious.
"Well, now the public believes that I'm a quiet and stoic kind of man. It's very amusing."
Tears were actually falling down Mia's face as she continued to laugh. But, if she was being honest, Mia didn't actually know why she was laughing anymore. Pepper and Michelle were right- that had gone terribly. She had been bitter and angry and- more than anything- done. Done with pretending that she wasn't angry at what Wizarding Britain had done to them. Done with pretending she hadn't seen the adults in her world turn a blind eye to what Dumbledore had done to them. Done with living her life centered around the ideal of doing what was best for Wizarding Britain and not what was best for her.
Done with pretending she was going to be their hero.
Hermione Granger may have been a hero, but Mia Lokisdottir wasn't. She was a killer and a liar and a thief- she was a villain at worst or an antihero at best. And she wasn't going to pretend she was anything else to the rest of the world and especially not to the Wizarding World. If that was her fate- if that the path she was choosing- then fine.
Straightening up, Mia brushed the tears off her face and smiled reassuringly at Pepper and Tony. She may not be the hero, but she was going to be the best goddamned antihero this world had ever seen.
"Are you ready for this?" Clint asked as they drove past the sign welcoming them to Davenport.
"Yes," Mia sighed. "I will admit though, when you told me that Karpov was in Iowa, I thought you were lying. What kind of name is 'Davenport'? It's not even a port city!"
Clint rolled his eyes. "You're British- your names aren't any better. Liverpool is also a stupid name for a city."
"The name 'Liverpool' comes from two Old English words- 'lifer' meaning thick or muddy water and pōl meaning pool or creek- and references the water surrounding the city," she informed him.
"That is the most useless piece of information I have ever been given and if Tony was here, he would be mercilessly bullying you."
"If Tony were here, my abundance of important and worthwhile facts would be the least of his concerns- he wouldn't be able to hear anything we were saying over the sound of his own voice berating us for coming here to torture information out of a former HYDRA soldier."
The casual way the younger woman spoke made Clint tense slightly. Sometimes, it was hard for him to remember that this girl wasn't just a muggleborn witch or a billionaire princess; this was the daughter of Loki, raised by the king of tricks and lies. If she really wanted to, she could twist someone's mind and will with just a flick of her fingers and they'd have no way of stopping her. Push her too far, and she would burn you and everything you loved without a second thought or a hint of regret. He may not have seen her do it himself, but Clint knew that it was only a matter of time before the darkness Mia kept tightly bound was going to come out. Especially after what had happened with the Kree. The only thing they could concern themselves with now was just who her attack was going to be aimed at.
"Clint?" Mia softly called, pulling the agent out of his thoughts and back into the car. When she was sure she had his attention, she emotionlessly questioned, "Are you scared?"
Yes. Not of her, but for her. Because, even if Mia was to give into her darker instincts one day, she would eventually snap out of it. And when she did- when she woke up to see what she'd done- there truly would be no coming back from it. Her mind would eventually rationalize what happened with the Kree. Hell, it was already rationalizing what she was about to do to Karpov. But what if one day, the person she hurt was Tony? What if it was Steve? "I know I've asked you this before, but you do know what you're doing, right?"
'You're going to save him. You will slay the HYDRA trapping him- you will murder any who get in your way.'
"Yes," she answered simply. "I'm going to save a friend."
'And then afterwards, you're going to have to live with the fact that you have murdered more people than you can count for a man whose hands are also soaked in the blood of the innocents.'
Mia thought it was strange of Dabria to talk about how she'd have to live with what she'd done. The fight against Thanos promised to be long and arduous. It was going to be the fight of all their lives. It may take a while, but she intended to win her war.
But who said she had any intentions of surviving it?
"Tony?" Pepper leaned against the frame separating their shared office from the living room. Well, technically it was Mia's office at first, but the younger woman was more than happy to share the space with her brother and Tony had been using it more often than she as of late.
He didn't look at Pepper, just continued to stare down into his glass of whiskey as though it had the answers he was searching for.
"Tony." Moving so quietly that Tony hadn't even noticed, Pepper was kneeling beside him and carefully pulling his glass from his hands. "Talk to me."
"I'm too late, aren't I? I've already… I've already fucked up."
"What do you mean?"
He finally looked at her and Pepper's heart clenched at the agony in Tony's eyes. "Mia. I've… I'm too late. She's hurting and it's not getting better and I just keep making it worse. Because that's what I do- all I ever do is make things worse."
"No," she tried to reassure him. "No, that is absolutely not true."
"Isn't it?" Tony looked away from Pepper, standing up and walking over to one the frames resting on a bookshelf. It was of him and Mia, taken by Bruce of all people when they were all in his lab. Mia had his Iron Man helmet under her arm like a football and was running away from Tony. "She didn't want to talk to Steve," he confessed. "She didn't want to talk to Steve, and I made her. I thought it would help her and I ignored what she wanted, and it literally made her have a panic attack."
Pepper followed him. "You thought you were helping her."
"And I was wrong!" he shouted, stumbling away from the picture and from Pepper. "I didn't help her. She flew through a portal into god-knows-where in space and I didn't help her. She got captured by the Kree and I didn't help her. Fuck, I couldn't even keep her from having a panic attack in our own home- the place she should feel safest in! And now, she's off pulling some dangerous shit- because you and I both know that she's up to something that neither of us would be comfortable with her doing- and trying to hide it from us."
She couldn't keep herself from wincing. Tony was right- Mia had run off with Clint and they both knew that whatever she was doing involved something bad. "She's trying to protect us."
"I'm the one who's supposed to protect her!" Pepper jumped back in shock. She'd never heard Tony sound so… desperate. "It is my job to protect her," he whispered, the fight leaving his body. "I'm her brother. I'm supposed to keep her safe. But I'm losing her, Pepper- I can feel it."
"Tony," she whispered, feeling a little helpless. He was in so much pain and, to be honest, so was she. Because Pepper was just as scared as Tony.
"I'm supposed to protect her," Tony repeated. "I'm supposed to keep her safe. And I can't. Nothing I do is good enough. What is the point of being Iron Man if I can't even save my own family?"
Walking over to him, Pepper wrapped her arms around Tony's trembling form and hugged him tightly. She didn't say anything though because she knew that it wouldn't help. No matter what she said, Tony wouldn't be able to understand her. All she could do is help him as best she could and pray that everything would be okay- that all of them would be okay.
"How do you want to play this?" Clint asked as they got out of the car.
With a flick of her fingers, Mia cast a Notice-Me-Not charm and a misdirection ward on the front of the decrepit house before striding up the sidewalk and sending a blasting hex at the front door.
"Subtle it is," the archer muttered, following her.
When Mia stepped into the house, Karpov was standing in the living room pointing a handgun directly at her. His eyes widened in shock when he saw exactly who had just blown through his door. "You are Mia Stark."
"Really?" she drawled, leaning back on her heels and shoving her hands into her jacket pockets. "I had no idea."
Narrowing his eyes, Karpov demanded, "What do you want?"
"Oh, I want a good many things- not the least of which is your head on a platter. But, before we get to that, I want you to answer a few questions."
Karpov pulled the trigger and Mia didn't bother with moving, just calmly stood and observed Karpov's horror as the bullet hit her square on the forehead before bouncing off. "That was rude," she told him. "Though, I did just break into your home, so perhaps I deserved it."
"Who are you?" he hissed, backing away.
"Didn't we already address that?" Mia frowned.
"You are no Stark- Howard Stark did not have a daughter."
Mia smirked. "And yet, here I stand before you in all my glory."
She sensed Clint stepping into the room behind her. "Are you just going to continue playing with him or are we going to get to the point anytime soon?"
"Spoilsport," she murmured, though her tone was unbothered. The gun Karpov still clutched suddenly disappeared and he found himself on the ground, bound in ropes.
"I prefer 'detail-orientated'," Clint countered. "And I wouldn't have to be if you were being a little less Loki and a little more Carol."
Finally glancing over at the archer, Mia asked, "And just how do you know how Carol would act? You've never seen her in action."
Walking over to the Russian, Clint searched him for any more weapons. "And I'm feeling like I'm not actually seeing you in action either. You just charged in, guns blazing, and started fucking around with this dude in a weird combination of Tony and Steve's styles."
"I'd prefer to think that they're copying me rather than I'm copying them," she sassed.
"They're older than you!"
"That might be true for Tony but, if you don't count the years Steve spent on ice, then I'm technically older than him- mentally at least."
Clint laughed, stepping away from Karpov with the three knives and two other guns he'd found on his person. "If we're basing it off mental age then you'd be older than Steve and Tony combined."
Mia nodded her head in agreement- Clint certainly wasn't wrong.
"Хуй тебе!" Karpov spat. Fuck you.
Glancing down at the Russian, Mia's lips pulled up into a small smirk as she smoothly retorted, "Учитывая компанию, которую вы держите, мне придется отказаться." Considering the company you keep, I'll have to refuse.
Staring at her with wide eyes, Clint blurted, "When did you learn Russian?"
"It's an Asgardian ability," she told him, not breaking eye contact with Karpov. "It's called Allspeak and it gives me the ability to speak almost every language."
"So, you just magically get to understand languages while the rest of us have to slave away learning grammar rules and proper pronunciation?" he demanded, outraged. "That is so unfair."
That made Mia look over at him. "My father is currently imprisoned because he was trying to protect me, my mother is off somewhere in the galaxy trying to find every person who could possibly want to harm us- and that list is just as long as you'd imagine it to be- and is rarely able to contact me, my family is currently unaware that the threat of HYDRA is hanging over their heads just waiting for a chance to kill them, the British Wizarding government wants my head on a platter, and I haven't had a full night of sleep in over two weeks. Given all of that, don't you think that the very least I deserve is to not need a translator when interacting with non-English speakers?"
"I mean when you put it like that…"
"I won't tell you anything," Karpov interrupted, snarling in Mia's direction.
"Yes, you will," she told him frankly. "The only thing you have any control of here is how much you'll suffer before I kill you."
Karpov laughed. "Do you expect me to believe that you have the stomach to torture me into speaking?"
"What makes you think that I won't? Because my brother is a hero?" Mia walked forward and knelt downin front of the Russian. "You think because I live with a good man that it makes me a good person too? You're wrong. My brother may be a hero, but I am not. Though, even if I were, I would certainly make an exception for you because I know what you did to Bucky Barnes."
In a move too quick for the human eye to see, Mia reached out and pushed hard enough dislocate his shoulder even with the tight ropes keeping him bound and stable. Karpov cried out and Clint swore. "Jesus, Mia!"
Mia ignored him, gripping Karpov's chin and forcing him to look at her. "Where are your records on the Winter Soldier Project?"
He shook his head, chest heaving as he tried to breathe through the pain.
Digging her fingers into the joint, Mia demanded, "The files on the Winter Soldier Project. Where are they?"
"Go to Hell," Karpov rasped.
She didn't want to do it. In Mia's opinion, digging around in another person's mind was almost the equivalent of rape. Legilimency was violating a person's thoughts and memories, taking the most private and intimate parts of themselves and putting it on display for the spellcasters amusement. It was wrong. But then, so was torturing someone to the point that their mind collapses and then creating someone else from the shattered remains.
Locking eyes with Karpov, Mia spat, "You first."
"What the fuck was that?!" Clint exploded as soon as they were in the car.
Mia stared blankly down at the folders and notebook in her lap. Clint was angry and confused and upset but Mia didn't care. She didn't care that she had tortured a man for no other reason than she hated him and because she could. Most importantly, she didn't care if it was a bad thing to do.
"Hey!" Clint shouted. "You need to tell me what's going on, right now! What the hell was all that about and what does it have to do with Bucky Barnes?"
"Bucky Barnes is alive," she answered simply. "He was captured by HYDRA, tortured and brainwashed, and then turned into a super-serumed assassin called the Winter Soldier that they keep on ice when they don't need him. That man was one of the people in charge of the Winter Soldier Project."
He was silent for only a moment before- "Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Are you telling me that Steve's dead best friend is actually alive and has been for all this time? Fuck. Just fuck. How long have you known? Why didn't you say anything?" Mia was just about to answer him when Clint spoke again. "Oh, shit. You said he's been kept on ice? As in cryogenics? Is he the one you had that freaky magic-bond with?"
For just a split second, Mia could see a metal arm in place of her own. "Yes."
Clint let out a whoosh of air. "You saw it, didn't you? You saw what they did to him, what they turned him into."
You are to be the new first of HYDRA. "Yes. And then I figured out everything- how HYDRA infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. and who's responsible. Our problem when we were first researching was that we assumed a HYDRA agent somehow managed to join S.H.I.E.L.D. and worked their way through the ranks until they assumed a position of power, which is how we've found a number of HYDRA agents so far. Neither of us thought to consider the possibility that HYDRA has been a part of S.H.I.E.L.D. from the start. In fact, Peggy Carter chose to bring HYDRA's lead scientist into the organization."
There was soft creaking sound as Clint's hand tightened on the steering wheel. "Are you seriously telling me that Captain America's ex-girlfriend just decided to bring a Nazi terrorist into a U.S. government organization, and no one said a goddamned thing?"
"Oh, not just any scientist- she brought in Arnim Zola, the man who originally experimented on Bucky when his regiment was captured in Azzano. Zola was captured on the train that Bucky fell from and Colonel Phillips chose to spare him and hide the fact from Steve. Zola was then imprisoned in America until Peggy Carter had him released."
"So much for loyalty," Clint huffed. "God, this is going to break Steve."
"Steve is the least of our concerns right now," Mia snorted, fingering the red notebook. "My only priority right now is finding and freeing Bucky."
"And don't you think that's something Steve could be helpful with?"
"Honestly? No. If we tell Steve about Bucky, we'll have to tell him about everything. How do you imagine Steve will react if we tell him that his friend has spent the last few decades being tortured and turned into HYDRA's puppet assassin and that one of the people at fault for that is the love of his life?"
Clint sighed. "He'll lose his mind. He'll go off on a tear trying to find Bucky and find an answer to all this that doesn't leave Carter looking like a bad person."
"Yes, and then HYDRA will know that we know about them, their plans, and Bucky. They will then react in two ways: either they'll wake Bucky and send him to kill us because they know Steve will die before he hurts Bucky, or they'll kill Bucky themselves and leave him for us to find in some sure-to-be-scarring way."
Steve wasn't the priority right then- it wasn't about what Steve would want. Mia's only concern right then was what would be best for Bucky. She knew that Steve might never forgive her for hiding this from him but that didn't matter. So long as she saved Bucky, Mia could live with Steve's hatred.
They were leaving the city limits when Clint asked, "We're not going to interrogate Peggy Carter, right? Because I may not have many limits but beating up an old lady is really not something I'm comfortable with."
Giving him a dry look, Mia asked, "Do you really think Peggy Carter would tell us the truth if we did go speak to her? That woman has been trying to hide what she did for decades- the only reason I found out about Zola is through Howard Stark's personal records. Even if we did speak with her, she wouldn't tell us anything. If I was Carter, I would rather die than admit to anyone that I betrayed the man I claimed to love, his brother, and everything I supposedly stood for."
"I don't think she meant for any of this to happen, Mia," he told her softly, not taking his eyes off the road. "I think Carter just made a mistake."
"No, Clint, a mistake was leaving Zola alive and in prison instead of just killing him after he had no more useful information. Carter made a choice and that means everything that Zola went on to do- all the pain, the suffering, and the deaths he caused- are also on her. What happened to Bucky is also her fault."
Clint tensed. "Do you really believe that? Believe in the idea that if you save a life you are responsible for what that life goes on to do?"
Mia took a moment to organize her thoughts before she answered. "I believe that it depends on the situation. If you saved someone from being gunned down in the street for example, you're not then responsible for everything they go on to do in life. However, if you chose to release a deranged criminal from jail and then gave him a position of power within a government organization then yes, what he goes on to do is on you. Peggy didn't free Zola because she believed he was a good person or because she had thought he had changed- she freed him because she was arrogant enough to believe that she could control him, had deluded herself into thinking that Zola was weak and spineless enough that he could be easily bent to her will."
"Don't you think that maybe your emotions are causing you to act a little irrationally right now?"
"Oh, I'm sure that they are. But that doesn't mean I'm wrong, does it?"
Carol felt like she was constantly choking on her own pain.
Her fingers slid into her hair and she tugged sharply, so forcefully that several strands were pulled out. It wasn't enough though- wasn't enough of a physical sensation to dull the emotional pain coursing through her.
Everything felt like it was falling apart.
She and Loki were at odds once again. He still resented her for giving up Mia and she didn't blame him for that- couldn't resent him for his anger. Carol deserved every harsh word he threw at her. But, as irrational as it was, part of Carol hated him too. Hated Loki for being the cause of all this heartache- for approaching her in that bar, for charming her into falling into bed with him, for getting her pregnant and being so excited about it that it made her secretly wish she was strong enough to raise their child, and for disappearing for so many years only to reappear in her life with their battered girl in his arms and a desperate plea for her help.
He made her care. He made her care and she hated him for it because sometimes it felt like caring only ever brought pain.
Mia- the child who was wanted. Their child. Their little baby girl- who would always be their baby no matter how old she was- was slowly falling apart in front of them and there was nothing they could do. Both Carol and Loki had gone through it- dealt with the pain that was so deep it felt like it was eroding their very soul. She knew that Mia would also have to deal with it one day too but god, if Carol could have prevented it then she would have in a heartbeat.
There was no going back though. No changing what had happened. So, if Carol couldn't erase what had happened, then all that was left to her was making sure it never happened again.
They had let Thanos and Ronin go free for far too long. It was time that they corrected that wrong.
Her footsteps echoed in the hall as she approached Loki's cell. It was thanks to his magic that the whole of Asgard hadn't become aware of her approach. They also weren't going to become aware of their departure until it was far too late.
"You ready?"
Loki smirked at her, his eyes almost seeming to glow in excitement. "Oh, yes," he purred. "I believe I've spent more than enough time on Asgard; it's high time I reminded everyone what happens when one pits themselves against the God of Mischief."
Carol couldn't help smirking. "In that case, let's give this world a show they'll never forget."
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