Hermione had lied.
In her defense, everything had kind of gone to shit, and now she had somehow come to find herself in Leipzig, trying to remain on the sidelines as her friends beat each other to a pulp. She had to admit, even if only to herself, the moment her feet hit German soil, she had felt a heavy sinking weight in her stomach, knowing that she had broken her word.
"Stephen's going to murder me." Hermione groaned under her breath as she dodged another stray bullet from the War Machine as he fought with some man they were calling "Scott". She still couldn't figure out where Tony and Steve had found these additional people, much less how they had convinced them to participate in a fight with a bunch of strangers.
Looking back over the past few weeks, she truly hadn't meant for this to happen. At the time, she had had every intention of staying out of the fray just as she had promised Stephen, but then everything had seemed to spiral out of control.
First, Steve had become obsessed with clearing the name of his long lost best friend, Bucky. Hermione didn't even know where to start with Steve. She understood that this man obviously meant a lot to him and was a connection piece to his past, but Steve's obsession with the Winter Soldier put a lot of his current allies and friends in a lot of danger. Hermione was hesitant to admit that she had had several fleeting thoughts recently that Steve's single-mindedness of late was beginning to make her question his ability to lead the group.
After Steve went completely rogue, Tony and Pepper had had a row to end all rows and had agreed to take a break. The Accords had put an enormous amount of strain on the couple, with Pepper still hoping that Tony would eventually put Iron Man away for good, and Tony wanting the Accords to serve as a compromise. Having not been able to find a middle ground, they had parted ways. While Hermione was still hoping for a reconciliation, it didn't seem like it was coming anytime soon. Tony's obsession with redeeming himself through the Accords had almost made him as intolerable as Steve.
And if all of that hadn't been enough, things suddenly had begun escalating faster and faster. Additional fighters were being gathered, the Wakandan King, T'Challa was out for blood attempting to avenge his father's murder, and Wanda had broken out of the compound, slamming Vision down through 50 ft. into the earth and escaping with Clint, who was supposed to be retired.
It was hard for Hermione to wrap her head around how out of control everything had become in just so short a time.
By the time Tony had called her letting her know about the showdown that would most likely occur in Leipzig, Hermione had already made her decision. Creating a slightly illegal portkey, she had travelled to Germany and intersected with the group at the airport just as the fighting had erupted. Rationalizing her lie in her mind, she had justified her actions by laying low, staying out of sight, and only intervening when it was absolutely necessary.
For the most part, everything had been manageable. As vicious as the fight had seemed at first glance, when you looked closely, you could see that no one was actually fighting to kill, with the exception of King T'Challa, perhaps. That had been an easy fix - Hermione had simply hit him with the confundus charm every time he began gaining the upper hand on that Bucky chap. The rest of her time was spent throwing up the occasional shield on someone's back to ensure that no one was irreparably injured.
Hermione had thought she was in the clear. The fighting had been dying down, Steve and Bucky had escaped in the Quinjet, and the fighting seemed all but over. Preparing to portkey back to her apartment, a sudden glowing beam from Vision's Mind Stone flashed through the air, striking the arc reactor in Rhodey's suit as he was giving chase to the stolen Quinjet. Rhodey was suddenly falling, spinning head over heels with seemingly no control at all.
Eventually realizing Rhodey was in a dead suit, Hermione quickly glanced around. Sam and Tony had both immediately begun racing towards their free-falling friend, each hoping to reach him before he crashed into the ground.
They would never make it.
Knowing she had to do something, Hermione turned on the spot, apparating to the outer edge of the airport to put her in closer range to the oncoming catastrophe. Lifting her hand, she trained it on Rhodey's lifeless form.
"Arresto Momentum!" She shouted.
Her spell hit him with no time to spare. Rhodey's body suddenly stopped completely, hovering only a few feet off the ground for several moments before plopping down on the ground with a small 'thud'.
Taking a deep breath of relief, Hermione knew it was time to leave. She needed to get out of there before anyone saw her. Turning on the spot, she apparated to a secluded spot before creating a portkey to take her back home.
Grabbing the old tin can and feeling the familiar tug behind her navel, she couldn't help the swell of pride that she felt at having been able to help, even if it was from afar.
"The doctors are checking him out now, but the initial report is that he should make a full recovery."
"That's a miracle." Natasha responded.
She and Tony were standing on the balcony of headquarters, looking out over the trees.
"I don't get it." He began again. "You saw it. His suit was dead. He free fell from 200 ft." He turned, looking at Natasha. "Why isn't he dead? Or, at the least, paralysed? It doesn't make any sense."
"I have a hunch." Natasha answered vaguely.
Looking back out towards the landscape, she continued. "Tony, Steve's not gonna stop. If you don't either, what happened to Rhodey is gonna be the best case scenario."
"You let them go, Nat. You stopped T'Challa to allow Rogers and Barnes time to escape."
"We played this wrong." Natasha defended.
"We? Boy, it must be hard to shake the whole double agent thing, huh? It just sticks in the DNA."
That struck a nerve with the redhead. Glowering at him, she responded. "Are you incapable of letting go of your ego for one damn second?"
Tony ignored her comment, instead responding with his own. "T'Challa told Ross what you did, so...they're coming for you." He said with little feeling.
Natasha scoffed at his thinly veiled threat. Pulling out her phone, she tapped the screen before turning it towards Tony. Confused, Tony looked down at the device and realized that he was watching security footage from the airport.
His eyes widened as he saw Hermione pop into the frame suddenly, shouting an unfamiliar string of words, and disappearing just as quickly. Speechless, Tony looked up at Natasha with a sudden realization.
"I'm not the only one that needs to watch their back." Natasha said before walking away.
Hermione toweled off her hair as she walked through her apartment in her favorite pair of leggings and a sweatshirt. She hadn't arrived home until late afternoon the day before, but Hermione had fallen straight into bed, completely wiped from her hectic day.
Still feeling pretty tired, she hoped that she would be able to get some rest before she was due over at the Sanctum that afternoon. Hermione had told Stephen that they could have dinner - What he didn't know was that she was planning to confess her going to Germany. The burden she felt at having lied to him was already weighing too heavily on her, and she cared about his friendship too much not to tell him the truth.
Dozing lightly on her sofa, Hermione was jolted awake a while later by the incessant knocking on her apartment door. Rising in a sleepy stupor, she made her way to the door with a slight stagger, trying to shake off some of the sleepiness that still lingered.
"I'm coming!" She called as the knocking continued.
Opening the door, she was taken completely off-guard as almost a dozen men dressed head to toe in black swiftly charged her, taking her to the floor before she could even take a breath.
Her brain finally connecting the pieces concerning what was happening, she quickly began firing stunning spell after stunning spell at anything and everything that moved. She watched in satisfaction as two of the thugs dropped to the floor, seemingly lifeless. However, that satisfaction quickly melted into despair as the assailants began blocking her stunners with riot shields, closing back in on her.
Throwing out her hand in desperation, Hermione blasted one of the men with a riot shield back into the wall, taking three others with him before she felt a searing pain in her jaw. The impact from the blow made her stumble back into her sofa table, knocking off a lamp in the process. She couldn't hear the shatter as it hit the ground for the ringing in her ears.
"Why are you doing this?" She bellowed at the intruders.
Receiving no answer, she lunged to the side, feeling the crunch off the broken glass on the floor being embedded deeply into both of her bare feet. Beginning to sling spells chaotically, she felt a sense of hope as she began pushing the troop back and edging towards her door.
Turning to run for it, Hermione was immediately hit by two needle pricks in her back that stopped her in her tracks. Pain erupted from every nerve as 50,000 volts coursed through her, dropping Hermione to the floor violently. Slightly aware of the crunch her nose made as her face made contact with the hard surface of the floor, she continued seizing on the floor for several seconds.
After what seemed like forever, the taser was cut off, and Hermione rolled over in exhaustion. Seeing the unknown men begin to grab her, she lifted both hands, blasting two of the men back into the wall once more. Their taser had hurt like hell, but it had nothing on Bellatrix. Regaining the upper hand once again, despite her position on the floor, she felt that bubble of hope well in her chest once more.
"Enough!" She heard one yell suddenly.
Snapping her head towards the voice, she only had time to see the unknown man drawing his closed fist back before slamming it down onto her jaw once more.
Feeling her jaw crack as her head bounced off the floor in recoil, Hermione desperately fought to remain conscious and she felt several hands on her.
The smear of blood that had dripped from her broken body as she was dragged across the floor was the last thing Hermione saw before darkness overtook her.