No Tears | NR

Chapter 1 - Part 1: Black Widow

Berlin, Germany

"Die Gruppe, die weltweit als die Avengers bekannt ist, hat sich in einem Streit um das sogenannte Sokovia Abkommen in zwei gespalten. Ein Teil der Gruppe hat das Abkommen unterschrieben, während der andere Teil auf die Unabhängigkeit der Gruppe besteht. In dem Abkommen handelt es sich um..."

The news anchor's voice faded into the background as Yara averted her gaze from the TV and stared at her phone screen instead. Realizing that she still hadn't received any new messages, she lifted her head back up and let her gaze wander around the busy bar. Yara was waiting for an important message and she was growing increasingly impatient. The noise of conversations around her and occasional yelling and laughing was irritating her a little. The smell of alcohol and too many sweaty people in one room mixed with the resulting heat and sticky air were beginning to give her a headache.

The woman greatly disliked places like this one where too many people were gathered in one room, especially if the room was small and there was alcohol. She wasn't a very social person and didn't like being around crowds of people.

Yara's gaze returned to the bright LED screen in front of her. The TV sat on top of a cupboard that was filled with traditional German beer glasses which were neatly placed in single rows. On every weekend night, a soccer game would play on the TV and people would meet their friends to drink beer and watch the game. Today, however, was a Wednesday. There were no Bundesliga games to live stream today, so the news had been turned on instead.

"...in Rumänien festgenommen worden. Rogers, Wilson, König T'Challa und Barnes sind nach Berlin gebracht worden..."

One specific topic had constantly been at the center of attention on every existing media platform, as far as Yara knew, for the last few days: the Avengers. After an incident in Lagos, Nigeria where several people got killed and many more injured, governments of various countries all over the planet had finally decided to intervene, resulting in the establishment of the so-called Sokovia Accords. Ratified by 117 countries, including the United States and Germany, the Accords were designed to provide accountability for all enhanced individuals, with a special emphasis placed on the Avengers and their activities.

While the Accords were at the center of the story that all news stations seemed to be so keen on reporting, the resulting division of the team as one part of the Avengers agreed to sign the Accords while the other part refused to do so was what was mainly being shown and talked about. Recent events like an attack in Vienna aggravated the situation further.

According to the news that Yara was currently watching, two of the Avengers who hadn't signed the Accords had been caught and apprehended in Romania as they tried to help a terrorist flee from the local special forces. They were currently being transported here, to Berlin, in the company of King T'Challa of Wakanda.

Video clips were being played off the two Avengers and the king leaving what Yara assumed to be some sort of police station and being accompanied to a vehicle with reinforced walls and bulletproof windows.

Yara didn't really care much about the media's current favorite topic wanting to stay out of all of it, but she would rather watch that than have to stare at her boring phone screen any longer waiting for a new notification to pop up. She was also hoping that her apparent interest in the news would keep drunk people, old men in particular, away from her. That tactic, however, had proven to be ineffective as there had still been a few men who had tried to start conversations with her and had gotten much too close to her for her liking. She had dealt with them by pretending to call her fake boyfriend, not even bothering to actually call anyone. Thankfully, none of them had been too persistent and had left her alone quickly.

Yara felt her phone buzz in her hand. She looked down at it and unlocked the screen. There was a single notification saying that she had received a new text message. She tapped on the notification which opened the message in the app.

"Sie ist von uns gegangen."

Yara stared at the phone screen. "She is gone." Her mind was blank. She was just reading the five German words over and over again, but couldn't fathom their meaning.

She was pulled out of her trance when her phone buzzed again and another message popped up underneath the first one.

"Es tut mir so leid."

"I am so sorry." She felt emotions stir in the pit of her stomach, but she pushed them back down and slowly got up. The woman pulled out a ten Euro note from her pocket and dropped it on top of the counter next to her glass. She had ordered beer earlier that night. Then she left the bar, pushing past groups of sweaty, smelly people on her way out.

The cool night air outside made her shiver slightly. She felt goosebumps rise all over her body. Yara stopped for a moment outside of the bar and took a slow, deep breath to clear her head before she turned right and made her way over to a large building that, in her opinion, resembled a prison. Writing above the building's main entrance read "St. Francis Hospital". The woman stepped into the hospital where a short, young man had been waiting for her. He was Yara's only current contact in this city and they didn't really know each other well enough to consider each other friends, but she had still asked him to come here before she had left to go to the bar earlier. When she found him with her eyes, she gave him a quick nod of recognition while he didn't waste any time passing her a room number. The woman nodded again to thank him and didn't wait for his reaction before she took off. After a short hike through the building, she finally arrived at a room with the number 313 painted next to the door.

Yara carefully pushed the door open, trying to be as quiet as possible. She wasn't really sure why she tried to not make any noise. Maybe she felt that she had to do so out of a sense of respect for the person behind the door, even though she knew that this particular person didn't care anymore. Maybe she just felt that the longer she didn't disturb the person behind this door, the longer she could keep on telling herself that that person was simply asleep.

The woman finally entered the room and closed the door carefully behind her. The room was empty with the exception of a bed in its center. Yara walked over to the bed and stared at it for a moment before she dared to lift her arm and slowly pull the sheet back that was covering the entire bed, revealing a blank, expressionless face.

This wasn't Yara's first encounter with death and she was sure that it wouldn't be her last one either. In her personal experience, people sometimes sort of looked like they simply fell asleep after they died. That also depended on their cause of death of course.

As she looked at her sister's face, however, she found that description to be absolutely unfitting. Maybe that was because the other woman's face was unnaturally white. Either way, something about her face was off. It didn't look calm and it certainly didn't have the woman's typical liveliness about it, which was usually even visible when the woman was asleep. Now, it was just still as if it had been frozen in time and place.

A feeling slowly rose through her body. Everything began to hurt. Her heart felt like it was being torn into tiny pieces. Yara was trapped in her paralyzed, stiff body. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to do something, anything. But all she could do was stand there, next to her sister, and stare at her. It was as if her body had been frozen. She couldn't move. She couldn't do anything. She couldn't even cry no matter how much she wanted to.

AN:

Wow, this took an unexpected turn. I didn't really know how I wanted to start the story. This just kind of happened as I was writing. But the first chapter is done! I am actually not too unhappy about this. The next chapters will hopefully not be as depressing. Also, I am sorry that I ramble on about the Accords for so long, I just felt that the chapter would be incomplete if I didn't roughly explain what they are and what's going on.