Mirror, Mirror ↠ Steve Rogers

Chapter One

Clint hates police precincts.

It's not that he hates police, usually. Out on the street, he has nothing against them, as long as they stay out of his way. Which they almost always do, and when they don't it's only long enough for him to flash his S.H.I.E.L.D. badge. Which he hates having to do, for the same reason he hates being inside police precincts.

He's been the guy with the badge for a long time now, but there's parts of him that don't believe it. There's parts of him that are still the circus thief, and he feels like he's pretending when he pulls out a badge and tells a cop to get out of his way, that he's got it handled.

Those parts of him are easy to ignore, mostly, but they get louder when he's inside a police precinct. The criminal in him feels like he's in the belly of the beast, get out while you still can, you idiot, RUN-

The criminal in him sounds a lot like his brother, actually.

Clint sets his badge on the counter. "I'm Agent Barton I'm here to see Leila Whittaker this is now a federal case," he recites boredly. It's actually technically an international one, but "federal" invites less questions.

The woman behind the counter shoots him a nasty look-it's always an insult, having a case that seems perfectly ordinary snatched by the higher ups (again: he cannot believe that he, somehow, now counts as The Higher Ups) but he knows that if any of them knew what they were really dealing with, they'd be grateful to have the problem taken off their hands.

The woman stands up, says "Follow me," and heads off down a hallway. He does.

When Coulson first gave them the assignment, Clint thought it was below their pay grade, because on paper it seemed like a simple recruitment operation-talk to the girl, tell her she can join S.H.I.E.L.D. or go to prison.

Then he read her file, and suddenly it felt like a matter of public safety and secrecy, and very much within their paygrade. Above it, even.

And yet, here he is.

The woman unlocks interrogation room for him. "There you go, agent," she says disdainfully.

"Much obliged, officer," he replies carelessly, and steps inside.

Leila Whittaker looks like she did in her file--a tall, curvy brunette--except that she looks older now than she did in the pictures, which means she's been doing a decent job at staying off the radar, and that she's added a hot pink streak to her hair that wasn't there before.

And she carries herself the way you'd expect a person of mass destruction to do so-like she doesn't have a care in the world.

After Clint read her file, he asked Coulson if they knew what abilities the kid had picked up since they lost track of her.

"No idea," was all the bastard'd had to say. "Best of luck."

Whittaker looks at him. "Are you my lawyer?" she asks sarcastically. "Cause--"

Clint doesn't bother trying to think of a quip, just snaps the bracelets onto her wrists before she realizes what he's doing, and then sits down and hopes they work.

"Sorry, you'll need those for the arraignment," he says in his best lawyer voice, before he can help himself. "Oh, look at that! I wasn't gonna do a line, but it happened."

Whittaker doesn't look amused. He stops smiling. On the plus side, the bracelets seem to be working. That or she's decided to hold back now. Either way, they haven't had the opposite effect of making her uncontrollably more powerful, so he's calling it a win for now.