Mirror, Mirror ↠ Steve Rogers

Chapter One

Rogers isn't home. It's late (and not raining, incidentally) when she gets to New York, so it could be that he's just sleeping and that's why he doesn't answer when she knocks, but she doubts it.

She knocks twice-protocol says she should knock three times, but she's tired and is fairly confident that he's not going to answer anyway-before pulling out the gadget SHIELD gave her. Leila knows how to pick a lock, but the tool they gave her is quicker.

Nothing. Leila knows how to listen for signs of life. Footsteps. Movements. Breathing. People are never silent, not really. They think they are, though, and if you listen closely, you can get a bead on what they're doing before they know that you know that they're there. And that extra second of reaction time can be crucial. It's saved her life more than once.

That's another thing she'd already learned on her own before SHIELD picked her up, long before. Years and years. Probably she was doing that analysis longer than she remembers; she's just better at it now.

She doesn't bother to turn the lights on, so she doesn't see much of the apartment-just that it's small and threadbare. The latter is understandable, given that its sole inhabitant has had only nine days to decorate. Leila's neighbors take longer than that to take their decorations down after Christmas, and to Leila's knowledge they don't have the excuse of having been unconscious for the better part of a century.

(The former is less justifiable. If SHIELD is loaded enough to buy and maintain the helicarrier, surely they could at least afford to set their namesake up somewhere with a view.)

Leila leaves, re-locking the door behind her. The file Fury gave her mentioned a second address, just two blocks away, some gym that Rogers frequents, so she heads there next.

Gleason's Gym is old and run-down, with a World War II aesthetic, which is fitting, she supposes. The sign says closed, but there's at least one light on inside. The door is locked, but she figures that if she were a gym owner, and Captain America asked her for a personal key, she might be inclined to say yes. Either way she uses the same tool as before and is inside in seconds.

The floor is huge and Captain Rogers is in the middle of it, pummelling the hell out of a white punching bag. A dozen or so matching bags are lying on the floor next to him. The corners of the room are dim; she can make out a few benches here and there, and a boxing ring in the corner. Rogers is standing directly under the light, in the brightest spot, like some kind of Messianic figure, but the lightbulbs are fluorescent, dim and flickering, and they seem to desaturate the entire room.

The whole thing makes Captain America look sort of like an old movie, or maybe an oil painting come to life. Unreal. Maybe that's appropriate.

Maybe that's how the rest of the world looks to him.

Leila watches him for a long moment from the shadows, and then Rogers punches a hole through the canvas of the bag. Sand spills out, the chain breaks, the bag goes flying, and Rogers picks up one of the other bags and starts to hang it up.

Leila decides to make her introduction now, and pushes herself off the beam she's been leaning against. Her heels click on the old tile floor. "Oh Captain, my Captain."

He looks over at her, breathing hard from exertion, and reaches up to finish hanging the bag before sitting down on the bench. "The door was locked," he says, unwrapping his hands. It's not an accusation so much as a question.

"Oh, honey, you'll have to do a lot better than that to keep me away." She smirks. "I'm agent Leila Whittaker. I'm with Shield. The people who pulled you out of the ice?"

"Right. Shield." He studies her for a moment, sizing her up. "You here with a mission, ma'am?"

Leila can't decide how she feels about being called "ma'am"-part of her bristles, part of her finds it inexplicably endearing-but either way, now's not the time to catch Rogers up on popular lexicon, so she ignores it. "You catch on quick," she says, and hands him the manila file folder. A different one than the one they gave her, because it's need to know and he doesn't need to know as much as she does.