Mirror, Mirror ↠ Steve Rogers

Chapter Ten

"Stark! You got that?"

It's funny, the way that comms are working perfectly in the midst of all the chaos. Fury's voice rings clear as a bell in Leila's ear. A quiet sense of normalcy within a broiling storm. The hallway is dim and cluttered with debris, but the three of them manage to take it at a run anyway, dodging techs and sizzling wires and jumping over scrap metal and broken, flickering gadgets.

Stark responds in the affirmative. They reach a split in the hallway and Tony stops, says, "find engine three. I'll meet you there," and runs down the left hall.

Leila takes off at a run, too focused to be annoyed when Steve easily overtakes her.

"You know where engine three is?" he asks.

"I have a vague idea."

"Vague?"

"I didn't exactly memorize the schematics," she snaps. She almost doesn't notice when Steve passes the right turn they need to take. She reaches out and grabs his arm, tugs him in the right direction, and for a split second, she forgets to let go.

Finally, they reach a dead end. The door to portside is clearly marked, but she can tell it's sealed tightly, like an emergency exit on an airplane. She jerks her head towards Steve, in a "you're up" motion, and he steps forward.

Steve's muscles strain as he pushes it open, slowly as he fights against the air pressure from outside, and then quickly, with a sudden wide swing of its hinges letting in a gust of hot air.

There's a ledge outside, around a foot wide, with a short safety bar on the edge that starts to the left of the doorway. The part in front of them has no such guardrails, presumably to allow room for the door to open. It's just hot open air and a thousand foot drop in front of them. The engine is on the other side, a yard or so away from the ledge. She leans forward. There's a catwalk a few feet away bridging the ledge to the engine bay, but it's half broken. Of course.

"I'm out by the engine." The comms crack to life as Stark's voice rings in Leila's ear, clearly annoyed. "Did you two take the scenic route?"

"We're here," Leila replies, staring out at the engine. If she squints, she can see him on the other side, through the rotors. A flash of red and gold flickering behind the engine, set against the alice blue sky. "Just got the door open."

She and Steve share a look. He nods at her, and finally, the two of them step out of the shadows and onto the ledge.

45 Minutes Later

The water beats onto Leila's back like acid rain. If she turns up the shower any higher, it would burn her skin off, and she's tempted to let it. Her head is tilted away from the nozzle as she works the shampoo into a lather, her nails digging at her scalp. The water that misses her hits the porcelain tiling, congregates around her feet before finding its way to the nearest drain.

Leila's always found solace under water. There's no problem, she's found, that can't be at least temporarily solved by a long, hot shower; no unwanted emotion of which she cannot purge her mind by boiling herself alive. Even now, she finds the tension in her shoulders half-easing, the weight of the events of the last half-hour scrubbed off with the dirt, sweat and grime.

It's like meditation, or what she imagines meditation is like. She can't quite shove it all to the back of her mind, but she gets some distance from it, at least. It's not so overwhelming, so all-encompassing. The upset has space to breathe, and so does she. She doesn't have other, more pressing thoughts competing with the part of her mind racing through everything that's just happened. Instead there's a ribbon of calm lying parallel to the shock.