Mirror, Mirror ↠ Steve Rogers

Chapter Twelve

Leila is still putting the finishing touches on "suiting up" as she makes her way through the helicarrier. Weapons check, gloves, the like. She's ensuring that as much of her hair as possible is tied back when she reaches the hangars, running as she does so, until she catches a glimpse of red and gold and sparks flying up, and backs up, still at a jog.

Tony has turned an empty corner of Hangar One into his own personal laboratory, going at his Iron Man mask with a welding torch. There are pieces of metal scattered around the table in front of him, little machines whirring, taking things apart and putting them back together. She didn't realize his suit was so damaged.

"Stark," she says, and by some miracle he hears her, looks up, and turns the gun off.

"Are you...." She doesn't know how to phrase it without sounding hopeful. She'd assumed he'd be with the rest of them. It's stupid, but she finds herself mildly disappointed. "Do we need to hold the quinjet for you?"

"No. I'm meeting you there. Don't worry about it," he adds, gesturing to the machine behind him. "This suit can outpace the jet, I promise you that."

Reasonable. Smaller size could mean higher speeds.

She hesitates for a moment before saying "see you out there," tightening her ponytail one last time. She starts to take off when she hears him mutter "Goddamnit" and then call her back. "Whittaker!"

She turns back, biting back her annoyance at his tone, and he holds up a pair of goggles. "Take these."

"They're hideous," she says as a reflex.

"So I'll put a tiara on it if we're still alive tomorrow."

"A tiara can't change the fact that they look like something Amelia Earhart would wear if she were a character in a made-for-tv scifi movie."

"If Amelia Earhart had had these, maybe she wouldn't have ended up as crab food."

He turns them, displaying a side panel where the eyepiece meets the straps. "They're connected to the camera in my suit. Hit this button, you can see everything I do."

"How would that have helped Amelia Earhart?"

"Because there's an earpiece in them." He gestures to the second button on the panel. "If comms don't get back up and running, at least we'll have one line of communication."

Everything suddenly becomes very real in that moment. A line of communication. Because they're going to be working together. To defeat aliens that want to take over the world. And the only way to stop them is to fight, together, in broad daylight. There's no espionage here, there's no shadows, no tricks, no smoke and mirrors.

She takes the goggles from him. "See you on the other side, Stark," she tells him, and takes off.

"Same to you, your highness," she hears him say.

Rogers is still heading across hangar 19 when Leila arrives. She falls into step next Romanoff and Barton behind him without a word, and he leads them into one of the jets. It's one of the larger ones, not like the one they took to Stuttgart. There's an agent already in it, and he looks ready to argue--

"Hey, you guys aren't authorized to be in here--"

"Son, just don't."

With just three words, they have the run of the jet, the agent wandering back into the hangar with an expression Leila can't be bothered to read.