Mirror, Mirror ↠ Steve Rogers

Chapter Seventeen

When Leila steps into the light, she feels refreshed. An odd way to feel after kind of dying and then coming back to life, but it's like rolling a pumpkin around a tiger cage or whatever. Environmental enrichment.

She's on her way back to the bridge, and the fact that she's not fielding chitauri attacks does not escape her notice. Apparently the two that ran away have sent word to their buddies to leave her be. She files this away, too, just in case, and--

"Stark, you hear me? You have a missile headed straight for the city."

Fury's voice over comms is clear as a bell, and Leila's blood runs cold. She wonders for a brief moment why no one else is responding, but then the clarity of the sound registers. The message was directed at Stark. She only got it through her headset. No one else heard it.

No one but them.

"How long?" Stark asks.

"Three minutes. Max. Stay-load could wipe out midtown."

"Jarvis, put everything we've got into the thrusters."

Leila doesn't know if Tony's noticed that she's still with him. She doesn't ask. She's slowed down now, although she hasn't stopped.

"I can close it," Natasha says over comms suddenly, just as Leila arrives back at the bridge. Thor, who's landed back down apparently, shoots her an inquisitive look--she supposes her...whatever this emotion is, is written on her face--but before he can ask, Natasha continues. She sounds...tired, and desperate, and hopeful.

"Can anybody copy? I can shut the portal down!"

"Don't do it!" Leila says, at the same time Steve says "Shut it down!"

"Whittaker, these things are still coming!"

"So is a TB missile," Leila snaps.

"It's an air-to-surface, actually," Stark pipes up, sounding unnaturally calm for the situation. "Non-ballistic. It's gonna blow in less than a minute. And I know right where to put it."

"Stark, you know that's a one way trip," Steve says. God, she hadn't even thought of that. Her stomach drops. She thinks she might actually throw up.

She takes a moment to center herself. If the missile hits, she won't die. She knows it.

No. She'll just be alone.

If it doesn't hit...she won't be alone, she knows that, objectively, but she thinks about Stark going through that portal and not coming back, and her stomach twists anyway.

A bright red speck flies by holding a long white stick.

"Might wanna turn off the eavesdrop gear, Princess," Tony says.

"Don't tell me what to do, Old Man."

She watches as he just barely misses Stark Tower before redirecting, flying directly up towards the portal. The rest of the team is quiet; they've cleared the bridge of chitauri for the moment. She almost wishes they hadn't.

Stark disappears.

"Sorry, Mis--" Jarvis's voice is cut short. She hears static. She should turn off the headset, like Stark told her to.

She doesn't.

"Come on, Stark," Natasha says.

Leila notices the surrounding chitauri short-circuit and then fall to the ground. The nuke must have hit whatever was controlling them.

"We were right," she says absently.

"Close it," Steve says, after a long few moments, and Leila would argue with him were it not for his defeated tone.

There's another long pause--Leila's not sure if Natasha's hesitating or if it's just taking a second--before the portal starts to close, narrowing slowly, and then, just as it closes for good, that tiny piece of space disappearing, Stark falls through.

"Son of a gun," Steve says, and Leila can't bring herself to make fun of him for it. Just stares. There's hope, again, rearing it's disgusting head.

"He's not slowing down," Thor says, and starts swinging his hammer. Before he even gets off the ground, though, a flash of green snatches Tony of the air, and suddenly the Hulk is sliding down the side of a building with Stark in one arm, sending pieces of glass and metal flying, before crashing to the ground right in front of them.

Steve and Thor rush over, but Leila takes a moment to respond before following them. There's no way they're this lucky. Right?

Thor takes off Stark's faceplate while Steve listens for a heartbeat.

"The arc reactor is dead," Leila points out, standing above them.

Before anyone can say anything, the Hulk roars suddenly, beating his own chest, and the arc reactor lights up as Tony's eyes shatter open, leaving him gasping for air for a few moments.

"What the hell? What just happened?" he demands. "Please tell me nobody kissed me."

"We won," Steve says in response.

Leila stays quiet, looking from Stark to the sky. It takes her a long moment to fully process it, to believe that it's real. That the portal is closed and the missile is gone and the chitauri are dead and Stark is alive and they won.

There's been so many false starts in the past...god, she doesn't even know how long it's been. It feels like weeks, it feels like minutes. She could calculate based on the position of the sun going off the last time she remembers, but instead she takes a moment to bask in the success. We won.

"Alright," Tony says. "Hey, alright! Good jobs, guys! Let's just not come in tomorrow. Let's just...take a day. You ever tried shawarma? There's a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don't know what it is, but I wanna try it."

She has to bite back a laugh, an actual, no irony, gods-honest laugh. She finds herself smiling. Part of her thought she'd forgotten how.

"We're not finished yet," Thor says, and Leila follows his gaze to Stark Tower.

Loki.

"Right," Tony says from the ground. "And then shawarma after?"