Mirror, Mirror ↠ Steve Rogers

Epilogue

The night skyline looks different, and it's not just because of the damage from the battle. It seems brighter, somehow. More alive.

Leila's apartment feels colder.

The broken buildings and the leftover shawarma in her fridge are the only tangible proof she has that the previous 48 hours happened. There's not a scratch on her, SHIELD has the suit she was wearing for repairs, and there's no one there with her.

She takes another headcount.

Thor is in Asgard with his piece-of-shit brother and the tesseract. The last time she saw either of them was when he left earlier that day after lunch.

Clint and Natasha are wherever it is they go when they're not working, presumably together. There's things that her teammates don't share with her, and she's usually okay with that.

Stark and Banner literally drove off into the sunset together, presumably for science-related reasons. Stark explained, a little, what they'd be working on. It had to do with engineering. Leila wasn't sure, she's still not sure if it was an invitation or not. She doesn't know why it would have been. She didn't take it.

She and Steve exchanged some empty pleasantries that didn't feel completely empty before he got onto a motorcycle (a chopper, of all things--she'd taken him for a touring man, but maybe choppers were more ubiquitous in the '40s) and drove away.

And Leila herself had gone home, slept through the rest of the day, and woken up just before midnight. At first she thought she'd slept through the next day, too, she'd been so tired when she got home. But no, it's been less than twelve hours since she crashed, and now for some reason she's awake, still exhausted but unable to sleep, in an empty apartment, surrounded by a suffocating quiet.

When it's quiet, she's found, she can still hear the battle going on--metal against metal and chitauri guts twisting, bodies hitting the floor, wind flying, civilians screaming--sometimes she can even smell it, the salt and sweat and blood, the metallic human variety and the ozone of chitauri. She can feel the knives in her hands, feel her hands cramping around them. She feels her own warm blood soaking her suit, splattering onto her chin. Her hair flying around. The weight of Stark's goggles atop her head.

And then suddenly she's not in New York at all. She's back in Germany and she's waking up with Loki standing over her, waking up from an emptiness she's never felt, and--

She opens her eyes. How did she get that deep into her own head? She focuses on the skyline instead, counting the lights.

No. She can't be alone right now.

She picks up her phone, scrolls to the Rs in her contacts and hits a number she's never called before. She's never had to.

It rings three times before Brock Rumlow answers, sounding confused, but not displeased, and not at all tired. Good. "Leila?"

"Hey," she says. "I've been thinking about you."