Mirror, Mirror ↠ Steve Rogers

Chapter One

Leila's having the dream again.

It's the one she keeps having, ever since the Patrice Joh mission--the one that gave her her healing ability. It's not the kind of nightmare that wakes you up with a jolt, breathing hard and covered in a cold sweat. Leila's been relatively successful at burying the demons that bring those dreams.

No, this is the kind of bad dream that you have to peel yourself out of and scrape off your mind. The kind that leaves a kind of psychic residue for the rest of the day. The kind of dream that settles on your shoulders with you as you slip back into the waking world.

She can never remember the details; they slip away as she wakes up and she's left with nothing but the memory of sensory details. The smell of smoke, the acrid taste of it in her lungs. The satisfying, electric feeling of taking a new ability for the first time. The color pink, a bright white light, and always, always this medical beeping sound, steady, too steady, like the heart monitor of a brain-dead patient.

Except this time it's ringing. Why is it ringing? That's not right. It--

Her eyes flutter open in realization to find her phone buzzing on the nightstand.

She sits up and catches it on the last ring, with just a moment to glimpse the caller ID.

"Agent Whittaker," Fury says, before she can say anything.

"Good morning, Director," she says, unable to fully shake the annoyance from her voice. Not that she resents being woken up from that dream, especially, but she does resent being woken up this early in general. Which is not really fair to Fury--waking her up when he needs her is, in fact, well within his rights as her boss--

That's another thing. She usually gets the call from someone else. Hill, Brock Rumlow. Coulson, before he...well. The point is, if Fury's contacting her directly, it must be important.

"I have an assignment for you," Fury says.

You fucking better. "And here I thought this was a social call."

"I want you to reach out to Captain Rogers and convince him to run some tests with us to see if we can replicate the super soldier serum."

"Have an intern do it."

"We also need you to copy those powers during those tests."

"Have an intern do that, too."

He scoffs.

"Not to question your undoubtedly endless wisdom," Leila says, "but why am I the designated Captain America Whisperer, exactly?"

"Because I, in my endless wisdom, said so."

She sighs, running a hand through her hair. She shouldn't be surprised. The day Fury explains any of his decisions to her is the same day hell freezes over. Which, incidentally, is the same day she manages to get Steve Rogers back onto the hamster wheel.

"You realize he's not going to want to submit to testing," she says, as if she's going to change his mind. "Historically, I'm told he didn't especially enjoy being a lab rat. For some reason."

There's a pause, and Leila can't be sure, but she imagines Fury rolling his good eye.

"Just make it happen, Agent," he says. "You have 36 hours." Click.

She sighs and sets the phone down.

"What'd Fury want?" Brock Rumlow asks, sitting up next to her.

"You're supposed to be asleep," she tells him.

"Then you should talk more quietly."

She looks over at him. He's still propped up on the bed by his elbows, lazily blinking himself awake. Rumlow has many assets, as Leila's learned over the past month, and her thin sheets are doing nothing to conceal them.