Mirror, Mirror ↠ Steve Rogers

Chapter One

"We're done for the day," Leila says into the camera. "Bring the guards in."

Felix Harker has been staring at the spot just above her shoulder for the past hour, but now his eyes glance to hers and he smiles. He always has this comic book villain smile, like he knows something she doesn't.

Which, to be fair, he does. Which is why she's been interrogating him for the last week.

So far, she's gotten nothing out of him, and today is no different. The problem is that she can't get him to talk about anything. If she could get him to have a conversation with her, she knows she could bring it around and get him to tell him something, probably without him knowing he's doing it.

But he won't engage at all. She's starting to forget what his voice even sounds like. She's asked him questions about the case, about himself, his life, about the fucking weather. She's bribed him with lighter sentences and the chance at a job, if he proves himself. Nothing.

She meets his eye, tilting her chin up, challenging him. "Last chance," she sing-songs.

He just smiles more and turns away as the guards enter the room.

She sighs and stands up, leaving the room before the guards escort Harker out.

***

"Gotta say," Steve says when she comes back into the room on the other side of the mirrored glass. "I don't feel like I'm learning a lot about interrogation."

"Don't make me put you in another iceberg, Rogers," Leila says by way of response.

Steve's lips quirk in a smile.

He's been shadowing her for the last week, with almost nothing to show for it. She's spent the entire week sitting in front of Harker, trying to coax him into a conversation, while he sat silently, smiling almost serenely, not even looking at her. Leila is one of SHIELD's top interrogators, and she knows it; having a witness to her failure is just the cherry on top of the shit sundae.

Usually, she tries to explain her techniques to him when she's done, and what she expected to happen. This time she just collapses onto a chair by the table. The room on the other side of the mirrored glass is dark, almost noir-ish.

"I swear to God," Leila continues, "I've seen international terrorists crack easier than this guy."

"What happens if he doesn't?"

Leila looks up. There are a lot of loose ends leftover from Harker's series of bombings, but most of them have to do with how he broke into a high-security bank without triggering any alarms; how he got ahold of chitauri technology; and--importantly--how he got the personal phone number of a SHIELD agent. Vira's phone number was on a lower-security system, so it's not the end of the world, but if Felix managed to get into any of their systems, they need to know how--and who, if anyone, he gave that information to.

She looks back down at the file on the table, flipping through it thoughtfully. "Then we go back to basics," she says finally. "Do some detective work." It's not usually in their job description, but Fury likes cases to be completed by the agents who start them. Granted, she and Steve didn't "start" the case so much as they were roped into it, but still.

"So what does that mean?"

There's only been one moment when Leila got anything close to a reaction out of Harker, and it was when she mentioned his mother. He didn't say anything as she asked about her, but his body language changed--his jaw tightened, his fists clenched. She pursued that lead for as long as she could, but it didn't go anywhere, even when she revisited it later.