Chapter Ten
"I'm not going to let a work acquaintance's death get in the way of saving your ass, Captain."
"Stark! You got that?"
It's funny, the way that comms are working perfectly in the midst of all the chaos. Fury's voice rings clear as a bell in Leila's ear. A quiet sense of normalcy within a broiling storm. The hallway is dim and cluttered with debris, but the three of them manage to take it at a run anyway, dodging techs and sizzling wires and jumping over scrap metal and broken, flickering gadgets.
Stark responds in the affirmative. They reach a split in the hallway and Tony stops, says, "find engine three. I'll meet you there," and runs down the left hall.
Leila takes off at a run, too focused to be annoyed when Steve easily overtakes her.
"You know where engine three is?" he asks.
"I have a vague idea."
"Vague?"
"I didn't exactly memorize the schematics," she snaps. She almost doesn't notice when Steve passes the right turn they need to take. She reaches out and grabs his arm, tugs him in the right direction, and for a split second, she forgets to let go.
Finally, they reach a dead end. The door to portside is clearly marked, but she can tell it's sealed tightly, like an emergency exit on an airplane. She jerks her head towards Steve, in a "you're up" motion, and he steps forward.
Steve's muscles strain as he pushes it open, slowly as he fights against the air pressure from outside, and then quickly, with a sudden wide swing of its hinges letting in a gust of hot air.
There's a ledge outside, around a foot wide, with a short safety bar on the edge that starts to the left of the doorway. The part in front of them has no such guardrails, presumably to allow room for the door to open. It's just hot open air and a thousand foot drop in front of them. The engine is on the other side, a yard or so away from the ledge. She leans forward. There's a catwalk a few feet away bridging the ledge to the engine bay, but it's half broken. Of course.
"I'm out by the engine." The comms crack to life as Stark's voice rings in Leila's ear, clearly annoyed. "Did you two take the scenic route?"
"We're here," Leila replies, staring out at the engine. If she squints, she can see him on the other side, through the rotors. A flash of red and gold flickering behind the engine, set against the alice blue sky. "Just got the door open."
She and Steve share a look. He nods at her, and finally, the two of them step out of the shadows and onto the ledge.
45 Minutes Later
The water beats onto Leila's back like acid rain. If she turns up the shower any higher, it would burn her skin off, and she's tempted to let it. Her head is tilted away from the nozzle as she works the shampoo into a lather, her nails digging at her scalp. The water that misses her hits the porcelain tiling, congregating around her feet before finding its way to the nearest drain.
Leila's always found solace under water. There's no problem, she's found, that can't be at least temporarily solved by a long, hot shower; no unwanted emotion of which she cannot purge her mind by boiling herself alive. Even now, she finds the tension in her shoulders half-easing, the weight of the events of the last half-hour scrubbed off with the dirt, sweat and grime.
It's like meditation, or what she imagines meditation is like. She can't quite shove it all to the back of her mind, but she gets some distance from it, at least. It's not so overwhelming, so all-encompassing. The upset has space to breathe, and so does she. She doesn't have other, more pressing thoughts competing with the part of her mind racing through everything that's just happened. Instead there's a ribbon of calm lying parallel to the shock.
Gunshots muffled by the sound of open air whipping around her.
She finishes washing her hair and stands under the water, letting the shampoo rinse out.
Steve hanging over the bright blue ocean miles under them, holding on to the helicarrier by just a loose cable. His hand slipping even as she tries to pull him back up.
She takes stock of the time. Fury gave her ten minutes. She has five left.
THCK! THCK! THCK! The loud, rhythmic sound of Tony caught in the newly-repaired rotors, picking up speed with every heartbeat.
She rinses her hair again, because it's long enough that sometimes only one rinse leaves leftover shampoo.
Fury's voice clicking onto comms, buzzing faintly over all the noise.
"It's Barton. He took out our systems. He's headed for the detention level. Does anyone copy?"
Her heartbeat picking up at the idea that Clint is on the helicarrier, that he's alive, only to stop less than a moment later at the realization that she still can't go to find him.
And now she just stands under the water. Lets herself forget everything outside the showers. Just her, encased by water and steam. If she could burn her own skin off, she would.
"Phil Coulson is down."
A heartbeat.
"Paramedics are on their way."
Beat.
"They're here."
Beat.
"He called it."
Leila hasn't cried in years. But just then, standing under the water, for a moment, she thinks she can remember how it felt.
She gives herself a second to pull it together. It's not that big of a deal. SHIELD agents die every day. She didn't even know Coulson, not really. He was an acquaintance. A guy from work. That's all.
And yet-
No. Nothing else.
She turns off the spigot, crosses the tile, and pulls her towel off the hook.
She meets up with Steve in the hallway on the way to the bridge with a minute and a half left. His hair is dry, but it's also significantly shorter, so she can't compare herself in that respect. She's glad, though, to see he's abandoned his suit in favor of civs too. Jeans and a smart blue shirt with long sleeves. No buttons, no collar. Obviously not something he picked out himself.
She's wearing black jeans and a plain blue camisole she had stashed in her locker. The colors almost match, actually. There's a "who wore it best" joke percolating in the back of her mind, but she lets it sit. Steve looks pensive, and she doesn't feel like starting another argument. It's really not that funny, anyway.
So she stays quiet, and they walk side by side in a silence that is something close to companionable. Knowing, maybe.
When they arrive at the bridge, Stark is already there at the table. Fury is looking out through the big line of picture windows. Maria Hill is standing nearby. There are a handful of leftover techs mulling around the screen area. They're not so small, even from the platform above that holds the briefing area, but the relative scarcity of them combined with how unidentifiable they all are to her makes them look like ants, wandering around aimlessly after their hill has been knocked over.
Steve and Leila take their seats quietly.
"These were in Phil Coulson's jacket," Fury says without preamble, and he turns and tosses a handful of cards onto the table. Leila doesn't have to lean to see them, and she wouldn't have to see them to know what they are. Coulson's Captain America cards. They're all stained with red. A few of them are stuck together haphazardly where Coulson's blood had dried like glue.
"Guess he never did get you to sign them," Fury adds, without looking at Steve.
If this had happened eight years ago, if it was the Leila from eight years ago, sitting at that table, looking at those cards, she would have cried, Leila thinks idly. She would have run.
That Leila died by her own hand, and she did it for a reason.
Today, her face doesn't even twitch.
"We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, location of the cube. Banner. Thor. I got nothing for you. I lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming."
It occurs to her, then, that Fury and Coulson knew each other for longer than she knew either of them. Their partnership probably existed long before Leila Whittaker did. She knew this; she clocked it from the second she saw them interact. But it never seemed relevant until today.
Fury pauses, as if giving them a chance to comment. No one does.
"Yes. We were going to build an arsenal with the tesseract. I never put all my chips on that number, though, because I was playing something even riskier."
He turns to face them fully. "There was an idea-Stark and Whittaker know this-called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people. See if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to fight the battles we never could."
Leila stares at the cards again. Maybe Steve should sign them anyway, once they dry. Put that in the casket instead of roses. Could be a nice gesture.
"Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea. In heroes."
His words hit her this time, penetrating her skull, hitting her mind and shooting a white-hot shock of panic down her spine. Quick as a lightning bolt. It's there and then it's gone, leaving her stunned by her own visceral reaction.
She stands up at the same time Stark does. He stalks out. Leila hesitates.
Fury looks at the table.
"Well," he says, "it's an old-fashioned notion."
Leila keeps her face blank as she studies him, then Hill, then Rogers, before she turns on her heel and leaves. Composed. Unaffected. This is who she is. This is the mold she poured herself into eight years ago, and it's served her well. Today is no different than any other day in any of those years.
She hears Steve jogging to catch up with her as she turns into the hallway. She feels like running from him, but that's not who she is and it's not what she does. She maintains her pace.
"Whittaker," he says, falling into step beside her.
"I'm going to check in on Romanoff and Barton," she says. "If you wanna go make sure Stark doesn't set anything on fire, be my guest."
He grabs her arm, gently but unwaveringly, stopping her in her tracks. Forcing her to face him. She looks up at him coolly.
"Don't give me that," he says, although he doesn't sound particularly malicious. Just very frustrated. "I saw you out there."
She can't muster the energy for a comeback. She just shrugs boredly. "Okay."
"Not on the bridge. Out by the engine. When they called it. You weren't okay. I need to know if you are now."
She studies him for a moment. He's not bluffing. She closes her eyes, takes a breath and swallows hard. She hadn't known her emotions had been written so clearly on her face at that moment.
"They called it."
The world is still and quiet. Her hair whips around her face, but she barely notices. It's as though she can feel the world shifting, its weight unsettled by the sudden absence of one man's soul. Something fundamental and ancient and tectonic changing irreparably .
She's vaguely aware of her facial muscles contorting, but she doesn't know how or why. Confusion, maybe. Shock. Vertigo.
There is a gunshot, and just as suddenly as it shifted, the world comes into focus again, and she shoves what just happened to the back of her mind violently .
That moment still feels like a fever dream. She doesn't know how to dismiss it or excuse it. She doesn't know what it was. How do you lie about a truth unknown?
That's just it, isn't it? It's not that she feels particularly compelled to tell him the truth, but she does usually like to know it for herself before she lies. The problem is that the definition of "okay" is rapidly shifting. She can't grab onto a solid concept of it to scrub against her current state of mind.
She can't give him an answer, honest or otherwise. So she changes the question. It becomes: how am I going to get this man to leave me alone?
"Did I let you die?" she asks.
"No."
"Did I let you fall?"
"No."
"Then I'm okay." She tries to jerk her arm free. He doesn't let go. Her hand reflexively reaches for a knife, before remembering she doesn't have any strapped to her. There's one in her shoe, but by the time that occurs to her, the reflex has passed.
"Tell me something, Rogers," she says. "What did they do to men in the 1940s who put their hands on women that didn't want to be touched?"
His eyes narrow, but he lets her go. "Sorry," he says. "I didn't mean it like that."
She reaches up and tugs on her hair in its ponytail, just to give her hands something to do. It's still damp. "I know you didn't." She doesn't walk away, now that she can. For some reason, she stays rooted to the spot.
"It's just that if we're going to work together, I need to know if I can count on you."
Work together.
Team.
Heroes.
"I'm not going to let a work acquaintance's death get in the way of saving your ass, Captain. Don't worry about it." She turns to leave.
"I'm not buying it. No one's that heartless. Why are you checking in on Barton and Romanoff, if you're so above it all? Do you think they need you? Cause that's not the impression I've gotten."
She turns back.
He's trying to get a rise out of her, she knows, although she's not totally sure why. And honestly, if he'd said something like that to her an hour ago, she probably would've decked him right then and there.
But she's tired. Her regenerative ability gives her higher energy, physically, but she's so drained emotionally that she can feel it in her bones. She's tired of everything, she's tired of this in particular, this back-and-forth from the last 30 hours. She can't stand here and have the same arguments with Steve Rogers over and over again, like some kind of endless Groundhog Day loop.
"Go talk to Stark about it, Rogers," she replies as she turns away. "I'm checking on my team."