Chapter Twelve
"Guess Stark isn't all style after all."
Leila is still putting the finishing touches on "suiting up" as she makes her way through the helicarrier. Weapons check, gloves, the like. She's ensuring that as much of her hair as possible is tied back when she reaches the hangars, running as she does so, until she catches a glimpse of red and gold and sparks flying up, and backs up, still at a jog.
Tony has turned an empty corner of Hangar One into his own personal laboratory, going at his Iron Man mask with a welding torch. There are pieces of metal scattered around the table in front of him, little machines whirring, taking things apart and putting them back together. She didn't realize his suit was so damaged.
"Stark," she says, and by some miracle he hears her, looks up, and turns the gun off.
"Are you…." She doesn't know how to phrase it without sounding hopeful. She'd assumed he'd be with the rest of them. It's stupid, but she finds herself mildly disappointed. "Do we need to hold the quinjet for you?"
"No. I'm meeting you there. Don't worry about it," he adds, gesturing to the machine behind him. "This suit can outpace the jet, I promise you that."
Reasonable. Smaller size could mean higher speeds.
She hesitates for a moment before saying "see you out there," tightening her ponytail one last time. She starts to take off when she hears him mutter "Goddamnit" and then call her back. "Whittaker!"
She turns back, biting back her annoyance at his tone, and he holds up a pair of goggles. "Take these."
"They're hideous," she says as a reflex.
"So I'll put a tiara on it if we're still alive tomorrow."
"A tiara can't change the fact that they look like something Amelia Earhart would wear if she were a character in a made-for-tv scifi movie."
"If Amelia Earhart had had these, maybe she wouldn't have ended up as crab food."
He turns them, displaying a side panel where the eyepiece meets the straps. "They're connected to the camera in my suit. Hit this button, you can see everything I do."
"How would that have helped Amelia Earhart?"
"Because there's an earpiece in them." He gestures to the second button on the panel. "If comms don't get back up and running, at least we'll have one line of communication."
Everything suddenly becomes very real in that moment. A line of communication. Because they're going to be working together. To defeat aliens that want to take over the world. And the only way to stop them is to fight, together, in broad daylight. There's no espionage here, there's no shadows, no tricks, no smoke and mirrors.
She takes the goggles from him. "See you on the other side, Stark," she tells him, and takes off.
"Same to you, your highness," she hears him say.
Rogers is still heading across hangar 19 when Leila arrives. She falls into step next to Romanoff and Barton behind him without a word, and he leads them into one of the jets. It's one of the larger ones, not like the one they took to Stuttgart. There's an agent already in it, and he looks ready to argue-
"Hey, you guys aren't authorized to be in here-"
"Son, just don't."
With just three words, they have the run of the jet, the agent wandering back into the hangar with an expression Leila can't be bothered to read.
Captain America may not even technically be a SHIELD agent, but his voice carries weight all the same. She's trying to find a frame of reference for this impact he has. The only thing she can compare it to is if Thor had arrived on earth a few thousand years sooner in like, Norway, or whatever Norway was called at the time.
(And maybe he did. Maybe that's how the myths started. She doesn't know the guy very well, after all. Maybe she'll ask about it, when this is done.)
People think that Christianity replaced Europe's pagan religions, and in some ways it did, but in others, Leila's not so sure. From personal experience and from observation, it seems to Leila that people never really trade out one deity for another. No. People replace their Gods with something even more powerful. People replace their Gods with heroes. And this is what happens when heroes come to life.
She wonders if this is new to him, if people acted this way around him before he went into the ice. She suspects not. Certainly he must have commanded respect then, too-at least once he made the shift from the stage to the battlefield-but she thinks it takes dying to build up the kind of clout he has. Dying, and then 70 years of hero myth layering up over the collective unconscious.
Or, she considers, maybe this particular SHIELD tech is just a coward. Whatever.
Mostly she's wondering how this superpower of his is going to come into play in combat, if at all. It's not as if Loki or his army is going to respect his authority. She's not sure what happens on a battlefield, really. She took a modern warfare class at SHIELD's Academy of Operations, and the biggest thing she took from it is that most warfare doesn't happen on a battlefield at all. These big Tolkienian clashing of armies don't exist anymore, for the most part. It's all sabotage and guerilla warfare and drone strikes and intelligence agencies.
She can't imagine the chitauri engaging in a long-lasting back-and-forth. No, this is a battle. She can feel it in the air, and she can see it in the set of Rogers' shoulders.
Natasha and Clint take the pilot's chairs, and Leila and Steve find themselves in the back again, just like Stuttgart. There's something vaguely poetic about it. Symmetrical. She can't be bothered to find the rhyme in it right now.
"What's the plan, Cap?" Leila asks.
"Loki's going to Stark Tower to open the portal. Stark's hoping to get there soon enough to prevent him from doing that."
"And if he doesn't, we'll be there."
"Exactly."
"Not an especially detailed plan."
"It's a work in progress," Steve admits, and nods at the goggles in her hand. "What are those?"
Leila takes a moment. She hadn't realized until now that she's been twisting her fingers in and out of the straps.
"Stark gave them to me," she says. "Apparently they're hooked up to his helmet. They have comms set in them."
"And he just had them lying around?"
She shrugs, and at his curious expression, she adds, "Tell you what. When we're all out of alien ass to kick, you can interrogate him about how he manages his belongings yourself."
He rolls his eyes, but the tension is diffused, just a little.
She puts them on, adjusting the straps until they fit perfectly, sitting atop her head. They seem to have the added bonus of helping to keep her hair in place. Maybe she'll take Stark up on his tiara offer. Or at least ask for a better paint job.
That reminds her.
"They're ugly, right?" It's not an especially relevant topic, but seeing as they have no idea what to expect from the battle in front of them, it's a valid enough way to fill the silence.
"War doesn't have to be pretty."
"You're holding a red, white and blue shield. Cut the bullshit."
"...Yeah. Guess Stark isn't all style after all."
She snorts. Before she can respond, though, a sudden crackling noise fills the plane.
"Jet 19-Alpha, this is Maria Hill, do you copy?" Her voice gets more clear as she speaks, static dropping away with every word.
Natasha hits a button on the dashboard. "This is Black Widow in Jet 19A. I copy."
"What's your status?"
"I have Hawkeye, Snow White and Captain America with me. We're heading to New York. Is Stark on his way?"
"Were my ears burning?" Stark gets his word in before Hill can.
"...I'm assuming that's a yes," Hill says.
"Halfway there already," Stark confirms.
Steve leans over to Leila. "I guess you can take those things off now," he says.
She smiles, but something inside of her rejects the suggestion. She's not actually sure why, but she manages to work backwards to a justification. Comms being back up doesn't mean they won't go down again.
"You know, I think I'm gonna keep them," she says. "Just in case."