Chapter 3
In 1943, when Steve Rogers liberated the 107th from the Hydra compound, he met one of the few female active combat soldiers of the war. While most countries had not yet decided to allow women into active combat roles, the USSR had allowed it since the first World War, paving the way for Galina Kovaleva--known as Kova to her compatriots--to become the only female member of Captain Rogers’ Howling Commandos, and one of the most well-known wartime snipers in modern history.
Click.
Leila turns off the documentary as she’s getting dressed. She’d turned it on to see if it would be enlightening in any way re: project recruit Steve Rogers, but it turns out she’s seen it too many times to glean anything new out of it.
She chooses her outfit carefully for the barbeque. Usually, she wears whatever the hell she feels like on that particular day (it’s always black; the variable depends on whether there’s other color involved and how much skin is exposed), but this is a performance. Steve’s going to be looking for any sign that he’s being manipulated, even if he doesn’t notice himself doing it.
Which means she can’t look too hot, but she can’t look too reserved, either. Steve knows how she dresses, and if he notices her diverge from what he’s come to expect, he might put two and two together and know that she’s trying to be seen as innocuous. Which is something people only do when they aren’t.
(Assuming he notices what she’s wearing at all. Straight men aren’t known for their attention to detail when it comes to clothing, but given her objective, she can’t be too careful. Besides which, given the rumors about Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, she’s not entirely convinced he’s straight, anyway.)
The weather is supposed to be moderate, so she chooses a black turtleneck tucked into a plaid skirt, leggings, and knee-high boots. Simple enough to look like something she just threw together for the look, involved enough to indicate that she cares about the look to begin with. (Which is true under the best of circumstances. She’s always been a slave to aesthetics.)
She expects Steve to call her from the car when he arrives. Instead, she hears a knock at the door. Old-fashioned. Kind of charming.
“If I’d known you lived in Manhattan, I wouldn’t have invited you,” Steve deadpans by way of greeting, and she smirks.
“Well, you’re locked into it now,” she says. “You ready to introduce me to all your cool friends?”
Leila had considered suggesting they ride motorcycles up to the park--it’s something they have in common, another potential advantage--but had decided against it just for the practicality of it. Instead, she lets him drive (it’s his event, after all, even if she doesn’t particularly like being driven places). His car is like his knocking, a charmingly old-fashioned thing, small, but noticeably different. He opens the passenger door for her.
She finds herself intrigued by the car, and wonders what the engine looks like. “I’m driving home,” she tells (not asks) him as he gets behind the wheel, and he smiles.
“We’ll see, Manhattan,” he says, glancing up at her apartment, and she smirks.
“I guess we will, Brooklyn.”
Off the top of her head, Leila knows of two Howling Commando legacies who currently work for SHIELD. A further background check indicates that those are the only two likely to be in attendance.
One of them is Vira Kovaleva, one of the few people Leila remembers from the academy. Leila never really connected with anyone there, so she doesn’t remember most of them, and Vira wasn’t even in the same school as Leila (she was in Communications, while Leila was in Operations), but she managed to make an impression via her bubbly disposition, anyway. Leila might be biased, but she feels like it should be illegal to like hugs that much at spy school.
The other is Sharon Carter, and Leila decides to make her Plan A. Granted, Leila doesn’t know Sharon so much as know of her--they’ve only met a few times, and only in passing--but everything she’s heard about her speaks to someone who could be the key to changing Rogers’ mind about SHIELD. The niece of the woman he apparently loved, who also happens to exude integrity almost as much as he does--the perfect beacon to get SHIELD back into his good graces.
Sharon Carter, she finds out quickly upon arrival, is not in attendance.
Vira Kovaleva it is.
Leila lets Steve mingle for a while before reeling him back in to meet Vira. Partly because introducing him right off the bat would be too obvious, and partly because it’s the nice thing to do, and while she doesn’t have any moral investment in kindness, she does have a practical one, in this situation.
Galina isn’t in attendance that year, she finds out quickly, so she mostly just sits on a bench and lets Steve do his thing, glancing up from her phone every so often to check on him. It’s a strange je ne sais quoi that’s taken over him here. Reconnecting with the closest thing he has to living family, while surrounded by monuments to the lives they lived while he was gone--she can read the contradiction in his posture, in his eyes. He’s more alive than she’s ever seen him, but the melancholy he carries with him is heavier, more bitter.
Still, every time she looks up he’s generally smiling, so he can’t be having too bad of a time. She doesn’t notice herself smiling until he catches her eye and smiles back at her.
She looks back down at her phone, but can’t make her smile disappear completely.
“There’s someone I want you to meet,” Leila tells him an hour later, when he sits next to her on the bench. She doesn’t bother with any ‘oh, I just realized’ bullshit. He’ll see right through it, and it won’t get her anywhere.
He raises an eyebrow, looking guarded. “Oh, really?”
“Mhm. You know how I said I wanted to meet Galina?”
“Yeah. She’s not here, though,” he says, sounding both apologetic and disappointed. She doesn’t feel the urge to put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, exactly, but she does notice that he has the exact right posture for such a gesture. She ignores the thought.
“Yeah. Well, I think if she was, she’d want you to meet her granddaughter.”
“Granddaughter?” Something lights up in his eyes again, some mixture of sadness and hope.
“Her name’s Vira. I think you’d like her.” Unlike Leila, Vira isn’t as involved in espionage; she’s one of SHIELD’s psychiatrists, and Leila imagines her genuineness is something Steve will appreciate.
Vira isn’t hard to track down. She’s always been something of a social butterfly; all Leila has to do is follow the sound of raucous laughter to find Vira standing near a grill, listening to one of the other legacies tell a story.
Leila doesn’t bother to wait for a breaking point in the conversation. “Vira,” she calls from a few yards away. (She would default to her last name, but she’s not sure how many Kovalevas there are outside of Vira, if any.)
Vira looks up and her eyes light up. She excuses herself and then launches into a hug, throwing her arms around Leila. Leila doesn’t quite hug back, but pats Vira’s back awkwardly. If this offends her, she doesn’t show it.
“Leila!” Vira says excitedly, her Russian accent coming through at full force. “How are you? Why are you here? Oh my God, New York--”
“I’m fine. New York is also fine. I’m here to introduce you to someone.”
Vira steps back and glances around before her eyes land on Steve, who’s looking distinctly amused. Part of her wants to slap the smile right off his face; the other part wants to smile back. Vira’s eyes widen, and she seems at a loss for words.
“Hi,” Steve says, extending a hand. “I’m Steve.”
“I know who you are,” Vira says, and then blushes. “I--my grandmother told me about you.”
Steve nods. “I’m sure she chose the most embarrassing stories possible.”
“Nope. Only the good,” Vira says, but Leila can tell she’s lying.
Leila takes a step back as Steve and Vira talk. Again, she’s struck by how (comparatively) lively Steve is in this environment, like some dormant part of him has come alive. She remembers the theory about how when you meet someone you knew a long time ago, you revert to the person you were when you knew them, and wonders vaguely if there’s some variation of that going on--and, more importantly, if she can use it to her advantage. As far as she can tell, it’s a neutral thing, but she keeps it in the back of her mind for future reference, anyway.
Their conversation is interrupted by Vira’s phone ringing; she apologizes profusely and steps away to answer it.
“You’re awful quiet, Whittaker,” Steve says, and again, there’s that thin note of suspicion under his good nature, like he knows what she was thinking. Unsettling.
Before she has to answer, Vira comes back over, her face having gone pale. “I--”
She doesn’t get the chance to speak before the explosion hits.