Chapter Two

A glass of wine in each hand, Adela crossed Sabrina's living room to where her friend sat on the white and green striped couch. She'd purchased the thing from a second hand store years ago and a tuft of stuffing fell out from the bottom of the left arm. A string of glittering amber colored lights draped from one side of her apartment to the other, filling the room with a cozy glow that didn't make Adela's eyes ache. Lights from the street outside sparkled like gemstones out the large, black-framed window behind Kat's television. She handed Sabrina one of the two glasses, then went to sit opposite her.

"So tell me," Adela said, sipping at the fruity, dark red beverage. Why did Sabrina only buy the really fruity stuff? It was usually either that or Vodka. No in between with that girl. Adela herself was more a tequila kind of girl but a drink was a drink. "How are you liking your new assistant?"

Sabrina rolled her eyes. She pulled the blanket on the back of her couch down so she could cover her legs with it. "I have never been more frustrated in my life. It's like pulling teeth to get him to do anything—and he kept trying to look at all the classified stuff that has nothing to do with what we're working on. I swear I could probably get more work done by myself than I ever could with him." She sipped at her drink. Light from the television flashed through the dark as the two women sat together. A pint of ice cream with two spoons lodged in it on one side of the coffee table crafted from a large wood pallet waiting for one of them to reach out and touch it. On the floor by her coffee table sat Kat's knitting supplies—she wasn't particularly good at the craft buts he did manage to make some neat stuff that she often gave to Adela. "What about yours?"

"Dude, mine's an absolute hottie who is actually pretty easy to work with. I can't complain."

From behind her wineglass Sabrina sneered. "Fuck you."

"Don't get mad at me because you pulled a bad cosmic straw."

"What you mean like regarding this, or in general?" Sabrina leaned forward and took a big scoop out of the ice cream container. Adela laughed as her best friend slumped back against the arm of the couch and ate the bite of frozen treat. "On Thursday he spent literally—literally—an hour and a half playing with the bell on my desk."

Adela snorted.

"No! No!" Sabrina sat up and waved her ice cream spoon in Adela's face, splattering her with melted and spit-soaked vanilla ice cream. Adela wiped it off her face without a word. "Do not laugh! You weren't there! Ding—Ding—Ding—Ding! Dingdingdingdingdingding or an hour and a fucking half. Then at one point he fell asleep at one of the tables when I had him researching Medieval Iconography—"

"Okay but to be fair that sounds like really boring."

"Why am I even friends with you?"

"Because you enjoy my chaotic nature."

Sabrina huffed and took a long drink from her wine. "Then today, Travis came in to look at some files and Loki threw stuff at him."

"Threw stuff?" Adela raised an eyebrow. "What like books and artifacts?"

"Not yet, thank God." Sabrina ran her hand through her hair as the cleaning crew on Hoarders: Buried Alive came in and gasped at the mess in an elderly woman's house. Both women did their best to not look on the screen at that point because earlier they'd said that there might be crushed cats somewhere in the pile of trash and neither could handle that. "Just little wads of paper. Also balls of paper. And oh my God—!" She groaned and clenched her fists. "He can't stop talking about how great he is! How smart he is! Yet I have yet to see any evidence of it. Keeping him on task is like trying to wrangle a bunch of cats." She paused. "Or, I guess, like trying to keep you on track."

Another swig of her drink and Adela wiggled her eyebrows at her friend. "You're kind of attracted to him, aren't you?"

"Wh-What? That's stupid that's—" Sabrina shrugged. "Well, I mean I'm not unattracted to him."

"He really is your type though. Just throwing that out there. Feel free to throw it back."

"Ugh I know, right? Sometimes I feel like Kaufmann stuck him with me on purpose."

Adela laughed. It still felt odd for her to be close enough to another person know their "type," and to be able to sit together on the sofa drinking wine and eating ice cream while watching trash TV. When she was alone Adela sometimes still felt like that twelve-year-old girl S.H.I.E.L.D found in the twisted carnage of her escape ship. But when they were together Adela let herself believe that maybe life could go on after all the death and carnage. That maybe it was okay to smile and laugh and gossip about hot guys.

Years later and Adela could still remember the day Kaufmann found her. Her nanny and the loyal knight who had smuggled her out of the palace following her aunt's betrayal of the crown were both dead. The ship was naught but a smoking pile of crumpled metal at the bottom of the ocean where the Atlantic met the Hudson River. In her final moments before the water rushing into her lungs stifled her ability to breathe and unconsciousness claimed her, Adela thought that Aunt Breyna had succeeded after all. That all the royals from their planet were now thoroughly dead—and the lives lost to get Adela out were lost for nothing. Her eyes closed and she gave one last prayer for her lost home.

Then in the next second she woke with her back flat on the deck of a ship. She rolled over and coughed onto the smooth, cold metal. Water rushed out of her as her coughs evolved into stomach twisting gags. A hand on her back. She turned and her eyes met those of Director Sheldon Kaufmann. At the time he hadn't made Director yet. He was merely Agent Kaufmann. But she wouldn't learn that until later.

Kaufmann had taken care of her. He brought her back to what at the time as S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters and subjected her to a thorough interview about who she was and where she was from and how exactly she ended up in the Hudson. An interview he handled with as much delicacy as he could, for Adela was still a child and his wife had just found out she was pregnant. He gave her a blanket and had brought her a stuffed bear that still lived on a chair in the corner of her bedroom at her apartment. He spoke softly and kindly, and when she began to cry trying to tell him about her aunt's treachery he patted her head and told her how very brave she was. After he found out about what she could do, about how she could converse with the spirits of nature to wield their powers, he extended her an invitation to join S.H.I.E.L.D when she was older.

If he had never done that, if he had simply sent her on her way and left her at the mercy of the foster care system or to an orphanage, then she never would've been there to walk into the Archives one day to find a small girl with pink dyed hair transcribing old files onto the computer system. The kinship she felt with this stranger, who had only just started at S.H.I.E.L.D a few months before, was shocking and overpowering. She was weird and at first kind of annoying but she knew how to make Adela laugh. The air she carried around her just by existing was the kind of soothing presence the lost alien princess didn't even know she needed until it was there. Until then she never thought about wanting a friend. Never cared. Her entire being had been devoted to getting stronger so one day she might return home and bring her aunt to a swift and bloody end.

But, like they say, life happens when we're busy making other plans.

Now it was years later and they were practically inseparable. Though Adela didn't always use it, Sabrina let her decorate the second bedroom in her apartment and use it as her home-away-from-home. Whenever she slept over she would have a bed of her own, and if she needed somewhere to go she would have one. Most of the time Adela stayed in S.H.I.E.L.D agent housing but sometimes it was nice to have that homey, warm feeling.

"Okay, okay, here's what we can do." Adela placed her wineglass on the end table near her side of the sofa and turned to face Sabrina. "If all you want is to get him to just stop—we can sneak into Kaufmann's office and steal his pass key. From there we can get into the Level 10 Clearance weapons room and . . . borrow . . . the power dimming handcuffs to cuff this guy to a chair. Then you can put tape over his mouth and boom! You've finally got silence!" She bit the inside of her cheek to try and fail to stifle a giggle. "And also, you know, you can kill two birds with one stone and sit on his lap—if you know what I mean."

"Oh my GOD." Sabrina pulled the throw pillow out from behind her and whoomphed Adela on the side of the head with it. She fell backwards howling in laughter.

"Look at you—you're all red!"

"Why are you even making jokes like this?!" Sabrina pummeled her with the throw pillow again and again, serving only to make Adela laugh so hard part of her wondered if she was going to roll off the side of the couch. "You. Hate. His. Guts!"

"B-Because it bothers y-you!" She howled. Tears streamed down her cheeks from the sheer hilarity.

As much as she missed her home, as much as she nursed the pain the destruction of all her closest loved ones to make herself strong, even Adela couldn't deny that even the darkest cloud had its silver lining. At least she had Sabrina for a friend. At least she knew someone who never failed to make her laugh.

"Okay! Okay! Sorry!" She palmed the pillow out of Sabrina's hand and the two settled back on their ends of the sofa. The joy was quickly replaced by a swift sense of melancholy as Adela's wine-addled mind thought about what Loki had done to New York, about how that monster was going to be working with Sabrina. "Seriously though—be careful, okay? Jokes aside, I don't trust him."

"And you think I do?" No matter how much Sabrina liked to joke around and how much difficulty she had reading the room, when she knew to be serious she was serious. "You're so lucky. Thor is an Avenger! I bet being in public with him is like being a celebrity!"

"Truth is, I hate it." Adela shrugged. "We went to investigate what we thought was going to be another gathering—turns out it was just a bunch of kids smoking pot in an abandoned grocery store—and on the way there people were fawning over him and looking at us. I don't think I've ever been looked at that much my whole life. It made my skin crawl."

Sabrina smiled. "Wanna trade?"

"God no!"

As much as having everyone on the street looking at her because she was working with an Avenger bothered her, Adela knew that it would be safer for all involved if she stayed away from Loki. The bastard had destroyed her city, killed so many people, and had seemingly gotten away without so much as a slap on the wrist. The injustice made her angry. Those who caused death and destruction deserved no less themselves.