Beyla - Loki

One in 14,000,605

Beyla sat alone, turned away from the others, a storm contained inside a chair. The hum of the Milano felt too loud, every vibration a reminder of the void she'd just been dragged out of. Footsteps padded closer-light, almost hesitant.

"Hello," the bug-eyed girl said gently.

Beyla flicked her a glance and looked away. "Please leave me alone."

The girl-Mantis, they'd called her-rested a hand on Beyla's forearm and drew a breath, her antennae lowering. "I am sorry. Loss is... a great emotion."

Beyla tore her arm back as if burned. "What did you just do?"

"Mantis can read emotions," Drax rumbled from behind her. He stepped forward, all solemn gravity. "I lost my wife and daughter to Thanos."

Beyla pivoted the chair to face them both. "I'm not looking for sympathy."

No one argued. They didn't need to. The silence did it for them.

#

Knowhere reeked of solvents and smoke. The mining colony hung in the void like a hollowed skull, its collector's museum already half-chewed by fire. The Guardians filtered through the wreckage with practiced stealth; Beyla kept to shadow, her fingers tight on a length of broken pipe.

Beyond the rubble, Thanos loomed over Tivan. The Collector tittered, perfectly terrified.

"Everyone in the galaxy knows you'd sell your brother if it bought you a trinket," the Titan said, voice almost bored. "I know you have the Reality Stone. Surrender it and spare yourself."

"I told you-I sold it," Tivan lied, sweating. "Why would I lie?"

"I imagine it's like breathing for you."

"Like suicide."

"So you do understand." A pause. "Last chance, Tivan."

Beyla's grip whitened. Loki's old, whispered nightmares skittered up her spine-needles, knives, the weight of a hand that could snuff out stars. She forced air into her lungs.

And then Drax roared.

He charged. Beyla snapped the pipe up, cracked him behind the ear, and dropped him like a felled tree. Gamora used the beat she bought-two clean strikes, blade sinking deep. Thanos staggered and fell, blood dark on his neck.

Gamora's breath hitched, tears hitting ash. "Why? Why you? Daughter?"

Beyla didn't move. Why was it this easy?

It wasn't.

Thanos' voice rolled over them, disembodied. The bleeding corpse dissolved to colored dust. The flames blinked away. When the illusion dropped, everything was leveled, and the Titan stood before them-whole, the gauntlet gleaming, Reality Stone pulsing red.

He plucked Gamora out of the air as if she weighed nothing.

"Let her go, Grimace!" Quill shouted, blasters up.

Beyla stayed in shadow, every learned instinct freezing her muscles. The gauntlet flickered blue and both Thanos and Gamora vanished, wrenched away by space itself. The room's heat died with them.

She swallowed the taste of metal and ash. She hated the part of her that hadn't moved.

#

The ship they tracked next didn't even bother hiding. It cut a brazen path through the dark, no cloak, no mask. Quill rolled a grenade into the control room; the doors blew wide and Guardians spilled through-Star-Lord, Drax, Mantis-straight into a three-way brawl already in progress.