I sat behind the bathroom door with my back against the cool tile, listening to the apartment like it was a battlefield.
Which… felt ridiculous, because it was my home. It was supposed to be safe. It smelled like coffee and Theresa's lavender detergent, not blood and burnt ozone. But after you've lived long enough in worlds where danger wears human faces, you stop trusting "safe" as a concept.
Out in the living room, Mom and Sharon were talking in low voices over the coffee I'd made. Mom's voice was tired but warm, the way it got when she was happy to have someone in the house besides me. Sharon's voice was softer, friendly, perfectly pitched to make Theresa feel like she was doing a good thing by "having family close."
If Sharon really was just family, then I was officially the worst kind of paranoid. The kind that ruins relationships before they start, just because your brain refuses to unclench.
But if Sharon wasn't just family…
Then tonight was not a coincidence. It was a move.
And I had to know.
Mom's voice floated down the hall from the living room, light and ordinary—the kind of ordinary that made everything else feel even more ridiculous.
"Did Abel go take a bath?" she called. "Then I should go wash up and change too. Sharon, sit here for a while. I'll be quick."
"Oh, okay, cousin," Sharon replied smoothly. "Take your time."
I sat on the toilet in the main bathroom, fully clothed, with the shower running at full blast like I was trying to drown my own paranoia in white noise. Steam gathered on the mirror. The air smelled like cheap shampoo and the kind of domestic safety I didn't trust anymore.
Because I wasn't actually bathing.
I was watching.
A scrying spell—simple, clean, the kind that didn't take much power if you anchored it correctly—played across the fogged mirror in front of me. A different angle. A different room.
My room.
My bait.
Let's see what you do, Sharon Carter.
The spell wasn't fancy like a Pensieve. It was closer to a magical peephole: a stable, narrow window into a space I'd pre-marked. I'd cast it earlier with my wand and tied it to a discreet point near my desk. As long as no one in the apartment did anything that disrupted ambient magic—like, say, opening a portal to another dimension—the scry would hold.
In the mirror, Theresa disappeared into the master bedroom. I watched the door close and felt the apartment's "social physics" shift instantly.
Theresa was in her private bathroom.
I was in mine.
Which left Sharon alone in the common area.
And when someone trained in infiltration realizes they are alone and unobserved, they don't relax.
They move.
Sharon's posture in the mirror changed subtly—the kind of shift normal people never notice. Her shoulders settled. Her weight distributed. Calm, but ready. Like she'd been waiting for this opening rather than surprised by it.
She took a slow breath and looked down the hall.
Then she stood.
And walked directly toward my bedroom door.
Not rushed. Not nervous. Quiet steps. Controlled pace. The way people walk when they've done the same thing in different buildings with different targets a hundred times.
Okay, I thought. So this is happening.
The door opened slowly.
Sharon slipped inside like she belonged there, and that right there was the first thing that tightened my chest. If she'd hesitated—if she'd fumbled, glanced over her shoulder, looked guilty—this could still be "curious relative" territory.
But she didn't.
She scanned the room with fast, efficient micro-movements: corners, desk, closet, under-bed angles. Not with her head turning wildly, but with her eyes and body orientation. A practiced sweep.
My room looked exactly the way I'd kept it on purpose.
Neat. Orderly. Plain. Cold.
Not teenage-boy messy. Not "I'm discovering myself" messy. No posters, no sports trophies, no scattered laundry piles beyond what I couldn't be bothered to deal with. The entire space was structured around one rule:
If someone searches it, nothing should scream "secret."
Theresa's room, by contrast, was warm chaos. Clothes that didn't make it to the hamper. Books stacked in odd places. Old photos. Little signs of a life lived with emotion instead of caution.
Mine wasn't like that.
And Sharon noticed.
I saw it happen in the mirror: that tiny pause, the slight tightening around her eyes. Recognition, not surprise. The kind of look you get when you realize you're not dealing with a kid.
She walked to the bookshelf first.
Textbooks. Novels. Some science fiction. Nothing occult. Nothing mystical. Nothing that would satisfy a search warrant or a paranoid agent.
Too clean.
Then her gaze landed on the desk.
My notebook. My notes. My "homework."
Left conspicuously visible, like a tired student had abandoned them to go shower.
I saw her breathing change slightly as she stepped closer.
There it is. The bait.
Two steps.
Three.
Then she stopped.
And for a moment—just a moment—Sharon Carter stood perfectly still.
This was the most interesting part. Not the searching. Not the trespassing. The pause.
Because all she had to do was reach out.
Stretch her hand.
Read.
If I was the person S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted, the evidence was right there, sitting under her nose. And it wasn't subtle evidence either—potion ratios, diagrams, some runic patterns mixed into chemical notation. A normal person would see "nerdy scribbles." An agent trained to connect dots would see a pattern.
Sharon's hand hovered a fraction above the paper.
Then… didn't move.
She just stood there, staring.
I could practically hear the internal argument even through the silence of the mirror.
If she looks, she can't unsee it.
If she looks, she can't go back to Theresa and smile like family.
If she looks, she becomes the person who betrayed a woman who treated her like a sister.
And that was what surprised me most.
Theresa was genuinely happy Sharon had "come back into her life." She treated her like real family—someone she could trust in her home, someone she could laugh with. Not a distant cousin obligation. Not a holiday visitor.
Sharon had been receiving that warmth like it mattered.
I'd seen it in small things—how she listened to Theresa, how she laughed without forcing it, how she brought groceries without being asked. It hadn't felt like a cover story anymore.
And now, in my room, Sharon's face showed the exact moment she admitted to herself that it wasn't a cover story.
What am I even doing? her expression asked.
More importantly: why am I betraying family to expose someone who hasn't hurt innocents?
Because that was the kicker, wasn't it?
If I'd been hurting people—if I'd been a threat—Sharon would've done her job without hesitation. She would've read the notebook, taken photos, called Coulson, and smiled at Theresa on the way out. That was what agents did.
But the things S.H.I.E.L.D. had on me—if Sharon knew them—didn't paint me as a villain. They painted me as a problem-solver with questionable methods.
Saved people.
Stopped Kilgrave.
Helped Tony.
Not exactly "terrorist."
So Sharon took a breath.
And stepped back.