Author's Note: My updates may still be poky but they're at least regular! Thank you all so much for your patience and I hope this chapter is worth the wait! Thanks again so, so much to Jade, Majoline, and Amanda, my amazing Betas Three!

As a bonus, here's a link to the photo that made me squee like a madwoman, as Quvenzhane Wallis was a huge inspiration for Kara this fall in 'Mischief,' and she's slowly become how I imagine her when I write. When I saw she was presenting best villain, I may have made little noises of joy. Just imagine Tom clean-shaven and with dark hair...

ETA: Ugh, so links don't work in stories! I will add a link to the photo described above to my profile!

He blended in so well. It took Natasha a moment to find him, but there was no mistaking the short-cropped black curls, the sharp green eyes, slender fingers curled around a library copy of a thick book, Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story, as his other hand held tight to the metal pole. Natasha wove her way through the crowded subway car, her hand clenching the cool metal just above his.

"Interesting book?"

He snapped the book shut, sliding it into the leather satchel slung around his shoulder, and gave her a tight smile. "It was." He glanced around to the car, his perturbed gaze finally coming back to her. "No one else you'd rather interrogate?"

"No one else worth it," Natasha said, swaying along with the rocking motion of the car.

"And what will we discuss? The weather? The Yankees' rather underwhelming season thus far?" Loki waved a hand dismissively, and Natasha felt a certain heaviness in the air, golden flashes sparkling in her vision.

"What was that?" The sinking feeling faded, but Natasha's voice buzzed oddly in her ears.

"A simple glamour." Loki smirked as he looked across the cramped train. No one so much as looked up from their distractions. "You of all people should recognize deception at work." Loki leaned forward, words dripping with casual malevolence. "So who you sent you, Agent Romanov? Stark or your minders at S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

"I don't have minders, and S.H.I.E.L.D doesn't know who you are, much less what train you take. And I work with Tony." Natasha shrugged. "I don't pretend to work for him anymore."

Loki smirked. "But you're going to report back to him like the good little spy that you are."

"He was the one who made this little agreement a team project." Natasha raised a single eyebrow. "If he wants my support, than I'm going to see things for myself. Tony's a good guy." Natasha paused to consider that assessment. "A decent one, anyway. I don't hold any such illusions about myself, or you." Whatever spell Loki cast took away whatever comfort silence should have held. "Neither does Clint."

"Ah, yes. Agent Barton. We had the most delightful chats about you." Loki tilted his head and smiled in a biting mockery of politeness. "How is he doing? Does he still have his bow strung? Waiting for me to slip so he can put one of those arrows through me?"

"He's a patient man."

"It would do him all sorts of good to move on. I didn't do anything to him I didn't do to a handful of scientists and your ever so useful people with guns, and you don't see them sending their...paramour after me," he said, almost spitting the word at her.

Natasha clamped her fingers around Loki's surprisingly delicate wrist. "I'm here for no one's reasons but my own. Did Clint tell you about my childhood?" Natasha tightened the grip on his cool skin. "You should know I'm the last person to let the past repeat itself."

"While I appreciate your concern," Loki said, clamping his free hand around hers, "her room isn't red." She felt bones pushed almost to the point of breaking, but Natasha didn't give him the satisfaction of so much as a wince. "She will never become anything like you."

"So she'll grow up to be like her father, whoever that is." Natasha smiled primly and slid her hand out of the vice-like grip. She had made her point. "Would that be Luke or Loki?"

"And how shall I answer, Agent Romanov? Or is it Miss Rushman?" She kept her mirthless grin even under his withering gaze. "I do wonder how Mr. Stark remembers what to call you."

"Oh, Tony has his own names for me."

"You do have so many to chose from. Natasha, Natalie, the little spider..."

"How original." Natasha rolled her eyes. "What I call myself doesn't change who I am. All I, Tony, or anyone else needs to know is that I'm not the person I was."

"And you, unlike your erstwhile companions, don't think I've changed."

"I know people can change, if they want to." Natasha raised a brow. "Though you aren't exactly a person, and I have no idea what you want."

"What I want is to be left alone, but none of you seem to believe that, save your fine-feathered friend." Loki smirked and lean forward, fingers tracing slow, predatory circles on the cool, curved metal. "But this quaint, cloying notion that you can ever be something but what you're doomed to be." He raised a single brow. "I mean, look at you..."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You've spied, seduced, maimed, and killed, as Agent Barton so kindly informed me." Natasha didn't so much as clench her jaw, refusing to rise to his challenge. "I am having a difficult time seeing how this is different from what you do now."

"If you can't tell between the Red Room and S.H.I.E.L.D., you really don't understand us at all."

"Yes, S.H.I.E.L.D." Loki's grin was sharp and brittle. "The organization that would have rather destroyed this city than allow you to save it."

"You hardly gave them a choice."

"But don't you always have a choice? Isn't that the little lie you tell yourselves every night?"

Loki laughed, his green eyes glinting in the dim light. "That's why you hunted me down? To inform me that should I make the wrong choice with her, you will make me see the error of my ways?"

"Something like that." Natasha smiled tightly.

"I'm well aware some of you have taken it upon yourselves to look after Kara's well being. This may surprise you, but I respect, rather grudgingly, your concern and common sense." Loki's smile was brittle enough to freeze the warm, slightly dank air of the subway car. "I will, however, show no mercy to anyone, and by anyone I mean your dear Agent Barton, who choses to strike at me through her."

"Clint might not like you or this deal, but he would never hurt her."

"Are you an expert on him or just who has the capacity to harm a child? Oh wait, I believe you're quite the authority on both." Even if Natasha didn't need to let her guilt bleed through, it sat hollow in the pit of her stomach, either way. "I doubt Agent Barton has your capacity for bloodshed when it comes to innocents. But whereas I could somewhat trust the Captain and his breathtaking naivete with my daughter, I have no such illusions when it comes to my former compatriot."

"So if Clint takes Kara, you'll kill him?" Natasha raised an eyebrow. "I just wanted to be sure I got the essence of your little rant." My God, she was sounding more like Tony every day.

Loki chuckled, a mirthless, chilling sound. "Has my dear brother ever told you how he and I would sneak into the orchards of the goddess Idunn when we were children?"

"No, he hasn't." Natasha frowned, her brows knitted together. "Are you doing to distract me with a heartwarming childhood story?"

"Oh, there is a point to this, I assure you," Loki answered, his reply doing little to assure her. "We were the princes of Asgard, but even we could only enter her grove with permission. So of course, we took it upon ourselves to enter unseen every chance we had. It was my idea, of course. Thor never was fond of anything but brute, direct means."

"Nice to see some things haven't changed in a thousand years. But you're telling me this little flashback because...?"

"Those apples, which I was so very good at stealing, grant whoever eat them a very long, very resilient life." Loki curled his hand tighter around the metal pole between them, and Natasha swore she could see the silvery surface crack beneath his fingers. "If your little friend does anything to Kara, I will find a way into Asgard and strip Idunn's orchard bare. I'll cram them down his throat and save enough for you, so you can watch as I torture him for an eternity. No matter how much either of you beg me to kill him, he'll live through every length of gut ripped through his flesh, every severed limb, every drop of acid spilling into his eyes. Now is my meaning clear?"

"Crystal." Natasha rested her cool, unshaking hand at her side, meeting Loki's venomous gaze with no sign of fear. "Any other threats you'd like to make."

"That's not a threat. It's a promise, and while I may be a liar, I always keep my promises." Loki stood, smiling tightly as her glowered over her. He made a single motion with his hand, and Natasha saw a golden shimmer in the air. The curious, faint buzzing in her ears was gone, replaced with the dissonant symphony of the Broadway train, pulling into Columbus Circle. "While I hate to cut our lovely conversation short, I have somewhere to be." He hefted a leather satchel over his shoulder as the train slowed. "If you came here looking for answers, I'm not sorry if I disappointed you."

Natasha held fast to the pole as the door opened and people shuffled around her, Loki among them. "What made you think I came here for answers?" He turned, an unreadable expression on his face before the door closed and swept him away from her sight.

Loki almost didn't recognize the sound.

There was at least something familiar, and he took the jingling to be one of Kara's toys until he recalled the noise and its source.

The phone to which only Doom had the number.

Thanking the Nine that Kara was fast asleep, Loki answered the call. "You really need to find someone else for this late night pillow talk. There are numbers with perfectly reasonable rates."

"Doom does not have time for your trivial prattle," the voice said. Even as Loki rolled his eyes, his hand clenched around the phone a little tighter than was necessary. "These artifacts you have delivered - do you mean them as trifles?"

"I mean them as evidence of my good will," Loki purred, wishing for the thousandth time he could strangle the man through the phone connection. "It is hard to remember what you humans consider objects of great power and bits of cosmic bric-a-brac."

"There is a great power in this city, Doom is well aware." A great power Loki had yet to unlock, the troublesome wolf almost mocking in its silence. "Doom will not have it in any other's possession."

"You may be a sorcerer of some talent, but I hardly have need of your pitiful mortal trinkets. Worry about Strange and Reed and the Avengers. Have I yet shown myself to be a disappointment?" Loki paused. "A significant disappointment, anyway."

"Doom knows you are an ally, though you seem a reluctant one as of late." Loki smirked, despite his apprehension. The man might be a raging megalomaniac, but he was brighter than the average supervillain. "But know this. You would do far better to remain Doom's ally than his enemy."

"I will keep that in mind."

Loki could hear the crash of Doom's glove on something hard and unyielding. "You may joke, Trickster, but Doom does not. All who cross Doom will suffer!"

"Then it's fortunate I have no plans of crossing you at present." Even though the man couldn't see him, Loki still felt a hollow smile pulling at his lips. "And if our only other topic of discussion is my evidently poor skill in appraising artifacts, I believe we're done."

"You had best hope we are." Doom's voice resumed its more restrained tones of metallic malevolence. "Until our next meeting, Trickster."

Loki's palms glistened with sweat as he fumbled to press the red 'end call' button.

"Luuuuuuuke? Earth to Luke? Anything going on up there?"

Loki blinked, nearly dropping the coffee that clearly was failing to do its one miserable job of keeping him awake. His late night caller had ensured Loki did little but pace about the apartment and work out half a dozen spells to try and awaken the slumbering stone wolf.

"Sorry." Loki took a sip, running a hand through his slightly more unruly hair than usual. It really needed a trim. "I should have asked them to make it a little stronger."

"You should've asked for a caffeine drip," Stephen said. "Anyway, we were talking about next month. Do you and Kara have any plans for Memorial Day weekend?"

Humans had so many holidays and festivals, most of which revolved around feasting. Perhaps that was why the Asgardians held them in such esteem. "I don't believe so. Should we?"

"Perfect! You have to come, so we can sweet talk Miss Connie into joining us." George rubbed his hands together. Connie, fishing through her purse, looked less than impressed.

"Come where?"

"Alabama. Orange Beach, you and Kara will love it."

All Loki knew of Stephen and George's home state was that it was of little consequence, save for barbecue and college football. And that it was a considerable ways from New York. "Not that I doubt it isn't charming, but we have a perfectly good ocean in New Jersey."

"Luke's right." Connie plucked a tube of lip gloss from her purse in triumph. "The shore is closer, it's cheaper, and they stopped filming that damn show."

"It's not the same. If I don't get some decent pulled pork soon, I'm going to go into withdrawal," Stephen said, sounding almost petulant. "Listen, the flight from here to Mobile is the same as the drive, right?"

Connie held up her hands. "I can't just afford two tickets! I'm glad the two of you have good jobs but I barely make my rent sometimes."

"We can get your ticket-"

"I didn't ask you to!"

Alice, Oscar, and Kara looked up from their nearly finished donuts at their bickering parents. Kara dusted the crumbs from her purple sweater and hefted her kitty purse over her shoulder.

"Why are you fighting?"

Loki couldn't help but smile at her directness.

"We're not fighting," Connie said, pressing a hand to her forehead. "We're just talking loudly."

"You always talk loud," Kara said, drawing sniggers from Stephen and George. "But you sound mad."

"Oh sweetie, I'm not mad. I just don't want my friends to think I'm some kind of charity case."

Stephen and George's chuckles ceased, and Loki could see the contrition in their eyes. Midgard, even more so than Asgard, had gaping chasms between those with much and those with little. He had grown up never lacking for anything, save the truth, but he saw those on Asgard who had gone without.

He hoped, although in retrospect it was a foolish thing, he had never been unnecessarily cruel to those who also lived in Asgard's shadowy places.

"I think I may have a compromise," Loki said in his most dulcet tones. "The Met has asked me to pick up a few more hours, and Kara's babysitter is quite busy with her softball team."

Loki saw the confusion on Kara's face, but she was wise enough to stay silent.

"What does that have to do with this?" Connie sighed as Oscar climbed into her lap.

"If you could be so kind as to watch Kara after school whenever you're able, until Sarah is free, I think that would more than recompense any payment I chose to give you. Say, for airfare to this beach of Stephen and George's."

"Luke, I-" Connie shook her head and looked away, even as the three small ones were looking between themselves with growing excitement.

"It's a simple business arrangement. That's all." Loki smiled as Connie threw up her hands, this time in acceptance.

"Fine, fine! Ay, you and that silver tongue."

Loki smiled crookedly as Kara clambered into his lap, a high-pitched chorus of "beach, beach, beach!" rising from her and her friends. She leaned up, cupping her hand around his ear, and thankfully lowered her voice to a whisper.

"Daddy!"

"Hmmm?"

"Sarah quit softball!"

Loki chuckled and whispered back in Kara's ear. "Oh dear. We shouldn't tell Connie then, should we?"

Both Kara's eyebrows shot up before she clambered back to his ear. "Is that a lie?"

Loki laughed and wrapped his arms tight around her as she giggled. "Yes it is, darling. It is."