The bad man had brought her tea. Well, he sent a robot to bring her tea. Kara wanted to throw the tea at the robot but if she broke the robot the bad man would be mad and he'd use his magic and Kara did not like his magic. At all.

But Kara liked tea, and she was thirsty, and the tea kinda smelled good. Like berries and honey, and it was a pretty pink color in the cup. There was a plate with a thick piece of warm brown bread, bits of different kinds of cheese, and big purple grapes.

"I like green grapes better," Kara said, wrinkling her nose. "And there's no biscuits."

"Doom says eat," the robot said in its funny buzzing voice.

Kara crossed her arms across her chest. "If I eat the purple grapes you have to give me biscuits."

The robot thought. "There is bread. Biscuits are redundant and unnecessary."

Kara didn't know what redundant meant but she knew unnecessary was just a fancy word for "no" her dad liked to use a lot. She sighed, and even if the robot was really mean, it should give her a biscuit for locking her up in this room.

But first it needed to know what biscuits were.

"Biscuits are cookies." She shook her head. "Duuuuuuuuuh. You eat them with tea." Kara furrowed her brow. "Do you have Google? You can check."

The robot was quiet. "Alternate definition confirmed. Kitchen stores indicate several types of biscuits. Specify preference."

"Chocolate. A whole package!"

"Nutritional information indicates two biscuits are the recommended serving size."

"I'm stuck. In a bad guy's house. My dad tried to fight him but the bad guy was too strong." Kara felt tears in her eyes and her throat got tight. She wanted not to be scared and to be strong and brave like her dad and the Avengers but it was so hard.

She clenched her hands. It was hard but if they could do it so could she. "If I had a whole thing of cookies I'd be super good. I promise. I won't even call the bad man more names." She gave the robot her biggest eyes. "Pleeeeeease?"

The robot whirred and made a tiny beep. "Your request has been transmitted and accepted. You will comply with the initial instructions and eat the food provided."

"Even the grapes?"

The robot paused. If robots could sigh and make the face her Dad made whenever Kara asked for a bear claw or another hour at the museum or to watch ooooone more episode of Phineas and Ferb, this robot definitely would. "Yes." Another whirring noise. "Even the grapes."

"Oookay. I'll eat them all." Kara's eyes twinkled, and she smiled her sweetest, most innocent smile. "But there's sooo much food and tea." She tugged at the hem of her dress. "I think you should have a tea party with me."

"It's a beautiful tea party." Loki smiled, though it strained his jaw and whatever dignity he still retained. His fingers plucked a black lace veil from his forehead. "But this is too lovely of a hat for me. Are you sure Thor Bear wouldn't like it?"

Kara shook her head, a tiny sigh escaping her lips. Today, and most days, she suffered no one's foolishness, not even his. "No, Daddy. He has a fancy hat and you don't."

Thor Bear, and the rest of the ursine Avengers, sat around the small round table that hosted Kara's tea parties. Even if Loki was less than enthusiastic about the veiled green pillbox atop his head, at least it was tasteful (and his color). Barton's hat looked as if an electrified flamingo had died on his stupid furry head.

Loki chuckled softly. "But what if I did have a fancy hat?"

"You do?" Kara's small hands clenched around her teacup as her voice rose an octave. "Where is it? I wanna see it!"

"Ahh, it's not here right now," Loki said, with only a hint of a stammer. "But don't you worry, it's a very lovely hat, and it so much better than Thor's."

Kara pursed her lips, head tilted ever so slightly. "Maybe."

"Well, I will take a maybe." Loki turned his attention to the plate of chocolate drizzled cookies between them. "I will also take one of those cookies, please. Before Thor or the Hulk eat them all."

"Biscuits, Daddy." Kara now added eye-rolling to her reply repertoire. "Tea cookies are called biscuits."

Loki furrowed his brow. "Someone was paying much more attention to the Great British Baking Show than I thought," he said before clearing his throat. "My apologies. The biscuits."

Kara stacked the cookies precariously on his plate. "Here you go! Don't forget tea!" Kara picked up her cherished tea kettle: a lilac brontosaurus whose tail curved into a handle and whose neck and head formed the spout.

Cold, faintly brown-colored water spilled from the dinosaur's mouth and splashed into Loki's similarly prehistoric cup. Damp tea leaves swirled in the water - damp leaves with an alarmingly familiar scent.

"You made real tea?" Loki raised the cup to his nose. "Not pretend tea?"

"Yup!" Kara was happily, if not quite accurately, pouring Captain America Bear's cup. "Do you like it? It's your special tea!"

"The tea in the round shiny box?" Loki took a deep breath. "That special tea?"

"Uh-huh! We need very special tea for a special party." Kara paused in her pouring, her smile faltering. "Is it okay?"

"Of course." He could see her smile brightening already. "Tea with you is always special."

"Tea with you AND the Avengers." Kara's gaze drifted thoughtfully to the ceiling. "So it's super super special."

"If it's very special tea, then, we should make sure it's warm," Loki said with a wink. He gently took the purple teapot from her hands, tugging at the small pterodactyl atop the dinosaur's back to open the lid. He poured the two cups of cold, leaf-speckled water back into the pot, then closed the lid. Gold sparks swirled around the dinosaur as Loki warmed the teapot nestled in his hands with perhaps more ostentatious magic than was necessary.

A memory wafted through his thoughts, elusive and bittersweet as the steam rising from the dinosaur's nostrils. He remembered Frigga, and how her sturdy, unfussy magic would give way to flights of sparks and lights to comfort Loki in the moments he felt especially small, fragile, and all too vulnerable to averted glances and furtive whispers..

As the gently steaming dinosaur hovered around the table, pouring tea to Kara's open-mouthed delight, he silently, if bittersweetly, thanked Frigga for yet another valuable lesson.

Loki looked around the silent room, hands outstretched and helpless.

The tea set would never fit. Hardly any of Kara's things could come with them, unless Loki brought a duffel bag to the impending showdown.

If this was a regular flight into exile, it would be easy enough to bring the canvas tote Sarah called the "Hermione bag." She, and a few other troop leaders he and Miriam liked knew Loki's the bag could be relied upon to hold everything sans a kitchen sink.

However, it was too dangerous to bring a pocket dimension between worlds when travelling via Yggdrasil. Thus Loki had to choose what few material comforts would accompany him and Kara to their next world, in the largest leather satchel he owned.

And yes, it was a satchel, in spite of Stark's insistence it was a man purse. In its soft brown depths, the dinosaur George cushioned the brontosaurus teapot. The plush Captain America protected the lightning glass Thor had made as an impromptu birthday gift, which Loki had taken out of the bag nine times so far, and put back ten times.

He gave up on taking it back out again.

Accursed piece of lightning glass or not, there was just enough room to carefully tuck some of Kara's drawings in the bag's laptop sleeve. He plucked the former refrigerator masterpieces from a drawer in her dinosaur-sticker covered nightstand, recognizing each slightly crumpled sheet of paper and the brightly colored figures that were supposed to be Kara, himself, their friends-.

No, he reminded himself. Kara's friends and their parents whom he tolerated..

The drawings fluttered from his hands, rustling like leaves down onto the of her drawings featured one or more Avengers in various iterations, with Captain America earning the lion's share of her attention. Loki swept the few drawings with Barton to the floor, resisting the urge to incinerate them before they could reach the ground. A ghost of a smile touched his lips as he found the picture with a tiny Kara and Loki shouting "Shut up, Thor!" at his clumsy, stick-figure brother tripping over a cloud above them. He tucked the curated pictures in the bag, one by one, until only one remained.

He didn't recognize it, and he remembered every drawing that once graced the refrigerator. The paper had already yellowed at the crumpled edges, and Loki could almost see Kara's small hands clutching the drawing tight. There were two stick figures, and Loki knew the small stick figure with disproportionately long fingers and a red bow in her curls was Kara. And the stick figure above her, with a sad red-crayon smudge smile, misshapen loop-dee-loop wings, and a silver circle above the hair that mirrored her daughter's, was her mother.

Loki sank down as his legs lost what strength they'd regained since the battle this morning. He was a master of trickery, lies, and compartmentalizing feelings other people would have called guilt or shame into a hole deeper than the Abyss, feelings that never failed to rear their head whenever Kara talked about her mother. But Kara was gone, kidnapped by a megalomaniacal madman, a situation whose irony he would appreciate only when Kara was safe and sound.

Damned if Loki would let a villain with fewer convictions destroy the one human he couldn't bring himself to kill.

He tried to put the picture with the others, to hide the twin black dots of accusation that were the angel's eyes, but instead his fingers curled around the drawing, wearing new creases into the edges.

Her eyes had been closed, the last time he'd seen her. No, they had been clenched shut, as if saving Kara depended on closing her eyes to the death and destruction threatening to crush her and her daughter. It had worked, he thought grimly, her trading one last glimpse of Kara for the girl's survival.

"I won't let him hurt her," Loki said to the image, as if she were a saint on the candles in the bodega downstairs and he was the helpless, desperate mortal praying for her intervention. "I will do everything, up to and including a heroic death, to keep her safe." He laughed, closed lipped, at the thought. "Thor would be sure Odin knew I was brave and selfless. Stark would take responsibility for my tragic redemption. Kara-"

Loki let his fingers drift to Kara's crayon avatar, whatever smile remained on his lips wavering. "Kara would be alive. No matter what they told her about me, she would be alive, and that's all that would matter."