AN: This chapter is a few days early. Due to my beta having a life, I will be updating on the 1st and 15th of each month in and about. My chapters are looong so it should be worth it to wait every 2 weeks for a chapter. I did have some of this story done before NaNo, and I won the challenge but I still needed a few weeks to finish it. So this arc was completed two weeks ago, and I have been editing my heart out for a week so the NaNo ramble was coherent to anyone besides myself, LOL. For those worried about this story being a rehash of the movies, it's not. Read carefully. The changes in a few places are subtle but huge for later on.
Love Sirya!

SoA – Part Three

Chapter 1: SHIELD screws the pooch.

(Time jumps ahead)

Oct 4th 2010 (Almost a month Post-Flash)

"The Tesseract has been powered up at the PEGASIS facility in New Mexico." Brainiac let Kara know over her comm while she cleaned up after a tornado in Kansas. She had managed to get to the area before the almost out-of-season F3 tornado managed to do any damage to the small town. The people by now knew to look for a black streak in the sky where her blue and red one used to be when they heard the sound barrier echo with multiple thundering booms during a crisis. She was still wearing Loki's colors instead of her own as she continued to mourn his passing into the Void.

Flying around the cyclone at over eight hundred miles per hour in the opposite direction had disrupted the air funnel, and the thing had stopped. She normally didn't stop tornados, otherwise she'd be busy almost every stormy day during the summer. That was just in the US. She did try to stop any many as she could that threatened large population centers or towns directly head-on as this one had. Even worse it was during the time when kids were normally getting out of school. The schools were in lockdown and parents would be worried.

Mother Nature didn't like being messed with, and Kara respected the spirit of Gaia too much to disrupt her needs or whims too often. So far she didn't seem to mind Kara stopping the occasional funnel. It also made her dizzy, and slightly nauseated to fly that fast in that tight a circle for a couple of minutes.

She always stayed still afterwards with her eyes closed. Most people always thought she was looking for anything else she needed to do, before she floated down to meet with the civilian emergency service people, and see if there was actually anything they needed. That was what she usually did once she stopped feeling like she was still in a spin cycle. She could see downed trees covering a major highway off to her right, making emergency vehicles try to squeeze by to get to the people in the outskirts that needed help from flying debris. She made her way over that way still a little slowly.

"Monitor how long, and what output it is reading at. Let me know if they go too far." Kara sighed wearily. She was tired, and she was more than a little sad and nervous that she hadn't heard back from Flash yet. With Loki gone, and her estrangement from Asgard, there really was only her few friends in Midgard holding her here. With the call of family and Kal El out there, she was considering leaving if he was interested in reconnecting. She did try to keep in mind that he'd have no memories of her. She also knew Flash didn't have a way to get to Kal immediately when he left, but she trusted that as soon as he could, he would contact him for her.

She moved down and began moving the trees to the side of the road. Clean-up crews could cut them up later. It was more important to get them out of the way. She could hear people cheering in the background so when she was done she gave them a fake smile and waved cheerfully before she flew back to take a shower in her home in Malibu. Tornados were dirty, cold, and muddy work.

She changed into her Kara Stark persona and walked past the towel draped mirror in the bathroom. Like all the mirrors in her home it was covered, or painted with a 'frosting' spray often used at Christmas time to make windows look frozen over. She couldn't yet look at the reflection of 'Kara' without a wave of grief, or worse, a flash of hope that died upon realizing it wasn't Loki out of the corner of her eye, but her own reflection in the mirror looking back at her.

She quietly moved past the mirror and faded into her clothes as she walked into the hallway that led to her lab. If she wasn't sleeping she was working. Even Tony was running out of projects for her to work on for Stark Industries.

March 17th 2011

"The Tesseract's power is operating at an increase of over three hundred percent over the last twelve times they have activated the cube." Brainiac articulated to her as she considered the schematics for the Iron Man Mark VI and compared it to the actual gauntlet in her hand. She was trying to find the flaw that Tony insisted was in the repulsor on the left palm, the one he couldn't find. He'd thrown the thing at her yesterday and said. "It's broken, fix it." She'd ignored it just to annoy him until about five minutes ago. He'd been getting on her nerves steadily for two weeks. He kept trying to force her to look into mirrors. She'd uncovered them, but she still avoided them when she could.

"Did they increase the power input to see if they could get a better return on the power, or are they doing something else as equally idiotic?" She asked as she continued to look at the circuitry of the hand repulsor. She used her telescopic vision to zoom in, looking at the gauntlet's microscopic structure. There was the issue right in front of her.

"Damn, Tony was right." She muttered with no real emotion. Six months ago that revelation would have started a one-upmanship contest between the two. Tony usually won since he was so imaginative, though Kara held her own by making his idea come to life better than he could.

She'd discovered micro cracks in the housing that the repulsor was attached to. Microscopic breaks in the bonds looked to be from a bad mix of the alloys by her estimation, but they were there. It was rare for there to be issues with this alloy in Tony's suits, but mistakes happen. Tony would likely double check the alloy mixing foundry that was strictly for his personal use.

Kara sent him a note to change the alloy mix to true Adamantium mix instead of the bastardization he was using currently that made the armor a bit lighter than true Adamantium would give him. She suggest that and even better idea would be to change to Vibranium if he could find enough on the black market. That would cut down on the stress and durability issue of his armor without adding the weight true Adamantium would. She knew he'd never get enough Vibranium. She was just trolling him by even making that suggestion. She got such little joy out of anything else lately.

The true Adamantium would be more durable and easier to recycle long term since its melting point was so much higher than the rest of the components. When he needed to melt any of the armor down later, he could throw a whole piece in the smelter, and the other components would be burned away leaving pure Adamantium once more. She'd certainly proved she could melt the damn stuff without a smelter if he was worried about production tampering. It just tended to burn her powers out if she did too much at once.

The added benefit of there being nothing left for anyone to salvage was just gravy. The garbage picking by the press, and people trying to gain a buck from Tony's competitors had gotten impossibly ridiculous. Kara had started incinerating all their paperwork and information storage devices when they were no longer needed, rather than use the trash or any form of recycling.

"Yes, they have been making such an attempt, and the Cube is now maintaining its own power. The power levels however are not holding. They are fading as the amount of power being fed it is still below activation threshold." Brainiac voiced his concern to her. "It is storing a little power each time they activate it, according to the results I have copied for you."

Kara nodded absently as she looked up the best places to get the raw materials, so they could make the Adamantium themselves. "Keep monitoring. When they screw up, I'll go in and take it back. If I go in too soon, Fury is just going to throw a temper tantrum." She muttered with a sigh as she kept working, ignoring the large pile of unopened letters from her mother in Asgard that were piled on her desk.

One more letter had been added overnight. She wasn't ready to forgive and forget just yet, which she thought would be what Frigga would ask her to do, for the sake of Asgard. So she ignored the letters to avoid facing the request. The number of letters had been steady, one a week for nearly a year. She'd look at them when she was ready. A year was nothing to Asgardians. No one was really going to care if she took some time to mourn, least of all Frigga. If she asked, Heimdall would tell her why Kara wasn't opening the letters. Mourning periods were sacred on Asgard, no one would interrupt her process out of respect for Lady Death, the entity that oversaw the aspects of all Death in the World Tree.

Odin was leaving her alone. Unless she got a direct order, there was no way she was going to interfere with the humans and their absurdity at trying to harness the power of the universe. Those envelopes were unmistakable and the Ravens, Huginn and Muninn, wouldn't be chased off if it was official court documents. She knew her mother would hope once she stopped wearing black that she'd return to Asgard and see her. In May she would end her mourning, but until then Loki was still dead, and she was not ready to let him go until she was out of time. She'd lost too much to let his passing go so easily.

It was not normal to give a mate's grieving period to a non-mate. There were very few exceptions to that rule. They hadn't had any understandings in place. While it had been discussed they weren't sanctioned, and had only in theory been a match pair. There was no one to appeal to about her mourning process. On Krypton, and on Asgard, mourning periods were regulated. There was the mandatory two weeks all, even enemies, observed in times of peace. Extended time was granted in the cases of mates, a young child, or if the loss was considered very grievous, such as multiple family members.

Given what she had already lost so much already, she had granted herself the exemption on the basis of early matching in the mate process and extreme previous losses. In the databanks he was listed as her chosen intended. By the book, that was all she required to appeal to Rao to embrace Loki into its light and guide him on.

The only other exemption she could have applied for this type of mourning was to a child, borne or fostered. She certainly didn't see him as her child. The idea of that had never crossed her mind since he had always been someone she looked up to and loved as a personal hero.

Her god Rao wasn't here, but she hoped The Norns would allow his soul to rest with her loved ones. It was the least they could do for allowing the one person she loved more than any other in this universe to die. Without Tony, Pepper, and Darcy, she would have seriously just packed up and waited for Barry to return, so she could leave this universe to its fate.

May 1st 2011 (end of her mourning period)

Kara folded her black armored catsuit and placed it in the drawer of her walk-in closet at the Fortress. She moved until she was in front of the full length mirror mounted on the door. She looked sadly at the image of Kara Stark before she activated the change, and she became Supergirl. The image staring back at her stood strong with her colorful armor once more.

The hardened blue tinted leather breastplate had her family crest in gold across the chest. Her golden tinted vambraces were decorated with the etchings of the Royal house of Odin and her knee length red cape was attached by round golden pauldrons over her shoulders. One had the symbol of Frigga, and the other to symbolize Loki etched into each. Her deep red leather skirt fell to mid-thigh, and she wore her golden weapon's belt which had her daggers attached to it. Finally her red leather greaves on her thigh high boots completed her everyday armor. She had her Valkyrie helm still in her storage space, along with her sword that she rarely used. She still preferred her daggers, and they had the added benefit of not being as threatening to the humans when she approached them with the dagger's visible.

Walking slowly she went to the main console for the Brainiac computer. Loki's image came up as a full life projection. "It is time Kara." Brainiac told her.

Kara nodded with clear, but sad eyes. "Good-bye Loki… Deactivate image protocol." She ordered with a whisper.

The image of Loki disappeared and the image of Alura Zor El shimmered before the body became the basic vestige of the computer, a blue skinned male with white hair in simple Kryptonian clothing. It was the AI's basic factory image. Brainiac himself was a consumer version of the large AI that had run large portions of Krypton's main computer systems. Her Brainiac was the 'home edition', and only available to top ranking members of society. Her mother had been a High Justice, and her father, a leading scientist, both qualified for the AI.

Kara gave Brainiac's basic image one last solemn nod before she turned swiftly away. She left the Fortress slower than normal as her thoughts strayed once more to her missing, and presumed dead foster brother. Brainiac watched her leave. Once she had left he proceeded to reset the computer systems to lock out Loki's access to his systems. With no idea where his body had ended up, it was a security breach to leave it intact. Even after a year his systems still could not find where in the Void of Space his body had managed to be sent, if it had survived the black hole intact at all.

May 15th 2011 8:43 pm PST

"Tesseract power is off the charts that the humans can monitor." Brainiac reported as Kara was about to shut down and leave the lab for the night.

Kara actually stopped what she was doing to listen to the report. "Can you still monitor it?"

"Some of the readings will be distorted." Brainiac admitted with a hint of annoyance. The human systems would be on lockdown and the real-time access to the recording images wouldn't be available until they were uploaded to a SHIELD server. The power levels were so strong that Brainiac was able to assess the situation from the outside, but those readings were being distorted by the Tesseract itself.

"Sorry about that, but I don't want SHIELD to possibly gain access to any Kryptonian tech." She told it with a frown. "They have hackers who might be able to figure our language out with enough time, resources, and energy."

"I recognize that." Brainiac assured her before he continued to report to her about the state of affairs in the Tesseract testing range. "Power levels have increased, and it has opened a portal to unknown space." Brainiac told her with an actually fear based emotional component to his voice. Very different from the calm tones he usually used, having adapted his voice protocols from JARVIS when he saw Kara's stress levels decrease when JARVIS spoke to her. In this case he actually want to increase them so the emotional manipulation was called for.

"Anything we need to be concerned about?" She asked slightly worried what SHIELD could do if something big, or dangerous came through. It looked like it was time to intervene soon.

"Not that I managed to pick up. The main singularity to unknown space has collapsed, almost as soon as it formed. I am not able to read anything in the vicinity due to a secondary singularity that has developed from the left over energy surge that has flooded the room. The Tesseract is emitting a large amount of interference. The power levels seem to be dropping quickly. No picture, video or audio can be accessed right now. I should be able to pull it up in an hour once I manage to clean out the distortion, or SHIELD uploads the footage to a server I can access easily."

"Don't bother right now, just monitor the outputs and energy levels." She sighed with relief. "Hopefully Fury won't try that again. If he tries again, I'll take the thing from him for good." She was hoping to put that off until she found the nerve to open her letters from her mother. A few more weeks, then she'd take it from Fury and return it to Asgard... maybe.

May 16th 2011 2:15 pm PST / 11:15 pm Hamburg, Germany (the next day)

"Kara, there is a Dark Matter discharge that has occurred over northern Germany between Hamburg and the French boarder." The voice of Brainiac called aloud through JARVIS's speakers in her Malibu lab startling Kara out of her thoughts.

Her head snapped up from the search she was doing. She'd been going over the old SSR files that Tony had received from Fury last year. So far she had found two other ideas that Howard had been looking into. While neither of the two experimental ideas were close to being complete, Kara could easily see Tony making a go of both the flying car, and the laser mine. There were also a few she planned to keep buried. Peggy Carter's personal files, and the official SSR files mentions them as "Howard's Bad Babies". Kara was quick to figure out Howard had been a genius, but more than a touch mad if he'd thought making weapons like that, and then keeping the plans in his house wasn't going to blow up in his face. If Peggy hadn't been willing to help clear his name, Tony never would have been born. Howard would have ended up being charged with Treason and killed by the state. Still she couldn't say he wasn't brilliant. He'd actually designed and made a car phone back in 1946!

Brainiac had been doing a scan looking for traces of the Tesseract. It had disappeared once the base it had been housed in had collapsed in of its self once the singularity caused by the Tesseract had imploded.

She had a feeling that Fury was up to something with the Tesseract, especially as now it was missing and being shielded from detection. She didn't know who was helping them but she suspected the Midgardian Magic Sect that was guarding the Time Gem. Occasionally that Stone also went 'missing' behind some type of shielding too. Unlike SHIELD it seemed the Ancient One wasn't stupid, she kept the trust and placed it in a secure place and never touched it unless it was truly a moment of total destruction, which meant it had only been used twice in a thousand years for a period of only moments.

Her eyes flashed up from her computer screen to see the map that JARVIS had brought up on the holo-display. "How large a burst was it?" She snapped, her eyes flashed with anger. She already knew what the answer would be.

"Discharge indicates it is large enough for a single, trans-realm transportation, and the signature does not match the vibration for a different Earth." The voice of Brainiac told her. "Incidentally a large storm has gathered in less than a minute over the same region."

JARVIS added sounding concerned, "And Sir is in the vicinity of said storm inside a SHIELD Quinjet."

The entire lab was treated to a huge blast of displaced air, and a loud thunderclap as Kara shot out the room. She exited out the nearest door leading outside. JARVIS had opened it, correctly predicting that at this time she would be too angry to bother with the tunnel. He also alerted LAX air-traffic control that Supergirl was heading up at a huge rate of speed so they could warn pilots to ignore the sonic booms in the area as non-storm related.

Full heavy plated battle armor, much heavier and denser than her normal, cheerfully colored Supergirl Armor materialized over her body as she began to reach the stratosphere. She climbed until she reached eighty thousand feet before she streaked as fast as she could across the US and Atlantic Ocean.

With the amount of air traffic in the skies near Tony's mansion if she flew anywhere lower than sixty-five thousand feet at the speeds she was traveling at, the sonic booms, and pressure waves in her wake could damage the delicate airframes of regular aircraft. She normally made an effort to avoid causing problems for the commercial pilots.

Because of the care she had to take, it took her several minutes to reach the coordinates of the Quinjet, Brainiac continued to update her to its position. The storm made visibility so bad she had to dive steeply to see through the cloud cover, even with her advanced vision. The flashes of lightning created at ground level instead of from the clouds made zeroing in on Thor a simple task. Once she broke the clouds above she took a millisecond to zero in on him.

In her red haze of rage all she saw was Thor in the air attacking Captain America who was braced with his shield to take the hammer's blow. She continued to rush forward without slowing as Thor continued to fall towards the old hero. It was a blow that would likely kill Rogers if it connected, even with the Super Soldier Serum in his system.

She managed to strike Thor right in his side before the hammer connected with the shield. The blow caused Thor's Hammer to fall from his grasp, all breath left his lungs, and his body drastically changed directions at ninety-degrees, braking at least two ribs with the impact. Kara ducked her head so the tree branches hit the top of her helmet instead of her face as she continued to plow Thor, side first, through the trees and down into the rocky surface of the ground.

Back in the clearing Loki, Tony and Steve were knocked off their feet from the sonic booms that followed Kara's epic entrance.

"Oh!" Tony gasped softly, wincing at the thoughts running through his mind. "I don't want to be Fury when Blue gets a hold of him." He managed to wheeze out as he stood next to Loki who was also rising slowly to his feet. Loki gave Tony a puzzled look before wiping his hands down the front of his armor, knocking the dirt from the breastplate's surface.

Steve picked himself up and shaking his head trying to clear the ringing. His hearing was impaired from being so close to the pressure wave as she passed him. "I take it that was Supergirl? The one Coulson told me about." He yelled, trying to hear himself speaking.

He was answered by a surprising voice as Loki stepped up beside them. "Yes," He answered thoughtfully, "I do not imagine they are going to stop soon, without help." Before Tony or Steve could stop him Loki began to stride quickly, but gingerly towards the battle they could now hear ongoing a little ways into the trees.

"HE WAS A MORTAL YOU WARMONGER, TWO-FACED, HELL SPAWNING,-"

Tony's eyes opened wide at the string of impolite insults that managed to not include any actual cuss words that followed. Steve stumbled as he's own eyes gapped wide. Loki was chuckling while shaking his head with amusement.

"She never could control her temper when Thor, or his friends, managed to anger her enough to entice her to react with violence." He gave them a quick look. "We should hurry. She might truly try to kill him if she is irate enough, with no one to stop her."

Tony grabbed Steve by the armpits as he launched and began to fly quickly towards the sounds of battle. Loki faded until he was standing just outside of the new clearing Kara and Thor had created with their brawling.

Kara was moving much faster than she had when Loki had last trained with her on Asgard. She was also strong enough to block all of Thor's returning blows, though Loki could tell he was not using his full strength against her. It was a mistake he paid for a moment later when one of Kara's mailed fists struck Thor's unprotected face, making him fly backwards and hit the ground on his back. Loki winced as Kara jumped on his prone body and began to deliver body blows with her fists at astounding speed, making the ground tremble with each quick blurred blow.

Kara's eyes glowed deep red, and her long dagger appeared in her hand. It was at that moment Iron Man and Rogers arrived.

"Hold up Blue!" Tony called out, pulling his visor up. "Don't kill him. Poppa Odin would get mad... and pissing off powerful Daddies is never a good idea."

Kara's eyes never left the prone Prince. Thor had the presence of mind to stay still. While he didn't know of all Kara's powers, he did know about the heat vision, and its ability to burn through armor. Right now her stare was aimed directly at his eyes, he wasn't sure if he could survive that. He knew she'd be angry to see him, he hadn't expected her to be this angry. He also hadn't planned on getting into a fight with mortals that could withstand his lightening attack over possession of Loki either.

"Sister, I am not here to harm anyone. They attacked me first." He told her, trying to justify his actions and calm her.

Kara's eyes flashed and a bolt of energy just missed Thor's head leaving a sting of heat as she sheared off a line of hair near the scalp over his ear, making Thor wince from the heat and close call. He was lucky she hadn't sheared off his war braids.

"LIAR!" She screamed with burning rage. "Murderer! They would not harm anyone without cause." Thor stared at her in shock that she had actually taken a shot, even if it was only a warning one. "You attacked first, I know you did! You always do." Her face scrunched up with disgust and hatred.

As much as Loki seemed to be enjoying the scene he stepped forward, it would not do for her to lose faith in him when he had any type of control. Plus as much as he was enjoying seeing Thor brought low by a woman, he wanted to be the one to hurt or possibly kill him if it became necessary, not his Kara.

"Kara!" He called out. "Leave the brute alone. He is not worth the effort, and you know he cannot afford the loss of more intelligence. If you continue to try to teach him proper manners you will only succeed in killing what little, precious amount of reasoning he has remaining."

Kara froze at the sound of his voice. She dropped her dagger from her suddenly nerveless fingers. It landed tip first against Thor's breastplate but it clattered to the ground. Her body slowly rose to hover over Thor, turning in the air to face Loki and the others. Seeing him saw her drop her guard completely as she stared in shock. "Loki?" She gasped breathlessly she nearly fell to her knees as her self-powered flight disappeared.

Loki just gave her a mischievous smile. "Miss me, My Kara?" He asked nonchalantly as he opened his arms near his waist. The words My Kara were spoken in Kryptonian and sounded completely different from her name. 'Whekara' was the sound the humans and Thor heard when he spoke.

He was in too much pain to raise his arms any higher comfortably. The devil-may-care smile was the last bit of the show he managed to put on for her.

Kara blurred as she raced over and pulled him into her arms. "I can't beli-, I thought-, how can-?" She rambled trying to find the words to express her overwhelming disbelief, her words also blurred into Kryptonian as her mind blanked with shock. She ran her hands over his face, arms and chest as if testing to see if he was real and not a ghost. She finally threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly.

Loki gasped with pain as she squeezed him too hard. "You're stronger than before." He wheezed painfully.

Kara loosened her grip, took half a step back but kept her hands on his shoulders, her eyes never leaving his face. "You're alive!" Loki accessed her storage space with his magic and made her battle armor faded away to her regular Supergirl armor as she took in his face. Her hands reaching for his cheeks, "You're really here." She stared into his eyes, tears filling her own. Her hands never leaving him, grasping at him to make sure he was real.

Loki's expression softened as he looked back at her. "I am here." He promised her. "I would never abandon you willingly." He raised his hand to the back of her head. He pulled her forward gently so he could kiss her forehead softly. He began to whisper reassurances to her softly as he let her cry on his shoulder and tucked her as close as he could manage with his ribs as delicate as they were.

There were so few he loved and trusted, and Kara had managed to be one of those few. Her grief was written on her face, and unlike Thor, he knew she had missed him by her reaction to the sight of him. No one could fake this level of emotion, not even him. Despite himself he felt warmth spread through his chest, and he allowed himself a few moments to bathe in the feeling. He had enough control this far from the scepter to indulge in a moment of pure acceptance and love. He sighed in contentment, embracing the moment.

Kara cried and held on to him, scared he'd disappear if she let go. Her sobs were heartbreaking for the others to hear. Thor looked down in shame at his own actions since he had barged in and grabbed Loki before throwing him out of the Quinjet. He wished his own reunion had been as warm, or caring. He loved his brother, but that feeling was one Loki didn't seem to return. He quietly recalled Mjölnir to his hand. He missed the point that he had approached Loki with anger on his face, rather than the warmth, disbelief, and love Kara had.

Tony and Steve quietly walked over to Thor as they witnessed the scene. Steve's ears were already healing as they approached him. Tony was watching the scene with torn loyalties. He was happy for Kara that her favorite person was alive, but he was miffed that Loki was the bad guy he'd had to arrest. Until now he had been hoping it was an imposter. There was no mistaking Kryptonese. The language was so foreign sounding that even her real name was almost lost in the jumble of sounds. He'd only heard it because he knew Kara was her name.

"She's your sister, right?" Steve asked somewhat quietly, trying to break the ice with the strong Asgardian they had been fighting only moments before. Steve was trying to establish what he was seeing. The reunion between Kara and Loki looked more like a reunification of lovers than of lost family members. Loki was supposed to be under arrest, not cuddling with the most powerful being on the planet. The display was making him nervous on two levels. The idea that Supergirl was so much more powerful than them all and might side with Loki worried him. The second reason was the level of public display of emotion, that level of intimacy was not done in his time.

"Aye, a fosterling," Thor explained quietly not wanting to disrupt the scene in front of him, no matter how much he wished he could be a part of it. "By Asgardian Law, she is as close as non-blood can be to being a family member."

Without looking away from Kara and Loki, Tony nodded his head sideways to Steve as he explained, "She's an 'honorary Princess of Asgard', and an ambassador to 'Midgard' from Asgard since she's the closest to what we are that they have." Tony quickly explained to Steve, using his fingers to air quote. "She crashed there first before coming here a few years ago." Steve nodded quietly. He'd read the file, but it had been hard to believe, and scarce on details. He hoped that Tony and Thor would be able to elaborate.

"I hate to break up the pity party down there, but we need to get Loki to SHIELD." Black Widow's voice came over the link in Tony and Steve's ears.

"We'll come up, just give us a moment." Tony told her. Turning to Thor he pointed his finger curtly and gesturing up to the approaching Quinjet, "She said you can fly with that hammer of yours, Point Break."

Thor nodded slightly confused by the nickname the tiny metal man had called him. "Yes. Do all of you fly as well?" He questioned politely.

Steve shook his head. "I only fall." He answered bashfully.

"I'll take you up." Tony told him with a touch of authority, sounding almost like a commanding military officer than a civilian, even to Steve who had worked with both. "Blue's not going to let anyone else handle Reindeer Games over there." He said as he looked over to see the two still closely entwined. Unlike Steve, he knew the two were close, but not together, though even he was startled to see how close they were. Only Thor seemed to find the affection normal, or at least he wasn't reacting to it. Tony was chalking it up to cultural differences at the moment, but he was having some doubts about it. "So yeah, we need to get this show on the road."

"Fury isn't going to like her being brought along." Widow reminded them over the link.

"Yeah well, you tell her she's not invited. I dare you." Tony smirked at the thought. "But wait until I can start filming that shit; 'Death of a Widow' I think I'll call it." Widow didn't respond to his dare.

"Where have you been?" Kara finally managed to whisper in his ear as she held onto him, still speaking in Kryptonese.

"I was thrown into the Void." He answered her softly, his mouth near her ear, he took in the scent of the ozone and slight flowery scent of her hair. It helped to brace him against his memories. "I fell for a long time before I managed to escape through the Tesseract. I never meant to leave you Kara. I meant to keep my word to you. I'd never have let you believe I was dead… If I could have contacted you I would have." He assured her sincerely.

"The last opening!" She gasped as she grasped at his waist tightly. "You came through the wormhole from unknown space!" She pulled back just enough to look into his eyes.

Loki nodded stiffly from pain. "I felt the Tesseract sending a message through space and used my seiðr to reached for the energy when it came through where I was. When I found the cube in a place with humans, I took it and fled when they attacked me." He explained softly, trying not to gasp in pain. If she knew of his pain she would want to do a full exam of him, and then she might discover the mind link to The Other. He couldn't let that happen, the control wouldn't let that happen, it would protect itself. He could feel the scepter was getting closer, and he only had a minute or so left before he'd lose more of his control.

"You knew they had it." She mumbled from his chest. He sighed and closed his eyes with a hidden pained expression, holding back a wave of regret. Yes he had known. He'd been with Kara when they had first discovered the humans had found the cube.

"I am sorry, Kara. I am sorry for everything that must happen." He whispered while he could. It was the only warning he could give her. Anything else and he risked losing more of himself when the scepter's control exerted itself. It would stop him from revealing anything else and might strike out at her to protect the plan if she knew too much. He had hoped she would stay away, not find out what was happening until it was too late to interfere. It was dangerous to have her here. Still, it was good to see her.

Kara stiffened as she heard the warning. "What must happen, Loki?"

Loki could feel the scepter coming into full strength range, and closed his emotions off so they didn't leak back through the link. "I mean to become King of Midgard." He told her calmly, as if talking about the weather.

Kara shook her head. This made no sense and was confusing her. "You can't." She looked back over at the others. "Is that why they are here, to stop you?"

"I do suppose that is their intent," Loki smirked evilly, "at least when they arrested me for taking something we needed." Pain shot through his head as a warning. He backed down from it so it wouldn't exert itself more.

Kara felt herself shiver at the darkness in his smile. Something was wrong with his posture, eyes, and his demeanor. Physically everything screamed this was Loki. He knew Kryptonese. He knew her. His body, while thinner was his. But something else was screaming this was wrong.

"I love you Loki, but you are not My Loki. I will have to stop you." She told him sadly as she took a step back and stared at his chest, it was too hard to look at his eyes. She felt like she was betraying him. It ripped her heart apart to say those words, and that step was one of the hardest she'd ever taken.

Loki winced at her words but let her step back as the voice in his head told him to gain control of her when it was time. He would need her if he was to succeed on Midgard the voice decided, Loki had no choice but to agree. He winced again at the command to take her will from her when he regained the scepter.

Tony noticed Kara had stopped crying, and had stepped back. When he was finally able to hear their quietly spoken words to each other he could tell they were still not speaking in 'All Speak'. She'd explained that the times she spoke English with a stronger accent, it meant she was using the magical language so all listening could understand her. She seemed to be much calmer, and Loki was wincing at her words.

"Hate to break up the reunion party, but Loki is has a prior engagement with SHIELD, and we need to get him to there, pronto." Tony called to her.

Kara looked down at her feet and nodded softly. "I know." She yelled just loud enough so they could hear her over the sound of the approaching Quinjet engines. She grabbed Loki's arm and marched them both over to the others.

"We are ready." She replied blankly. Steve Tony and Thor all had matching looks of concern, but they all prepared themselves for the lift up to the Quinjet's back hatch.