Chapter Text
The plan, ultimately, was simple. Clint liked simple, because simple plans were the easiest to fix when everything went to shit.
It followed what Clint had long ago nicknamed a stealth-speed-scream progression. Part one was stealth, breaking into the prison while attracting as little attention as possible. Once they'd found the prisoners, they'd get to part two, speed, where some stealth was abandoned to move the prisoners as quickly as possible. When their cover eventually got blown, part three kicked in. The more screaming, flashing chaos they could create, the more they could confuse their numbers. Guards, especially in a prison, were much less likely to try to intervene with a break-in if they thought they were outflanked and outnumbered.
The first part went off without a hitch, even though it looked utterly bizarre to Clint's human senses. When pressed for a simplified explanation, Strange had said simply, "I'm going to knock on the door. Loki will show me where to open the door, and when I open it, we'll put big doorstoppers on both sides."
"Probably a little too oversimplified," Steve admitted, but at least that made more sense than trying to decipher the chalked runes, melting candles, and other oddities that had been arranged at one end of an empty hanger bay.
Whatever it was, it seemed to work well enough. The door opened into a dark, narrow space that was unmistakably a prison cell. When Steve stepped through, a figure melted out of the darkness. Silently, Loki gestured for Steve to grab one side of the cell door, while he took the other, and the entire door slid silently out of its frame. They set it down as quietly as possible and the stealth party funneled out into the corridor, the two magic-users remaining behind to maintain the portal.
Clint had to admit, it was a little cool to be on an alien spaceship. There weren't any windows to prove it, but his senses were sharp enough that he noticed a slight shift in the pull of gravity when he stepped through the magical doorway. The prison was tight and crowded, and all kinds of crazy pipes and wires were running along the walls and ceiling. His excitement diminished when he realized that the dim light was concealing a significant amount of filth and grime. They were getting close to part two now, so he picked up his pace.
It didn't take long for them to find prisoners. No one reacted to English (or any of the other Earth-based languages Nat tried), but the language of someone unlocking your cell and silently gesturing down the corridor was fairly universal. In the dim light, Clint couldn't tell how humanoid the prisoners were, but growing up in a circus had taught him not to judge or stare at physical appearances. Barnes kept an eye on their surroundings, allowing Clint to focus on opening locks as quietly as possible. The soft clank of Steve's boots on the catwalk below told him that Cap and Nat were similarly engaged, and the shuffle of feet from the opposite direction told him that the other teams were hard at work, as well.
Part two didn't last long, because it never did. When the distant toll of an alarm bell echoed through the corridors, Clint turned to Barnes and nodded. "Your turn." With one of his strange, curled expressions, Barnes moved down the corridor and began simply ripping locks apart with his metal hand. Within half a minute the ship was filled with a cacophony of sound as the various heroes ripped, blasted, and kicked in doors, locks, and control panels.
Clint's eyes had adjusted to the dim light by the time the guards showed up, so he spent a few extremely cathartic minutes filling alien guards with arrows as the chaos escalated around him.
And then his ears popped and a rush of air nearly knocked him over and he started cursing because of course someone had blown a hole in the goddamn spaceship.
A smaller alien nearly flew past him. He snatched it out of the air and pressed it into the hands of a much larger, bulkier alien who seemed to be doing just fine. That had been the last cell in this corridor, so Clint kept to the end of the line, shooting down the stray guard who was somehow doing just fine in the increasingly howling wind. As he approached the cell with the portal he caught sight of Thor, Steve, and several other of the wide-shouldered types anchoring smaller prisoners and ushering them through the cell door.
"Go!" Steve shouted when he saw Clint, and Clint didn't argue or pretend he was fine. He was barely moving under his own power in the wind force. He realized abruptly that there must be multiple holes in the ship, and the reason there was still any air at all was because it was being sucked from Earth through the magical doorway. Logic and physics said that the door should be impassable, nothing but a wall of wind, but it wasn't.
When he'd made it through the portal and turned around to help the next person through, he realized why. The mages had been making changes to their spell on the fly, and apparently changes on the fly required blood, because they each had nearly identical self-induced knife wounds and were dripping onto their runes.
Clint didn't have time to think, just joined the bucket line that was carrying people instead of water through to the safety of Earth, eventually helping to drag the heroes themselves through the increasing pressure.
Thor was at the very end. At first he refused to go through without his brother. Clint could hear Loki and Strange screaming over the wind, reminding the thunder god that Loki couldn't drop the spell on his end until he was the last one left. So Thor came through, hovering on the Earth side of the portal, and it was just Loki.
There was the sound of an explosion, muffled through the roaring wind, and suddenly the vacuum effect tripled, spell alterations apparently useless. Everyone within eighty feet of the portal was bowled over. Clint reacted on instinct, firing a grappling arrow at one of the massive steel beams supporting the hanger roof. As it looped around and caught, he held on to the line with one hand and grabbed Lang, who had just lost his own grip and was about to fly past.
Out of the corner of his eye, Clint saw that Loki had only been kept from blowing away because Thor had reached back through the portal to grab his hand. They were shouting over the wind, words that Clint didn't have time to make out.
And then Thor was pushed back into the hanger, the portal vanished, and the howling wind stopped.
Things were really, really, REALLY not okay.
Technically the general battle plan was on track. Once the prisoners were freed and confirmation of that spread through various networks, Thanos' legions and plans began to fragment. Only a few truly loyal groups were still with him. In battles large and small across the globe, the invasion was being pushed back, or at the very least, the lines were holding. Thor was upset, but focused. Clint refused to think about Loki and focused on the war.
And then the bastard took Tony in a trap that Clint had to admit was disgustingly clever.
None of the Avengers wanted to rest. Suddenly it didn't matter that Tony's stubbornness and genius had gotten them into trouble more than once. He was still Tony Stark and his absence was like a great big hole in the world. So Clint, like everyone else, pushed himself and pushed himself for two days until Nat told him to go to sleep before she kicked him in the head (again).
Clint didn't normally dream when he was this exhausted, and he'd never gotten the hang of lucid dreaming, so he knew something was weird from the start. Also, the aurora-colored road running through the vastness of space lit by a million intensely shining stars was definitely not the kind of imagery Clint's subconscious usually provided. He was standing on said road, at the perfect vantage point to observe a massive nebula of stars and planets that looked oddly like a tree.
"Finally." Clint turned and okay, Loki, this was more familiar. Loki frequented his nightmares a lot. Although in his nightmares the alien prince usually looked more cruel and crazed, and this Loki looked a lot more like the one he'd seen in the conference room almost a week ago. Also he looked worried and kind of impatient. And there was a significant lack of death or destruction or the blue of mind-control. So, all in all, still a really weird dream.
And then it got weirder.
"Mark what I will show you with the greatest care, Agent. I will not be able to dream-walk again." Loki reached out to the stars and pulled something Clint couldn't see. The stars blurred around them like an old sci-fi warp speed effect. When the world stopped moving around them, they were standing in the prison ship. The light was slightly worse than the last time Clint had been here, and it was empty of prisoners.
Mostly. Clint turned around and saw Stark chained up in a cell. There were clear signs of injuries, and the inventor was unconscious, but he was also alive. Instinctively, Clint's hands went to the cell door, but they passed straight through it. Right, he was dreaming. This wasn't real.
"The ship has moved, but I know not where. I will show you what I can." Loki gestured again and the cell block warped out on them. Outside the ship, Clint realized what Loki meant. The ship wasn't hovering the depths of space anymore. It was, very clearly, underwater. From this angle he could see a number of large holes that had been hastily patched and a massive gap in the hull that seemed to be covered by some kind of force field while it was repaired from the inside.
Another warp transition, and at first Clint didn't know what he was looking at, a white wall full of black lines, but he tried to commit it to memory just the same, in case this crazy dream was really some kind of communication. About halfway through his careful inspection he realized it looked a bit like a topography map of a plain at the base of a really large mountain, except no, reorient, not a mountain, a shoreline, and the seabed beyond. Which meant that the small narrow thing over there was the ship. He got the feeling Loki had seen the image but not close enough or for long enough to focus on labels or a map key. Fortunately, as an agent, Clint had a lot of practice and training in rapid memorization, so he committed the lines to memory as best he could and then everything warped again.
This time, however, they landed in Clint's own kitchen. The combination of Loki, beat up or not, standing in his kitchen in his house with his family possibly just out of sight made Clint's stomach roll and his fingers reach for a bow that wasn't there. This. This was his nightmares. A decade later, Loki still remembered Clint's secrets and could use them as he wished.
Oddly, Loki's expression seemed understanding.
"I apologize, Agent, but of the two I could reach, my brother was too obvious. His mind might be searched." Seemingly out of nowhere he produced a large wooden box covered in carven runes. "And symbolism is important in dreams." Loki lifted several tiles from the kitchen floor as if they'd never been mortared down, revealing a space that shouldn't exist under the floor, and placed the box in it before replacing the tiles. "I would not suggest opening that. Should I perish, it will remove itself."
Then they were back on the aurora road again. For a moment, Loki looked like he wanted to say something more, but then he turned and began walking along the path, and Clint woke up.
The next few hours were a blur of people, questions, and images. Clint thanked every lucky star he had for the careful, patient way Wanda helped him with the barest touch of her powers, focusing his memory and keeping the images clear and fresh as he sketched them and compared it to uncountable miles of coastline.
Ironically, Clint never missed Tony more. Everyone was looking at him with worry or concern or pity. The Avengers were walking on eggshells. He needed Tony there to crack jokes, to give Clint something to focus on besides fear and uncertainty. Tony would probably whistle "Once Upon a Dream" until Natasha elbowed him in the gut and pretended it was an accident. Maybe he still would, once they found him. Clint held on to that thought.
Wanda could tell there was something strange in his mind, but her power was wild and untrained, as Strange commented when he showed up. "When this is all over, remind me to take you to Tibet," the doctor said to her. "I have to check with a few people first, but I doubt they'll say no." Wanda seemed apprehensive, but Clint hoped she'd take him up on it. She needed some time around people who understood her and appreciated her abilities instead of pointing her like a weapon.
For now, Strange sat Clint down in a chair and told him to close his eyes. Even though he couldn't see what was happening, there was that feeling in the air that Clint was learning to identify as supernatural power. Whatever Strange did, when he told Clint he could open his eyes, the air around them was filled with what looked like glowing orange runes. Except for right in front of him, where in the middle of a number of runes there hung the green outline of a box.
Strange gave a short, low whistle. "That's . . . clever, actually, really clever."
"What is it?" Wanda asked before Clint could.
"It's information. I'm pretty sure it's from his memories."
Clint's fingers clenched suddenly around the arms of his chair. "He put his brain in my head?"
"What? No, no," Strange shook his head. "That's the beauty of it. A whole personality, or a lifetime of memories, especially what that lifetime is measured in centuries, that would be a huge amount of energy. Not to mention that ripping it out would be dangerous and the body left behind would be defenseless. No, this is just the data points. All the emotions, all the context, that's still in his head. He'd still react instinctively to friend or foe. But if you asked him for someone's name, or where they lived, or any other fact, he wouldn't be able to tell you because it's all in here."
"In my head," Clint repeated, but he was already following the logical path of deduction. It was obvious to anyone who'd ever been behind enemy lines. "So he's probably being interrogated."
"That would make sense. In this state, he'd still react, it wouldn't appear that he'd done anything to himself, but he literally couldn't tell anyone anything."
Clint sighed. "And I'm guessing you can't take it out of my head."
Strange frowned. "It would be risky. This isn't my spell and I'm not familiar with this kind of magic. If the box breaks, you'll have a thousand years of someone else's knowledge in your head, and that could drive you insane."
"Why me?" Clint groaned rhetorically, but Strange answered him anyway.
"Any kind of magic is easier when you have a connection to the other person. Since he's been in your mind before, you were probably the easiest to contact. Plus, if you were captured, I doubt anyone would guess that there's anything unusual hidden in your mind."
"You're just a guy with a bow," said Wanda with a teasing grin. When Clint's expression didn't change, she added, "It's a good thing, now. You have no obvious secrets our enemy would want to know."
Clint was not going to think about how he didn't belong in this lineup of superheroes. That could wait until they rescued Tony. Maybe until after they beat down Thanos. Maybe longer than that.
This time, the rescue mission was going to be a lot harder.
For one, Strange couldn't get them in via portal. Something about wards and needing someone on the inside to break through the other end. He also seemed doubtful that, if they found Loki and he was in any shape to cast magic, he would be able to open a portal on the fly. So they'd travel from point A to point B the old-fashioned way.
The other big hitch was that, since the ship was on Earth, there was more chance of getting jumped by Thanos or his army on the way in or out. So most of the heavy hitters would be off creating a big, violent, messy distraction that would hopefully also take out some key targets but mostly take the attention off a quite break-in.
The third problem was that the ship was underwater. All Natasha had to do was murmur, "This is just like Gallipoli," and Clint and everyone else from SHIELD started making adamant arguments that it would be better to get the whole ship to the surface and not risk being trapped at the bottom of the ocean. Clint had done the Das Boot thing, and he'd like to not do that ever again.
He was also hoping that he could be on Team Ship Takeover, but Wanda had gently pointed out that, if Loki couldn't remember anyone specifically, he might not be cooperative. Clint had fought him but also temporarily had been on the same team. It was clear on her face that she hadn't wanted to say that, to remind Clint once again of a shitty, painful memory, but Clint knew she had a good point.
At least this way he'd be on Team Get Tony. He desperately needed that inappropriate levity back where it belonged, keeping Clint's little inner voices distracted and quiet.
Which was how, eight hours later, he was once again creeping through the dark-lit hallways of the repurposed prison ship. Stealth-speed-scream, he thought to himself, only this time it was Natasha's team that would be doing the screaming as they took control of the ship.
The brief glimpse of a cell had given no indication of where, in the massive cellblocks, to specifically look. Clint could have ordered them to split up, but since it was just the three of them and the ship was likely full of guards, he didn't want to take that chance. In front of him was one of the Defenders, a guy in an honest-to-god devil outfit but who could apparently see perfectly well in the dark, so Clint was biting back costume commentary. Bucky was just behind him, heavily armed but still walking with the lack of noise that came with intensive training.
The demon guy, who went by Daredevil (Clint was biting his tongue hard enough to hurt), suddenly stopped. "One floor down. Take the ladder to the right. Five cells forward," he murmured.
"Which one?" Clint had to ask.
"Not human," was the reply, and Clint swallowed a sigh. Of course they'd find Loki first, that was his kind of luck.
The cell indicated wasn't the bars-and-sliding-doors kind, but the kind with solid metal and a food slot. It also had a big, serious lock. Clint did a quick overview. "I don't know if I have the tools to get this open quietly." He glanced at the red guy. "You've got super-senses, right?"
Daredevil smiled. "Kind of."
"Can you listen to the lock? Like a stethoscope?"
It turned out his hearing was exponentially better than any lock-breaking sensor Clint had ever used. He got the lock open in forty-five seconds. "You passed up a great career as a safecraker," he quipped as he slowly swung the door open.
All joking quickly died when they saw the occupant within. Loki looked even worse than before, if that was possible. He hung from the ceiling by his wrists with his toes just touching the floor, though on closer inspection, Clint realized that it wasn't just the wrists. The cord, some kind of metal rope that was glowing slightly, had been looped and knotted in a manner similar to what Clint had seen once too often on Earth. It was a kind of strangulation torture: weight rested on the wrists but also on a tightening loop around the neck, so that unless the subject stood on their toes, their air would be restricted or even cut off. But the strain of standing on one's toes and keeping one's hands held high in the air was intense, so eventually the subject would weaken and, essentially, choke themselves.
Well. That explained the bruising they'd seen before.
"Loki," Clint whispered several times in increasing volume, with no response. "Bucky," Clint said instead. Fortunately he didn't have to explain torture methods to the former assassin. Bucky looped his arms around the prisoner and carefully lifted him up, giving the line enough slack for Clint to untie it from the ceiling, and then from around Loki's wrists and neck.
When it was completely removed, the glow faded and Loki stirred. Magic, Clint figured. "Loki?"
Eyes opened. Loki coughed, then clapped his hand over his mouth instinctively to muffle his coughing. With his other hand he pushed at Bucky's arms, so the soldier let go, and while Loki swayed, surprisingly, he did stay standing. Clint uncapped a water flask and held it out. When half of it was gone, Loki handed it back, no longer coughing. Instead he was watching them carefully.
"You are not foe," he said in a hoarse whisper. "But not friend, I believe."
"It's an enemy-of-my-enemy kind of thing," Clint found himself saying, then mentally slapped himself. He was supposed to be convincing the man to cooperate. "I've got your stuff in my head."
Loki frowned, but then nodded. "Then I must at the very least trust you in this escape."
"Can you walk?" Clint asked.
Loki gave him a tight smile. "If we are escaping this prison, I can do more than walk."
That should have been physically impossible given what they'd just seen, but Clint wasn't going to get into an argument about alien physiologies. He had different priorities. "There's another prisoner here, a man, human, brown hair -"
"And an inability to cease speaking?"
Clint smiled. "That one." If Tony was still babbling, that was a very good sign.
"I believe I know where he is." Loki moved toward the door where Daredevil had been keeping watch. "This way."
They moved deeper into the ship, four silent shadows on thin catwalks. After a minute, the muffled echoes of banging and violence began to reverberate through the pipes around them, and then a familiar alarm went off. The other team was right on time, but now Clint's group had to hurry. With things having moved from stealth right to scream, they ran down one corridor and two sets of stairs without caring about the noise they made.
Half a dozen guards were attempting to come up the stairs at the same time, but between Hawkeye, Daredevil, and the Winter Soldier, six grunts were barely a speedbump on their way down.
Clint was definitely grateful that they'd found Loki, however, because he realized at the third turn that the ship was considerably bigger than anyone had realized and that trying to find Stark on their own would have taken hours. They'd long since left the cellblocks and the rooms they passed now were full of dark, disturbing shapes. Clint decided he didn't want to know what this part of the ship had been used for. If Loki hadn't opened a portal in the center of the cellblock area during the first break-in, Clint doubted they could have gotten all the prisoners safely through this maze.
Finally Loki led them to another securely locked door. Clint glanced at the lock, considered the time it would take to pick, and gestured at Bucky instead. Three swings of a solid metal fist bent the door and frame enough to render the lock useless.
Clint had braced himself this time but still shivered at the sight of Tony Stark, the most confident man on Earth, torn and bloody and horribly vulnerable. He was secured to a heavy metal table by multiple cuffs and chains and bolts and locks. Even smashing half of them open by force, it felt like freeing Tony took far too long. There was a pulse and breath, and no visible permanent injuries, but no sign of returning to consciousness, so Bucky simply picked him up in a fireman's carry.
"What now?" Loki asked.
"Up. The others are trying to bring this ship to the surface. We just have to get to a top-facing exit," Clint explained.
Loki frowned for a moment, then nodded. "The quickest path will have the most guards," he warned.
"Fine with me," Clint said. He was itching to put a few arrows in these bastards.
There were a lot of stairs between them and the top. Guards popped up more and more often, and now they were playing defense, trying to shield Tony from harm, which put all of them, especially Bucky, at a disadvantage.
They'd been cornered in a stairwell with enemies above and below when Loki spoke again. "I know we are not allies, but we must move faster." Before Clint could ask what that meant, Loki had knelt down and retrieved daggers from two fallen guards.
Clint felt his blood go cold. Without needing to think, he notched an arrow and took aim -
The pale figure had already swung himself over the bannister. Dashing back up the stairs put him behind the guards below Clint. There was the flash of a blade and two of the three shooters were down, giving Clint the opportunity to shoot the last one with the arrow he'd already drawn. Daredevil was already taking advantage of the opening and running forward to engage the guards above. It was over in less than a minute.
When Loki rejoined them, he handed Clint several arrow shafts. "Your magical quiver reuses these, yes?"
Clint didn't draw a second arrow on Loki. Fear for Tony (for all of them, really) overrode his increasingly muddled feelings about their former adversary. Another competent fighter meant they'd get out of there that much faster, and they did. Even though he looked like Clint could knock him over with a feather, Loki managed to do as much damage as any of them to the guards that remained in their way.
They were almost at the top when the ship rocked suddenly. "We've surfaced," said Bucky, who had clearly been on more submersibles than the rest of them.
"We're almost there," Loki replied. He was right: thirty seconds later they were climbing into what had once been an airlock, with an outer hatch above them.
Clint glanced at the control panel. "This is definitely not English."
Loki examined it carefully, then flipped a lever. "That was the power, I believe." The hatch was still closed.
Clint was about to start pushing buttons randomly when Daredevil placed his hand against the wall. "The way this ship works, would power be hot or cold?"
"Cold," Loki supplied.
Red gloved hands followed an invisible path along the metal wall that ended at a wheel on one side of the control panel. "That one."
It turned only a fraction before the horrible sound of grinding metal filled the airlock. "It's rusted shut," Bucky said as he examined the doors. "I don't think anyone's used this since the ship hit the water." He put Stark down and tried to pry it open himself, but he had no leverage, no gap between the door and the wall.
Clint's mind raced. They couldn't fail now, not when they had Tony and they were so tantalizingly close to fresh air. He ran his remaining trick arrowheads through his mind, trying to come up with a solution. "Where're the A-listers when you need to smash things?" he muttered, because it was the kind of thing Tony might say, and he felt a little cheered when Bucky gave him a half-grin.
Loki was staring at the controls, frowning. "I can open it," he said. Then he looked at Clint. "But it will require the magic I am using to remain conscious and mobile."
Oh. That explained some things. "We're not going to leave you behind," he replied to the unspoken fear. "Your brother would kill me." But that really wasn't it, anymore. Even if Thor wouldn't knock his head off, Clint knew, instinctively, that he wasn't going to leave Loki behind. And he really, really didn't want to think about that right now.
He didn't have to. Whether or not Loki remembered his brother, or trusted Clint, or was following blind instinct, he seemed satisfied with Clint's words. He placed his hands on the wheel, which glowed green and spun rapidly, forcing the hatch open with an earsplitting shriek of metal. Then he dropped like a stone. Forewarned, Clint caught him before he hit the floor.
Five people emerged into the sunlight, and then the Quinjet was there, and Natasha and the others, and Clint could stop thinking and curl up on a bench and let his mind go blissfully blank while the rescued prisoners became other people's problems.
Clint had a whole five days to not think about Loki. The war with Thanos came to its inevitable climax. The assembled heroes of Earth and the universe saved the day. Then Clint slept for about sixteen hours.
Natasha was there when he woke up.
"You don't have to come," Clint said, but he already knew she would, so they walked together out of the Avengers barracks and across the lawn to the main building and the medical wing.
Thor was there, of course. When he hadn't been needed out in the field he'd been watching over his brother. Loki had only woken up after Thanos' defeat, and while his expression was still wary, the smile on Thor's face told Clint that Loki's instinctive reaction to his adopted brother had given the big guy reason to be hopeful about their relationship.
Still, it was bizarre, seeing that pale, angled face consider the two SHIELD agents with wary curiosity.
For a moment, Clint actually wanted to lie. Say that something had happened and they couldn't give him back his memories. Because damnit, without all the history, without the mistrust and the atrocities, Loki was . . .
No. Not thinking. No thinking. "Okay," he said. "Do what you gotta do."
Loki stood smoothly and crossed the room. Two cool fingertips pressed against Clint's temples. A vision of his kitchen flashed through his mind and there was the briefest sensation of an inch inside his brain. Then Loki stepped back, green eyes blinking and widening and Clint ran.
Well, he only ran into the empty room on the other side of the hall. But yeah, he ran.
Natasha followed him, of course, and closed the door behind them, and said, "You want to talk about it?" and it wasn't really a suggestion because she was using her you-have-to-talk-about-it tone.
"I just didn't want to see that," Clint said uselessly. "Damnit."
"Didn't want to see what?" Oh, she was going to make him say it.
"I can't . . ." Clint swallowed hard. "There's the guy in my nightmares, the god with a scepter leading an army out of the sky, and I hate him, I'm fucking terrified of him. And there's the guy who went undercover and got tortured for intel and two prison breaks, who's smart and efficient and defensive but it's just like . . ."
"Me," Nat said, with no trace of self-loathing. She's clearly been thinking about this as well. "Or Wanda. Bucky. Even Lang."
"I know, I know, me and my damn lost causes, right?" Clint laughed, shaky and uncertain.
"You're good at that. You see people and you don't see what they've done. You see how they're hurting. What they went through to get to where they are." If it had been someone else, Clint would have scoffed, but he and Nat didn't bullshit each other. If she said something to him it was because she meant it. "Don't be mad at yourself for that."
"But I can't deal with this, Nat!" Clint pointed at the door. "I can't forgive him."
"No one's saying you have to."
"But I want to. In my head. But I can't." Clint knew he wasn't making any sense, but fortunately Nat was fluent in Clint.
"Listen to me," she said, walking up to him. "You are a good person. Shut up, no, you are," she cut him off before he could protest. "Hating people isn't what you do. That's why it hurts so much." She tapped him on the chest over his heart. "You don't have to forgive him. You don't have to stop being scared. You've been through too much. But you don't have to hate him, either."
Clint fought against that idea instinctively: how could he not hate Loki after all that had happened? But once he asked the question, he answered it.
Nat was right. He didn't hate easily. And now that he'd seen the other side of the man, someone with whom he could not only sympathize but also empathize, understanding and relating to and even relying on in a fight, he couldn't hold on to hate.
He took a deep breath. "I hate being a good guy."
"No you don't," Natasha said, and she was right. "We should check back in on them."
"Yeah, we should," Clint admitted.
In the other room, Thor was standing hesitantly on one side of the room, looking very much like he wanted to reach out to his adopted brother but feared the gesture wouldn't be appreciated. Loki stood on the other side, eyes fixed far into the distance.
Clint had expected that, with his knowledge returned, Loki would put on that mask again, the literal illusion as well as the arrogance and cold superiority. He certainly looked more confident and collected than he had only minutes ago, but when his gaze snapped to Clint and Nat, he didn't smirk or sneer.
"Agent Barton," he said, and Clint honestly didn't know what to read in Loki's tone of voice. "I entered your mind without permission. Where I hail from, this is considered inexcusable."
That was about a hundred light-years away from anything Clint had been expecting. "Um. Well. I get why."
"I had hoped you would. Still. You kept safe my memory box. Moreover you had ample opportunity to repay me for my prior actions toward you, and instead you aided in my rescue. I am not so stripped of honor that I would ignore this." He seemed to stand a little straighter, looked Clint in the eye, and said, "If there is something in my power to give to you in gratitude, you need but name it."
Clint stared for a good ten seconds in surprise and disbelief. He saw Thor about to speak, but Natasha must have given him a look or gesture from the doorway, because he closed his mouth again.
"Okay," Clint said finally. Revenge had crossed his mind but then crossed right out of it again. Nothing was going to fix what had happened in the past, but there was one thing from that nightmare that Clint could change. "Everything you got from my head, when you were in it. I want you to put it in a box and then throw away the box and the key. Or smash it. Whatever will make it gone."
Loki blinked several times. "This could be done. I would not be able to remove everything, but I can certainly destroy everything I could not have learned without entering your mind. You are aware that I will not be able to prove to you what I have done?"
Clint nodded. "You said this is about honor. Wouldn't be very honorable if you lied."
Loki gave him a thin smile, but there was no malice behind it, only a sort of tiredness. "I require a container of thin crystal or glass. It need not be large."
Nat turned back into the corridor. "One minute." While she ran off, Loki sat on the bed and closed his eyes in concentration. She returned in less than the promised minute with a glass vial and a rubber stopper she'd probably gotten from the medical lab down the hall.
Loki held his hand out without opening his eyes, so Natasha placed both vial and stopper in it. A few seconds later, the vial began to glow, filling itself with what Clint could only describe as a blue-green cloud. It took about fifteen seconds to completely fill the vial, at which point Loki quickly inserted the stopper and twisted it down to seal. The vial stopped glowing, but the cloud remained.
He opened his eyes and stood, also bringing up with him the thin hospital pillow. With a flick he removed the pillow itself from its case and dropped the vial into the white cloth pouch. Then he took hold of the cloth, and the vial inside, in both hands, and snapped it in two.
Clint quickly realized that the cloth wasn't just to hold the broken glass: it blackened as if it had been set on fire and emitted a strong green smoke. As the smoke dissipated, Clint thought he heard a snatch of a voice pass his ears, but then it cleared completely and he wasn't sure if he'd just imagined the sound.
Loki tossed the burnt bundle into the trash. "It is done."
It felt like a weight Clint had forgotten he was carrying dissipated with the smoke. He'd had Loki in his head twice now, but there was nothing left to prove it. His secrets were his own again. He couldn't betray anyone any more than he already had.
And, wow, Clint had done that. He'd done the right thing, and then gotten Loki to do the right thing. He felt . . . heroic.
"Cool," he said out loud, and held out his hand.
And after a moment, Loki took it.