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“Sir? Can I ask you something?”
Loki was somewhat slow to respond, slow to acknowledge the presence of Clint Barton beside him. In moments of quiet like this, he tried to make it a point to keep his mind open to the presence of all his servants, all his soldiers. It let him gather at least a general impression of how they were faring, what they were thinking, what problems were arising that might soon need his attention. In turn, this also gave him the chance to reinforce his influence over them, and by extension their cohesion as one unified whole.
But trying to pay attention to the many could sometimes leave him unaware of the few. It was exhausting, honestly, in a way he could barely let himself admit in the privacy of his own head. Not least because there was no privacy in his head, not really, not anymore. Not only was the Other watching, but a door could be opened both ways, a channel could be traversed in both directions. As he was in their minds, so they were also in his. Dozens of indistinct background murmurs could still combine to become a deafening hum.
In moments like this, he had too many limbs and too many eyes and all of them were so, so tired. They hadn’t slept in days, because he hadn’t slept in longer. The light of the Tesseract was enough to keep you going, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t enough, even though it had to be.
There was a mental image that kept dancing at the back of his mind – Mother, Frigga, at the breakfast table, scraping jam too thinly over bread. He wondered sometimes if it was her attempting to reach out to him again. He wondered sometimes if he was going insane. But mostly, he was diverting energy he didn’t have to keep his thoughts clear, because none of them needed the distraction, certainly not a distraction born from his own persistent, damnable weakness.
“…sir? Are you all right?”
Speaking of weakness…
His thoughts were spinning in sick, drunken circles. There would be no verbal communication possible, like this, and Barton of all people was most likely to come to him with a serious problem. The consummate soldier, the consummate warrior, Loki knew that he had no reason not to trust that Barton wouldn’t keep his eyes peeled for trouble.
And so, reluctantly, almost as much in dread of facing the world as of even potentially losing control, Loki pulled himself back, folded himself up. He looked up at Barton out of his eyes and his eyes alone, and his stomach twisted in dread to see the concern with which the archer was regarding him.
“Fine,” he replied, tersely. Like this, it took barely a second to play the last minute or so back through his head, and remember what the question had been in the first place. Inclining his head, he added: “And you may. Though I can’t guarantee an answer.”
“I understand, sir. It’s just…” Here Barton cast a look around that seemed almost…anxious? They were still in the process of moving into the underground service tunnels that Loki had decided upon – through his many sources and many eyes – as the safest place to work, as close to their goal as possible. No one was looking towards them, everyone else was attentive to what work was assigned to them. Yet Barton still added, in an undertone: “…can we talk somewhere privately?”
Curious and more curious. Loki risked reaching out a tendril of thought to brush against Barton’s mind, seeking the source of this fresh concern, the reason it couldn’t be voiced here, aloud, in front of his many comrades. Barton recognized what he was doing already, and obligingly stilled his thoughts and lowered whatever mental defenses he still possessed.
Loki looked, and saw, and felt his heart stutter in his chest.
“Oh,” he said, quietly. Then, stubbornly ignoring the way his legs protested after so long sitting, after so little sleep, Loki got to his feet. “Yes, of course. Follow me.”
Barton did so, already looking hesitantly relieved. It was a pleasant enough sensation that echoed back across the connection that now existed more strongly between them, and for that if nothing else, Loki was glad he had allowed himself this.
They retired to a small alcove a little ways down the tunnel, where most of their equipment had first been laid to rest and most of their equipment had now been cleared from. Loki let his senses extend out a little further, enough to catch any of his other agents that might venture close and turn them aside for now.
With all of that done, there seemed no further reason to hesitate. Loki folded his arms and leaned himself back against the wall, allowing himself that much support at least. He looked to Barton, and said aloud:
“You're worried for your family, aren't you, Barton?”
“Yes, sir. I'm sorry.”
“Why are you sorry? Why are you worried?” Loki let his voice take on a dangerous note, and drew some reassurance from the way his soldier almost visibly quailed beneath his gaze and the renewed force of his will. Barton was his most trusted – his favorite, in a way. Loki knew, however, that this meant he needed to be all the more alert for signs of dissension. It was the ones you trusted that were most likely to take advantage, after all. “Do you think I'll cause them harm, by any chance?”
The archer's eyes widened. He shook his head emphatically. “No, sir. Never. It's just...I was wondering if you could tell me, how far this is likely to spread. I just need to know if I should call my family, tell them to clear out. It wouldn't be the first time, sir. And I trust Laura. She'd know what to do, how to get away with the kids.”
Laura . It was a name with...memories, emotions, implications tied up in it like threads in a tapestry. Loki rolled it around his head, tasting it as Barton tasted it. Selfishly, he wrapped up that sense of love and trust away and stored it safely in a corner of his own mind, perhaps to keep him sane when it got bad later on. Because it would get bad later on. Wars always did.
Still, everything he was reading from Barton said that he was being sincere, and so Loki let himself settle once more. Barton felt that he was out of the woods, and did the same. Allegiances to those other than him could not be stamped out entirely, or if they could, he hadn't yet figured out how. So far, Loki had made up the difference with a delicate approach. He had supplanted Nicholas Fury in their minds as their leader, teased out from Barton the memories of the many atrocities committed by those agents he'd once held dear. He was a righteous man at heart, after all.
Yet Loki wasn't sure that he could turn Barton against his family. Those roots ran deep. At first, he toyed with the thought of doing away with them entirely, quietly. But...no. The mental link between them ran both ways, after all. What they knew, he knew, and he didn't have the energy to block all his thoughts from them. Not when they already needed to look to him for unspoken orders, to continue functioning as a coherent whole.
Perhaps there was some other way he could turn this revelation to his advantage. Loki smiled to realize it, before schooling his expression into something reassuring.
“You have no need to fear, Barton,” he said, and Barton believed him. “There's no hope that this will spread to your family. And if it did, I would see to their retrieval myself. “ He thought he might even mean that. After all, where would the harm be? “I know you must miss them terribly, but it would be best if you stayed away for now. You know how SHIELD operates, after all. The slightest trace that you've been in contact, and...”
“I know. I...wouldn't want to put the kids through that.” His shoulders squared slightly, from their usual easy slouch, and Barton added: “I've tried to spare them that life.”
Two more names – Cooper. Lila . The feelings tangled up there were intense enough to almost leave Loki dizzied, and it took him a moment to realize why.
He hadn't realized until now, or perhaps he had, and just hadn't appreciated what it meant until all of this hit him, all at once. Clint Barton was a father, one who would move the heavens themselves for his children. But more than that, he was a father who loved his children wholeheartedly and equally. His heart swelled and warmed just the same at perusing Lila's drawings on the refrigerator as it did while cooking lunch with Cooper. Loki knew that because he felt it, all of it, as his own, for one piercing moment.
He realized further that he had never yet experienced anything like that, from either of his fathers. Loki had forgotten long ago, if he'd ever realized it all, that this was something fathers could feel. He felt suddenly lonely and frustrated and envious of two mortal runts, and he was too tired to keep Barton from feeling it. His soldier took a slight step forward, seemed to make as though to reach out. But Loki shot him a glare, of the sort that could cut teak, and the archer subsided obediently...but not entirely.
“Sir...I don't pretend to know where you came from, or what brought you to this. But I just want you to know that I am proud and honored to serve you. We all are. I know I was Fury's man before, but I look at you, I look at all of this...” He gestured around, at the tunnels, at the machinery being assembled, at the people scurrying back and forth like devoted ants. “...and I know we're doing the right thing. Selvig might be a bit of a nut, but he's got one thing right. This is bigger than politics or nations. This is...truth. And I'm honored that you trusted me to be a part of it.”
Barton smiled, and only the cold blue light in his eyes gave any hint that it was anything but genuine. “I'll lay down my life for you, sir, without hesitation. But I just...want my family to have the chance to enjoy the good we do, when the dust settles. That's all I've ever wanted.”
Trust, loyalty, devotion . All things he had hoped beyond hope to inspire as a king, one day, even as he'd gained a reputation for lies and deceit instead. And look at you now , a cold little voice whispered at the back of his head, for his mind only. It sounded very much like his voice. This is the only “loyalty” you could ever inspire. The only loyalty you deserve , mewling wretch that you are.
“Rest assured, Barton,” Loki heard himself say, as though from far away. “They will. You were the first to join me, and you have been my most faithful. I will not forget, no matter what happens.”
He stepped forward, and Barton did not step back. Loki reached out with slightly unsteady fingers, resting one hand on Barton's arm, and moving the other hand to rest on the back of the archer's neck. When he bowed his head to rest his forehead against the soldier's, Barton leaned in a little to meet him.
“For your service, I swear to you, they will be honored under my rule. There will be no more need to hide them away on some lonely farmhouse. We will leave no enemies to stand against us, and so no enemies who could possibly harm them. They may live wherever they please, and you may live with them – open, unafraid, and free. They will want for nothing when this is done, Barton. They and any other children you might choose to bring into this world.”
“Thank you, sir.” His soldier's voice was low and rough with emotion, with gratitude, and something long-neglected and buried inside Loki twisted and whined with hunger for more.
He knew that he meant the words, and why shouldn't he? It would cost him nothing, and maybe...maybe it would even be allowed to mean something.
And for now, at least, it drew the ties that bound a little tighter.
* * *
It was a bit of a drive from New York back home, even accounting for the fact that he stayed up far later than he should have and drove far longer than he should have. Natasha had guessed that he would, however, and he kept himself awake with frequent check-ins. Most people didn’t know it to look at Nat, but she was a pretty good talker. That suited Clint fine, as he’d always been a pretty good listener. She’d stop by to visit in a couple of days – at this rate, she’d probably meet him there. But before that, there was paperwork to be done, and Natasha really the only one both in a fit state and sufficiently aware of SHIELD protocols to do it.
Beyond that, though, he needed the quiet, and he needed the speed. It was almost a ritual, by now. Just for a while, on his motorcycle, he could pretend that he was leaving all the shit he’d seen behind, speeding along and leaving it all in his rear-view mirror. It would catch up to him. It always did. But it would take a few weeks, and thus he could spare his family a few more weeks of trouble.
At least he knew they were okay. He’d called the second he’d been able to both keep his eyes open and find a phone, after the portal had closed. Laura had answered, and Clint had made damn sure to look right at the chained and – according to Thor, at least – warded Loki while she answered. That also meant they hadn’t been able to talk long, however. Just hearing her voice had felt like knots coming undone in his chest, but she’d also been crying, she’d seen the news, and yet again hadn’t realized he was alive until she’d heard his voice.
And if Laura was crying, Clint knew that he could be relied on to start crying, and he’d be damned if he would break in front of that thing now that he finally had a choice in the matter. So he’d reluctantly kept it short, and promised to be home soon.
“After all, that patio’s not going to last much longer.”
It was night by the time the farmhouse rose into view over the horizon, and Clint couldn't help but be grateful for that. It wasn't that he didn't want to see his kids. The need to see them was a physical ache in his chest, but equally powerful was the need to make sure he had his act together enough to be around them. A few hours with Laura, to make sure he had his feet, or even just a few hours of proper sleep in his own bed, would make all the difference. Clint knew as much from extensive past experience.
All the same, it felt as though every nerve in his body was straining forward by the time he'd sped down the last half-mile of driveway, before pulling at last to a stop in the open space below the porch steps. Part of him knew that Laura would be awake, since he'd called ahead and let her know about when he'd be in. Part of him hoped that she would be asleep.
But neither could he be disappointed when a light flicked on behind the door like a welcoming beacon, or when scant seconds later, he heard the sound of the chains and latch being undone before the front door and the screen door were both opened, and there she was.
Because she was still his wife, he saw her holding the spiked baseball bat she kept in the umbrella stand tucked just behind her as well, and Clint felt something in him relax a little further at the sight. If she had been able to retrieve that, then she had to be alone in the house. He'd been almost positive before – they'd exchanged their usual passwords over the phone – but it was nice to have that extra little bit of confirmation.
They looked at one another for a long moment, each assessing the other, each reassuring themselves. Clint was the first to break the silence with a smile and a step forward.
“Hi, honey. I'm home.”
She was smiling, even as she burst into tears and hastened down the steps to wrap him in a tight embrace, which he returned without hesitation.
They had a routine for this. Clint, quite frankly, enjoyed routine, and hoped that the world would stay in a place where he could get a little more of it. They retired together to the kitchen, and Laura made him sit while she went to work gathering the fixings for coffee, despite Clint's protests that he wanted to help. There were leftovers that needed eating up – there always were, with kids Lila and Cooper's age – and so something was transferred from a Tupperware container to a plate and then into the microwave. Today, it just so happened to be chicken and rice.
The only words exchanged were the bare necessities and easy pleasantries. To talk of other things now would be to let SHIELD encroach too far into the lives they'd carved out for themselves. Now was the time to re-establish those boundaries and re-draw those territories, before any other topics were broached. He asked how Cooper had done on his science test and how Lila's soccer practice was going, and mused on what materials were missing from the shed before he returned to work on the patio.
Those were all the words that were spoken between them, and it was a ritual as familiar as breathing after so many years. Yet this time, it slowly dawned on Clint that it all felt...hollow. Wrong. He was going through the motions because they had to be gone through, and yet he was taking nothing from them.
Laura noticed it, too, and she noticed it too quickly for him to redouble his efforts to hide it. He felt her lay a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently, before she spoke. “Did I leave the chicken too long?”
Are you okay?
No, he wasn't.
Clint sighed, long and tired, and rested his head in his hands. Laura's touch didn't falter, her hand sliding from his shoulder to rub little circles along his back.
“I screwed up,” he said, suddenly barely able to stand the sound of his own voice, suddenly barely able to stand the feel of his own skin when he let himself think that Loki had been crawling under there. “I screwed up, Laura, I was compromised, we might have to move, again, and Cooper's finally making friends...”
She sat, and he told her everything, as coherently as he could manage when so much of it still felt too much and not enough like a hideous nightmare. He left out most of the gruesome details of Loki's presence in his mind, hoping perhaps that giving such things less words would give them less power. Loki's power seemed to lay so heavily in words, after all.
When he was done, all was quiet, but slightly less oppressively so than it had been before.
“He was in my head, Laura. Looking around like I was just an interesting book. He told me to kill, and I did, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world, I almost killed Nat...”
“But he's gone?” Laura finally asked at last, gently giving his (bloodstained) hands a squeeze. “Your teammate, Thor...he took him back to whatever planet they came from?”
“Yeah. Judging by the look on his face, he wasn't about to let him out any time soon, either. But...he got out once. They both made it here. And fuck, Laura, that means there is a world of people like that. A world of gods, who don't mind coming down here and screwing around with us. What the hell are we to them? You didn't see him, Thor was flinging around lightning, and I'm just a guy with a bow and arrow...”
“You're not 'just' anything.” Laura spoke gently but firmly, leaning forward to press a kiss to his forehead like a promise sealed. “You're braver than both of them put together. You said it yourself – how easy must it be, to go out there and fight when you know you can sling lightning around?”
It wasn't much. But it was undeniably something, and so Clint managed a weak smile. “I don't know. Sometimes I wish we could have a little more 'easy' around here.”
“You bring it on yourself, dear. The screen door was fine as it was.”
“You say that now, but next time tornado season rolled around...”
Loki was far away. Loki was far away, and even if there was no such thing as a life sentence on Asgard, parole probably wouldn't come at any point in Clint's lifetime. Sometimes, all you could do was hope that it became someone else's problem. What mattered now was that he was here, he was home, and he could start to remember how to talk about other, better things.
Speak of the devil...
Clint heard footsteps on the stairs in the hall. He looked at Laura, and they shared a smile, and went out together to see Lila standing there in her pajamas, tousle-haired and sleepy-eyed. But the way she smiled at the sight of Clint just made the world feel like it was back on its axis.
“Daddy?”
Clint knelt down and held out his arms, and Lila came scampering in for a hug that he returned fiercely. “Hey, kiddo. I was hoping this would be a surprise.”
“It's okay. I already knew you'd be back soon.”
The words themselves should have been innocent enough – maybe she'd been watching the news, maybe Laura had told them both that he was on his way home. And yet something, some lingering sense of dread, or maybe just echoes of how he knew his keeper (master) had thought, made the hairs on the back of Clint's neck stand on end. He darted a glance up at Laura, and saw that she looked equally puzzled. She'd wanted it to be a surprise too, perhaps.
“Oh yeah?” Clint asked his daughter, keeping his voice deliberately light. “And how'd you figure that?”
“When Auntie Nat came to visit me.”
Clint went cold. Cold and numb and still, and he knew that Lila was still speaking, and Laura was speaking to her, but he could barely hear, couldn't convince his arms to move, his ears were ringing and his head, oh his head...
“Sweetie, Daddy's still very tired. He's had a long night. We're just going to have something to drink, and then we'll be going to bed, too. Say good night, now, then off you go.”
Dimly, he felt Lila press a kiss to his cheek, a spark of warmth in a world that was once again cold as ice. “Good night, Daddy. I'm glad you're home.”
He managed to recover just enough to give her a kiss to the forehead in turn. “Me, too, Lila. Me, too.”
They waited until the sound of her footsteps had faded entirely on the stairs, and then Laura all but dragged him back to his feet and lead him into the apartment on numb and unsteady legs.
“Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck...”
The chair legs scraped discordantly over the tiles as Laura pulled out a chair for Clint to all but collapse into, and then she took a seat beside him, worrying at her lower lip. Perhaps rightly guessing the state he was in, his wife spoke first. “She said...she said Natasha came to visit, a couple of nights ago. To tell her about you. That you were doing something important, that it was for our sake, and that it would all be over soon. But when I talked to Natasha after the fighting stopped...”
“...she didn't mention anything like that?”
Laura shook her head.
Clint's throat felt dry as dust, but he swallowed, and made himself speak. “I don't...I don't think it was really him. Physically, at least. But he could do that. Change his shape, and send projections of himself, far away. If he knew who he was looking for.”
“And he knew? About Lila?”
It wasn't an accusation. He'd already told her, after all, but he hadn't told her enough. He hadn't told her why.
“What he said to her. That's...not how he kept me in line, but how he kept the leash tight. Kept me from realizing that there was anything wrong. He saw you, all of you, in my head, and he knew I cared. He told me he'd keep you safe. Told me he'd take care of you, when we won. Like I said. Everything he said made sense, and I wanted to believe him, and...he knew it.”
“But there's one thing I still don't understand.” Though he could tell she was trying, for the sake of sparing him as many words as she could, and he loved her for it. “If he knew where we were, if he was going to look for us anyway, then why...”
But even she couldn't ask the question aloud. Even she couldn't contemplate the idea. Clint couldn't blame her.
Why stop at words? Why reassure his daughter that Daddy would be home soon, rather than taking such an obvious “weakness” out of the equation entirely?
Clint was afraid that he knew. He knew, because even as Loki had been in his head, Clint had been in Loki's.
And the things he had seen and felt on his captor's behalf had made so many things make too much sense. Buried beneath the facade of a careful mastermind and aspiring warlord had been the heart of a sick, scared child who wanted nothing more than for his mother to save him, for his brother to understand, for his father to notice. And yet in the way of so many children, he'd also wanted to hurt them for what he perceived as hurting him, and hadn't understood why he couldn't. More than that, in the back of that diamond-bright and broken mind had been the constant, cloying fear of something worse . Something much, much higher up the food chain that would leave Loki quietly gibbering with terror inside and screaming in the night when he thought he was far enough away.
He'd seen in Clint the family he'd lost, or had maybe never had, and Clint – through the Tesseract's cold blue haze – had seen a lost child desperately in need of someone to keep him safe.
Maybe all of that should have made him sympathetic. It didn't. Even the pity twisting hot in the pit of his stomach was more akin to something he might feel for a sick, maddened dog staring at long last down the barrel of a gun. None of that changed the fact that in using Clint to try and fill some of the cracks, Clint had still been used . Loki had gone digging through his mind as though entitled to it, and only when he'd found something he wanted, something he could understand , had he cared in turn.
Whatever had happened to Loki to leave him this way had been pitiable, perhaps even tragic. But it had left Loki in a state that Clint still wasn't sure could be fixed.
He didn't doubt that Thor would try, though. God protect however many planets there were should be fail.
Ultimately, Clint knew, the reason all came down to this.
“Because that's what monsters do, Laura. Every so often, when the mood takes them, they let someone go. Because they had freckles, because they weren't scared, because they smiled, because they begged. And that's how they convince themselves that they aren't monsters, that's how they sleep at night.”
He looked up at Laura, and his jaw hurt from clenching his teeth and his kitchen was blurred through a film of hot, bitter tears. “I will not be the reason he lets himself sleep at night, Laura. I wish Thor hadn't taken him back, I wish they'd let me take back everything I did to help him, I wanted them to let me hurt him. If...”
His resolve broke, and so did his voice. Clint slumped in his chair, and when Laura reached out with the hand not holding his to wrap an arm around his shoulders and pull him close, he couldn't have resisted her if he'd wanted to. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her, pulled himself as close as he could when they were both sitting on two kitchen chairs, and he spoke. The words were muffled against her shoulder, so maybe she didn't hear them, and maybe they didn't have to mean anything.
“...If he made me a monster, just to keep him company...I wish I could have at least gotten that much”
If she heard him, she never mentioned it.