Chapter Text
Clint Barton had no magic, no special senses, and (as far as he knew) no extraordinary abilities, but he didn't need them to feel the tension that filled the conference room.
Despite being built to accommodate the entire roster of Avengers, the conference room at the upstate base was crowded. All currently active Avengers were there, but so were Steve Rodgers and his informal team. The sudden arrival of a being capable of destroying planets had put all internal disagreements on hold: the escapees had simply shown up in response to Tony's call, and even Hill had done nothing but note, in a very third-person, absent sort of manner, how planetwide emergencies took priority over damn near anything else. Hill was also very pointedly ignoring the fact that the Hulk was in the swimming pool, refusing to de-green and thus happily being distracted with pool noodles and a massive buffet table.
There were quite a few other non-Avengers, as well. The King of Wakanda sat at the table in his black outfit with his head and hands uncovered. Doctor Steven Strange somehow managed to lurk and loom simultaneously in one corner. Five individuals with various powers had introduced themselves as the Defenders, based out of New York City. (Well, four Defenders and a guy in a skull shirt who seemed friendly with them, so Clint was going to group them up anyhow.) And an utterly bizarre troupe of aliens, including a talking raccoon, who had all arrived in a spaceship, called themselves the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Clint thought that was a little tacky, but he wasn't about to argue with a sentient tree. Fortunately for the sanity of the Earth-born in the room, both the raccoon and tree had returned to their ship by the time serious discussion began.
Now Clint was watching carefully as the assembled heroes mingled (or didn't), taking turns to share intel concerning their own encounters with Thanos, his agents, or the Infinity Stones. The picture that was being painted wasn't looking good. Thanos had been pulling a lot of strings, and Clint, at least, couldn't see the bigger purpose that necessarily connected all the threads.
Not to mention, it was hard enough being a normal human in the Avengers on a regular day. Being a normal human in a room entirely full of people who could drop-kick him across a football field was something he had to deliberately and pointedly not think about.
Natasha appeared next to him as suddenly and silently as if she'd teleported. "We have a problem," she murmured too softly for anyone else to hear.
Clint didn't need to respond, and she didn't need to say anything else. Only a few of the occupants of the conference room noticed the two assassins leave in silence.
Only when they were well away from the conference room, nearly at the outside door, did she speak again. "Perimeter alarms were tripped. Got a very familiar energy signal." She brought up the reading on her cellphone and showed it to him.
Clint felt a chill run down his spine before he even consciously processed the information. "We're sure?"
"If it's a trick, it's a damn good one." She was watching him, he realized. He didn't blame her. "It hasn't moved much. Looks like he's waiting for something."
So much had happened since New York and that first alien invasion that Clint hadn't had reason to think about Loki in quite a while. And yet, still, green eyes flashed through his mind and he felt himself tensing involuntarily. Those eyes had been in his head. They'd ripped him apart and put him back together wrong. And yeah, he still woke up screaming sometimes from nightmares where it happened all over again.
Loki had been spotted among the enemy's forces. Clint wasn’t sure if he'd been hoping or fearing another showdown, but now it was here, and he and Nat had to deal with it.
"Okay," he said, and meant it. If there was one thing Clint was good at, it was compartmentalizing and locking away his emotions until the immediate situation was over. So he did that, and said, "Okay," again, with a nod. "Let’s find out."
And then, in a bizarre anticlimax, there wasn't any trick.
Natasha rounded the corner of the hanger bay, coming into line-of-sight of the energy signal with a gun in her hands and her wrist stingers ready to fire, and sure enough, Loki was standing in the long shadow of the building looking for all the world like a bored urbanite waiting for a train. He gave her a smile that was not at all as predatory as Clint remembered. "Agent Romanoff. Finally."
"Loki," Nat returned evenly. Not for the first time, Clint blessed Nat's ability to make any conversation sound utterly casual. "You expecting me?"
"Expecting someone. Your security machines cannot be so primitive as to have taken this long to detect my presence." He made a dismissive gesture toward the whole of the Avengers compound.
Nat paused mid-step, but since it was Natasha, she made it look natural. "You wanted us to find you."
"I assumed that this method might provoke a more intelligent and less instinctively violent reaction than, say, ringing the bell."
"And why would you want to do that?"
"Because I have intelligence, of course. If Agent Barton would be so good as to cease aiming at my head, perhaps we can rejoin your colorful little band of heroes and I'll share it."
Clint didn't un-knock his arrow until long after Natasha had secured Loki's wrists with a special set of cuffs Stark had designed to hold pretty much anyone except the Hulk. Loki had rolled his eyes, but hadn't protested. In fact, he'd even held out his wrists obligingly.
The two of them flanked him as they crossed the compound back to the main building. Clint and Nat had shared a long look that translated as, I can't see why not, but that wasn't stopping Clint from keeping his focus on the alien god and his fingers in close proximity to his weapons.
Loki only met his gaze once, and then Clint avoided it and pretended he wasn't avoiding it.
Nat had tried to get the attention of one of the core Avengers before bringing Loki into the room, but unfortunately the attention she managed to get was Thor, and subtlety wasn't one of the Asgardian's strengths. "Loki!"
"What?" Half the room made visible movements toward weapons or into fighting stances.
Loki, of course, merely sauntered in and gave the room a brilliant smile. "My, how your little club has grown."
"Romanoff, please explain why this thing is standing in my conference room," Stark said in that particular tone of voice he tended to use when he was about to shoot something. "And why he's conscious."
"Do not be alarmed, friends," Thor insisted as he crossed the room to stand by his brother. Adopted brother, Clint remembered. "He is not here to harm us."
"I think we're going to have a hard time taking that on faith." That was Steve, sensible as always.
To Tony, Natasha said, "He says he wants to give us intel on Thanos."
"And you believed him?" Tony replied.
"That's Loki," a less familiar voice said. Clint had to turn to identify the speaker, a short, dark-haired woman from the New York City group. "I thought he led the army that destroyed midtown." At that, Clint could see her companions tense for battle as well.
"Much has changed," said Thor. "When Thanos intercepted our vessel, Loki allowed himself to be taken from the ship. He told me he would pretend to ally himself with the tyrant and act as a spy for us."
"While that would be wonderful, as Stark has suggested, what assurance do we have that you are not here to spy on us, instead?" said Vision.
"Perhaps you'll simply have to trust me," Loki said, though his grin suggested that he knew exactly how absurd his suggestion was.
"Not yet." Everyone turned: this was the first time Doctor Strange had spoken since he'd introduced himself at the meeting's start. Now his hawk-like gaze was fixed on the cuffed god, seeing something that only the magician could see. "Turn off your spell."
Almost everyone who had still been sitting was on their feet, but neither Loki nor Strange seemed to notice. Clint hadn’t seen any evidence that aliens could kill with a look any more than a human, but Loki seemed to be trying his hardest to murder Strange with a blazing stare. "You dare, you presumptuous pretender of sorcery -"
"Loki." Thor's voice was low, but in the silence of the room, the emotion in the single word was clearly audible.
Green eyes darted to the thunder god. "You would ask me in front of these -"
"Please."
For a moment, Clint thought a fight was inevitable, that Loki would simply explode in a fit of rage and fury. But Thor was right: Loki must have changed since his last visit to Midgard, because he closed his eyes, let his shoulders slump a fraction, and illusion that Clint knew no normal person could sense melted away from Loki's skin.
Until now, Loki had looked much as he had in Clint's memory, polished and impeccable. Now, Clint had to admit that the man looked wrecked. His hair and clothing were mussed, torn, and stained with blood. His skin was so pale that the dark hollows under his eyes were more gray than black. Clint's trained eye caught deep bruises peeking out above the collar and around the cuffs on his wrists, suggesting prolonged and painful restraint. Extremely so, if Loki had the same rapid healing that Thor demonstrated.
There was a single sympathetic hiss, and an under-the-breath, "Fuck," that Clint didn't recognize, but otherwise the room was silent.
And then, without ceremony, Captain America walked over, pulled out a chair for the god of mischief, and sat back down in his own. And that, for a significant portion of the room, was that.
Not for all of the room, however. "I'm sorry, we're new here, well, newly returned, anyway, we're not up on recent events," said the most human-looking of the Guardians, a stocky man who reminded Clint of Tony in his ability to babble. "Who is this guy and what does this have to do with Thanos?"
"I have many names. In this realm I am known as Loki the Silver-Tongued, of Asgard," Loki said as he sat down. Despite his appearance, he moved with exactly the same smooth confidence as he had minutes before. Despite himself, Clint was impressed. "Some years ago, during my travels, I was captured by one of his lieutenants. Thanos demanded my obedience and aid in marching on my homeworld, where he believed there to be an Infinity Stone. I knew it to be elsewhere, and bargained with that information. I proposed a plan, which he approved, for traveling to this world, obtaining the Tesseract, and opening a portal for his army, through which the conquest of this part of the universe would begin."
"Which you tried. And failed," Stark interjected.
Loki's mouth twitched. "Truly. Though I had imagined when I'd proposed it that it wouldn't take quite so long to be defeated."
"I'm sorry, did he just say that he threw that fight? Do those words mean the same thing in Asgardian?"
"Tony," Steve sighed.
Loki helped the situation not at all by favoring Stark with a smile. "Certainly not. If I had deliberately lost, Thanos would have noticed. I simply came up with a plan so convoluted that I hadn't expected it to work." Then he rolled his eyes. "I allowed myself to be captured, told you the location of the device as plainly as I could, and then left it practically unguarded while the army funneled through a single chokepoint. Would you have preferred a map?"
"Arrogance may not be the most effective means by which to establish trust," T'Challa said before Tony could have an aneurysm. "I wish to hear the rest of your story before Mr. Stark loses his patience."
"My apologies," Loki said, only slightly insincere.
Clint glanced at Natasha to see that she'd raised an eyebrow, too. He knew she'd be watching him for subtext, tells, and body language, and he wondered what she made of the god of lies saying sorry, out loud. And why didn't Clint get a sorry? No, wait, Clint knew why. He was a mere mortal. Story of his life.
Loki was already continuing. "When our ship was confronted by Thanos' ship, I allowed myself to be captured and told him what he wanted to hear. I insisted that it was the fault of his commanders for failing to secure the portal device and underestimating the humans' response."
"Do you think he believes you?" That was Natasha, of course, asking the important question before the conversation got sidetracked.
Loki pursed his lips together. "To be entirely truthful, no, I don't think he trusts me."
"Shocking," Wilson muttered. Barnes elbowed him with his mechanized arm. "Ow!"
"But he believes I still desire vengeance against my brother and the mortals who stopped the first invasion, and that has allowed me access to a considerable amount of information."
That wasn't an exaggeration. Loki began unraveling massive swaths of data and the conference ground back into gear.
It was a long meeting. The sheer amount of players in the room meant that hearing everyone out took hours, and coming to decisions took even longer. Plans had to be made, adapted, discarded, and remade.
And during the entire length of it, Clint couldn't stop watching Loki. Something had shifted abruptly in his mind when the former mad villain had begun sharing intelligence. There was something too familiar about the whole thing, he realized, something he'd seen a hundred times before. He was watching an undercover agent put aside emotion and pain, take off their mask, and debrief. He's seen Natasha do it too many times to count, and when he caught her attention, he knew she was thinking the same thing.
"You okay?" she murmured, too soft for anyone but them.
"It's too weird," he murmured back, and she nodded.
"You don't have to stay," she said, but he shook his head. He wasn't speaking much, but he was still contributing, and this meeting was too important to abandon just because it was giving him the willies. He was fine. He could deal.
The sun had set and was depressingly close to rising again when the room had settled on a clear course of action, established the lines of communication, and even sketched out a few backup plans. The quiet buzz of wrap-up conversations filled the space. Clint noted with approval that some of the second-tier Avengers had made solid connections with various visitors. Superheroes, like spies, were often easiest to contact via friend of friends and word of mouth rather than official channels, especially when things went wrong.
Out of the corner of his eye Clint caught Doctor Strange approaching Loki. He didn't hear their short, low voiced conversation, and by the time he moved to see their faces and read their lips, they were done. Strange handed Loki a small plastic canister - a prescription drug? - and he caught Loki's thank you, but that was all.
As Strange moved toward the door, Clint stepped to the side, not enough to be squarely in the other man's way but enough so to get his attention. "What'd you give him?"
Clint found himself under that keen stare that really shouldn't be as unsettling as it was. "I'm sure you're aware, Agent, that I was a doctor of medicine before I became a master of magic. I gave him a painkiller."
The archer's eyebrows shot up in silent query.
"All right, it's not just a painkiller. But it's chemical, not magical. I'm sure you utilize such things in covert actions, as well. It allows one to get on with what needs doing, despite," he flexed his gloved fingers meaningfully, "distractions."
Of course Clint had read Strange's file, which included a certain accident report, and a diagnosis concerning hands that couldn't be healed by known scientific methods. The entire time he was here, Clint hadn't seen him remove his heavy leather gloves. Two and two made four: Strange had been apologizing for making Loki take off a disguise that Strange knew all too well.
Clint remembered a few times he'd swallowed somewhat insane combinations of drugs, legal and illegal, in order to keep functioning on a mission despite exhaustion or injuries. Something cooked up by an actual expert would be a nice change of pace. "Don't suppose I could get a couple of those."
Strange drew a notepad from somewhere deep in his elaborate outfit, scribbled a few words, tore the paper off, and handed it to Clint. "Use sparingly," he said with a thin, hollow smile, and then he was gone. Clint had no idea what the writing said but it looked like pharmaceutical terms so he put it away for later.
Meanwhile, Thor had drawn Loki aside, and this conversation Clint could hear perfectly well.
"I don't like this," Thor was saying.
"Your liking it is irrelevant. Freeing the prisoners removes the Titan's leverage. It must be done, and would be the most advantageous use of my position."
"And what if he knows of this meeting? Or has a fit of temper? If you are imprisoned -"
"My disguise is intact," Loki cut him off. "I said I would do this thing, and I'll not go back on my word."
Thor gripped the smaller man by his shoulders. "You're not allowed to die."
Loki gave him a deeply humoring, twisted smile. "As the king commands."
"I'm serious, Loki. I thought you dead twice now. I will no longer believe it. So don't even consider dying."
"Cease, brother, lest the mortals decide you've lost your wits."
Natasha stepped up to them. "It's almost dawn, boys. I'm guessing it's time to head back before you're missed."
Loki nodded and held up his wrists. "I'm afraid arriving in these would be somewhat conspicuous." There was a half-smile and a light tone that made Clint's fingers twitch again because it was exactly the kind of understatement he and Nat traded when they felt the tension of a mission rising.
The cuffs were complicated, so it took Nat a whole ten seconds to get them off, but off they came. Loki rubbed his hands against each other for a moment, then placed his palms against the front of his shirt and dragged down, as if he was wiping something off his hands. As he did so, the illusion of a perfectly attired and unblemished figure flowed back over his own.
Stark made that frustrated little grunt he always did when he saw magic that he wanted to pin down and study in his lab until he proved it was a trick and he could do it better with technology. Everyone ignored him.
"Thank you. Now, I assume you wish to escort me to the perimeter to ensure I make no detours," Loki said.
"Good, we can skip the lame excuse I came up with," Natasha drawled.
Loki's smile widened as he turned toward the door. "I'm certain it would have been adequately plausible. Until tomorrow's eve, brother."
Clint followed them out, staying two steps behind but alert and watchful. The three of them said nothing as they crossed the driveway and the lawn. The eastern edge of the sky was just beginning to show signs of the eventual sunrise, but Clint found himself focused on sound rather than sight.
Three people walking across a field should normally make some noise. He was used to Natasha's ability to be terrifyingly silent, and she, in turn, had helped him remove the last telltale sounds from his own movement. Loki, whether by skill, magic, or both, didn't add a single noise of his own.
Five steps from the perimeter, Natasha said, "So."
They all stopped, and the dark-haired alien turned to face her.
"What's your angle?" she said, matter-of-fact.
And to Clint's, and he was pretty sure Nat's, surprise, Loki answered her. "Revenge."
"For being tortured?"
"For being used. I am no one's pawn or puppet." The sudden acid in those two words didn't feel like an act.
Nat didn't so much as twitch. "That's it?"
He straightened an invisible crease on an illusionary shirtsleeve. "You have not the lifespan to fathom the pride or honor of beings who live thousands of years. In Asgard, the wrong insult might result in a battle to the death." He paused, then shrugged. "If you believe me bereft of honor, I might suggest that the Mad Titan's treasury is considerable, and I doubt anyone will note a few items vanishing in the chaos that will follow the coming battle."
"Like an Infinity Stone?"
Loki shook his head dismissively. "I never wanted one to begin with. Limitless power, yes, but the damn things have minds of their own and resist all control. I merely opened a doorway and that cursed box leveled an entire compound. Useless."
Clint couldn't argue with that. He remembered Nat telling him about the Mind Gem scepter making people around it irritable even when no one had touched it, and Ultron had happened when Stark poked it. Vision was, well, Vision, but then there were bits of Jarvis and magical lightning and some human in there, too.
Nat seemed to consider his answer as well, and after a moment, she nodded. "Need anything else?"
In response, Loki took a step back, executed an elaborate bow, and vanished from sight.
As they walked back, Nat said, "I'm not going to ask if you're okay."
"Good." Because Clint was definitely not okay, but it looked like he was just going to have to deal with that.
"I really wanted to punch him."
"I thought you were going to."
She shook her head.
There were volumes of unspoken communication happening, as there always was between them. It was inevitable when two people fought side by side for so many years in the shadows of spycraft and wetwork.
Natasha didn't have to say why she didn't punch Loki. It wasn't because he was clearly already injured; Clint has seen her do worse to people in worse shape. It was because she was thinking about a rooftop, decades ago, when she had been seen as an asset rather than an enemy.
Clint was thinking about it too. It was impossible not to see the similarities between Loki's cold, closed demeanor and the inscrutable woman whose trust had taken Clint a lifetime to earn. But he was different, too, very different, burning with a cold fire that threatened to scorch the land to ash around it. Clint remembered the way those green eyes had looked when that fire had grown so great it seemed to consume Loki whole.
He thought back to the introductory theology books he'd looked up back when SHIELD first encountered Asgardians. There was a bit about gods having different incarnations or forms that represented their different spheres of influence. One branch of Hinduism believed that the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer were merely three faces of a single being. Did that apply at all here? The Loki who attacked New York was the God of Chaos, an unstoppable force of entropy that would eventually cause the end of world. The Loki they had just seen was Loki the Lie-Smith, the silver-tongued shapeshifter who could trick anyone out of anything.
All this contrast was making his head hurt. Clint filed it away in his brain under Things To Deal With Later and stopped thinking about it.
When they got back to the conference room, the various visitors had departed, leaving only the Avengers. Clearly they'd been waiting for the agents to return, because as soon as they walked in, Tony said, "Are we really doing this?"
"Fighting a crazy ancient alien with a big golden glove? I thought we were pretty clear on that," Clint found himself saying automatically, because humor and deflection were wonderful instincts.
Tony barely spared him a hand-wave. "Mission Impossible Mythology. Secret Agent Alien God. We're all cool with this?"
"My brother will not betray us, Stark. He is aware of the risks and faces them regardless," said Thor.
"Well obviously you're voting yes, you were trying to save him back when he actively slaughtering people."
"He was ill!"
"From torture?" Natasha interrupted, effortlessly redirecting the conversation to suit her needs. "From Thanos?"
"Yes, and more." Thor suddenly realized that he'd said more than he wanted to, and his gaze moved from Nat to sweep across the room. "He would not wish me to say."
"Too bad," Tony quipped.
Thor seemed to have reached that conclusion himself already. "My brother omitted a part of his tale. Before the Mad Titan captured him, his mind was already weakened."
Clint couldn't help but supply the appropriate, "How?" He needed to know.
"There was . . . an accident, during a fight, on Asgard. The fabric of reality was torn. Loki fell through that tear and into the Void beyond." The warrior's face twisted, clearly upset at the mere recollection of events. "It is a place of nothingness. Absence. There is not even darkness, merely the absence of sight. You could not hear yourself scream, or feel the touch of your own hand."
"Full sensory deprivation?" Rhodes asked. "For how long?"
Thor shrugged. "There is no time there. A week at the very least. Possibly months. He was taken halfway across the Universe and emerged from a similar tear which it appears Thanos had been observing."
Clint really couldn't deal with this right now. He was already overloaded with the puzzle he'd seen so far, and this was one puzzle piece too much. So instead he watched the reactions around the room, noting the order of processing. Nat was blank, of course, but Clint knew she was already three trains of thought ahead of everyone else. Bucky had stiffened unmistakably, confirming Clint's suspicion that sense-dep had been part of the Winter Soldier's brainwashing. Stark had a too-tight grip on his coffee cup, but Clint wasn't sure if he was thinking about a cave in the desert or falling from space. Rhodes and Wilson, both modern soldiers, had twitched in a way that meant the words "sensory deprivation" were queuing up memories: Clint wondered if they'd only seen reports, the aftermath, or the real thing. Wanda hadn't had an instinctual reaction but her frown suggested her vivid imagination was helping her out. Vision looked thoughtful as well, but more like Nat than Wanda, thinking and planning. Steve's lack of reaction suggested that sense-dep hadn't been in his WWII training or his time-jump catch-up training.
"That's physically impossible," said Lang, and Clint couldn't quite decipher the emotions in the ex-con's tone. "You couldn't come out of that and not be, I dunno, a gibbering drooling mess for the rest of your life. Your sanity would literally shatter."
"A human would. But you big guys heal pretty quick," Rhodes pointed out. "Can you heal your heads, too? Mental stuff?"
"It takes time and assistance, but yes, we are capable of recovering from mental and physical strains that a mortal could not."
"So what you're saying is that the Loki who attacked Earth was the product of psychological torture followed by physical torture, and what we're seeing now is a return to baseline?" When Thor frowned, Natasha clarified, "This is his normal?"
"Yes. Mostly," Thor amended. "He is still healing, but he is far more now the brother I know than he was when we fought him together."
"PTSD's a bitch," Wilson murmured.
"And how do we know it's not all an act?" Tony said, though the way he asked it suggested he wasn't entirely certain himself.
Finally, Steve spoke. "I don't think it is. When he walked into the room, he was all arrogance and confidence. But when he was asked to drop his illusion, that all vanished. Suddenly he was a wolf in a corner. That didn't feel fake. He put the act back on a little too quickly, too. He wouldn't be so defensive if that was a show for us. And we've seen with Thor, it takes a lot to make you guys look that beat up."
Thor nodded and Stark harrumphed.
It was Vision who laid the whole thing out in plain terms. "Thanos is a being of immense power who has had years to lay his plans. The opportunity to empty his prisons of all those he has captured, for their knowledge or their leverage, is too valuable to ignore. There will be a significant number of Avengers involved in the operation who can monitor for potential traps. If all goes according to plan, then we know Loki is more concerned with stopping Thanos than fighting with us. And we can proceed from there."
Tony sighed. "I just love it when you do that inarguable third-grade logic thing," he said in a tone that suggested he really didn't love it but was at least resigned to it.
And then, to Clint's complete surprise, Steve looked at him. "Are you okay with that, Barton?"
Suddenly the whole room's focus was on him, and Clint hated that, so he focused on the part where Captain America had just asked him if he was okay with it like they would maybe drop the whole thing if he said no. Not Tony, not Nat, not Bucky, him, Clint, because of everyone in the room he was the only one who'd had Loki in his actual goddamn brain fucking him up from the inside out.
"Um. Yeah?" he managed, and now that it was spoken, he realized that yeah, he was okay with it. "Yeah. Like Vision said, the prison break is the important thing. If we get through this mess and he hasn't fucked with us, I'd say that earns him a second chance."
He was aware of Natasha in particular looking at him, because he knew what she was thinking. He was deeply grateful that neither Fury nor Coulson was here, because he knew exactly what they would say, and it would involve unkind things about lost causes, and then Nat would get upset. But the rest of SHIELD wasn't here, so yeah, it was okay.
Or at least he'd keep telling himself that it was okay, and eventually it would be. Clint could do that.