There was a little voice that constantly whispered in the back of Loki's head, telling him to do things he knew he wasn't supposed to do.
Stumbling through the portal to retrieve the Tesseract, it was especially loud. It wanted nothing to do with the Tesseract. "He'll only take it from you," it hissed. "And use you again. Why do you want to help him? Aren't you supposed to be the proud son of Odin?"
But Loki's allegiance to the house of Asgard and Odin was long spent. He hissed back at the voice, warning it to shut up. Mostly mentally, but he thought a little bit of the hiss escaped through his lips, and he wasn't even sure if that part was him speaking to the voice or gasping out of pain. There had been so very much pain lately. He gripped the staff harder. The staff made it go away. The pain, even the voice a little. If he just focused enough on the staff, everything went away.
There were voices around him, yelling, angry, some even afraid. Good. People were supposed to be afraid of him, after all. Wasn't that right?
And then they were attacking him. Guns, knives, useless Midgardian weaponry. All pointless against Loki. He didn't care about them, or the wounds they might inflict on his body. It was easy enough, for the first few attacks, to block and dodge.
"That's enough," the voice whispered. "You don't have to kill them. They're just defending what's theirs. They're harmless, anyways. Midgardians were never able to hurt you."
But his mind was swelling with a bright blue urge, almost like lightning in its intensity. Kill. Kill. Kill.
The voice was just irritating, after all.
Six warriors dead, before he stopped to think. And when he stopped to think, he was holding the hand of another warrior, one with a sharp gaze and a gun in the very hand Loki was holding (though at this angle, he would have been hard pressed to shoot Loki now). This was the one who had tried to protect the master of all these warriors, the one with the eye patch, showing him to the ground to avoid Loki's lethal energy blasts. Until a couple months ago, Loki would have done the same to protect Odin.
Loki had been misguided, of course, toiling under a man who had never been his father, had never loved him. This man was the same. Still...
"You have heart," he said.
He lifted his staff. Clarity. That was what it offered to him. He would give that clarity to this warrior as well. He could be generous. He was going to be a king soon (why, how, he was not sure but something made him certain of it) and kings were supposed to be kind. Not like Odin, who hoarded away his treasures and kept his secrets and refused to share even with those he claimed to love.
The blue spread through the warrior's body. Loki smiled down at him. This was benevolence.
The warrior smiled back up at him. The blue had spread to his eyes.
They were still holding hands and Loki found it easy to pull the warrior to his feet. "What's your name, warrior?" he asked him.
"Clint Barton, sir. Codename Hawkeye," the warrior said.
Loki nodded. Names were important. There were those who would have thought the question a waste of time at this point, but Loki was not one of them. Names held power over you. The name of Odinson, for instance, had been bondage for him for a very long time, a bondage now shed. Laufeyson could have been his name once too, but he did not associate himself with that monster. And now he was nothing but Loki, a name Odin had given him as an Aesir prince but that he had appropriated for his use as he saw fit.
"My hawk," he told the warrior. "You will be first among my warriors. There is great heart in you." He recognized this hawk, now. He had done research on those that followed this man named Fury, and the name Clint Barton had come up once or twice. A worthy warrior, as Loki had thought himself.
Loki needed more than one warrior though, so he went about gathering more to follow him among the agents still alive and present.
The voice was displeased. "You would put others under the same slavery as yourself? Wake up, Loki! What are you doing? Kill them if you wish, but leave their minds free. This is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong."
The voice knew nothing. Loki was not enslaving the men. He was granting them enlightenment. They would be his chosen few, the ones to truly follow him. The Chitauri, yes, they would come later. But the Chitauri were monsters. Monsters like Laufey. Loki licked his lips. "They should all die." No. They were his master's honored servants, higher in his favor than Loki himself. "You hate them."
The man with the eye patch was talking, now. Trying to get away with the Tesseract. "You don't want the Tesseract anyways."Trying to keep things under control. Loki was the one in control now, and Fury was a fool.
"I am Loki of Asgard," he said. Perhaps his name would help the fool to understand. "And I am burdened with glorious purpose."
Burdened? He was sure he had not meant to say burdened. Gifted, entrusted, graced. Thanos (his master's name still hurt in his head, and he shuddered to think it) had done him honor, giving him this task. Burdened was the voice's word. He was listening to it too much.
"Your word, Loki."
Ignore, ignore, ignore.
Fury didn't get it. He didn't understand Loki's vision, Loki's dream of freedom, the gift he had given the agents and the gift he was going to give the world. (His master only wanted him to do good, things after all. All these commands, the fetching of the Tesseract, opening the portal for the Chitauri, they were all for the best.)
"Freedom is life's great lie," Loki informed Fury. But he could tell the man wasn't listening. Yet another convinced of his own importance, unable to see the beauty and simplicity of bending to another's will.
He gave clarity to Selvig instead. Thor had spoken well of Selvig's mind, and Loki needed other minds to help him with his plans, his glorious plans. Especially with the way his own mind seemed to betray him lately, twisting first one way and then the next.
And then he and his new warriors were leaving the facility. He was glad to leave that place. It was suffocating, with all that rock and metal around him. It prevented him from teleporting in or out, the reason he had needed the portal in the first place. And now it seemed that all the rock would be crashing down on them soon, crushing the breath out of their lungs. But it was all right. He would get out and he would bring all of his agents out with him. Loki took care of what was his.
"There are the other agents. Hundreds of them. How many of them will die now, Loki, because of you?"
That was all right though. Loki already knew he was a monster.
/…/…/
The hawk was a font of overflowing information. Loki listened to all of it attentively. He learned about SHIELD (his hawk's former employer, but that was fine, Barton was his now and eager to prove it), about Nick Fury (a hard man, hard to cross in particular, but still in so many ways an idealist), about Phil Coulson (one of the best agents the hawk had ever met, and one of the hawk's best friends), and Natasha Romanoff (not only an amazing agent, but a beautiful, stunning woman who used to be the hawk's enemy and he was so glad that she wasn't anymore).
Natasha was apparently lovely but fast tempered, and yet in control of her every word and action beyond even Barton's level of control. The deadliest woman he had ever met, too. And she had made some mistakes in life but changed her ways, and now was fiercely loyal to SHIELD and to Barton himself, and desperate to prove it. "Constantly trying to prove herself a worthy warrior, Loki? Does that remind you of a certain woman you know?" Loki wasn't going to think about Sif, though. That was a life he had left behind.
Loki also learned about "The Avengers' Initiative."
A group of warriors, apparently, the greatest in the realm, all American because even though SHIELD was an international organization, it had been founded in America and was most focused there. Barton gave Loki the details on each prospective member, answering every question Loki had, sometimes even before he thought to ask them.
"You have done well," Loki told the hawk when he paused for breath. "Rest, now."
"Done well?" the hawk asked. There was a hint of confusion in his lovely blue eyes. "I have done nothing, master. Why should I rest?"
"You brought me safely out of that SHIELD rock trap," Loki said. "And now you have told me all that I could wish to know about our enemies. You rank your deeds too low. Now, rest. There will be tasks for you later." He considered telling Barton, as well, to call him Loki rather than master. No one had ever called Loki master before, and he didn't really like it. But he held his tongue. It was only fitting for the hawk to show him respect. And Loki was his master, after all, even if the term was strange to his ear.
"I don't need rest," Barton said. Which was a lie. His entire body was shaking already, and Loki had no idea how long it had been since his hawk had slept, but it had least been the twelve hours since they had escaped the SHIELD base. "I do not think I will ever need to sleep again." His eyes glistened.
Oh. Of course, the staff. "The staff's power will give you a certain momentum to keep going until your tasks are completed, but there is nothing for you to do now, my hawk. And you are a mortal. You need your sleep. Else the staff will suck every scrap of vigor from your flesh."
The hawk hesitated. "I can sleep later."
For a man under the control of the staff (the enlightenment, the clarity, not the control) he was disregarding Loki's wishes a surprising amount. "My hawk," Loki said sharply. "You will sleep. Now."
"As you wish, master," Barton sighed.
The warehouse that was Loki's hideout did not have beds. Loki cared about the comfort of his hawk, though, and it was a simple enough matter to turn one of the boxes into a luxurious four post bed with green and gold sheets.
"Isn't that overkill?" the hawk asked, squinting at the bed.
"Just sleep."
He got the other agents to sleep too. None but Selvig protested the order and even Selvig only slightly. Barton was different for some reason. Loki didn't know why. He wasn't sure he wanted to know why.
Loki liked Barton. He liked his hawk.
The voice liked the hawk too, so that was one matter on which it and Loki agreed. But it still whispered foolish things. Saying Loki should set the hawk free. "What is the worth, Loki, of a hawk in a cage? Release his mind. If you would be generous, that is true generosity. He must have his freedom to go where he chooses. Do you think his eagerness is real? The staff compels him, else he would not care for you. Give up your delusions, Loki. Face the truth."
It was the voice that was deluded, not Loki. What the staff showed him, what Thanos showed him, that was the truth. All else was useless complication. And Loki loved his clarity. Giving it to his hawk was a true gift.
"Clinging to an enslaved man because no sane man would stay with you. How the mighty fall. Look up, Prince Loki, and see what you used to be. Maybe the hawk would even like what you used to be. No one could help but despise you now."
"The hawk is mine," Loki said. "Mine. You can't take him."
The voice laughed, echoing in Loki's skull.
"Shut up. Shut up!"
The nearest agent stirred in his sleep. Loki gripped his staff until his palm hurt and even the echoes of laughter were drowned out by a rush of blue.
/.../.../
AN: And so begin the mind control shenanigans. For more of them, by the way, read my story "Having Heart", which is based around the same sort of idea while being entirely different. By the way, this story is as AU as you want it to be. Personally, I dig the whole Loki-was-mind-controlled-all-along theory, so I don't consider it to be terribly AU, at least not yet.
Ah, I like Loki and Clint. I also like Loki being angsty and slightly insane all the time. I also like reviews, so if you'd care to leave one, it would be entirely welcome.