I was a puppet.
"But you resisted him Clint – you aimed for the chest, not the head," my shrink says.
I still killed thirty-two people, and that's not counting the people Loki killed on his way out, like Coulson, or the mind-controlled agents Rogers had to shoot or throw off the helicarrier to protect Stark while he fixed the engines, or the German scientist whose retinal scan we used, or all the dead in New York … I looked up the number even though Tasha told me not to.
I tried to kill her. I was going to cut her eyes out and flay the skin from her fingers, because those were the two things she was always most afraid of … even more than being raped … He filled me with so much bloodlust I laughed at the thought …
He made me. He made me, I tell myself over and over again as I bury my head in my pillow and try not to scream.
But even that means nothing. The professor resisted him – he argued with him about the shut down when they were drawing up the plans. "But what if something goes wrong – what if it starts to implode, like it did at headquarters?" Selvig asked, the perpetually cheerful tone he'd adopted in the past few days shaken by annoyance.
"I thought you said you fixed that," he said coldly, examining the half-built gate.
"I did. But I'm not certain I did. There's still a one point thirty two percent chance it could go horribly wrong – and it won't hurt to build for the one point thirty-two percent … and that's assuming my stats are right, statistics was never my strong suit …"
"Very well, but make it something I control," he said coldly.
"But what if you're not there when it starts to implode?"
"I will be – just do it," he snapped.
And then he left to get captured, and made me go rescue him …
He made me, he made me, he made me …
My shrink says I should call Selvig. I can't do that. He's a civilian, and he did better than me. He talked back to him, he talked him into a kill switch, he saw Loki making me … making me … act out killing Tasha, he heard me … he heard that he made me …
He made me …
Selvig knows I laughed while acting out killing my best friend. The woman I trained, that I was responsible for like a brother. I can't face anyone who knows that.
I can't even look at Tasha anymore. I walked away after Stark got us supper and never looked back. I pretended I wasn't there every time she knocked on the door and ignored her calls. She thinks she knows … she thinks she understands what it's like. But she doesn't … and I can't stand to explain to her why. S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't even ask questions … they just sent me the first check for medical leave pay and a notice saying I should see a counselor two weeks later.
I couldn't even go to Coulson's funeral, because I know I sent the arrow that made everything go to hell and led to him being on that bridge. He saved me, multiple times, and I got him killed. How was I supposed to face his girlfriend, his friends, his family with that on my conscience?
My shrink says I shouldn't blame myself for the civilians killed by the Chitauri … but I helped him get the things he needed to build his gate, and unlike Selvig I did nothing to resist him.
I work out and go shooting to try to relieve the tension, to try to make a dent in the guilt and the anxiety. It doesn't. At night I drink like I'm hoping to find Coulson and the other dead at the bottom of every bottle. It dulls the pain a little – mostly I'm the sad drunk at the corner of the bar, drinking until I'm numb and ignoring the cute bartender trying to flirt with me. At least, she used to – now she knows better and just lets me drink until she needs to call me a cab. She doesn't know who I am or why I drink – and she never asked after the first few times. She just gives me a sad smile and asks if I want the usual.
One time I went in to a random church and talked to the preacher, not even knowing what denomination it was. I could have been in a Scientology center for all I know … I just walked until I saw an old-timey looking church that happened to be open. I was raised sort of Baptist, but my parents didn't really care (we went Easter, Christmas, and the occasional non-football-season Sunday) and I didn't either, but I'd seen a lot of movies where they go to a church and talk to someone, and I couldn't stand the thought of another session with my counselor telling me the same things over and over so I figured that was as good as anything. I told him who I was and what I'd done and there were tears in his eyes – he told me how I was a hero to his son, even if I couldn't see it in myself, and how none of the bad things I did were my fault. I told him I was no hero, that I was a thug who happened to have been granted mercy by one of the people who died because of me. He hugged me and said the past didn't matter, that what mattered was that I went to New York to save people, and I didn't have the heart to tell him I mostly did that to have a chance to shoot at Loki, because he thought I was this great person, so much better than I was. He said a prayer for me, and said he'd add me to his prayer list and his church's prayer list so a lot of them would pray for me.
I think … I think I wanted him to condemn me, to order me to repent and do some kind of penance, or to tell me I was weak and needed Jesus to resist this pagan deity. I had all of the "it wasn't your fault" from the counselor already … I wanted someone to validate the crushing guilt I feel all the time, so I could be angry at them instead of myself for once … if that makes any sense at all. If someone else said it, I'd get mad and have to defend myself … maybe then I'd believe it really wasn't my fault. I want to be angry at someone else – besides Loki. He's on Asgard, hopefully suffering. Though nothing would ever be enough.
One time I could have sworn I saw Coulson on the news, talking down some crazy guy at a subway station. But I know that was just me seeing what I want to see.
Sometimes I wake up at night in terror, convinced Loki's still in my head – I feel him there, almost physically. Once I reached for the k-barr I keep under my pillow, determined to stab my carotid and die while I still had some measure of control so he couldn't use me again … and only stopped at the last second. After that I had to stop sleeping with it, which makes me feel less safe, considering I've done it since I was thirteen.
The worst part is sometimes I liked it – he brought up memories of my first time and the women I've loved best and showed me his conquests of beautiful, presumably alien women through his eyes until I was as hard as a rock, to which he said, "Oh dear – it would seem I've found an eager colt of a man in you, Agent Barton," in that slimy voice, and stroked my neck and back seductively and laughed at how I moaned in response. Even my own body turned against me. He showed me a wide universe I'd never even contemplated with aliens and dying stars and things I can't even begin to describe. He even made me laugh. I was his plaything – body and mind, all his to toy with. There was nothing in my mind he left untouched – when I woke up I wanted to rip my brain out of my skull and literally bleach it, because I felt like his fingerprints were everywhere on it.
I still remember everything I did under his control … it's like a movie I'm watching, only it's all through my eyes. The counselor was surprised I remember it so clearly – Selvig and a couple of the other survivors said they can't remember most of their experience, like it was just a bad dream. How I envy them. She guesses my top-level training primed my mind to remember it better … but not to resist. So in other words, it did me more harm than good.
"But you resisted him Clint – you aimed for the chest, not the head," my shrink says.
I still killed thirty-two people, and that's not counting the people Loki killed on his way out, like Coulson, or the mind-controlled agents Rogers had to shoot or throw off the helicarrier to protect Stark while he fixed the engines, or the German scientist whose retinal scan we used, or all the dead in New York …
Coulson saved me, and I got him killed …
I tried to kill Tasha, I laughed at the thought of torturing her.
He made me, he made me, he made me …
I was a puppet.
Author's Note II: So I was really taken aback in Avengers by how … rapey Clint's description of the mind control was. ("Do you know what it's like, for someone to pull you out, and put something else in?") Not at all helped by Loki threatening to have Clint kill Natasha "intimately" and while I honestly believe he just meant up close and personal … yeah the rape bomb was dropped and it's very hard to unsee that when you rewatch it. (I also find it … a little Freudian that the giant worm thing in the background starts moving right as the Other promises Loki he will long for "Something as sweet as pain" if he fails. There's a disturbing amount of rape subtext for a lighthearted superhero film is all I'm saying, but at least it's not being played for laughs as male-on-male rape frequently is.)
I was also deeply annoyed and even disturbed that Selvig's PTSD/nervous breakdown was played for laughs in Thor 2, especially given that Iron Man 3 got a huge amount of praise for it's sensitive portrayal of Tony's PTSD which was triggered by events in the same freaking story. And especially since that movie also had Jane sulking and giving up on science … because that guy she spent a long weekend with never called. Yeah … world's smallest violin honey. Apparently sensitivity is only for the main cast. Originally this was just going to be Selvig's story, but then I realized they're probably going to just ignore Clint's trauma in Avengers 2 and they're doing their best to make Clint not main cast either so I flipped to his perspective, plus it was a logical way to resolve Selvig's question about the shutdown mechanism.
I guessed a lot about the background of both characters. I really hope Selvig's background wasn't eye roll inducing to any actual Scandinavian readers … I was going based off a British TV show based on Swedish books (Wallander) and the Internet (which is always a reliable source right?) to get a good guess about how Swedes would react to naked Selvig … which so far as I can tell would probably be shrugging. (As opposed to America where it's either "Nudity! The horror!" or "Ewww naked people who aren't hawt!" or "Naked people who aren't hawt are funny!" Not sure how much of that extends to England but despite the English setting the production on Thor 2 was American.) For Clint, my head canon is that Coulson chose to spare him the way he'd later spare Natasha (in the comics he was a criminal and originally an antagonist). His father was an abusive alcoholic and so I had him giving in to those tendencies. He's also a bit of a womanizer in the comics, which is why I had Loki use the sexual memories in addition to the cool space stuff to control him.
Yes I know Selvig said it was the Tesseract that showed him space but I'm pretty sure that was actually Loki keeping him placated. I may be wrong but … that makes more sense to me than the inanimate object showing him things.
I wanted to have both of them remembering enjoying it at the time because … that actually happens to rape victims, sort of. Sometimes rape victims (of either gender) get aroused or even have an orgasm during their attack (because that has to do with hitting the right cluster of nerves and the conscious mind actually has very little to do with it) and it only deepens their horror at the attack … because they often feel like even their own body betrayed them and it adds a layer of shame and guilt.
Also, as much as I love Loki, he's a very bad man and I think writing this helped me remember that. Which, one last thought … why does the cartoon Earth's Mightiest Heroes get to show us Loki with snake venom dripping in his eyes but the MCU were too wimpy to even make his cell look uncomfortable? That cell was three quarters the size of my apartment and very comfortable looking. Lock me up in MCU Asgard's prison, please.