The next step of the plan is to find a way of harness the Tesseract to create a portal both large enough and stable enough to transport the Chitauri's army. This requires equipment, which requires people to acquire and work on said equipment, which requires a further exertion of his powers. Selvig, while far from even a beginner when it comes to seidr, at least knows the capabilities of mortal science and technology. He can identify what they need, once Loki has explained the principles in small enough words.
It is easier, in the end, to simply dump the concepts straight into his brain through the channelling powers of his staff. Knowledge; that is the weakness of men like Selvig. Loki knows, for it is one of his own many weaknesses. Much he has learned, over the centuries, and much he has paid for it. Selvig is no different. It is even conceivable that he might have made a bargain such as this willingly, if given the choice.
(His most recent pain was payment for nothing. He will take what he is owed.)
The first request is for a primitive computation device, which merely indicates further that these Midgardians are barely capable of thinking for themselves. Compared to the elegance of constructs like Odin's ravens, which can analyse and prioritise information from the entirety of the Nine Realms, this 'laptop' that he steals from a barely-guarded warehouse is like a child's toy. Still, they work with what they have. He manages to acquire a few of the other items on Selvig's list during the same trip.
The next thing is to find a safe place from which to work. Barton's skill-set comes into use here. He is an assassin, a silent killer, and a 'secret agent' which means that he does the dirty, dishonourable work other mortals do not wish to sully their hands with. As such, he knows many appropriate locations, not to mention his knowledge of where they might find the manpower required to build and monitor the stabiliser device as well as do whatever other jobs might be required of them as Loki's plan adapts to future circumstance.
Their new hideout is in the sewer system of a nearby city, damp and dank with walls of red brick. Loki keeps out the wet and the smell both with his seid, while Barton splices into the local power grid to power their machines. Loki leaves Selvig to his laptop while he and his soldier arrange how they will acquire scientists and mercenaries sufficient to their needs.
"SHIELD has plenty of enemies both domestic and international," Barton explains, as they go through the list he has drawn up, making calls and arranging deals. Loki does not yet have quite the strength it would take to bind quite so many souls to him. Not yet. Money has a power of its own though, and that tends to by enough.
(If you own them they are yours and you cannot be a slave if you have slaves yourself.)
"This realm is still ruled by many petty warlords then?" Loki asks. For all that has changed in the past few centuries, other things seem to have remained the same.
Barton laughs. "I guess you could say that. It's kind of a mess at times. Wars everywhere. Still, it makes plenty of work for folks like me."
"I am beginning to think the Chitauri had the right idea of it," Loki says. After all, who better to unite a world than a Prince? A Prince of Monsters, it is true, but... there is so much he could do with this realm. There is great potential here waiting to be unlocked, that much is plain. United, he could make this a world to rival Asgard!
But if he tried he would be doomed to failure. This much Loki knows, this much has been made violently clear to him. Trying to do good is not in his nature, and so it turns to dust and slips through his fingers. He has no wish to do that to Midgard. No, he will stay with his original plan which requires his failure. Let the Chitauri lose their war and take the Tesseract for himself. He will be content with power; he needs no realm.
"So tell me Agent Barton," he says. "Of SHIELD's capabilities. What forces could they muster to turn back an invasion?"
"What magnitude are we talking?"
"Perhaps two or three thousand, including several wings of small flying craft, and perhaps four-score war-beasts. Very large, well-armoured war-beasts."
"Sounds tricky. The Helicarrier has decent firepower but it'd go down pretty quick against that lot. They would have to call on the US Army and Air force, and that would take a bit of time to scramble - to get into position. Unless they could get a nuke off from a distance, but things would have to be pretty damn fucked up to resort to that."
Nuke – nuclear. Interesting. An old-fashioned sort of power source, but with the potential to impart massive destructive force, if one were willing to pay the price. So many of the old paths of seidr are like that. And the cost of that path is particularly terrible. Loki has never been tempted to meddle in such magics.
"What of this 'Avengers Initiative' I have heard discussed?"
Clint grins. It's a harsh wolf-grin, a feral bearing of teeth. Loki finds himself liking this little mortal more and more. He is like a well-trained hunting hawk, ready to stoop upon its prey. "If I know Fury he's already started to get the team together. They're his pet project – I was meant to be part of it, before you claimed me. He'll be glad of the excuse you've given him – though he'll want to get the Tesseract back very badly as well."
"A pragmatic leader then?"
"Very," Barton says seriously. "SHIELD have a habit of doing whatever it takes."
"I shall... remember that."
(Hurt them! Hurt them before they have a chance to hurt you!)
"The first prospective team Fury drew up was Iron Man, the Hulk, 'Tasha and me. Then we found Captain America, so he got added to the roster. Thor was put down as a maybe after New Mexico."
Loki's eyes narrow. "Fair warning," he says, barely keeping his anger in check. "I react badly to that name. Do not speak it in my presence unless absolutely necessary."
"Sure thing boss." Suddenly an unexpected hand is on Loki's shoulder. "Family can really fuck you up, I know."
"Do you?" Loki spits, suddenly venomous. "They are not my family. My family was nothing but a lie."
"You grew up with them though," Barton says softly. "I know what that's like. Family is at least as much what you find as what you're born into. By bond, not by blood. For me, first it was the circus, and then later on SHIELD. 'Tasha and Coulson, hell, even Fury a little." For a moment confusion passes through his blue-hazed eyes, but it goes again as quickly as it came, and he smiles. "Actually since you took over from them, I guess that makes you my family now."
For once in his life, Loki is speechless.
Clint has been trained to try and resist brainwashing. He's seen other people who have managed to break their conditioning, hell, he even helped 'Tasha get through what the Russians did to her. He understands Stockholm Syndrome and why it happens, he understands the theory of manipulating someone's mind to your cause. This is nothing like any of that.
When Loki touched the sceptre to his chest it was like a wave of warmth had overwhelmed him. He had felt... loved. That's the only possible way of putting it. There are leaders in human history whose very charisma and cult of personality have made people want to worship them, to get down on their knees with a burning desire to do whatever is asked of them, to fulfil every minor need of the one they want to serve, and in that moment he understood them perfectly. Loki is perfect. Loki is utterly deserving of his loyalty. He would give, will give, anything to make Loki happy.
And Loki doesn't seem like a very happy kind of guy, which causes the brainwashed part of Clint a great deal of distress. At the start after escaping from SHIELD he had looked like crap, worn-out and exhausted, and that had just led to the part of him that he is going to think of as evil!Clint for the sake of his sanity going all 'mother-hen' on him and trying to feed him sandwiches. While actual Clint had been in no fucking mood to feel sorry for him, he did wonder why he was so beat up in the first place. Hell, he wondered a lot of things. Loki was an unknown quantity, and unknown quantities made him nervous.
Still, for all that most of him is happy to serve, Clint is still in here, which is better than the alternative. Some part of him is still self-aware enough to know that he didn't choose this, that something is very wrong here. A part of him that belongs to himself, not to Loki. He can't actually do anything, he can't stop himself from doing what he thinks Loki would want. He's just a little voice in the back of his own head. But at least it gives him hope that maybe this is reversible. That maybe there is a way out.
He thinks the thing that scares him most is how much he hasn't changed. A large part of his job is killing people, and he never questioned all too much who they were or why they needed to die. SHIELD told him who his target was, and then he eliminated that target. Natasha is about the only exception to that, and only because something about her echoed with something in him. Like looking in a mirror. They are two of a kind, and however much he might have believed what he told her about killing for SHIELD being somehow morally better than killing for the FSB, but in the end, however justified, murder is murder.
So really, what is the difference between killing who SHIELD tells him and killing who Loki tells him? That's what makes it so hard to remember sometimes that this is wrong, that he's been brainwashed by some kind of alien artefact. He tries to focus on 'Tasha and Phil. God, Phil. He doesn't even know if he's alive. Phil was in the SHIELD base when Loki came through from where the fuck ever, and there's no telling whether he made it out or not. Probably he did, because Clint can't imagine something as simple as a collapsing building taking out Phil 'Secret Ninja' Coulson, but there's no way of knowing. He can't actually allow himself to think about the possibility of Phil being dead because if he does he'll just go mad. He wouldn't be able to cope with that on top of everything else.
He has to find a way to stay strong, to try and resist the allure of just giving in to the seductive pull of submission. He has to. For the man he loves, and the woman who's like a sister to him. For his family.
Loki has told him to 'acquire a solid pure-carbon substance'. Clint has no fucking idea what he intends to do with that, but it's a simple and harmless-seeming enough request, so he doesn't put much effort into trying to fight it. Sometimes he has this vague idea that he might be able to nudge evil!Clint into doing something slightly different to what he was planning to do, but it takes a lot of energy, and he can't do it to anything really important for the plan. So he's just waiting for the right opportunity, the right moment. And in the meantime he'll buy Loki his stupid coal.
One express delivery to an abandoned building with good access to their sewer base later, and Clint is lugging a couple of heavy sacks down to join the rest of the equipment. "Where do you want 'em Boss?" he calls out. Loki emerges from the shadows where he's been lurking, clutching his sceptre. Clint has never seen him put the damn thing down for more than a few seconds. It's kind of creepy.
Loki holds out his hand. The brainwashed part of Clint is pretty good at anticipating what Loki wants, even when he doesn't have the sense to use actual words, so he slices through the heavy fabric and pulls out a lump of coal, tossing it to his master. (God, did Clint just think that in a non-sarcastic way? He really is fucked.) Loki smiles, and Clint feels a little shiver of pleasure go down his spine.
"We do need something to pay our new servants," Loki says, laying his staff down on a nearby camp table (courtesy of Walmart) and folding his palms together over the coal. He closes his eyes, and his knuckles turn white with effort as he squeezes. Strange wisps of energy shifting in the colour spectrum between blue and green surround his hands, and for a moment the space between his fingers seems to glow white hot. When Loki opens his hands again it is to show Clint a tiny diamond glinting in the centre of his palm.
"Holy shit."
"I'm glad you're impressed." Loki says, and again there's that warm rush of pleasure. Clint is trying not to forget that it isn't real, that it isn't actually coming from him, but it's increasingly hard.
Clint glances back at the coal spilling from the open sack. "That's going to buy us a lot of mercenaries," he says.
"I believe they should arrive within the next few days, correct?"
"That's the deal. I managed to get the cash for their up-front fee out of a coupla' SHIELD expense accounts they hadn't shut me out of yet, but we'll need the diamonds when they get here. Mercs are expensive these days."
"I trust you to handle the details," Loki says. Stop feeling so happy, Clint tells himself. Complements from super-villains do not give us the warm fuzzies. Or in an ideal world they wouldn't. Clint hates stupid Norse aliens.
Before long the base is teeming with well-armed professionals in tac gear and swarms of scientists in lab coats waving around clipboards and bits of shiny technology. The latter are mostly on loan from AIM and HYDRA in return for Loki letting them keep whatever research they do into the Tesseract. Not that he's giving them much time to do any of said research. Building the portal machine is the top priority here, and Clint knows that Selvig for one is barely sleeping in his rush to force alien concepts and technology into a form compatible with Earth science.
At the moment Clint himself doesn't have that much to do. He co-ordinates the watches guarding all the ways in and out of the tunnels, and he arranges for food deliveries and for any bits and bobs that turn out to be needed. But all in all, this doesn't take up much of his time. It isn't as though he's prone to boredom – you can't be a sniper if you aren't prepared to spend days on end waiting – but his brainwashed self has this terrible urge to be useful. Evil!Clint gets all antsy when they're not finding some way of making Loki happy.
However, because Clint is an ingenious son-of-a-bitch, he has come up with a way to use this to his advantage. It relies on a certain amount of double-think; basically as long as he can make a convincing argument to himself that something is for Loki's good, he can do it, within reason. So far he's been looking up Norse mythology on Wikipedia. Evil!Clint likes anything that will help them anticipate Loki's needs, while Clint himself is hoping for some kind of information about strengths and weaknesses. That's assuming that any of it can be trusted, of course.
Mind you, going by what he's read, if it is true it's very nearly enough to make him feel ever so slightly sorry for Loki. Because seriously, Asgard is pretty fucked up, and he doesn't think it's just the brainwashing making him think that. People having their lips sewn shut, snakes dripping acid venom on people, having your innocent kids killed for something you did... It's enough to make the brainwashed part of him near incandescent with rage, and Clint as a rule is not much given to anger. But really, even if the Vikings got it right, that doesn't exactly excuse trying to take over the world. Plenty of people have shitty, abusive childhoods and don't become super-villains.
Okay there's definitely a correlation and all, but that's why places like the Vault and Ryker's have so many therapists.
Asgard probably doesn't have therapists.
Goddammit, he needs more information! He needs to know more of what Loki's plan is, he needs to know his motives. Whatever his reasons are, they're secondary to the problem of trying to stop him killing any more people. Clint can't do very much, but his entire modus operandi is about being in the right place at the right time to apply the right amount of force. Usually in the shape of an arrow to the heart. He can do this.
He needs to ask Loki some questions.
If we know what the plan is, we can carry it out more efficiently, Clint tells himself, carefully not letting any other reasons slip through his mind. Loki shouldn't have to worry about everything himself. And you know, talking about your problems is psychologically healthy. We want to be there for him. We want him to be happy.
The risk of this particular plan is that he actually starts to convince himself that all this is entirely true (rather than only partly true). There are times when he catches himself feeling sympathetic for Loki and he's not entirely sure which part of him the thoughts come from. It is getting harder to tell where the brainwashing stops and he begins.
Just hang on, he thinks. Just keep on going. Until what, though? Until SHIELD comes to rescue him? Unlikely. Until Loki's plan is complete? It's not as though he'll let Clint go once he's done. He's trying not to let it seem hopeless, but there's not much of a light at the end of the tunnel here.
Anyway, he has a super-villain to interrogate. In the interests of making everyone involved more co-operative, he's brought food. Donuts, to be precise. He always brings Phil donuts when he's in a bad mood.
He'd just compared Loki to his lover, Clint realises, horrified. Bad thoughts, bad thoughts.
Too late to back out now though.
Loki is holed up in an alcove watching his minions scurrying about. He's sitting on the steps, his hands clasped tightly around his sceptre. His face looks drawn and pale. He looks ill again. Maybe he hasn't been getting enough sleep. Do Norse god-aliens sleep? Clint glances down at the donut box. Maybe he should have brought soup.
Get a grip! You're thinking like brainwashed-you again!
As he gets close though, Clint sees that Loki isn't really watching anything at all. He's staring straight ahead, his eyes sort of glazed over. The crystal at the head of his staff is glowing faintly, releasing wisps of Tesseract energy as insubstantial as gas. Clint pauses. When people start checking out like this, it's generally not a good sign.
He's just wondering whether he could get away with waving a hand in front of Loki's face when Loki comes back to himself. His head jerks to the side with a hiss of pain, and his breathing goes quick and harsh. Clint knows what it is to breathe like that, when you're trying to hide that you're hurt. He's torn between wanting to go over and help somehow, and the knowledge that Loki's pride will not thank him for it.
Loki looks up. He seems to be aware of what's going on around him at least, though his mouth thins at seeing Clint standing there. There's an awkward silence.
Fuck it, Clint thinks, and goes over.
"I brought you something to eat," he says, holding the box out. Loki takes it cautiously, like he thinks it's going to spring open and unleash some kind of trap.
"How thoughtful," he says, with a clear hint of sarcasm.
"I just worry about you, Boss," Clint says, and hates how earnest he sounds.
Loki shoots him a suspicious sideways glance, but he opens the box. "More Midgardian delicacies, I suppose," he says, reaching in. He takes a bite out of a custard donut and makes a pleased noise. He eats like someone who has only just realised they're hungry, taking massive bites and licking every last speck of sugar from his fingers. Clint finds himself slightly mesmerised by his tongue.
"So what's the next step in the plan?" Clint asks, finally dragging his gaze away.
"Once the machine is ready Selvig will take it to the power source. As for you and I... let's just say I have a revenge to take before I'm done." Loki's eyes are wide and feverish, and more than a little mad. "Not that such is my only vengeance, the only grievance that must be redressed. I have more than enough to go around. But this must come first; I'll have my fun, though I must leave them in well enough shape to fight. That is for the second vengeance." He smiles and suddenly reaches up to grab Clint's wrist, pulling him down to sit on the cold brick beside him.
"Tell me, will Fury have gathered his band of lost souls yet?"
"I... yes. The timing is well within his projected scenarios. He'll have them on the Helicarrier, waiting to catch our trail."
"Your chosen 'family'" – his expression is half sneer, half honest disbelief – "are amongst their number, are they not?"
"Yes." This is in no way how Clint hoped this conversation would go.
"Tell me," Loki says. "Tell me everything about them. The ways in which they are weak. The soft underbelly where they can be hurt. Open them up to me as you have opened the others of their pathetic troupe." He pauses. "And tell me why they are worthy of you."
Clint struggles, he fights, but he is already opening his mouth, words spilling forth uncontrollably. The pleasure of doing his master's bidding is already lapping at the walls of his resistance. He is handing over the tools of his family's destruction, and he has no idea how Loki intends to use them.
He can only listen to himself talk.
Loki listens and tries to banish the lingering aches of psychic pain.
(Again the Chitauri hurt you. Again they debase you. Once the Tesseract has been turned to your will, you shall turn their sun to ashes, you will trap them in eternal agony, you will unmake their planet and everything they hold dear.)
Barton's voice is steady and oddly calming. The sweetmeats he brought with him have given Loki a boost of energy he badly needed. The Chitauri are ever watching him through the staff, leaving him little time free to plan their demise as it should be planned. Good revenge should be savoured. Nor can he speak to his servants as he might wish, lest he is overheard. But one revenge they certainly will not begrudge is revenge on Thor's would-be allies.
Oh, of course he will not hurt them too much – they must be able to turn back the invasion force after all. But a little hurt will both make him feel better and serve to bring them together. Strength in adversity, was that not always the way? One of Asgard's few proverbs, and proven enough in the example of Thor and his little band of warriors. Yet it did not do for Loki, always on the outside even after lending his wits and seid on their petty quests. No strength, no togetherness for the Jotun outcast, for the hidden monster.
But these so-called heroes are all monsters and freaks together, are they not? They have created themselves, or been created, through mortal science and it has left them with so very many insecurities, so many avenues of attack. Hurting them will be no challenge at all. The only challenge will be not striking too deeply, wounding them such that they will no longer be fit for purpose.
"Natasha is a lot like you," Barton is saying. "You'll need to be careful with her."
"Like me?" Loki says, laughing. "There are none like me."
Barton frowns. "She relies on people underestimating her," he warns. "She's clever, she uses trickery. She's deadly and she won't hesitate to strike a killing blow. She's killed more people than me, and I've killed a lot of people."
"You want me to stay away from her." Loki sees the intent behind his words. "You don't want me close enough to kill her." Loki smiles, and reaches over to pat Barton's cheek. "Clever, to try and get around my seid like that. Don't worry. I have no intention of killing. That would spoil the fun entirely. Her life at least is safe from me, and that of your lover if you so wish it." His hand wanders up to card through his little assassin's hair. Hmm. Soft. "You do wish it, don't you?"
Barton's eyes slide half-closed, blissful. "I want what you want," he says.
"I want you to tell me the truth."
"Then no, I don't want you to kill them."
Loki smiles. "Not on my honour, for I have none, but on my seid. So I swear. I wish to be good to those who serve me, and you have served me so well." Barton is leaning into his hand, hungry for affection. It is... pleasant, even if it is only due to the spell. Sudden whim takes him, and he leans his sceptre against the wall, leaning in to press a soft kiss to Barton's forehead. He smells of strange human smells, coffee and sweat and the faintly scented soaps they use on their hair.
Barton nuzzles into Loki's shoulder, and Loki lets him. The mortal's ear is near enough his lips for the quietest whisper to carry.
"Because you are so good," he says softly, ever so softly, "I will tell you what I am going to do. I have said I have an army, I do not want them, they are not mine. They will come here for their prize and you mortals will kill them for me. I wish no realm, I wish only to hurt those who have hurt me. Odin, Thor and the Chitauri. I will lose and then I will take the Tesseract and have my revenge, and so in losing I will win, because all I can do is lose. I am a monster playing a monster's part, because there is nothing else, no other path of destiny before me save this."
He draws back, takes up his sceptre and stands. Barton blinks up at him in confusion.
"Good boy," Loki says, and walks away.
What the fuck? That's pretty much the only reaction Clint can think of, sitting on the floor watching Loki stride off. A monster playing a monster's part? The Chitauri? Loki speaks in riddles, and he is beginning to think that there is genuinely something wrong with his mental state. Was he like this before, as Thor's brother? Clint was in New Mexico. He's read all the reports, written a good few of them himself. Loki had been responsible for the metal war machine that had destroyed half the town, but before he left Thor had made no mention of madness. What changed between his journey back to Asgard and Loki's arrival on Earth?
Loki has spoken before of the army he intends to bring through the portal they are creating, and now Clint has a name for them. The Chitauri. He'd thought the army belonged to Loki's allies, but from what he just said it seems the god may not be working entirely of his own free will. But who would be powerful enough to make Loki do anything, he think indignantly, before realising that's just evil!Clint thinking. Loki is far beyond any normal individual human, yes, but he's hardly all powerful. Especially with how tired he's been looking recently.
And is that indicative of something more? Perhaps whatever hold these Chitauri have on him? Clint thinks over what he's been told, what he's seen. Little clues. He's always been observant. One possibility: The Chitauri want to invade and conquer Earth, and have forced Loki into clearing them a path. Loki doesn't seem the type to allow anyone to make him do anything, so he's plotting to... make them lose? Presumably he can't just refuse to open the portal on pain of... something, so he's going to make sure SHIELD and the Avengers Initiative are nice and close by to beat the crap out of the invasion force. That way the Chitauri's failure won't be his fault.
That makes a certain amount of sense, but Clint gets the feeling he's still missing something here. Loki had called himself a monster, for one. And he's talked of ruling Earth before, which seems an unlikely thing for the Chitauri to allow their tool. Although perhaps to set him up as a puppet... He at least looks human, whereas who knows about the Chitauri. Still, this seems deeper, more complex. The rough outline looks right, but the devil is in the details.
Anyway all this is enough to make him sure that Loki is perhaps not the threat he had thought. Oh Clint isn't about to fool himself that he has any regard for human life. He's a long-lived, possibly near immortal alien, and they are... Well, he said it himself, he thinks of them as ants. But if Loki is being forced into doing all this... Clint is currently in a position to know exactly how that feels.
I need to help him, he realises, for once both parts of himself, brainwashed and otherwise, in complete agreement. If I know the rest of his plan, we can set this up so the Chitauri die with a minimum of collateral damage. The minimum loss of human life.
'I bring tidings of a world made free from freedom', Loki had said, back in the SHIELD base. Had he been talking partly about himself even then?
Clint scrambles to his feet, full of renewed purpose. He's going to get Loki out of the Chitauri's hands, and goddammit, he's going to save the world while he's at it.
Perhaps it may not have been the best idea to confide in his servant, but really, Loki tells himself, there is no risk in it. The spell holds strong, and while it does there is no chance of Barton spilling his secrets to others. Nor will he be able to pity him if Loki orders him not to. He would be incapable of it.
And did it not feel good, to confess to someone who by virtue of his own seid cannot condemn him, or hate him, or turn away from him? Loki has ever been a private person, but that is at least partly by necessity. Thor never understood him, and Odin was a distant figure. And a liar, he must never forget that. Perhaps real fathers are different. It is true that Thor was ever closer to Odin than Loki was.
(Perhaps when you have caused Thor as much pain as he caused you, you will kill him, and send his broken body to Asgard. Let Odin know what it is to be torn away from someone you love, to have a family broken.)
It is a day before Barton comes to speak to him again, outside of normal reports on the state of their operation. Once more he is bearing a gift of food. It amuses Loki; does his archer think he is Volstagg the Voluminous, to be coaxed into happiness by what he can stuff into his belly? Not that he objects; though Asgard's table has delicacies from across the Nine realms, they have little from Midgard, only old recipes from the time of war with Jotunheim. Midgard has changed much since then, and they have many intriguing morsels for him to try. Though Loki is accustomed to suppressing his hunger when he has to, seid requires a great deal of energy, and his real appetite can be quite... prodigious.
"What have you brought me today?" he asks, peering at the little plastic tub.
"Baklava," Barton replies, holding it out. "It's made with honey and nuts; I thought it might be a little more like what you're used to. Mead is made with honey right, so..."
Loki lifts out one of the little sweetmeats, dripping and half-sticking down to the bottom of the box. He takes a delicate bite and cannot hold back a moan of pleasure. If these are the delights Midgard has to offer, perhaps he will stay here for a while after this is over. Servants are easy to acquire, as is Midgardian money, and with the Tesseract his magic will be such that none in this realm can harm him.
"What you said before," Barton says, "if there's any way I can help you, if I can make things easier..."
Of course his words have aroused the protective instincts his seid has given them. He should have known. "So long as you continue to play your part in the plan as admirably as you have, all will be well."
His soldier's eyes flick to the sceptre by his side. Good, he is smart enough to realise the dangers of talking freely. Such a clever little one this. He is glad he took him from his previous masters. It would have been a true shame to kill him. Barton looks frustrated. Clearly he has questions.
And it would be good, would it not, to be able to rely on one of his servants to understand the hidden meanings behind his actions. To know that there would be no confusion, no misunderstandings. That Barton would not, in trying to anticipate his wishes, accidentally damage his true plan.
Loki pushes the sceptre a little further away from him. It will be harder to do without being able to channel the Tesseract's energy, but the expenditure of his seid will be worth it. He reaches out to cup the side of Barton's head again. His soldier looks up, perhaps expecting another kiss. Loki smiles, and pushes in with his seid.
This is far easier when you have the experience of it being done to yourself. He slips into Barton's mind, seeing the shimmering over-layer created by his spell, seeing beneath if the archer's own self, battered and beginning to seep into the spell around the edges, but still strong. Loki delves deep, threading seid behind him. Down to subconscious levels, where he halts, and begins to build a link. A chain, a thread, to go between their minds and allow them to speak without words. A channel of communication the Chitauri cannot track, not from so very far away.
Clint is blinking in confusion when Loki releases him.
You may ask you questions now, Loki says, testing the link. For none shall hear but you and I.
"What did you..?" Clint asks, before thinking better of it. Telepathy? He asks. You can just give someone that?
A channel between our minds, Loki replies. I repeat, ask your questions. And, so we look less suspicious, come sit with me again.
Barton does as he's told. Loki pulls him down further so that his head is resting in his lap. His fingers wind through the mortal's hair once more. Let Barton think perhaps that the connection is stronger with the contact, let Loki tell himself that it is just for the look of the thing. In all truth, he enjoyed doing this the day before, and he has never been good at denying his wants.
Barton settles into it, twisting to a more comfortable position, resting his hand lightly on Loki's thigh. Loki hardly needs his new-wrought connection to feel the waves of bliss echoing through the outer seid-binding.
You could have... oh this is nice, Clint says, mind to mind. You could have come to SHIELD for help. If we knew what the Chitauri were doing, if we knew they planned to come to Earth, we could have done something. Worked together.
Even if I did not wish to take my revenge on my false-brother through you, through hurting his latest pets, his latest toys, Loki says bitterly, do you truly think my words would have been believed? I know my reputation, I know what Thor must have said of me to your kind. Allow Loki-Liesmith access to the Tesseract, to your new-won jewel and weapon? I think not.
I suppose that's true, Clint says, regretfully. Well if all you have is me, I want to help you. I don't particularly want this world to be invaded and conquered. What kind of hold do the Chitauri have over you anyway?
Loki's hand stills for a second. I shall not speak of my time with them, he says viciously. It was not pleasant, to say the least. He resumes his petting, trying to sooth away the memory of pain. His heart burns with hate.
They hurt you! So fierce and protective, little hawk. He can feel the archer's muscles stiffen against his side, an instinctive readiness for action.
Yes, and we will hurt them back, Loki thinks, dark and terrible.
They're the monsters, not you, Clint says to him, with earnestness bought of seid. Why did you call yourself that, it's clear you're nothing of the sort.
Anger is replaced by hurt, bitter hate turning in on itself. Loki feels once again the pain of being nothing more than what he is. His little archer knows nothing of true monsters. He is ignorant in his innocence.
If you saw my true face you would not say that!
Barton twists to look up at him, blue-shone eyes showing nothing but curiosity. No fear. Loki realises that with the seid, he will be incapable of hating him, of shunning him, from looking away in horror. No matter what his true reaction might otherwise be, in this time and place Loki's foul Jotun heritage means nothing.
He cannot decide how it makes him feel.
"I am not of Asgard," he says, aloud. The Chitauri already know all this. "Not truly. Odin lied to me; he stole me as a babe from Jotunheim in the last days of our war. He wanted to use me, perhaps if only to see if my kind are evil by nature or by culture." He is caught up in his memories, barely even aware of what he's saying. "I suppose I proved the former on that count. Everything I tried to do, to make him proud of me, to make him love me was futile. Thor, the true Aesir son, always came first. I am a monster, and I can't fight that. I can only play the role that destiny lays out for me."
Barton sits up and for a moment Loki thinks that even through the seid-spell he is disgusted enough to pull away. But then he leans forwards to pull him into a hug. It's the first embrace Loki has received since... he cannot even remember.
"Destiny is bullshit," Barton says. "You don't have to be anything you don't want to, I don't care what you are. I'll help you, I'll do whatever you want."
"Would you kill me, if I asked you to?" Loki says, not quite knowing what makes the words spill uncontrollably from his mouth.
"No. Never."
Loki chokes back a laugh. Stupidly, foolishly loyal. He lets himself relax into his servant's arms, and tries not to think about the magic that makes it so.