This chapter's song is "The High Road" by Three Days Grace, which I more apply to Loki and Natasha, but the mood of it suits the chapter anyway.
Chapter 55
"If it's done right, you feel like you're out among them, part of them. Like you could lose who you are," he murmured.
There was a long pause, as if she was thinking about what he said. Then she reached up to touch his face, and whispered "Show me?"
He kissed her hand. "Gladly."
Clint turned his back on the scene as Loki bent down to kiss her, unable to stand another moment. He knew where this was going, and he didn't want to think about it, much less watch it. He made his way carefully through the undergrowth, not making a sound, until he came to the path he had trailed them up not fifteen minutes before.
He felt like his head was on fire. He had tailed Loki for much of the afternoon. After the incident in the kitchen, he became seriously concerned. He had ventured out into the other room after he saw Loki pass one of the kitchen windows with a bottle in his hand, leaving Darcy to the distraction of a tin roof sundae. He had found a very upset and slightly drunk Tony, who would not explain what was going on.
Upon his return, Darcy had made some very interesting comments.
"Well," she had mused, licking her spoon. "I suppose it's possible that Dude Loki isn't as keen on Natasha hooking up with Femme Loki as Tony and I thought he would be..." she frowned a little.
Clint had stared at her a full minute, trying to process what she had just said. "You... and Tony... are somehow involved in Natasha and... and Femme Loki..."
He could tell that it had been a Herculean effort for Darcy not to laugh at him. "We kinda set them up," she admitted quietly, instead.
At this point he had sat. There was really no alternative. "Why?" he managed at last.
Darcy gave him a funny look. "Because we thought it would make them happy. All three of them. But I guess we were wrong. That's what we get for meddling..." she sighed and took another big bite of ice cream.
As soon as he could find a valid excuse to get away from Darcy (provided by a heaven-sent Jane who wanted to have some girl-talk with her), Clint had set out to trail Loki. He wasn't really sure why he was doing it. It was just something instinctual-if you don't understand what's going on, do some reconnaissance.
He had rationalized to himself that a drunk and angry Loki was a dangerous Loki-as if there were a sort of Loki that was not dangerous. If something happened to Natasha and he was not there to protect her, he would never forgive himself. Especially if it was Loki that happened.
So he followed him, carefully. Clint was very certain that Loki was not aware he was being tailed, mostly because he consumed the entire contents of the bottle he carried over the next four hours. Once it was empty, he chucked it away, and Clint found it. His concern raised to alarm when he saw that it was Absinthe. He knew Loki's physiognomy was different from a human's, but he also knew that a very small amount of Absinthe could make a human pretty much bat-shit crazy. Who knew what effect large quantities would have on Loki, especially since he was already fairly crazy to begin with?
After a while Clint began to grow frustrated-it seemed that the only harm Loki was interested in doing was stealing pillows and blankets and staring things to death. But at last, after the sun had gone down and the stars had come out-making Clint's task both easier and more difficult-Loki had set off toward the cabin he shared with Natasha. He had halfway expected an altercation to occur right there, but was not surprised when Loki asked her to come out with him. Loki wasn't stupid, and if he was going to fight with Natasha he'd be smart enough to take her far away from her friends first.
Once Natasha had joined him, though, following Loki became far more challenging. Clint had to be extremely careful, backing off until he constantly risked losing them. If Natasha detected Clint following them, he didn't like to think what the consequences would be. His worst fears seemed confirmed as Loki led her off the lit path, into the jungle, towards the clearing where he had left the bedding. He had almost, almost stopped them then, but was willing to give Natasha credit for being able to take care of herself for the few seconds it would take him to close the gap, once Loki attacked.
Except Loki hadn't attacked. They had talked. Shared things from their past-some things which Natasha had not even told him. Apparently they had already fought, and were now reconciling. The phrase make up sex floated through his brain, and that was impetus enough to tear himself away from the scene and flee.
His mind was so full of these things that he nearly ran right into someone.
"Darcy! What are you doing out here?" he demanded, grabbing her by the shoulders so she didn't fall over.
Darcy frowned. "Well I was trying to follow you, but then I got lost," she complained.
"Are you crazy? Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to go wandering in a jungle at night?" he chided.
Her frown deepened into a scowl. "Safe enough for you!" Before Clint could argue this point, she pressed on. "And Natasha and Loki!"
Clint froze. In all his effort not to be seen by them, he had neglected to consider that he might be seen by others.
"I was just heading back from Jane's cabin, when I saw them coming up the path, hand in hand. I was happy to see them getting along again. Imagine my surprise when I saw you skulking around after them," she said in an acid tone. "You know, stalking ex-girlfriends is not generally an attractive trait in guys." She folded her arms, her expression and posture demanding an explanation.
Clint would be damned if he was going to have this argument in the middle of the jungle. He pushed past her, making his way back towards the lit path. Darcy stomped after him, and he sighed. He knew he owed her an explanation.
"I wasn't following Natasha," he grumbled. "I was following Loki. You saw the scene he made earlier, I was worried he might... do something."
Darcy sighed too. "Like what?" she said sarcastically.
Clint held a branch aside for her, and saw the dim glow from the lit path ahead. "I don't know. Hurt her, I guess."
"And what did he actually do?"
"He drank an entire bottle of Absinthe," Clint said with a mild sense of triumph.
Darcy whistled low. "Isn't that a hallucinogen?"
Clint nodded. "In humans, anyway."
"So what did he do then?" She actually sounded mildly interested, her love of gossip overcoming her anger at him. Clint could see that if he actually had something of interest to report, he could easily distract her from the argument.
Unfortunately, he didn't. "Nothing," he growled, frustrated, and pressed on towards his cabin. "He sat around a lot. Thinking, I guess. Then he went and got Natasha, told her a bunch of romantic mushy stuff, and they made up." He knew he sounded like a sullen teenager, but he didn't care.
"So, aside from the excessive drinking, basically he did the right and responsible thing?" she said in an annoying I-told-you-so voice. She took his lack of answer as an agreement. "Clint, when are you going to realize that he's not a homicidal psychopath anymore, if he ever was?"
At this, he rounded on her, furious. "If he ever was?!" he hissed. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Within the first half an hour after his arrival, he had completely destroyed a secret SHIELD base, killed over four dozen agents, and in Fury's words made me and Eric his own personal flying monkey. He then proceeded to make me kill at least-" Here Clint stopped, his voice catching in his throat.
"Oh, now I get it," Darcy said without a trace of sarcasm. Her honest and open expression was enough to stop his rant in its tracks.
"Get what?" he frowned.
"You blame Loki for what he did because you still blame yourself for what you did. Either you're both guilty or you're both innocent. I thought you were holding yourself responsible so you could hold him responsible, but now I see it's the other way around," she mused, nodding to herself as if to confirm her suspicions.
Clint took a long moment to sift through what she had just said. "No," he said, but the anger had gone out of it. "It's not like that."
She sighed. "Then please explain it to me because I am way confused."
He started walking again, to help him think. She seemed to sense that he was not avoiding the answer, and followed him patiently. They made it all the way back to his cabin before he found the words.
"I don't know how much of this I can tell you," he admitted as he sat on the couch.
"Secret spy stuff?" she asked, sitting next to him.
He ran a hand through his hair. "Not really..."
"Bro code?" Darcy offered.
He laughed. "In a weird, twisted way, yes."
She chewed her lip a little. "Is this about Loki being possessed? Because I already know about that."
Clint experienced that odd sinking feeling-the one he associated with reaching for the next trapeze only to find it just wasn't there. "What?" he managed to say.
"I mean, I don't know how you know," she evaded.
"Loki told me," he said quickly, wanting to get to her explanation.
"Seriously?" Darcy was flabbergasted.
"Yes. He knew it was the only way I would work with him. We agreed that I wouldn't tell anyone because..."
"Because, he, like you, wants to be held responsible for what he did. What a bunch of masochists you are," she rolled her eyes.
He just stared at her, refusing to be distracted despite her innate ability to do so.
"All right. Thor figured it out. They've been brothers for like, a bajillion years, right? You don't think he'd notice that, in addition to going totally wacky, his eyes had turned a different color? I mean, they're one of his best features and all..."
Sensing a detour that would involve cataloging Loki's physical assets, Clint groaned. She just grinned. "Jealous, are we?" she teased. "I like that." She took a moment to collect her thoughts and continued. "He didn't know what it meant, though, until Eric happened to mention that the same thing had happened to him, when Loki did the funny thing with his staff. Thor asked him how he had managed to break the possession, and Erik told him he had hit his head really hard when Tony tried to attack the portal generator. A little research proved the same had happened to you, and Loki thanks to the Jolly Green Giant. He told Jane and me all this before he took us to meet Her the first time."
Clint blinked, again finding that with Darcy's rapid speech he needed a little time to figure out precisely what she had said. Something in there nagged at him, and his eyes narrowed when he put his finger on it. "Tasha is the only one who knew that," he murmured.
She looked a little sheepish, but then sighed. "Yes, Natasha knows. Did you really think she would be dating him if she didn't? But I think she's in the same philosophy camp as you and Loki."
He nodded, "She knows what it's like to do terrible things and then later wake up and realize how wrong they are. She's learned to let go of her responsibility for those things, but she won't pretend that it's easy."
She shifted, still uncomfortable with the undefined relationship between Clint and Natasha, the fondness in his voice when he spoke of her. "Ok, so you get all that. Why are you still so pissed?"
He glared at her, but she didn't recoil. "Because I need to be angry at somebody! He killed Phil, Darcy."
At this, Darcy rolled her eyes, but before he could lash out at her again, she held up a hand. "Have you ever considered that he did you all a favor by killing Phil?" she said it so matter-of-factly that he hardly knew what to say.
"Are you totally nuts?" he demanded.
"Hear me out. From the moment he arrives, Loki only does everything he can to piss you all off. The way Thor makes it sound, Loki could have easily sweet-talked his way out of that lab, swindled SHIELD out of the Tesseract and schmoozed his way into half a dozen allies before he declared open war on Earth, and that would have been more his speed. Instead he makes the biggest splash possible, and gets on everybody's radar. Then, instead of just going to ground, he decides to prance around Germany like some stuck-up supermodel."
Clint frowned, remembering Loki's words in the underground facility. They had just been discussing Clint's failure to kill Fury, his first real resistance against the possession of the Tesseract.
"I want to know everything you can tell me about this team of his. I would... test their mettle. I grow weary of scuttling in shadows. I mean to rule this world, not burrow in it."
Clint nodded. "It's a risk."
Loki grinned. "Oh yes."
At the time, Clint had thought that Loki was just massively overconfident and wanted to remove a minor annoyance before it grew into a genuine problem. Now... "You think he lost on purpose," he realized.
"Yup," Darcy grinned, glad he was catching on.
"Then why Phil? Why not just stay caught in the helicarrier? Why go through with the battle of New York, if he was just trying to get away from the Chitauri?"
"Because the Chitauri were still coming," Darcy said solemnly. "You guys couldn't get your shit together, and it wasn't a sure thing that you would beat them when they came. If you lost, his only hope for survival would be to make it look like he planned on beating you all along. So he had to do the one thing he knew would make you all hate him enough to try your damnedest to beat him. He broke one of the cardinal Evil Overlord rules in the hopes that your punishment would be better than whatever awaited him in the hands of the Chitauri. Thor said Loki had been missing for like a year. Who knows what they did to him."
"Oh, god," Clint said shakily. "So Phil was just... the sidekick who gets killed?"
Darcy laughed. "I think he would take that as a compliment," she proclaimed. "You forget that I knew him too. At first I thought he was kind of an asshole, you know, but then I just realized that he was one of those serious, hard-core motards about SHIELD. Except he wasn't a badass. He had no super powers, no special skills. He was just polite and efficient and dedicated. He's probably the kind of guy who had Nathan Hale's Last Words in cross-stitch hanging on his wall."
He gave her a confused look.
She laughed self-depreciatingly. "That's what I get for being a Political Science major. He was this spy, back in the revolutionary war. Not a very good one, though, 'cause he got caught. Before the redcoats hanged him, he said 'My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country.' Phil was that kind of guy."
Clint swallowed hard. "Yeah, he was."
"So yeah, it's probably shitty of me to say that Loki gave him the opportunity to be what he wanted to be, but that's what I think." Darcy crossed her arms, wondering if this was the end of their relationship.
He breath hitched at her words, at the determined but fearful look on her face. "No. You should say what you think. It's obvious I don't have a clear line of sight on this, and I need someone to tell me when I'm shooting at shadows."
She stared at him for a full ten seconds. "I think that's the sexiest thing a guy has ever said to me," she proclaimed, and then pounced on him.
He laughed through her kisses, but quickly realized how serious she was when she grabbed his hand and shoved it up her shirt. Clint was no idiot, he knew when to shut up and put on the moves. He was just about to do that one thing that Natasha had actually complimented him on when the sound of a throat clearing came from the doorway.
Darcy and Clint froze like two teenagers when the basement light comes on. They turned to see Steve standing next to the door, his expression caught between disapproving father and embarrassed younger brother.
"Hi Cap," Darcy said with a remarkable lack of awkwardness as Clint removed his hand from her shirt and his knee from between her legs. "We were just... leaving." She stood, pulling a stunned Clint up from the couch. She dragged him out the door, grinning at Steve the whole time as if daring him to say something.
He remained tersely silent until the door closed, when he heard him mutter "Kids these days..."
It was all they could do to keep from laughing, and Darcy continued to pull him towards some unknown destination.
"Where are we going?" he asked, still half-laughing.
"My cabin," she gave him a coy smile over her shoulder.
He raised his eyebrows. "What about Jane?"
"Oh, she's probably busy riding the lightning," she joked.
Clint made a face. "You have a dirty mind, girl," he laughed.
She just gave him a sly look. "You're about to find out just how dirty," she promised as she pushed open the cabin door.
Clint just grinned and followed her in.
A/N: I have too much fun writing Darcy, I really do. This chapter was a bit of a toughy, though. I originally planned for them to have an actual fight, with shouting and everything, but they just wouldn't cooperate. Clint is a little thick-headed but Darcy can talk her way out of anything.
The scene Clint remembers is from the Avengers deleted scenes, for those who don't recognize it. I seriously recommend looking them up if you haven't seen them yet.
Speaking of which, has everyone seen the new teaser trailer for Thor: The Dark World? Not gonna lie, I screamed like a little girl at the end. You can hop over to my deviantArt site (link in my bio) to see the fanart it inspired.
Next on Saturday, Chapter 56: Mirror, Mirror (and if you've been paying attention this should clue you into what kind of chapter it is ^.~)
