My first Hawkeye fanfic. I wanted to write this little one-shot to help me become more comfortable with his emotions and character before I wrote something longer. Enjoy!
Disclaimers: I have never read a Marvel comic in my life. I have watched only a few of the Marvel movies. Therefore, I apologize if I inadvertently go against canon in some way.
I own no characters.
Constructive criticism appreciated. Please, no offensive language!
Please review!
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He refused to explain to himself why his brain demanded secrecy. He refused to admit to himself the insane fear that threatened to boil over in his veins every time he thought the name, every time he saw the lithe, silent figure. He refused to yield to the reality that he was still so much a part of Loki that he feared to be without him as much as he feared to be in the same room with him. Nat had said that it would take time. Clint knew that. He had accepted that. But it didn't mean that it liked it.
He wanted something hard and solid and confirming. Something that told him that he was no longer a link in Loki's mind. He wanted something that assured him that the murdering god was so securely defeated that not even a breath could escape his lips without the Avengers being aware of it. That was why he was headed down to the holding cell. Alone, at a stealthy half-run down the dimly lit passages. He was too ashamed to ask even Nat to go with him.
Perhaps, too, he wanted to gloat. Perhaps he wanted to stare at Loki through the mirror glass and feel that warm thrill of satisfaction of knowing the state of powerless defeat that he had helped to place the god in. Perhaps he wanted that surge of self-confidence to enable him to move forward with his life. Perhaps he was just curious. Loki had been placed in custody so swiftly following his capture that few of the Avengers had been allowed to visually take in and appreciate their hard-earned prize.
Barton doubted, however, if Steve Rogers, Thor, Bruce Banner, Natasha Romanoff—even Tony Stark—would possess such a desire. They had looked upon this venture as a mission—not a personal revenge quest. Barton's entrance had been a very literal last-minute thing—he had had no time to sort out his feelings and motivations besides a desperate need to hurt the being who had hurt him. It had given him a sense of purpose and urgency at the time. He had reasoned that he could sort out those thoughts later if he so wished. That, perhaps, was another reason why he was making his way down the halls of Stark Tower.
He paused now at a corner and glanced behind him, breathing deeply and evenly. He had long before slipped into the trained mindset of a silent marksman that had embroiled him into the seemingly cold, emotionless being that the perceiving world saw him as. Only one more short hallway. He had walked it only once, yet he knew its every step like Stark Tower was his own. He had embedded the route into his brilliant mind for this moment that he knew was inevitable. The moment he could see Loki caged and helpless, held within SHIELD containment facilities in Stark Tower guarded under layers of Stark technology. He could stare at Loki for as long as he wished through the double-sided mirror glass. The god could do nothing to him. He was helpless. Defeated. And Barton had to see it for himself.
He came up shortly as the large metal door presented itself. He paused for a brief second and then pressed his hand to the touch recognition plate at the side of the entrance. He stood quietly while the laser scanners flared across his eyes for a brief, confirming moment, and then, with a soft beep, the door slid apart, and Clint Barton stepped into the containment holding area of New York's near destroyer.
He walked softly across the short, nondescript entrance. He could see the prisoner seated alone in his glass-walled cell. He paused for a moment to take it in, to gather the courage to stride across the space between door of room and door of cell, to gain the safety of the walkway secured behind two levels of mirror glass. Loki could not see him, he told his pounding heart. Still, his fingers were wrapped unnaturally tight around the short pommel of the street dagger that he carried tucked beneath his jacket, and his breathing seemed loud and harsh in the stillness of that room. Loki cannot hear you. He is helpless. He can do nothing to you. He cannot reach your mind now. Right, Barton?
He was directly opposite the prisoner now, and he stopped. He allowed himself a daring step toward the double mirror glass so that he was a mere five feet away from the being who had enslaved his mind. And he lifted his gaze.
What he found was somewhat disappointing. Loki was seated on the low stool that had been a part of the very scarce furnishing provided for him in containment. A stool, a chair, a plastic tumbler of water. The stool and chair had been fastened to the floor, and the water could only be gained through a straw. There was worry about what he might do with loose objects, of how he might use them to vent his rage or to cause harm to himself. It was a very temporary arrangement—obviously, there were no plans to leave Loki in Stark Tower forever. But until something else could be decided upon, none of them felt that any risks could be taken.
Barton didn't know what he had expected, but it certainly hadn't been this. He stood for a long time, watching the being he had known as proud, elegant, cold, brimming with rage and hatred. Seated now on a bare stool in a bare room, his head down, his arms hanging limply over his knees. Barton didn't know what to make of it. Then, Loki looked up.
Barton felt his breath catch in his throat and he stumbled back a full pace, swallowing the thick wad of fear that had emerged so suddenly and was even now coursing through his blood at a frightening pace. He had looked up, through the glass, directly where Barton was standing. There was nothing in that gaze that told Barton that their eyes had made contact, that Loki knew he was there, yet somehow, he felt that Loki felt. And somehow, he knew that Loki didn't care. There was something else in that gaze that Barton had seen, something else that had struck such a cacophony within his very soul. There was something within Loki's gaze that had swept him back to the very foundations of who he was, of where he had come from, of the man behind the words Agent Barton, Hawkeye, Master Assassin, Expert Marksman. There was fear, there was anguish, there was—emptiness. There was everything that Barton thought he had left behind. There was everything that Barton had never imagined another being possessing in such vivid, hurtful degrees. Yet he saw it in Loki. He did not know what in the life of the proud young god could have happened to bring forth such wellsprings of emotion into his open visage. It must have been something so terrible, so painful…. A thousand thoughts were assaulting Barton's senses, a thousand voices screaming at him as he struggled to understand the moment and its possibilities of meaning. For if indeed Loki felt Barton on the other side of the glass and made no attempt to mask his true feelings—
Barton turned away and started back along the hall. He turned once and saw that the god's gaze was moving with him. He paused, and Loki's eyes paused, too. A hint of the old smile was creeping onto his lips, subtle, fighting against the tear streaks that still lined his cheeks. Barton swallowed.
Then, Loki dropped his head, and a deep, shuddering breath sent a tremor up his hunched back. Barton found himself breathing as well, something like relief thick in the action. He turned and walked the rest of the way to the door.
The metal door shut firmly behind him as he sank against the wall of the passage. He pressed his hands against the cold plaster behind him, reveling in the lessened tempo of his pounding brain. He glanced at the door, saw in the reflection from the tall windows flanking it that his own face was wet. He swiped at the tears angrily. How dare he—how dare Loki sit there in his cell and follow him with that rushing gaze of anguish? How dare Loki fill his chest with such fear and his mind with such memories? How dare he—how dare Loki—be so like to him?
Did fear and pain never go away? The pain of his childhood years, the betrayals of his youth, the years of endless, endless running and killing and feeling alone and useless and at odds with the living world—had he not left all that behind? He had thought so. He would have told anyone so. Then why did Loki's gaze make them come again, so fresh and so real?
He began walking the hall slowly, back up to the more brightly lit passages and the open staircases and rooms of Stark Tower. Loki had been defeated. He was powerless, he was stripped of all means to do anything to Clint Barton ever again. Yet he still sat in that cell and he stared at Barton through the mirror glass—and his gaze said untold things and—asked for unthinkable things. Barton refused to dwell on what those things were. But he knew. In the very back of his mind, he knew. He knew because his visage had silently pleaded in the very same way when he existed with blood and emptiness and pain and fear in his heart. He knew that he would have sought out the gaze of a passing person if only to see if their own might respond with more than disdain. He knew that if he was as Loki was now—trapped in walls of glass, an enemy to the entire known world, blood and death and fear circling endlessly through his brain—he would not despise the presence of even one of those who put him there. If that person might help him.
Clint shook his head. He was no psychologist, no therapist. He had no desire to counsel the being who had enslaved his mind and forced his hand to commit unspeakable horrors. In that way, he suspected that he shared with Loki, too, for he could hardly imagine the god willingly helping him if their places were reversed. They were linked—forever linked. The mind connection would fade, Clint had been assured of that fact by several mental health specialists. But that moment of shared pain and fear was forever embedded. Their pasts could not be rewritten. Barton turned and ran lightly up the short flight of stairs leading into the foyer of Stark Tower.