literature

Sympathy for the Devil

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Sympathy for the Devil
Universe- Avengers (before Thor 2/Captain America 2)
Pairings- Maybe a hint of potential Clint/Loki if you squint through shipping goggles
Warnings: Strong Language, Loki

  Clint Barton was ready to break something.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t ready to deal with the fallout from acting on his impulse, so he drew on his reserves of self-control and pretended everything was fine.  Steve Rogers- damn him- just kept staring with his damn concern, and now Natasha was looking worriedly toward his white knuckles.  Wonderful.  As if he hadn’t been stared at enough.

  After the Battle of New York, the Avengers and everyone else involved in the alien attack had tried to return to normal.  Sometimes it worked.  Usually normal took one look at them and laughed its ass off, then called in extra PTSD, misery, and nightmares.  For Tony it was the panic attacks.  Coulson never quite recovered from being stabbed, though only those in S.H.I.E.L.D. even knew he was alive.  Dr. Selvig went straight over the edge, becoming a loon with the brains of a top scientist.  No one could blame him, though.  Having a god in his head had been at the top of the traumatic ranking system.  And when Loki’s mind control came up, it wasn’t long before all eyes turned to Clint.

  Clint was not ok- he was miles from ok- but that didn’t mean he wanted to be constantly watched.  Everyone from Fury to fucking Natasha was just waiting for him to snap.  They even thought they could understand why he would.

  They were wrong.

  Yes, having him in his head, fucking with his thoughts, was hell.  There was no comparing to that feeling of complete powerlessness.  No stopping the guilt at knowing he had been responsible for killing his fellow S.H.I.E.L.D. members in the helicarrier.  No denying he hadn’t even hesitated to plan the assault.   Loki had turned Clint’s world upside down and watched him scramble to find a foothold again.  The bastard had probably even snickered a little.  Clint wasn’t fooling himself.  He knew full well what Loki had done, and it was so easy to be angry with him for it.  It should have been easy to hate him.  Clint deserved the right to hate him.

  And right there was his problem.  Loki was proving to be difficult to hate…  

  Fucking bastard.

  Clint was definitely free of the mind control.  He had been honest about that.  All of his current thoughts were his own, no matter how much he wanted to attribute them to someone else.  That would have been so much easier than accepting he’d lied to Natasha.  “I can’t remember much,” he’d told her, “it’s all kind of fuzzy.”  Bullshit.

  The memories were there, as clear as any others he had.  The only fog over them was his sense of being unable to control his loyalty.  Loki’s magic staff had found whatever part of him that dealt with those kinds of things, and it had taken it over.  Suddenly, Clint had found himself with an unwavering devotion to his “boss”.  Less-than-loyal thoughts had occasionally crawled out of his subconscious, but he’d never been able to even consider acting on them.  His skills and normal thought patterns, however, had been unaffected.  They had let him pick up on some things he really wished hadn’t been there.

  Observation 1: Loki had been anxious.  Not “I’m-a-general-in-a-war” anxious, but “I-can’t-afford-to-fail-or-terrible-consequences” anxious.  Clint knew how to distinguish a target under duress, and- as much as he hated to admit it- Loki was one.  Honestly, the brainwashing probably helped him on that one.  At the time, he had been perfectly attuned to his boss’s every need… and every worry line.  When Loki had zoned out, Clint had noticed.  More than that, he had cared.  And when Loki came back to him looking stressed and moving up plans, it had been Clint’s turn to worry.

  Observation 2: Loki had been scared.  That one had been much harder to spot.  Clint may have even been wrong, but his gut had told him otherwise.  Twice there had been a glint of fear of Loki’s eyes, and twice Clint had been desperate to know how he could fix it.  He hadn’t asked, however, knowing his boss wouldn’t have wanted him to.  

  Observation 3: For the guy who took over his brain, Loki had been rather nice.  Subconsciously, Clint had expected some kind of mental torture or degrading orders.  Instead, Loki had used him the same familiar way S.H.I.E.L.D. had.  Making him spill every detail about his organization and the Avengers had been sickening later, but he couldn’t help drawing parallels to a debriefing.  Their interactions had been short, but Loki had never felt the need to remind Clint who was in charge or anything.  He’d even let him plan his own missions.  The weirdest thing Clint could remember was an offhand remark about how it would “be such a shame to let that pretty face go to waste,” and he’d chalked that up to Asgardian craziness.

  Observation 4: Loki was clever.  Like, really clever.  It had been obvious strategy was his strong suit.  The grand plan, however, had been overwhelming force with no alternatives.  The mind control or vibes or whatever had told him to just go with what Loki did, but his post-Loki brain during the Battle had steadily kept tabs on all the things that were tactically wrong.  It had been far too long of a list.

  Fuck.

  Clint could see how the pieces fit together, but he didn’t want to finish the puzzle.  Finishing meant acknowledging the bigger picture, and Clint hated the bigger picture.  He was a target guy.  All his focus was meant for one person.  He wasn’t supposed to know- or care- about the target’s job, or their place in the organization, and he was cool with that.  More than cool, it was what he preferred.  Now Loki- fucking Loki- was going to make him see a conspiracy when the culprit was supposed to be singular and obvious.  This had better be a onetime lapse in sanity.  The facts needed to be nothing more than the ramblings of a crazy man- like Selvig’s theory on the coming end of the world.  His traitorous brain could take all those “What if…?” questions and dump them right then and there.

  But what if you’re right?

  If there had been another player in the invasion, the entire context of their battle would change.  (Who was he kidding?  There was no “if” about it.)  Someone who was capable of making Loki into a scared underling would need to be reported to S.H.I.E.L.D. command immediately, and Clint would wind up in a psych evaluation.  They’d say he had Stockholm Syndrome or something.  All his evidence was gut feeling and brainwashed memories, and that pissed him off.  He couldn’t even tell Natasha the truth, because she would assume he had been compromised again.

  So, no.  Clint wasn’t going to snap because of what Loki had done.  He had dealt with his issues and he was basically over them.  They certainly weren’t messing him up.  He was, however, plenty messed up and losing sleep over what Loki probably hadn’t done- like plan to take over the world- and that was far worse.  He couldn’t even properly hate the man who had violated his mind because of it.  Instead, Clint found himself almost feeling bad for him.

  Sympathy for the Devil was a bitch.
I wrote this a while back, then it disappeared into a folder and I didn’t think about it again.  Well, now I am.  Randomly stumbling across a piece seems like a good enough reason to post it.

Ok… Notes.  There aren’t many:

This takes place before Thor 2 obviously.  Steve is around doing his kind-of associating with S.H.I.E.L.D. before Captain America 2, and that means hanging out with Natasha and Clint.  An angry Clint who is trying to keep up the “I’m fine and Loki is a bastard but it’s over now” act.  He’s dealing.  Sort of.  Maybe this is why he couldn’t show up in the freaking movie about S.H.I.E.L.D.  (…I’m a little bitter about that.)

Loki’s actions in Avengers plus the whole Thanos end-credit scene make it pretty obvious he was being coerced.  Hell, everything he did in that movie was difficult to mesh with the clever, tricky Loki of mythology and (somewhat) the Thor movies.  This piece is just Clint noticing that.  Because he can.

I tend to give Loki a more mythology based characterization when I write him, like several other people, which kind of factored into “Observation 3” Clint made.  I’ve seen lots of stuff depicting Loki as being… well, cruel or degrading to his mind slave.  Some of it was shipping stuff, some of it was hilarious (like [this]), etc.  In the movie, however, he didn’t seem all that bad for a guy with mind slaves.  That whole “pretty face” comment means exactly what you think it means, though.  Mythology-based Loki totally rates people of both genders by how willing he’d be to screw them, and he considers it a damn shame he has enough decency not to get Hawkeye in bed while he is too mind-controlled to say no.

Faves are appreciated, and comments (particularly with what specifically you did or didn’t like) are encouraged.

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© 2014 - 2024 Daughter-of-Shadow
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AurasyrFreespirit's avatar
No way! My first Loki fic had this title too! Well-written, I liked that it was in Clint's p.o.v.!