Chapter Text
It wasn’t that Clint wasn’t used to nightmares.
It wasn’t even that Loki hadn't already become a star attraction in those nightmares.
But even so, they weren’t often like this, the screams in the dark echoing in his head. Burying his face in his hands, Clint crouched in the dark space of the dream, trying to convince himself despite the very linear and non-fuzzy feeling of this place, it was still a dream.
Because the screams sounded a lot like Loki’s voice.
When it was finally quiet, the sound no longer echoing around whatever dark space they were in, he slowly lifted his head and took his hands away.
Loki stared back at him, hair longer then Clint remembered and tangled around his face, blood around his mouth and most of him was still in shadow. Even knowing it as a dream, Clint’s fingers itched and he wanted to run away.
“Of course,” Loki drawled and if seeing him had been bad, hearing his voice was a thousand times worse. “Of course my conscious would give me you.”
Clint woke up because he really did not want to be in that dream anymore.
-0-
Natasha carefully did not comment on the small cardboard box he was carrying, his bow case almost three times as large and much shinier. She had the grace not to say “that’s it?” which was why Clint loved her so much.
“Sad to be moving?”
“Sad?” he asked, circles under his eyes and exhaustion evident in every line of his body. “Not precisely.”
Nat was still kind enough not to say what was on her mind as she peeled the SHEILD issue car out of the parking lot. She was still allowed to drive one. He was not.
No one at SHIELD blamed him per se, but there were many agents not interested in meeting his eyes either. And when Stark showed up waving his hand and saying that there was some team building thing—no, literally a building there were floors and he was going to be insulted if no one showed up—well no one really protested him moving out of his standard issue quarters.
Even he did not protest too much, because he could already feel the itch starting under his skin, the one that tried to tell him he had been there too long already. Staying in a cubicle of a room with no real windows had been one reason he was so willing to take the longest undercover missions.
“Do you know who else is even going to be there?” Clint asked.
“Bruce, Tony, and me,” she said. “Steve is still insisting on doing his own thing, and well, I…”
“Will be shuffling between DC and here,” Clint finished for her.
“You can shuffle too,” she said, eyes on the road but Clint knew most of her attention was on him, and the cardboard box on his lap that held everything that mattered to him. His tactical gear and uniforms technically still belonged to SHIELD and Stark had assured him he would make him more—better—uniforms anyway. His bow technically did too, but no one was willing to bring that up. It was the one grace they were giving him.
He shrugged instead, shoulder jammed against the window and digging into the edge of his seatbelt. “I’m not so sure yet,” he hedged.
“You’re still an agent,” she said and he looked out the window.
It was early enough in the morning that it was still dark and they were driving from DC to New York, so he let the lights off the freeway wash past him. “Maybe,” he allowed after a minute. “Why only the, uh, four of us?” He refused to ask about Thor specifically.
It really was not Thor’s fault, everything that Loki had done, but the thought of facing him and knowing he still called Loki his brother made Clint’s stomach twist and he wanted to run, punch something, shoot a target from as far away as he could.
“Steve wants to keep doing his own thing,” Natasha said, as if she hadn't already basically said that a minute ago. The fact she was avoiding Thor too didn't bode well for Clint. “He got his invite as well but…”
“He’d rather stick to DC and do the good thing?” Clint offered and still did not ask.
Luckily for him, Nat sighed, and then gave in. “Thor is still in Asgard,” she said. “Last we heard the Bifrost wasn’t working, so he can’t just get back that easily."
“But eventually it will work again, right?” Clint said. “And then what? He stops by for tea and scones and when the world really needs him or what?”
“We’re going to be a team,” Natasha said, quietly, and the landscape was still slipping past them.
“Even if it kills us,” Clint said, only half joking.
“Is he going to be a problem for you?” she asked instead, her eyes far too intent on the road.
“No,” Clint said, because he wanted that to be true.
-0-
Clint was not getting out of SHIELD that easily, as Fury had more then succinctly expressed to him, but Fury also decided he needed some time away. So he lived in Stark tower, with Nat when she had the time to be there, and Tony when he had the time to be there, and mostly Bruce.
It lasted for less than a week and it was still the happiest and most fragile he had been in a long time.
“It’s not fun, being on the backseat while someone else is in control,” was one of the first things Bruce had said, and Clint had never adored someone so completely so quickly in a long time. Not since he met Nat, not since he met Phil—and his thoughts still skittered away from that thought like a live wire.
It was not quite the same, but it was a point of reference for both of them, and those simple lines were enough to build something on.
Clint started to think maybe this would be what being an Avenger meant, and maybe that was not so bad.
He and Bruce were alone in the tower for a while, Tony drifting in and out and almost always with pizza, Natasha trying to be there but already pulled back into the world of active duty. “Aren’t you an agent too?” Bruce asked one night, while they were cooking together in the kitchen.
“Yes and no,” Clint said and Bruce did not push it.
It would have been better except Clint kept having dreams about Loki. Almost every night, he would catch at least something—a glimpse, a sound—and sometimes he would end up sitting across from Loki in some shadowy place.
“Aren’t my real nightmares enough?” Clint asked, because covering his ears and screaming had long since proven ineffective.
“Yes,” Loki said dryly. “This is your nightmare.”
“Ex-fucking-cuse you?” Clint said. Loki wrinkled his nose, like he was trying to figure that out. “Right, sorry, you clearly haven’t taken enough from me, my nightmares aren’t even my own. Okay.”
Loki shrugged and Clint was still trying to figure out how to wake himself up from these dreams. He was starting to notice that Loki’s injuries from dream to dream remained consistent. His broken nose was still broken, and new bruises and cuts were layered over the ones from the night before.
Another night, Loki was pacing and Clint sat with his head between his knees, trying to wake himself up.
“I watched you, you know,” Loki said abruptly, and Clint looked up.
“What?”
“Before, through the—it’s all very complicated and not the point,” Loki waved a hand and Clint really, suddenly, wanted to know. “But before I came through the gate, I had linked my mind with Selvig’s. I did not pick you at the drop of a hat. Even before that, when my brother and I first arrived in your world for the first time, in that desert place.”
“Is that supposed to be a comfort?” Clint asked, mentally reshuffling those days with the scientists and their gateway. Selvig, he had noticed, did stare at him an awful lot but he knew very little about the man or his habits. He watched the scientists too, because it was his job.
“A comfort to you?” Loki asked. “Why would it be? The fact that my mind has chosen to present me with your image, night after night, implies some lingering guilt over … something,” and he waved a dismissive hand. “Perhaps talking it over would bring me more restful nights.”
“Oh yeah, you look like you’re having a right old restive time,” Clint said and wanted to ask exactly why Loki had watched him, why that caused him to do anything and all, and because he wanted to he did not.
That morning he woke up and pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes. “This is why you’re basically on psychiatric leave,” he told the room.
He needed to tell someone.
He had his phone out to call Natasha when there was a flurry of thunder and rain outside the tower. “I thought it called for sun all day,” Bruce said, looking up and they both tensed just before Thor came thundering down on the balcony outside the glass walls. He landed hard on his feet, hammer swinging from one hand and expression grim.
Standing frozen, Clint watched as Bruce warily went and opened the door. “Thor,” Bruce greeted, Thor shaking out his hair and offering an exhausted smile, trying to cover way he'd looked a second ago. Clint swore he rounded his shoulders a bit too, trying to not take up so much room or be so tall.
“It is good to see you again,” Thor said and his eyes slid past Bruce to Clint, who was tense and stiff. “Ah,” he said and Clint wanted to run away. “Clinton Barton,” Thor said and he took a step back.
“Loki,” he said instead. “You took your brother back to Asgard right? He’s contained there, or punished, or something, right?”
“That is,” Thor said and his eyes were shadowed. “What I came to talk to you about.”
-0-
Thor waited for the others to arrive before he would explain, and Clint must have paced up and down the whole tower three times by the time they did. Tony arrived last, in the suit because it was faster to fly in he explained.
“So, the Avengers,” he greeted, the suit removed as he walked inside. “Together again. Thor, buddy, good to see you.”
“And you Anthony,” Thor said, and even his smile was exhausted.
“What’s the problem?” Steve asked, hands folded together and elbows on his knees. “It sounded like it took you a lot of power to come down last time.”
“The Bifrost has been more or less restored,” Thor said. “We can once again travel between the realms, though it is not yet completely returned to its former state.” He folded his arms over his chest, taking a breath. “The realms, of course, are in chaos, and there have been wars.”
“Can we help with that?” Steve asked, like he doubted it.
“No,” Thor said, and Tony bristled. “Probably not.”
Natasha sat pressed against Clint’s side, as Clint reminded himself over and over Loki’s actions were not in any way Thor’s responsibility. Thor was not the one who stuck a glowing stick in his heart.
“Loki is missing,” Thor said those were the words Clint had most dreaded hearing.
“You said he would face Asgardian justice,” he said, and he was on his feet before he realized. “You said that’s why you were taking him back—what do you mean he’s missing?”
“He was in Asgardian custody,” Thor said. “But since then he has been taken away.”
“Well find him and bring him back and keep him this time!” Clint said, the others looking at him without trying to make it obvious.
“That is what we are trying to do,” Thor said, calm but there were storms behind his eyes.
“How?” Clint demanded.
“No one can track Loki,” Thor said. “We believe,” and he hesitated. “We believe he was taken against his will. At the least by people who wish him some harm.”
“Oh,” Clint leaned back. “Good. So why are you looking for him?”
Thor narrowed his eyes. “We do not know who has him, who has the power to hide him, or why. I would rather find my brother then leave him to some unknown fate.”
“How can we help with that?” Natasha asked, and she was mirroring Steve’s posture, her elbows braced on her knees and hands clasped. Except she was mostly still watching Clint.
Thor hesitated, as if he really doubted exactly what he was about to say. “I consulted with those who know more of magic then myself,” he said finally. “And who have been studying the Tesseract as well as knowing my brother’s own magic. And,” he met Clint’s eyes. “We cannot find my brother, we cannot track him. However, they are convinced of the existence of a bond between himself and you.”
“What?” Clint managed. “What—bond?”