Triskelion 2/2 (Thor/Avengers)
Title: Triskelion 2/2
Fandom: Thor/Daredevil/Avengers et al
Characters: Clint Barton/Phil Coulson, Loki, Bullseye, the Avengers
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 10,800
Summary: Inspired by the Norse myth of Nari and Vali. I honestly don't know how to explain this fic. It started out being about Clint, but I think it ended up actually being about Loki.
It begins like this.
Waking up is like swimming through water in full combat gear, his lungs screaming and body weighed down as he tries to struggle toward the light of consciousness. Brightness sears his eyes when he tries to open them and he wonders if he's died but the moldy taste in his mouth and the heaviness in his body point toward sedation, not death. But then, he's never died before.
Except he has, over and over and over again, and somehow he knows this isn't death.
Clint squints into the light as he manages to pry his eyelids apart, the source of the illumination coming from bright fluorescents in the ceiling above. He's on his back, laying prone, and everything fucking hurts. There are casts on his leg and wrist and a soft whimper rattles his throat as he tries to push himself up to take in his surroundings.
It's a SHIELD recovery room, that's for certain: he's been in them enough times to know. The location isn't terribly surprising, but the people scattered around the room give him a bit of pause.
Natasha's tucked onto a cushioned chair in the corner, her legs propped over one arm and her cheek resting against the back, asleep and still managing to make the position look gracefully comfortable. Thor is sleeping on the small table near the window, sitting with his chest and arms sprawled across it. Phil's sitting at his bedside with his head pillowed on his arms as he sleeps on Clint's right side, and to the left...
To the left is Loki, watching him with an inscrutable expression, the ancient-looking book in his lap apparently all but forgotten.
Clint parts his lips but no coherent sounds come out, his throat rasping and dry. Loki holds up his hand and then there is a glass of water in his hand, and the trickster god frowns for a moment before a straw pops into existence as well. He raises it to Clint's mouth.
He drains about half the glass before slumping back against the pillows, the strain of partially sitting up and craning his neck pathetically taxing. He swallows as Loki sets the glass on the bedside table, licking his dry lips; running through the flashes of coherent memory he has access to as he considers his next word.
Or, word.
"Father?" he tries.
Loki stiffens instantly, as though shocked with a live wire. He stares at Clint with immeasurable pain and sorrow and hope and fear in his eyes, his entire body tense as he searches his gaze. After a long moment he nods, jerkily.
"Yes."
Clint nods in return, letting out a low, slow breath. He looks down at Phil as he mulls over the significance of this confirmation in his head, sliding his hand over to rest atop his lover's own. Phil sighs softly in his sleep, fingertips curling around Clint's palm, giving him that little bit of grounding he was lacking. He looks back up.
"When-how...long? You're...here?"
"You have been unconscious for six days," Loki replies. "Two were spent in the hospital before Director Fury had you transferred here. As for my being here..." his lips twitch. "I go where I please, regardless of your SHIELD's policy of not allowing 'villains' inside their buildings. They were forced to accept that fact once they discovered they would be unable to stop me."
Clint digests that for a moment. He weighs his options, pitting logic against reason against fact against knowledge, and in the end the impossible wins out. It often does, when it comes to his life.
"Vali," he rasps. Talking hurts. "You-called him Vali. And me...called me..."
"Nari," Loki finishes for him quietly, the slight smile fading from his face.
Clint smiles crookedly, the expression just this side of bitter.
Because he knows the legends. He knows the folktales. Even if some of the others hadn't paid much attention to their crash-course in Norse mythology, he had: he'd gone out of his way to know as much as he could. He knew about the fates of Vali and Nari Lokison; their roles in binding the trickster god with death and blood.
"Explain," he says softly.
Loki looks at him, pained, but he doesn't deny the request-the demand. Clint understands the basics, but he wants the gaps filled in by the being who had started it all. He needs that much.
He's owed that much.
"You were just children," Loki murmurs. "Not two days old. At the moment of your birth I was given a glimpse of your futures-a fragmented shard of what may come. You were my joy, and my punishment. I saw Ragnarok, the end of worlds... I saw myself bound by your blood, and Vali stood over your body."
He glances away, then, and Clint can't fault him. He tightens his grip on Phil's hand and Phil mumbles a little, as if wanting to reassure him even while asleep.
"I sent you to Midgard," Loki continues quietly. "I bartered a deal to erase your names from the Book of Hel, that you might be reborn: reincarnated as humans, separate and whole, without any knowledge of Asgard. I...did not want to see any more of your lives."
His voice lowers.
"I did not want to watch you die."
Clint swallows, and he's sure he's going to wake Phil up with the force he's using to hang onto him.
"I thought you would be able to live in peace, apart, but I was wrong. You found each other. Every lifetime, every rebirth, you found each other. And every time, you died. Every life, Vali found you and killed you, and every life, I felt you die."
Loki barrels on before Clint even has the chance to think of taking a breath, shame and regret weighing down his words.
"I rarely visited Midgard, so I never had to face what I had done. Except, when I fell from Asgard... I fell to Earth, and then I came to find Thor, where you..."
He looks down at his hands, long graceful fingers twined together in his lap.
"I would not abandon you again. Not this time."
Clint swallows. Any witty reply or flippant comeback he might have had dies before it can even surface, because he can't ignore the inescapable feeling of truth that Loki's words elicit. He can sense something different about himself, something humming beneath the surface of his skin, and worst of all he can remember. He can see every past life, every past death; and Bullseye-Vali-was always the one there, at the end.
"You killed him," he says softly, instead. And he doesn't know why that hurts so much because the man was a psychopathic bastard, but the image of Bullseye lying limp and lifeless on the wet concrete makes something twist horribly in his chest.
"Yes," Loki whispers. The pain in his voice just drives the knife in Clint's heart further inward, and god, what is happening to him? "Yes, I did."
"Why?"
Loki glances away briefly before looking back up, extending an elegant hand. He rests the very tips of his fingers against Clint's chest, and a kind of warm recognition floods through his body, energy tickling all the way down to his toes.
"You feel it, don't you?" he says. "The Aesir in you. When I was keeping you alive," and Clint grimaces, but he doesn't deny the fact, "My power opened up the part of you that was locked away, and that will not be undone. In whatever rebirth you have after this one, should you choose to live out the rest of this mortal life, you will remember everything. You will be born aware. Vali..."
Loki shakes his head slowly, sorrowfully, as he pulls back his hand.
"His mind was broken. And if I woke him as he was, it would be broken forever, every lifetime a repeat of this one. When he is reborn, if I can find him-when I find him-I can raise him without the pain he suffered. I can make him whole."
"You want a second chance," Clint murmurs.
Loki smiles at him painfully.
"Is that so much to ask for?" he asks, voice soft. "I have gone millennia being irresponsible, trying to pretend that I was doing what was right for you both, when I knew it to be a lie. I could have stopped this cycle centuries ago, but I never did. I have no wish to continue being that manner of father. That manner of man."
There's something mournful in his tone, and Clint doesn't know all of the details of what happened in Asgard regarding Thor's banishment and later reinstatement-but he knows enough. He looks down at Phil, who he's now certain Loki put under some kind of sleeping spell along with the others, because Phil could go from dead asleep to having a gun in his hand and taking out two intruders in under five seconds flat given the softest noise.
('Vacation' in Sydney. It hadn't ended well.)
Clint traces his fingers along the back of Phil's knuckles. The only father he really remembers is an alcoholic who regularly beat him, and he had rejoiced when the man died. There are distant memories of others, from wealthy gentry to destitute paupers, all from past lives he'd rather forget he'd had-but none of them bring up the same feeling of belonging that thrums through him when he looks at Loki.
"I have a family already," he says lowly. "When the family I was born to failed me, I found my own."
Loki shakes his head.
"I do not mean to replace anyone, Nari, or intrude on your life," he replies. "I simply wish to make things right."
Clint studies him for a long time, marking the emotions on his face even as he tries to categorize his own. The pull he feels toward Loki is unmistakable-and when he examines it, he can feel threads tugging him toward Thor as well; and, far away, a tiny soul that he instinctively understands will become Vali. Thick cords bind him to Natasha and Phil, slimmer ones connecting him to the rest of the Avengers, and Clint knows that no matter what form they take, he will never let anyone go who holds one of the few spaces in his heart.
"You're going to find Vali?" he asks. If anything is going to be repaired, if Loki is going to show him he's being sincere at all, it will have to start there.
"Yes," Loki affirms, his eyes intent. Clint purses his lips.
"There will be rules," he warns. Loki raises an eyebrow but nods his assent, so he continues, "And I don't know what all of them are yet, but the first one is going to be that you call me Clint. That's my name." Before Loki has a chance to speak he adds on hastily, "And the second one is no more destroying things downtown, because it's annoying and SHIELD docks damage control pay."
Loki's mouth twitches.
"I'll see what I can do," he concedes.
Clint eyes him a few moments longer before nodding in satisfaction, allowing some of the tension in his shoulders to drain away. It may be just a flimsy façade of control, for now, but it's enough to settle him back into something that resembles his usual calm. He tilts his head to the side pointedly.
"Now give me back Phil; I haven't had nearly enough TLC for someone who got run through just a week ago."
Loki does smirk, then, and with a flick of his wrist the atmosphere in the room shifts. Clint strokes the back of Phil's hand and his lover sits up immediately, blinking at him in instant awareness as Natasha stretches languidly in the corner. Fingers immediately twine with his own, and the relief and love on Phil's face steals Clint's breath away. To his left, Loki innocuously picks up his book to continue reading.
And despite the daily tendency to put his life at risk, despite the fact he's a reincarnated Norse myth and that his family is a rather psychotic group of individuals with serious amounts of issues to work on, Clint has a feeling that things will sort themselves out in the end.
Epilogue: One Year Later
"Goddammit Hawkeye, watch where you're going!"
"Sorry, sorry!" Clint yells, jumping off Tony's back and narrowly avoiding getting crisped by one of his flight stabilizers. The version of him that was just being strangled by the neurotic witch they're currently fighting shatters into pieces in the-admittedly gorgeous-woman's hands, and she lets out an angry shriek as she turns to his current location, hurling a green ball of fire that Steve deflects with his shield.
He still hasn't gotten used to the multiple-copies thing. Loki does it so easily, but it's hit or miss with Clint: sometimes he leaves his copy behind to teleport to safety, and sometimes he leaves his copy behind only to appear somewhere eight feet above the actual ground to land atop an extremely disgruntled Tony Stark.
"Enchantress!" Thor bellows, in the middle of fighting a rather impressive-looking Asgardian with an overcompensatingly huge axe. Natasha's busy taking down two massive frost giants and Tony had been occupied with some kind of fire-breathing smoking animal-like thing before Clint landed on him.
"Cease this attack at once!" Thor orders, hurling the executioner-guy away with a heavy blow from Mjolnir. He stalks toward the witch, smashing aside a few stray animal-things in his path. "If you leave now, Amora, you will not be-"
Clint doesn't hear what the witch won't be because at that moment Loki pops into existence directly in front of him, nearly getting an arrow in the face as Clint lurches backward. The god is wearing a rather simple set of robes and a beaming grin on his face, and he has a tiny bundle cradled in his arms and Clint knows what that means, a burst of excitement thrumming through the adrenalin pounding in his system.
"I found him!" Loki says excitedly, taking a step forward. "Clint, I found him, I found-"
"Not a good time!" Clint squawks, grabbing Loki by the shoulder and yanking him down as a foot-long shard of ice smashes against the wall where he'd been standing.
Loki blinks. He turns around, very slowly, and Clint can see the anger flickering around him.
(Literally, he can see it. Some kind of Asgardian thing to perceive emotions that he hasn't figured out how to turn off yet, which is both useful and terrifying-because while knowing when Bruce is about to blow is a good thing, knowing when Tony's horny really, really isn't.)
Loki holds the little bundle close to his chest with one arm; the other flashes out, and Natasha skids to a halt in the midst of a running leap as the two frost giants shatter into pieces: small, vicious-looking undoubtedly-spelled daggers embedded in their chests. The fiery animal-thing fighting Tony just turns tail and runs, scampering back to its mistress and hiding behind her legs as Loki straightens.
"My lord!" the witch says delightedly, and Clint is so very not surprised that Loki knows all of the crazy beautiful people in the nine realms. "We wondered where you had gone, you disappeared so suddenly-"
The psycho bitch takes a step forward, arms outstretched. Clint snaps an arrow from his quiver, training it on her in a heartbeat as the rest of the Avengers go equally tense, Natasha pulling out one of her scary strangle-you-with-piano-wire coils.
But Loki just snaps his fingers, points at the witch, and says, "Shoo."
She disappears.
Steve blinks, waving his hand through the green smoke where executioner-man used to be before casting a perplexed look at Clint. He shrugs with a 'what can you do?' expression and slings his bow across his back as Loki turns around, the wide smile back in place like he hadn't just easily dealt with the foe they'd been fighting for the past two hours.
"Clint," he says again, and suddenly Clint's reminded of why the eccentric god showed up so suddenly. His mouth goes suddenly dry, and he wipes his hands on his pants as he takes a hesitant step forward, looking from Loki to the bundle he's cradling gently in his arms.
"That's..." he breathes, something tightening in his throat. Loki's grin softens to something fond and gentle, and he nods as he crosses the distance between them, turning back the baby-blue blanket in his arms to reveal a slumbering, peaceful-looking infant just a few months old.
"He was in Norway," Loki says as Clint reaches out a shaky hand, stroking his fingers across the babe's round cheek. "After all these lifetimes, he was reborn in the place where we Asgardians first set foot on Midgard."
"He...was he..?" Clint glances at Loki, whose features tighten. The god shakes his head. No, he hadn't taken the child away from a loving family who would have cherished him. Clint nods-and then his attention is abruptly dragged back as a tiny hand wraps around his finger and he stares, wide-eyed, as the babe holds onto him with a surprisingly strong grip. Bright blue eyes blink up at him sleepily.
"Vali," he murmurs wonderingly.
"Loki..?"
Clint looks up, surprised to find the rest of the Avengers hanging around at a polite distance, clearly interested but allowing them their little moment. All but Thor, who's standing hesitantly a few feet away, looking at them with an almost painfully hopeful expression. There had been progress, on that front: every time Loki dropped in to point out the location of a bad guy to them or to give Clint some new spelled arrows or bring Phil an ancient Ming vase after he'd mentioned he liked them, there was always at least a brief exchange with Thor. More repair was needed between them than was with Loki and Clint, and while both sides showed promise, there was still lingering uncertainty on both ends.
Clint glances from Loki to Thor, seeing the surprise on the trickster god's face. After a few moments Thor's expression starts to wilt and that's when Loki nods, motioning him over. He gently disentangles Vali's hand from around Clint's finger-the infant pouts, wrinkling up his nose-and turns to Thor, smiling tentatively.
"Vali, this is Thor," he says softly as Thor stares, dumbstruck, at the tiny being in his brother's arms. "This is your uncle."
Vali makes a soft cooing noise and Clint can feel the swell of pride and joy and relief that emanates from Thor like heat off a burner. A ridiculous, silly grin spreads across his face as he takes a step forward, beaming down at the child that could likely fit in his palm.
"Hail, Vali Lokison," he says, smiling through the formality as he leans down, stroking his thumb across Vali's forehead.
Vali snuffles at him, scrunches up his nose and promptly sneezes in his face.
There's a brief, startled silence, and then Clint starts cracking up.
And that's how Phil finds them, Clint bent over gasping for air through wheezing giggles, the other Avengers snickering like children as Thor wipes off his face. The grin still hasn't faded, and as Phil slips an arm around Clint's waist, leaning comfortably against him, the sound of Loki's laughter rings bright and joyous in the air.
~ finis
Fandom: Thor/Daredevil/Avengers et al
Characters: Clint Barton/Phil Coulson, Loki, Bullseye, the Avengers
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 10,800
Summary: Inspired by the Norse myth of Nari and Vali. I honestly don't know how to explain this fic. It started out being about Clint, but I think it ended up actually being about Loki.
It begins like this.
Waking up is like swimming through water in full combat gear, his lungs screaming and body weighed down as he tries to struggle toward the light of consciousness. Brightness sears his eyes when he tries to open them and he wonders if he's died but the moldy taste in his mouth and the heaviness in his body point toward sedation, not death. But then, he's never died before.
Except he has, over and over and over again, and somehow he knows this isn't death.
Clint squints into the light as he manages to pry his eyelids apart, the source of the illumination coming from bright fluorescents in the ceiling above. He's on his back, laying prone, and everything fucking hurts. There are casts on his leg and wrist and a soft whimper rattles his throat as he tries to push himself up to take in his surroundings.
It's a SHIELD recovery room, that's for certain: he's been in them enough times to know. The location isn't terribly surprising, but the people scattered around the room give him a bit of pause.
Natasha's tucked onto a cushioned chair in the corner, her legs propped over one arm and her cheek resting against the back, asleep and still managing to make the position look gracefully comfortable. Thor is sleeping on the small table near the window, sitting with his chest and arms sprawled across it. Phil's sitting at his bedside with his head pillowed on his arms as he sleeps on Clint's right side, and to the left...
To the left is Loki, watching him with an inscrutable expression, the ancient-looking book in his lap apparently all but forgotten.
Clint parts his lips but no coherent sounds come out, his throat rasping and dry. Loki holds up his hand and then there is a glass of water in his hand, and the trickster god frowns for a moment before a straw pops into existence as well. He raises it to Clint's mouth.
He drains about half the glass before slumping back against the pillows, the strain of partially sitting up and craning his neck pathetically taxing. He swallows as Loki sets the glass on the bedside table, licking his dry lips; running through the flashes of coherent memory he has access to as he considers his next word.
Or, word.
"Father?" he tries.
Loki stiffens instantly, as though shocked with a live wire. He stares at Clint with immeasurable pain and sorrow and hope and fear in his eyes, his entire body tense as he searches his gaze. After a long moment he nods, jerkily.
"Yes."
Clint nods in return, letting out a low, slow breath. He looks down at Phil as he mulls over the significance of this confirmation in his head, sliding his hand over to rest atop his lover's own. Phil sighs softly in his sleep, fingertips curling around Clint's palm, giving him that little bit of grounding he was lacking. He looks back up.
"When-how...long? You're...here?"
"You have been unconscious for six days," Loki replies. "Two were spent in the hospital before Director Fury had you transferred here. As for my being here..." his lips twitch. "I go where I please, regardless of your SHIELD's policy of not allowing 'villains' inside their buildings. They were forced to accept that fact once they discovered they would be unable to stop me."
Clint digests that for a moment. He weighs his options, pitting logic against reason against fact against knowledge, and in the end the impossible wins out. It often does, when it comes to his life.
"Vali," he rasps. Talking hurts. "You-called him Vali. And me...called me..."
"Nari," Loki finishes for him quietly, the slight smile fading from his face.
Clint smiles crookedly, the expression just this side of bitter.
Because he knows the legends. He knows the folktales. Even if some of the others hadn't paid much attention to their crash-course in Norse mythology, he had: he'd gone out of his way to know as much as he could. He knew about the fates of Vali and Nari Lokison; their roles in binding the trickster god with death and blood.
"Explain," he says softly.
Loki looks at him, pained, but he doesn't deny the request-the demand. Clint understands the basics, but he wants the gaps filled in by the being who had started it all. He needs that much.
He's owed that much.
"You were just children," Loki murmurs. "Not two days old. At the moment of your birth I was given a glimpse of your futures-a fragmented shard of what may come. You were my joy, and my punishment. I saw Ragnarok, the end of worlds... I saw myself bound by your blood, and Vali stood over your body."
He glances away, then, and Clint can't fault him. He tightens his grip on Phil's hand and Phil mumbles a little, as if wanting to reassure him even while asleep.
"I sent you to Midgard," Loki continues quietly. "I bartered a deal to erase your names from the Book of Hel, that you might be reborn: reincarnated as humans, separate and whole, without any knowledge of Asgard. I...did not want to see any more of your lives."
His voice lowers.
"I did not want to watch you die."
Clint swallows, and he's sure he's going to wake Phil up with the force he's using to hang onto him.
"I thought you would be able to live in peace, apart, but I was wrong. You found each other. Every lifetime, every rebirth, you found each other. And every time, you died. Every life, Vali found you and killed you, and every life, I felt you die."
Loki barrels on before Clint even has the chance to think of taking a breath, shame and regret weighing down his words.
"I rarely visited Midgard, so I never had to face what I had done. Except, when I fell from Asgard... I fell to Earth, and then I came to find Thor, where you..."
He looks down at his hands, long graceful fingers twined together in his lap.
"I would not abandon you again. Not this time."
Clint swallows. Any witty reply or flippant comeback he might have had dies before it can even surface, because he can't ignore the inescapable feeling of truth that Loki's words elicit. He can sense something different about himself, something humming beneath the surface of his skin, and worst of all he can remember. He can see every past life, every past death; and Bullseye-Vali-was always the one there, at the end.
"You killed him," he says softly, instead. And he doesn't know why that hurts so much because the man was a psychopathic bastard, but the image of Bullseye lying limp and lifeless on the wet concrete makes something twist horribly in his chest.
"Yes," Loki whispers. The pain in his voice just drives the knife in Clint's heart further inward, and god, what is happening to him? "Yes, I did."
"Why?"
Loki glances away briefly before looking back up, extending an elegant hand. He rests the very tips of his fingers against Clint's chest, and a kind of warm recognition floods through his body, energy tickling all the way down to his toes.
"You feel it, don't you?" he says. "The Aesir in you. When I was keeping you alive," and Clint grimaces, but he doesn't deny the fact, "My power opened up the part of you that was locked away, and that will not be undone. In whatever rebirth you have after this one, should you choose to live out the rest of this mortal life, you will remember everything. You will be born aware. Vali..."
Loki shakes his head slowly, sorrowfully, as he pulls back his hand.
"His mind was broken. And if I woke him as he was, it would be broken forever, every lifetime a repeat of this one. When he is reborn, if I can find him-when I find him-I can raise him without the pain he suffered. I can make him whole."
"You want a second chance," Clint murmurs.
Loki smiles at him painfully.
"Is that so much to ask for?" he asks, voice soft. "I have gone millennia being irresponsible, trying to pretend that I was doing what was right for you both, when I knew it to be a lie. I could have stopped this cycle centuries ago, but I never did. I have no wish to continue being that manner of father. That manner of man."
There's something mournful in his tone, and Clint doesn't know all of the details of what happened in Asgard regarding Thor's banishment and later reinstatement-but he knows enough. He looks down at Phil, who he's now certain Loki put under some kind of sleeping spell along with the others, because Phil could go from dead asleep to having a gun in his hand and taking out two intruders in under five seconds flat given the softest noise.
('Vacation' in Sydney. It hadn't ended well.)
Clint traces his fingers along the back of Phil's knuckles. The only father he really remembers is an alcoholic who regularly beat him, and he had rejoiced when the man died. There are distant memories of others, from wealthy gentry to destitute paupers, all from past lives he'd rather forget he'd had-but none of them bring up the same feeling of belonging that thrums through him when he looks at Loki.
"I have a family already," he says lowly. "When the family I was born to failed me, I found my own."
Loki shakes his head.
"I do not mean to replace anyone, Nari, or intrude on your life," he replies. "I simply wish to make things right."
Clint studies him for a long time, marking the emotions on his face even as he tries to categorize his own. The pull he feels toward Loki is unmistakable-and when he examines it, he can feel threads tugging him toward Thor as well; and, far away, a tiny soul that he instinctively understands will become Vali. Thick cords bind him to Natasha and Phil, slimmer ones connecting him to the rest of the Avengers, and Clint knows that no matter what form they take, he will never let anyone go who holds one of the few spaces in his heart.
"You're going to find Vali?" he asks. If anything is going to be repaired, if Loki is going to show him he's being sincere at all, it will have to start there.
"Yes," Loki affirms, his eyes intent. Clint purses his lips.
"There will be rules," he warns. Loki raises an eyebrow but nods his assent, so he continues, "And I don't know what all of them are yet, but the first one is going to be that you call me Clint. That's my name." Before Loki has a chance to speak he adds on hastily, "And the second one is no more destroying things downtown, because it's annoying and SHIELD docks damage control pay."
Loki's mouth twitches.
"I'll see what I can do," he concedes.
Clint eyes him a few moments longer before nodding in satisfaction, allowing some of the tension in his shoulders to drain away. It may be just a flimsy façade of control, for now, but it's enough to settle him back into something that resembles his usual calm. He tilts his head to the side pointedly.
"Now give me back Phil; I haven't had nearly enough TLC for someone who got run through just a week ago."
Loki does smirk, then, and with a flick of his wrist the atmosphere in the room shifts. Clint strokes the back of Phil's hand and his lover sits up immediately, blinking at him in instant awareness as Natasha stretches languidly in the corner. Fingers immediately twine with his own, and the relief and love on Phil's face steals Clint's breath away. To his left, Loki innocuously picks up his book to continue reading.
And despite the daily tendency to put his life at risk, despite the fact he's a reincarnated Norse myth and that his family is a rather psychotic group of individuals with serious amounts of issues to work on, Clint has a feeling that things will sort themselves out in the end.
Epilogue: One Year Later
"Goddammit Hawkeye, watch where you're going!"
"Sorry, sorry!" Clint yells, jumping off Tony's back and narrowly avoiding getting crisped by one of his flight stabilizers. The version of him that was just being strangled by the neurotic witch they're currently fighting shatters into pieces in the-admittedly gorgeous-woman's hands, and she lets out an angry shriek as she turns to his current location, hurling a green ball of fire that Steve deflects with his shield.
He still hasn't gotten used to the multiple-copies thing. Loki does it so easily, but it's hit or miss with Clint: sometimes he leaves his copy behind to teleport to safety, and sometimes he leaves his copy behind only to appear somewhere eight feet above the actual ground to land atop an extremely disgruntled Tony Stark.
"Enchantress!" Thor bellows, in the middle of fighting a rather impressive-looking Asgardian with an overcompensatingly huge axe. Natasha's busy taking down two massive frost giants and Tony had been occupied with some kind of fire-breathing smoking animal-like thing before Clint landed on him.
"Cease this attack at once!" Thor orders, hurling the executioner-guy away with a heavy blow from Mjolnir. He stalks toward the witch, smashing aside a few stray animal-things in his path. "If you leave now, Amora, you will not be-"
Clint doesn't hear what the witch won't be because at that moment Loki pops into existence directly in front of him, nearly getting an arrow in the face as Clint lurches backward. The god is wearing a rather simple set of robes and a beaming grin on his face, and he has a tiny bundle cradled in his arms and Clint knows what that means, a burst of excitement thrumming through the adrenalin pounding in his system.
"I found him!" Loki says excitedly, taking a step forward. "Clint, I found him, I found-"
"Not a good time!" Clint squawks, grabbing Loki by the shoulder and yanking him down as a foot-long shard of ice smashes against the wall where he'd been standing.
Loki blinks. He turns around, very slowly, and Clint can see the anger flickering around him.
(Literally, he can see it. Some kind of Asgardian thing to perceive emotions that he hasn't figured out how to turn off yet, which is both useful and terrifying-because while knowing when Bruce is about to blow is a good thing, knowing when Tony's horny really, really isn't.)
Loki holds the little bundle close to his chest with one arm; the other flashes out, and Natasha skids to a halt in the midst of a running leap as the two frost giants shatter into pieces: small, vicious-looking undoubtedly-spelled daggers embedded in their chests. The fiery animal-thing fighting Tony just turns tail and runs, scampering back to its mistress and hiding behind her legs as Loki straightens.
"My lord!" the witch says delightedly, and Clint is so very not surprised that Loki knows all of the crazy beautiful people in the nine realms. "We wondered where you had gone, you disappeared so suddenly-"
The psycho bitch takes a step forward, arms outstretched. Clint snaps an arrow from his quiver, training it on her in a heartbeat as the rest of the Avengers go equally tense, Natasha pulling out one of her scary strangle-you-with-piano-wire coils.
But Loki just snaps his fingers, points at the witch, and says, "Shoo."
She disappears.
Steve blinks, waving his hand through the green smoke where executioner-man used to be before casting a perplexed look at Clint. He shrugs with a 'what can you do?' expression and slings his bow across his back as Loki turns around, the wide smile back in place like he hadn't just easily dealt with the foe they'd been fighting for the past two hours.
"Clint," he says again, and suddenly Clint's reminded of why the eccentric god showed up so suddenly. His mouth goes suddenly dry, and he wipes his hands on his pants as he takes a hesitant step forward, looking from Loki to the bundle he's cradling gently in his arms.
"That's..." he breathes, something tightening in his throat. Loki's grin softens to something fond and gentle, and he nods as he crosses the distance between them, turning back the baby-blue blanket in his arms to reveal a slumbering, peaceful-looking infant just a few months old.
"He was in Norway," Loki says as Clint reaches out a shaky hand, stroking his fingers across the babe's round cheek. "After all these lifetimes, he was reborn in the place where we Asgardians first set foot on Midgard."
"He...was he..?" Clint glances at Loki, whose features tighten. The god shakes his head. No, he hadn't taken the child away from a loving family who would have cherished him. Clint nods-and then his attention is abruptly dragged back as a tiny hand wraps around his finger and he stares, wide-eyed, as the babe holds onto him with a surprisingly strong grip. Bright blue eyes blink up at him sleepily.
"Vali," he murmurs wonderingly.
"Loki..?"
Clint looks up, surprised to find the rest of the Avengers hanging around at a polite distance, clearly interested but allowing them their little moment. All but Thor, who's standing hesitantly a few feet away, looking at them with an almost painfully hopeful expression. There had been progress, on that front: every time Loki dropped in to point out the location of a bad guy to them or to give Clint some new spelled arrows or bring Phil an ancient Ming vase after he'd mentioned he liked them, there was always at least a brief exchange with Thor. More repair was needed between them than was with Loki and Clint, and while both sides showed promise, there was still lingering uncertainty on both ends.
Clint glances from Loki to Thor, seeing the surprise on the trickster god's face. After a few moments Thor's expression starts to wilt and that's when Loki nods, motioning him over. He gently disentangles Vali's hand from around Clint's finger-the infant pouts, wrinkling up his nose-and turns to Thor, smiling tentatively.
"Vali, this is Thor," he says softly as Thor stares, dumbstruck, at the tiny being in his brother's arms. "This is your uncle."
Vali makes a soft cooing noise and Clint can feel the swell of pride and joy and relief that emanates from Thor like heat off a burner. A ridiculous, silly grin spreads across his face as he takes a step forward, beaming down at the child that could likely fit in his palm.
"Hail, Vali Lokison," he says, smiling through the formality as he leans down, stroking his thumb across Vali's forehead.
Vali snuffles at him, scrunches up his nose and promptly sneezes in his face.
There's a brief, startled silence, and then Clint starts cracking up.
And that's how Phil finds them, Clint bent over gasping for air through wheezing giggles, the other Avengers snickering like children as Thor wipes off his face. The grin still hasn't faded, and as Phil slips an arm around Clint's waist, leaning comfortably against him, the sound of Loki's laughter rings bright and joyous in the air.
~ finis