No, he doesn't imagine how he was in the days that Coulson was scouting him out, and his early time in the agency, would have shown much in the way of heart. He's been a weapon for a long time. Kept the softer parts safe. (He's more liberal with that softness now, but that wasn't an easy journey.) So what did Loki see so immediately? Clocked him with a single piercing look.
Maybe it's the same way Clint likewise took him in with a look and saw beyond the megalomania--saw exhaustion and pain and desperation and something else that only became clearer with time spent around the godling.
Phil makes to toast. Clint does not follow suit. He gets it, what his handler-boss-friend is going for, and he isn't wrong. Stagnation is death, of ego if nothing else. It is human nature to change. Neither of them have irreparably broken from their encounters. Altered their perceptions, but they are, at base, still themselves. Changed, but themselves.
Hopefully.
Still. Not the kinds of changes, or impetuses for change, that they would've liked. Doesn't give him back the months being treated like a threat, the time spent wondering if he really had lost his mind, the paranoia and the guilt and the sleeplessness. Doesn't bring back the people lost, nor the trust. Doesn't quite ease how hard he goes on missions, harder than he needs to. Not sure he wants to celebrate their changes, even for irony's sake.
"No, your best agent reverse-interrogated him, so I understand it." It's a moot point; they are both very good agents, and they hold each other up as the better. (But they both know Natasha is, at the end of the day.) And he wasn't the only one fucked up about everything. She'd been compromised, too. He'd been afraid that was also his fault for giving Loki all that ammo. Turns out it was mostly being trapped and then chased in a small space by the Hulk that really did it. But no, she had admitted to him, hearing some of her crimes regurgitated back to her and fighting her best friend hadn't helped.
"Were you worried about me, or were you worried about the damage you knew I could do?"
no subject
Maybe it's the same way Clint likewise took him in with a look and saw beyond the megalomania--saw exhaustion and pain and desperation and something else that only became clearer with time spent around the godling.
Phil makes to toast. Clint does not follow suit. He gets it, what his handler-boss-friend is going for, and he isn't wrong. Stagnation is death, of ego if nothing else. It is human nature to change. Neither of them have irreparably broken from their encounters. Altered their perceptions, but they are, at base, still themselves. Changed, but themselves.
Hopefully.
Still. Not the kinds of changes, or impetuses for change, that they would've liked. Doesn't give him back the months being treated like a threat, the time spent wondering if he really had lost his mind, the paranoia and the guilt and the sleeplessness. Doesn't bring back the people lost, nor the trust. Doesn't quite ease how hard he goes on missions, harder than he needs to. Not sure he wants to celebrate their changes, even for irony's sake.
"No, your best agent reverse-interrogated him, so I understand it." It's a moot point; they are both very good agents, and they hold each other up as the better. (But they both know Natasha is, at the end of the day.) And he wasn't the only one fucked up about everything. She'd been compromised, too. He'd been afraid that was also his fault for giving Loki all that ammo. Turns out it was mostly being trapped and then chased in a small space by the Hulk that really did it. But no, she had admitted to him, hearing some of her crimes regurgitated back to her and fighting her best friend hadn't helped.
"Were you worried about me, or were you worried about the damage you knew I could do?"
Did do.