brandingproblem | open post

He doesn't even blink at the answer. He knew it when he asked the question. Even though Phil was somewhere in a SHIELD facility getting his own mind twisted up he knew Clint well enough to know how he would have handled it.

There's a pointless surge of guilt for not being there for him. Phil was dead. There was nothing he could do. He pushes the emotion away and focuses on how he can be here for his agent and friend now instead.

"Please, no strip clubs." Phil makes a face, just a hint of a frown, which explains how he feels about that particular idea. "Stark will invite himself along and drag Captain Rogers just to embarrass him. And I don't know what Thor would do with that particular Earth custom. I don't need a spectacle to keep myself entertained."

Phil's not sure he'll ever want to try dating again. "Answers would help. You know I don't like unknowns. Now... my existence is an unknown outside of wildly experimental medical technology. I am relieved I'm not an LMD."

Stark's tests had proved that Phil's body was his own. SHIELD hadn't made a copy of him and his consciousness. He's himself... but he also doesn't feel like it all the time. "I might have to come to terms with the fact I may never get an answer besides what reports I was able to find when I first got suspicious."

"You really could use some company, Phil. What about that cellist? Invite her out, have a nice dinner, see where things go."

No, he doesn't think that line of questioning will get anywhere. Coulson's too unsure of himself in a physical sense; he's not going to subject someone outside of SHIELD's sphere of influence to his particular brand of weird unknown.

"Can't help you with answers," which they both know, unfortunately. "It's just gonna be up to the geeks downstairs. Unless you want to infiltrate our own people, see what we can dig up. Someone's got some data stored away somewhere. Has Stark been trying to hack in again?" They need certainty where there is none. It fucking sucks. "You really might have to live with it. But hey, you're alive to live with it. That's not nothing."

"I don't know if SHIELD told her about my death or not." Phil hadn't listed her as anyone who should be informed. Their relationship was still somewhat new when the invasion of New York happened. "It's just as likely that I stopped calling her for months and she's very mad at me with no idea of what happened."

Which means that relationship is another lost to his career. It might be the last if he can't figure out this disconnect between himself and his body. It's still his but he doesn't know how it's changed so it doesn't feel like his.

"Do you think Fury recorded anything of what was done?" Phil's genuinely asking. He would guess the possibility of records is low. If there are records they'd be heavily redacted. This level of experimental treatment is not something SHIELD writes down. Not until it's out of the extremely experimental stage and into reality.

He sighs before he takes a drink of beer. "I'm not ungrateful for that but... it's uncomfortable not knowing."

"Then you should call her and see if she's mad at you, and then you'll know. That's an unknown you can control. Don't know what you'd tell her, but that'd be up to you. Go be happy. Go try to be happy." And if it's lost, it's lost, but if it isn't...he's got a second chance.

But maybe that isn't the point, right now. Maybe Coulson has to figure himself out first before he can figure the rest of his life out. And what if that never happens?

Clint nurses the bottle and then straightens in his seat some. Not taking his feet off the desk yet, because he likes this casualness. But he's thinking about this. About what might or might not exist. "Far as I understand it, it's not really science if you don't write it down somewhere. Have a record of it somewhere. You need data, you need to understand how and why something happens, especially if shit doesn't work. Might not have any of that shit on SHIELD servers; whatever data there is, it's locked up real tight and probably spread over a lot of places. We're talking heavily redacted, eyes only, Level Ten kind of access if that. But you don't just fuck around with the human soul and not have things recorded, even if just a written account and some numbers I'd never understand."

"A relationship built on lies is not a relationship," Phil counters. It would bother him. How would he explain the scar on his back and chest? Anyone with any sense in their head would know a scar like that wasn't survivable. There would be questions he couldn't answer and that would cause resentment.

"Let the cellist go. I have." The ease at which he did that probably said a lot for that particular relationship. He understands, though, that Clint's worried and trying to help in a way that's tangible and real. He's always been good with direct action.

"It would be Director level. His eyes only." Phil agrees with a small nod, like they're planning any other operation. If Natasha had been there it would be like any other mission. "I assume that Stark is looking for it. The man is as brilliant as he says. And stubborn."

He makes a pained face to admit that even though he does occasionally like Tony Stark. He will never admit it to anyone. "If he can't find the answers in the samples he's taken, he's going to go to the source. That AI of his is hard at work combing every file it can and attempting to hack what it doesn't yet have access to. I'm pretending I don't know any of that."

Because if he did he would have to step in and put a stop to it. Stark would be looking through highly classified documents that could, if they leaked, cause a lot of international incidents. "I still don't think he'll find anything. If Fury wrote it down, it's on paper locked up tight somewhere. Not digitized. Not where someone like Stark could find it."

Okay. Let it go. Will he really? Maybe, maybe not. It's a physical, actionable thing. It's going to surprise the team, later, probably, when they all start figuring out that Clint's not a bad hand at the emotional stuff, too, in his own sense. But it's true that he prefers something to do. Something he can get his hands on.

There's an argument to be made that the relationship doesn't have to be built on lies, but he knows that's a very different situation.

"Yeah, wouldn't look good to more or less declare open war on your own people." A sentiment that's going to age very poorly in a few years. "Stark's already got a track record of digging up SHIELD secrets; it's expected, and he wouldn't want anyone else to take the fall for it when it blows up in his face. Hard to blacklist Iron Man. A lot easier to levy repercussions on the man behind the curtain."

International incidents, and probably interpersonal incidents. Clint...hesitates, a small furrow to his brow. But it disappears in a moment. The only people who know about the Bartons are Fury, Coulson, and Natasha. That's not anything that would be digitized anywhere in Fury's files. Probably not even a physical file. Personal intel and a promise made long ago. (Not that he thinks Stark would do anything with that information. There's far more potentially damaging and much more damning in Hawkeye's personnel file, mission reports, psych evals than that. But it's what's most important to him.)

"And Fury knows now that that's what he's going to do, go poking around. He'll have the best on his end re-encrypting and moving things around. Digital cat and mouse. It'll go on for a while."

And if Coulson's particular intel is hard copy only, then it'll all be for naught. It'll mean trying to find the breadcrumbs of where that kind of research would be. Backtracing any potential places where the experiment took place. Careful physical raids. And that, beyond some grey hat hacking, would definitely be a declaration of civil war.

"Maybe I should go bat my eyelashes at Fury and ask him pretty please."

"SHIELD is an organization built on good intentions. We know where it leads." Phil believes in the work SHIELD does and the work he's done over the years. His hands are just as bloody as Clint's or Natasha's. Often their hands are bloody because of his call. He's aware of just what sacrifices he's made and the choices he's made. Clean is not a term for SHIELD agents at any level.

Stark is protective in his own way. His own very grating and annoying way. He could tell him that digging wouldn't do any good but that wouldn't stop the man. He wants answers and will not be stopped until those answers hurt someone. Phil's not sure if those answers will hurt him or not.

He catches Clint's frown even though it's short and barely there. He can guess what that's about but he won't press. Clint will bring it up if he's really worried.

"I doubt even your eyelashes will do anything," Phil says in that same dry but weary tone. "I asked him and he won't tell me. It's my life and he won't tell me."

Not the full details, at least. Fury's answers had simply been that Phil's life had been worth saving. He was worth an Avengers level response. That's something he's still coming to terms with. He's never thought himself that important before. He's no Captain America, no matter how much he wanted to be as a child.

He pinches the bridge of his nose for a moment and then lets it go. "If Fury doesn't want us to know, we won't know. It's how he's always worked."

"It's smart." Something Fury has in god damn spades. The spy. At least twenty steps ahead of everyone.

(And Clint and Loki had been one or two more steps ahead of that. Maybe set that thought into a little box of its own, shove it under the bed.)

"Too powerful to risk letting it fall in anyone else's hands. If he's not sure he can trust it, then it never has to get used again. If he does have faith in it, it's only gonna come back out when one of us does something stupid and shuffles off our meager mortal coils. Whatever it is, he's waiting to see what happens to you. Means if he has to, it can get thrown back together in a hurry. And probably dismantled just as fast. If it's mechanical, anyway. If it's chemical, there'll be one sample stored somewhere, because the alternative is synthesize some up in a hurry and at that point it implies it's simple enough to synthesize in a hurry, which means someone else would've stumbled on it by now."

But they have Stark, and they have Banner, and the power of those two together will figure something out. Clint pulls his feet from the desk at last.

"I haven't really talked to him about it anyway. Know it won't change anything."

"All he needed was a guinea pig."

It's perhaps more cynical that he should be considering Fury is one of his oldest friends but it's because he knows Fury that he believes it. Fury will do what is best for SHIELD and Fury. He could risk an agent before he had to risk an Avenger. Whatever was done to him they're all watching and waiting to see if it goes horribly wrong.

Resurect an Avenger. It did feel good when Fury said it. It took him awhile to figure out what it truly meant, the underlying reason.

If it does, the method will be destroyed and Fury will try to find another way to keep the dead from resting peacefully.

"There's not one sample," Phil argues with a little frown. "There's more than one. Fury has backups of backups. He's not going to leave it to one sample. What if something took out all of you at once?"

At least six to seven samples of whatever the wonder drug is. Phil would prefer a nice round number like ten but it's hard to say if Fury wants that much sitting around. The more that exists the more likely it was to fall into enemy hands. Smart. Careful. Paranoid. That's Nick Fury.

"It won't," he agrees with a nod. "If you need to just do it when I'm busy so I can pretend like I didn't know what you planned."

"If it's some chemical wonder-drug," Clint reminds, because they don't even know that much for certain. "And you know even if it goes wrong," Coulson dies in some horrifying way, probably, "he'll keep one sample on ice, just in case."

Fury is a man of just in case.

"No," with a light scoff, waving the idea of talking to Fury about this whole thing off, "I'm not gonna get into that with him. I know Tasha already tried to rip him a new one; the man's unrippable. The fact that the man trusts me enough to keep me a high level agent is more than enough goodwill. Not gonna push that."

"It's a drug. None of me is mechanical. Stark and Banner confirmed that." Phil almost gestures to himself, hand twitching on his bottle of beer. He is his own flesh and blood. It has to be a drug. Whatever Tahiti is, it's a drug of some sort. That's the only thing that makes sense. "Unless you're suggesting that Fury has some sort of... flesh knitting machine."

Another statement that will be ironic in a few years. Natasha had certainly tried very hard to get answers. She took Fury's meddling with his memories personally, as she would given her own history.

The facts as they know them is that Fury brought him back with something called Tahiti and messed with his mind to make sure he didn't remember his death. Until Phil started to remember and went looking. All he'd been able to find is what Fury wanted him to find and when confronted had only said it was necessary.

"Barton," he says seriously. "I need you to keep an eye on me and make sure I don't... change. Physically. Mentally."

Phil can't shake the bad feeling he has about what was done to him. He doesn't know why because he doesn't know the exact details of what's happened to him. There are few people who know him as well as Clint does. If he starts to go wrong, Clint will notice.

"And if necessary..." Phil looks at him and waits for Clint to get his meaning. If he denies it, Phil will say it out loud. "I'm going to tell Romanoff the same thing."

"Okay."

It's easy to say. He'll know there are changes. He'll be the first to see it. And if necessary--

Well, that part won't be easy, and they're going to have to have a conversation about at what necessary means in this case. And Nat will also do it. Clint normally would be able to. Not easily, but he'd do it.

But now...

There is a sharp comment locked behind his teeth about how anyone that needs SHIELD agents put down should just come to him; he's already got experience in it.

"And we won't let anyone touch you ever again."

Clint and Natasha are the ones Phil trusts not only to recognize the changes but also know him well enough to make the call when the time comes. It's his mind he's most scared of losing. The memory tinkering is really... Phil is deeply unsettled and he doesn't know what else might have gotten lost.

"I don't think Fury would try it again." If dies the second time. "Unless he'd try an LMD."

Phil groans and pinches the bridge of his nose again. "Probably downloaded my consciousness while he was altering my memories. Don't know how I didn't think of that before now."

SHIELD even owns his mind, that's fantastic. Phil's pretty sure that wasn't in his contract but he's skeptical. It might be in there somewhere. It's been a long time since he read his actual contract.

He looks at Clint. "Has any of this made you feel better about your own situation with Loki?"

Because they still haven't touched on that. They need to get there. Clint has demons to exorcise just as much as Phil.

Clint sets his bottle down with a sharp sound. "Well, fuck, Phil, I'm sure if Tony stumbled on a whole human consciousness in his deep dive, we'll just delete it."

And while it is both plausible and crazy at the same time, it definitely seems like Coulson's deliberately winding himself up. With shit none of them can do anything about right now. "Trust that if there's ever another you running around, we aren't going to play the game of which one's the real one. We'll know."

And then turns it back around on him. Does it make him feel better? Does it make him feel any fucking better? Well, it doesn't alleviate the ball of guilt heavy in his gut. That all of this is happening because of him. Because he didn't fight the control hard enough. Because he didn't fight Natasha hard enough. Because he was too smart for his own fucking good.

"I feel like this needs more beer. Or something harder." Something that'll make his skull feel like it's got a jackhammer to it in the morning, which will be nice and distracting.

Phil gets up from his desk and walks over to the living area that's been provided. There's a very stylish couch and a very small bar because of course there is. Tony Stark had input on the interior design. It is also fully stocked with some of the best alcohol money could buy.

He gets a bottle of something expensive and twenty years old, grabs glasses, and then goes back to his desk. He pours for both of them and pushes a glass towards Clint.

"It's not your fault I died," he says, fixing Clint with a look. "We trained you to resist a lot of torture and interrogation but not magic. You fought in all the ways you could."

Phil chose to go after Loki. He put himself in that situation. That's not Clint's fault. That was his choice. They can't get caught in this argument. Clint needs to let go of some of his guilt. At least, over this.

He watches Coulson with careful eyes. He knows nothing's going to happen. And this is a man he can trust. And he's talked (and talked and talked and talked) about what happened until he was Tesseract blue in the face before.

Hasn't talked about it with Coulson, save to have the knowledge that he isn't blamed. Still feels like there's a sickness prickling at his senses in bringing it up.

Dulled enough he can sleep more nights than not. Managing the nightmares feels like just a matter of time and distance. Managing the dreams that ought to be nightmares but don't feel like one, well. That'll probably just be time, too.

"I know," but he says it with a frown, with enough of a pinch in his expression to suggest he doesn't wholly believe it. Stares at the glass. He flexes a hand under the desk before he reaches for it. "Monsters and magic." Like Nat had told him.

"But you still think there's more you could have done." Phil can read a lot from that frown and the troubled thoughts flashing, very briefly, behind Clint's eyes. "I'd like to hear how you think we could better prepare out agents to fight that sort of interrogation."

He could present the evidence. Clint missed shots which he never does. He did not fight Natasha as hard as he could have. Phil knows their skills and they are equally matched. He did not give Loki the location of his family. He kept plenty of secrets and fought back in many small ways.

Yes, his actions killed agents. It opened the door to Loki capturing Thor and thus the confrontation that led to Phil's death but if he's hanging onto that for his guilt it's a weaker argument.

"Do you have a ledger now that needs balancing?" He's aware of Natasha own idea of how she needs to atone. If both his best agents have ledges Phil's going to have to start making a spreadsheet. There's no way to eliminate all their guilt but he hopes they can find some peace with what they've done.

Technicalities. At least to Clint. He hadn't divulged (most of) his own secrets because Loki didn't ask. He'd wanted to know about Fury's team of super-fuckups and how to best take them out of the picture long enough to get the job done. Being a puppet on a string meant Clint was not one to worry about or plot against. Against Natasha, he had fought, tooth and nail, to kill if necessary. He hopes--he hopes that if it came to it, he would have treated her like Fury. Debilitate, not decapitate. Slow, not slaughter. But he can't say what would have happened had she not managed to knock his head right into some solid railing.

She's always been better than him anyway.

His laugh is not a happy one when he brings the glass finally to his lips. "Oh, we both know that's never gonna get balanced. You're not the accountant of my soul, Coulson." Tony's taste (or, maybe, even for someone who doesn't drink, might it be Phil's?) in alcohol is almost too good. It's smooth and smoky with a low, warm burn. Clint kind of wants more, acid burn and paint thinner kick. It seems too nice to be wasted on him. But. Not so wasted on friends.

"You've read my reports." The transcripts, the evaluations, the readouts from all the tests under the sun the docs could think of, videos of the interrogations he's sure were made. He knows Coulson's gone over whatever he would've felt pertinent. "I don't know if there's any more light I can shed on the whole thing. If what you wanna know is how to make me feel less guilty, well, psychology's a son of a bitch that isn't always rational."

They want to help each other. And neither's sure they even can.

"I'm your handler," Phil reminds him, simple and straight forward. "I give the order for you to kill. The red in your ledger is often because I put it there. Of course I'm the accountant."

He knows almost every crime Clint committed before SHIELD. Same for Natasha. He knows every target they've killed, captured, or interrogated since they joined up. He pushes them to see psychologists and come to him when that doesn't help. He's trying to help balance that ledger whether they see it that way or not.

"Your reports are insightful but thoughts and feelings change over time." Phil lets his hand rest on his glass but he doesn't drink. He's debating that within himself for the moment. "Clint, if you just need to scream about how unfair it was I'm here to listen. I'll shut up and let you get it out. I understand the feeling."

Phil had shouted at Fury and while it hadn't solved anything he felt a little better afterwards. Sometimes that urge to scream in existential dread sneaks up on him.

"I can't stop you feeling guilty, but I can try to make it easier for you to cope with that guilt," Phil reminds him. Clint doesn't have to carry it all on his shoulders. He can share that burden with his friends.

"So if my ledger's in the red, so is yours, and we're both okay with that." He spreads his arms. "I'm an assassin. I don't try and pretty up the things I do, because someone has to do it, and I can take it. We do what we do to keep bad things happening to innocent people. I sleep pretty easily most nights about it."

Not all nights. It'll never be all nights. Sometimes what gets done on the job is horrible, and the compartmentalization boxes can't stay closed forever. But most nights.

But the whole scope of his time with SHIELD is not what's in question here.

"I'm not gonna...I'm not gonna wail about having something in my head to someone who also got his brains scrambled up like eggs." The absolutely bizarre sensation of both being consciously aware, thinking the way he thinks, speaking the way he speaks, and also being trapped behind his own eyes. Screaming and not screaming. Being himself a little to the left versus being something else entirely. Their experiences are different. He remembers everything with perfect clarity. He wasn't played with by an ally, by a friend.

Might also be the best person to talk it out with.

"Thor says his baby brother's secure in an Asgardian jail cell for," a little handwave, "indefinitely, I suppose. Or until King Dad decides otherwise." Wonders if he'll be let out. Wonders if he'll escape.

Wonders if someone's going to come for him. Or come for the power he lost.

"Phil, where's the scepter?"

That's how they all sleep at night. They tell themselves the questionable and outright horrible things they do are for innocent people so they don't get hurt. So they don't have to make the hard choices and can remain innocent. "You're less of an assassin these days."

It's rare the Avengers have to kill anyone but sometimes there's other work SHIELD asks them to do. They did lose two of their best agents in the shift to SHIELD and it's fairly well known that their loyalty is to their handler, not necessarily the organization.

"Why not? I'd understand the feeling." There are times Phil questions his memories, even ones he knows are real and have been for years. How could he not when he knows Fury's been in there?

But if Clint wants to argue that, well, Phil's going to let him for now. He's trying not to burden Phil even though it's never been a burden to help him before.

"As far as I know Thor took the Tesseract and the scepter back to Asgard." He was dead when that return was made. Every file he's been able to find and read said it went back with Thor. "It's under lock and key in Odin's vault."

Loki would have a very hard time getting close to Clint a second time. Phil knows Natasha alone would make sure the "god" never got so much as a glimpse at Clint much less close enough to make trouble.

Clint's eyebrows raise slowly. "Is that what they're telling people happened to it?" Because Clint was there, and he knows it got put in some kind of attache case to be brought to some SHIELD facility or another for study, the way the Tesseract was. The cube of fuckery, that went back with Thor.

It has been made explicitly clear to Clint that he is under no circumstances to know the location of the weapon in question. Just in case. That's acceptable to him. He doesn't particularly ever want to be near the damn thing again, and in spite of the fact that everyone is as sure as can possibly be that he isn't some kind of secret surprise sleeper agent, it's safer not to take the risk. He supposes to throw people off the scent, a different official story would get written up. Need to know, and anyone not on whatever project it's being used for doesn't need to know.

Hopefully if someone does come looking for the disco stick, they start with Asgard.

"Whoever was behind Loki might want their toys back. I don't know which thought is scarier, that someone with that power would come for it, or that they'd consider it not powerful enough to find the endeavor worthwhile."

He's not honestly sure if he's necessarily afraid of Loki himself. There are complicated layers to peel back. But the glimpse of something, someone behind Loki? That's worth a bit of fear. And it's not fucking actionable.

Clint turns the glass steadily, slowly, around and around. "Do you really wanna talk about fucked up brain stuff? Cuz if we get into mine, we're getting into yours."

Phil frowns at his drink. "That is what is in the official reports I've read."

So, another lie he's stumbled on. Phil isn't surprised but he's... disappointed in himself for not questioning the story. For not seeing the lies typed up on the screen in front of him. It made sense to him, though, that Odin wouldn't leave a powerful weapon like that with Earth.

Maybe he didn't come back from the dead with all the same facilities. He should be able to recognize a cover story. He's written them in certain cases when the real information needed to be buried and buried deep. Usually, at Fury's request.

"What's there to get into?" he asks, raising an eyebrow. "Fury made me think I'd been in a hospital and then recovered at a spa in Tahiti. But I dreamed of something else and went looking. It's haunting me."

False memories. Mind wiping. Lies. Phil is aware of how intense and underhanded SHIELD can be but having it done to him is... it hurts a little bit.

"Coulson." Clint leans in a little across the desk. "I trust Fury to a point. He's always got his mind on some sort of end goal, and I do believe his intentions are good, for the safety and security of humanity, even if his tactics are underhanded at best and real fucked up beyond that. Also, if he wanted to hurt me for any reason, he'd know exactly how to do the most damage." He's not saying blackmail, and it's never been threatened before, he's just saying. That's there. In case. He does trust Fury. To a point.

"But maybe one of the things you have to grapple with here is realizing maybe you don't know your friend as well as you thought you did. That maybe this is someone who's at a point where he doesn't have friends."

And that can't be an easy thing, that kind of loss. Such a human loss. At least that would be something easier to contend with rather than the perpetual existential crisis of being brought back from the dead and played with.

His voice gets a little softer, then. Dealing with the delicate. With the difficult. "Tell me what you dreamed about." And then, maybe in the sense of fairness: "You tell me something that's eating at you, I'll tell you something. Or ask me something you want to know." Back and forth. Almost like a game. A game of truths.

Framed that way, it feels like something Loki might conjure up. He banishes the thought the moment he recognizes it.

"No, that's not fully true," Phil argues. "Fury has a very short list of trusted people and he cuts them out easily but he has them. He has friends. Not many."

I'm one of them, Phil thinks to himself. They've worked together too long for him not be among the trusted. Yes, Nick tampered with him and brought him back but there's a reason. They simply don't know the reason.

Finally, he takes a careful sip. It's probably the best hard liquor he's had in years. It might be worth unraveling his brain to enjoy this. He sets it back down very deliberately.

"I dreamed I was in a very beautiful beach front resort but I was in a hospital gown." He stares out the window, frown slowly deepening. He still remembers actually spending time in a spa and enjoying his time there. His first vacation in years. "And I always woke up with a migraine."

There was one night he woke up with a migraine and a bloody nose. Phil knew then that something was very wrong with him. He had to investigate his own death.

"I'm not sure what it means but it was strange enough to make me go look for the truth."

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