brandingproblem | open post

"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."

It's nice to think Fury has space in his life for friends. Clint's not so sure that's actually the case now. But Coulson knows the man better than he ever will, so he'll defer to experience on this one.

And focus. "Did you remember anything about--I mean, you remember what happened to you. Did you have any weird, inconsistent memories about actually surviving, getting on a plane to go take some dream vacation for your troubles?"

Which is not following his own arbitrary rules he just set up, but too bad, he knows so little about Coulson's actual lived (or fictional) experience.

"I remember my last words with Fury. Those are most likely my last genuine memories until maybe recertifying for field work." Those last words weren't even a complete sentence and about work. That's fitting for Phil though. He's always given SHIELD everything. "My memories then pick up when I woke up in a very nice medical facility before being transferred to the spa. I have memories of physical therapy there and other treatments."

His chest still gets tight and the scar tissue pulls uncomfortably when he gets tense. Phil, almost habitually, rubs at his chest right then over the scar he can feel through his shirt. "The doctors told me I died on the surgery table but they were able to bring me back by standard revival procedures."

Phil smiles ruefully at Clint. "You're probably familiar with the feeling of your mind not fully being your own, right?"

Time for Clint to crack himself open like Phil has done.

"Probably a little familiar, yeah."

He's been watching Coulson. Part of him is ready to vault the desk and snap him back to reality if need be, but the man has a pretty good hold on himself. Not perfect. No one is. Clint wasn't there, but he is aware of Coulson's injuries. Where he must have scarring. Or at least a phantom ache.

He hasn't had his memories played with, though. The only thing that gets fuzzy is the end of his fight with Natasha and coming to (strapped down and fighting it, his mouth saying something that sounds like him but isn't quite him, a haze of blue), and everything else is simply there for him to review at any time he chooses.

"Sometimes it isn't even like my mind wasn't mine. Maybe that's the real problem. It was me. It's all exactly what I would've said and thought and done if I'd ever been naturally inclined to switch allegiances at the drop of a hat. And it all felt right. Like that's what I was supposed to be doing." Clint stares at his glass like he could break it by thought alone. "But then there was the part of me that got shuffled around, torn open, mixed up. The part that was fully aware that something reached inside me and played around."

He had, when prompted, described the sensation that turned him as something grabbing him by the ankles and pulling him under a frozen lake. Drowning without drowning. An unnatural cold sliding under his skin, not really a physical coldness.

"The part that just had to fucking watch everything happen. I've been your right hand a long time. So obviously I made a real good one for him."

He savors the burn of the drink. The warmth it makes him feel.

"He saw the same potential I did," Phil murmurs softly. Back when they first met and Clint had been more likely to fight for money than a cause. Phil felt like the only one who saw something in the surly archer, not just in terms of skill, but in personality. Given the right push, Clint could become one of the best. He had become one of the best, worthy of the title Avenger.

He didn't like thinking he and Loki could think along the same paths and reach the same conclusions.

"I think the key phrase there is naturally inclined," he says louder, watching Clint staring at his glass before taking a drink. "You were not naturally inclined to change sides. What he did was unnatural to who you are and what you believe in."

It might have been easier on Clint if it was total control. If Loki pulled his strings like a puppet. The Asgardian had him on a leash but given him just enough freedom, just enough control that Clint would take his actions as his own once let go. Is Loki capable of such foresight? Phil's not sure but it's possible.

"My memories are changed but it doesn't feel like Fury changed anything else. I'm still myself." Except the parts that are changing because of dying and coming back. Knowing he's on an experimental second chance is changing him. How could it not? There is the fear, though, that those changes aren't his own choice.

"Did you see that I have heart?"

It's such a tiny, simple thing. It shouldn't haunt him. He knows why he was chosen. Survived the onslaught of violence and was the first one back on his feet, ready to fight. That's what it was. The obvious choice, lucky and smart and resilient and able to pull himself up and keep going.

But he doesn't think that's exactly what Loki meant by the comment. Did the power coursing inside him show him something in particular? Did Loki simply see something worthwhile inside him?

Clint isn't convinced Loki choosing his general very, very well was entirely a matter of happenstance.

At the end of the day, Phil's still Phil, and Clint's still Clint. But: "I don't know that we can be touched by that kind of power," whether alien or homebrewed science, "and not be changed."

"I saw that you had skills and were looking for direction. I did not see your heart at first." Phil didn't realize how deep and strong that heart was until much later when Clint started to trust him. That's when he realized just how great of an agent Clint could be. Not just good, but great.

And he was right.

Phil raises his glass in a toast. "We're only human. We're going to change otherwise, I'd be more worried."

Whether that change will be good or bad really remains to be seen. Clint is coping. Phil has not lost his mind. They're handling it even though sometimes it feels like everything is going wrong inside their heads.

After another drink he sighs heavily. "He did take my best agent."

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?"

Did do.

Loki's damage to the team might was effective. He saw the threat the Avengers could be to his plans and very nearly dismantled them. Phil isn't sure to this day whether is sacrifice was truly necessary or not. Confronting Loki was. He would have caused more damage if Phil hadn't shot him but his death brought them together after nearly being broken. Maybe. Hard to say when he trusts that the team would have saved the world anyway. The after is a bigger question.

"I was both," he says easily, no hesitation in the answer. "As a high level agent you know the ins and outs of SHIELD almost as well as myself. Loki had a wealth of information and could use that, did use that, to his advantage. Of course I was worried about how easily you could take us down."

That's the truth. Clint, with his loyalty shifted, was a liability and a high level threat. There's nothing wrong with admitting what they both know.

"But you're also my friend and I believed that friend still existed under Loki's influence. I wanted to help my friend. It's why I called in Natasha to help bring you in." Another agent would have simply put Clint down, eliminating the threat. Natasha owed Clint for saving her life. She would make a different call. She would make sure they got Clint back. Phil trusted that her last choice would be execution.

"If there was a way to bring you back, I wasn't going to stop until we found it."

"Should've put me down like a rabid dog." But who, frankly, would they have gotten to do that other than Natasha? "Glad you didn't. Obviously."

Clint and Nat are even now, if either of them were ever keeping score.

"I don't know what would've happened if I hadn't been intercepted. Don't know if I would've killed you to get you out of the way, or if I would've figured out how your death might've been used and just knocked you out. Or if the me inside my reprogramming would've spared you regardless. We'll never have to find out, but..." He shrugs. There's no use to it. "I think about it, sometimes." In the quiet. In the dark.

The thought makes Phil's heart seize in his chest for a second. He's lost too many friends. The other reason is... he'd do it. If there had been no hope of bringing Clint back to himself he would've given the order to put him down. And also taken it on himself to inform his family, let them take their anger, blame, and grief out on him.

It's his job as Clint's handler. It's his duty as a friend. It would be one of the hardest calls he's made but Phil knows himself well enough to know that he would do it. He could and would make the call. He might even take the shot himself if necessary.

"You shot Fury in his vest when the smartest move would've been to kill him," Phil points out like they're debriefing from any other op. "You made a choice to save him. Because you knew he was needed. I think you would've taken me out of play but not taken me out."

Unlike Loki who did not care and only saw a threat to be eliminated. He didn't have the forethought to think Phil might make people care.

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