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"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.

And why would Loki have thought that? Even Clint hadn't seen that far ahead when explaining (in excruciating detail) everyone's flaws and faults and weaknesses. Coulson would only have met several of them in gathering them together for this united threat. The thought of 'if this man specifically dies, the plan goes to shit, because they'll all unite under a common banner' sure hadn't hit him because it seems a little ludicrous. Even now, it seems...wild.

"I think so, too. He asked me about it, you know. That I didn't kill Fury, because I admire the man. Told him that was part of it, yeah. And that I'm better with a stick and a string than a gun. That I was still fucked up from the initial attack and the mindfuck. None of it was a lie, but...excuses, I guess. To hide how much of that had been me. I don't know, the lines get...blurred sometimes."

"Yes, I can imagine."

Even Phil only sort of understands why his death united the Avengers. He's an every man. It's his greatest skill as an Agent. No one looks at Phil Coulson and sees a threat. They see an accountant. It's what he wants them to see.

The every man dying was a reminder of what the Avengers had to fight for. Who they were trying to protect. They were protecting everyone by saving the world. For all their superpowers and strength, a reminder of who those powers were meant to protect was needed.

"And you are better with a bow than a gun. It's remarkable, really. A gun should be easier." They can take a break from the deep heavy conversation if Clint wants. Phil is opening that path for him.

"It's too easy. I'm used to the full body physicality. None of this Tony Stark video game point your hand and shoot shit."

Meditative. His draw weight is frankly ridiculous, and even though he never even graduated high school, he can still do lightning fast calculations in his head, angles, wind speeds. It's not numbers to him, just feeling. Look one way and point the bow another. Breathe. Hold it tight and let it go with the whole of his self.

He's still good with a gun, of course. He doesn't miss. Knows how to pick his shots. Has been good ever since he was a kid.

It's a distraction if he wants it, he knows. He's not sure if he wants it, because if they veer off, he might not want to come back to this.

"Didn't really intend for this to be a therapy session, you know." Middle ground. Not veer off entirely, but accept this for what it is instead of something else vaguely awful falling out of his mouth.

"I'm not a therapist," he says dryly. "We're just friends talking to someone they trust."

Phil also can count the number of people he trusts on his hands. Clint ranks very high among them. It's also easier to talk to Clint about how damaged his mind might be. Clint knows what it's like to have someone mess around in his head.

No one really knows what it's like except Clint and Natasha. She hasn't been by to talk recently. She'll come eventually. They always check in on each other.

"I know we're supposed to tell the shrinks everything but... that's hard. Especially when you know they're reporting everything to someone else." That someone else was Phil very often in Clint's case. It's Fury in Phil's case.

"Hard to say everything when you're sort of still in the middle of it, too." Coulson's still in the middle of dealing with everything that he is, on top of the thin veneer of distrust that's hard to wipe away. Clint had still been in the middle of even trying to process it all. Hard to deal with trauma properly if you aren't even out the other side of it yet. "They say it's a marathon, not a sprint. But I needed to prove I wasn't going to snap, and then I needed to prove I was fit for duty."

So it is what it is. He is fit for duty. That doesn't mean he's okay, necessarily. Doesn't mean he could regurgitate every god damn feeling and pick apart every irrational thought on demand.

"Sure, I'd like to say I'm over it, and it's never going to be a problem. I can't guarantee anything like that, though." He kicks back the rest of his drink. Lets it burn slow, settle warm. Breathe out heavy. "Now's as good a time as any to tell me you're worried about my evals, you know."

"And you don't really understand what 'it' means. Just that someone else messed around with your mind somehow." Phil knows he's at the start of whatever this is. He's going to have to find out more details to really understand and come to terms with himself and what was done to him.

Dead. He was dead. It's such a strange thought when he feels so very alive.

He does not follow suit and finish his drink. Phil feels a comfortable warmth in himself from the alcohol and doesn't want to push his luck. Without knowing what unlocking his mind will do he's going to be careful of alcohol and other mind altering substances.

"If I was worried about your evals I would've called you up here today." Phil's not worried by Clint's very human reactions. He's allowed to have those. All other metrics are fine. He's still the world's best shot. Still a capable agent.

"At least I know technically what did it to me," he says with a humorless smirk. "For all the good that does when the damn thing's god knows where, and whatever the brainy scientists find out, I'll never know. I don't even know if what I know is what I know. You know?"

Better to laugh even if it isn't funny, because it's better than anything else. (Screaming and not screaming.) "It's easy to blame Loki, obviously. Thing was either made for him or," with a little wiggle of his fingers, "attuned to him or something. We carried out his will. But I don't...know." A frown. The skyline looks more interesting right now. "I don't know that it was necessarily him. I don't know if the scepter had a mind of its own or if even he wasn't entirely sure what it was or..."

Or if it was the Someone Behind Loki beyond any of them.

"We were touched by something bigger than ourselves. It's not Asgardian, that's why Odin didn't give a shit. Thor said the cube belonged in his dad's vault, but other than the staff having some nice aesthetics, it's not... I don't know what it is. But it's not Asgardian. It's not anything I think anyone knows about. And I think--"

Is he rambling? Jesus, is he making any sense? Clint shakes his head. "I don't know what the fuck I think sometimes. Think part of me's afraid no testing will show that maybe we're still somehow connected in some way because of that thing. Tesseract's a door, opens both ways. Who's to say the scepter isn't, too? Feel like it's hard to touch without being touched in return."

"There is something beyond Loki. I've read the reports of what Stark saw through the portal." He's also heard from Stark himself who is obsessed with what he saw, who is trying to make Phil do something though Stark himself doesn't know what that something is. "And my guess is the scepter was made for him by that entity. Put the right weapon in the hand of your agent and let them do their work."

It's how Phil's operated for years. He doesn't have to give orders in the field because he trusts Nat and Clint to know their own capabilities and what to do. He steps in when there's something they don't know or can't see coming for them.

"You could be right." Coddling Clint and telling him not to worry is the wrong thing. There is a lot to be worried about. Intergalactic threats are real now, though Phil's known about aliens for years given Fury's little trip when he was a rookie agent. "We haven't seen signs of a connection, however. The scepter is more a key to the door from what I've read. It can open and close it. Your mind isn't a key even after having the scepter poke it. If anything, we should be more worried the scepter is a tracking beacon."

That's a possibility that's come up in his conversations with Stark. They've got a big neon sign flashing "here!!" to whatever is out there.

"We take what you know, what Stark's scene and we start planning now for what's coming. Together."

Yeah. There's something coming. Stark might be running himself a little ragged with too many projects to keep up with, but he's not wrong in his paranoia. There's only so much they can do to prepare for what they don't know. There are too many problems here on Earth as it is.

So. Set that worry aside. It'll come when it comes, and they'll fight the good fight. Plan for it and hurry up and wait.

He tries to focus on Coulson's reassurances. There hasn't been any indication. No unnatural glow in his eyes, no posh Shakespearean reject voice in his ear, no phantom hand on his shoulder. No nothing that indicates that there's any open connection. It'll concern him until one day it doesn't anymore, and that day is not today, but he can take some solace in knowing that there's nothing provable.

But he's caught on the phrase put the right weapon in the hand of your agent, turning it over in his mind. The way Coulson said it. Thinks briefly about May, an ally, the interim handler that Clint consistently disrespected not out of any malice but because their styles hadn't meshed. What Coulson means is the scepter. But Clint sees something else.

"He knew how to use me." His gaze flicks briefly to his friend. "Like you do." What took years of trust building and trial and error, taken up effortlessly by an alien interloper. In a sense: Barton was the right weapon to put in Loki's hands. "That bothers you, doesn't it."

Phil frowns because yes, it bothers him.

"Loki had a glimpse into your mind. He cheated." Phil worked very hard to build a relationship with his agents. He tried with every agent he was tasked with handling to make a good working relationship. There were very few he had taken a personal interest in.

Like Clint. Like Natasha.

"I also trained you." He took the rough, raw talent Clint had and sharpened it into a finely tuned agent and weapon. He made Clint into the perfect tool for Loki to use. Not that he regrets helping Clint become who he is but he doesn't like that relationship... tainted in a sense. Someone took that trust they built and turned it against them.

He rubs his temple for a moment. "I don't know if it would've been better or worse if he grabbed me or Hill or any of the other agents there that day."

It might have been easier on Clint though.

That could be it. Got those long fingers flicking through the patterns of his mind, got shown the right way to handle his new weapon. In some ways, the thing masquerading as Clint had figured out how to handle Loki in turn.

"Could you imagine if he'd gone for Fury?" Should've, even. The apparent leader, that would've been a smart play. But Loki had come at the problem sideways. "Maybe he didn't have enough heart," added in a mutter.

Or too high profile. Hard to say. He'd turned Selvig, a handful of other agents and scientists. Useful. But not in charge of everything. Able to disappear. Not all of them have taken it too well. They say Selvig's slowly losing his shit. Clint wonders if it's a matter of time for him, too.

"Sometimes," and he hesitates. This isn't therapy. This is a friend. Clint leans his head back and closes his eyes to the ceiling lights. "Sometimes I dream that I'm with him, and it isn't a nightmare."

That he belongs there. That it's right. That it feels the way it's supposed to. Handler and agent.

"I wouldn't be surprised if Fury is immune to any sort of mind control." Phil has no idea what his friend is capable of. He could have some device in his mind. He could have a lot of training. He'd also be hard to get close to. Somehow, Phil feels that Fury wouldn't have been captured. He would've turned it on Loki somehow.

The last part makes him ache a little for his long time friend. He can't imagine what that's like. His dreams lately haven't been peaceful. But he does understand that Loki twisted a relationship Clint felt safe in and put a stain on it. One that might never come clean.

"I'm sorry. I know that doesn't solve the problem or chase away the dream but I know our relationship is important to me. I would hate for someone to twist that." They are family and more. He trusts Clint with everything because they've worked together for years, handler and agent. Clint's giving him the same level of trust in return.

"It's not...christ. We're okay. It didn't do anything to us. Or at least, I don't think so."

That can't be true. He doesn't treat Coulson any differently, but Loki did change things. Not, perhaps, their relationship. But things changed.

"Don't be sorry. I'm the one who's sorry." And he knows he doesn't need to be. Coulson doesn't blame him for anything, and it drives him up the fucking wall. Clint rocks to his feet, swiping up his empty glass and heading for the minibar ostensibly for a refill. "I'm sorry, and I know you won't accept that, but I am anyway."

They've changed. Those changes are going to effect them. Their relationship might change because of that. Phil can't see them ever not being close. It would take a great deal of damage to change things that much but... something might change.

He tracks Clint as he walks over to the minibar. "We're going to have to agree to disagree on that."

While he can understand Clint's sense of guilt, Phil doesn't think it's necessary. He doesn't blame him. Clint only blames himself because he was taken by Loki. If another agent had been taken, Phil still would have put himself in front of Loki with the gun. The choice he made had nothing to do with Clint being the one who helped attack the helicarrier.

"And we're going to be okay. I mean our minds. We'll eventually be okay." Phil is trying to reassure himself in that too. He wants to be okay and not be twisted into someone else. He had better not turn into a zombie either.

"Yeah." He's looking through the options of drink. Or he thinks he is. He doesn't really see the bottles. Now that he's up, he's restless, like he wants to fight something, like he's going to fight himself, and it might be a night where he beats a punching bag until his knuckles bleed, but at least it'll be out of his system. "We will. Both of us. We'll get out heads on straight and not be afraid of ourselves."

And until then, they'll lean on each other, trust each other. Coulson's himself even if he's missing parts (and if they can alter memory, why not other things, why not personality, history, why not rewrite a whole person just because you can) and Barton's himself even if he doesn't know the long-term effects of having something alien shuffle around his hardwired loyalties (and if it's as easy as a touch with magic they can't possibly understand, why not seed in the paranoia, why not leave something behind to quietly grow until the time is right, why not bide your time until you can bring the good little soldier to heel again), and they have to trust each other about it since they can't fully trust themselves.

"I wish you blamed me, though." It tastes as sharp and bitter as he knew it would. It tastes like blood in his mouth. "Even just a little, even if you knew it wasn't rational, I wish you would."

"And why? What would that accomplish, Clint?" Phil frowns at him, not sure why his blame matters so much. There are plenty of agents in SHIELD that still don't trust Clint after Loki. There are plenty that blame him for the death of friends and coworkers. Why does his blame matter?

"Is it because you think I'll be able to come up with some appropriate punishment? Do you want me to put a mark on your record?" If he points out how ridiculous Clint is being maybe the archer will see some sense.

His blame changes nothing. It doesn't change what happened. It doesn't change Clint's guilt or Phil's death. He almost rolls his eyes at Clint but holds himself back. He knows what those words cost him and he's not going to make light of them. He's going to try and help.

"Loki carries all the blame here. Not you. And one of these days, you're going to figure that out yourself."

It's stupid. It's nonsense. It doesn't change the feeling. Clint plants his hands down, shoulders flexing, head hanging. Of course Coulson's right, and it won't make anything better, and it won't change anything, and it's better this way. "Maybe I do. Want some punishment. Some consequences for my god damn actions."

It's not like he hasn't suffered repercussions. (It's not like he hasn't suffered.) (Screaming and not screaming.) So he needs all this reframed. What is it that he wants out of this? Why does it crawl around his brain that he needs the walking corpse of his friend to hate him? What use is that thought? Any of these thoughts? What does it accomplish, why does he think he wants it, why does it haunt him, why is he even here--

"I don't know!"

That was louder than he intended. Maybe to be heard over the pounding of his heart. He's facing Coulson and his arms are thrown wide and his skin feels too tight and the beating in his chest is frantic.

He takes a breath. Finds that, too, tight and difficult. Scrubs a hand down his face and tries to reorient himself. (inonetwothree outonetwothree) (only it ends up inonetwo outone-)

"The world got turned upside-fucking-down, and it scares the shit out of me, Phil. How am I even on this team? What use is a guy with a quiver of arrows going to be to the next alien invasion, or the next bit of out of control tech, or the next crystal ball of magic that upends everything we thought we knew about our cozy little existence in the universe? Hulk shrugs off bullets like they're snowflakes, Stark can fly in a tin can and shoot lasers from his hands, Thor's an alien god, Cap's got the strength of at least two and a half of me and the resilience to be a one man army. I'm good, I know I'm good, but I'm good for baseline human, not a super soldier experiment or a man that can summon actual lightning from the heavens. I don't think I know much of anything anymore."

The anger washes over him like water off a duck. Phil's dealt with Clint's anger before. He's even dealt with it directed at him especially in the early days of working together. He knows it's not about him and he knows it's not personal.

It's deeply personal to Clint, but the anger is not over something Phil did or didn't do. Clint's letting go of some of the things tangled up in his head and squeezing around his heart. Phil turns his chair so that Clint can keep yelling.

"None of us do," Phil agrees, still calm and steady like he always is. When Clint's adrift like this, Phil stays steady, his anchor point in all the chaos going on around him. "We're dealing with new unknown threats of levels that no one considered before. We have the technology to bring a dead man back to life. The whole world, not just you, is coping with this new reality. And the majority of the population are just normal people, baseline, not even to your level."

Phil sits forward, his gaze fixed on Clint with intense surety and confidence. "Now we need heroes who can respond to those unknown threats. We need skilled people willing to step up. And we need a baseline human who can fight those threats because other baseline humans are going to see him and feel safe. Iron Man is cool. Captain America is inspiring. You? Hawkeye is real. Hawkeye matters because he's human. And you are good enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with those heroes."

Things that will ring true in another almost 15 years.

Right now, it feels patently ridiculous. No, people are going to feel safe seeing Symbol Of Freedom Captain America fighting for them. They're going to see a flying metal suit and feel safe knowing that's fighting for them. How is an archer jumping around safe, how does that sound real and like he matters--

But also. Sure. Hawkeye is human and still is doing what he needs to do, alongside gods and monsters. Fighting aliens and weird shit even though he has no right to do so.

"Great," with a tired noise in his throat, "so I can inspire a new generation of suicidal idiots with nothing to lose and everything to prove."

That's unfair of him. He knows it. He rubs at his eyes, and Coulson is...a rock. A stable rock to cling to when things get too chaotic, and there's the little twinge of guilt thinking that Coulson doesn't need this when he's got his own shit to worry about, and then a whole team to boot. But Coulson's good at that. Always has been.

"Sorry." Small and quick. "For...that." The explosion of whatever all that was. Crisis. "I trust you."

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