Chapter Text
Coulson wasn’t coming after him.
Maybe Clint had wanted to be sure or maybe he just couldn’t muster the energy to care, but he hadn’t even canceled his credit card, hadn’t even changed his name, hadn’t made any effort to hide; but no efforts were made to find him, either. After all, SHIELD was to be rebuilt and the free world to be saved; there was plenty of good excuses not to go running after one stray operative right now. And if that meant they were technically letting him go, well, that didn’t seem to bother Coulson too much.
Clint wished he could have thanked him, but the only real way to do so was to disappear and make it so Phil would never have to regret his choice.
*
Clint had always thought he’d die an agent of SHIELD. Now, he felt like he’d stolen someone else’s life, leaping into another existence just as Agent Barton was destroyed. He’d gotten out. Which shouldn’t have been allowed, shouldn’t have been possible, and he still couldn’t quite believe it.
He wasn’t sure what to do with himself.
He didn’t stay in Reykjavik for very long; after landing, he rented a car and drove east. He couldn’t have stayed put to save his life, and his instinct made him flee the crowds. He was jet-lagged and exhausted and numb, and on full automatic mode.
*
The city stuck with him for a while, but the buildings around grew more scattered and sparse with each mile; then it all abruptly turned into something wild and cruel, unlike anything he’d ever seen.
There was no sign of civilization, save for the road splitting the wilderness in half; no sign of life either, no trees, no plants—only endless lava fields, black and sharp and jagged, like the bottom of the ocean; and from above, a waterfall of dazzling white light. It was something of an eerie, dreadful sight, everything flat and black and lifeless. Everything wiped out, razed to the ground. It seemed like the entire world had ended along with Clint’s former existence.
The sun wasn’t setting, even though it was now past midnight. Clint drove on until his tremors got so bad he couldn’t drive anymore, until he felt like he was driving across a sharp-edged nightmare.
He parked on the side of the road and looked around. He felt exhausted and feverish, but the sharp black desert set his teeth on edge. Now that the engine was silent, he felt more lost and stranded than ever. He wasn’t sure why he’d come here and wasn’t even sure he was here at all. It couldn’t possibly be that easy—and it wasn’t, because he’d gotten out and now what? Now what? Now what?
Eventually, he grew so restless he felt he like was going to crawl out of his skin. He would’ve left the car to take a walk, but he was afraid of the outside, and too tired to reason himself about it. He ended up digging through the glove box for something to read, to distract himself, anything to make him look away from the unforgiving, mineral hell he’d found himself in.
He found a little tourist guidebook in English, belonging to the car company. He flipped the pages nervously and opened it at random.
In time, he read, weathered lava fields make for the most fertile lands on Earth.
He stared at the book for five full minutes.
Then he closed it again and looked around once more, this time more calmly. Outside was only rock and light.
He was wrong. This wasn’t the end.
This was after the end. This was what a brand new world looked like, when someone was here to see it.
Bare rock and unfiltered light. Lifeless and empty and raw. But eventually, the edges would grow smoother and wouldn’t hurt so much. Eventually, it would all grow fertile once more. And Clint hadn’t grown anything of his own for years; of course it would take a bit of time to get used to it again.
He slowly put the book back, then turned on the ignition and drove away across the black fields, his fingers still trembling a little around the wheel.
*
Clint didn’t realize exactly where he’d come until later the next day.
He hadn’t thought about the implications on the plane, and hadn’t connected the dots either when he’d read the signs in Icelandic or seen the little Vikings in the airport gift shop. But after his first, sleepless night, he stopped for food and fuel at a gas station—and that was when it hit him. It was so obvious in retrospect that he would wonder, later, if someone else hadn’t played his part in his not noticing until then. But this time the clues were just too numerous for him to ignore.
There were the books, in English and German and Spanish. Norse Gods and their Stories. The Elder Edda and Snorri’s Tales – Bilingual Version. Sigurd and other Icelandic Sagas. And there was also the jewelry, the tiny silver necklaces with one different rune engraved on each—Vikings Symbols of Power!
Clint picked up the first one, turned the tiny cardboard label and read, Fehu: Possession.
He quietly put the necklace back.
But as he paid for his groceries, he bought the bilingual Edda, and a cup of coffee to go.
*
He drove for days until he stripped himself of his last shreds of paranoia and realized he didn’t have to.
He stopped in a little village in the southeast. Snowy mountains fell steeply into the tiny harbor, where small colored boats danced like bright toys in the clear water. Clint rented a room, put the Edda on his nightstand, shut the curtains and slept—a deep, rich, sound slumber, which was like sinking down dark waters and nestling underneath the warm soft mud to rest.
When he woke up, it could have been any time in the day or night. Hell, he wasn’t even sure what day it was.
He looked out of his room at the harbor, with the mountains in the background and, further still, the blazing white wall of a glacier, like a frozen wave the size of the horizon. The light was as harsh as before, but there was life here—a bit of life, a few plants and mosses, and gulls cawing high up in the air.
This, he decided, was as good a place to settle as any.
*
At first, he simply wandered around, peeking curiously at everything he saw and using his bilingual tales to try and make head and tail of the Icelandic language—an attempt which proved vastly unsuccessful. He quickly gave up and reverted to English, since everyone here spoke it anyway.
On the third day, he took up hiking. Everything, he found, was effortlessly gorgeous.
The feeling of being at the beginning of the world hadn’t deserted him. There was, as he’d observed, no night at this time of the year. The sun went down, then back up, and down again, like a phoenix drawing circles over their heads. It rained, then it stopped raining, then it rained again. Clouds were continuously shredding and melting back together in an aerial dance of cotton, shadow and light chasing each other on the slopes of the mountains.
Clint felt like he was on stand-by, trapped in a circle, waiting. He found he didn’t really mind, but he still felt unsure. Should he be waiting?
Logically, the answer should be no. Loki had played him one last time in Minto Lakes—exacting his revenge by exposing Clint, rather than killing him; a softer vengeance, but vengeance nonetheless. But like he’d told Coulson, Clint wasn’t angry about it. If anything, it felt adequate. Yet he was left with the strange certainty that it wasn’t over, and that right here in Iceland was where it all ended.
This wasn’t just a matter of being in a Norse country. Iceland was Loki’s land, almost too obviously so. A mess of ice and fire under an ever-changing weather; split in half deep under by a gaping crack which kept widening; but concealing its chaos under aggressive, insane beauty. Simply being here was like calling his name.
And Clint saw Loki’s name everywhere. Some guy in Reykjavik was writing a play about him. Some hoof-shaped basin in the North was said to be the mark of his son. Some bar in the small village had a drink named after him.
Clint wondered if he should wait, if really there was something to wait for. He wondered if it had been a good idea to come here.
But he didn’t feel like leaving, not just now, so he stayed.
*
He’d let himself lose track of time, so he honestly didn’t know when it finally happened.
“The Edda,” someone said with a smile in his voice. “I remember.”
Clint’s eyes blinked open. It was the middle of the night and he’d drawn his curtains against the midnight sun; harsh, white lines of light cut through the darkness.
There was a weight on the bed, close enough that Clint had rolled closer, against the solid warmth of it. He had spent days expecting this moment and yet he was still surprised—surprised he’d been right, maybe.
Pages were flipped in the dark and the smooth voice read a few lines in guttural, flawless Icelandic. Then the book was put back down on the nightstand.
“What does it say about me, again?”
Clint had read that part. He slightly propped himself up. “That you’re pretty and wicked.”
Loki chuckled slightly, as if to say they’d gotten that one right. Then he turned his head to look at Clint.
He was dressed very simply, in a dark pullover and green jeans; his unruly hair was a flow of absolute blackness down his back. There was no glamour covering up his scars or the wounds he’d sustained in the lab; Clint could see that while his torn ear had healed up nicely, it hadn’t quite grown back. The cuts on his arms seemed to have faded, although Clint couldn’t see further up than the wrist. The rune was gone, but not entirely—some kind of nacreous watermark remained on his cheek, visible only when he moved. Someone else than Clint might have not known it was there.
Loki looked better, without that restless despair which had possessed him before—and that Clint saw plainly only now that it was no longer there. But he didn’t look peaceful, not by a long shot. Being in Clint’s room—having come to him, after so long, which amounted to admitting he’d followed him all the way to Iceland—seemed unsettling to him; yet he’d let his glamour fade away, allowing himself to look vulnerable, even though he still kept a façade up. There was something strained and brittle about his smile.
He stared at Clint for a long minute, then slightly narrowed his eyes. “Are you not mad?”
Clint shook his head, and Loki looked a bit at a loss. Apparently, he’d come expecting a fight.
“Thought you’d be long gone,” Clint said hesitantly.
Loki’s smile reappeared and grew lopsided. “Yet you came to me.”
Clint almost rolled his eyes. “I didn’t come to you.”
“I got here first,” Loki objected. “Hundreds of years ago, as a matter of fact.”
Clint couldn’t answer anything to that. When Loki shifted on the bed, Clint felt again his weight through the woolen quilt, pressing against his thigh. There was a moment of silence as they both waited for the other to speak.
“There is a volcano,” Loki said eventually. “Stifled under the glacier. It is going to erupt very soon and bring it all to ruin.”
His very voice sounded breakable, like he spoke over something huge which had swelled inside him, leaving him paper-thin. And Clint suddenly knew, just knew, that Loki had heard of his mother’s death. Thor must have found him, somehow. Clint wanted desperately to ask, to make sure, but some words are not meant to be said.
He sat up and asked, softly, “When’s very soon?”
Loki shrugged.
“Maybe it won’t happen,” Clint said.
“Volcanoes do little else.”
There was a silence. Loki sat there in the dark, in a frame of sleepless sun. In his inevitable future was fire and blood; and yet he was sitting in Clint’s room in an obvious attempt to delay it.
Not that he’d admit it.
Clint felt a bit of his old frustration with him return. Fuck whoever had invented dignity, and fuck twice whoever had invented revenge. “It doesn’t have to happen,” he insisted. “And enough with the goddamn metaphors already, Jesus fuck. Just—don’t go back. This old fucker ain’t worth it.”
Loki looked at him; his expression seemed to hesitate between his usual grin, and something… else, flickering beneath.
“You’re concerned,” he said.
“Yeah. I’m concerned. Happy?”
There was a pause.
“Have you forgiven me?” Loki asked, quizzical.
“Have you said sorry?” Clint snapped back.
The grin won out, irony etching itself into Loki’s sharp features again. “Oh, Barton,” he said in mock disappointment. “You know better.”
Clint’s weariness came back like a high tide. He felt utterly helpless—felt like Loki was made of this jagged black rock; he’d been malleable once, but now he was cold lava, and it was too late, for anything. He could not give an inch of ground anymore, not without breaking; or so he thought—and he’d never be convinced otherwise.
“If you just said the word,” Clint said tiredly. “If you just let yourself,” but even as he said it, a nasty little voice said in the back of his head pot, kettle.
Loki was still smiling. “Are you asking me to stay?”
“No,” Clint answered.
He said no because he didn’t want to lie, because Loki was exhausting to be around and Clint was at the end of his rope.
He said no because if he’d said yes, Loki would have left at once.
Well, hey. He was free, now, after all. Nothing could stop his own pain and anger to drive him back to the stars—unless someone forced him to stop.
But Clint was so, so tired of going down that road.
“No,” he repeated softly, “you’re the one who’s gotta ask.”
In this moment, no matter how weary he felt, he sincerely hoped Loki would. But they both knew how that went.
Loki’s smile grew wistful; he gazed into the darkness, and he murmured, so low Clint barely heard the words, “Damn me.”
Then he looked back up, and his scarred grin was sharp again. “Damn you all,” he said. “You cannot expect me to give up. I have come too far to dream of it.” He tilted his head to the side. “Do you remember that first day in the Triskelion? You really should have killed me then, Barton. While it was still t—”
Clint pulled him close and pressed their mouths together.
Loki stilled; for a second, Clint feared Loki would not even allow this, would stifle it too under hard-boiled layers of scathing irony. But then, slowly, Loki parted his lips and softened by a fraction, his weight shifting against Clint’s again.
Clint scooted closer, plunging his hands in the black hair with a wave of relief; Loki clung to him, and Clint felt tremors of exhaustion run through his wracked frame.
So this was why he’d come back. For a last bout of silence. For a last chance to give in. When Clint pushed him back and held him down, the demi-god went boneless in his grip.
“Only for tonight,” he still breathed when Clint tried to kiss him again. “I am not—”
Clint pulled his hair hard enough to make him cry out and stay very still, lest he broke his neck.
“Enough now,” he ordered quietly. “Enough.”
Loki swallowed, then closed his eyes and exhaled shakily. When Clint kissed him again, he melted into it.
Enough. It would have to be enough. All they could share in the end was a bit of warmth. The rest was history and would be history—the same old story Clint already knew since some of it was printed inside the book on his nightstand. No effort could be, or would be, made to stray from it. Stubbornness, after all, falls in equal share to gods and men; and so they call it destiny.
Perhaps it is.
*
Beneath the curtain, the midnight sun had insensibly turned into bright dawn. Loki was asleep in Clint’s arms, tucked against his chest; they were tangled together under the quilt, limbs twined like ivy, fingers laced like vine.
Clint wasn’t sleeping. This was the last night before the rest of his life. He focused on the steady rise and fall of Loki’s chest against his. Not long ago, he couldn’t have held him like this, not without guilt or shame or some measure of disgust; and he was sure he’d feel all these things sooner or later, but right now, for one stolen moment, it was okay.
Clint’s frustration wasn’t gone. It was almost maddening, really, all that could have been; a word from either of them could have turned it all around. But Loki was too proud to stay, and Clint was too selfish to make him. Or rather, perhaps, Loki was too hurt to move on, and Clint too weary to stay. Either way, Loki was heading back, and Clint forward; and that was that.
Freedom. Life’s great fucking lie.
Clint looked at the dark curtains framed in light. He knew that once he opened them, it would be over, past and future rushing back to set the present in motion again. He wasn’t as wary as he should; he had been given a new life, something he’d once ceased to hope for. Right now, it still hurt, jagged and puzzling, but in time all the sharp-edged novelty would become old lava underneath.
He… kind of looked forward to it. Maybe he’d go find Natasha. Or maybe he’d do something else entirely, who knew.
But not just right now. Right now, Loki deserved those last few minutes of obscurity, because he was the one who’d wiped Clint’s world anew.
The Joker stops the game and makes it start over.
So he let the lying night linger; and maybe there were thanks tangled there somewhere, perhaps even some kind of twisted apology, at long last; but from whom to whom it was impossible to say. It was all buried anyway, down into the solidified stone, irretrievable now.
It was useless to discuss any further; but in the dark, Clint slowly came to realize there was still one last thing he wanted to say, before the curtains were drawn open and the light of a new day flooded in.
He shifted minutely against Loki and felt him shift in return, a slow, drawn-out stretch. In this second, Clint remembered the haunted, gaunt man carrying a deck of cards in his back pocket; and he was glad to let him go. He closed his eyes.
“You asked me what was left of you the day you stopped fighting,” he murmured. “It’s not actually that bad; you should try it sometimes.”
Loki hummed, then tightened their embrace.
“Well, lover,” he sighed, “maybe I will.”
It was a blatant lie, but Clint let it slide. This one was almost sweet.
They’re not often sure, those who sit in the hall,
Whose kin they are who’ve come;
No man is so good that he has no flaw,
Nor so bad that he’s good for nothing.
The Elder Edda, “Hávamál”, stanza 133.