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Harold Barton (deceased)
Relationship to Clinton Barton: father
Threat: none
Edith Barton (deceased)
Relationship to Clinton Barton: mother
Threat: none
Charles Barton
Relationship to Clinton Barton: brother (elder)
Threat: TBD
Everybody’s unreasonable about something.
For Clint Barton, it’s his family. From his first blink to his last breath, it is and always will be, his family. He remembers the smell of his father’s breath (wine-poisoned, full of regret and broken promises) and the taste of his own blood bursting in his mouth (sickeningly bitter as he choked it down).
He remembers how it was his father who did it to him.
He remembers the look on his brother's face (numb), as he took their father’s hits, red and purple blooming like roses on his cheekbones—he remembers how their mother was the only one unmarked and wonders if he and Charles really had to protect her like that.
“Clint Barton, son of Edith.”
Later, he learns to hate Edith Barton. It’s been years since he’s called her his mother, and only when the cloaked figure at Vormir whispers her name does he remember her outside of her cowardice. He wonders what she would think of him now.
He remembers her hair (light, silky), and how much his father liked to yank on it, to pull handfuls out for his own delight, hearing her cries and then striking her (hard, loud) across the face. Harold Barton had always liked to say how beautiful Edith’s hair was.
Clint remembers how her hair looked soaked in her own blood, sprinkles of windowglass shards decorating her yellow locks like gemstones (twinkling, streaked with crimson). He wonders if his father would have found her beautiful then. He remembers how his father lay dead next to her.
He remembers how he screamed, how he thought his hourglass had run out. Next to him in the back seat, Charles had been silent (stone-faced—it had scared Clint). Years of taking hits for both his brother and mother would have done that. Clint had never thanked him.
He had wondered if abandoning his brother—the two of them orphans, for a carnival job, was the right thing to do. He now knows it wasn’t. Enthralled by the lights (bright, dancing), the music (everchanging—much like his loyalties), quick to replace his shell-shocked grief with praise from faceless crowds—he was fast to leave his brother behind, the one reminder of his poison past, for a circus act. Quick to audition, quick to be recruited. There, he was trained in archery.
He wonders if the performer who taught him the bow recognises him now as Hawkeye, and whether he's horrified or not. Clint thinks he might be.
He remembers how Charles finally gave up and left, and how Clint let him. His regret is shaped in the hourglass of his life losing endless grains of sand. He remembers losing himself in the plastic bow in his hand, rubber arrows against his back. He remembers how the carnival adored him. One day, he stopped adoring it back.
He remembers how the bow turned to wood (hand-carved, his first love), to metal (dangerous, glinting like his eyes). Before he could take a breath, his arrows were sharper than his wit, shooting straighter than his father’s words. He thought no one would see. He was wrong. He remembers how a woman in the crowd watched him shoot, and as he landed the target, she hit her own bullseye, in him.
She stayed back after the show to smile at him, and he loved her face as much as his father loved his mother’s hair.
Laura Barton
Relationship to Clinton Barton: wife
Threat: Large
Her name was Laura. Clint didn't learn her last name. He was too eager to replace it with his own and soon enough, he did. He put down the bow to pick up a wedding ring, tucked away his arrows to tuck in his baby, but as he now knows, duty never stops calling for men like him. It came for him like the poison spat from his father’s mouth and when he caught the eye of one Nicholas Fury, his hourglass turned over once more.
Lila Barton
Relationship to Clinton Barton: daughter
Threat: Large
Cooper Barton
Relationship to Clinton Barton: son
Threat: Large
Clint rose through the ranks of SHIELD faster than the time it took his father (wine-drowned, pitiful) to crash their car. His strategic prowess (unbeaten) and combat skills (to be feared) fuelled his desire to fight, and his leadership (cold, unchallenged) took him to the very top as one of SHIELD’s most elite agents, and Nick Fury’s right hand man. Thinking back, he’s glad he secured his role in SHIELD, secured Fury’s trust in him. It was the only way to save—
—Black Widow. An assassin appearing on SHIELD’s radar as a threat to global security. Assigned to Russia, Clint was set to murder Black Widow in order to maintain the peace. Stories about the Red Room Academy haunted his thoughts, the girls with baby fat still on their faces and fists clenched, fingers and hearts running with blood.
“What if I fail?”
“You never fail.”
~excerpt from Clint Barton’s Red Room research, intel provided by ex-Red Room assassin
He pictured his daughter, baby Lila, Russian lies whispered into her sweet ears, Soviet training designed to break her embedded into her muscles. He felt his body clench. Black Widow was dangerous, born of a program so cruel, so inhumane—he would complete his mission at all costs.
“You’ll break them.”
“Only the breakable ones. You are made of marble.”
~excerpt #2 from Clint Barton’s Red Room research, intel provided by ex-Red Room assassin
Thoughts of the Red Room followed him through the Russian snows—the girls' violent training (combat, acrobatics, weapons, torture), the hours of brainwashing they were put through every day (handcuffed, broken to pieces). He pictured Lila, stuck in an endless ballet routine, hands (callousing) and feet (breaking until unbreakable). He saw Edith, training in the use of firearms, Harold as her shooting target. He thought about how the Red Room used real people as shooting practice and wondered if the girls had to remove the body themselves, soak their hands in someone else’s blood like he had.
“The [graduation] ceremony is necessary, for you to take your place in the world.”
“We have no place in the world.”
“Exactly.”
~excerpt #3 from Clint Barton’s Red Room research, intel provided by ex-Red Room assassin
He pictured Laura at their ceremony, drugged and forcefully sterilised, waking up with blood between her legs and aching in her gut. Removing their ability to bear children supposedly made the Red Room graduates better killers; they never had to experience such weakness as worrying more about a family than their mission.
Clint thinks about his own family, and wonders if they were right.
Of all he had learned about the Red Room, nothing could prepare him for the Black Widow. He thought he had been ready. He knows now, more than ever, that he had been wrong. He had followed her footsteps with considerable difficulty—she had covered her tracks well, but not well enough to hide from Hawkeye. When he burst into her last known location—a supposedly vacant apartment, he had his bow drawn, prepared to eliminate on sight.
She had acted fast, not caught unaware—she had heard his footsteps (quiet—not quiet enough) in the hallway and had leapt up against the door. In an instant her gun was between his eyes just as his arrow tip laid against her neck. The apartment smelled like old, stale, not lived in. They were still.
Clint wonders why she didn’t shoot immediately. Then he wonders why he didn’t.
When he returned to SHIELD, Black Widow (screaming, clawing at his face), strapped to his back, he could only watch Fury pleadingly. By some miracle, he let her stay.
Weeks went by before she even faced him, let alone talked to him. Only when he mentioned his daughter, Lila, did she tilt her head. Later, he realises that of course she would be intrigued by children—she could never have them. Urged on, he had told her about his son, Cooper. It was months later when she spoke to him for the first time, and her first words—'You should have a third child, since you can', made him realise who she truly was. He does have a third child—he names him after her. Natasha Romanoff turns his hourglass over a fourth time.
Natasha Romanoff
Relationship to Clinton Barton: partner
Threat: large
He found new meaning in every step, coming in every day to see Natasha’s coy face and returning home to Laura’s. As much as Black Widow thrived by his side, her and Hawkeye the best of partners, thick as thieves and twice as dangerous—she delighted his family at the dinner table, enchanting Laura and captivating his children. He later realises she adopted his family just as they adopted her.
Nathaniel Barton
Relationship to Clinton Barton: son
Threat: large
For the next five years, his wife (dark-eyed, beautiful), daughter and sons (children he and his brother never were) and his partner (who shared his soul) were at his side nonstop, and he finally took control of his hourglass. He held it in his fist, crushed it into glass shards (like the ones that painted his mother’s face). He was free.
He was wrong.
Clint learned about the Sokovia Accords, and they tore his life apart. They forced him out into the open, endangered his wife and children, put him and Natasha on opposing sides, and when she punched him across the face he felt his father’s sneer. It had been years since he had felt his father’s hot hand against his cheek. He found it again in the burn of his gut when he watched his hourglass build itself back up in front of his eyes.
Still, he survived. He always does. Clint wonders what would have happened if he let it break him. He decides he won’t wait and see.
Clint put down the bow, permanently this time, and picked up a ball, threw it to his son. He put SHIELD behind him, put Natasha behind him, and turned to his family. His back was to the Avengers and he couldn’t care less. Ahead of him, he had a wife (smiling), and three children (one of them named after his old partner). His hourglass was put away with his arrows, collecting dust in the back of his barn.
One day he decided to teach his daughter (stronger than he ever was) to shoot. What harm could it do, he thought, she had always wanted to learn, he thought.
She turned to dust before his eyes.
He could hear the sand (like his daughter’s dusted remains) trickling down in his hourglass behind his eyes. The hands of his dead family turned it over again.
He turned his back once more, picked up a sword in place of a bow and travelled to Tokyo (loud, drowning in lights) in place of his barn (too empty). When he drew blood for the first time in years, he tasted his own. Feeling again like a child, he heard his father's voice (drowned out by his mother's screams).
He felt her before he even saw her. He knew, without turning, that she had come to get him.
“Don’t give me false hope,” he had said.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t give it to you sooner.”
Even after all those years, Natasha Romanoff still had a gun between his eyes. After swearing that he wouldn’t, Clint Barton returned with her. Her hair, he saw, had been dyed blonde (like his mother’s), returning to her original red. He was glad. He wouldn’t have wanted to see Edith again.
She looked tired. The way her body settled (like she could melt) was almost frightening. He had always relied on her to be focused on the mission and nothing else. He began to realise their roles were switching. He hated to know who she had lost to make her like this (broken, waiting for her own hourglass to run out).
Seeing the Avengers again was a slap in the face. Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, he felt twinges of guilt every time he saw them, like the deadness in their eyes could have been prevented if he had helped them. He knew something terrible had gone down, the same thing that had lost him his family. He almost wishes he had helped.
Almost.
Thor, however, disgusted him. They had all lost people from the decimation. Many of them had resorted to questionable coping methods, purely to survive, but Thor—Thor truly made him want to walk out. Unrecognisable from when Clint had worked with him all those years ago, the God of Thunder had morphed into a person Clint had never met (beer-stuffed belly, wine-stunk sweat—like his father). e wonders if this was the alternate path he would have been forced to go down, had he not picked up the sword.
He wonders if it was better if he hadn’t.
Time travel. A myth of whimsical scientists, desperate idealists clinging onto a Hail Mary pass. Never did he think that Tony Stark would be one of them. Clint had shrugged it all off. He was almost too eager to don the suit, as if to prove them all wrong, to extinguish his sparkling hope (burning him up from the insides) before it consumed him.
He was wrong. Where he expected to see nothing, he saw his house. The leather of his son’s baseball glove was real, the call of his daughter’s voice was real. As soon as his foot hit the front porch of his own home, he knew he was too far gone. When he was pulled back out, the spark was more prominent than he ever imagined possible.
Hawkeye and Black Widow, their mission: retrieve the Soul Stone. It was almost like being back in SHIELD—if he tried hard enough, he could replace the Avengers complex with the dark interior of a helicarrier, take Tony Stark’s droning voice for Nick Fury's. It was the only way he could focus. The stakes were so high he was drowning in them.
Space. It was emptier than he ever dreamed. Rocket’s warnings swam in the back of his mind, but all he could do was stare. The stars were beautiful, he admitted, but they looked so far away, as if plastered onto a screen.
It was so lonely. He felt his throat close up and couldn’t say why.
When Rhodes and Nebula were dropped off, he and Natasha moved themselves swiftly into the cockpit. Hearing the doors clang shut, he felt himself start to smile. His mouth cracked painfully; it was something he hadn’t done in a long time. There had been little to smile about, but when he looked over to Natasha, she was grinning, curled lips (chapped), exposed teeth (knocked in one too many times, but lovely in their own right), and then he was too.
“This is nothing like Budapest,” he remarked. As they laughed, he set his eyes forward to the stars (advancing, yet ever distant) and wanted to cry instead.
“Clint Barton, son of Edith,” the cloaked figure said, and he half-wanted to shoot them down. They ascended the steps, and he was dutifully reminded of the hundreds of missions they had experienced like this, with Clint in the front, weapons drawn and Natasha with her back to his, the barrel of her gun pointed outwards (straight, hands steady).
The moment he understood, he wished he hadn’t. One of them had to die to obtain the Soul Stone. The notion was so cruelly unfair, he wanted to call off the mission altogether. However, not once had Hawkeye and Black Widow called off a mission. Neither of them were about to start.
They sat, for too long, against the cold stones of Vormir, watching the sun—at least Clint thought it was a sun, in the distance. It didn’t rise nor set, but stayed steadily as a deep orange hue against the horizon, purples and blues streaking past it. It was beautiful, he decided. A sight he could settle for as he died.
When he finally stood, so did Natasha, and he knew they were thinking the same thing.
It had to be him. She must have known. Looking back, he wonders if he could have done it differently, maybe tied her down or knocked her out, anything so that when he threw himself off that cliff, feeling so, exhaustingly small, towards the orange in the distance, swimming in his eyes like the stars he had seen above (far away, lonely—like him), he wouldn’t have felt her small hands against his waist, the hope trembling in his throat dropping into his stomach like a stone.
He heard his own shout echoing in his ears, the pure panic (blinding white) flashing before his eyes as they both fell. He tried to turn and see her face, that maybe her eyes would tell him what her mouth couldn’t, but the kickback of the grappling hook took the breath out of him, digging into his belt almost violently. When she fell, he realised what she had done.
His hand was hooked around her wrist, fingers intertwined with the leather of her sleeve. He could feel her heartbeat (slowing even before she fell—he wondered if she had taken a poison pill like SHIELD agents do, that she had sealed her fate even before leaping after him). He refused to look down, choosing to focus on her face instead. He saw Edith, Laura, Lila, Cooper, Nathaniel, and his grip tightened. Her blood was pounding beneath his fingertips and he wanted to scream, wanted to thrash—wanted to curse the world (broken) and the stars (lonely) and everything that had kept him breathing just for this moment. He felt more alive than he ever had, a part of him wanting to stay like this forever, the both of them on the brink of death, but not dead yet (not ever).
“It’s okay.” He saw her lips move.
“Let me go.” His body shuddered, fingers twitching. He stretched out, straining—every muscle in his body chanting desperately. Natasha slipped through his grasp all the same.
As she fell, he watched a small pendant (silver, familiar) fly out from beneath her shirt, looping around her neck. When he saw the charm, an arrow—catching in her hair (like his breath in his throat), he recognised it immediately.
She tore his hourglass to pieces along to the tune of her shattering body.
The blood spilling from her head, it matched her hair—belatedly, he thought it looked beautiful, then wondered if it was his father’s words (wine-drugged, unlawful) that made him think like that.
He wishes he could close her eyes.
Turning back to the cloaked figure, he met their gaze (blank, like they had seen this infinite times before). Without thinking, he raised his bow (shot straight, like his grief). Before an arrow hit, he woke up.
His right fist was glowing orange, Vormir's sun. He knew why. He didn’t want to see but looked anyway. Unclenching his hand, he observed the Soul Stone, small and unassuming, sitting in the center of his palm.
He wanted to crush it to bits.
He had wanted to do many things in that moment, Clint thinks back. He had wanted to scream, and cry, and pound the ground with his fists, he had wanted to die—to stop the utter blankness in his chest, and he had wanted to live—for a hope he didn’t even have back then.
He learns, after all this is finished, after Thanos is dead yet again having taken Tony with him, that the planet keeps turning. It does not stop when his own thoughts get too loud. The world has no place for grief—it is a moving train on forbidden tracks, everyone who cannot keep up gets thrown off and crushed (like his hourglass). He will not be one of these people. He shoulders his misery, wears it like a veteran’s medal, wears it like an arrow around his neck, and soldiers on.
He goes home. Laura takes him in her arms, and he takes Nathaniel in his. Looking into his son’s eyes, he finds Natasha.
He sees her everywhere. Water along a river trickles like her laugh, the stars flicker like her smirk. He finds her footsteps in his own. Silently, he thanks her.
And, like his hourglass, the world spins madly on.