Chapter Text
“Stop him!”
“He’s going into the main tent!”
“Up on the tightrope!”
“Get down here boy!”
“I’ve got him...”
CRACK!
THUD.
“Is he dead?”
“Close enough. Let’s go.”
Fremont, Nebraska – 10 years ago
03:00 CST
Blackness faded to the dark of night. Cold rain bounced off his face, but he couldn’t hear the storm around him. He couldn’t move, and even breathing brought agony enough that he wanted to succumb to the black once more.
Clinton Francis Barton was going to die tonight in the mud. Another faceless carnie meeting his end after falling without a net.
Something nudged his head, making Clint open his eyes once more. They focused on a large pink nose a moment before a tongue washed his face. Ew , cow , Clint thought. He wanted to reach up and push the animal away, but even twitching his wrist sent sparks of pain through his body and he cried out, unable to hear his voice but certain that it was pitiful.
The cow kept licking him, moving up Clint’s face to grooming his hair. The rain started to lighten up, and a sliver of moonlight broke through the clouds, giving Clint enough to see where he was.
He didn’t remember how he ended up in a muddy field. The last thing he remembered was watching the trapeze artists after he finished his act with Trickshot . Then Jacques appeared, pulling his brother Barney away to help him with something.
Two headlights turned in his direction as a truck approached through the mud. The light blinded Clint, but he could only close his eyes to try and block it out.
The mud made it impossible for Clint to hear anyone approach, and without his aids or reading lips, he couldn’t understand if someone was speaking to him. He flinched at the feeling of someone gently touching his shoulder, gasping at the pain that followed.
His eyes flew open, taking in the blurry vision of a gray-haired woman in a leather jacket kneeling in front of him. Off to the side, a man in a ballcap was on his cell phone. The woman shouted over her shoulder, then faced Clint again. Her head moved to block the light enough that it wasn’t trying to blind him.
“-- tay -- we’re -- am --?” He managed to make that out from her lips. Clint moaned, letting her know he tried to understand her. The man ran over with a blanket, pushing the cow away before gently placing the warm fabric over Clint.
He wanted to thank them. Or tell them to leave him to die. Clint wasn’t sure which he would rather have, but anything was better than freezing in a mud pile.
The woman threaded her fingers through Clint’s hair, then stopped and pulled back to look at it. He whimpered, wanting to feel the affection again even if her hand came away bloody. The woman looked over her shoulder; Clint guessed that she was telling the man about his head.
Flashing lights started to color the side of the woman’s face. It was a steady pattern, hypnotizing? Giving in to the cold and pain, Clint let the pace of the flashing guide him back to unconsciousness.
The next time Clint was conscious, it was in a hospital room. The smell of disinfectants tickled his nose as Clint dug his way through the foggy mess in his head. The world remained silent, but the pain was gone and he lay on a warm, spongy bed. It was already a better situation than last time.
He opened his eyes, squinting even though the overhead lights were off. Only the headboard light and the soft glow of the television illuminated his surroundings. He tried to look around, trying to find evidence of how long he had been out.
There it was, the whiteboard. Clint remembered it was in every hospital room he stayed in when he was a child—a clumsy one who “fell” too many times in his first eight years of life. The date was on the board, the name of his nurse and doctor, and then the smiley pain level chart.
It had been a week since that night. A week since Carson’s left him to die alone in a muddy grave. No one sat in the guest chair, which meant that Barney hadn’t come to his senses and come back for his little brother. He had no one.
Clint was still looking at the whiteboard when his bed was shaken. He tried to turn his head but realized that he only had limited mobility of his neck. Still, he was able to see the doctor and nurse standing at his bedside.
“Can you hear me?” Clint got from reading the doctor’s lips. It was a familiar phrase, so he knew the lip motions by heart. He shook his head as best he could, then made to move his hand to sign that he was deaf.
Only his hand... his arm was too heavy to move.
His eyes left the doctor to look at his right arm. It was in a cast, starting up at his right shoulder and continuing down his body, engulfing the entirety of his chest, right arm, hips, and right leg. His leg and arm were both in traction.
On his left side, his arm was in a soft brace, laying across his chest on a folded blanket, a sling strapping it down to keep it from moving.
Clint tried to speak, a pitiful whine escaping his throat. It felt like he was trying to breathe through a coffee stir straw, unable to get enough air as panic started to set in. He looked back at the doctor, knowing he had to appear small and helpless in the bed. Years of neglect and scrounging for food had ruined his ability to grow like a normal child would have. He could only imagine what a week unconscious would have done.
The bed was shaken again and Clint’s eyes went back to the doctor. The nurse stood there with a handheld dry erase board now. When she had his attention, she asked him if he remembered his name. Clint nodded. She asked him what it was, and he tried to speak it, he really did, but nothing came out.
He flexed the fingers on his left hand, feeling them move easily and without pain. That was a start, Clint thought, and he started to fingerspell his name.
The nurse was about to put the dry erase marker in his hand when she noticed his fingers moving. Clint watched her get the doctor’s attention, pointing at his fingers. The doctor had the nurse leave the room, and Clint settled back into his bed, already exhausted from the effort.
Clint must have dozed off because the sun was shining through his window the next time he opened them. He looked at the whiteboard on the wall and another day had gone by.
Someone touched his hand and Clint lazily turned his head to see who it was. A woman in a white jacket stood there, smiling. The doctor from last night was beside her. Clint looked between the two, unsure what was going on.
Then the smiling woman moved her hands. Hello, my name is Doctor Signora. She did the motion for the doctor again—touching her right hand to her left wrist—but in doing so made her right hand into the S finger sign.
Clint smiled. He looked at his left hand and slowly fingerspells his name. C-L-I-N-T. He couldn’t move his arm enough to show her his name sign, so she was just stuck with the spelling.
Signora nodded. Hello Clint. Do you know what day it is?
Clint nodded, then purposely looked at the whiteboard on the wall, then back at Signora. He saw her laugh, and he gave her a small smile.
Cute, but good job. Do you remember what happened to you?
Clint remembered, but it was too much to fingerspell out. Not that it mattered, since they wouldn’t believe him. No one ever believed him. F-E-L-L.
Signora frowned, and Clint knew that look. Technically, he wasn’t lying. He had fallen, it had just been from a tightrope instead of down a staircase. She then looked at the other doctor, turning enough so that he couldn’t read their lips.
He just watched them. Not that there was a lot he could do in his position. His eyes were starting to get heavy when they turned back.
Where are your parents? Signora asked.
D-E-A-D.
He looked away to avoid their looks of pity. His father was a piece of garbage. Clint was glad he was dead.
Signora’s hand touched his again to get Clint’s attention.
Who takes care of you?
B-A-R-N-E-Y.
Uncle? Clint shook his head. Brother? Clint nodded. Where is he?
D-O-N-T-K-N-O-W.
The doctors talked again. Is there anyone we could call who would take care of you?
Clint thought for a moment, debating on how to answer. His last foster family was using the Barton brothers as a meal ticket, and they had left when their father started advancing on Clint. They had already lived through one of those families, and Barney promised never to let it happen again. That was why they had run away.
He didn’t want to go back into the foster care system. Not that he was going to get out of the hospital anytime soon from the near full-body cast. Clint knew he wouldn’t survive this time. No one ever wanted Clint...
… except for those three winters down in Florida in winter quarters. His first three years with the circus when Carson’s used to put down stakes next to Haly’s . A colorful trailer with a family of three that welcomed Clint in for dinner almost every night. Parents who were nice and loved their son. A boy around Clint’s age who always laughed at Clint’s bad jokes and didn’t care if he was deaf.
Clint nodded to Signora and the other doctor. G-R-A-Y-S-O-N.