Chapter Text
Red Room training facility, somewhere in Russia.
She learns to slip the handcuffs early, earlier than most of the other girls who enrolled with her, though they all work it out once they know the trick. Most nights, they are obedient, responsible; they take the docents at their word, because their safety and health has always been the docents’ priority. They are here to dance, not to play about. They are here to make their parents, and their great nation, proud.
Some nights, they wander.
The Bolshoi Theatre is vast, an ancient crypt set to swallow young girls alive, with a hundred wings and a thousand secret rooms. They have begun to learn its mazes. The parapet is cold beneath their stockinged feet, each tapestry and curtain a magnet for curious fingers. A blonde girl starts to whisper—
“Hsst.”
Romanova motions for silence. If the docents hear, they will all be caught, and punished—sent to bed without supper, or made to drill until their toes bleed. She will not stand for interruption, not tonight. She has a mission.
She has overheard things she oughtn’t, pieced together the shadows between the lines. Their star is due to return, the man who does not exist except in rumor, and she wants to see. To know if the rumor is true. That he was trained here, in the Bolshoi Theatre; that he is the finest pupil they have ever had.
The other girls follow her through the hall, huddled together for warmth. They do not heat the theatre when there is no audience. Their destination is a guess, but they are very clever, the Bolshoi girls. They guess well.
An unused wing, she thinks. Somewhere the girls do not go, where their precious star will not be interrupted. Somewhere the docents do not go, but the doctors might. Somewhere recently cleaned, mantles dusted and paintings straightened for his arrival.
She smells the blood before she sees it.
Droplets, only; on the carpet. Fresh. Not even dry—there will be scrubbing in the morning.
So he is only just arrived.
Even her greatest hopes could not reach this height. To see his room, perhaps. To know that he is real, that they have not dreamed the world around them. Not to meet him.
She follows the trail of blood, and the most timid of the girls behind her look away. Some turn back to scurry to safety in the room full of beds. They will not last, she thinks; they will not survive the training. Already, after only a year, she knows this much of reality: those who fail are finished. They will never be Bolshoi. They will never dance again.
Faint light slips through a cracked door. When she presses her back against the wall to listen, only a few girls are left—the brave few who will follow her to their evaluations, in time, and out into the world as Widows. But she cannot know that, not yet, when she is only seven and the future is a vast abyss.
Now she knows:
Dim illumination, as from a lamp with a cloth draped over it, damped out.
Soft breathing, labored. A man. Injured, or out of breath. Both.
And a quiet metallic whirr.
The man says something, in English. He sounds American. Like the videos they watch, to practice their speech. Her English is no good, not yet, and she does not understand.
“It is alright,” he says in Russian. “I know you’re there. Do not be afraid.”
The other girls are. But she is brave, or a fool, or both. She has come all this way.
She pushes the door open, gently, and steps into the light.
She is here to see.
The outskirts of Waverly, Iowa, U.S.A.
Okay...This looks bad.
He’s pretty sure this isn't part of the plan, but his brother’s never been a very talented planner, and they’ve been hanging on by the skin of their teeth for so long now he’s not sure he remembers what “good” looks like. So when Clint tumbles back on the dusty floor with his teeth rattling in his skull, he figures lying there for a couple of seconds won't make things too much worse.
Getting out of the home was easy, with nothing to carry but Barney's homemade picks and his slingshot and the clothes on their backs. Getting to the old fairground on the edge of town was harder, but Barney'd said it wasn't that far, and he trusted Barney to know. He always trusts Barney to know.
Barney didn't know what to expect once they got to the actual circus, but it's not like he'd ever tell Clint something like that. He figured it out, because he's the brains of this operation, ain’t he?
He figured wrong.
In the novels, you always put on your most pitiful face and throw yourself on the mercy of the ringmaster. Nobody ever says how, though. Maybe you beg. Maybe you tell 'em about how awful you've been treated, how you just want a chance. And now Clint's on the floor with what Barney thinks might be a concussion, proving that what you don't do is sneak into the tents before you know where the boss lives and where the guys with the swords and the knives and the bows and the impossibly short tempers get drunk after the second show of the night.
Clint groans and tries to roll over, but the Swordsman rests a boot on his chest. Trick Shot's already got Barney's arms twisted up behind his back, threatening to lift him into the air. The Swordsman leans down to look Clint in the eye—the swollen-shut eye, that's what he gets for trying to run and hitting a damn tent pole—and Clint wants nothing more than to grab his stupid little mustache and pull, to see if it's real.
But he doesn’t, because the Swordsman smiles, and both Barton boys have seen that kind of smile before. It’s the smile of a man who really doesn’t give a shit whether they live or die.
Barney is too young to die.
Clint's working eye flicks to the side, searching for Barney, and Barney gives him a wink before slamming his head back into Trick Shot's nose with a sickening crunch. The man yelps and loosens his grip, just enough for Barney to pull free and go barreling forward into the Swordsman. He's already off-balance with his foot on Clint's chest—it takes nothing at all for a fast-moving teenager to send him tumbling.
Barney steps back and offers Clint a hand to pull him upright, fast, before the men can get their bearings.
The Swordsman's already starting to get up, staggering, made slow by circus tent moonshine. Trick Shot's nose is spurting blood through his hands.
"Okay?" Barney asks softly, putting his back to Clint's.
Who would take in two teenage boys with no skills but seeding chaos everywhere they went? What other choice do they have but to fight their way through? Barney’s gonna age out of the system, soon, and when he does, Clint’ll be on his own.
That's never been an option.
The Swordsman got lucky the first round, but he won't get lucky again. Not if the Barton boys have anything to say about it.
"Okay," Clint says with a lopsided grin, and he lifts his fists—thumb tucked under, the hard bones of his first two knuckles taking point, like Barney taught him.
This looks good.
Hell’s Kitchen, New York, U.S.A.
He is nine when it happens.
“I can’t see! I can’t see!”