Work Text:
People told him he was stupid. He was slow, an idiot.
They called him retarded.
And Clint never really understood what that meant until Barney explained it one day. By then Clint was 13 and still did not know how to spell his own name.
At 19 he knew most of the alphabet. And SHIELD let that slide because he was good at his trade and did what was asked of him like a good soldier should.
But they still called him stupid. They still called him slow, an idiot. Retarded.
At 20, Coulson showed him a game to help him learn the alphabet: all his arrows were given a letter, and all Clint had to do was put them back in the quiver in the right order.
Clint had it down in less than a week.
They worked at it for only an hour or two a day, as long as Clint’s attention span would last. Within a month, Clint could write simple words. In six months he progressed to larger words. By a year he could write simple sentences.
At 21, Clint learned to write his own name. Clinton Francis Barton.
So Clint wrote Coulson a little note: “Thank you for telling me I could do it.-Clint”
And ten years later it was also in Coulson’s locker, in the same box as his trading cards.