Chapter Text
Once, before Clint was Hawkeye, the World’s Greatest Marksman, he was Hawkeye, the World’s Pretty Good Marksman, but He’s Still Just a Kid. Clint is fourteen, his limbs long and loose, his hair too long, his face not too scarred - not yet.
Clint is settling a bet he made with the elephant trainer last week(her name is Josie, and she is a sweetheart), which is why he’s in the elephant cage shoveling dung when the gate clanks open. Rosie, the elephant, waves her trunk, but is otherwise disinterested. “Found you a friend, kid.” Duquesne laughs, shoving another boy in his direction. The boy is shorter, but older than Clint, quite a bit sturdier and tightly muscled. It’s the look in his eyes that throws Clint for a loop - it is outwardly hard and sneering, but those eyes - well, those eyes are awfully kind.
“Let me guess, ran away to join the circus?” Clint laughs. The boy narrows his eyes at him, and does not respond. He just picks up another shovel. When the cage is clean - well, cleaner, it is an elephant’s cage, after all - the boy marches out, and Clint watches him go, cataloguing the new addition. Battered leather jacket, a 1920s bomber, probably a family hand-me-down. A square bulge in the lower left back pocket, that’s a pack of cigarettes. An old, worn Captain America shirt that smells like fabric softener, probably something called Mountain Mist or Alpine Spring, or something stupid like that. Short hair, buzzed close. Light skin - far too light for a circus boy, so he’s only been running for a while. Interesting, Clint thinks, but he doesn’t dwell on it too long. The circus always has kids passing through, some last, like Clint has. Some are good enough to last. Most just disappear, and fade away. Clint doesn’t make friends, because he doesn’t need more people to leave him. He’s had quite enough of that, thank you very much, and he doesn’t try to think about why he hasn’t seen his brother Barney in a year. He pushes the new boy out of his head, and goes to shoot arrows at hay bales.
Two days later, after they’ve moved from Portland to Seattle, he sees the new boy again, although he has to admit that he’s been subtly keeping tabs on him. He listens in to the circus gossip, and he knows that the boy’s name is Phil, which is an awfully boring name for a circus kid, but he isn’t going to call him that until the name is offered to him willingly. Phil is wandering outside, trying to entertain the crowds in line for tickets. He is juggling three balls, and there are three more on the ground. There is a tin can by his feet, and there are some coins in it, and a couple of dollar bills. He’s not bad. Nothing fancy, but his hands are steady and practiced. He lacks showmanship, though. He’s still dressed in jeans, a different t-shirt and the same battered jacket, and if not for the juggling, he’d look like just another audience member, if a bit on the shabby side. Clint picks up a ball from the ground.
“Hey.” Clint says, and when Phil turns around, Clint tosses him the ball. Phil quickly catches it and adds it to his rotation, not pausing his juggling routine. Hmm, not bad at all.
“You’re Hawkeye, the archer.” Phil says.
“What, you thought I was just the pooper scooper?” Clint responds, arrogantly, because if there was a moment to puff up his feathers, now seemed like a pretty good time. “How many can you do?”
“Six.” Phil says, so Clint tosses him another two balls in rapid succession, quietly impressed when Phil doesn’t hesitate at all.
“Can you juggle fruit?”
“Like oranges and shit? Yeah, of course.” Phil frowns.
“You should switch to those, they’ll look cooler and you’ll make more money.” Clint says, nodding at the direction of the pathetically stocked tin can. Phil’s brow furrows, as if he didn’t want the advice.
“Or knives. Knives are pretty cool.” Clint presses, because he knows how to charm an audience and Phil obviously doesn’t. He doesn’t know why he’s even trying to help, but finally, Phil grins, or maybe it’s more of a smirk, Clint isn’t entirely sure, because he’s busy trying to catch the small torrent of balls being launched at him.
“Ow, ow, ow.” Clint yelps, but he’s laughing, and so is Phil, who picks up the six balls back off the ground(Clint had caught none of them).
“You’re gonna be late for your act.” Phil says. “It must take at least twenty minutes to grease yourself into that costume.”
“Ugh, that stupid costume.” Clint groans, but he’s already jogging to the wardrobe trailer, wondering if he can throw his stupid, glittery, makeup on quickly enough to make his first cue. Still, he is pretty sure he hears Phil yell after him - “I like your costume!”
Later in the night, standing on the highest platform in the tent, with a flaming arrow in his hand, Clint glances down, and sees Phil, watching intently. He doesn’t think he’s trying to impress the other boy, but he is still quite satisfied when his shot is absolutely perfect, and Phil claps.
---
After Clint Barton is Hawkeye, the World’s Greatest Marksman, he goes off and works as Hawkeye, the World’s Angstiest Assassin, and then somehow, improbably, he finds himself as Hawkeye, SHIELD Level 5 Agent, Sniper Specialist. His first handler is killed in action, not Clint’s fault, the handler was too green to be out in the field, and Clint had tried to make up for the mistakes, but in the end, he’d gotten his own ass out of Prague, and didn’t go to the memorial service. His next two handlers resign.
His last handler was Agent Maria Hill, and she was a stone cold badass, and Clint respected her. She let him use a bow in the field, and the research and development arm of SHIELD made him something gorgeous and light and perfect, and it was the first time anyone had ever made anything just for him before. But he doesn’t name her, because she’s technically still SHIELD property. This new life, where he has a warm bed, and three hot meals a day, and unrestricted range access, and he’s not even counting the fact that he draws a ridiculously good salary too - well, he’s just not really sure it’ll last. Agent Hill isn’t friendly, but he doesn’t need friends. She smiled at him once, after an op in Bosnia goes terribly awry, and she'd had to put together a special team just to retrieve him, but Clint thinks that was because he looked improbably pathetic, lying broken and bleeding on a diseased concrete floor. But, she does retrieve him. She also puts him on desk duty for three months, which was inefficient for everyone, because filing is not one of Clint’s stronger points. But, she’d come for him, and Clint starts to trust SHIELD, trust that he’s at least an important enough asset that they wouldn't let him die so easily, which is a feeling he’d never quite anticipated before.
But then, Agent Hill gets hurt in the line of duty, and Clint isn’t there, isn’t there on the rooftop he’s supposed to be on, watching her back. The op was getting called off as too dangerous, the murderer-rapist-trafficker was going to get away, and Clint had a shot - he just needed to move to the next building over, and not keep his sights on Agent Hill for just ninety seconds. Clint is right, he does have the shot, and the murderer-rapist-trafficker goes down hard, and they free two cargo containers full of weeping women and children. But it takes less than ninety seconds for a different sniper to get on a different roof, and that sniper is not a very good one, so Maria Hill only gets a punctured lung, not a head shot.
She is pale and thin in the hospital bed. Clint only visits once, while she is kept unconscious for the doctors to repair the damage. When she wakes up, Clint visits again, but she doesn’t speak to him, an oxygen mask still covering half her face. The betrayal and disappointment in her eyes though, he can’t miss that. It’s ever harder to miss when he receives a copy of her report - delivered electronically, and not by hand, as usual.
“Specialist Barton has trouble following orders.” it says.
---
It’s been a bad night, one of those nights when Clint doesn’t think he’ll ever be Hawkeye, the World’s Greatest Marksman. Tonight, he’s just Clint Barton, the World’s Greatest Fuckup. It was a complicated trick, to be sure, but he’d done it before, him and Katie. Sweet Katie, perfect Katie, small, brave Katie on the spinning board, getting knives thrown at her and arrows launched at her every single night. Katie was the bravest person he knew.
Clint didn’t even want to do the act. It was Buck’s idea, so Clint had practiced it, and it was fine. But it was too dangerous, it was always too dangerous, and finally Clint had said no - they wouldn’t do the act, not in front of a live audience, not again. So, Buck had beaten him, stomped on his wrist in the dirt behind the lions’ cages, left his arm bruised and bloody and shaking, and threatened him. “Do the act, or you’re out,” Buck had said, and the circus wasn’t family, not any more, not ever, but it was sort of a home, and besides, there was nowhere else to go. He knew his aim would be off. Knew it at the bottom of his heart, knew it in Katie’s wide, terrified, eyes, knew it in Buck’s malicious grin, he knew it.
Josie, the elephant trainer, comes by, and she smells like elephant poop, but Clint doesn’t care, because she’s nice and kind and he wouldn’t trade her presence next to him for a woman that smelled like flowers and cakes. She’s the only person that can find him on days like this, sitting on top of the tiny caravan he’s finally earned. He’ll keep it as long as the audiences pay to see him, as long as he gets a standing ovation every night.
“She’ll be okay,” Josie says, rubbing her large, rough hands against his back. “She has a family. She called home once she was out of surgery. Her dad’s an engineer, you know? Health insurance and all that - she even still had her insurance card, once we retrieved her things. She’ll get physical therapy, and she’ll probably walk again.”
Clint nods. Katie wanted to be a dancer. She’d walk again, sure, but would she ever be able to pirouette again, holding her weight on one pointed toe? The moment between the pull of his bowstring, and the arrow flying, wildly inaccurate, but not inaccurate enough to miss completely - it was a moment too long, and a moment too short.
“I’m actually surprised she stuck with us that long.” Josie says, and Clint knows what she means. There are kids that run away to the circus, kids from good families, kids from the depths of suburbia, looking for a new, exciting life. The circus is just a grittier, dirtier, summer camp to them, a brief foray into the seedy underbelly of travelling entertainment. They always go home, eventually.
And there are kids like Clint. Who have to learn to hit the bullseye every time, and split arrows on cue, who learn to balance on a tightrope blindfolded, who learn not to flinch when the knives hit the plywood only millimeters from their soft flesh. If they learn, they’ll thrive, and they’ll eat, and they’ll sleep, sometimes even with a sturdy roof over their heads. If they don’t, then they truly have nowhere left.
“Chin up, kid.” Josie says. “We move on at dawn, you should get some sleep.”
After Josie leaves, Clint leans back on the caravan’s roof and looks up at the night sky. It is dark, and there are no stars.
“I was looking for you.” A voice says from the ground. Clint looks over the edge. It’s Phil again, the juggling boy, with a burlap sack tossed over his shoulder. His leather jacket looks too large for him, and his hair is growing out already, no longer the short military buzz he was sporting a just a week ago. Clint isn’t sure why, but he gives Phil a hand up, giggling a bit as the other boy scrambles upwards, none too gracefully.
Phil rummages in the sack and pulls out two ice cold cans of beer. He hands one to Clint.
“You look like you need this.” Phil says.
“I’m gonna need much more that that, kiddo.” Clint responds, tracing his fingers in the condensation.
“I’m eighteen. I’m much older than you, kiddo. Drink that first, and then I have those tiny airplane bottles of whiskey.” Phil says, setting the bag aside.
“Have you even been on an airplane?” Clint asks, opening the beer.
“Yeah.” Phil answers, distractedly, gulping his beer as if they might get caught. He burps, and laughs.
Clint has never been on an airplane. Clint has never even seen an airport. Clint definitely doesn’t have a passport. Next to him, Phil pulls out a cigarette, lights it and takes a long drag. “Was she your girlfriend?” Phil asks, handing the cigarette over. Clint has never smoked a cigarette before, but he doesn’t want to look uncool, so he takes it, inhales, and promptly coughs his lungs out.
“I’ll take that as a no.” Phil says. It’s true, Katie was not Clint’s girlfriend, although he’d certainly lost his virginity to her, fumbling under the circus bleachers many afternoons ago. It was sweetly awkward, and awkwardly sweet, and Clint did not think he acquitted himself well that night, but Katie never felt sorry for him, and thankfully, never brought it up again.
“I took your advice, you know?” Phil says, not laughing at Clint, which Clint considers a small mercy.
“About juggling fruit?” Clint blurts, the cold night’s air slowly refilling his lungs.
“I tried apples. I doubled my nightly take, but then Rosie the Elephant wandered by and sucked in three of them, trunk to mouth, all three at once. That got a great laugh though...a real crowd pleaser.” Phil says. “And I’ve been watching you. The way you walk, the way you look at people and make them love you? I’m learning.”
“Thanks, I guess.” Clint says. It’s a compliment, he thinks. “Where’d you learn to juggle?”
“I taught myself. I thought I’d run away and join the circus, y’know? Turns out, all I’m good for is ticket line entertaining. I can’t do what you do.”
“Hey, we need ticket line entertainers. Besides, you usually smell better than Dirt the Clown, and I’m sure our paying audience appreciates that.” Clint says. Phil smells like old leather and soap. Clint likes that smell, and not just because the usual scents of the circus are burning kerosene and elephant shit.
They drink more, beer and tiny airplane bottles of whiskey, gazing up at the starless sky. When Phil edges closer, his fingers brushing lightly over Clint’s, Clint realizes that he really wants to know if Phil also tastes like old leather and soap too. He doesn’t - he tastes like cigarettes and whiskey and popcorn, but Clint is no less enthralled by that discovery.