Time to go

Circus games

Natasha picked at the edge of the blanket and murmured "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"After everything you've told us about Clint, I doubt anything can surprise us anymore." Steve said softly.

Natasha made a very un-ladylike snort, " Oh really?" She leaned back onto Clint's pillow and began to start speaking.

"When social services tried to find a relative for Clint and Barney to live with,every relative basically chased them out of the house. They said they were monsters from hell that killed their parents. You can guess how horrifying it is to be literally chased out of a house by a seventy year-old lady screaming and waving a broom in the air. So Clint ended up going into the system. He never really said anything about the families except some were good and most were bad."

Bruce cringed at the word bad. If Clint said it was bad, it probably felt a hundred times worse.

"No family seemed to want him or his brother. After trying to find them a family for about three months, they were put into a foster home. Clint never told me about it, but he said he was there for two years."

"Two years? What happened? Did he get adopted?" Bruce leaned forward, remembering his years in the foster homes. It wasn't an overly happy time for him, he went in when he was twelve, much older than Clint, and was stilled bullied incessantly.

Natasha sighed " Clint ran away with Barney to Carson's carnival of traveling wonders. It was a big circus act, one that didn't mind hiring baby faced kids. It wasn't a great place."

It was at that moment that Tony burst out laughing.

"The circus,seriously? How bad could the circus be?"

"You don't understand. Once you join the circus, you are there till you can't preform or you die. You are on your own, the circus isn't your family. They don't take care if you, you learn to make it on your own. He said that you could never get close to anyone because you never knew if they would be on the train the next night. Barney and Clint drifted apart, caring for someone else showed weakness and if you were weak, you were as good as dead. Clint distanced himself from everyone, he preferred silence, getting his job done and staying in the shadows. He still acts like he's still in the circus to this day."

"What could a seven year-old do in the circus?" Steve cocked his head like a bird.

" Kids are cheap labour, they could do a lot. Clint started by caring for the animals, but was forced to be an acrobat because he was so small. When Clint was about thirteen he was still working as a acrobat and one of the other circus performers, they called the swordsman, took an interest in him. He said Clint had the makings of a great swordsman and marksman. So he became the Swordsman's apprentice, and the Swordsman was right. Clint was a natural born marksman and fighter, while still working as an acrobat he trained with the swordsman. By the time he was fourteen the swordsman dubbed Hawkeye: the world's greatest marksman. Soon he was performing every night and crowds flocked to see him. He never missed his marks but the only reason why he never missed was that he was scared. He knew that if he was even off by a centimeter he was a dead man. The swordsman may have saved Clint from being a flying monkey his entire life but that didn't mean he cared about Clint in the slightest. Clint managed to keep his spot as marksman until he was eighteen. That night Clint had to work as both a marksman and an acrobat, he was basically dead on his feet by the end of the show and he missed the bullseye by a millimeter. Not enough for the crowd to notice or care about, but Clint noticed and so did the Swordsman. Clint had never seen what happened to performers when they screwed up, but he had heard whispers from the older performers of what happens. The acrobat Clint replaced when he was seven hand had slipped on a bar and was called to the Swordsman's tent and no one saw her again. So the second Clint saw his arrow waver slightly off course he knew he was done. He was called to the swordsman's and was tackled down by a man the second he moved the flap to enter. They put a bag over his head and basically beat him unconscious. When he woke up in the morning the circus was gone and there was a note stuffed in pocket. Here lies Hawkeye, the world's greatest marksman who missed his target. " Natasha had a little bitter laugh " Clint says he never missed again. He had no where to go so he joined the army and became a sniper. He was there till Shield found and recruited him. Thats all I know." Natasha finished.

For a second there was silence in the crawl space and then Tony's cell phone rang.