Time to go

Homeward bound

When Clint finally succumbed to sleep, the dreams that met him were more night-terrors than peaceful dreams.

He was back in his bed in the boys room of his last foster home. The room was cold like it always was, even though it was packed full with twenty young boys and filled with the nightmare induced whimpers of the eighteen that were sleeping.

Two of the boys,one at the age of seven and one at the age of ten were wide awake. Clint and Bernard Barton.

Clint woke up at the feeling of a slight cold breeze along his face, if he were any kid he would have pulled the blanket over his head and rolled over, but Clint wasn't any other kid. He bolted straight up in bed to see his brother easing open the window.

"Barney? What are you doing?" He said groggily, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

"Shhh, not so loud." Barney hushed " I'm not doing anything, go back to sleep."

Clint eyed the pack slung over Barney's scrawny shoulders, he could see a tin of food sticking out.

"Barney are you running away?"

"Clint be quiet, you and I both know what will happen if Mrs. Edson catches us awake!" Barney whispered.

Clint shuddered slightly at the mention of his 'foster mom', Mrs. Edson was a cranky old lady who didn't mind taking a chunk out of your hide if you stepped out of line. But he didn't want to see Barney go.

"Barney... don't go." Clint was terrified to be completely alone, the other boys mocked him and called him a killer.

"Clint go back to bed, I'm not leaving!... I'm just going out.. for awhile,"

Clint listened to his brother sliding back under the covers, but he knew his brother was leaving and he wasn't coming back.

"Barney..please, you can't leave me alone..you're my brother, you're supposed to look after me.." Clint could feel tears running down his cheeks as he begged.

"In this world it's every man for himself, you either eat or get eaten and I don't want to be somebody's meal. Goodbye Clint." Barney face was carved in stone. Then he slipped out the window.

Crawling out of bed Clint watched his brother run away from the shabby house and away from him.

"No! No not like momma and papa, I can't lose Barney too!" Clint cried a bit more then went stone faced. He wasn't going to lose anyone ever again, he stuffed his meager things into his pack and slid out the window after Barney.

He ran down the road after Barney and once he got close enough to reach him, the dream changed.

He was back on the ground in the swordsman's tent, Barney beating him to a bloody pulp.

As Clint faded in and out of consciousness he felt Barney roughly pick him up and drop him in the ditch. Then it happened, the thing that kept Clint from ever wanting to sleep again.

Barney leaned down over his ear and whispered:

"You are a failure Clint. You know that you're the reason mom and dad are dead. You should have died in that car instead of mom. You should never had followed me to the circus that night. You don't belong with me, you don't belong with anybody. Goodbye Clint."

Clint bolted up in his cot, heaving. Where am I? He almost screamed. Then he calmed when his hand hit his bow that he had stashed under his bed. He was back in the circus, he wasn't Loki's slave anymore, he wasn't an avenger anymore, he wasn't a shield agent anymore, he is a circus performer now. Standing up and stretching his arms he walk out of the tent.

The sun was just rising over horizon but the makeshift cook fire was already blazing and had a skinny figure sitting cross legged in front of it.

Clint warily walked over to the skinny person, it was a girl, he decided, most likely five years younger than him.

"Good morning?" He moved closer to the fire.

The girl spun around instantly, a look of surprise covering her freckled face and her brown eyes wide and startled. Once she saw Clint she seemed to calm down slightly.

"Good morning?" She inquired.

"Yes I think it is." Clint sat down a couple feet away from her, " I didn't mean to startle you, I'm Clint the new acrobat." He put his hand out, and she brushed it away.

"So you are the boy that Sasha and Rose were gushing about." Her eyes scanned him like she was trying to figure out how big of a hole she would need to dig to hide his body. "I thought you'd be bigger ."

Clint half laughed " You know that can really bruise a man's ego."

The girl snickered, clearly warming up to Clint, "Well that's what I'm here for, to keep you boys in line. My name is Aries, I'm a show manager."

"A show manager? We didn't have those when I was working, what do they do?"

Aries laughed " I bet they didn't have a lot of things when you were working, like running water and electricity!"

Clint just sighed "Are you going to answer or not?"

"Fine, just trying to make a joke." She grumbled " A show manager oversees all the other parts of the show, like the performers, prop-men, light workers. They also set up the tour dates and were the circus travels." Aries explained.

"Great, so you could tell me were we are going in the US?"

"Yeah, the circus no longer works just in America though so we could be overseas for a couple months off and on." Aries pulled a phone from her pocket and did a bit of typing. " Looks like the next place we'll be is Waverley Iowa."

That was when Clint felt his world crash apart.