Time to go

On fire

One year later-

When Clint stepped off the airplane onto home soil he felt for the first time in the last year a feeling of strange pain.

Around him the other performers laughed and jostled back and forth, all of them were overjoyed to be back in New York. Even if it was just for a week before they headed south to Brazil.

Yet everywhere he looked all he could see were people he knew he would never see again. His mother grabbing luggage off the carrousel. His father arguing with a desk clerk. Barney and Coulson sitting in a row of chairs. Kate as a stewardess. Bruce as a pilot. Tony talking with Zachary. Natasha constantly walking in his peripheral.

Suddenly he felt a small person bump into him and he almost swung at them but he stopped his hand in mid air. It was just Aries.

"Jesus Clint! Don't try and take my head off ! Come on! We're all going out to eat before the show tonight!" She laughed and tugged at his arm then looked at his face, all of her cheerfulness evaporated like water. "What's wrong Clint? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Not just ghosts." He muttered under his breath then looked down at Aries, she looked genuinely worried for her kinda, sorta friend. "I'm just not feeling all that great. I think it was the airplane, I was never that good with flying. I think I'll just pitch my tent early and sleep it off."

It wasn't a full lie, he was feeling nauseated but it wasn't from the flight. It was from the familiar faces that were plaguing him like locus the second he stepped off the tarmac.

The second the rest of the performers were out of sight he found himself a taxi and went to the fair grounds to sleep away the monsters.

__________________________

"Get up of your buts, we're going out!" Tony came bursting out of the elevator and into the common room where Natasha, Bruce and Steve were sitting reading up until the last five seconds.

Steve closed his book wearily and looked up at the over excited billionaire, "What are you shouting about now? Some of us are trying to enjoy a nice calm day without having to save the world."

" We're going to the circus! They're going to be in the city for the week and when I was going to meet some businessmen at the airport I met their owner and got us four tickets!" Tony was basically flying off the walls at this point.

Bruce shrugged and stood up, "Sounds like fun, I've never been to the circus before."

"Fine lets go tonight," Natasha moaned and stretched out on the couch. "If going to the circus id the only thing that will shut you up Tony, let's go."

Tony clapped his hands together "That's the spirit guys! Go get yourselves ready the show starts in a hour!"

__________________________

Clint crouched on his perch and picked at his costume lightly. Remi and Katrina (one of the many choreographers that help design the show) practically had to have Aries pin him down to make him stay long enough to show him the new costume and the show plans.

Both Remi and Katrina were overly excited which kinda made Clint scared, but when he saw the costume he instantly thought it was going to do something that would make him look like a flying monkey.

The costume, or if you could call it that, was black with a little purple chevron on the chest and very simple. Normal except that it looked like it was made out of much heavier material than normal stuff and it came with gloves and sock like things made out of the same thickly woven material. It reminded him like the costumes he used to wear when he was a younger acrobat, simple, one colour unitards that looked exactly like this, other than the colour and thickness . That was what scared him, Remi loved his bold, bright and sometimes dangerous costumes which this one didn't look anything like those feathery messes.