“Report!” Cap called over the comms as soon as the crash and rumble had died down in the area.
“Clear on my end,” Black Widow replied, slightly out of breath.
“They have scattered,” Thor boomed, the sound echoing faintly as he was not that far from where Cap stood, letting SHIELD agents swarm around him to capture the last of the terrorist cell that survived.
“I got eyes on the building that exploded,” Iron Man said urgently. “No sign of Hawkeye.” All eyes swiveled to the debris to the east of the battleground. As agents were already heading in that direction, the Avengers all turned and ran in that direction as well.
“Hawkeye?” Cap called as he ran. “Report! Hawkeye!” The rest of the team came into view at the base of what was left of the ten-story tenement building that Hawkeye had been perched on. Tony stayed up high and began running scans with Jarvis for any life signs. Hulk came loping along and squatted beside them, joining in the efforts to pull away the rubble to see what they could find.
“There are heat signals,” Tony reported, scanning over them quickly. Most of them were cooling rapidly, which pretty much told him those were now dead bodies. There were a couple of heat signatures that remained pretty steady but they both seemed pretty small for their beefy archer. “One deeper to the northern corner and one not far from Hulk. Neither big enough to be Legolas.”
Hulk huffed and leaned down to peer into the rubble. When Iron Man hovered over the two areas where the heat signals were to indicate the exact location, Steve and Natasha ran to one, while Thor joined Hulk. Several agents joined them, taking their cues from the superheroes.
Steve and Natasha, both filthy, sweaty, and sporting minor scrapes that were already closing, were pulling rubble out as quickly as they could. Hulk, crouched low, spotted a shadow among the rubble and bent nearly to the ground, leaning on one fist to keep from tipping over. He turned his head and peered into the shadows, seeing what appeared to be part of the fire escape. He leaned in and sniffed the shadow, ignoring Thor pulling crumbled stone and metal nearby. The dust agitated Hulk’s sinuses and he sneezed, a large part of the exhale going over the rubble and into the shadow he had been looking at. When something moved behind the twisted steel of the fire escape rail, he froze.
“Hulk find,” he growled lowly, catching Thor’s attention. The blond immediately joined him as they carefully began pulling large pieces off the pile that hid the metal-filled shadow. It took them a few moments before Thor lifted the final piece carefully away from the makeshift cage the twisted railing had caused. Tucked in one corner of the cage was a filthy, bruised little blond boy, so small and wearing nearly nothing. The plain black tshirt that was barely still covering him had to have been a castoff from an adult as it swallowed the little boy.
Thor called out to the others.
“We have a child alive here!” Thor called out, alerting the medics who hovered at the end of the destruction. Hulk hesitated when the little boy blinked blue-gray eyes up at him and tried to cringe even further back into the corner. Thor patted the Hulk on one arm and moved in between them to pry open a space in the metal frame so the boy could slide through. Apparently, the god was worried simply lifting the metal off would cause a shift of the rubble that would injure the boy further once the protection was removed.
The boy, eyes shifting over the area and taking in all the people involved, slid quickly through the gap and took off running over the rubble. The agents all made to grab him, but he dodged them easily and clambered over the rubble without care for his bare feet and hands.
He had nearly made it to the edge of the rubble and would have slipped away past the buildings, but Hulk, who had lumbered after him in large steps, reached down to scoop him up gently and held him to his chest.
“No run, safe now.” The boy squirmed and kicked but made no sound. He bit the large green hand but it didn’t even register on the Hulk. He was concentrating on keeping himself from harming the boy. He wasn’t so worried about the boy harming him.
“Man of Iron,” Thor called out to the hovering suit. “Are there more signals that you have found?”
“Nothing,” Tony replied despondently. “Widow and Cap are close to the other one and the rest are cooling down too fast to still be alive.”
“Keep digging,” Cap yelled over the rubble, forgetting they had their comms in. “He’s got to be here somewhere. He might just be buried under something that’s masking his signal.” Thor nodded, turning his attention away from the silent struggle coming from the little boy who hadn’t yet given up. He and the other agents continued digging away at the pile of debris.
Tony kept watch over all of them, calling on Jarvis to order support for the victims of the damage and supplies and aid for the people digging desperately through the rubble. He’d seen the one terrified child Thor and Hulk had pulled out and watched as Steve and Nat finally located and gently extricated an unconscious, dark-skinned teenager. The rest of the heat signals continued to fade, but he had already mapped them out and was directing the rescue effort.
Something from the explosion had been blocking the signal embedded into the bow and quiver he’d built for their archer, but suddenly the signal burst onto his panel and he found it was uncomfortably near where Thor and the agents were still digging through the rubble. It was the work of a little longer before the bow and quiver, both severely damaged, nearly crushed were pulled from the detritus. Still no Hawkeye.
From the edge of the disaster area, Hulk had felt the boy relax in his arms but he was still breathing fast, so he gently handed him over to the waiting medics, staying close so he could grab the boy should he try to take off again. In the aftermath of his terror, the boy seemed to be losing steam quickly and he didn’t fight the medics as they checked him over, but he also did not open his mouth to answer any of their questions. He pretended that they weren’t even there, staring only at the Hulk.
For his part, Hulk acknowledged the stare and finally huffed, retreating so Bruce could return. The boy’s eyes never left him as he shrank and gratefully accepted a silvery emergency blanket and electrolyte drink from one of the medics. Now that he was back to being Bruce, the scientist approached the boy and sat on the bumper of the ambulance where the boy and the medic were.
“So, that was pretty scary, huh?” Bruce asked, smacking his lips after a sip. He watched the boy’s eyes drop to his mouth. Bruce offered the drink to the boy, who took it hesitantly. “It’s just juice. I promise.” The boy’s eyes dropped to the drink and took a tentative sip. The wide eyes closed for a second as he swallowed, then he drank a little more before handing the drink back to Bruce, who took it and finished it off.
“How is he?” he asked the medic, who was applying a butterfly bandage to the boy’s forehead. The man smiled as he gently applied pressure to make it stick.
“In shock, mostly.” The medic pulled a thicker, wool blanket around the boy’s shoulders, who acted as though it wasn’t there. Those bright blue eyes were still on Bruce’s face, watching him. “Looks like a sprained ankle, some bruises all up and down his back, a nice bump on the back of his head, as well as the front, the worst one right here.” He indicated the bandage. “And some scratches and scrapes but nothing a good bath and some sleep won’t fix.” When Bruce nodded in response, the medic frowned. “But he’s awfully skinny and he still won’t respond to me.”
“I see that.” Bruce sat and looked out at the area of devastation, watching Steve carrying the teenaged boy towards the other ambulance.
“Someone said that building was empty and set for demolition.” The medic gently brushed the boy’s crooked bangs away from his eyes. “Think this one was homeless? Maybe his family was inside?” Bruce grimaced, with a shrug.
“Hey,” he told the medic, “I got him. Go help the others.” And with a nod, the medic patted the boy on the shoulder, grabbed a bag and hurried towards the other medics who were bringing in other injured people, civilians, and terrorists alike.
After a moment of watching them work in silence, Bruce hauled himself up to sit on the bench next to where the boy sat, still staring at him.
“I’m Bruce,” he said softly, holding out a hand. There was no response at first, but a look of confusion. He tried again and patted his chest to indicate himself. Perhaps the boy didn’t speak English. “I am Bruce.”
The boy’s eyes went from watching his mouth to the hand on his chest. When Bruce held out his hand to indicate he should introduce himself, the boy’s eyes darted around. After a moment of patience, a small, pale, dirty hand came out from under the wool blanket and he shook hands.
“I’m Clint,” the boy nearly whispered, eyes blinking slowly. Bruce’s eyes went wide and the reply he had been planning froze in his throat. He tentatively shook the very small boy’s hand, but didn’t release it, just dropping them down to rest quietly between them. The boy’s, Clint’s, hand slid out of his as he slumped down, showing his exhaustion.
*****
“I’ve got Clint,” Bruce whispered, knowing no one could hear him. Tony hadn’t yet found a way to make a com that would stay in Hulk’s ear after he transformed. Hulk’s hearing was pretty good, so he usually didn’t need one unless they got separated across a large distance. However, on the other side of things, Bruce couldn’t communicate to the group once Hulk had gone back to sleep. He knew, however, that Steve’s hearing was super powered, so he slipped one arm out and wrapped his arm and the emergency blanket around the boy and tried a little louder. “Steve,” he prefaced it, hoping the super hearing would pick it up. “I’ve got Clint.”
He didn’t want to take his eyes off the boy, but he risked a glance over at the two groups still ripping away rubble. Everyone else was still busy pulling metal and stone out of the way, but Steve was upright, frozen, like a meerkat on the plains. He caught Steve’s eye and nodded, gesturing with his head at the little boy. He saw Steve’s eyes go wider and his jaw drop open, but he knew the super soldier had understood. Turning his head back to the little boy, he looked closer.
Now that he knew it was Clint, it was much more obvious. The usual light brown hair was a dirty blond now but still not far from his adult color. The sharp blue eyes that tended to gray or green depending on his mood. The slant of his nose, the length of his chin. The shape of his face was leaner, but then again, Clint as an adult was pretty lean, but muscular. This kid was all kinds of malnourished. There were the dark circles under the kid’s eyes that were ever present even in adult Clint. He was pretty sure if the kid hadn’t spoken up, they’d have lost him in the foster system easily.
The first one by their side, amazingly, was Natasha. She seemed confused when she only spotted the blond boy leaning into Bruce’s side. Her arrival had startled him into sitting up and he would have disappeared behind Bruce if the man hadn’t wrapped his arm around the thin shoulders with a gentle squeeze of assurance.
Natasha blinked down into those blue eyes, then gave a startled expression that Bruce was sure she hadn’t meant to show. Tony landed, faceplate peeling back, with Thor and Steve close behind. They all crowded around the doorway of the ambulance, and it was only Bruce’s gentle hold on the little boy that kept him from sliding off the gurney and disappearing under it.
“Not funny, Brucie,” Tony muttered, then grunted when he felt Natasha’s elbow bang into the abdominal panel of the Iron Man suit. He glared at her but stopped when he realized she was still staring at the little boy and not really paying attention to him.
“Look at him,” Steve said, his voice lilting in awe. Tony took a closer look at the boy and while he couldn’t see the smartass archer that he knew and more than tolerated, he did see that the boy could be the smartass archer than he would later know and be friends with.
“Holy shit,” Tony gasped, eyes wide. He was no expert on children, but the kid Bruce clutched to his side was really small. Like, if he was eight, he’d eat his suit.
“How-,” Steve started, his head tilted in his typical puppy dog confusion. Thor was utterly baffled, but didn’t add any commentary.
“I don’t know-,”Bruce started quietly, but one of the lead agents jogged over to them and raised a hand.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she said quickly, “But is that Barton?” When she pointed at the kid, that was the last straw and Clint promptly ripped out of Bruce’s grip and scrambled to the back of the ambulance, huddling in the corner, the blanket covering him completely. All of them turned to glare at her, and she had the good graces to back up. “Uh, whoa. I just need to know to put the last of the pieces together.”
“Yes, this does appear to be our wayward archer,” Thor grumbled at her with a frown. “What do you know of this?” She sighed deeply.
“From the info we’ve gotten from witnesses to this mess so far, this building was abandoned but had recently become some secret lab.” She glanced over her shoulder with a grimace. “The other survivor, the teenager in the other ambulance,” she gestured, “had ID on him that says he’s a 52 year old man, by our records, he’s a disgraced scientist who was rumored to be working with a Hydra offshoot.”
“And you think this lab is…was…part of that?” Steve asked, information connecting in his head. She nodded.
“We’d need to get DNA tests, but I’m pretty certain that whatever made the building explode is what turned back time on both of them.” She hesitated and then grimaced again. “And all of the other workers in the building. Every…body we’ve recovered have been children.”
“Oof, a building full of dead children,” Tony grimaced, “Pepper is going to love the PR nightmare.” The agent sighed.
“All of them are dressed as scientists or in some of Hydra’s garb. All of them have IDs stating they are actually much older people.”
“Great,” Thor said with a smile. “Then we can easily find out what caused this and reverse it.” Everyone around him winced a little.
“Um, not that simple, most likely,” Bruce said with a deep frown. “Look at the super serum. As far as we know, a one-time event. Every attempt after that to replicate or reverse it has not gotten the same result.” The Norse god frowned. Bruce tried to elaborate. “The Red Room’s initiates have a version of the super serum.” He glanced at Natasha, whose face had returned to neutral. “Natasha is stronger and faster than a normal human. And will age slower, but she’s still nowhere near a match for Steve.”
“Shhh,” Tony muttered. “She’ll hear you.” This earned an upward twitch of the corners of Nat’s mouth.
“And look at Hulk,” Bruce continued. “I was trying to replicate it and you see how differently that turned out.” At Thor’s fallen face, Bruce sighed softly, glancing behind him at the mound of blanket and boy. “The point is, even if we knew exactly what caused them to all regress in age at the same time, it may not be reversible, or even repeatable.”
“This is about the time that Legolas would chime in,” Tony grumbled. He put on a rather disgruntled face and tried to imitate the archer, which to no one else sounded anything like Clint. “Aw, de-aging bomb, noooooo!” But they got the point.
“The point being,” the lead agent interjected, “Fury is already locking the area down and requesting everyone involved, including the Avengers, as well as the corpses and prisoners, be brought to the base and quarantined until it can be determined in full what happened, how to fix it, if it can be.”
“And what to do if it can’t,” Steve mumbled. He looked beyond Bruce to the bundle in the back corner of the ambulance and watched as the blanket edge parted so that one blue eye was peering out at them. The rest of them groaned quietly.
“Okay,” Bruce said with a huff and a half smile. “First thing will be getting Clint to cooperate. I don’t know if he’s just in shock or really regressed to age five or six, but so far, he acts like a real, scared kid, and not like the snarky assassin we work with.”
“I can help with that,” Natasha nodded. She glanced at Steve who nodded at her to proceed. She turned to look at the rest of them. “I’ll need you all to back off, but don’t go too far yet. Bruce, you seem to have connected already so stay here. I’ll see if I can find Hawkeye in there.” With a deep breath, she stepped up into the ambulance and moved to sit next to Bruce, leaving a gap so that Clint could see the outside, but close enough she could grab him if it came to it. She kept her peripheral on Steve, Thor, and Tony as Steve turned them away to go back to helping dig out corpses and secure the area.
Natasha turned her eyes onto Clint, who disappeared back into his blanket fortress for a minute or two before peeking out again. She did not smile at him, but kept her face open and neutral. First, she tried some of their own hand signals, but there was no response. Then she tried Russian, but no go.
“Clint, do you know who I am?” She finally resorted to English and direct questions. He lowered the blanket only low enough for her to catch the shake of his head. Her eyes watched what he was focusing on and caught that now that there was only her and Bruce, he was watching their lips. Information bloomed and she tried something different. With a hand gesture, his eyes dropped to her hands. She quietly moved her hands in standard American Sign Language.
Bruce, watching them avidly, didn’t catch the first question she asked in sign language, but when the boy had nodded, startled, Bruce had caught on to what she was doing.
“He knows sign language?” He asked. Natasha held up a finger in the universal sign for ‘one minute’ or ‘wait’ and spoke softly to the man sitting next to her.
“It’s not known outside a handful of people, one of whom was killed by Loki,” her voice came out hesitantly. “But Clint is deaf.”
Bruce’s eyes went nearly as wide as when he’d realized who the boy was, but he didn’t make a fool out of himself by repeating her statement as a question in incredulity. What he did do was analyze what had happened from the time the building had exploded until now and this new information made it more logical. Even if Clint was still adult Agent Barton inside there, if he’d lost his hearing aids, he’d just been through a trauma, had been rescued from a cage not of his own making, chased down by the Hulk and several agents, and then had everyone come at him at once from a perspective that would be disorienting. If he wasn’t of an adult mind, it would be even scarier.
“But he wears the team coms. Tony would know-,” Bruce frowned.
“He modified his himself so no would think he was even weaker than he was already perceived, as only a human.” Natasha quietly replied.
“No one outside of our team will learn about it from me,” he assured her after a moment of processing. “But I’m pretty sure it’ll come up in SHIELD medical.” He winced as she closed her eyes with a nod and turned back to the boy. He watched her hands after that, as she didn’t speak out loud again.
‘What do you remember?’ Natasha asked him. The boy pulled the blanket further down from his head and his own hands appeared to reply. Bruce had taken ASL while on the run, but kid Clint’s aptitude with it was stilted and lacking. He caught bits and pieces but none of it made sense. The one thing he did catch was ‘brother’ in questioning form. He wasn’t sure who Clint was talking about, but he caught the minute tension in Natasha’s shoulders, then watched as they fell a little as the hope left her eyes.
“He’s not the same, is he?” Bruce finally asked, after watching them go back and forth with short, stuttered answers. Natasha finished what she was signing, then turned to the man.
“This is not my Clint,” she said, her voice painfully emotionless. Then she shuddered. “After Loki, then Coulson, I never thought-.” But she didn’t finish her sentence as she swallowed and then rubbed her palms over her thighs. “He’s amenable to not trying to run away. For the time being.” She turned a wane smile to Bruce. From the back of the ambulance, the little boy pushed the blanket back and approached them slowly, cautiously.
Natasha signed to him and spoke her own name, Bruce understanding that before was her keeping his privacy. But now, this is how they would have to interact. Clint nodded, then pointed to himself.
“Clint.” Then he pointed to Natasha and Bruce in turn. “Natasha. Bruce.” Both of them nodded at him and he simply nodded.
It was another minute or so before it seemed he accepted his fate and returned to sit next to Bruce, peering at Natasha around the scientist. “Big, green?” He asked, gesturing at Bruce.
“Hulk,” Natasha spelled out as she said it. Surprisingly to Bruce, Clint simply nodded and repeated the name.
Nat called the rest of the team over and told them to come slowly, then signed to Clint that her friends were coming to introduce themselves, to not be afraid. Within a minute, the other three had come over, deliberately not hurrying. While Clint was watching them approach, Natasha took that moment to quietly speak using the comms to fill them in with what she had discovered. She did not reveal that he was deaf, but explained that he needed them to point to themselves and say their name as she pointed to them.
“Clint?” Steve said once he was sure Nat was pointing to him, “I’m Steve.” With his hand over his heart like that, Bruce wanted to chuckle because Captain America had never seemed so earnest in his life.
“Tony Stark,” Tony said while pointing to the arc reactor in his chest.
“And I am Thor of Asgard,” Thor thundered, making the rest of them glance sideways at him. Clint turned to Natasha with a confused look on his face.
“I don’t understand,” Clint said honestly, making all of them look to her for more. She smiled at him. When she lifted her hands and began signing, Steve and Tony gaped. Thor looked confused.
“It’s okay,” Natasha said out loud as she signed. “It’s hard to explain right now, but we’re a team that helps people.” Clint turned an incredulous look back to Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor. Then his face brightened as he turned back to Natasha.
“Like Justice League?”
Bruce chuckled and nodded.
“Something like that.” He watched Natasha translate into sign language.
“He’s deaf?!” Tony cried out. “Did it happen in the explosion?” He was starting forward to check the boy’s ears on his own before Natasha and Bruce both pulled Clint behind them and put a hand to stop him.
“I’ll explain later,” Natasha hissed at them. “Things are rough enough on him right now. I will not have him overwhelmed.” Her eyes flashed with unspoken promises of damage if they stepped out of line, which stopped Tony in his tracks. Steve reached over and laid a hand on Tony’s shoulder.
“Later, Tony. Let’s get him back to the base so they can do a full checkup on him.” Tony’s mouth closed but he continued to stare hard at the dirty little boy who peeked out from behind Bruce’s armpit. When they left the ambulance for where the quinjet had been haphazardly parked a little way away, Bruce was stumbling, still weak from his transformation, so Natasha easily lifted little Clint up to rest on her hip, his head up and alert, looking around.
Both Steve and Thor offered to carry him, but neither the boy nor Natasha would allow it. Tony had to take off his suit to fly the jet as Steve had yet to be trained on it and Natasha was indisposed. Their usual pilot was a nervous limpet attached to her side.
The flight was uneventful and amazingly silent as no one really spoke, all eyes watching Clint and in return, being watched by him.
Fury himself met them at the jet. His only response to seeing the tiny body attached to his agent had been a grunt before he slipped out of his own flowing coat, raising eyebrows all around, then placing it over Natasha’s shoulders and covering Clint to conceal the boy until they got him inside and secured into one of the secluded medical rooms which had long since been designated for the exclusive use of Strike Team Delta. Amazingly, with Coulson gone and the rest of the team now part of the Avengers, it hadn’t yet been reassigned.
They did get some side eyes and direct stares by other SHIELD employees, but the dark glare Fury had locked into place cleared a path directly in front of them, making the trip through the base relatively sedate.
Once in the room, fury had enacted protocol ID10T-BRC, which meant that only those in the room and those who signed NDA’s could be privy to the data. Steve snorted as he realized the first part of the protocol code, which had been around even way back in his day, but when Natasha rolled her eyes and explained that it was a code Coulson had specifically created for Strike Team Delta not long after Natasha had been brought into SHIELD. The BRC stood for ‘Barton, Romanov, Coulson’. Neither Natasha nor Fury elaborated.
“Lost my one good eye and now my smitin’ hand is back in Kindergarten.” He crossed his arms, leaning against the wall while the others ranged around the room, Natasha sitting on the hospital bed with Clint still clinging to her. The clear blue eyes stared intently at Fury, his face mostly buried in Nat’s hair. “Debrief before I let the doctors loose in here.” He raised an eyebrow at Steve.
“We got the call from Sitwell around 2pm. That Hydra was attacking a chemical storage facility near the Pym facility.” Fury nodded and gestured with one hand.
“That, I’m aware of. Please move ahead to what happened after you engaged.” Director Fury kept his eye on Steve, but the rest felt sure if any of them moved, Fury would know anyway. Even Clint barely moved more than to breathe and slowly bring one hand up to plant his thumb firmly in his mouth so he could chew on the tip.
“Honestly, I don’t think any of us really know, sir,” Steve said, shrugging. “Bar- Hawkeye was calling out locations and we were finally making headway, when he called out that he was going to check some suspicious activity in the building he was stationed on top of.”
“Jarvis told us it was abandoned months ago and is…was scheduled for demolition in two months,” Tony spoke up from where he perched on the extra wide windowsill and tapped on his tablet. He sighed remembering when he’d discovered that he and Clint shared a love for wide windowsills for sitting with their eyes on the outside world. He eyed Clint, then smirked at the Director before turning back to his tablet. Fury glared at him before turning back to Steve.
“We were almost done with battle when the building he had been on exploded.” Steve glanced around at them and they all nodded in agreement. “By the time the smoke and dust had cleared enough to see, the rest of the terrorists who were outside the building were down or fleeing and we couldn’t see Hawkeye.”
“There was nothing to indicate the building had been anything but an empty building? Nothing odd?” Fury asked. Steve shrugged again.
“Not that I was aware of. There were a lot of Hydra running around, but I don’t specifically remember any of them running out of the building, or into it for that matter. Until Bar – Hawkeye reported going to check on it, it didn’t stand out.”
“Am I wrong, but was that smoke a little too blue?” Tony asked carefully. His forehead furrowed as he looked around at the others. When no one denied it, he called up the video recorded from the suit and handed the tablet to Fury so he could see as the building exploded and after. Fury hummed, mostly to himself, and then handed it back.
“Turns out there was a generator in that building. AIM had built a biochemical lab on one of the floors.” At the startled looks from the others, Fury sighed. “Agent Murphy spotted a homeless man hiding in a nearby dumpster from the firefight and explosion. The man told him that he’d seen them bringing in all kinds of lab equipment and recognized the AIM logo on some of the crates.”
“So, AIM had a biochemical lab in a building just down the street from a chemical storage facility that Hydra was attacking?” Bruce asked with a frown. Fury rubbed over his face.
“That’s what it seems like, people. The cleanup team is getting samples and recovering any information, notes, and data they can, as well as all the bodies of the AIM employees. They all got de-aged at the same time as Hawkeye, but only one survived and he’s in a coma and might not make it through the night. The Hydra agents don’t appear to know much more than we do about the AIM lab. Clint here is the only one who can tell us anything more.” Fury gestured at Clint, who was still leaning into Natasha.
“And what does he remember?” Steve asked Natasha gently. She shook her head, then gently squeezed Clint, as though to assure herself he was alive and safe.
“He asked about his brother,” she relayed and shared a dark look with Fury, who sighed. They both knew if he was asking about Barney, he was missing a lot of memories. “Beyond that, nothing before opening his eyes and finding himself trapped in a metal cage under a lot of rocks,” she said.
“That’s what saved him,” Bruce elaborated. “It looked like he was near the fire escape when it exploded so when the building came down, a fire escape landing somehow miracuously twisted upside down and he twisted with it. The rubble trapped him inside it like a cage, but while it didn’t stop all the debris, at least it protected him from being crushed.”
“And he lost his gear and his hearing aids?” Fury asked Natasha.
“We found Hawkeye’s bow and quiver damaged in the rubble,” Thor told them. Stark stood up and came closer.
“And what’s this about hearing aids? He’s deaf? And you knew but didn’t feel the need to share that?” Tony ranted, ignoring the fact that Clint was shrinking closer and closer to Natasha as his voice went up.
She growled, then raised her voice at him in Russian. They all knew just enough of her tone and a smattering of Russian to understand that whatever she said back to Tony was not complimentary. Fury was the one who moved between the assassin and the billionaire.
“Hold on, Stark. Hawkeye’s hearing aids were specially designed for him, by Stark Industries, as a matter of fact. Under an alias, so no one would catch on.” At Tony’s confused look, Bruce spoke up.
“Natasha already explained to me that he modified the team coms to work as well as his aids so we wouldn’t find out either.” Tony’s jaw dropped in surprise.
“Just the fact that none of you noticed them and didn’t find out until now tells you how well they worked and how good an agent he is…was.” Fury glanced over his shoulder at the little boy, Natasha frowning as she hugged him with both arms.
“Was he born deaf?” Steve asked in the stifling silence that followed.
“No,” Fury sighed. He shared a look with Natasha, who paused before nodding.
“According to Coulson’s complete background on Agent Barton, he lost most of his hearing around age four due to his abusive ass of a sperm donor.” Fury’s back was to Clint so he didn’t have to stick to talking about Clint with his codename only. He and Natasha both knew it would be too confusing to call him Agent Barton right now. The shocked, horrified faces of the Avengers, minus Natasha, were enough to make him sigh. “He started learning sign language, but after his parents were killed in a drunk driving accident when he was five, the foster system paid for his hearing aids. He stopped learning it once he could hear reasonably well again.” He turned and looked down at the towheaded child. “He didn’t pick up teaching himself again until after his brother tried to kill him as a teenager and he was too injured to wear them while he healed. Luckily, we came along not too many years after that.”
“We did not say anything because that is…was…his story to tell,” Natasha told them. “With this, however, he’ll need to have new ones made to fit his young ears. Until then, he can speak, but he can only understand rudimentary sign language and he’s reading lips as much as he can. We will have to accommodate.”
Tony stood stock still for a few seconds, then dove back into his tablet.
“Send me the specs on his current, adult pair, and I’ll have them resized to pint-sized Barton,” Tony said, taking everything in stride. Having something useful to do settled him a little more as he leaned into the window once more.
“You’ll have it once the medical team has done a once over.” Natasha didn’t even have to speak for Fury to hold up a hand in her direction. “I’ll make sure they’re aware you’re in charge of his care as you’re his last living medical proxy besides myself. They won’t separate you. I have no doubt he’d take off on them and adult Barton loose in the base is bad enough. I don’t want to even imagine mini-Barton running rampant in the vents. Captain, keep me apprised.” With that, he took the coat back from where Natasha had draped it over one of the chairs and swept from the room.
“Well,” Bruce started with a thoughtful tilt to his head. “I’ll work with you and the medical team so he has another familiar face during all the testing. And since we have no clue how long this will last,” he trailed off as his furrowed brow took in the sleepy child that Natasha still cuddled. The ‘or if it’s permanent’ was unspoken but they all heard it. “We’ll need to get him some clothes and maybe talk about where he’s going to stay if this becomes long-term.” He glanced around the room at the rest of them and they all silently agreed that Clint was still part of the Avengers and they weren’t just going to shuffle him off.
*****
Medical had agreed with the paramedic’s assessment, but took it a step further to take blood samples. Natasha held the little boy through the entire process and praised him gently for stoically allowing the prodding and needles. He was very nervous, but with his history, even at this young age, she understood. Once again, she vowed that if Stark Industries ever invented a time machine, her first stop would be a certain farm in Iowa, where she’d visit upon Clint’s father, every injury she even suspected he’d given his sons and their mother, even if Clint never more than hinted at certain events. Every now and again, Clint would look around and find Bruce, who always smiled at the boy before turning back to look at the information that continued to be gathered.
When all the tests had been completed and they were allowed to rest, Natasha asked Clint to stay with Bruce, who had only slipped out to get cleaned up and had been back quickly. The tired little boy agreed and reluctantly released his grip on her, sliding to sit on the bed next to the scientist. When Bruce offered to hold Clint on his lap, he got a scowl in reply.
“Daddies don’t coddle kids,” he muttered around a yawn. “That’s a mommy’s job. And I’m too old to be coddled.” It was Bruce’s turn to sigh as the shrunken archer wiggled around to lay down with his back towards the wall, his face towards the door. He kept waiting for those tired eyes to close, but while the blinks dragged out, they refused to shut for longer than a second or two. It was with a silent gasp that he recognized the hyper vigilance in the tiny boy. Swallowing the dark thoughts that swam from his own past, he put himself into Clint’s line of sight and waited for the eyes to switch from watching the door to watching him.
“Me and the Hulk will watch the door. You can rest for a while.”
Clint blinked at him for a moment, then nodded and closed his eyes. Bruce moved to sit on the chair beside the bed, turned so he could keep an eye on the door. He didn’t think about taking his hand away from where he rested it on Clint’s arm on the bed.
*****
Two days later, SHIELD was no closer to a solution and Fury was getting frustrated that at any time, there were two or more Avengers in the room with Clint. While Coulson had told him that they would eventually become a family, that that was part of the reason for his sacrifice on the helicarrier, Fury sighed that he’d lost control of his own agents. Not that Barton or Romanoff had ever been his to control. They had reported to Coulson, who took his orders from Fury. But even Coulson would ignore or countermand orders if any of the Delta team members had a valid concern or reason to do so.
Natasha and Bruce took turns staying with Clint, one or both always in the room with him, bringing him food. Tony had brought in the hearing aids he had personally built in his private lab, to exacting specifications. Clint’s eyes had lit up when he turned them on and the smile Tony got was the first the boy had shown since the incident. Steve and Thor came and went, bringing things they thought Clint could use, like clothes. Thor had also brought a scaled down bow that a master weaponsmith on Asgard had made for the well-regarded archer; everyone but Natasha had explained that it wasn’t an appropriate thing right now. Natasha had not been upset by the gift though and asked Thor to just keep it at the tower until they knew more, appeasing the thunder god.
The PR from a building having exploded during an Avengers’ callout and being full of dead children was a nightmare that their legal team and Tony’s were trying to repair. The official statement for now, though, was that in a skirmish with Hydra, it had been discovered that AIM, in a nearby building, had been experimenting and blew up the building to hide those experiments, which was true. And that there were only two survivors, a teenaged boy in a coma, and a little boy who had no family that could be found, also true. But when pressed about where the children had come from, they couldn’t release the information about the de-aging, so they stated they were working on that and were working to find their families.
The official statement was also that Hawkeye had been injured in the explosion and would not be available for the foreseeable future. This was also true, but the rage that some citizens felt at what appeared to be a mass murder of children was more than their concern. They wanted answers.
And having them all coming and going from the base appeared to some as though they were caring more for their teammate, than for the dead children (or the two surviving ones).
So, Fury and Stark came up with allowing the de-aged archer to leave the base to be cared for at the Avengers’ tower, letting it be seen that they were doing all they could for the little boy. With the other boy still in a coma, it was understood that he couldn’t leave the base medical yet. It was a late Tuesday when Bruce held the little boy’s hand as they went out a ‘secret’ entrance that they knew journalists knew about. The real secret entrance came out nowhere near the base itself.
They pretended to be outraged at being caught at sneaking the boy out, but that was part of the plan. The PR announcement the next day that the boy had been unofficially adopted by the Stark Foundation and the Avengers until they could find him a permanent home came as no surprise and seemed to ease, if not close the matter for the moment.
*****
A week later, a long week of late nights in the lab with Bruce working on how to reverse the de-aging, time that all the Avengers spent with the young Clint, teaching him video games, watching cartoons, old Justice League being a favorite, and Natasha being cagey and antsy around the little boy, the last of what she called ‘real family’ no longer being relatable, Tony emerged from his lab, rubbing his greasy hands on a utility towel as he headed into the communal kitchen for some coffee. It was easily after midnight and all the lights were low, so he stumbled when he caught sight of the orange rolling across the floor from behind the island. It was not expected and in the world of superheroes and aliens, that was saying something. His brow furrowed as he bent down to pick it up.
He looked at it in confusion for a second before scanning the area. There didn’t appear to be anyone else there.
“Hello?” He called out. There was a sound of cloth shifting softly from behind the island so Tony leaned forward and down.
Crouched at the base was Clint, wearing a pair of pajama bottoms only, bare footed, clutching to his still slightly emancipated chest another orange, an apple, and what appeared to be one of the vegan cookies Bruce kept in the back of the fridge. Bruce declared the cold kept the flavors in and then a short reheat of 30 seconds brought them out.
“Um,” Tony said when the clear blue eyes looked up at him in trepidation, “Hello?” He could see the thin chest heaving as the boy stood up and tossed the food onto the top of the island, the fruit rolling to a stop in the exact center.
“I’m sorry,” the small voice said as he backed up a step and bowed his head. “I won’t take anymore without asking. I’m sorry.” He quickly shoved the rest of his haul onto the top of the island to ‘give it back’.
Tony was fast to hold up his hands to stop Clint.
“You don’t have to ask, Clint,” he said quickly to stop the boy from bolting. “I thought we told you about the communal kitchen and that you could get anything you want when you want. But why the vegan muffin? Wouldn’t you rather have Ben & Jerry’s instead?” The boy shuffled his feet, then stopped, his head tilting.
“What’s Ben & Jerry’s?”
The smile that spread over Tony’s face was warm and prompted Clint to respond with a curious step forward.
*****
“Anthony Edward Stark and Clinton Francis Barton!”
Tony and Clint froze, spoons halfway to their mouths, eyes wide. Both heads turned towards where Natasha now stood in the hallway, her hands on her hips, a frown on her face. Tony’s eyes widened and he looked down into the equally wide eyes of the little boy sitting crosslegged next to him on the island top. Both swallowed, then turned to face her again, Tony slid off the island top, moving to put himself between Nat and mini-Barton.
“Whatever it is, it’s solely my fault.” Tony put his spoon down into the pint he and Clint had been sharing. Clint copied the move and rolled just enough to get his feet under him, a better position to make a dash away if needed. Nat felt her chest tighten but controlled it, rolled her eyes and shook her head.
“You guys decided to have an ice cream party and didn’t invite me?” She forced a smiled and didn’t let Clint have a chance to get upset as she simply plopped herself down on one of the other island chairs and held out her hand. “Which one of you gentlemen will get me a spoon and the Cherries Garcia?” One eyebrow rose.
Tony and Clint shared another look of astonishment, then they quickly turned to task. Clint grabbed a really large tureen spoon while Tony pulled out the Cherries Garcia to hand over. Natasha eyed the large spoon, then shrugged and dug in. Tony, still wide-eyed, shrugged at Clint, who lifted on shoulder in a return shrug, before they climbed onto nearby stools instead of back on the island top and resumed eating the melting ice cream.
****
”Captain Rogers,” Jarvis’ voice called once his sensors picked up an opening in the sparring match with Thor. Both were drenched in sweat, being the only two Avengers strong enough to take the other on in hand-to-hand contest. Both paused, Steve reaching for a towel to swipe his face and arms.
“Yeah, Jarvis?” There was a hesitation in the answer.
“Sir could use your assistance in the lab next to the range.” Both men immediately jumped to attention, not pausing to change, running out of the gym to find the elevator already open and waiting. If Jarvis called for assistance for Tony, something really was wrong with Tony. The elevator covered the distance at emergency speed, Jarvis only replying that there had been an accident and Tony was unconscious and bleeding and Natasha and Bruce were unavailable to assist as they were at SHIELD. And he could not currently locate Agent Barton.
There, laying slumped against the wall was Tony Stark, eyes fluttering, a nice goose egg forming underneath the smear of blood at his temple. They assessed the area quickly but nothing seemed out of place except the vent directly above where Tony lay was askew. Of course, being Tony’s lab, it’s not like they’d notice if anything was really out of place.
“Tony,” Steve asked, gently handling the man’s chin to get a better look. The eyelids finally slowed the fluttering and Steve had to bat away the shaking hand that was reaching for his temple. Tony’s eyes opened a little. Thor had taken the towel Steve had thrown around his neck and was holding it over the minor head wound to staunch the blood flow.
“Ow.” Tony moaned. Steve huffed through his nose.
“Yes, ow. What happened? Where’s Clint?”
Upon the mention of the mini-archer, Tony tried to sit up more. Thankfully Steven and Thor were both there to support him or he would have fallen sideways as the room spun a little.
“Oh God, I messed up,” he groaned. He lifted sad eyes up to both men. “I, uh, I was working on something and Clint was playing with some of the smaller tools I keep on the workbench. I asked for the tool he was tossing around, not like I was afraid he’d drop it or anything, but I needed it for the next part of the recalibration…not important. Anyway, he didn’t respond so I reached to take it out of his hands.” He sighed, dropping his face into his hands.
“Young Clint did this?!” Thor gasped. Tony looked up.
“I think I startled him and he just reacted.” Tony grimaced. “Poor kid went white and just leapt straight up. Before it all went dark, I saw him disappear up there.” He stopped and looked up. “Clint? You there? I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I wasn’t trying to hurt you. And I’m okay. Really, kiddo.” There was no reply, no sound to hint he was still in the area. Thor and Tony helped him up so he could sit at the workbench and lean against it.
The two large blonds hovered over Tony, checking his head and discussing how to search the vents. Jarvis only had sensors on the vent openings to keep track of comings and goings, but not in the vents themselves as Clint, Agent Barton, had expressly requested he have unmonitored access, that he would have his own booby traps set up to keep any non-Avenger out of them. Jarvis monitored the openings and Clint the in between. The rest of the team had found out eventually that Clint often took to the vents when he was out of sorts, like a safe space just for him. Not that Stark had made the vents larger than regulation, really. Clint just had a way through them all except the smallest, such as ones above the bathrooms.
Now, with little Clint running scared in the vents that would do nothing to slow him down, none of them had any clue on when he’d reappear.
Tony scanned his workbench to find the tool he’d needed before all this, he got an idea to create a sniffer robot to follow Clint’s trail through the vents, and spotted something that definitely shouldn’t be there.
Clint’s hearing aids.
They were on the edge of the workbench, pushed haphazardly back against the box of random parts he kept on the corner. Really close to where Clint had been tossing the tool around. And one of the aids was opened up, the loose wire obvious when he knew what he was looking for. And the bottom fell out of his stomach. It was a good thing he hadn’t anything to eat recently as surely his bots would have a nice mess to clean up.
“Oh. Oh no,” he groaned, prompting the other two to look over to where he had lifted the aids off the bench top. Grabbing the right tool, he quickly fixed the loose wire and tested the rest to make sure they were secure. With such tiny and delicate parts, Clint should have let him know right away if something was wrong. But the young boy, having had to be reliant on no help for so long had probably thought he was being helpful by not interrupting what Tony was working on.
“Are those his hearing aids?” Steve asked softly. Tony nodded, running his free hand over his face.
“It means he’s running scared, lost in the vents he’s not familiar with and probably even more scared because he can’t hear anything.” Tony took a deep breath.
“Jarvis, high alert for any sign of Clint. Signal any of us as soon as you spot him.” He didn’t wait for the AI to respond and just shook his head and dove into pulling together items to bring his idea to fruition.
“What are you doing?” Thor asked. Tony didn’t look up as he hurried to a closed metal storage cabinet in the back corner. He threw open the doors and began digging through the piles of apparently discarded prototypes.
“First thought was a robot to sniff out young Legolas,” he grunted as he fumbled around, going from top shelf to bottom. “But then I thought he’s already scared, so it’s gotta be something like anti-scary.” He stopped and looked over at them with a thoughtful frown. “Is that a word?” He shrugged, then went back to digging. He finally found something and then before he could close it and return to the workbench, he suddenly spun and grabbed the stuffed dog laying forgotten off a side shelf. “Aha!”
He ran back to the bench and began pulling seams from the stuffed dog, then turned to take apart the other item he’d grabbed. Steve and Thor relaxed against the work bench and watched him work. He was furiously handling wires and bolts and a soldering iron.
“J,” he said out loud, but again didn’t wait for a response. “Can you-?”
“Already working the code, sir,” Jarvis replied. It had turned out that the AI had a soft spot for Agent Barton and an even bigger one for de-aged Clint. Natasha could get Jarvis to do things with her programming skills, and none of the others had really tried to get around the AI, but Agent Barton treated Jarvis like a human, like a really good friend and he never demanded or commanded Jarvis. Barton had always asked and let it go if the AI declined. Little Clint did the same and it seemed Jarvis was very helpful to the boy, and protective. Tony cracked a fond smile, shaking his head as he pushed the lead cable from his computer into the back of the robotic toy.
“Tony!” Natasha growled as she burst into the room. “Move, I’m going in.” She made to step onto the workbench to get into the open vent Clint had disappeared into, but she caught sight of the toy.
Tony grumbled until his computer beeped, then he removed the lead cable and closed up the back of the stuffed dog fur over the robotic toy. As soon as the glue seal had set, he tapped it on the nose. The dogs eyes lit up a soft brown and the head moved on it’s own.
“Woof, sir,” the dog said. Steve and Thor chuckled as the voice sounded just like Jarvis pretending to be a dog. Natasha blinked at it and then narrowed her eyes at Tony, who lifted up the toy to look it in the eyes.
“You got his scent?” The little fluffy tail wagged. Tony grabbed a little bag, that usually held tiny parts, and dropped the repaired hearing aids into it, then crimped it closed and attached a thin wire to attach it to the neck of the dog toy.
“I transferred the chemical pattern from the laundry. It’s working as expected, leading up into the vent above.” Tony nodded, then showed the dog around to the others. He handed it off to Steve, the tallest, to step up and set the dog just inside the edge of the vent. There was a slight click, then a whir, then it went nearly silent.
“Anything, J?” Tony asked after the first tense moments. Natasha’s arms were crossed as she glared at Tony, her eyes taking in the obvious bump on his head and keeping her reprimand to herself for now.
“The trail is quite strong and I’m certain he is not far. Cute puppy mode activating.” Then there was silence. There was a blueprint on the monitor that showed puppy Jarvis’ progress. It was twelve more minutes before there was a beep. On the screen, it appeared to stop two floors down, just above Bruce’s quarters. “I’m split between the conversations, but I’ve located him, sir. He is frightened, but physically okay.” On the monitor, a window opened and they could see the shadowed image of a very distraught little boy.
There was a collective sigh. From the angle, the camera had to be in the nose, but the only light was coming from the glowing brown eyes of the robot dog, so it looked like a horror film as they watched tiny Clint balled up in a corner, wide, red-rimmed eyes peering above his knees, where his arms were wrapped tightly. There was some movement and Clint unwound just enough to reach forward and the screen went black until the hand pulled back with the little bag.
He visibly sobbed and clutched the bag to his chest, before he opened the bag and took the hearing aids to put them into his ears. Then the little boy bent over, his body shaking as he visibly pulled the toy closer. The screen went black again and it was obvious that the dogs face was smashed into the little body.
“He is concerned that he ‘messed up’ and is afraid that hurting you and losing his ears means he’ll get locked in the closet.” There was a gasp from Thor.
“Who would do such a thing to a child?” Tony shook his head and took in Natasha, deflated against the edge of the workbench. Her hands flat on the surface, fingers flexing as though imaging them digging into someone’s flesh. He shared the sentiment.
“I have explained no one in the tower would punish him in that manner, nor hit him for something that was an accident. Young master Clint is willing to come out and take his punishment, if he can still keep me after it’s over.” There was a fond tone from the AI that had only been heard before when the AI was talking to Pepper. Tony nodded, more to himself.
“Yes, of course, I’ll tweak the programming so you’re a separate sub program but will still be able to connect. But yeah,” Tony said. “You’re his, okay. We just need to get you a new name for the sub program.”
“Let Clint choose,” Natasha said quietly. “He’s always wanted a dog.” They all chuckled, breaking the last bit of tension. With all the comments on the coms during battles and random comments when they were out of the tower from Barton about ‘that cute little doggie’ or ‘did you see the best boy’, it wasn’t unknown that he absolutely LOVED dogs. He had never pushed for it or even asked, but with more insight into his past, the others knew Clint probably was afraid they’d scoff at him or outright deny the request, so he wouldn’t ask, no matter how much he wanted it.
“J, I’m assuming Brucie has been listening in this entire time?”
“I’m here, Tony,” Bruce said quietly. “So is Hulk.” They shared a look of surprise, then the black screen changed and it showed Clint crawling closer towards a vent that was opening and a large green finger poked up and wiggled. They heard a small giggle then a sniffle as the boy finally reached the finger and tapped it, making it disappear from the opening. The angle changed to looking down through the opening and there sat Hulk, grinning up at the camera. Both large hands came up like a platform and they heard Hulk prod Clint to come down.
“Hulk catch.” The camera angle moved again and then went a dark green as Hulk pulled the boy to his chest gently. “Clint safe.”
“Hulk and Bruce safe too.” They heard Clint’s muffled voice. There was a sniffle but they couldn’t tell if it was Clint or Hulk. And the connection cut out.
Natasha turned and left the room, discreetly running a hand over her face. Thor appeared relieved but upset, continuing to ruminate on Clint’s request to not be locked in a closet. Steve patted Tony’s shoulder as they both heaved deep breaths.
“I’m thinking we need to start planning long term here,” Steve finally said. “And I think it’s fair to say, we need official adoption papers.” Tony sat up with a start and turned to stare at Steve.
“You do realize it’s me who’s going to adopt him. Thankfully, he looks nothing like me or he’d instantly be branded my secret love child that I’ve taken in, not some homeless kid.” Steve smiled down at him.
“As a little blond boy with blue eyes, he looks a little like me. Maybe they’ll think he’s OUR secret love child?” Tony gaped at Steve’s teasing. Because it was true. Tony was still a prime time gossip rag target and there had been so many jokes about Steve and Tony only fighting in public to hide the fact they were in a secret relationship.
Steve watched Tony flounder and blink as he tried to get ahead of the press in his head. They both knew Pepper needed to know sooner than later so she could maybe dive in and divert rumors, but secretly, she’d be laughing hysterically at Steve’s suggestion. Tony may not be completely straight, but he was in love with Pepper and all their friends knew it. The rest of the world, however, loved to cause drama.
It was times like this that Steve really missed the older Clint. He could appreciate a good practical joke and as a spy, could get around without being noticed to get the scoop before it hit the papers. They should bring Natasha in with Pepper on this.
Steve couldn’t help it but he chuckled as the left the lab, heading to the kitchen to make grilled cheese sandwiches for everyone. They were one of Clint’s favorites and turned out Hulk loved them too. After today’s debacle, it seemed Clint and Hulk would be hanging out for a while. So he asked Jarvis on the way to have extra bread, butter, and cheese to be set up from storage for Stark Industries cafeteria on the ground floor. He smiled that he could at least do this for his friends. His family.
*****
Thor waited until they’d had lunch, all of them crowded around in the common room, filled to the brim with Avengers. Hulk, with a subdued Clint on his lap, sat on the floor with a heaping plate in front of them to share and the little robot dog next to the plate. Hulk would delicately take two sandwiches at a time as Clint nibbled on the second one. Natasha was on end of the couch closest to where they sat, keeping an eye on Clint. Hulk still made her a little nervous but she’d seen the way Bruce and Hulk were towards her de-aged best friend, so she had eased back, remaining on watch. Steve was coming from the kitchen with another large plate full of sandwiches.
“Mister Tony!” Clint yelled, bursting into tears as he leapt up, tossing the half eaten sandwich on the edge of their shared plate. He ran across the room and slammed himself into Tony’s legs, hugging him tightly before looking up at him pleadingly. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t hear you. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
For his part, Tony was stunned. He stood there for a moment before detaching Clint and crouching down in front of him.
“Hey, hey. It’s okay. I’m okay. You’re okay.” He then pulled the boy into a hug, feeling warm tears at the back of his own eyes. “I don’t blame you for not hearing me. I startled you and you reacted. We’re all good, right?” He felt the little boy sob into his shoulder for a moment, then the small head nodded hesitantly. Everyone was watching and they all were stunned into silence. Natasha’s face, however, twitched before she leaned forward to whisper into Hulk’s ear, then slipped towards the door, where Thor had just come in. They stopped, heads together, whispering too low for Steve’s super hearing. Then Thor’s face went dark and he nodded. Natasha left the room silently with Thor on her heels. Steve frowned as he watched her go. So did Hulk. But when Clint sniffled one large sniffle, then pulled back to look at Tony in the face, who didn’t look mad, they turned back to the boy.
“Can I still play with your toy dog?” Clint asked. And Tony beamed a smile.
“Actually, I made him for you.” The sunshine smile that spread across Clint’s face made them all smile.
“For me?” Clint looked over at Hulk, where the little fluffy robot dog sat next to the large green knee. Tony laughed.
“Yeah, all little boys need a pet. He’s for you.” Clint jumped forward and hugged Tony again. And Tony closed his eyes, wondering if Pepper would ever want kids. The little boy ran back over to Hulk, grabbing up the little dog before jumping back up onto the large green thigh.
“Look, Hulk! I got a puppy! Mr. Tony said so.” The boy ran the back of his hand across his face to wipe away snot and tears, making Tony cringe thinking about how much of that he’d see if he looked down, then he saw the blissful look on Clint’s face and he realized, what is a little snot and tears when it was giving someone in his family a better childhood than the first time. He stood back up, wiping his eyes with the excuse that he was just really tired.
And there was so much planning to do. Identification for Clint, adoption papers to make it legal, NDA’s all over the place, a very long talk with Pepper, a psychiatrist for Clint, for himself. Hell, for the whole team.
“So what are you naming your puppy, Clint?” Steve asked, finishing sitting the plate down. He turned towards the now open spot on the couch closest to Hulk and Clint.
“I think I’m going to name him…Hawkeye,” Clint declared. In his happiness, he didn’t catch when the three remaining Avengers froze and looked at each other in surprise.
“…because of the football team?” Steve asked, finally sitting down. Clint looked up at him, tilting his head, then back down at the dog.
“No, because he found me, like that guy in my dreams.”