Deaf to Your Words
Sharp, needle-thin, and feathered at the end with a bright purple plume, the arrow lies less than three inches from Peter’s face. It’s less than three inches long, and the shaft is buried in the bark of the tree that he is now pressed against. He can practically feel the divot that the projectile dug through the air, as if it flew so quickly that the air had not quite managed to move back into place. For one, brief, agonizing moment, Peter can do nothing but inhale sharply and feel the sharp pound of his heart in his chest. Solid, real, alive despite the certain death three inches from his face.
There is the thin, tinny, almost bell-like twang of a string nearby, and Peter snaps out of it and into action.
“Clint!” Peter puts his hands up quickly, his heart thrumming in his chest and his breath caught in his throat. He instinctively wants to take a step back, but the tree makes that impossible so instead he steps forward with his palms out in surrender. “Clint, it’s just me! Don’t shoot!”
The silence returns, heavy and oppressive as it hangs in the air. The leaves are still, the ocean’s breeze avoiding the clearing entirely as the sound leeches from the area. The dirt is warm beneath his feet and the air is warm on his skin as Peter stands with his heart in his throat, silence curling all around him.
Then the silence is broken by the sound of bells.
Peter huffs, dropping his hands to his sides as the tinkling bells continue to chime. His eyes narrow and he glances up, scanning the canopy of the forest above him. Bright leaves hang overhead and turn the sunlight green as it filters through their waxy surfaces, dancing across Peter’s skin as he lifts a hand to shade his eyes. A bright flicker in the corner of his vision catches his attention, a small spot of light huddled on a thin branch on the opposite end of the clearing. Just a moment later the little glimmer moves, and suddenly there is a figure hovering just in front of Peter’s face.
He stumbles back automatically, then lets out another huff of annoyance even as a grin pulls helplessly at his lips. “Come on, Clint.”
“Oh don’t “come on, Clint” me!” The pixie lets out another laugh, bright and bell-like as his wings flutter behind him, a distinct sort of grin on his face that Peter remembers clearly. It means that he is up to something no good, and it is the look that he wears almost all of the time. But with that look still on his face, the pixie holds up his hands and tries to feign innocence. “You haven’t visited in ages, how was I supposed to know it was you? I’ve gotta defend my land, man.”
“Aren’t you always talking about your incredible eyesight,” Peter asks, sure to make his voice as condescending and sarcastic as possible. The grin on his face deepens as Clint crosses his arms with a huff.
“My eyesight is incredible, I will have you know.” The pixie sounds about as indignant as a pixie can, his musical voice twisting and turning to get the condescending tone that his throat was not made for. “Eyes of a hawk, that’s what they say.”
“I have only ever heard you say that.”
“So? Someone says it. I’m not wrong.”
“Well, you still missed,” Peter points out, gesturing to the arrow buried in the tree behind him.
“Don’t worry Pete, I wouldn’t have actually hit you.” The pixie chuckles, his head cocking to one side as he crosses his arms against this chest. “You really thought I would?”
Peter does not respond, because he does not like to lie. Lies taste bitter on his tongue, and he knows that the word no would leave a bad aftertaste… however, he also gets the sense that a yes is not the answer that Clint is looking for.
“Come on, kid. I never miss, remember?”
“That’s what I’m scared of,” Peter says with a chuckle, glad to feel how easily the words come. A knot in his chest, there since he first mentioned the pixies that morning, loosens with the ease of the banter, old patterns of teasing that feel achingly familiar coming back without effort. The words linger in the air for a moment too long, just enough for Clint to cock his head curiously before Peter follows it up with a quick “You don’t have the best memory, you know.”
The pixie makes an indignant noise that dissolves into the twinkling sound of bells, his wings flaring out to the side as he shoots Peter a glare that is rendered nearly ineffective by the grin that he can't seem to swallow back. Peter finds himself grinning too, his face aching with the stretch of muscles that he can’t help but feel have been underused. The laugh in his chest feels good, the smile on his face feels good, and the bells of Clint’s annoyance and laughter are something that he missed far more than he had realized.
Clint shakes himself, wings fluttering with the shiver that runs through them, and Peter takes the movement as a signal to reach out a hand. Clint lands on it with a bell-like hum that might be gratitude, might be annoyance as Peter pulls him closer to his chest. Clint stands there in his palm for about two seconds before flopping down to sit cross-legged with his back leaned against Peter’s fingers. The papery wings tickle his hand, and Peter lets a little giggle echo in his throat even as Clint sends him a quick glare. The wings and weight of the pixie are just the same as a butterfly, and Peter cannot help but giggle even harder as his friend—maybe it’s ok if he still calls the man his friend?— purposefully shifts so that his wings tickle the webs between Peter’s fingers.
“This is the guy?”
“Oh!” Peter startles, Clint letting out a slight jingle of alarm as his hand moves. Of course, Tony Stark! The entire reason that he is here, that he is visiting Clint again, how could he forget? Peter could feel heat in his cheeks, but he quickly shoves it to the side so that he can turn to the man watching him. He holds up his hand, quickly bringing Clint up to Tony’s height with only a slight jingle from the pixie. “Mister Stark, this is Clint. Clint, this is Mister Stark.”
“Stark?” Clint snorts, arms crossed against his chest, his eyes finally alighting on Tony as he swings his legs off of Peter’s palm, leaning against his knees and scrutinizing the adult in front of him. “Who is this guy, Peter? I haven’t seen him around before.”
Mister Stark blinks, his gaze lingering on Clint briefly before shifting over to Peter. “So this is a pixie?”
“Uh, yeah, yeah he’s a pixie,” Peter answers before looking back at Clint. “And uh, well, you see it’s kinda complicated—“
“Wait, was he speaking just then?” Clint straightens up, his sharp eyes piercing Tony through before he waves an arm in the air. “Yo! Big guy! Did you say something?”
Tony blinks blankly at Clint before vaguely gesturing toward the pixie while looking at Peter. “What is this? I thought you said this guy could help?”
“He can help!” Peter says quickly, bewilderedness in his voice as Clint makes a loud, bell-ringing noise from his cupped hands.
“He is talking, isn’t he? Peter, you found a human?”
“What?” Peter glances down at Clint as Tony makes a twisted face of confusion.
“How’s he going to help? He can’t speak!”
“Yes he can!” Peter replies to Tony, absolutely bewildered. “Can’t you hear him?”
“All I hear is bells,” Tony says, voice deadpan and flat as Clint’s musical, song-like voice pitches up again.
“He’s saying I can’t speak? He’s the one just makin’ faces and calling it talking!”
Clint’s face twisted, over exaggerated expressions flitting across his features in quick, mocking succession that makes Tony’s posture tighten. “Is he mocking me?”
Peter can feel his head spinning. “Stop, wait, hold on—“
“That’s right, that’s what you look like big guy!”
“He’s just chattering bells,
“Oh, I don’t know what your saying but I take it as a personal offense—“
“Guys!” Peter’s voice is loud, desperate, and the only voice in the clearing that all parties can actually understand. Both sides of the argument fall silent, Clint jingling in offense as Peter curls his fingers half protectively, half preventatively around his tiny form. But both sets of eyes soon land on him and Peter takes a deep breath, the confusion sharp in his mind as he tries to piece together the situation. “You two are going to give me a headache. Can you not hear each other?”
“Just bells,” Tony repeats at the exact same time that Clint says “not a word.”
Neither seems to realize that they interrupted each other, though Tony’s gaze flickers over toward Clint.
“You’re… well, you’re both talking. Loudly.” Peter clarifies, because he feels that is an important foundation to this conversation. His left hand, the one that is not full of pixie, reaches up to run through his wavy hair as he lets out a low breath. “Clint, you can’t hear anything? At all?”
“Not when he speaks,” Clint says, jerking a thumb over toward Tony. “Which is just as well, he seems like the kind of guy with a mouth too big for his face.”
“Why do I feel like he just insulted me,” Tony says, his face set in a tense frown.
“And you can’t hear anything either, Mister Stark?” Peter clarifies again, ignoring the man’s previous statement.
“Just the bells,” Tony says, something like bitterness underlying its tone. He pauses for a moment, is gaze flickering to Clint with a pointed look. “They’re stupid bells, by the way.”
Clint returns the gaze fiercely, a sharp glare pointed at the man above him. “See? Like that. I bet he just said something stupid, I can almost guarantee—“
“Please, please stop. Just for a moment.” Pete’s hand moves to rub his temples, his head already pounding from the confusion and the clashing voices. It feels like the worst possible combination; Clint’s musical tone tinged with the undercourse of bells and whistles, a voice that never matches his words and that he seems to actively fight against clashing with Mister Stark’s flat, harsh tone that grates coldly against his ears and sounds fake, as if the man is layering the tone overtop of something else entirely. They clash against each other in a way that hurts Peter’s ears, and he rubs his temples a bit more viciously before speaking again. “Why can’t you understand each other? What’s the deal?”
“He’s a human,” Clint exclaims at the exact same moment that Tony mutters “He’s a fairy.”
Peter does not bother correcting Tony, instead focusing on Clint’s half. “What? I’m a human, you can understand me!”
“You’re hardly human,” Clint says quickly, with a wave of his hand and a jingle of bells. “You’re one of us, Neverland chose you. You’re a kid, he’s—“ Clint breaks off, his wings stilling with a suddenness that leaves him stony in Peter’s palm, his eyes wide and his tiny hands pressed against Peter’s own as he sits up stock-straight. “Wait. Wait. Peter, he’s an adult, isn’t he? A human adult, a human adult that isn’t from here—“
“Well, yeah,” Peter rubs the back of his neck with a wince as Clint’s musical words shoot sharply into the air. “Sorta… well, yes, yes, I told you it's complicated but—“
“Peter, it’s dangerous.” Clint is standing now, his tiny feet hardly leaving an imprint on Peter’s palm as he jingles in some sort of complicated pixie emotion that Peter cannot quite interpret. “Where did you find this guy?”
“What is he saying?” Tony interrupts before Peter can respond, his cold voice cutting sharp and serrated through the air and causing Peter to grimace a bit. “He seems agitated, what are you talking about?”
Peter cannot respond before Clint is speaking again, high and ringing. “No wonder I can’t hear him, Peter he’s not supposed to be here—“
“I know!” Peter’s voice rises again, sharp and distressed and louder than he intended. He did not intend the outburst at all and yet there it is, hot and hanging in the air as he ducks his head. His fingers clench to pull at some of the locks in his hair. It takes strength to make sure his right palm stays open for Clint, though the effort is unnecessary because a moment later he hears bells chiming next to his ear. The sound continues for a moment, quiet and subtle, and then Peter feels a tiny hand pat his shoulder.
“Sorry, Pete.”
“It’s ok,” Peter says quickly, too quickly, but says all the same. Too quickly the hand is gone, so quickly that he does not even have the chance to appreciate it before Clint has flitted away, wings fluttering as he hovers a little ways in front of Peter. The boy forces himself to take a breath and to look up with a small, fragile smile. “You guys are just both very loud and your voices.. well, they don’t sound the best against each other—“
“So he was interrupting me?” Clint says with an offense so great that Peter cannot help but chuckle a bit at it. The pixie frowns, arms crossed against his chest as he juts his chin out toward Tony with a defiance far greater than his size. “Shut up, big man.”
Tony frown deepens again, staring back at the tiny pixie with an expression hidden beneath his features. “I feel like he is insulting me again.”
“Sort of, but not really. I promise he’s nice!” Peter says.
Clint pivots in midair, offense on his face as he frowns at Peter. “I’m not nice at all, I’ll have you know.”
“And he’s nice too!” Peter says quickly to the pixie. Just to his side Tony lets out a snort, sharp and disbelieving.
“You better not be talking about me. Nice is an adjective used to talk about me every-so-never.”
But they are both nice. Peter knows they are both nice; he has the lingering feeling of Clint’s hand on his shoulder, the heavy black jacket around his waist, memories of brief moments of concern from both to prove it. Sure, they were brief, but they were there. There was kindness in both of them, no matter how angry he had made them in the past or the present.
His eyes skitter from Clint to Tony, and the guilty knot in his chest tightens.
“But… I know, Clint.” He lets out a breath, a breath that is far weaker than he intended and that curls around his lungs. “I know that he is not supposed to be here.” His eyes slide up to meet Tony’s, then instantly drop at the cold, hard look in the man’s eyes. His fingers curl into the fabric of the jacket around his waist, painfully aware of how selfish the action is. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
Tony Stark is silent for a moment. “You both seem pretty worried.”
“We are,” Peter says slowly, quickly remembering that Clint is deaf to Tony’s words. “Worried, that is.”
Clint lets out an exhale, the sort that would be an ugly snort from a human but that is rather like a whistle from the pixie. “That’s a word for it.”
“Why?” Tony asks, his voice flat as he snaps his shoulders in a quick shrug. “Don’t get me wrong, I want to get out of here yesterday. But should I be more worried?”
Peter winces, his face twitching and his fingers digging harder into the fabric beneath his fingers. He notices Clint’s expectant gaze and clears his throat. “He’s, ah, asking if he should be worried. Since we are.”
“Of course he should be.” Clint’s wings beat down a bit too sharply, shimmering in the greenish light as he rises up before settling back into his previous hovering height. “It’s dangerous here. You know how Neverland is; she has a mind of her own. And that mind does not like humans, adult humans at that, both of which he is and…” Clint breaks off, suddenly realizing that he had turned to talk to Tony before remembering that the man could not understand a word he said. He let out a deep, bell-ringing sigh, then turned back to Peter. “Can you translate that?”
“He’s basically saying that Neverland won’t like you,” Peter says with a glance over at Tony. The man simply snorts at his words.
“Yeah, well, newsflash, Neverland is a hunk of rock and dirt. It’s a non-sentient land mass, if it's even that at all. It doesn’t exactly have feelings.”
“Neverland is a lot more than rock and dirt,” Peter says, his eyes widening at Tony’s words. Rock and dirt, as if Neverland is nothing more than the material beneath their feet. Words without regard for the air around them, the ambience of the clearing, the life that thrums all throughout the land. The presence of Neverland among them, disregarded in a flippant statement of rock and dirt. Is that how humans see their Earth? Peter cannot imagine it.
And by the sound of Clint’s shocked, outraged jingle, he cannot either. “He said what—”
“Not important, not important,” Peter quickly raises his hands, trying to shift the conversation before another argument breaks out with him as the middleman. “What’s important is that we need to get Mister Stark home. Right? Can we all agree on that?”
There is a beat of silence in the clearing. Then, a sharp and decisive nod from Tony and a slower, more guarded nod from Clint. Peter swallows back a sigh of relief and pushes on.
“That’s why we’re here, Clint. I have no idea how to get him back, and since you’re more in-tune with magic than I am…”
Clint snorts another of his sharp, pixie-whistle snorts that shake his wings and make him dip in the air. “Magic? You’ve come to the wrong pixie, Pete.”
“You’re great with magic!” Peter protests. He glances over his shoulder at the dart that is buried in the tree’s bark and gestures at it, as if the needle-like projectile holds proof. “See? You never miss; you said it yourself!”
Clint’s expression does not change. “I don’t use enchantments on my arrows. That’s all skill and practice, no magic needed.”
“You’re also the only pixie I know,” Peter admits, his hand rubbing at the back of his neck. “I… there’s really not a lot of other options.”
“Yes, there are plenty of options.” Clint crosses his arms, his wings batting him a bit closer to Peter as he begins to count off on his fingers. “For example let’s say, oh, literally any other pixie.”
“I don’t have another pixie!”
“Come on, you know Sam, don’t you? The bird guy? Talks to birds?”
Peter winces. “I met him a total of once, and that involved me getting him caught in a spiderweb.”
“What about Hope? You’ve met her, right?”
“Again, it was like, once.”
“She loved you though! She’s better at this than I am, way better. I think she even has a boyfriend who, ok, might not be the most competent, but Sam’s said he knows what he’s doing at least once.”
“Again, I’ve met Hope once, Clint. I don’t know her at all, let alone her boyfriend!”
“What about…” Clint trails off, his voice petering out with the sound of faint, distant bells. “…anyone else?”
“See?” Peter crosses his arms, something like satisfaction twinging in his gut. It is not happy satisfaction. It is something colder, more bitter, something that almost makes him feel guilty at just the notion. But all the same, he feels it as Clint stumbles over his words. “You don’t know any other pixies either!”
Clint makes a face, his sharp features pulled into a look of embarrassed annoyance. “Of course I do! I just… can’t think of them off the top of my head, is all.”
“Right.” The bitterness sits back as the teasing tone tinges Peter’s voice once again. “You’re the most sociable pixie I know.”
“Darn right I am,” Clint mutters back, but his voice has a tone of sarcastic irony to it as well and his lips quirk up into something of a smirk. “That’s exactlywhy I live out here.”
“In the middle of nowhere.”
“Right. So that I can have space from all of my many acquaintances.”
“Of course.” The clearing feels a bit lighter now, the air clearer as the jokes take over, and Peter takes a deep breath. His eyes slide over to Tony, letting his gaze linger on the man’s guarded and slightly lost expression, then lets the breath out and turns back to Clint. “I… Clint, I know this is asking a lot from you. I know… I know it’s been a while, and I haven’t exactly… the point is, this isn’t about me. I messed up. I have to make it right and I don’t… I need help. I need you.”
Something lingers on his tongue, something missing from his words, something that has been missing for a long time. Something heavy, something that has been sitting on his tongue since the last time that he saw his friend.
But he swallows that back, lets his eyes drop to the mossy forest floor beneath them. He is not sure that Clint would want to hear those words. Not now. Not after so long.
The pixie watches Peter. His thin, translucent wings scoop the air around him, glittering in the soft green light that falls across his bare shoulders in dappled patterns that blend nicely with the sleeveless purple shirt on his torso and the sleek black pants that cover his tiny legs. His blonde hair bounces with each downstroke of his silvery wings, hair that is unnaturally unruly for a pixie just as his shoulders seem unnaturally strong. There are also cloth wrappings around his wrists and a bandage across his nose giving him a rougher look than most of his species. Still, despite the coarse edges, despite the fact that his voice is intentionally rougher than most, there is a distinct stillness in the air as he considers Peter’s words. His wings sparkle, his eyes shine brightly, and the bells chime softly in the air. Despite everything about who Clint is, there is no doubt that he is a pixie. There is no doubt that there is magic in his blood.
“Alright.” Clint runs a hand across his face, shaking his head with the motion. “Alright. Fine. I’ll do my best.”
“Thank you,” Peter breathes, his words heavy as they leave his mouth and fill the air. There is a significance to them, a significance that lightens the weight in his chest and adds a welcome distinction to the clearing. They are not the words that he wants to say, but they are still important. For now, they are enough.
“Don’t thank me yet, Pete. I have no idea what…” He hesitates, then waves his hand in the general direction of Tony. “This is, let alone if it can be… undone, or whatever. Really, it depends on how it was done in the first place.”
“Magic,” Peter supplies quickly. “We’re pretty sure it’s magic.”
“Obviously. He’s an adult human in Neverland. It literally cannot be anything but magic.” He squints at the man, as if scrutinizing him. His eyes are sharp, and one hand rubs at his chin as he looks Tony up and down. “What kind of magic are we talking, anyway?”
Peter winces. “I uh… I don’t know?”
“Yeah. That’s real helpful.” The pixie looks at him, those sharp eyes meeting his own. “Are you sure you don’t know?”
“No,” Peter responds, and the word is true enough to only leave a hint of ash on his tongue. Clint, however, is not so easily fooled as Peter himself.
“Not even an idea?”
Peter opens his mouth, but something holds him back from answering. He wants to say no, wants to honestly tell Clint that he has no idea. He wants to say that he simply found Tony in the woods and decided to help him despite having no idea how he came to be in Neverland.
But his mouth will not form the words. His throat closes up before he even attempts to speak, something like ash and coal coating his tongue. He tries once, twice, then lets his mouth fall shut. Clint does not look surprised.
“What happened, Peter? How’d he get here?”
“I don’t know.” The words come this time, honest and soothing on his ash-laden taste buds. “I really don’t.”
“But you have an idea?”
“I…” Peter trails off, his voice petering out once again. But he knows that he cannot be silent. He cannot lie, but he cannot say nothing either. It is a lucky thing that Clint is willing to help them at all. He cannot expect the pixie to be able to do anything without information, without some sort of guess as to what brought the man to their land.
Peter’s eyes flutter back open, just enough for him to glance over at Tony. The man seems to be trying to follow their conversation, but it is obvious that the one-sided perspective that he hears has left him behind. His expression hides behind a mask of indifference, one that Peter is starting to pick out as his default facial pattern. Peter’s voice lowers as he turns back to Clint, his gut twisting as he hopes that Tony is too lost in the conversation to piece together his words; or better yet, that he doesn’t hear them at all.
“I…” He starts slowly, but the speed of his words pick up quickly, tumbling out of his mouth like a squirrel clambering up a trunk, as if the words will be stuck in his throat forever if he does not say them now. “A wish. I think it may have been a wish.”
Clint’s eyes widen. For a brief moment his wings stop moving altogether, to the point that they have to beat twice as hard to keep him from falling out of the air once they start up again. “A wish?”
Peter nods silently, the tension coiling in his gut as he watches Clint’s reaction. He can feel Tony Stark’s gaze burning into his back, and he desperately hopes that the man doesn’t realize just how serious this could be.
“Peter, that’s… that’s more intense than I was expecting.” Clint’s hand rubs at his chin, his arms crossed as he seems to turn the admission over in his mind. “A wish, that’s… that’s powerful. Which makes sense, actually. It would take something like that to pull a person into Neverland. Especially an adult.” Clint pauses, and his sharp blue eyes flick from the mossy ground to look up at Peter. “Who made the wish?”
Peter opens his mouth, the answer on his tongue, and yet it turns to dust in his mouth before he can speak. He swallows sharply, his eyes stinging as he looks down to avoid Clint’s sharp, knowing gaze. He wants to say he doesn’t know. He wants to say it could be anyone. He wants to say it was Tony, or Neverland herself, anything and everything that it could possibly be. It could be anything, couldn’t it? It could have been anyone. It could have been anyone’s fault.
And yet his gut feels heavy at the thought and his throat is thick with ash even as he swallows.
He is the one who went to the Other World. He is the one who sat there, shivering in the cold, unfamiliar alleyway and looked up at the sky with wide, shocked eyes. He is the one who accepted Tony’s outstretched hand.
He knows the truth, but he cannot say it. Instead he says what he can, words that taste like ash only around their edges, words that are able to slide out of his mouth with truth. “Someone wished on a star. I’m… I’m pretty sure of that.”
“Wait… so this is star magic?” Clint’s eyes widen for a beat, his wings fluttering in the air behind him, and Peter cannot help but breathe out a breath of relief that the pixie does not press further. Instead his wings flash, and then he throws back his head, and the clearing is filled with the tinkling noise of his laughter. “Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?”
“Huh?” Peter glances up, head cocked to one side as he stares at the laughing pixie. “Why didn’t I… what do you mean?”
“I actually have a guy!” Clint claps his little hands together with a bright noise that is somehow comforting on Peter’s ears. “I have the perfect guy for this!”
“Wait… you actually know someone?”
“Shocking, I know.” Despite his inherently bright, musical tone, Clint manages to suck his words dry. Still, the dryness does not diminish the positive tone, and more importantly it does not diminish what they mean. “Believe it or not I—don't laugh—I have a friend, a friend who happens to know far more about magic and nonsense than I do. Star stuff is his specialty.”
“That’s perfect!” Peter exclaims, excitement bubbling up in his chest. The feeling is warm and hopeful enough to push back the bitter, cold guilt that sits in his gut. “Why didn’t you mention that sooner?”
“Why didn’t you tell me it was star stuff sooner?” Clint shoots back, his wings moving him in mid air as he shakes his head. “Come on man, I thought you were talking about pixie nonsense, like talking to animals and stuff. I don’t know a thing about that.”
“You are literally a pixie, Clint.”
“I’m not that kinda pixie though.” Clint rolls his eyes, shaking his wings with something like a dramatic shudder.
“The competent kind?”
“Shut it,” Clint warns, though he is grinning as he holds up a finger in Peter’s direction. “I am perfectly competent. You know anyone else who can shoot a flea’s legs off from forty feet away?”
“I don’t believe you a bit.”
“Well, you can ask my friend once we meet him. He happened to help me test my skills, I will have you know, and he’s almost as stubborn with the truth as you are.” He runs his hand along the bow of the weapon that hangs at his side, a cocky grin on his face. “Who needs magic anyway? I’ll stick with the good old stick and string.”
“What is he saying?” Peter jumps slightly, the teasing pattern he had fallen into faltering as he remembers Tony’s presence. He turns, a pressure building against the flesh of his cheeks as he turns to face the man. Right. Tony is completely lost in this conversation, and it shows.
“Good news: he’ll help us,” Peter cuts to the most important detail first, then gestures quickly to Clint as he runs through some of the smaller details. “He has a friend, someone who is better versed in the particular type of magic that caused— well, that we think caused— this whole thing. A theory, at least. I’m sure he’ll be able to help, or at least Clint is and I hope so… and uh, right now he’s just going on about his most dangerous weapon—”
“Hey!” Clint calls out indignantly, his voice cutting through Peter’s sarcastic tone. The boy can’t help but grin innocently at the pixie’s offense. “I’ll have you know that this is a perfectly dangerous weapon.”
“He’s claiming it’s perfectly dangerous,” Peter says, his tone dipping into mock seriousness as he nods in an over exaggerated manner. But then he turns his head and meets the eyes of Tony Stark, and his grin drops drastically. The man does not look amused at all by the banter that is going back and forth in the little clearing. In fact, he looks exactly the opposite. He looks proud, condescending, and when his eyes catch on the little bow hanging at Clint’s side they carry a critical sort of manner that makes Peter shudder.
“That?” Tony snorts, his gaze running in a critical sort of way over the craftsmanship of the arrow. His face shows that he is not impressed. “It’s tiny.”
Tiny, perhaps, but deadly all the same. Peter has seen first-hand the amount of damage a single one of Clint’s two-inch arrows can do when fired by a practiced hand… a practiced hand that Clint more than possesses.
“What’s he saying?” Clint chimes in, his eyes narrowed and sharp in the green light. His hand that was running across the wood of his bow has stilled and shifted so that now, his hand is wrapped around the weapon’s center.
“He, uh…” Peter practically winces at his own voice, trying to keep ash out of his mouth as he works to diffuse the situation as quickly as possible. “He was just commenting on your bow, nothing important.”
“I feel like he’s insulting me.”
“He’s not! He just thinks it’s small—”
“Oh, really?”
“Great, what’s he saying now?” Tony cuts in, his eyes narrowed suspiciously at Clint as the pixie’s grip on his bow tightens.
“Hey, guys, can we please not start this again?” Peter doesn’t mean for his voice to come out as desperately as it does, but… well, it is difficult to keep the pleading tone out of his words as the two different voices fall harshly on his ears. He cannot help it, cannot help but instinctively flinch as the words rub painfully against each other. He ducks his head, heat once again pressing at his cheeks as he rubs discreetly at his temples, just hoping that the arguments won’t flare up again and make his headache any worse than it already is.
Thankfully, no more harsh words come. There is silence in the clearing, and Peter can feel two sets of eyes lingering on him with a gentle, waiting pressure. Both parties seem to understand that an argument with a person they cannot hear is futile, and the thought allows Peter to breathe out another heavy breath before looking back up at Clint. “Back to the important things. Clint, where exactly is your friend?”
“Not far at all,” Clint says with a shrug that jingles in the air. “He’s actually been boarding just down the path from me, not even on the other side of the Hollow. Something about his brother wanting space or something of the like… he’s a nice guy, he won’t mind us dropping in.”
“He lives right around here,” Peter says slowly. “On this side of the Hollow.”
“Oh yeah.” Clint nods, his wings twitching as he hovers. “We run into each other almost daily. It’s borderline annoying for one of us, I’m sure.”
“And you didn’t think to mention him?”
“Like I said, if you had just said it was star stuff a bit sooner, it would have clicked.” Clint shakes his head. “You’ve got to be specific, Pete.”
Peter groans, but it is a good-natured sound, one that is coupled with a grin and playful shake of his head. “You are impossible, Clint.”
“Says the guy asking me to figure out how to get a human out of Neverland.” Clint rolls his eyes, but to Peter’s delight there is no bitterness in his tone. No lingering hesitance, no underlying anger towards Peter. There is only the familiar roughness that pushes against the inherently musical voice, the teasing bite that Peter can remember grinning at for as long as he has known the pixie. “What are we waiting on then? Let’s move; if we get going now, we’ll be in and out before dark!”
“Come on!” Peter relays quickly, the joy in his chest seeping into his voice as he addresses Tony. He waves his hand at the man, motioning for him to follow as the pixie ahead begins to move deeper into the forest. “Clint says if we go now, we can meet his friend before it even gets dark!”
Peter does not let his gaze linger on Tony, does not let himself see the look of relief that filters through his carefully crafted mask. He does not let himself think about just how unhappy Tony has been through this entire experience, nor how his hand still seems to burn from where the man had touched his palm just before Neverland had pulled them back. He does not let himself dwell on the twisted knot of emotions that sits heavily at the bottom of his gut. Instead he focuses on the moss beneath his bare toes as he steps forward, the glint of light that is Clint as he flits ahead into the darker portions of the forest, the feeling of relief at the fact that they are making progress towards his promise.
There are still words that lie on his tongue, heavy and charged with anticipation, but he swallows them back. Thus far, neither he nor Clint has acknowledged their last meeting. Neither of them have acknowledged the time that has passed, not directly. There has been no need to speak of it, no need to bring those weighty words into existence. And so, decisively, Peter swallows the words that his mouth wishes to form. They are not needed, no matter how much his body is trying to tell him otherwise. He will hold onto them, for now at the very least. He will say them if Clint wants to hear them.
For now, he will be grateful that the pixie is willing to help them. He will focus on that and nothing else.
The moss between his toes is cold, and Peter focuses on it as he slips into the darkness of the woods with a misplaced human on his tail, chasing after the glimmering light of the pixie that he has not spoken to since his brothers disappeared.