This has been in the works for a while, a product of my (slightly creepy) obsession with Hawkeye, both Matt Fraction's wonderful comics and Jeremy Renner in the utterly amazing Avengers films. Now just to wait for the Hawkeye film that I really need.

I

He is four years old and is already learning every hiding place in the house. The best place is under the stairs, curled up next to the old whisky bottles and musty coats. He listens to his mother's tears through the door and learns what hatred is for the first time.

II

He is five years old and his dad hits him hard, much harder than before. There's this intense pain and then he's bleeding and the world sounds painfully muffled, like his mother's tears through a locked door. He's so lost and desperate and confused but he learnt long ago that tears only meant more pain.

III

He is six years old and the policeman at the door is telling him that he's very sorry for his loss. He hides behind Barney to hide the bruises like he was told. He's picked up lip reading well, but he still doesn't understand the word 'lost'. He doesn't realise that the man with the cruel hands and women with the mascara tears that he never really associated with family had been taken away in a blaze of fire and the scream of tires.

IV

He is nine years old and is running away from the crowded orphanage and the cruel older boys to a better life. Barney swears at him as he runs, but the older boy's hand has always been his lifeline. He's already learnt how to stare down the social workers and can handle himself in a fight, but nothing prepares him for the cold that seeps into his bone that first night on the street.

V

He is twelve years old and the circus' best pickpocket, and Trickshot is telling him that he has the potential to be a great archer some day. He should have known that nothing in his life could turn out well, and he learns to fear Trick's cruel smile as much as he fears the knives and boiling water and whips.

VI

He is fifteen years old and is now the main act from the whole circus. The whole crowd is looking at him in awe, his name on their lips. Adrenaline races through him, and he can't remember a joy quite like this one. He can't wipe the grin off his face.

VII

He is seventeen years old and he should really have expected this because everything ends and everyone leaves eventually but it still hurts more than the knife plunged into his gut when Barney walks away.

VIII

He is twenty one years old and has long lost track of the people he has killed for a couple of thousand pounds of cash in a black duffle bag. The arrows that once caused him joy are stained with blood, and the light that once danced in his eyes was long gone.

IX

He is twenty four years old and a man in a pressed suit is offering the chance to be so much more than just another killer. Even though he knows by now that he could never atone for his wrongs, he can't help the beginning of hope in his gut.

X

He is twenty six years old and Coulson has gone quiet on the coms as he holds the knife to her throat. Her hair is as red as fire and her eyes are devoid of all the defiance he had expected. He looks into her eyes and sees a reflection of what his own were once like. He puts down the knife and offers her a hand instead.

XI

He is twenty nine years old and Strike Team Delta are quickly becoming the most successful team since the Howling Commandos. Nightmares still wait at the corner of his mind but he's getting to know Natasha more. Last mission she ever smiled at him, and he felt that maybe things would turn out okay after all.

XII

He is thirty one years old and the knife is so cold on his skin and yet the cuts it makes burn. He keeps another man's secrets while his body gradually gets used once again to the torture that has always followed him. He greets pain as an old friend, and wondered how he ever thought he could leave it behind.

XIII

He is thirty four years old and wakes up with Natasha in his arms and realised that he had slept free of nightmares for the first time in too long. He makes her breakfast and she make him coffee, it's almost as if they are a part of each other. She curls into his side when they watch a movie, and the sagging couch in the tiny apartment feels a little like home.

XIV

He is thirty nine years old and the world is expanding, aliens and Norse gods and things that are closer to magic than science. This new terrifying world makes him doubt everything he knows, but he had Natasha Romanoff smiling across at him in the battlefield so he might just be okay.

XV

He is forty one years old and finally might just be happy.