A/N: This is a silly little one shot that came to my mind and I had to write it down.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Avengers or anything recognizable.

"Coulson?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Call the Avengers, we have a new mission."

"KIDS!" Tony shrieked. "I don't do kids."

Fury sighed, this was worse then he thought it was going to be.

"I know but these kids one wish was to meet someone from the Avengers so we are holding an event for the Make a Wish foundation."

Tony scouffed. "We don't get a say in this? I mean don't get me wrong, I like kids... sorta."

"Aww Tony, who knew you were such a sweetheart?" Natasha teased.

"Afraid your perfect image is going to be soiled?" Clint joked.

"You two also have to go." Fury pointed to the two master assassins.

"What?" Clint's face was one of total suprise.

"But were spies. We don't want our faces broadcasted."

"Well they already were during the 'incident.'"

Tony laughed but immediately stopped when he got two death glares. They were supposed to go to a party with abunch of kids and sign things and answer questions. It started at 4pm which was in two hours and they were only just being told. Everybody had protested, Tony the loudest, but Fury knew that they would all end up going. They couldn't resist kids.

Tony's consisted of a lot of yelling and complaining, Steve was saying how it wasn't a good idea and how he hadn't interacted for more than five seconds with a kid in almost a century. Bruce was saying that he might Hulk out and that would just end badly, and Natasha was trying to bring up logical points about how she shouldn't go. Thor was really the only one that was ok with going, something about him wanting to see what Midguardian children were like. And Clint, he was silent. That was kind of the creepy part, he's never silent in times like these.

"How come you aren't saying anything to this, Clint? Do you want to go? Thought that seems highly unlikely considering who you are." Tony started rambling.

Clint didn't hear him though, he was stuck in a flashback.

Clint was 6 years old.

Him and his brother, Barney, were out trying to escape their father's drunken fury. They were currently sitting in the back of store waiting for the store owner to look back at his TV so they could steal some stuff. All of a sudden a man came in and walked straight to them. Both the boys got into defensive stances, expecting nothing less than a fight.

Both were surprised when he introduced himself and said he was from the Make A Wish foundation and that he wanted to know their wish. Barney and Clint both thought long and hard knowing that they only had one shot and they need to make it a good one. They eventually both came up with the same answer, for Father to stop beating them. The man stared at them with a look of horror. Fully suprised and scared.

He called 911 and told them of this, they said that they were going to send CPS.

Barney and Clint sat at the window for two full weeks before finally giving up, CPS wasn't going to come. What did they expect when Father is the sheriff.

A

Later that night Father stormed in and went straight to the fridge to pull out a beer before walking back over to them. He leaned against the back of the couch and stared at them. His eyes were full of fury and they knew that he knew. They were going to get beat tonight.

He unleashed on Clint first. He always did. He came out of nowhere and punched Clint across the jaw. His little body fell to the ground and was immediately kicked in the torso. Without thought his arms went down to hold the recently injured area, he would regret that for the rest of his life. Moving his arms made his head opened season and with a well placed kick to the head, Clint had lost his hearing. His father then punched him in the face again and put blow after blow to his body.

He snapped his arm as if it was a twig and then stomped on his hand breaking numerous bones before moving on to his brother.

Clint will never forget the last words he heard before he passed out. One of the last things he ever heard from his father. "Protective Services my ass."

After that his father didn't talk to him for 3 weeks, only beat him. Then he died.

*End Flashback*

"CLINT?!"

He snapped his eyes over to his team. They were all staring at him.

"Are you alright?" Natasha asked softly.

"Yeah, I'm fine." She knew he was lying but thankfully didn't call him out on it.

Nobody knew about his past, not even Nick Fury did. He wanted it hidden, he didn't want them finding out about his past. They would look down on him, hell, his team didn't even know he was deaf. The only ones that did were Natasha, Coulson, and Fury, but none of them knew how he had become deaf.

"What was that?" Bruce asked.

Clint stared at him for a minute before he looked at the ground with an inner battle going on inside of himself, should he tell them about his little run in with Make a Wish or should he lie. He looked up and fully planned on telling a lie, and when he saw their faces he knew that he was going to have to tell the truth... or at least part of it.

"I had a little run in with Make a Wish when I was young and I was just thinking back to that." He offered and made it clear that was all he was going to give.

"Well go suit up and meet in the hanger." Fury dismissed them.

As they arrived, there was cheering and screaming while they were escorted into the building. They were stationed around the room because there were so many for each one of them. Well, there actually weren't that many for Hawkeye. There were probably about 10 while everybody else had about 30-40 surrounding them. Iron Man definately had the most but he had good competition from Captain America. He was soon done with all the kids wanting to talk to him, they had moved on to the others.

He looked around the room and spotted a poster across the room. It had a man on it, he was probably in his late 50s early 60s, and there was something very familiar about him but Clint just couldn't place it. He stared at it for around 10 minutes before he actually looked at the words printed on it. One of there best employees (the man on the poster) was going to come to personally thank the Avengers for making this night possible.

He turned his attention away from the poster and looked at the others. They were all smiling and laughing at the kids and they looked like they were actually having a great time. Clint was getting depressed. He couldn't stop thinking about when he was little and the fact that he apparently had no fans was not helping because he couldn't distract himself. He had tried everything. The room was really loud too and it was starting to make his ears hurt, but he wouldn't dare taking his aids out, not with this many people, especially since they were strangers.

Thor's laugh was ever present over the hundreds of people there and it did nothing to help his constantly falling mood. Damn him and his princeliness. Princelyness? Was that a word? It could be, it seems like their would be a word for that. Ugh, ok a different word. Amazing, awesome, joyous, astounding, godly, breathtaking. Those words could actually be used to describe the rest of his team. For him, the words cool, funny, nice, all those bland words that people use for things they really don't care about came to mind.

A shriek of excitement broke him out of his finally distracted state. The sight that greeted him had a mixture of anger and betrayel ripping through him. There, up on the stage, were all of the Avengers posing with kids and with each other without him. They didn't even ask him. Not once did they even look over at him. At one point they all took a picture together. That just pissed him off. Ok, so maybe he wasn't much of a team player, but he had been living with these guys for close to a year and thought they were pretty close.

He saw a little boy look back at him and then back up to the women standing next to him before he slipped his hand out of her's and walked over to him. He had bright blond hair and grey eyes, he was wearing a red zip-up hoody and a pair of jeans. He was about seven and was pretty pale. It was one of the boys that had been over here with him earlier.

"Hey." He smiled at the boy. "William, right?"

"Yeah, but please call me Willie, Mr. Hawkeye." Clint laughed.

"I'll tell you what, you, and only you, can call me Clint."

"Why Clint?"

"'Cause that's my real name." The boy beamed and Clint couldn't help but smile back.

"So why aren't you up there with the rest of them?" Willie asked.

"I don't know. They didn't ask me."

"Why not?"

"Don't tell them this, but I think it's because they know that if I went up there they wouldn't get any attention." Clint fake whispered to him.

"Yeah, and that's also the reason why you have been sitting here all alone for the past hour." He called Clint out much to the archers amusment.

"Touche."

Willie smiled again and took one of the papers that was sitting on the table. He started folding it and almost instantly Clint realized what he was trying to do. He also took a piece of paper and started folding it. Both ended up with two different kinds of airplanes and they showed them off to each other.

"So how did you become an archer?" The boy asked as he gave his plane a test throw.

"I grew up in the circus."

"No way!"

"Yeah but that is just a secret between you and me alright?" Clint hadn't meant to let that slip.

"WILLIAM?" The women he was with before came rushing over and grabbed his hand.

"I told you not to leave me without telling where you were going." She scolded. "I am so sorry." So turned to Hawkeye for that last part.

"It was no problem, he's a wonderful boy. You going to keep those promises we were talking about, Willie?" When the boy nodded he continued on, "Alright, just remember that you can do anything you set you want to, don't listen when other people tell you it's impossible."

There was a little dinner break but Clint wasn't hungry and just stayed at his little table in the corner. When they came back the person was going to be here to thank them and some other stuff was going to happen, he wasn't really paying attention.

The guy arrived and talked to the others a bit before going on stage. As soon as he spoke the archer remembered exactly who he was. The man from the store all those years ago, the man he would never forget. The voice telling them not to worry because help was on the way. Promising that they would never suffer from Father's hands again. Agony rolled through Clint as he remembered how he had trusted that man and he had betrayed him. Told him all these lies like he wasn't bringing false hope to a child that didn't know any better.

He remembered the warm smile he gave us that fooled both Barney and him into thinking that he was a good guy. That was the first time in everything he could remember that he had seen Barney let his guard down. He also remembered the last words that man told him, "Go on home now, help will be there soon." Clint's heart swelled just thinking about it.

He needed to get out. Out. Out. Out.

He couldn't hear this voice for anymore.

He stood up from the table and stumbled, knocking a chair over. He was far enough away that nobody could hear it but the speaker saw it out of the corner of his eye.

George continued to speak but now focused on the man in the back. He was wearing all black with a bow slung across his back. That could only be one person, Hawkeye. What a weird dude, knocking over chairs and stuff. George started calling up the Avengers, Hawkeye was last and was almost out of the room when he called him. As he slowly walked up, keeping his face angled down, George thought there was something vaguely familiar about him. He brushed it off for now and continued speaking while waiting for him.

As Hawkeye got closer, George looked over to him and he could finally see his face and his eyes, those eyes. They were filled with worry and anger, eyes that George would recognize anywhere. The boy from Iowa all of those years ago in the small store. The one that wished his dad would stop beating him.

His speach cut out and he gasped.

"It's y-y-y-" George passed out.

"What the hell, Clint!" Tony yelled before rushing over to the fallen man.

"What did you do?" Steve asked.

"I-I-I did-" Clint stammered before he was cut off by Bruce.

"Save your excuses." Bruce.

"I think you should go." Natasha. Even Nat. How could she believe that he would do this? He was 20ft away from him when he collapsed and he obviously didn't throw anything.

He turned and saw everyone staring at him in horror and disbelief. He saw Willie looking at him in shock. That face slowly turned to one of betrayal and that just killed Clint. He ran. He didn't pay attention to where he went, he just had to get out of there. He burst through a door that thankfully lead outside. It was facing the woods and that's where the archer took off in a sprint to.

Crashing through the woods, not even worrying about noise, he ended up by a huge tree. It was starting to get dark out and he didn't know how long he ran or where he was, so he did the thing that anyone in his position would have done. Deleted everything on his phone, turned it off, and then ran for about fifteen minutes before throwing the phone as far as he could and ran back to the tree. He climbed it and tried to rest.

He woke up sometime later and it was still dark out. He got down and started in a random direction. About 2 hours later he came across a pretty busy road that had no side walks in sight. He took off at a dead sprint across the road and was in the last lane when he got clipped by a car. The person stopped but he pointed a gun at them and told them to keep going.

He was pretty sure that his leg and a few of his ribs were broken.

*Meanwhile, back at Make a Wish*

George woke up with a grunt. He opened his eyes to see the Avengers standing over him. Well not all of them, there were only five. He was confused for a moment before all of the memories came back to him. The boy. He sat up fast and his vision blurred, then he was pushed back down by a strong pair of hands.

"Where... Where's Hawkeye?" He asked.

"Don't worry, he's gone." Someone said, Captain America maybe.

He tried sitting up again. "What? No. I need to talk to him."

"But he hurt you." Captain America again.

"He didn't do anything!" George practically screamed at them.

"Then what happened?" Iron Man asked, very confused.

"I fainted, he didn't do anything. Do you know who he is?" He asked like they were idiots.

"Hawkeye? Clint?"

"Do you know anything about his past?" He said exasperated.

"No..." Bruce Banner said warily.

"He's the one kid whose wish I couldn't make come true."

Clint had limped to an alley way and found a few things in the dumpster there that he could use to splint his leg. It hurt like a bitch and it was going to hurt like a bitch for awhile but he didn't want it to heal wrong. He needed to get back to the tower, not because he had anything special there, but because he knew that Bruce had the best pain killers in his lab. He hailed a cab to the tower and ignored all of the drivers attempts to get him to go to a hospital.

He hobbled inside and pressed the elevator button for Bruce's lab.

"Agent Barton, can I assist you in anyway?" Jarvis asked, scaring him half to death.

"Yes, can you tell me where Bruce keeps his pain killers?" He wanted to be prepared so he didn't have to spend along time looking for them.

"They are in the bottom left drawer of the desk right by the door."

"Thanks, Jarvis."

"He went directly to the drawer that Jarvis told him about and found a syringe. Usually he wouldn't take pain killers at all because they numbed his senses, but he needed a little less pain if he was going to be able to escape. He injected the shot and sat there for a little bit taking it in. Pretty soon he started feeling really tired and weird.

"Jarvis, these aren't pain killers, are they?" He slurred to the ceiling.

"No, sir. It is morphine." Well look at that. Another one to add to his betrayal list, this one is unique though, it's a computer.

Clint tried to fight to stay awake and leave but his body just wouldn't agree and succumbed to the darkness.

The Avengers stared in shock at the man still lying on the floor.

"What was his wish?" Someone finally asked.

George swallowed. "I walked into a small store in Waverly, Iowa, just trying to find a snack as I passed through. I saw two small boys in the back, basically identical, the only difference was the age. They were probably 6 and 8 years old. No parents with them, just them. I walked back to them and told them I was from a foundation that helped kids have their wishes come true. I asked what their wish was and both of them thought about it for a minute before coming up with the same answer." He paused.

"What was it?" Tony asked, the suspense was killing him.

George looked at him and what Tony saw in his eyes was despair. "They wished for their father to stop beating them." The words were spoken softly. Every single Avenger was speechless. Even Tony.

"Child abuse?" Tony finally got out.

"We need to find him." Natasha said. She was pissed with herself. She had just brushed him off like he was nothing. They had been partners for 11 years now and when he needed her she went against him. They exchanged phone numbers with George promising that they would call when he was found.

They searched the woods behind the building, but only found his phone where he had left it. At about 3am Tony finally got the genius idea to ask Jarvis if he was in the tower. When Jarvis responded, they rushed home as fast as they could. No time for cars, they just gave each other rides.

They arrived back and instantly asked Jarvis where he was.

"He is currently in Dr. Banner's lab."

"Thanks, J."

As they walked into the lab they saw Clint slumped on the ground. His leg was in a make shift splint and when Bruce saw it he instinctivly went into doctor mode. He picked him up as carefully as he could and set him on a gurney he had in a side room. He started going over him, checking for injuries besides the obvious leg. Just as he hit the ribs Clint woke up with a scream that was held back into a grunt.

"4 broken ribs, probably a few cracked." He said absentmindly to himself.

"What are you guys doing here?" Clint asked. No one dared to look into his eyes.

"After George woke up, he told us that you didn't do anything, and..." Steve trailed off.

"And what?" Clint said in a very serious voice.

"He told us that you were abused as a child." Steve said quietly.

Clint screamed and at first Steve thought it was because of him but then he heard Bruce apologizing.

"I am sorry, I thought doing it without you paying attention would be best." Clint was griting his teeth, holding back the noise that wanted to come out.

"I am surprised you took medication." Natasha said, finally looking up at him. Big mistake. In his eyes all she could see was anger and betrayal.

"I only wanted to take pain killers so I could leave, but Jarvis, you bastard, told me where his morphine was instead of pain killers." The archer glared at the ceiling with such hate even Natasha was glad she wasn't the A.I. at the moment.

"I am sorry, Agent Barton, but without my interference you would have left, again." Jarvis responded.

"Again?" The rest asked in unison.

"Jarvis, you were told not to ever bring that up." Clint said in a deadly voice.

Wisely, the A.I. stayed quiet this time.

"What does he mean again?" Tony asked.

"Nothing."

They all started protesting and just wouldn't shut up.

Clint really didn't want to be there right now. If only he could shut them all out, anything would be worth it. What the hell, his cover was screwed up anyway. He ripped his hearing aids out, welcoming the silence. He gave a content sigh and closed his eyes. This was probably a really bad idea because there was not one single person in the room that he trusted anymore, and with his eyes closed anybody could sneak up on him. Not to mention that nobody knew about his deafness besides Tasha.

He was lying there thinking about what his life had come to when pain ripped through his leg and travelled up through his body. His eyes shot open and his arms reached down to his leg. He knocked the hands away and glared at Bruce. He can lip read and knew what Bruce was saying and decided to ignore him. He could read sign launguage but still chose to ignore Natasha.

For the next few days Clint locked himself in his room, ignoring everyone else. He hadn't talked to anybody since that day, since he took out his hearing aids and ultimately exposed one of his biggest secrets to people that he didn't trust anymore. Clint may have been over reacting a little bit, but the event opened his eyes to how much the team had been mistreating him. He was rarely invited out with anybody, left out of pictures and sometimes even movie nights.

Clint suspected that it was because he was playing for the otherside in the begenning and so it took a little longer to adjust. Steve, Tony, and the rest hadn't tried that hard to get to know him, so their betrayal didn't hurt as much. But Tasha, ow. Clint didn't realize that every since moving in with the Avengers, Natasha had been ignoring him, choosing to spend more time with the oh-so-great Avengers instead. Then she just turned her back on him in the blink of an eye.

Most of Clint's day was spent laying in bed, throwing a ball up in the air, and then catching it. It made a steady beat that Clint could always count on. Whoosh. Slap. Whoosh. Slap. He didn't really eat anymore, not wanting to risk the chance of running into one of the Avengers. He also avoided the gym, knowing that there was usually someone in there, those someones most likely being Natasha and Steve. The other part of his day was usually spent in a little room that he found on the top floor. The room had solar panels in it, so that meant that the top was glass. Wires were running around the room and down the middle. There wasn't much space but at night, if he timed it right, he could look up and just stare at the moon.

The best part was that it was easily accessible by the air ducts so he didn't have to worry about the others seeing him. No one knew about this room either. Tony probably knew, but he most likely forgot about it. Oh, and was it mentioned that Jarvis has no sensors in this room.

He spent most nights in this room, sleeping was almost impossible. Every time he closed his eyes he saw his father, drunk and angry. He got a few hours here and there, though. He slept, just not anywhere near a healthy amount.

The first time he saw any of the Avengers was about a week, maybe two, later. The reason it happened was totally by accident, too. He had just awoken from a nightmare about his father and was too paranoid to remember not to watch for the others. He was walking through the hallways, trying to clear his head, when his feet carried him to the common room without him even realizing. He walked in and all of the others were sitting there on the couches, watching a movie. Even Phil was there.

Wait, Phil. PHIL! When did he get back from his mission?

Clint stopped and stared. The others all looked at him before actually seeing him. Somehow, someone managed to press the pause button and there was now an epic stare down going on. Six to one.

"Clint?" Coulson asked. Clint must of looked worse than he thought.

"Coulson?" He said in a voice that was rough from disuse.

Steve almost gasped when he saw Clint, the man looked terrible. He had huge brusies under his eyes, his once tight fitting clothes that showed off his muscles now practically hung off his shoulders. He obviously hadn't shaved in awhile and was a few days past a 5 o'clock shadow. He walked with a limp, although Steve was not sure why. It wasn't from the recent break because it was the other leg.

When the archer saw the rest of them, he stopped in his tracks. He had a panicked look in his eyes, and his hair was wild like he just woke up.

"Clint what's wrong?" Steve asked although Clint didn't answer. Steve stood up starting to get worried, calling his name again. Clint looked at him before quickly saying something in a very rough voice and his words were slurred a little.

"My aids aren't in. I'll go- I'll go get them."

Coulson quickly signed something to him then reached into his pocket. His hand came out with two tiny things that Steve guessed were the hearing aids that Tony had told him about. Clint put them in and then looked down at the ground.

"Clint, we need to talk." Natasha said.

"Can we do this later? I'm not in the mood." Barton said softly.

"No." Steve surprised everyone, even himself by saying that. "We miss you, Clint."

"Not to mention that you look like hell. I bet you haven't been taking care of yourself." Tony stated.

"Look, Clint, we are sorry about how we just assumed that you did something when that was obviously a hard moment for you." Steve said.

"Yeah, I mean my father ignored me and spent more time looking for Cap here, and that sucked, but I can't imagine what you went through." Tony said in a moment of vulnerability.

"We really don't know much about you and we would really like to know." Bruce stated. His voice had no anger or sympathy, just curiosity.

So the Avengers sat that night, sharing their stories, supporting each other, and really getting a chance to get to know each other. The movie totally forgotten in the moment of friendship.

"Is there anything we can do to make it up to you? Name it and you got it." Tony asked.

Clint paused. "There is one thing..."

"What is it?"

"Not it, who." Clint smiled as he thought about Willie.

A/N: I don't know if that ending was good or not, but please review :)