Time had stopped.
It took a deep, shaky breath and had held it.
He fell to his knees alongside the lifeless body of the boy. The boy that moved faster than time itself; lived for it.
The boy had died for him.
No, God no, he hadn't seen that coming.
Now it, he, was all he could see as he lay on the lifeboat next to that lifeless body, fingers dangling a breath away from the still chest of Pietro.
He wasn't moving and it was too painful see that kind of stillness about the kid.
Clint closed his eyes. God, he would give anything to trade his slow paced life for the kid's fast one.
Time finally exhaled sharply, painfully, and Clint was overcome by the cries and screams of those on the lifeboat.
Sokovia fell.
The world shook and suddenly, all too suddenly, time began moving again.
The lifeboat shuddered and Clint's hand brushed the bloodstained running shirt.
Too fast.
He was breathing too fast.
"Cap!"
Pietro was breathing too fast.
Pietro was breathing.
"Cap, he's alive!"
Clint rolled off of the bench, landing hard on his knees next to the boy, hands fumbling to find a pulse, for the second time that day.
The pulse was thready, jumpy and moving too fast. Everything about Pietro moved too fast for Clint, but it was moving, he was moving.
Pietro coughed around the blood in his mouth, his fingers curling around Clint's hand that was still pressed against his throat, and the speedster tried to smile.
"You.. Didn't.. See.. That-"
"I will fucking kill you," Clint breathed out, a half delirious smile on his face. "You little shit."
Steve was there with a medic in tow and Pietro laughed at Clint until an oxygen mask was pulled over his face and they rolled him off to the medical ward.
Clint shook his head before letting it drop back onto the seat behind him.
Kid was full of surprises.
Surprises that he definitely didn't see coming.