Pietro Maximoff was an ass.
There was no polite way to say it; he was an ass, and an annoying one at that, and the cheeky bastard knew it and flaunted it in every way he knew how.
It drove Clint up the wall; they'd barely met perhaps forty-five hours ago and already he wanted to kick the kid's sassy remarks into next week.
Of course, there were plenty of more important things he could be focusing on, like the invasion of flying robots and the fact Sokovia was flying, of all things, or perhaps even the panicked young woman who stood to fight beside him despite her fear, but when the younger man slid by to pick up his sister in one fluid movement and called "Keep up old man!" he really had to resist the urge to let the arrow he had knocked fly at the guy's smug face.
"Nobody would know. Nobody. 'Oh, last I saw him Ultron was sitting on him! Unlucky, quick bastard. We'll miss him. I miss him already!'" he muttered mockingly to himself as he slowly trailed after the twins, gritting his teeth in frustration and sincerely hoping the kid might trip up and end up sprawling on the ground.
Of course, the world decided to grant his wish in an unexpected, terrible way; the boy did end up sprawling, face first on the dirt, eyes open and last smug smirk on his face as his bullet-riddled body thudded to the ground.
He barely had any time to stare; the younger boy he had ducked out to save was clutching his chest tight, staring at Pietro's body in fascinated horror. He instinctively tried to press the kid's face into his shoulder, make him look away, but he was numb, barely able to move.
What the hell…
He hadn't even felt the kid move them out of the way…
The shock clouding his head – what is he, an amateur? He should be better than this – is interrupted by a ragged Steve sliding up to them, pointlessly feeling Pietro's neck for a pulse before turning to Clint with a frenzied look in his eyes.
"Get to the lifeboat!" he ordered, straight up snapped at him like he was the general and Clint the private who was new to the field.
And Clint couldn't bring himself to be annoyed by being treated like a rookie; all he could do was stumble to his feet and carry the kid back the way he'd come, trying to focus on the ground instead of the limp form Captain America is currently hauling after them.
The ground is littered with deep gouges from the bullets that had been heading to murder him and some innocent child, but instead killed a sarcastic kid too young for his chosen profession.
'Fuck!' Clint grit his teeth, speeding up until his feet hit the metal flooring of the lifeboat and his cargo was squirming to be free, and he set the boy down only to watch him fling himself into his mother's arms with many joyous cries and elated tears.
The Maximoffs didn't have parents to worry about them, to return home to. Hell, this city currently floating forty thousand feet off the ground is their home, and it's about to be blown to kingdom come.
Everything blanks, and Clint has to sit down before he falls down, waving off the medic that tries to approach him and lying back, exhausted and pissed off and not ready to admit there might be a few tears in his eyes. "It's been a long day," he groaned.
And whose brilliant idea was it to lay the kid there?
Right next to him, just below him by a few feet, is Pietro Maximoff's body, just as dead and still as it was earlier, only now his eyes were closed. Steve never would've let it be otherwise.
"God fucking damn it," he hissed wetly, trying to glare heatedly at the corpse and failing miserably.
Pietro Maximoff was an annoying ass, and he saved Clint Barton's ungrateful ass life, and Clint really wishes there was a punchline to this joke.
A/N: And lo, return of the angst. Exploring Clint's feelings towards this is going to be one of my favorite things from this movie, I can already tell. Fair warning, I'm never going to get over this movie, so look forward to more of this soon, ok?
~Persephone