Author's note: Thanks to jerseydanielgibson, Guests (thanks to the one who reminded me about the Marines rule, which I knew once upon a time but apparently forgot!), MagicLia16, Guiltypleasure82, girliemom and Nimrodel101 for your reviews. And especially thank you, W. Blackbird, for yours, because you helped crystallize some of my thinking regarding what I aimed to do with Clint's character.
There will be an updated family tree at the end of the chapter.
1998
Clint stayed on his best behavior for the rest of the summer, and Mike and Tien felt hopeful that the worst of it was behind them.
But everything fell apart when his senior year started. He started leaving school in the middle of the day and disappearing for long periods of time, and this time no amount of persuasion or threat from his parents seemed able to move him from his chosen course.
"Is he drinking again?" Steve asked one night after Mike had called to say that Clint had yet again broken his curfew.
"I think it's worse than that," Mike said grimly. "The alcohol isn't really enough to do anything for him. I think he's doing something stronger now."
Steve's heart throbbed painfully, thinking of it. The number of patients he had seen going through something like this... and now it was his own family. He'd never seriously thought it could happen to them, but he should have known better. No family was immune.
"He's trying to escape something," he told Mike after a beat.
"I know. I know. We've tried to talk to him about it, so we can figure out how to address it in a healthier way. And all we get is the same old rants about how he hates Vietnam, and he hates school, and he hates living under the rules we came up with to keep the kids safe after what happened in Bethesda. He keeps saying he wants to be free to live, but apparently what he means by that is to be free to ignore his homework and do whatever idiotic thing pops into his head at any moment, no matter how dangerous." Mike sighed heavily into the phone. "I mean, he has less than a year until graduation. You would think he could just buckle down and tough it out until he's done, and then he can move out and go back to America like Harrison and Sammy did. But he won't. He isn't even making plans for after graduation. If college isn't his thing, fine, but it's not like he has any ideas about how he's going to support himself. For a kid who acts like all he wants to do is get away from his family, he isn't doing one thing to make that possible."
"Does he feel pressure to succeed?" Steve asked. "Sometimes people escape that by giving up. Pretending like they don't care anymore."
"Tien and I tried not to do that," Mike said. "With any of the kids. And we've told Clint outright that he doesn't have to try to be Clint Barton, or Steve Rogers, or anyone but himself. There are things he's good at. You've seen how he can get the whole family laughing. It's more than just having a good sense of humor. You remember how Sammy used to get so tense when she was in a big group of people? The way she used to just fade to the back of the room and check out, more or less? He was the only one of us who could draw her out and get her laughing and relaxed enough to learn how to deal with that kind of setting. People are drawn to him. That's a gift, and there are about a million things he could do with it. But he won't even try."
"Let me talk to him," Steve said. "I think you and Tien are doing all the right things, but he's dug in his heels with you. He might open up more to someone he doesn't see as his disciplinarian."
In the weeks that followed, Steve did his best. But Clint stubbornly stonewalled him, even if he did it more respectfully than he had done it to his own parents. The behavior problems continued, until the breaking point was finally reached: the day an increasingly vigilant Tien found drugs hidden in Clint's bedroom.
After everything was said and done, Mike and Tien made the difficult decision to pull Clint out of school and check him into a treatment facility that promised to address both the substance abuse and provide intensive behavioral counseling.
It was a decision that Clint strenuously resisted. But Tien in particular remained adamant; as much as Clint might hate the idea of being in a heavily supervised treatment facility for three months, he'd hate being in jail even more. Mike seemed less sure, wanting to deal with it within the family if they could, but eventually he yielded. He didn't have to say it, but Steve could see it in his eyes: Mike was worried about his marriage, too. The continual conflict had been hard on them both, and Steve knew all too well that when one family member self-destructed, sometimes they took others down with them. It was bad enough that Mike was watching one of his children slip away from him. He couldn't lose his wife, too.
They all hoped that the treatment facility would make progress where their family had not. But one day, while Amanda and Joe were at school and Dave and Sarah had just come upstairs from the lab to have lunch with Steve and Peggy, Mike showed up at the cottage.
"How is Clint doing?" Dave asked, gesturing at him to sit at the table and join them.
"Well," Mike said with his tone carefully controlled as he sat down but ignored the plate Sarah slid toward him, "he checked himself out of the treatment facility last night."
"He checked himself out?" Sarah repeated in confusion. "I thought he could only be released to his parents. How did he do that?"
"Oh, he did it real subtle," Mike said with a twist of sarcasm. "Slammed his shoulder against a locked door and knocked it out of its frame. Ran across the lawn, jumped clean over the fence, sprinted down the road at top speed. Security cameras everywhere. Not a brain in his head." He rubbed his forehead wearily as the rest of them stared at him in shock. "Now I've got explanations to invent and damages to pay. And I can't ever take him back to a place like that again." He shrugged his broad shoulders helplessly. "What would stop him from doing it again?"
"How did you find him?" Peggy asked, concerned.
"Looked in the usual places. Found him in a tattoo parlor, high as a kite, drawing up a new design for himself. Luckily I got there before they got started on him."
"High on what?" Steve asked.
"I don't know. He wouldn't tell me. Must've been something pretty strong for it to work on him at all."
"Where is he now?" Sarah asked, half-standing up, looking deeply concerned. "Do you need me to examine him?"
"I'd be glad if you did, although whatever it was, it seems to have worn off pretty quick."
Sarah slid her sling ring onto her fingers. "He's home?"
Mike nodded. "Tien's watching him. She has her sling ring ready just in case, but I don't think he'll try to run away again today. He knows he took it too far. I think he scared even himself this time."
Sarah vanished into a portal, and then Peggy broke the silence that followed.
"What will you do now?" she asked.
Mike shook his head in weary defeat. "I don't know. I just don't know."
"You know, it's ironic," he added after a long pause, his eyes going distant. "I used to worry about this with Steven, when I was teaching him how to fight. The day I realized he had surpassed Harrison, and with me starting to slow down, I thought: if something ever happens, if Steven ever snaps for some reason... we'd have a hard time stopping him."
He took in a deep breath. "But it's my own son I should have worried about." Bitterness flashed across his face. "There's no reason to think this won't keep escalating. If he ever commits a serious crime... I mean, they haven't built a prison yet that can hold a Rogers. As bad as it is now, it could still get worse."
"So far the only person Clint has hurt is himself," Steve pointed out. "It's not gonna come to that."
Mike was in no mood to be comforted. "We can't be sure," he said. "I just keep thinking... here Sarah's been so determined all this time not to use the serum to create new supersoldiers because she thought it was too dangerous. But we've been creating them anyway, haven't we?" He laughed humorlessly. "We've all been merrily building our families, assuming it wouldn't be a problem because we raised them right from the day they were born. But that isn't a guarantee, is it? Every one of them is their own person. They can choose whoever they want to be. And if they choose badly..." He trailed off.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Peggy asked Steve that evening after dinner, when they had escaped the clatter in the cottage. Amanda had been loudly chattering into the phone with one of her friends, while Joe had been passionately ranting to his dad about the tight control the high school administration had imposed on the student newspaper he was trying to start up, and so Steve and Peggy had gone outside to sit in the peace and quiet of the garden.
"What are you thinking?" Steve asked her.
Peggy reached down and picked an orange chrysanthemum, rolling its stem between her fingers thoughtfully. "That if Clint needs professional help — and I think he does — but we can't risk sending him back to a facility for fear his reckless behavior will blow our family's cover..." She met his eyes firmly. "Steve, we ought to take him in ourselves. You and I."
Steve didn't answer right away. He had been thinking the same thing, but there were considerations. A lot of them.
"We wouldn't be able to stop him from running away any more than his parents or the treatment facility could," he pointed out.
"No," Peggy admitted. "But I don't think this can be fixed by force. Bringing him here could solve a number of problems. For one thing, we'd change the dynamics he and Mike and Tien have been locked into for so long. We'd give him a fresh start. For another, we'd distance him from his so-called friends in Quy Nhon who keep dragging him back down into the gutter."
"He'd just find new 'friends' here."
"Not if we don't send him back to school," Peggy said. "At this point his education has already been so disrupted that I think we'd be better off getting some textbooks and just have him finish up at home. I could help him with that. And if and when he acts up, you'd be right here to handle it."
Steve sighed. "I'd do my best. I've helped patients through things like this before. But Peggy, when it's our own family and our own home, it might be... different."
"I wasn't thinking you were qualified to do this because of any certification," Peggy said firmly. "Long before that, you were helping people like Wanda Maximoff go straight. Even some of the other Avengers — people who had pasts, people who could potentially be dangerous if they lost self-control — you loved them and you accepted them. You made them family. And they responded to that."
"I'm more than willing to do it for Clint," Steve said, anxious that she not misunderstand. "It's you I'm worried about. We came here so you could retire. And now we're talking about going all the way back to being parents again. With a child who... isn't much like ours were."
"I won't get any rest until Clint finds his," Peggy said with certainty. "And I can't bear to see our son looking the way he looked tonight. If we can take some of the burden off his shoulders, even for a little while-"
"Okay," Steve said readily. "Okay. We'll offer."
After talking it over, Mike and Tien agreed to give their plan a try. Sarah and Dave were on board too, and Amanda and Joe were ready to do what they could to help their cousin, even knowing it might disrupt their own home life.
And so as soon as Clint had been settled into Steven's old bedroom, Steven and Peggy had a long talk with him to explain the rules of the house and the expectations they had for him.
"One of the conditions of staying here is that you have to get a job and keep it, in addition to your at-home studies," Peggy said. "Now, that might mean finding something in the village, or you could accept responsibilities here instead. It's a large house, and there are plenty of things to be done to care for it."
"So you want me to be your Cinderella," Clint quipped with an attempt at a smile, although his humor seemed a little forced. Somewhat to the family's surprise, he had seemed more embarrassed than angry by the decision to move him to Winchester. "Scrub the floors, wash the windows, muck out the stables."
"No stables, but the rest of that would be extremely helpful," Peggy said seriously. "Your aunt and uncle work long hours, and unfortunately your grandfather and I are slowing down a bit, as much as we hate to admit it. Joe and Amanda both have their chores, of course, and they help as much as they can, but they have a lot of homework to do."
"Yeah, and Amanda has her swimming, and Joe has his newspaper," Clint said, one of those odd notes of bitterness creeping into his voice.
"You don't have to do the cleaning," Steve put in. "I've been doing the cooking, but you could take that over if you'd rather."
Clint's eyes flicked down to the floor. "I don't know how to cook."
"Neither did I, at your age," Steve admitted. "In fact, I didn't learn until I was married. But everyone really appreciates having a hot meal waiting for them at the end of the day. Might be a little more glory in that than mopping floors."
Clint thought that over for a long moment. "Would you stay with me while I do it?" he asked Steve a little tentatively. "Tell me what to do and how to do it?"
"Sure. I'd like that."
Clint half-shrugged. "Okay. I'll try that, I guess."
For the next few weeks, he did his school lessons with Peggy in the mornings and then learned meal planning, grocery shopping and cooking from Steve, and both of them were heartened by the fact that he seemed to be putting some effort into it all. Of course, in the kitchen his learning curve was so steep that he needed continual guidance and it wasn't saving Steve any time or work yet, but Steve frankly enjoyed the time they time they spent together. Every once in a while something bitter or self-critical would slip out of Clint's mouth, but mostly he was energetic and funny, and when he was around there was never a dull moment.
Joe and Amanda got into the habit of playing card games with him in the evenings if they got their homework done in time, which usually turned into riotous laughter that went on past their bedtimes. It wasn't exactly ideal for the adults in the house who were trying to sleep, but they were all so glad that Clint had found a healthy way to have a good time that they let it go on.
One day Maggie came over to join the cooking lesson, having been asked to host a dinner for a crowd of her in-laws' political colleagues and realizing that there were several traditional English dishes Henry's mother was asking for that she didn't feel confident making just yet. Steve had learned how to make all the classics for Peggy back when they were newlyweds, and so the three of them began cooking up a storm and before long the kitchen was a glorious mess of dirty dishes while the air was filled with the smell of roast beef.
Maggie was in high spirits as they worked; a few weeks ago she and Henry had announced to the whole family that there was a baby on the way, and although there was only the faintest hint of roundness to her belly, she was already full of plans for the nursery and seemed to have all her pregnancy books memorized.
Tien and Peggy were sitting in the dining room working on Peggy's memoirs as the three of them cooked, and far from minding the distractions coming from the kitchen, they were both dipping into the conversation on a regular basis, excited both about the baby and about Maggie's picture appearing in The Sun when they had run a full-page spread of the festivities at Royal Ascot Raceday in their society section.
Steve shared their excitement about the baby, even if he was indifferent about the fashion spread; it had been much too long since there had been a baby in the family, and both he and Peggy were looking forward to finding out if being great-grandparents was as nice as becoming grandparents had been.
Clint had started off the day in high spirits too, but about the time they started moving the loaded dishes to the table, Steve realized that he had stopped participating in the conversation, and his face was uncharacteristically serious as he carelessly jammed a serving spoon into each dish.
When Maggie went back into the kitchen, Steve touched Clint's shoulder. "You okay?" he asked quietly.
Clint didn't look up from what he was doing. "Yeah."
Steve lifted his eyebrows slightly. "Clint. Really. Are you okay?"
Clint shrugged Steve's hand off his shoulder with an impatient gesture. "Why wouldn't I be?" he asked, and then he went back into the kitchen and busied himself filling a pitcher with water.
He remained strangely quiet throughout the dinner, and despite Steve's best efforts he could not find out what was going on by the time they all went to bed that night.
The next morning Steve woke up early and Tien sent both him and Sammy to San Francisco via portal for a long-planned trip to visit the Pyms.
Pym Industries had taken off over the last decade and Hank was now sitting on a fairly sizable fortune, while Hope had graduated from high school and was now studying business management. Their relationship wasn't exactly at its best. Hank had made good on his determination to send her to boarding school to free himself up to research the Quantum Realm even as he ran a growing company and mentored Darren Cross, and Hope was not the type of person to quietly swallow the indignity of being shoved to the side by her own father. She'd thrown herself heart and soul into her martial arts studies as a way of venting her anger over the situation, and when Sammy showed up Hope immediately started reminiscing about their sparring sessions together back in Bethesda when they were little girls, that summer her mother had died. Before long Hope ended up challenging Sammy to a friendly rematch, and while Hank and Steve talked in the living room, they could hear the girls' grunts and thumps coming from the workout room, punctuated by frequent laughter.
As they'd agreed beforehand, both Steve and Sammy poured their separate efforts into trying to soften Hank and Hope toward one another. It was the reason Peggy had decided not to come; while Hank did not blame her personally for what had happened, she was still a living reminder of his former employment at S.H.I.E.L.D., where everything had gone wrong for him. Her husband "Grant," on the other hand, as a mere friend, was safe.
He did what he could, knowing that he couldn't solve Hank and Hope's problems once and for all during this visit. Hope was destined to sit on the board of Pym Industries and shut her father out of his own company. But Steve cared for them both and wanted to see them happy again. He would have wanted that even if their reconciliation was not crucial for Hank's future discoveries about the Quantum Realm and his invention of the Quantum Tunnel. If he could plant any ideas in Hank's mind that would ease that transition someday, it would be worth it.
When the visit ended, they called Tien to discreetly portal them back home: Sammy back to her dorm at MIT and Steve to Winchester. But the moment he stepped into the cottage, he could hear someone crying. Frowning, Steve followed the sound into the living room.
There, he saw Maggie sitting on the couch, face buried in her hands while her shoulders shook with short, bitter sobs. Sarah was sitting next to her, while Maggie's husband Henry sat on her other side with one arm wrapped around her shoulders, looking pale and serious.
Peggy was perched in a chair pulled up close to them, one hand resting on Maggie's knee, but when she saw Steve standing in the doorway she quickly stood up and pulled him into the hallway for a whispered conversation.
"Please don't tell me-" Steve began, a quiet dread filling his heart, as there was only one thing he could think of that could make Maggie cry like that.
"She's losing the baby," Peggy confirmed in an undertone.
Steve was quiet for a long moment as her words sunk in. "Isn't there anything we can do for her?" he asked tentatively. "At the clinic?" They'd never tried such a thing with the serum, but if there was any chance, any chance at all…
Peggy shook her head slowly. "It's too late. There's no heartbeat. It's just a matter of time now."
Steve blinked several times, trying to understand. "But… that never happened to us, or to Sarah or Mike. I thought maybe the genetic changes-"
"It happens," Peggy said quietly. "Quite often. Perhaps we just got lucky before now. Or maybe the serum only improved our family's odds. Not eliminated the possibility."
Steve sighed heavily, feeling his heart constrict painfully. For this to happen to anyone was cruel. But for it to happen to Maggie of all people, when being a mother was what she had most longed for her whole life…
"Steve, Clint left the house earlier today and never showed up to handle dinner like he said he would," Peggy continued softly, and Steve's attention snapped back to the present. "He isn't answering his phone, either. I was just about to go out looking when Maggie and Henry showed up."
Steve allowed himself a moment to feel the crushing disappointment. So he'd done it again. Well, it probably would have been too much to ask that he and Peggy could solve Clint's problems when Mike and Tien hadn't been able to.
"I can go," Steve said after a beat.
"I can do it if you need," Peggy said quickly. "You've already been out today. You must be tired."
"I'm fine," he said firmly. "You should stay. Maggie would probably rather have a woman's touch right now."
"If you're sure."
He walked into the living room, where Maggie was resting her head on Henry's shoulder, red-eyed and silent, having finally run out of tears to cry. Steve put one hand on top of her head, feeling her dark curls like silk against his fingertips — so much like Peggy's — and then he leaned down to kiss the top of her head.
"I'm so sorry," he told her gently.
Steve followed Mike's example, and looked in all the usual places. But Clint wasn't in any of Winchester's four tattoo parlors, and no one there remembered seeing him. With a sinking heart, Steve realized that in the hours Clint had been gone, he could easily have gotten on a bus and gone some distance, in any direction, and at this point it might be next to impossible to find him. But bad odds had never stopped him before, and even though it was growing late and his body was beginning to strenuously object to the number of steps he had walked today, he started methodically driving from pub to pub to continue the search.
He finally got lucky at the third place as he went from table to table showing Clint's photo, and a man said easily that he remembered seeing him.
"Yeah, he was here," the man said, handing back the photo. "But he left with Amy. 'Bout an hour ago, I think."
Steve's heart leaped with hope. "Do you know where Amy lives?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
The man laughed. "There isn't a man in this pub who doesn't know where she lives."
Steve was worried he wouldn't give up the address, but he did, remarking dryly that if it was his kid, he wouldn't want him hanging out with that woman, either. Steve drove straight there, hoping and praying with all his strength that Clint would still be there, and despite muscles grown uncomfortably stiff he tried to hurry up the dingy, unlit stairs to the flat in question.
A young woman answered the door, and when he asked if she was Amy, she shot him a suspicious look, still holding the door open only a crack.
"Depends on who's asking," she said.
"I need to see Clint," he said.
"Who?"
"My grandson."
"Never heard of him."
Steve squared up his shoulders, leveled his gaze at her and said nothing. She stared back at him in a challenging kind of way, but he didn't so much as blink, and after a long wait she seemed to melt under his gaze, taking a slow step backward and letting go of the door so that it swung open the rest of the way.
Clint was sitting in the hallway behind her, leaning back against the wall, with his hands resting palms up on the threadbare carpet, staring at nothing in particular. Steve gently but firmly pushed his way past the young woman, and Clint looked up at him, eyes noticeably glassy even in the dim light.
"Oh. You," he said.
It hurt, but Steve got himself down on one knee to face Clint directly.
"You didn't tell anyone where you were going," he told Clint. "You had us all worried."
"Why? I'm good here."
Steve's eyes drifted down. There was a syringe on the carpet next to Clint, and a little glass bottle. Steve picked up the vial, and a surge of fear shot through him when he read the label and then realized it was empty. His heart suddenly racing, Steve looked over at Clint and quickly reached out to check his pulse.
"M' okay," Clint said, clumsily pulling his arm away. "Just... makes me sleepy."
"Sleepy? Clint, this is what doctors give to people going in for surgery," Steve said, feeling sick.
"'S the only thing that works on me." His words were slurred together, his eyelids drooping. "Just gotta… turn everything off. You know?"
"Why?" Steve asked, bewildered and worried and most of all, scared to death because he kept hearing Bruce Banner's words from long around echoing inside his head: I got low. I didn't see an end. So I put a bullet in my mouth. Was that where Clint's mind was? Was he intentionally trying to hurt himself? "Why are you doing this?"
"Gotta sleep," he mumbled, closing his eyes and tipping his head back against the wall.
"Leave him alone," a voice said, and Steve looked over to see Amy glaring at him from a few feet away.
"He came here to get away from his family," she said. "That's what he said. So just go away. He doesn't want you."
"I'm not leaving him alone. He's my grandson, and he's coming home with me," Steve said firmly.
The girl looked visibly annoyed, but after a few seconds she shrugged her shoulders and wandered away.
Steve looked back down at Clint, who had slumped back against the wall and looked for all the world as if he never intended to move again.
"Grandson? What grandson? 'M not even related to you," Clint mumbled.
"Considering you just took something that should have knocked out a horse and lived to tell the tale, I'm pretty sure that isn't true," Steve said.
He tried to get Clint up, but it quickly became clear he'd need a little more time before he went anywhere. And so painfully, stiffly, Steve managed to lower himself down on the floor and leaned up against the wall next to Clint.
Clint took in a slow wheezy breath and looked at him bleary-eyed.
"You hate me," he said.
"No, I don't," Steve said firmly. "I love you."
"No. You hate me."
"I love you."
"Lying," Clint mumbled.
"I don't ever."
Clint's eyes seemed to grow moist, but then he grimaced and pressed his palms into his eyes and didn't move or speak anymore. They sat there side by side in the hallway for a long time in silence.
Eventually, Amy came back, arms folded across her chest.
"Are you going to shove off, or what?" she asked Steve.
"We'll both leave as soon as he's ready," he said calmly.
"No, you'll leave when I say, you decrepit old gaffer," she shot back. "This is my flat, and I didn't invite you!"
"Shut up," Clint said unexpectedly, lifting his head up with eyes suddenly darkening. He stared a challenge at her. "You don't know who you're talking to."
"Clint-" Steve said quickly, worried that he might say too much in his impaired state.
"You're talking to my grandpa," Clint said forcefully. "So you shove off."
"Oh, that's great," she said sharply. "That's just great. Do you know how much that cost, what I just gave you? I wasn't about to make you pay, not for the first one, but now-"
She broke off as Clint made a clumsy attempt to get up. It was a bit of a struggle, but eventually he managed to get back onto his two feet. Suddenly worried that the situation might get out of hand, Steve started to get up, too, but his muscles had gone cold and he wasn't much more graceful than Clint had been.
Seeing it, Clint braced one hand against the wall and offered the other to Steve. Both of them were wobbly, but they managed to steady each other enough until Steve got back on his feet, too. Then Clint looked at the girl with narrowed eyes for a long moment until he reached into his pocket, dug out his wallet, and dropped several bills, letting them flutter disdainfully down to the floor. Then he turned his back on her.
Somehow they managed to help each other out to the car, and Steve drove them both home.
Maggie and Henry had gone home by the time they arrived. Sarah checked Clint over and then gave him an injection to counteract the effects of what he'd taken, suggesting that someone watch over him tonight just to be safe. So Peggy took the first shift sitting in a chair by Clint's bedside, and in the early hours of the morning Steve took over for her. To his relief, Clint kept breathing slowly and steadily until he finally woke up about an hour after Joe and Amanda had left for school.
Clint sat up slowly, looking around the room a little confused for a few seconds before he saw Steve sitting there. Then he seemed to remember all at once, and an expression of self-loathing crossed his face.
"How are you feeling?" Steve asked.
Clint ran one hand through his mussed hair, and then let his hand fall limply to the mattress. "Like crap," he said flatly.
"Are you hungry? I can make you something."
"It's my job to cook." Clint stared down at the rumpled blankets, the corners of his mouth curving downward. "I was supposed to cook last night. I screwed everything up, didn't I? Again."
"Everybody does sometimes," Steve said quietly.
Clint laughed humorlessly. "No one screws up like me."
"You weren't yourself," Steve said patiently. "I could tell something was going on the night before that. Why didn't you talk to me about it? I'm here to help you. Remember?"
Clint shoved the blankets off his legs and planted his bare feet on the carpet. "How could I?" he asked with a sudden passion. "You wouldn't understand. You, least of all!"
"Well, you might at least give me a chance to try," Steve said mildly.
Clint stood up and paced away from him, staring blindly out the window even though the sun was shining too weakly through the overcast sky to illuminate much of the garden below.
"So what was it?" Steve asked gently from behind him. "What set you off?"
Clint sighed heavily. "You'll hate me."
"I think we've already established that I won't."
There was a long silence. Then he turned to face Steve and spoke a single word: "Maggie."
"What did she say to you?" Steve asked.
"It isn't what she said," Clint said with a faint scowl. "It's what she is."
Steve's brow creased. "And that is?"
"The same thing everyone else in this family is. Perfect."
Steve absorbed that for a long moment. "Do you really think that about us?"
"Hmmm, well, let's see," Clint said with mock thoughtfulness. "When my grandma retired, she was named an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by the Queen of England. My grandpa saved the world so many times he's lost count now. My dad's a world-class spy even if the world doesn't know it, and my mom can travel across the planet in the blink of an eye-"
"Clint-" Steve started.
"No, wait. Just wait. I haven't even mentioned my siblings," Clint barged on. "My big brother is a bodyguard for the future savior of the galaxy. One of my sisters is a top-notch ballerina and the other one knew how to hack the internet before it even existed. Oh yeah, and I have a cousin who gets plastered all over the newspapers every time she goes to the races in her fancy hats and dresses to mingle with the upper crust. I wouldn't be surprised if her baby ends up having playdates with the royals. Not to mention the cousin that's a doctor, and the one that's a Marine, and the one that-"
"Clint, this family is not a competition," Steve interrupted firmly. "No one expects-"
"It isn't about expectations," Clint said, his voice raw. "Grandpa, I don't even care that everyone in the family is doing better than me. I can live with that. It's that I don't even know what I want to do. That's the part I can't stand. Everyone else is good at something, or at least knows what they want to be good at. I've got nothing. Nothing. I don't want to go anywhere or do anything. I just-" He flung his arms up in a gesture of defeat. "I just want everybody to leave me alone."
"Do you really want me to leave you alone?"
"No," Clint mumbled after a long pause. "Not you. And Steven. I don't mind him. You know, I really should hate him. He has everything I don't. He has that insane Rogers drive. Musta skipped over me somehow. But he's too nice to hate. He looks at me, and I think he gets it. He gets me. I don't make him uncomfortable like I do everyone else. Wish he wasn't always on duty, training somewhere."
Steve mulled that over for a minute. "What does Steven get about you that the rest of us don't?" he asked at last.
Clint's next words were almost a whisper. "He knows what it's like to not fit in anywhere."
Steve fought to suppress the surge of grief that shot through him. He'd been there — had spent half his life there — but he hadn't had a lonely day in his life since he had created a family for himself. He thought his children and grandchildren would be spared from that kind of isolation, that having parents and siblings and cousins who were all in the same boat would give them a place to belong. And it had worked, for the rest of them. How had they failed Clint so badly? And Steven too, apparently. He fought his impulse to deny the problem, to defend his own choices that had led to this pass, and instead asked Clint quietly: "What makes you think you don't fit in?"
"Look at me, Grandpa!" Clint gestured to himself vehemently. "I'm Vietnamese... only I'm not. But I'm not American anymore, either. I'm a supersoldier — kinda — except I'm not really that either. And everyone in this family loves being what they are, loves having their little secret from the world, loves being little mini-Avengers or Prevengers or whatever Harrison's calling it now, but I'm no good for anything like that, and I don't even want to be!"
"What do you want?"
Clint's face was reddened, his chest rising and falling with barely-suppressed emotion. "I don't know!"
Steve was silent for a minute, letting him calm down a little before asking seriously: "Well, what makes you happy?"
Clint laughed humorlessly, and didn't answer.
"No, really," Steve pressed. "What makes you happy?"
Bitterness flashed in his eyes. "You won't like it."
"Try me."
The silence stretched out for several minutes, but Steve just sat back, waiting, until finally Clint said quietly: "The tattoo parlor, I guess."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
"Yes, you do."
Clint's face worked for a minute, and then he said, almost reluctantly: "I know some people think it's just scribbles on skin, but it really is art. It's pretty cool, actually. And it means something special to the person getting it. Something really individual, something that's just for them."
Steve nodded, keeping his face neutral. "What else do you like about it?"
"No one there judges," Clint blurted out and suddenly more words came tumbling out of him as though he'd only been waiting for an invitation to say them. "You know what I mean? Everyone has problems, and you can talk about them there and no one looks at you funny. Or you can listen to someone else talk, and maybe think of something you can say to help them, or at least make them smile for a while. Grandpa, do you- Do you believe me? I know everybody thinks I'm just doing this stuff to get attention. I swear that isn't it. But please… please tell me you understand." His brown eyes were pleading.
Steve took a deep breath and chose his words carefully. "I'm not gonna pretend to understand it, Clint, but it isn't about me. You've only got one life to live, and you need to find a way to be happy without destroying yourself in the process. That stuff that happened last night? That can't happen again. I know you know that. So you tell me: How can you take the interests and the talents that you have and turn them into something that's healthy for you, and maybe even does some good for the world around you too?"
Clint looked frustrated. "I'm not like you, Grandpa. Everything you touch turns to gold. I swear, if I couldn't do some of the things I can do, I wouldn't think we were even related."
Steve smiled with wry amusement. "First of all, you just got through telling me how much you love talking to people and listening to their problems and helping them feel better. And you still think you're not like me?"
Clint snorted a little. "Let's face it, Grandpa, a tattoo parlor's a little grittier than your old counselor's office, don't you think?"
"And second of all," Steve continued, "not everything I touch turns into gold. I've made mistakes in my life. A few of them were pretty bad. That thing that's going to happen in 30 years? The one that's going to tear our family in half, along with every other family in the galaxy? That was on me. You think I don't know what failure tastes like? That I never had mornings after that when I wondered why I even bothered to get up, when there just didn't seem to be a point to it anymore?"
"You did?" Clint said slowly.
"You're thinking of Captain America like he was some kind of living legend, like he was never unsure of himself, like he couldn't do wrong," Steve said. "Well, I was there, and I'm telling you, it wasn't like that."
Clint was looking at him as if with new eyes. "But how did you get out of that hole, Grandpa? That's the part I can't figure out."
Steve shook his head a little. "I wish there was an easy answer. Back then, I hit on the idea of leading therapy sessions, partly because I thought maybe I could relieve the guilt a little by trying to help people through the situation I'd caused in the first place. Partly it was because that was something Sam Wilson had done, and... maybe I was trying to replace him, trying to keep him alive by keeping his work going. I'm not sure any of that was really a good reason to do what I did. But at least I had a reason to get out of bed in the morning, and I think I did manage to help some people-" He let out a quick sigh. "-even if I couldn't help myself. To tell you the truth, I wasn't really right again until Scott Lang showed up on my doorstep and gave me a shred of hope."
Clint's shoulders sagged. "So you're telling me I just have to grit my teeth and power through this crap?"
"I'm not telling you anything. All I can tell you is what I did. You're gonna have to figure out a solution for yourself."
"That sucks, Grandpa. That really, really sucks."
"Well, you're smart. You'll come up with something. But you've got to make up your mind to do it, and stick to it even when things don't instantly get better. We all love you, and we'll be here to help you up every time you fall, but we can't do this for you. You're stronger than you know, and you can do this for yourself. I know you will."
Clint was uncharacteristically quiet all day, and that night as he and Steve worked together to clean up after dinner, he suddenly asked: "Does it really help to help other people?"
"I think it does," Steve said. "Gets you out of your own head."
"Well... who am I supposed to help?" Clint asked with faint bewilderment. "You guys don't want me going places where people are using. I'll relapse again. But that's where I'm always meeting people who need the most help."
"You could start with your own family," Steve suggested.
"You must be joking," Clint said with a snort. "Our family? Everyone here already has everything together." Then his face fell; he'd been both shocked and touchingly worried when they'd told him earlier that day about Maggie losing the baby. "Well... except Maggie. And... Steven too, I guess."
"You said this morning that he felt lost, too."
Clint's eyes suddenly widened. "I shouldn't have-" he started, looking stricken. "That was private, I wasn't supposed to talk about-"
"It's between you and him," Steve said quickly. "I won't put my nose in your business or his. But if you're looking for someone to help... Well, I've been worried about him, too."
Clint was quiet for a long moment. "But what am I supposed to do for them?"
"What you always do. What you're good at. Start by listening. People are good at putting on faces. You have to really listen before they start trusting you enough to tell the truth about what's going on underneath. Once you know that, you'll start seeing ways to help."
Winter changed into spring, and by the time the lilac bushes in Peggy's garden started to bloom, Clint had been able to scrape together enough self-discipline to complete his GED. He didn't seem to be in a rush to move out, though, and both his parents and Steve and Peggy weren't inclined to push it, either. Clint now knew how to make a number of meals without any help from Steve. He even seemed to like doing it, although any suggestions that he might turn his burgeoning cooking skills into a profession were immediately rebuffed. It was clear he wasn't ready for something like that.
And so he stayed on into the summer, and poured his full concentration into whipping up the hors d'oeuvres for Bram and Aliyah's wedding reception, held in the cottage's garden at its prime. To the whole family's great amusement, several of the Masters of the Mystic Arts that Aliyah had befriended during her short stay at Kamar-Taj, before leaving to join Sarah and Dave's magical medical staff, showed up in their traditional garb to join the celebration. Henry's parents, as both their next door neighbors and Maggie's in-laws, had naturally been invited, and the skeptical looks they leveled at those neatly pleated tunics and flowing robes were priceless. Clint imitated their expressions to a T as Steven snapped a photo of him, and even Maggie had to admit later that it was the funniest photo in Bram and Aliyah's wedding album.
With his doctorate completed, Bram and Aliyah moved to Salt Lake City as soon as their honeymoon was over to run a new satellite clinic Dave and Sarah had just opened up there. They had decided to spread their clinics across the globe widely, and not only in major cities, to give the gift of healing as equitably as possible. It helped that so many of their employees were former trainees from Kamar-Taj, which also drew in students from around the globe, and who therefore already knew a variety of languages. They now had clinics in every inhabited continent, some of them small but all of them growing.
Another year came and went, and Amanda left home to attend university in Dublin. Clint, however, made no plans to leave Winchester. He had months at a time when he did well, when Steve and Peggy could hardly imagine life without him — the way he broke them out of their ruts and kept them both smiling, the way he could nonchalantly run errands and handle tasks around the house that the two of them were beginning to struggle to take care of themselves, the way he kept in constant touch with Steven and managed to coax more information out of his introverted cousin than anyone else could about how he was really doing, as the stress of military life sometimes brought him down.
But Clint had more relapses, too. There were days when Steve and Peggy searched the town high and low for him, knowing what state they'd find him in when they located him or he decided to finally come back home. There were a lot of sleepless nights and long, emotionally fraught conversations. There were weeks at a time when Mike and Tien decided to stay at the cottage, too, to better show their son their love without disrupting his life by bringing him back to Quy Nhon with them. It meant the household was frequently in a state of turmoil, with people coming and going and uncomfortable conversations happening at odd hours of the night. Joe, as the last of Sarah and Dave's children left at home, sometimes could not hide his frustration with the disturbances as he tried to finish his last year of high school, and his parents ended up taking him for long drives when it got to be too much for him, hoping to give him the individual attention he needed, too.
When spring rolled back around, Joe moved out of the cottage to start his education at Boston University, studying to be a journalist. At the same time, Amanda moved back in and joined St. Raphael's staff, but not as a healer like her older brother Bram. She had completed her degree in business management in record time by attending classes year-round, and to Dave and Sarah's great relief she took over many of their administrative duties, leaving Dave more time to work out new lines of serum research and freeing Sarah to handle the training of new healers and perform the trickier procedures that patients needed.
Amanda was clearly in her element, keeping the wheels of the business greased, and Clint joked to her face that it must be good for her to have her lifelong dream of bossing people around fulfilled so soon, which Amanda readily agreed to without a trace of shame.
As Clint's third year living in Winchester came to an end, he had the longest stretch yet without any relapses. Steve could see the hope growing in him, that maybe this time he would be able to keep it up. Maybe he could finally begin living the life he wanted. Because Clint had finally settled on a goal for himself. After a lot of thinking and talking and planning with both Peggy and Steve and his own parents, he finally took the plunge and moved out to begin an apprenticeship to a tattoo artist in Chicago.
It wasn't exactly the kind of future they had once envisioned for their son, as Mike and Tien both admitted, but the fact that Clint had chosen a direction at all, and was putting in the effort to make it a reality, was such a relief to them that they were genuinely glad for him. As long as he could stay sober while he was doing it, it was all they could ask. They kept in touch with him as often as possible, facilitated by Tien's sling ring, and made sure he knew he was loved and accepted.
It seemed that his cousin Steven also spoke with him often, in person when they could, but mostly on the phone because of Steven's demanding duties with the Marines. Steven was always careful not to betray any confidences, but whenever he quietly reassured Mike and Tien that Clint was still doing well, they relaxed; they knew Steven could be trusted not to lie.
June 30, 2001
With the grandchildren spreading so widely across the globe as they left home, the family realized they needed to plan ahead if they wanted to gather everyone together all at once, especially since Bram, Maggie and Natty, as the married ones, now needed to split their holidays between their parents and their in-laws. And so Steve and Peggy chose a day for everyone to meet at Ocean Village in Southampton, intending for it to become an annual summertime event.
From his vantage point under an enormous beach umbrella shading him and Peggy in their lounge chairs, Steve could see his whole family enjoying the sun as seagulls cried overhead and the cool ocean breeze fluttered the edges of their towels spread out on the sand.
Natty was standing back to back with Bram's wife Aliyah, both of them showing off their baby bumps and ear-to-ear smiles as their husbands snapped away with their cameras. Meanwhile, beside him, Peggy was carefully lifting the new baby out of Maggie's arms. Maggie's expression was a mixture of pride and anxiousness as she handed the baby over. She didn't really like letting him out of her arms, Steve had noticed, much less her sight. It was as if she was afraid the baby would vanish as suddenly as the one she had lost, although this pregnancy had thankfully developed normally, with an uneventful delivery.
"Oh, you are a sweet one, aren't you?" Peggy crooned softly as she cuddled the baby up to her chest. "Yes, you are. You are just perfect." Steve felt a smile tugging at his lips, remembering the countless times he had seen Peggy cradling their own children in the same way.
"Maybe I missed a memo, but I didn't catch which James this little man here was named after," Sammy said, kneeling on the sand by Peggy and reaching over to gently smooth down the baby's tufts of dark hair.
"He's named after all three of them," Henry said promptly from Maggie's side. "My father, and Bucky, and Rhodey. We'll call him Jim to set him apart."
"Hey Harrison, why isn't Christina here? When are you gonna put a ring on it?" Bram demanded, lowering his camera as Harrison walked past, moving his feet quickly in the hot sand.
"Buzz off," Harrison said, although a smile lit up his face as he paused under the shade of the umbrella to answer. "I'll do it when I'm good and ready."
"Well, hurry it up," Aliyah broke in, one hand resting on her burgeoning belly as drops of salt water glittered on her long box braids. "You have a weird family, and I need a fellow sister-in-law to commiserate with."
"Oh, that's cute. The sorceress is calling us weird," Harrison said.
"I spent all of three months at Kamar-Taj," Aliyah defended herself. She had never been one to take an insult lying down. "At this point your aunt has taught me more spells than they ever did."
"Just think how convenient it would be to have not one but two Carters keeping a close eye on Tony Stark," Bram told Harrison, slipping his arm around Aliyah's waist.
"That is not why I'm dating-" Harrison began vehemently.
"-a fellow Stark Industries employee. We know, we know," Bram said with a wink.
"If you want to bug someone about girls, bug your own brother," Harrison shot back, gesturing at Steven, who had just emerged from the surf dripping with water after a solo swim far out to sea. "As far as I can tell, he isn't even dating."
"Have you guys seen the divorce statistics for active duty Marines?" Steven said mildly as he vigorously dried his back off with a towel. "I'm doing my future family a favor. One thing at a time."
"Sounds like a really lousy, lonely way to live if you ask me," Harrison said. "When are you gonna quit the Marines and live like a normal person?"
"When I'm done."
"When's that?" Bram pressed. "Just what exactly are you aiming for here? Uncle Mike says you can already out-fight almost anyone in the world. What is there left for you to learn?"
Steven didn't answer for a long moment, face impassive as beads of seawater slid down his muscled chest. At that moment, Clint came to his rescue; the rest of them hadn't even noticed him arriving behind his mother and father, wearing flip-flops under his Bermuda shorts. He had a design etched across his left pectoral, although it wasn't a tattoo — he had given up on getting one of those for himself — but only henna. He often joked that it was the perfect way to test out designs for customers anyway, although it was challenging to do it backwards, facing a mirror.
"I'm pretty sure Steven's the only person here qualified to decide what's best for Steven," Clint said mildly, and Harrison and Bram both dropped the subject, looking a little guilty.
"Race you to the water," Harrison said to Bram then, and in moments both of them were charging full-speed into the surf.
A visibly relieved Steven strode over to give Clint a brief hug. "Hey, Clint. How's Chi-Town?" he asked.
"Windy," Clint said promptly. "How's Twentynine Palms?"
"Hot."
They grinned at each other, and then wandered off down the beach together to get caught up on each other's news. They had only just gone out of earshot when Dave, Sarah and Joe came back from the concessions hut with their arms full of bottled drinks, and immediately found themselves swarmed by thirsty people.
"How's Boston?" Tien asked Joe as she accepted the last water bottle from him. "Are they keeping you busy?"
"Between my classes and the student paper?" Joe ran his fingers through his wet hair, making it stand out in three different directions. "I barely have time to breathe."
"I bet you love being free of all that red tape your high school principal tried to tie you up with when you were trying to print that paper of yours back in Winchester," Dave said.
"You would think," Joe said with a hint of disgust.
"Don't tell me your university administration tries to control what you print?" Amanda said in surprise. "In college? In America?"
"Not the administration," Joe said grimly. "The professors."
"What?" Amanda said, even more startled. "You don't mean your journalism professors?"
"Some of 'em. And other departments. I don't mean to make it sound worse than it is," Joe added quickly. "It's not like anyone's playing dirty tricks or doing anything illegal. But the pressure... the pressure on our staff to favor certain narratives in the stories we cover is unrelenting. And when it's authority figures pressuring kids who have only been reporting for a year or two and aren't confident yet in what they're doing, well, you can imagine the situation."
"And there you are, trying to cover both sides fairly," Sarah said sympathetically.
"No," Joe said vehemently. "That's half the problem. I'm trying to cover all three or four sides fairly. There are usually at least that many, no matter what the issue is. But everyone seems to be locked into this X versus Y viewpoint. Everyone wants a villain to point at. No one wants nuance. I thought... I thought it would be better in college." He looked frustrated. "I can't wait to graduate. Get out into the real world, get a job at a real paper. Where they know how to do it right."
Just then, Bram and Harrison jogged back up from their dip in the water and snagged themselves a couple of drinks before sinking down into the sand to bolt them down.
"How about you, Sammy?" Aliyah asked, nudging her where she lay stretched out on her towel in her swimsuit, eyes closed against the brightness of the sun. "You anxious to graduate and get away from MIT?"
"Are you kidding me?" Sammy said, propping herself up on one elbow and shading her eyes so she could look at them. "MIT's the best thing that ever happened to me. I've never seen so many brilliant minds packed into one little space. I'm not sure I want to leave at all." She shrugged a little. "I guess maybe I'll have to. Get some experience at one of those up-and-coming tech companies. But I might go back someday."
"To teach?"
"Maybe."
"You could probably teach them a thing or two now," Harrison said slyly.
"They don't let instructors teach students how to do anything that's technically illegal," Sammy pointed out dryly.
"Technically!" Harrison howled, slapping his sister on the back. "Technically!"
"Look, someone has to hack into databases and scrub our family's photos and records out of them," Sammy said calmly, settling back down onto her towel. "Someone has to keep things clean until Arnim Zola's creepy computer brain gets blown up, and Ultron's done doing what he's going to do. Can't have either of them figuring out there are two Steve Rogers, after all, not to mention a dozen or so descendants."
From the towel beside her, Amanda sighed deeply, arranging herself more comfortably on the sand, her eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses. "I love the beach," she said with feeling. "I think I need to live on one."
"Seriously?" Sammy asked.
"I've been thinking about moving to California," Amanda confessed. "St. Raphael's is international now, and there's really no reason why I should have to work in gray and gloomy old England. Especially when we have portals."
"Our mothers already spend half their lives portaling people back and forth where they need to go," Sammy pointed out.
"Maybe I should get my own sling ring," Amanda said thoughtfully. "There really should be more of us who can, don't you think?"
"Probably."
"Hey Mom," Mike said lazily from where he was laying on his towel, "how long are we staying here?"
"As long as we want," Peggy said, tipping her head back with a beatific expression on her face as the cool breeze rippled over them again. Baby James had fallen asleep on her chest, with his lips pursed and one tiny fist pressed up against his round cheek. "Sharon and her family won't be here until morning, and I already have her sweet sixteen gift wrapped and ready to go."
"What is it?" Joe asked curiously.
"Thigh holster," Peggy said promptly.
Harrison laughed. "Oh, her mother's going to love that."
"Well, not really, no."
"Grandpa?" Clint asked Steve, crouching down by his lounge chair. He and Steven had just gotten back from his walk. "You up to walking with me a ways?"
"Yeah," Steve agreed. Clint gave him a hand up, and soon they were strolling down the beach, leaving the deeper, hotter sand to walk through the shallow waves lapping against the shore instead.
"So how are you doing?" Steve asked Clint as he stooped to pick up a seashell and throw it far out into the waves.
"I've been sober for 14 months and three weeks," Clint said with the cadence of someone who had uttered similar sentences many times before.
Steve patted his back briefly. "Good. Work going well?"
"Yeah. My trainer likes my designs. Says my technique is getting better. Got a raise this month, which was nice."
"Gonna move into a better place?"
Clint laughed. "A better place? What, you don't like the shabby urban studio apartment I have now?" He chucked another seashell into the water. "Nah, I'm saving up for something better. Got my eye on a Harley Davidson Road King Classic I'd like to buy. Might be a little more fun than always taking the L."
"I approve," Steve said immediately.
Clint grinned knowingly. "I knew you would."
"Might help you pick up chicks," Steve added.
"Really? Hadn't thought of that."
They exchanged smiles.
"Making good friends?" Steve asked.
Clint nodded. "Yeah. I've actually got one living with me right now. He came into the parlor for a tat, and was brave enough to let a trainee like me practice on him. He's a good guy. Or at least he's trying to be. He was kinda in a spot of trouble. Girlfriend kicked him out of her place, but he's between jobs and couldn't get a place of his own. There are shelters, of course, but they don't let people in when they're impaired, for safety reasons. He wants to be clean, he really does, but he can't always manage it. So, long story short, he ended up panhandling on the streets."
"And he spent what he got on a tat?"
"Not the smartest decision," Clint acknowledged. "And he knew that. Sometimes people don't always do what they know they should. I get that. Anyway, that's why he's sleeping on my couch, and I'm helping him stay clean while he looks for a job." He started to throw another seashell into the waves, but then looked at it more closely and decided to tuck it into the pocket of his shorts instead. "At least I hope I'm helping."
"I'm sure you are," Steve said. "He's lucky he met you."
"I hope so."
"I'm proud of you."
Clint's chin went up slightly, his chest poking out a bit. "That's... kinda nice to hear," he admitted.
TO BE CONTINUED
Author's note: Here's the updated family free. Spouses are in parenthesis.
Sarah (Dave), running St. Raphael's Medical Services headquartered in Winchester, England. Their children:
Bram (Aliyah), 27, running St. Raphael's clinic in Salt Lake City, Utah
Maggie (Henry), 25, living in London and working at a children's nonprofit, raising newborn son, James.
Steven, 22, based at Marine Corps Base in Twentyninepalms, California
Amanda, 20, living in Winchester, England and working as business administrator for St. Raphael's
Joe, 18, journalism student at Boston University
Mike (Tien), living in Qui Nhon, Vietnam, training Clint Barton in Washington, D.C. Their children:
Natty (Quyen), 26, ballet dancer, living in Ho Chi Minh City
Harrison, 24, living in New York City, working for Stark Industries
Sammy, 22, student at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Clint, 20, living in Chicago, training as tattoo artist
Phew. This chapter was a beast to write. I welcome reviews!