'What is it that we don't know we're missing?
There is no hope in photos if I can't remember the feelings within them
I'm trying to find my way back to where we started
My tired mind holds no maps of the past…
Oh, the saints go marching out with their faces full of doubt.'

"No Maps of the Past" ~ The Collection

~OL~

"Bye, Pete, and nice to officially meet you." Cooper held out his fist as he passed the porch swing on his way to the car. "Thanks for marking my physics homework earlier. It'll really help when exams roll around."

Pete did his best owl impression, lips round. He was already a few inches shorter than Cooper, despite being older, and sitting down didn't help the height difference any—nor his shyness. He eyed Cooper for a long beat only to jump when Clint honked the car horn. Laura, standing in the doorway, mentally scolded Clint for that, as if they didn't have the twitchiest teenager on record sitting on their porch.

It was the fastest fist bump Laura had ever seen, but Pete did it. Cooper beamed.

Laura waved her dishtowel to catch Lila's attention, already buckled in the car. "Get your father back in here!"

"We'll miss the bus, Mom!"

"Just for a minute!"

Lila ducked away from the window and towards the front, in Clint's ear. He nodded and hopped out. Nate, occupied with reading homework at the table, sang the words to himself. Something about a rabbit. Even though he was reading a book about ice cream.

Clint relieved Pete of his plate and met Laura in the kitchen. "What's up, Lo?"

Laura pointed to the dishwasher. "It won't turn on."

"Again?"

"I suppose I should be grateful it isn't leaking this time."

Clint placed Pete's dish in the sink and toggled with the dials for a minute. "I'll buy some parts while I'm in town, along with more clothes for Pete. I'm pretty sure it needs new copper wiring at the back, that some exposed parts are touching and getting cycles mixed up."

Laura released her breath. "Thank you. It's not like we need a dishwasher. We certainly survived most of early parenthood without one—it's more that it has a mind of its own and acts up at random."

Clint saluted. "I'm on it, Mrs. Barton."

"Don't you start too."

This was probably payback for her laughing at him over Lila's comment and she probably deserved it, but she flicked the dishtowel at his behind as he left. On principle. Clint grinned the whole walk back to the car, only widening when he waved at Pete.

"Are we bakin' today, Mommy?" asked Nate.

"You bet we are." Laura picked up Nate and peered at his spot in the picture book. "As soon as we finish our read-aloud time. I promised chocolate chip cookies and chocolate chip cookies we shall have."

Nate squealed in excitement. "Read now!"

"Slow your rolls, champ." Laura plopped him back in his seat after wiping both cheeks free of maple syrup. "You pick a spot you want to read to me."

Nate hurriedly flipped back a few pages and Laura took the opportunity to check Pete still out on the porch. Both she and Clint had guessed at what Pete did all day, besides sleeping. And to be fair, he needed a lot of sleep. His body wasn't back at capacity by any means. But they worried about him getting bored or lonely during the hours they couldn't be with him.

Laura could only stop and watch—

Pete stood there stretching, first his hamstrings followed by his obliques, then settled back on the swing with one of Cooper's software programming textbooks. A sheet of loose leaf bookmarked his spot. He scribbled notes on it and a journal he pulled out of his backpack.

Laura's stomach warmed. How normal Pete looked in this moment, just a kid doing his homework, even if it was self imposed and leagues harder than what the average high school taught. Bacon crumbs on his pants. Curls still lopsided from his bedhead.

Clint was right; Pete did need new clothes. One pair of jeans and assorted threadbare T-shirts and hoodies weren't cutting it. He didn't even have pajamas.

She fired off a list in she and Clint's text chain, then listened to Nate read for a while. He made up some of the words, but he sounded out 'chocolate' for the first time and flushed, so proud of himself that he immediately darted out to show Pete.

He balanced on the teen's knee, bobbing. "I recognized it this time! See?"

Pete pointed to the word in the book and Nate shrieked it again at top volume. "Chocolate! Cho-co-late!"

Pete cringed, nodding. "Good job."

"Thanks!"

"Alright, chief." Laura herded Nathaniel away from the porch swing. "Cookie time. We're doubling the recipe to practice our addition."

"Finally!" Nate tugged on Pete's hand before he hit the stoop. "Come bake with us!"

Laura watched Pete shrivel back into himself. He shook his head.

Nate's face fell. "You don't want cookies?"

Pete turned back to his book, letting go of Nate. His hand shook around the mechanical pencil.

"We'll bring him some when we're done." Laura palmed the top of Nate's head and veered between them for damage control. "Sound good?"

Nate brightened again. "Okay! Can I write 'chocolate chip' on the bag?"

"I was hoping you would."

"Yesss!"

Nate got to kneel on the bar stool for their baking adventure. Laura stirred and mixed and cut anything that required a sharp knife, like the butter stick. But Nate was left in charge of measuring dry ingredients—which meant half of it ended up on the counter. Laura just smiled, used to as much after raising three kids.

"If we have a one-third cup measurer here and want double the amount of sugar, how much is that?"

A rare silence fell over the kitchen. Nate looked from the cup measurer to the granulated sugar bag. His mouth moved, doing math under his breath.

"Do I add the top number or the bottom?"

"The top," said Laura.

More silence. Nate had done this one before, but never in fraction form.

"Two-sixes?"

Laura tapped the cup measurer. "The bottom number stays the same."

Nate's brow cleared. "Two-thirds!"

"Look at you go!" Laura held up her hand and Nate high fived it with his tacky fingers. "Measure out some for us."

Nate burbled along, still telling Laura his made-up story about a rabbit while he reached his little arm inside the sugar bag. Laura 'oohed' and 'hmmed' along in all the rights place, greasing their baking sheets in preparation. Their stand mixer beat the butter and sugars in no time, and when she turned it off Nate was still going.

"An' the rabbit wanted more strawberries but he followed them into the woods and had to find his way back to his friends—"

"Ah!" Laura leapt backwards with a cry, away from the sink. Her blue socks darkened into a navy shade. "Not again."

Fleet footed steps and the door whisked open preceded Pete barrelling into the room at ninety miles an hour. He panted, eyes everywhere at once. Both arms hovered out from his sides in a strangely familiar stance, like Clint the night Nate went missing, and he had the pencil brandished in one fist like a shiv.

"You okay?" Pete demanded, voice tense.

Guilt rushed through Laura. She raised her hand to his shoulder but didn't touch, seeing the steel cables in his body. "I'm sorry, Pete. I just stepped in a big water puddle on the floor and it startled me. I didn't mean to scare you."

"Puddle?" Pete relaxed, pencil tucked back into his pocket.

"From the dishwasher. It keeps shorting out and thinking we need water for a cycle…but I haven't started one. It wouldn't even turn on an hour ago."

With ginger care, Pete stepped around the thick layer of water and knelt by the dishwasher. Laura grabbed some old rags to mop up the spill.

He signed something.

"Sorry, honey. I don't know that one."

Pete cleared his throat, jiggling his fist. "Tools?"

Laura looked up from her hands-and-knees drying process. She sat back on her heels. "You want…you want to take a crack at it?"

"Can fix it."

"Are you sure? I don't want you to hurt yourself on all the exposed wires. Not to mention the risk of electrocution with the water line."

Pete shook his head, face lighter. Almost a grin. "Easier than a hearing aid."

Laura winked. "You've got a point. I'll see what Clint's got for tools out in the barn."

When she came back, Pete had finished drying the floor and sent Nate to the laundry room with an arm load of towels. The teen lay on his back now, dishwasher pulled out a foot or so from the wall. Laura spared a moment to wonder how he'd done that by himself—their dishwasher was a relic, clunky enough that it took Laura lots of huffing and puffing to move it when they were given the thing ten years ago—before squatting beside him.

"I found his carpentry belt, the one Clint wears to build that tree house out back he thinks I don't know about."

Pete looked sheepish.

"You've helped with that too?"

Pete nodded and grabbed a pair of pliers off the belt. Then a screwdriver from his jeans pocket. A mini red one that looked like it had seen some lab fires.

"You carry that everywhere with you?"

"Just in case something else breaks," said Pete, wry.

He…he teased her! Pete just used sarcasm to tease her! Laura could have flown up to the treetops if someone asked her to. Pete trusted her enough to show his personality.

"I'll leave you to it, but if you need help or hurt yourself—please tell me. That's a rule, Pete."

"Yes, Mrs. Laura."

Somewhere, off in some department store maybe, Clint was laughing at her. She could feel it.

Laura muttered under her breath about overly polite teens and pretended not to see Pete's half smile around his blush.

"Hey, Pete?"

"Mmm?"

Laura palmed his forearm, with a soft back and forth rub. "The house feels…calmer. More stable, with you in it. I'm glad you're here."

Pete didn't reply for a while, busying himself with the screwdriver as he opened an insulated panel behind the washer. Then he reached out and brushed his hand against her wrist so they were linked, gentle and careful about even that small touch.

"M-me too," he finally whispered.

~OL~

Clint walked into the house two hours later—

And stepped back in time.

For a man who'd done that for real, several times, it shouldn't have been such a taser shock his system. But it was. He froze in the kitchen doorway and all six shopping bags fell from his hands.

Beat up sneakers, oil-stained jeans, and a scrawny waist were the only things visible of the figure half swallowed behind the dishwasher. Tools lay scattered in a ring. The figure mumbled, bumping a nearby soldering iron with his knee.

Laura and Nathaniel licked batter off the spoon at the counter stools and delicious smells wafted up from the oven. Together the pair watched the filthy figure on the floor work his magic. Nate in particular sat straighter any time the mechanic reached for a new tool.

Clint had walked in on this exact domestic scene dozens of times. Usually with more swearing and rock music playing in the background. Sometimes Nate practiced tying the mechanic's shoes. Other times, if the kids weren't around, he and Clint swapped outrageous stories of times they'd been shot at or abducted.

Nathaniel spotted him. He scrambled down from his chair at Mach one. "Daddy! I added cookie ingred'ents!"

It broke Clint from the spell. "That's so cool, buddy! Good for you."

He went down on one knee to hug Nate when he ran over to his side of the room, but his eyes never left the dishwasher. Those dexterous fingers that appeared every so often around the lip.

Out popped a curly head.

Clint hid the emotional discord and grief by kissing Nate's hair. "Hey, Pete."

Not Tony…

But oh if the kid wasn't the spitting image of Stark right now. Phillips head screwdriver in his mouth, hair everywhere, grease streak across one cheek. Even the sneakers were similar to the kind Tony wore, obsessed with the latest and best in every material possession but his footwear.

Pete waved.

Clint stayed low to the ground and squeezed Pete's ankle. A slow, tender pressure in case Pete didn't want to be crowded right now. He certainly didn't look on edge. The apples of the teen's cheeks flamed with colour and his eyes held a certain vigor, sorting through all those wires.

"Was I right?" Clint asked. "The wires are stripped and touching?"

Pete rocked his hand. Back to being less verbal, but Clint hadn't expected anything else, with him here in an unfamiliar setting. Pete would talk more like that day at the tree house when he was ready. Clint just had to be patient and wait.

"They're definitely a problem," said Pete, once he took the screwdriver out of his mouth. "But your drain hose and door gasket are loose too."

Or not.

A thrill ran through Clint at the full, verbalized sentences. Laura twitched in her chair and Nate's eyes widened to hear the boy's voice at a normal volume, now that Clint was nearby.

"You need fresh tape to protect the wires?" he asked.

"Already got it."

"Of course you do." Something fond and admiring laced Clint's tone. "One of these days you'll have to give me a thorough run-down on all the science topics you're good at."

Pete's toes squirmed. Clint squeezed those too through the shoe, small and curled just like Pete himself.

"He's been so helpful, Daddy," piped Nate.

"Oh, has he?" With one hand on Pete's leg and the other around Nate where he hugged Clint's neck, Clint couldn't stop smiling. It was the best kind of hands-full situation he could imagine. "I expect nothing less from Pete the human golden retriever."

Pete nudged Clint's shin with his toe for that.

"Got it!"

Clint leaned back. "Already?"

"Mhmm."

Clint held out his hand and Pete took it without a second thought, riding the pull to his feet. It nettled at Clint's heart, how light the kid was. A candle wick of a thing. Yet he didn't let go of Clint's hand when he stood and the tether demanded Clint wrap Pete in bubble wrap and never let him leave the house again.

Clint ignored this with effort and tried to follow Pete's wizardry with the dishwasher toggles. There seemed to be some sort of sequence.

"I screwed the electrical panel back on and the hose bracket is tighter now."

"Time for the true test." Laura rounded the counter and snuggled the last of their messy baking bowls in the top rack of the dishwasher. "You want to do the honours, Pete?"

Suddenly timid again, Pete nodded. "O-okay."

Settings ready, all he had to do was flick the knob. He did so with his bottom lip sucked back between his teeth…

The dishwasher's grrhhhgrsshhkkk symphony started up without a hitch.

Laura clapped her hands. "You did it! This thing didn't run so well even when we first got it!"

She kissed Pete's cheek before he could register her so close. Pete blinked, hand to his cheek. Nate cheered too, just happy to be in the middle of the family huddle. Together, Clint and Pete shoved the washer back underneath the counter cut out and dusted off their hands.

"Is it cookie time yet?" asked Nate.

Clint ruffled his hair. "Yeah, little man. It's cookie time."

Pete started to inch backwards…

"Oh no." Clint scooped an arm around his shoulders and steered him towards the counter. "Not getting away that easily. Master mechanics deserve cookies, that's the rule."

"Even Steve gets cookies when he chops our wood," Nate confirmed. "And he's not a mechanic like Tony."

"Stark fixed up a lot of our house," Laura explained to Pete in a muted tone. "Like the upstairs wiring."

"And the sensors," said Pete.

Laura canted her head. "Yeah…yeah, stuff like that."

Pete's forced smile, along with how easily he'd fixed the dishwasher, spun a bobbin in Clint's mind, invisible thread spooling into a bulk he couldn't see even in daylight. Nate jabbered about how to add measuring cup fractions for a while, from his place on Laura's hip, and Pete stood between either adult while he nibbled on a chocolate chip cookie in teeny tiny bites. Like he might never get one again.

"Chocolate chip is my favourite," he said softly, when conversation lulled.

Clint rested a hand on the back of his neck. He made a note to have chocolate chip cookies stocked in the kitchen as often as humanly possible. "Mine too."

Pete bought the relaxed tone but Laura didn't, eyes sharp on her husband over Nate's head. He graciously offered his milk glass for Pete to dunk his cookie.

'Clint?' Laura mouthed.

Clint shook his head, unsure how to answer her silent concern, the tether in a tug of war match with his mind. One he wasn't sure he wanted to win.

~OL~

"Why does it look wonky?"

"It's not wonky." Cooper's voice, trailed by a series of paper scratches. "Your scale and values are just a little…off."

Soil-covered and muscles soupy after hours in the garden, Clint climbed the porch steps just in time to see Cooper reach across the swing to tap on a sheet of paper in Pete's lap.

Both boys. Together. In one spot. Clint's jaw dropped.

Cooper had made sure to leave a good foot or so between where they sat, like Lila yesterday, but Pete looked more comfortable in his presence than hers. Dusk light outside the porch bulb's halo lit the boys in woolly blues and oranges.

Pete scrunched his nose. He sifted his palms to either side in question.

"Value means shading," Cooper replied. "Your dark versus lights."

Clint tiptoed in the shadows to avoid disturbing this scene. One he couldn't have imagined a week ago, the mental image made real of Pete here and interacting with his children, even if he did look shy about it. That insistent tether eased. The spell of both teens peacefully hanging out shimmered in the air like a crystal bubble, beautiful but easy to break.

Mission failed—Cooper glanced up and waved an arm like a magician completing a trick. "It's Old McDonald himself!"

"Yuck it up," Clint groused over his son's snickers. "You'll see who's laughing when I finally get those sweet potatoes to grow bigger than a ping-pong ball."

"You've said that for as long as I can remember."

"This summer's the year. I can feel it."

"Promises, promises."

Clint looked around for a hair elastic to flick at Cooper when his curiosity won out. He rounded the swing to get a better glimpse at whatever they were bent over. "What are you guys doing?"

"Drawing some animals," said Cooper.

"Creating an abomination," said Pete quietly at the exact same time, sending Cooper into a reluctant fit of laughter.

"It's not that bad, Pete, honest."

Clint twisted his neck to see the sketch pad. A furry blob with angry eyes and lopsided teeth roared out from the picture, a counterpoint to Cooper's serene frog on a lily pad, nigh photo realistic in its proportions. "It's uh…it's supposed to be a lion, right?"

Pete sighed like a defeated soldier. He crossed both hands near his chest and flexed his fingers—'It's a bear.'

Cooper stifled another laugh. He offered an eraser from the pencil case between their hips and Pete went to town on skewed lines around the…bear's…ears.

"Oh." Clint squinted one eye. "You know, if you look at it from the right angle, you could make a case for a polar bear."

"No, you can't."

"No," Clint agreed. "You can't. But if you tell people it's a lion, they'll never know the difference."

Cooper didn't even look up from his shading this time. "Farmers don't get to give artists advice."

"Umm, excuse me?" Clint placed a mock insulted hand on his chest, hamming up the tone when it made Pete smile. "Did you not see the sunset portraits Nate and I painted last month?"

"My point exactly." Cooper sniffed. "Also you smell. Mom'll never let you at the supper table in those clothes."

Just for that, Clint drew Cooper to his chest for a sideways hug, topped off by a classic noogie. Right into the dirt spot on his T-shirt.

"What, you mean these clothes?"

"Ugh! Gross, Dad!" Cooper shoved at Clint's chest to no effect. "Up close, you really smell."

Clint released him with his own laugh, especially when Cooper leaned into the hug, not nearly as put off as he pretended. Pete eyed the banter with a timid sort of amusement. He kept drawing, but Clint spied the glint of his eyes taking it all in. Puzzled yet absorbed in the moment.

Clint mussed his hair gentler than he had Cooper. "Glad you're trying some new stuff, Pete."

New people, was what he meant. Judging by Pete's red cheeks, he heard that part anyway.

"Don't stay out here too long, okay? It's getting dark and Mama will have supper ready soon."

"We're almost done," said Cooper.

About to head inside, Clint backtracked and pointed to another portrait Pete must have drawn earlier, now discarded on the floor by his feet. "Hey, this one's nice. A giraffe, right?"

Pete flopped his head back to another round of Cooper's coughing snickers.

"…It's a leopard."

~OL~

Clint hadn't passed such an interesting or mellow week since Cooper first came home from the hospital as a baby.

Every day brought a new sight, when he climbed the steps after an afternoon working in the tree house or vegetable garden: sometimes it was Lila, who seemed to prefer eating her meals and snacks with Pete on the swing, or Pete and Cooper on the porch floor, heads bent over a laptop and one of Cooper's render model programs—Pete turned out to be surprisingly good at the tech part of these, even if art wasn't his forte. Sometimes it was Laura trying a new braid in Lila's hair while Pete watched through the window.

They invited him in for movie nights (after Lila's Tuesday pick, Remember the Titans, came Wednesday…Nate requested the exact same movie every single week, Balto. Laura kept promising everyone he'd outgrow it) but he always spent nights out on the porch swing and never joined them.

Sometimes it was just Pete by himself in the field, back against the tire swing tree.

Clint caught him on one of these days, his far away eyes. He gazed out over the world from the hilly vantage and his mouth turned down on one side.

"Mind if I join you?"

Pete glanced up and patted the grass beside him, eyes still misty with images Clint wished he could see too. He looped an arm around the boy's shoulders with a content sigh.

"I've missed this," he admitted. "The quiet of the woods, just hangin' out with you."

Pete's head landed on his shoulder.

"Bad day?"

Pete shrugged. "Kinda. Feel funny."

"Funny where?"

Pete tapped his solar plexus, neither his stomach nor his heart.

"Mmm, I see. You learn about autonomic responses in that fancy school of yours?"

Pete nodded.

"This is one of those, I'm guessing. That's where I feel adrenaline bursts the sharpest, down there. You're missing someone today, someone you had to watch…?"

"It's not that."

"Okay." Clint thumbed the boy's shoulder. "Something else got you twisted up in knots?"

Lithe fingers balled in Clint's shirt. He shifted to take more of Pete's dead weight, though it wasn't particularly heavy. Clint ached for him, for every single second he spent helpless or scared in the past.

"You know you can tell me anything, Pete, right? And I'll never share it with another soul. You don't even have to use specifics."

"Thanks," said Pete in a corpse-like voice. Totally flat. "But I think that would make everything worse."

The tether coils choked Clint. A jumbled puzzle burned in his mind, though he had the edges now of the portrait that made up Pete.

"I would imagine that telling me who hurt you, at least, might make it better for someone else down the road." Clint had lain awake a lot of nights with this one. "If you told me, I can report them."

Pete's knees bunched up just like the rest of him, landing on Clint's thigh. He hid his face in Clint's shoulder.

"Today, I don't know why, I keep remembering the…" Pete gestured to his now-healed ribs.

Clint leaned down to hear better. "Remembering how you got injured."

Pete nodded. "Muggers."

Clint's lips parted, unable to draw air for a beat. His arm turned to rebar, a seatbelt locked around this wisp of a boy as if he could protect him from something that had already happened.

"A…are you telling me some guy beat you up in an alley after you jumped out of the car to live on your own? That's what happened to your face and ribs?"

"Guys, plural. And not my face. But yeah."

"Holy hell." Clint wrapped his other arm around Pete too, core shaking in an effort to hold back the rage. "I'm so relieved you survived that."

A thought struck suddenly, a potential answer to the stark fear in Pete's eyes. "Did you…Pete, did you know your attackers?"

A beat.

Pete began to tremble a little. "Yeah."

"From the soup kitchen? They took your wallet?"

"And my phone. And my watch. And broke th-the glasses." Pete's voice hitched over this. "Had some cash on me that lasted a while. Worked odd jobs until I got here."

Clint tugged Pete up higher so he could wrap both arms around the back of him, shelter his whole cranium using nothing but elbows and biceps.

"I never even thought to ask if you…do you need glasses?"

"No," the boy croaked against his neck.

"…Alright."

Clint nestled his cheek on top of Pete's curls. He let that one go without pursuing, Pete already shaking in his arms. This lone piece of information, who beat him up, was a blindfolded trust fall and Clint had no intention of dropping him.

"I gotcha, Pete. You're safe here with me. It's a sunny day in May and no one's going to hurt us."

"I didn't even fight back!" Pete protested, with eerie bitterness.

Clint growled deep in his chest and it locked every muscle in Pete's body. "You can't blame yourself for that. You're seventeen years old with a body weight to size ratio that makes me this close to having a coronary. Nothing that happened in the alley was your fault, Pete. Being homeless is not your fault."

Pete whined a noise of protest but didn't fight him or try to escape the hold. The side of Clint's neck grew damp, Pete's fingers spasming against his shirt.

"I'm going to make this right," said Clint, and had no idea what he was talking about. Or what prompted the heartbroken fervor in his voice. This wasn't just about a kid with no family anymore—this felt personal. "It's not going to end like this, Pete. For either of us."

~OL~

Laura's movie pick tonight after Thursday games—and she chose Enchanted.

Clint left his family with the big Central Park musical number for a bit and climbed the basement stairs up to the first floor, noting Pete already asleep in the porch swing and the lack of moon. Clint kept going all the way upstairs to the second floor until he couldn't hear a sound but the mobile above his head.

Ticktickticktick.

Insatiable and with a love for whimsy, like its creator. Like Pete.

Clint marched a few times from the window to the door, edge of his cellphone tapped repeatedly against his forehead. Four paces one way. Four paces back. The internal debate already had a winner, he just wasn't ready to admit it yet.

For that tether had amped up from mere cold coils to something that crackled inside Clint's brain, a power line stripped of its rubber to send sparks down his spine. It had been over ten years since he last felt like this.

He keyed in a number that technically didn't exist.

"Area code?"

Forgive me, Pete.

"Lansdown," he barked.

No Janie in his ear this time. With the time difference, it was three in the morning there, long before offices opened for the day in their European headquarters.

A few clicks.

"Hey, Gary."

Dot-dot-dot…dot…dash-dot-dash-dash—'Hey.'

Clint only had to wait another five scant minutes before Maria Hill's wide awake, stiletto tones filtered across the line. No more sinus infection in her voice.

"Barton. Everything secure on your end?"

Not a question about his cellphone signal.

"Maybe. I have a question, off the record, and you have to promise not to hang up until I'm finished."

"Clint, if it's interesting, you're going to have to beg me to hang up. Let me grab my personal laptop."

Clint puffed his cheeks in a firm breath. Stars through the window caught his eye, belts of blue and purple and green he'd seen with the naked eye two years ago, a DNA helix of gases and cosmic dust. His forehead crinkled, straining to look up at it. To look back at a time where he'd left his heart.

Or not all of it. Maybe not any of it, as Natasha had insisted he be the one to live. To not just…not die…but to get up every morning for his family. Living for someone else was the best and hardest thing in the world.

Space ships and ash-coated children—

"I'm ready. Hit me."

Clint shook himself. "How many STEM schools for teens are there in New York?"

Top trained intelligence agency director in the world, Hill set to typing at once without a single word. Clacking sounds echoed over bloop notifications and coffee cup slurps.

"Three."

Clint scratched his stubble. "That's it?"

"Most private schools are generalized, for a broad range of the usual subjects taught at a more prestigious level. For science specifically, there are only three."

"Do any show a list of drop-outs or kids who never finished their senior year?"

"Give me one second to search registrar memos and student lists." Maria took thirty seconds, by Clint's mental counter. "Hmmm…no dropouts. Most changes in senior enrollment are due to kids moving away or transferring. Except for these five ankle biters. They're juicy."

"How juicy?"

"Just some delinquent kids they had to expel for cheating on final exams. That's four out of the five. One school, Midtown Tech, had a student arrested due to drug possession. Cocaine."

Clint closed one eye. "Neither of those reasons sound right."

"Right for what? Who's this about, Clint?"

"Do those files have pictures?"

"Sending now."

Clint pulled the phone away from his ear to open the secure network link and its attachment. As predicted, none of them were Pete. Only two were even Caucasian, one being the charming druggie kid. He looked like a real piece of work.

"Dead end?"

"Yeah." Clint pressed the phone back to his good, aided ear. Worth a shot, though it smarted to think maybe Pete had lied about the advanced school or living in New York; maybe he made it up, embarrassed by the truth. "Thanks for trying. Would you keep an ear out for missing person reports or amber alerts on teenage boys?"

"Already done. I've set a notice on my filter of law enforcement databases."

"You're the best. I'll leave you to whatever it is you get up to this early."

"Clint…you know I'm not just an inter-agency director to you. You can talk to me, even if it sounds dumb."

An exact replica of what he said to Pete that very afternoon by the tire swing, before he cried himself out in Clint's arms and they couldn't get him to eat supper. The lack of interest in eating bothered Clint more than the tears.

"Not dumb, just…" Clint stroked a spot on his head, a scar that had never healed underneath his hair. His most prized and hated scar, in a way. "Out of the blue. Makes zero sense, no matter how I shake out the situation."

"Try me. You have a good gut for these things."

"Do you remember all those months of psychotherapy and assessment after…after it happened? All the shrinks who had to work on my cognition?"

A two-ton brick of silence clocked them both in the face.

"I try not to," said Maria, tired. "Some of your darkest days and mine. What does that have to do with a teenage dropout?"

Clint touched his face and was shocked down to his marrow to feel it wet. "I don't know, that's the problem. But it feels…I feel like I'm back in that SHIELD hospital room sometimes, Natasha's hair like a spot of blood in the sea of white sheets."

"…Clint, are you having a mental health crisis?"

Cold, hard efficiency. Maria would shoot you point blank after telling you exactly how she'd shoot you point blank. No preamble or extraneous dallying, and he admired her for it. It's why she'd make the most effective supervillain out of the old gang if she ever turned. "No, I'm just trying to reconcile two things that don't make sense."

"You're not giving me the whole story."

"He's just a kid who—"

"I don't mean with this mystery wonder boy, I mean with you. What else are you thinking, Barton?"

Clint couldn't ask the question out loud, not to her. Not even to himself. Not even on a dark night alone upstairs with his family safe under one roof.

He went with the easier emotion to talk about.

"Maria?"

At the use of her first name, she made a concerned noise in her throat. "What's going on, Clint?"

"I'm…mourning for someone and I don't even know who."

"We lost Tony and Nat, among countless others. It's natural to grieve. If I still am, heaven knows how you and the other Avengers feel."

But this wasn't in the same zip code as grieving Tony or Natasha. Theirs was an honourable sort of devastation, both choosing the way of their own demise and proud of it. They died doing what they believed in. No matter how much it hurt, there would always be closure in that.

This…this feeling…

Clint would sooner be flayed alive, on fire, than spend another second in this nameless agony. It had the same cosmic injustice flavour he experienced waking up with the stone on Vormir, like watching a child die when you could easily prevent it or withholding food from someone starving at your feet. Wrong. So very wrong.

Words formed in his mouth before he even conceived them, skirting around conscious thought entirely—

"Maria, did we leave someone behind?"

"Who?"

"I don't know, but someone." Clint felt it, a missing piece in his heart. "We left someone behind. They're gone, abandoned."

"Behind where?"

Good question. Clint sniffed, scrubbing his face. "I'm not going nuts."

"Of course you're not. Getting confused is a job hazard for us, especially when it comes to trauma and feelings."

"I'm sorry to call you again without warning."

"Shut up, Chuckles. I'd rather talk to you than the Secretary General and you know it."

Clint gathered his composure in Frankenstein fragments, a wobbly lower lip on one side and a half grin on the other. "You still owe me a poker game for rescuing you from his last visit."

"If this call is any indication—I'm going to whoop you silly, Barton. You've gone soft."

Clint's smile mirrored on both sides of his face. "Yeah, I have."

"It's a good look on you."