AN: WELP. We're finally on the chapter that inspired the whole fic. It's been four months of tinkering and labouring over a scene towards the end but I'm so glad to reach it at last. Hold on to your hats, friends!

'This blurry photograph is proof
Of what, I'm not sure, but it feels like truth.
In certain light, I can plainly see
A reflection of magnificence
Hidden in you
Maybe even in me.'

"Four" ~ Sleeping At Last

~OL~

St-stomp—st-stomp—st-stomp—

A keening whine echoed through the house, one that warbled on the end of each sniffle.

Cooper and Lila, playing a bare-knuckle round of ping pong in the basement rec room, paused their game; Cooper snatched the ball out of the air and shared a look of dread with his sister. Pete glanced up from his Gordan Korman book, stretched along the couch. Where he bench-pressed in their workout corner of the basement, Clint clanked the bar and matching thirty-pound weights onto its perch and sat up with a frown.

Lila said what they were all thinking—"Oh boy."

"Da-ad!"

Footsteps thundered across the hallway above their heads and down the basement stairs. All four of them tracked it in a unison head swivel.

"Daaaaad!" Yelled much louder this time. Nate's downturned lips and distraught eyes appeared. "You gotta fix it!"

He ran over to Clint once he hit the floor, who caught him before he could trip over scattered dumbbells. "Slow down there, Nate-man. What's going on?"

Nate shoved a white feather under Clint's nose. "Pippa's being a bully again. She plucked out one of Tina's feathers! With her beak! I saw it!"

His wind-burned cheeks flamed even hotter, ruddy and red and ready for a meltdown. Clint hoisted his youngest up onto his knee. The older kids gathered around in a triangle of concerned faces that Clint would have paid dearly to photograph if he didn't have his hands full of upset little boy.

"That's awful, Nate, I'm sorry."

"Someone has to do something!" Nate's lower lip trembled. "She can't keep being mean to the other chickens."

"I'll give her another talking to." Clint bounced his foot and it worked, Nate settling a bit. "That seemed to drive the message home last time, right? She kept to herself for a few weeks."

"I don't fink your spy voice will work again, Daddy."

Clint smirked along with Cooper. "I don't know…I can be pretty persuasive."

But Nate's spine tottered to rebar straight, on a mission. He climbed off Clint and over to Pete, who took a step back when Nate latched onto his arm. "Petey! You're really good at catching chickens! Can you talk to Pippa for me?"

"Uhhh." Pete stared at the boy, who stared back like Pete was the last salad at a rabbit convention. "I've never lectured a hen before. I grew up in a big city."

"That's okay! Pippa just has to learn to play nice." Nate tugged him along. "You're great at playing nice, Pete."

Pete stumbled along rather than use his size advantage to halt the boy—though he did throw a dumbstruck look at Clint.

Clint and Lila both snickered behind their hands. Clint saluted. "We'll back you up, Mr. Aloha."

Which is how Clint and company found themselves leaning on the chicken coop fence five minutes later and watching Pete stand in the middle of a poultry tornado. He blinked around at all the feathered bodies. Lila leaned her chin on crossed wrists amidst a grin while Cooper, at least, tried to be helpful.

"They don't like sudden moves," he instructed. "And watch out for their talons."

Pete pivoted in place. "Which one is Pippa again?"

"That one!" Nate stood beside him and pointed. "With the spotted feathers."

Clint spied the real problem and slipped through the gate. The hen house feeder was at lower capacity—probably thanks to Pippa hogging all the food—and Clint made an executive decision after topping it up. He used the knife that lived at all times down his boot to gut out a milk container from the recycling bin. Filling it, he propped the improvised feeder away from the other one, a refuge for the bossed-around ladies, on a plastic tray where pellets could slip out of the carton holes when a hen pecked at it.

That should solve some of the food competition for now, until I can buy a new one.

After two unsuccessful attempts to catch the hen and Lila almost falling off the fence from the force of her belly laughs, Pete finally corralled Pippa by the water trough and plucked her off the ground. She bristled.

"SQUAWK!"

Pete winced and tucked the hen carefully under one arm to pin her wings to her sides. She tried to peck at his wrist.

Cooper cheered. "That's good technique, Pete! They like being brooded."

Nathaniel looked up at Pete expectantly.

"Umm…"

Clint reclined on the fence by the gate, ready to intervene but too enamored with the scene to interrupt if he didn't have to. He snuck a picture with his phone: Cooper's lively face next to Lila's open mouthed, snickering one; Nate pointing at Pippa with an adoring look for Pete; Pete with the outraged hen under his right elbow and wide eyed at finding himself in this situation, other chickens in a fluffy cloud around his feet. One had laid an egg by his toe.

"We don't hurt our friends," said Pete to the chicken, oddly serious. "That's not nice."

"You plucked out one of Tina's feathers," Nate threw in, brow cross. Arms folded in a perfect imitation of Clint's posture when he needed to intimidate someone.

"That's not the way to solve conflicts. Being a bully is wrong." Pete scolded with his own voice warble, pressing back laughter like Clint. "Even if we do steal their cars."

Cooper's brows flew up in tandem with Clint's. "Dude. You stole your school bully's car?"

"Did I say that out loud?"

"Yes," said Clint and Cooper at the same time.

"Oh." Pete wilted with a sheepish grin. "It was for a good cause, and technically it was his dad's car. Long story."

"I'll bet," Clint muttered. This kid never ceased to surprise him.

"And we want to make sure we all help each other," Nate added. "Because you're bigger. It's not fair if you boss everyone else around just because they can't fight back."

Clint's tether twanged, a strange sort of syncopation since he couldn't stop smiling, even at this unknowing choice of words. The note rang all the way through a sharp breath. His scalp scar ached a little, like it had more and more these past few days.

Pete's eyes slid to half mast, fond. "That's right, Nate."

"You tell her!" Cooper called.

Lila had tapered off into sparse giggles—they returned full force when Pete lost his balance avoiding a chicken and fell on his back in the dirt.

Clint pushed off the fence. "Pete?"

"I'm good! Not hurt! I…ah!"

Chickens descended on Pete, clucking and nuzzling at his cheeks and hair and the sides of his knees. He was oddly popular with the hens. Nate tried to save him from the pinioned chaos and ended up underneath Nelly, her talons on his back.

"That tickles!"

"I've gotcha, Nate-man." Cooper sprang off the other side of the fence and landed amid the squawking heap. "I'll just move her and…maybe I don't got it!"

A warzone of feathers and feed pellets and ragamuffin hair milled around all three boys. Lila hopped in to help but ended up on her knees too, buried under a pile of inquisitive hens. Nate kept hollering about being kind to our friends.

And in the middle of it all was Pete, hands over his stomach—now he was the one who couldn't stop laughing, his giggles a duet with the ba-gawk sounds and Lila shrieking about feathers down her shirt. It was the first time they'd ever heard him lose it, those unpretty, whooping seal sounds people did when they were overwhelmed by the humour of it all.

"This is a train wreck!" Lila screeched.

"I dunno," Cooper mused, spitting out feathers. "At least they haven't pooped on us yet."

"Speak for yourself!"

Pete laughed so hard he wasn't making any sound now. Button nose scrunched, eyes fanned in abject delight, mouth open in the kind of carefree joy only a child could manage.

Clint snapped a photo of that too.

~OL~

"Just hold 'er steady…there we go. Three feet and seven inches." Clint notched a mark with the carpenter's pencil on the neighbouring plank. "Now I know how long to cut this last replacement board."

"I can help carry it," Pete offered. He rolled up the measuring tape and stood from the hole in the bathroom floor.

"Nah, that's alright, Pete. I've got it." Clint tweaked his nose. "You can drag this torn carpeting out to the garbage bin, though. Disgusting eyesore that it is."

Pete saluted in a motion he'd picked up from Cooper. They both walked down the stairs and out onto the porch with their respective tasks, parting ways once they hit the driveway. Pete's allotted daily chore was taking out the garbage anyway, so he knew where to go.

Of course he had to be the opposite of most teenagers on the planet and had explicitly asked them one night for a chore to do, when he saw how Cooper helped with laundry and Lila emptied the dishwasher. Clint wanted to find whoever hurt Pete and stab them in the larynx. But more than likely, this unnamed aunt and uncle had instilled him with good manners.

Pete went left, towards their locked, steel garbage bin by the fence. Clint went right, out to the woodshed for a fresh piece of lumber he bought a few days ago to match the one underneath tiles in the bathroom. He ran it through the table saw a few times, to the exact length the hole required.

Pete had beat him back inside and already stood in their bedroom, beside the en suite on bouncy feet. "Laura's gonna love coming home to this."

She was going to hate missing Pete say her name properly out loud for the first time, but Clint didn't let any amusement show on his face.

Laura. Not 'Mrs. Laura.' Some baby steps are leaps after all.

"You got it, bub." Clint nudged his shoulder with his own, his hands full carrying the wood. "She should be back with Cooper and Lila from the library in a few hours. Just enough time for us to fix this."

Nate was off with his homeschool co-op for a group art lesson, so the pair of them could do all the hammering and pounding they wanted.

"You know," said Clint. "It's crazy. I thought the tree house would need a truckload of wood. And it's expensive right now."

"Is it?"

"Like everything else. But I managed to put up the main structure with all these extra two-by-fours left over."

Pete held the bathroom door open to its limit for Clint to maneuver. "Have you found materials for a roof yet?"

Clint hefted the three-and-a-half-foot beam. He turned to look at Pete head on, warming to his subject. "Last thing to put on. I've got some tin sheeting from what they dug out of the Avengers compound rubble that we can—"

CLI-CLANK!

The wood juddered against Clint's palms.

He and Pete both gasped, eyes shooting up to the bedroom ceiling. Clint didn't see any holes. Had he hit the window? No, nor were there any cracks in the plaster…

Ticktickticktick—

Sudden silence.

Nothing. Not a mechanical peep to be heard.

"The mobile," Clint croaked. He threw the board aside to stand underneath the little device. "No, no, no, no. No!"

It hadn't been still in ten years. An entire decade. Air suctioned from the room at the abrupt dearth of the mobile's infernal noise, cheery and persistent. The rocket and moon and stars hung lifeless on their track and Clint missed a breath and…

"Clint?" Pete waved a hand in front of Clint's face. It didn't sound like the first time he'd said his name. "Clint. The mobile's not dead, it—"

"What have I done? It…I can't lose that stupid thing…"

"It's not broken."

Clint whipped around to face Pete. "What?"

"The power source was probably just knocked loose when you hit it with the board."

Clint's eyes prickled. "I don't know where Tony housed the power source. He said it like it was some game, as if I'd have the time or resources to even find it. It was never meant to die."

Sound whited in his ears for a moment and he struggled to inhale.

"It isn't dead," Pete said again.

"We joked it would still be running when I died."

Pete's eyes shuttered. "Let me grab my bag. I have some tools that can get it up and running in just a few minutes. I'm bringing the car around."

"Are you sure…"

Clint spoke to empty air, though Pete darted back across the hall moments later. He plopped his backpack on the ground and dug around for his beloved screwdriver and some rubber forceps-esque pliers. Clint noted that he left the bag unzipped for once, in his hurry.

"Is it okay if I…?" Pete took off his shoes and gestured to the bedspread. "I can wait to let someone else fix it, if-if you'd rather."

"No, Pete. You go right ahead. Can't do any more damage than I have today." Clint stilled his noisy breaths. "Sorry I scared you. This thing, dumb as it is, it just…"

"Means a lot?"

"Yeah. Hoo boy, yeah. A present for Nate after he was born."

Pete hopped up onto the bed and it barely sprang back at his weight. Sometimes, when Pete had more energy, he moved like a leopard in ways Clint seldom saw outside of memories of Steve mid-fight. Maybe Lila did have a jock to commiserate with under all those science pun shirts. Clint had a flitting thought about signing them both up for a sports camp that summer. Wishful thinking.

"The housing is right here." Pete slipped his fingernail under a hidden seam, hair thin, between both halves of the round moon.

And off it popped. No fuss, no muss.

Clint lost all his air. "That power panel has been there the whole time?"

"Yep. It's similar to a lithium contemporary battery, Stark design, only less explosive." Pete unscrewed a wire housing and squinted inside. "See here? You just whacked this chip loose. That's it."

Pete did something clever with his pliers and the magnetized back of the wire cover, not a beat of assessment or confusion. The fuzzy edge in Clint's mind sharpened enough to cut into soft tissue between his lungs. His scalp scar began to burn, a hidden streak of pain underneath his hair that Natasha gave him thirteen years ago. It was a feeling he experienced a lot lately, especially watching Pete in his element.

The urgency from a few nights ago rushed back, with no direction Clint could see.

"It's like you've done this before," he said.

Clint waited for the blush, Pete's signature humility and shyness when it came to his talents.

Instead, Pete sighed, looking old. "A curse and a blessing."

Clint had no idea what the ever-loving hell to do with that, but Pete didn't leave him any time for questions, snapping the back of the moon into place. As soon as the two pieces connected—

Tickticktickticktick!

Clint closed his eyes for a moment. "Thank you. Thank you. You know I've started to get used to that thing when I sleep now? Damned conditioned."

Pete jumped to the floor with a gymnast's grace and slipped on his shoes. "I'm told Mr. Stark had that effect on people."

"Yeah, he did." Clint tried to laugh, failed. "Here, I'll grab your bag so you can put those tools away."

Pete's eyes went Imax huge and his hand shot out. "No—!"

Clint lifted his backpack by one strap, tilting it sideways. Something loose on the top winked in the afternoon sunshine and clattered to the floor, black and rectangular.

"Sorry about that, Pete. I didn't mean to break your stuff. Let me…"

Every muscle in Clint's body stilled. The something on the floor wasn't very big, maybe eight inches long. Six inches wide. Not made of a particularly fancy material, nothing spectacular to look at. It had a chip of wood missing, filled with glittery pink nail polish.

It was a picture frame. More specifically, the back of a picture frame.

The room's walls felt like they began to shake on either side of Clint. A solitary earthquake beneath his feet and his feet alone. The scar seared. Images flashed in his mind, images he couldn't place.

He knelt, tether swelling in size until it eclipsed all else. "I…I know this frame."

Pete's breath stammered, a faint wheeze.

Clint said it again, because somehow nothing felt real and too raw all at once. "I've seen this picture frame before, always the back of it."

It was so quiet Clint could hear a clock ticking downstairs in the living room. The whole world slowed its spin.

"…Tony practically lived with this thing those ten days we spent at the compound, figuring out infinity stone locations in time."

Clint's eyes flicked up to the teenage boy before him, atom decal on his science shirt heaving. Pete had gone bone white. Cemented in place like the mobile minutes earlier.

"Someone accidentally bumped it off Stark's lab station before the time heist test, during one of Morgan and Pepper's visits." Clint never took his eyes off Pete. "And Tony had a full system meltdown when the back of it cracked. I've never seen him cry like that. Ever. Morgan picked it up to hand back but her nails weren't dry yet…bubble gum pink."

A vein protruded in Pete's neck.

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

His pulse drummed against it at light speed. Clint's raced too. A warm sensation started behind his nose, like inhaling water in slow motion.

"Please," Pete breathed. "Don't."

Clint ignored him, flipping over the frame. His first time ever doing so.

It wasn't a picture of Morgan or Pepper or even Jarvis in his human form, as Clint had long suspected of this infamous photo and all the bets they took on it should the truth ever come out. Rocket had debated sneaking in to peek at it on more than one occasion but even he wasn't that heartless. Nor was it a picture of Tony's parents.

It was a picture of Tony himself. He wore a pressed pinstripe suit and those classic sunglasses.

And held an internship certificate, upside down.

And…

And…

And there beside him…

Pete.

Bunny ears behind each other's heads and mile-wide smiles on both their faces. It was clearly an older photo of Pete, pre-Snap, maybe around Lila's age. He wore yet another punny shirt and an attempt had been made to tame his curls. It almost looked staged if it weren't for the true laugh lines around Tony's eyes, the ones he could never fake for the public.

Clint looked up again at Pete. Pete just stood there, frozen. Horror welled on his face in a reverse gravitational float.

For the longest five seconds of Clint's life, absolutely nothing moved. Not even a creak from the house. He lived and died an eternity in the intense eye contact and crumbling of everything he thought he knew. That one glimpse of the picture lit a fuse and Clint was the explosion. The images took on sound, blistering up through the tether and the scar, orbiting the devastated face of this boy.

Then Pete dove for his backpack and crawled out the bedroom window.

"Pete!" Clint jumped to his feet, reeling. That warm sensation leeched up his cranium in hot gusts. "Pete, wait! We're on the second floor!"

That didn't hinder Pete any: he flung himself off the roof and flipped onto the porch eave below. Not a break in pace whatsoever. Swearing up a storm, Clint slid down the banister and bolted out the front door in a dead sprint. It banged against the house and Clint didn't spare it a look.

He'd never run this fast in his life, save once—Vormir. His feet hunh-hunh-hunhed across the grass in short, clipped strides. He ran so fast he kicked up clods of earth under his boots.

The fog blew away with a clarity that almost brought Clint to his knees, the pain sharp as a taser bite. He'd been living in a black and white movie and suddenly it ignited with colours. Excruciating colours like blood and white lightning and gold suits and blue fingerpaints.

The images coalesced into a full reel:

Peter dressed in a black suit, eyes red rimmed.

"Sorry for your loss, Mr. Barton."

"Please, kid. Call me Clint."

Happy with an arm around the kid's shoulders.

Tony hugging Peter on the battlefield—Clint firing an arrow to keep an alien away from them so they could have that one moment.

Peter giving Morgan a piggy back ride back to visit Gerald.

The kid crying, pleading, next to a corpse, blood a river from his nostril. Pepper pulling him back.

Steve handing Peter the picture frame. "He did it for you, son. All of it."

They slapped Clint in a frenzied jumble, layered and talking overtop of each other. Threatening to drown him. Clint shouted as he ran, growls of pain and loss and fresh, righteous fury.

"Peter!"

He spotted the kid by the barn on a mad dash break for the trees. Not in a straight line—the jump from the roof, all that exertion, had made Peter woozy. He tripped and stumbled to his feet a few times, the only reason Clint could keep up with him.

Clint put on a burst of speed and vaulted over the fence. SLAM—his feet hit the dirt on the other side. He didn't care about details right now. He didn't care that none of this made any sense or tears streamed from his eyes.

He was not letting the kid run away. Not now. Not ever again.

"Peter!"

Peter didn't even hesitate at the call. He was running for his life too, sprinting at ever so slightly superhuman speeds that Clint would have felt awed about had he not been half blind with panic. Who knew what else the kid's body could do when fully rested, healed, and armed with proper nutrition.

That only made the spiral worse.

The images began to shrill like metal grinding against metal, an almost unbearable agony through his skull.

Clint skidded to a stop, squared his feet, and screamed for all he was worth, with every last scrap of authority he could muster—

"Peter Benjamin Parker!"

Peter stopped dead in an instant. Twenty-five miles an hour to zero in the time it took Clint to blink. Peter did so right at the treeline, close to where the tree house was built if he'd made it another twenty feet in.

They both breathed hard.

Black spots danced in Clint's vision but he bared his teeth and pushed them aside.

Peter turned slow, face a mess like that day on the battlefield, crouched by Tony, the mechanic's eyes following him until the very end. Only now Peter's face screwed in a vicious expression, a cat backed into a corner. His wadded-up nose quivered on one side and the scowl wrung a loose tear from his right eye.

He spat the words at Clint, so furious he was more animal than boy right now—"You were never supposed to remember! It's impossible."

"Bullcrap," Clint snapped back. "I know you."

"It can't be—"

"I know you. You introduced me to May at Tony's memorial. You're the skinny brat who stole Cap's shield in Germany—"

Peter backed away. Clint followed him step for step, core tight in readiness to grab the kid at a split second's notice.

"—You carried a box's worth of Kleenex in your pockets and handed them one by one to Pepper after the memorial, when she kept serving us those gross avocado cucumber sandwiches and crying all over them."

"Let me go, Clint. Let it go."

"Like hell I will!"

"I…I'll just run away again later."

"There's nowhere to run, Peter." Clint tasted the truth like he tasted the salt dripping between his lips. "Not now."

"Don't…"

"I stayed at the lake house with the other Avengers for two weeks after Tony died, to help Pepper and Rhodes pack it up, and so did you, even when your aunt and Happy left for Queens. Just the three of us adults and you and Morgan in the house. I made you a grilled cheese at four in the morning once. You kept stealing my bananas."

Peter halted at this statement, of all things.

Now that Clint had started, he couldn't stop, memories rushing in. The words sprang out of him like a geyser from a rock, clear and briny and real.

He inched closer. "Steve showed you those taut-line hitches on Morgan's tent to distract you after your crying-slash-panic spell at the memorial, to calm you down. I taught you how to feed an alpaca because that was always Tony or Happy's job and Pepper didn't know how."

Peter slid off the backpack, falling to his knees. A sob gouged out of his chest. "Just stop."

"You're the one who read Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus—Morgan's favourite—every night to her for eight days straight because she missed her father. That or told her elaborate bed time stories like you do for Nate."

Peter's chest bucked. "Please…"

"You built Morgan a mobile exactly like the one upstairs because Tony showed you the design himself."

"Stop! Just stop it!"

Peter howled his heartbreak to the heavens.

Clint didn't stop, couldn't stop, eyes a fire. "You fixed my hearing aid in a stupidly short amount of time because you're a genius on scholarship at Midtown Tech and you helped Tony build the new SHIELD patent for my prescription. The exact same one that broke last month."

Peter nodded, hands limp and defeated at his sides. His knuckles dragged.

"You really did take Trike on a trip around my son's ceiling because you can stick to it—you used to do that all the time for Morgan with her Polly Pockets. You once climbed the wall in my room at the lake house to change a light bulb." The pain crescendo-ed to a klaxon inside Clint's chest. He lost a breath. "My kids already met you at the funeral. You and Cooper tried to see who could skip rocks the farthest."

Peter struggled to gasp air and Clint lowered himself to his knees bare inches from the boy, both of them out of fight. "If I look in that backpack, I'm going to see a Spiderman suit and web shooters and probably a bunch of Tony's old tech."

A gust of wind blew over Peter's face, curls sticking to his tear tracks.

"You're Peter Parker—and I know you. The only question is why? Why didn't you tell me all this and why didn't I remember you on sight?"

"I don't know how this is happening," Peter quavered. He strangled both hands through his hair. "I don't exist and therefore I can't hurt anyone else. That was the deal. Strange promised me. And I couldn't even keep you at arm's length, can't even do this one thing right! I was selfish!"

"You're not—"

"I am!" Peter tore up a handful of grass and slammed it back down. "I saw it was you that first day and was so tired of being tired and not wanting to get up anymore and…and I just…I didn't run away when I should have…"

Clint hovered a hand over Peter's brow and mouth and that button nose inherited from the Parkers, long dead scientists. Didn't quite touch. Just close enough to feel the heat of his flushed skin.

"Peter, did you know I was mind controlled by an infinity stone once?"

That caught Peter's attention. He looked up, eyes dark with bloodshot veins and pupils blown wide.

Clint nodded like he'd asked a question. "During the battle of New York. We didn't talk about that one much during the PR conferences. Kind of a bad look if I'm shooting the agents trying to help citizens, you know? Natasha saved my life, my mind."

Clint leaned down and parted his hair so Peter could see the scar. It seemed to boil to the touch. "Ever since then…I can't be hypnotized. I'm not even suggestible or gullible. People can't manipulate me into things, though many have tried. Like a titanium wall has gone up around the reason and free will center of my brain."

"That's not how memory manipulation works." Peter trembled all over, like a shock victim. "It isn't like chicken pox. You can't just…just…be immune to it."

"But I am." Clint searched the eyes. How had he not recognized those open-hearted brown eyes? "I think in this case it is like inoculation. I've got a back door, an escape hatch, if you will…and it prevents any sort of mind alteration from sticking long-term. Trust me. The SHIELD team thoroughly tested me, for months. It's on record."

Clint sucked in a breath and let it out for five counts. "A Hydra agent even captured me once and tried to brainwash me, like Barnes. Didn't take at all. Hurt like a mother, gave me some fun new trauma, but it didn't work."

The truth hit Peter in real time before Clint's eyes, every grisly stage of his emotions. He gaped up at Clint.

"You remember me. Me. You remember who I really am. I-I'm not alone anymore."

Clint's fingers made it to Peter's face. A light brush of bowstring-calloused fingertips on his cheek. "I do, Peter. I'm only sorry it took so long."

"Now you know why I'm not safe," Peter whispered. "Why I have to leave. I'm a danger to people."

Clint's tears streamed down his neck. "Not safe? Are you kidding? Peter—you're the reason I have my family back. Tony invented time travel for you."

Peter's helpless fear and ire dissolved into a car-backfiring type of breath hitch. Into the specific soul exhaustion Clint had felt waking up with the stone in his hand. Peter covered his eyes with his palms.

"Forget leaving, Parker. I'm not letting you out of my sight ever again."

Peter tipped forward in a slow fall, void of any spinal tension behind it. Clint met him in the middle and they crashed into each other. Peter sobbed so hard, it clogged in his throat. Clint picked him up and settled him across his lap, like that night in the hallway.

"This doesn't change how much I care about you, Peter." Clint's face crumpled, heart pounding at the reality of this situation. Of this kid. "If anything, I love you more knowing who you are."

Peter smacked Clint's chest with a weak fist. "You should send me away. I g-got so many people killed and injured."

"Never. Not if someone asked me to at gunpoint."

Clint looked up at the sky, at Nat and Tony somewhere out there. At…

"Oh Peter." Clint held him tighter. "What happened to May?"

Peter wailed another agonized sound. "She…she died. Right in front of me like Ben."

"Peter…I'm so sorry…so sorry you had to live on your own with no help for this long." Clint protected the back of his head with both arms. This kid had lived in an alley, had jumped out of a moving car, had been mugged while he was starving to death, all when he should have been cherished. "That's going to change now, do you hear me? I don't care that you're enhanced and took on Thanos—I'm the adult and you're not and you don't have to worry about this stuff another day in your life."

Clint declared it to the universe and divinity at large, to dead friends and future friends and every ghost from Peter's past. A challenge, his own cornered-animal growl.

Just try and take him and see how quickly I can tear down the world.

"Wasn't enhanced for a while, until two weeks ago," said Peter, his skin now cold and clammy. Clint had the alarmed thought that maybe he was going into shock. He rubbed up and down Peter's back.

"Your powers shut off to slow your metabolism."

Peter lifted his head. "How did you know that?"

Clint couldn't very well tell him about the harrowing mission with Steve, when his super healing went MIA courtesy of starvation and some particularly creative torture.

"I've seen it before," was all Clint said. "And gosh, Pete, we've been starving you! Three modest meals a day, if that with your stingy eating habits, are not enough for a kid who can pack it away like a football team! No wonder you're having low blood sugar spells."

Peter let out a shaky sigh. "I haven't wanted to eat much. Got used to less portions at the soup kitchen in Queens."

Clint tucked him in close to his chest, folding his shivery profile like origami until his body started to warm up. He had his own moment to see stars and process, the sky crashing around his head. "I can't believe it's been you the whole time. No wonder you understand my grief and the war so well—you were in it. You're dealing with the exact same thing."

"I'd say I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but…everyone who learns my secret identity gets hurt. I figured if I could just pretend and you never knew the truth, you'd be safe."

"I understand why you didn't," said Clint, even though he didn't fully. But he understood guilt and the ways it ate at one's humanity, another similarity between them.

Peter palmed at Clint's slick cheek. "I miss Tony."

"I do too," Clint whispered. "He loved you. So much. Did you know I found adoption papers for you in his study when Rhodey and I went through the few hard copy documents he owned? Apparently he and May talked about it. They were in a secret safe under the floor."

A full body shudder ran through Peter.

"He shouldn't have done it…he'd still be here if he hadn't…"

Clint closed his eyes into the curls, unable to stand right now even if he wanted to. His legs had long since gone rubbery. "No, Peter. If Tony hadn't found a way to reverse the Snap, he'd have gone to an early grave, a shell of himself. There was something hollow behind his eyes for those five years. It filled up when you swung through a portal. Morgan would never have grown up with all of him."

I know because I had those same hollow eyes for years.

It seemed this kid was destined to bring them all back to life. This precious kid, the single greatest motivator for the single greatest scientific breakthrough in history. Tony would probably crawl out of the grave and eviscerate Clint if he didn't take care of and love Peter, not that Clint needed any prompting.

Peter ran out of words and tears after that, but he continued to shake in Clint's arms. How long they sat there, crying and coming alive, Clint would never know. Long enough for the sun to arch back towards the trees. Clint threw logistics out the window, the explanation for how a whole world forgot about priceless Peter Parker, in favour of their barest essentials—grieving child, grieving man, and a strange peace glowing between them.

Nothing else mattered for now.

Peter's sobs slowed, a deflated bouncy castle against Clint's ribcage…and somehow they fit seamlessly together, two broken people slotting heart edges together. Clint felt that cold little nose meet his neck and it filled up the empty cavern in his chest, like it always did.

"I'm Peter Parker," Peter declared, the tone of a free man after years of bondage, signing his name against Clint's chest. "And you're Clint Barton."

Clint kissed Peter's forehead, finger spelling the letters of his own name. "And we're going to figure this out. Together."