Warning for a rather intimate description of minor character death here
Clint hated them for a long time. Everything came out about the circus and its underage workers by the New Year (Bruce came to Tony's for Christmas, after all. Score!), including how they'd picked up young runaways and forced them to lie about how old they were, and in one case going so far as to stick hot pokers into a ten-year-old boy's (Identity Redacted) ears to make him deaf, then display him as a tragic hero. He had only just turned fifteen a few months ago.
Not much of a surprise, Bruce's abilities as an orphan-whisperer came in handy; he was the only person who could get the kid to talk, foregoing visits to Tony's house to walk to Principal Fury's in the snow and see him. Even Betty was being neglected, but she complained a lot less than Tony did. Of course, no one complained as much as Tony did, complaining and slouching went hand-in-hand in Tony's little universe, no one was able to keep up.
And yeah, okay, let's talk about Principal Fury while we're at it. Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to let him be a foster parent?! He had an eyepatch and radiated crazy! Then again, the more Tony thought about it the most it almost made sense. Fury didn't have a wife or kids of his own, no one could say what he did with his hours outside of school, and he always made such a big deal out of looking out for kids in trouble. Even if it made him look like the assembler of the Island of Misfit Toys, Fury could almost be said to have a heart. Maybe that's what was behind the eyepatch... Wait, ew, no, never mind.
A month after school was back in session Clint trailed awkwardly after Bruce to their study group meeting. He actually had hearing aids that worked now (because of course the circus wouldn't give him real ones, it would defeat the purpose of his training. Assholes), but he purposefully didn't speak or meet eyes with any of them. He just sat next to Bruce like a lost baby bird. Other than reading newspapers and watching TV when he could, the kid hadn't actually been to school in over five years, and attended classes after school to catch up.
"Hey, Legolas, pass me a pencil, would you?" Tony asked, not even looking up from his book. His open palm got a stab of graphite for the attitude, but looking up and seeing Clint's shit-eating grin, he didn't mind.
One downside of being friends - or trying to be friends - with a runaway was that he was awfully hard to find. Sure made play-dates hard to come by, not to mention it stressed Fury out to no end. After a while, though, they got the hang of Clint's usual haunts and then resorted to just following him around. He didn't like them, exactly, but he liked Bruce and put up with the rest of them accordingly.
What Clint did like was the woods on the outskirts of the county. They weren't very hardy woods, or even all that thick, but they stretched out far. There were rumors - big shocker there, in Shield County of all places - that if a dumbass wandered far back enough into the woods they would find cults or spies or the Amish. No one ever went that far, of course, because they were scared little shits, but sometimes smoke could be seen furling out from the treetops and would stir the rumors up again. Clint quickly found a little nest to call his own (and no, Tony would not be stopping with the bird analogies, thanks very much) that they called the Hippie Hole. It was the empty space between two small hills, littered with old tires perfect for sitting on, old homemade beeswax candles, and engravings in the tree trunks from the mid-seventies. It was awesome.
"So Fury's not letting me have my own bow, but he let me join the archery team at school, what kind of bullshit is that?" whined Clint, slowly carving an obscene picture into a trunk with a broken-off arrowhead.
"He doesn't want you shooting holes in the side of his house," Bruce fairly pointed out, only for a carved wooden penis to be thrown at his head.
"I would never hit the house, my aim is perfect, asshat!"
Roaring with laughter, Thor dropped from the branch on which he'd been doing chin-ups and ruffled Clint's hair. "Your aim is true indeed, young archer. Perhaps you could compete in the annual promenade of talent?" he suggested.
Clint stared at him. "Dude, promenade? Are you even real?"
"Of course I am! Care to challenge me further?"
Thor waggled his eyebrows to add emphasis, and Clint dove across the space between them to practically climb up the bigger guy like a tree. Tony, Bruce, and Steve idly watched for a few minutes while they wrestled, Steve looking puffy and uncomfortable surrounded by so many plants he was or was very likely allergic to, until Bruce rolled his eyes and leaped into the fray himself. Laughter, grunts, and choking noises were the only sounds in the Hole for quite a while. Tony wondered if it would sound like cheap porn if he shut his eyes, especially with all the noise Thor was making.
With a clatter, Steve's inhaler hit the forest floor as he leaped to his feet. "Guys!" he shouted, and the fight came to a stop. Thor was at the bottom, flat on his back, with the scruff of Bruce's ruined shirt in one hand and Clint trying very hard to get him in a headlock but really just laying on top of him now that Steve had their attention. They followed his stare to the other side of the clearing, the side opposite the town, and found a girl in a tattered blue dress shivering in the gap between two trees. Tony blinked, wondering if he had had too much to drink last night, but everyone else was looking too. It was like The Little Mermaid and Rapunzel had crashed together in one tiny fourteen-year-old girl, with bright red hair that fell tangled to her waist, covered in ashes and trembling at them. Usually Tony would just say 'trembling,' but with the way she was glaring through dead gray eyes, it somehow felt pointed.
Clint was the first to unravel himself from the wrestling match. "Hey, are you okay?" he called out.
After a second she mumbled something that sounded like "Pomoigite," turned on her tail, and ran.
And god dammit if they didn't follow Alice down the rabbit hole. In only the four months since Bruce moved to Shield County Tony had done things he never thought it would find himself doing. He was in the woods, for fuck's sake, somewhere he never thought he'd be caught dead, he hadn't had is phone out for half an hour (no use, no wifi), and was enjoying himself around human beings. They ran after the girl for what felt like ages, losing Steve to his inhaler only a dozen meters in or so.
"What did she say?" panted Bruce.
Clint breathlessly shook his head.
Eyeing the dirty wild girl, Tony asked, "Dudes, what if she's one of those kids like on the news? The ones raised by wolves or something? If she was speaking gibberish..."
"Then where'd the dress and walking-on-her-hind-legs come from, dumb shit?" snarled Clint.
At the mouth of another clearing the girl stopped and turned to them, and the tiny gated village burning at her back. "Pomoigite," she repeated, skinny bare legs shaking in the cold.
Tony called the cops. It seemed like he and the cops were really close lately. With lots of convincing from Clint, using a much simpler and easier to understand form of sign language, the girl reluctantly followed them back to the outskirts of the woods, clinging to Clint's hand. She didn't speak a word of English, so when an ambulance tried to take her away she turned and tried to run again, but Clint held on. "Can I go with you?" he asked the paramedics, and since he was the only person who seemed able to communicate with the girl, they let him.
Dude, she's Russian! Do you speak Russian? Clint texted Tony later.
Why would I speak Russian? replied Tony.
I dunno, you're rich, rich people speak other languages.
Try again, bird-brains.
In fact, no one in Shield County knew Russian, so while she was recovering from smoke inhalation Clint started teaching the girl (whose name they finally figured out was Natasha) sign language. She picked up on it crazy-fast, and soon the police had pieced together what happened. The village in the woods was not a cult, despite popular opinions, nor was it Amish. It was Natasha, her parents, and all her parents' siblings and children living together away from the rest of the world. None of them were legal citizens, and so just lived off the land to avoid being caught. Natasha and the other children had been taught how to fight by her father, who used to be a Soviet spy (no, really, or at least that was how Clint translated it), in case they were ever attacked. She didn't know how the fire started, but the cabins were old and dry and went up quickly. According to the firemen, no one else in the little village survived because they'd all been in the same building.
Did you ever see a man who looks like me run by? Clint asked her a week after they found her. She shook her head, and when he wilted slightly touched his hand.
Can I live with you? she asked. Clint thought to explain how the foster system worked, but figured that if Fury had pulled strings for him, he could probably pull strings for Natasha too. Besides, he liked her. She was pretty and she seemed to find something worthwhile in him. She taught him some Russian words and smiled at his terrible accent. Natasha never laughed, or at least hadn't since they found her. Even those small, wry, smiles were rare and fleeting.
Before visiting hours ended he told her, I'll ask. She smiled again and tugged on the collar of his shirt until he was up on the bed and his shoulder was her pillow. When the nurses came to kick him out he shrugged helplessly, pinned under the sleeping fourteen-year-old who had latched possessively to him as soon as sleep hit.
Natasha started school with them the next week, intentionally placed in classes with Clint so he could translate for her, and soon she was trailing along with him every time they hung out. Tony wasn't really sure if she and Clint were dating, but didn't dare ask in case it got him a black eye. The pair of them were volatile enough, but there was Bruce to worry about too, who seemed to regard Clint and Natasha like younger siblings, and treat anyone who was mean to them just as viciously as Thor did to those who mistreated Loki.
They still went to McDonald's during study hall, but it was a lot harder to sneak past Coulson now that their group was getting bigger. He got them thrown in detention more than once, which was annoying as fuck but Tony couldn't help admiring his balls. Steve had totally given them up as a lost cause, but still reminded them they should go to class, like the good boy scout he was. Mostly Tony thought he showed up for the apple pie, but just scolded them as a reflex by then. Natasha really liked the McNuggets; she'd never had McDonald's - or anything outside the woods - before.
When the snow melted Tony thought he might invite everyone over for a swim in the heated pool - and for once, by 'everyone', Tony meant only five other people - but even as he was pulling up his contact list, Mom came into his room with the phone in her hand and tears in her eyes. "Sweetie, I'm so sorry, but it's time," she told him in a rasping voice, and Tony hadn't seen her looking so present since his little meltdown before Christmas.
"What d'you-?" he started to ask, then the air rushed out of his lungs like he'd been punched in the chest, because oh. Jarvis. Tony leaped from his chair so quickly it knocked over into the wall, and it was like the temperature in the room dropped thirty degrees because he was shaking so hard it hurt. He pulled on his coat and hat and scarf and just stood in the middle of his room wondering why he felt so scared.
He looked up at Mom and she rushed in toward him; his arms were already up to wrap around her. "Oh, honey, I know," she sniffed sadly, petting the back of his head. When had she become so small, for Tony to have to curl down around her shoulder? When had he stopped being a kid and become this unfamiliar man, who thought about how he should be comforting his mother while still seeking comfort from her? Drawing back to stroke his cheek, Mom sadly smiled, blinking back tears. Her hand came back wet. Oh. "It's going to be okay, sweetie. But we've gotta go. The nurse says...it could be any time."
Tony didn't ride in the front seat, but curled up in the back staring at his phone while Mom drove to the nursing home across town. It wasn't like anyone knew about this, about Jarvis, because that hadn't been worthy of precious news time, even if it happened right in the middle of the Stark family shitstorm. He hadn't even told Bruce, his first and best friend.
But his phone still lit up. Betty and I broke up.
Then Tony couldn't breathe because he was crying like a fucking child. It went on - he allowed it to go on - for the ten minutes it took to get to the nursing home where Jarvis was waiting to die. He'd been in the hospital since the New Year, but they moved him to the nursing home only days ago. It wasn't a place where people went to get better- it was a place people went to die.
Dad was there, sitting by his oldest and most faithful friend, holding his hand. There were tears in his eyes when he looked up and smiled sadly at Tony. God, the room was so oppressive, but they couldn't even raise their voices because of the old woman on the other side of the dividing wall. "Can he hear us?" Tony asked, his voice very small and thick.
"We don't know, buddy," Dad said, looking back down at the thin wrinkled hand closed in his. "Maybe."
So it really didn't matter, then.
They sat for hours around Jarvis, and it was torture. Tony wanted to scream but the quiet pressed in on him from all sides, all sides but one, because even if he was unconscious and on the verge of death Jarvis was making his presence known. Dying isn't fucking soft, it isn't like in the movies, not when you were dying the way Jarvis was. His body was closing down around him, power going out one circuit board at a time, and they could hear it, see it, their engineers' minds soaking in the information with the detachedness of a machinist, because maybe if human beings were machines they could be more easily thrown away when they broke and stopped working.
Jarvis' every breath was a wheeze, sounding loud and painful, sometimes whistling with the pure goddamn effort each breath needed just to come in and made them wonder why his body was even trying anymore. When he breathed out it was quiet, except when it wasn't. When it wasn't, it was a moan, an aching plaintive cry that shouldn't have shaken Tony up so much because it wasn't Jarvis anymore, it was air in his throat in his voice box it wasn't Jarvis, Jarvis wasn't feeling how hard it was to breathe, Jarvis wasn't in pain no matter how much it sounded like he was. But he looked old, and he looked broken, and there was so much fucking wrong with that.
Tony remembered being little, and not really knowing what to make of their housekeeper, who had looked so old to such a small boy but was really two years younger than Daddy. He had been going bald then, but so had Dad, only slower. He had been there when Tony worked so long on his circuit boards and Legos that his knees burned from rubbing his bedroom carpet, ready with band-aids and a glass of chocolate milk. Jarvis had been there when Tony woke up convinced there were monsters under his bed, when he knocked over something expensive and didn't want Mom and Dad to find out, when even Obie was busy, when Tony realized that he liked girls and boys just the same, when no one would listen to him, all the times that Mom or Dad or Obie weren't there Jarvis was, and Tony never really appreciated that. Jarvis had been a voice over the intercom, someone to practice his steel-edged wit on, someone to sigh and grouse and call him sir in that double-sided way that also meant I love you, and Tony loved him too but never said it and now he was leaving.
"Hello?" Bruce mumbled, dry-mouthed and still half asleep. Almost instantly though, when Tony didn't start talking about his brilliant new idea at a million miles an hour, he was awake and alert. "What's wrong? Are you okay?"
Hunched over on the bathroom floor, Tony fisted a hand in his hair and held his phone (his best friend, his uncle, his mentor, his buddy) close and cried. And told Bruce that Jarvis had just stopped breathing, those rattling shakes that made his whole chest hurt to hear, that agonizing noise that at some time around dawn made Tony wish and wish and wish would you please please just die faster and make this hurt go away oh god, had just stopped and that had been the end of it and it was too fucking quiet, pressing in on him from all sides now, and the doctors had confirmed it and Dad had started to cry like a child and needed Mom to hold him and there was no one to hold Tony, because Bruce was his best friend now.
"I just needed to hear you," he said when he finally ran out of any other words. "I just needed to hear you, Bruce."
Bruce was tired, still mussed and warm with sleep at six in the morning and heartbroken in his own right, but he stayed up until Tony felt brave enough to go back to the room with Mom and Dad and the empty machine that used to be Jarvis. "Hey, Tony. I'm here, okay? Come and find me," he reminded Tony before they hung up. Because he was Bruce, and he was Tony's best friend, and Tony just needed to hear him and that was okay sometimes.