Legal Disclaimer: I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.

Warning: This work may be offensive to some readers. There are also references to abandonment and chronic health issues. Feel free to back out if need be.

Author's Note: A special reminder to everyone that if you are upset about things that happened in canon, that getting mad at people using canon in their fics is pointless. I'm sorry if canon isn't friendly towards your favorite or supports a character that you dislike, but that's not on me. That's something to take up with the creators of canon.

Submitting Info:
Stacked with: Hogwarts (Term 15); MC4A (Year 4)
Individual Challenges: Old Shoes; Short Jog; Disabled (x2); SHIELD MC; Neurodivergent; Best Stories (Y); Two Cakes (Y); Eating Cake (Y); Bucket Listing (Y); Zed Era; Culturally Inclined; La Vie Boheme; My Favorite Things
House: Slytherin
Assignment No.: Term 15 – Assignment 05
Subject (Task No.): n/a
Other Hogwarts Challenges: 365 [309](Falling)
Other MC4A Challenges: FaB [3B](Ceramic Mug); Set [3C](Kitchen);Ship (n/a)[SuMic2 (Purple); Bingo (3B - Tunnel of Love)]; Hunt [Fa WD (Heart Condition; Major Respiratory Issue); Fa Items (Ceramic Mug)]; Chim [Loride] (Royal Purple); Fire [x3](Yank to the Bank; Bromance to Romance; Beautifully Rare); Garden [Reader Digest (Deaf/HoH Character); Duties (Shivering); Personal Favs (Tony Stark)]; Hang [Phrase 02] (n/a)
Representation(s): Deaf Clint Barton/Tony Stark; ARC Reactor Issues: Pre-Clint Barton/Tony Stark/Tony Stark; Friday & the Tower
Primary & Secondary Bonus Challenges: Casper's House; Turtle-Duck; Second Verse (Rock of Ages; Most Human Bean; Grease Monkey; Unwanted Advice; Spinning Plates; Middle Name; Sneeze Weasel; Nontraditional; Found Family; Not a Lamp); Chorus (In the Trench; Abandoned Ship; Wind Beneath; Unicorn; Larger than Life; Tomorrow's Shade; Peddling Pots; Machismo; Wabi Sabi; Pear-Shaped; Odd Feathers); Demo 1 (Easy Zephyr; Under the Bridge; Shiver & Shake); Demo 2 (Hot Stuff; Soul-Like; Some Beach)
Tertiary & Generic Bonus Challenges: Mea (Ennui; Rampant); TY (Ntaiv); War (Ennui; Sanctuary; Orator); O3 (Orator; Olivine); FR (Evolution); LiCK (Poppy)
Word Count: 1766 words

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Shifted Perspective
Part 03: Familiar Faces
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Clint's first stop was the newsstand on the edge of Hell's Kitchen. He had to admit that he breathed a relieved sigh when he spotted the same creepy man in it along with the same ugly pug camped out on the counter. Familiar was good until he got the lay of the land in this version of Earth. After all, he couldn't count on gaining Tony's help if for some reason this place didn't have one.

So he gave the pug a nod of acknowledgment and started browsing through the available papers and magazines. It didn't take long to confirm that Tony was alive in this world. Apparently there had been a bit of crisis a couple of months before where StarkTech had been suspected as going rogue and nearly destroying the world. Formal investigation into the matter proved that an outside program had hacked the systems of the Iron Legion after destroying the security features in place to prevent StarkTech from falling into the wrong hands. The conclusion was all reasonable and expected safety precautions had been followed even though they had clearly not been enough.

He rubbed his lips as he tried to quell his sudden urge to throw up as a shiver of cold recognition worked its way up his spine. He knew enough about how Tony would have set up those security features to know it would have JARVIS controlling it all as well as running the firewalls. Destroyed meant that this Tony had lost a son, even if it wasn't acknowledged.

Even more unsettling, Clint read about the dedication of a training compound a bit upstate. Frowning, he flipped through the brief article on it again. It seemed the majority of the Avengers had moved into residency there, along with some unfamiliar names. His own name wasn't among them, which was a bit strange, but not as strange as the brief mention of Bruce's disappearance and Rhodey's new on-call status with the Avengers.

Clint didn't need to think too hard in order to the math.

Tony had been abandoned by the Avengers, by his best friend.

Clint traded magazines, picking up a business weekly publication. It immediately confirmed that Pepper was working out of the West Coast offices of Stark Industries. Happy would be with her as a matter of course. Tony would trust no one else with her protection detail.

Tony never did well on his own. The genius could go through the basic motions of life on his own, true, but that wasn't the problem. Tony only thrived when he had company. Being around people who cared about him always energized him. No matter what his critics would claim, Tony Stark had a huge heart. Leave him alone in a public place for a half hour and he would probably have adopted at least one stray. It could be a problem (and had been a few times) but Clint wouldn't change him for the world.

And somehow, this world had just left their Tony Stark without a family.

This was so much worse than he had thought it was.

Clint put everything back the way he had found it before giving the pug eyeing him suspiciously a nod and leaving. He ducked down a nearby alley and took the fire escape back up to the rooftops. It was the easiest way to travel quickly in the city without the ability to fly. Not to mention that it was cheaper than even the subway. Nearest he could figure this world's Tony had been on his own for at least a month if not the full two that had passed since this Ultron entity had taken over the Iron Legion. That meant that there was no one on Tony-wrangling duty while the genius would be grieving and more likely than normal to be self-destructive.

A niggle of thought crept out of the corner of his mind as he hurried towards the Tower.

This world did not seem to appreciate the treasure that they had in Tony Stark. Clint already knew from theoretical discussions with Tony that his genius would welcome other versions of himself so long as they weren't a villain, super or otherwise. Even if Clint had the feeling that Tony would agree to a lot of outlandish things if it staved off the day his greatest unspoken fear came true and Clint left, he was still willing to bet that convincing another Tony to come home with him wouldn't be something that his lover would really object to. It might even soothe that worry just a bit.

Not to mention that Clint was already thinking of maybe even outright kidnapping this Tony.

Clint had to do the last few blocks on foot as the buildings changed to taller buildings that were less jumper friendly. He found himself following a group of chattering teens with backpacks and canvas satchels. He thought that they might be students headed towards the study rooms on the third floor of the Tower, but while they did enter the Tower, they didn't head towards the elevators. Instead they headed towards a large cluster of chairs and low tables out of the main path through the lobby. Clint frowned as he watched them go.

Had Tony not set up the study floor in this universe? Clint's eyes widened as he remembered how much back and forth there had been between Tony and Pepper to get the floor set up. At one point, even Natasha had been pulled in to help with the paperwork and political contracts necessary. Had this world's Natasha and Pepper not helped? How long has this world actually been neglecting their Tony?

Taking Tony back with him was seeming like a better idea by the minute.

Erring on the side of caution, Clint bypassed the receptionist desk, heading directly to the private elevator that had access to the Avenger floors. It opened to his biometrics, which had been a growing worry ever since his name had not been listed as one of the Avengers living at the facility upstate. He had a spark of hope that maybe it hadn't been listed because his other self was actually living at the Tower.

After he had stared at the panel of buttons for probably too long, because he honestly had no clue where Tony might be let alone if the floors would be the same, he decided the best way to find the genius was probably whatever baby Stark CI that had replaced JARVIS. Carefully, he spoke his request, aware that he didn't know who he should be addressing and that he was going to have that soft-mouth-ness to his words that he hated because it reminded him of Barney being an asshole when they were kids.

"Can you take me to Tony, honey?"

The only response was the elevator starting to ascend towards the penthouse. That was a bit weird, but Clint figured it was just that the program was likely young. Maybe they were still a little shy around strangers. He couldn't say that he would blame them, given what he had read about the Ultron crisis. It was good that they were cautious, even if a part of him missed the text that JARVIS would have put on the wall to greet him once he had noticed that Clint didn't have his aids in.

The doors opened and Clint tugged nervously at his royal purple body armor before exiting. He felt like someone had punched him in the gut as he caught sight of this world's Tony. He was shorter than Clint's Tony by at least half a foot. He also looked as if he hadn't slept in days, and Clint would have been surprised if he had been eating real food in the same time frame. His dark brown (not black) hair stuck up in every direction as he had been running his hands through it repeatedly. There was a look of resignation in his brown eyes (not the familiar blue that reminded Clint of the Missouri sky in summer), as if he was expecting to be yelled at.

Yet despite all that, he was still recognizably Tony Stark.

"Tony," Clint breathed, the last several hours hitting him all at once. He had to swallow several times to dislodge the lump of emotion suddenly blocking his throat so that he could speak the Hebrew phrase that his Tony had made sure that he could pronounce flawlessly even without being about to hear most of the tones he would be using. "Any zr barts mvzrh."

Before his very eyes, Tony seemed to crumpling in on himself as if Clint had stabbed him instead of telling him that he was a stranger in a strange land. His eyes sparkled as they seemed to fill with tears that refused to spill over. The genius visibly struggled to pull himself together to give the callback phrase, and when he finally did speak, the words sounded as choked as Clint had felt upon seeing a version of his genius so downtrodden.

No sooner than the last syllable had left his mouth, than Tony's eyes fluttered shut and he began to fall where he was. The ceramic mug that he had been holding fell from his suddenly lax fingers, shattering as it hit the tiled floor of the kitchen he was standing just within. Tony was following close behind it.

Clint was moving before he could fully comprehend that Tony was losing consciousness. He swept the genius into a bridal hold easily (too easily; the genius was much lighter than Clint was used to). More than once he had been to do the same when his Tony's heart had decided to skip too many beats in a row or overwork itself. Damn genius always forgot that the reactor wasn't actually a pacemaker and the compression caused by it did a number on both his heart and his lungs.

He carefully laid down his burden on the white couch.

Even in a different world, this was a routine that Clint was overly familiar with. He didn't mind going through the list of what needed to be done. If nothing else, Tony looked as if he could use even this small snatch of sleep. He could hear just enough of the baby CI's voice to know they were panicking, which was something that he was definitely needed to deal with sooner rather than later, but first he had make sure that Tony wasn't having a heart attack or bronchial flare.

Clint was definitely taking Tony with him, after this.

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To Be Continued
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