Trigger Warning: mentions of suicide/suicidal thoughts in this chapter

Chapter 2: Ditched

Barney stabbed him.

Barney ran away.

Barney left him for dead.

Barney. His big brother, the one who promised to take care of him and keep him safe. The only family he had left in the world. Stabbed him, ran, and left him for dead.

Barney tried to kill him.

Clint wished he'd succeeded. He'd be better off dead than lying in a ditch for hours with no sign of help. His whole body was in pain. There was a knife sticking out of his side. He was cold and hungry and alone and he really really wished he was dead. Despite all that he really didn't want to die in a ditch on the side of the road. So he came up with a plan, a very simple three step plan.

Step 1: Get out of the ditch

Step 2: Don't die

Step 3: Kill Barney

Barney had tried to kill him, it was only fair he returned the favor.

Standing with a knife in his side proved to be difficult, for a brief moment he considered pulling it out but quickly decided against it. Even though it was causing him tremendous pain the knife was doing a pretty good job of keeping his blood inside his body, which is where he would like it to remain. So what if it took him nearly twenty minutes just to stand up at least he wasn't gonna bleed out.

Ok, standing - check.

Onto Step 1: Get out of the Ditch.

This raised a rather serious problem. In order to get out of the ditch he had to climb, climbing seemed as though it was going to be significantly more painful than standing. However, as far as he could tell the ditch did seem to follow along with the road. It'd be easier if he just walked in the ditch until he found a place where the climb wasn't as steep. Now the question was, which way did he go?

When they'd gotten out of the van Barney had pointed down the road to his right he said if he just followed that road eventually he'd find a town. Clint didn't want to follow that road, for all he knew it was a lie and he'd just walk until he dropped dead from hunger or dehydration. But it was also the only lead he had. So, as much as he hated to do it, Clint started walking.

He didn't know what he would do when (if) he made it to this possibly fake town. If it was real they'd have questions for him. What happened? Where'd he come from? Who did this? Where were his parents? What was his name? And he wouldn't be able to answer any of them.

No one was going to believe that a couple of runaway orphans faked their own deaths (Barney's idea), disappeared from society, joined the circus, and then somehow managed to survive there for five years. And even if by some miracle they believed everything he had to say, what would happen? They'd track down the circus, arrest Barney and Jacques and Buck. Then what? The three of them would know it was Clint that ratted them out and that would paint a giant target on his back. Without a legal guardian he'd be thrown back into the system and when the three of them managed to break out of jail they'd track him down and finish him off.

Maybe they'd put him in the witness protection program instead. He'd get a new name and a new family and a whole new life. He'd get to pretend like Clint Barton never even existed and that his whole life…

Why did that seem worse than the first option?

Ok, no police. Police were a bad idea.

Going back to the circus was out of the question for obvious reasons.

His side throbbed and his steps faltered. Luckily he managed to regain his balance, which was good seeing as there was nothing for him to grab hold of, being in a ditch, so if he hadn't he would've fallen flat on his face. He risked a glance down at his side and noticed that there was a small, but steady, trickle of blood darkening the fabric of his pajama shirt. He was too scared to lift up the hem and take a closer look.

After taking a deep breath to steady himself he pushed through the pain and continued forward.

Walking was hard. He couldn't extend his legs as far as he would've liked to or it would jostle the knife and his side would start to burn. Something must've happened to his ankle when he fell too. Every step he took intense stabbing pain worked its way up his leg and radiated all the way to his knee. It was getting harder to lift his right leg the longer he walked, and his ankle felt as though it had doubled in size. Clint once again didn't look at it and instead decided that if he ignored it for long enough it would probably go away on its own.

Probably…

Maybe…

…It didn't go away and Clint felt like he was going to die.

But it seemed like luck was on his side for once because he wasn't going to die in this ditch! Turns out he was right, eventually the ditch and the road did even out with each other and he was able to easily step from one to the other. The more even asphalt made walking just a bit easier and that gave him just the tiniest bit of hope.

Step One of his plan officially accomplished.

Now onto Step Two: Don't die.

Not dying probably involved a hospital. Getting to a hospital meant he needed to find civilization. Civilization was supposedly right down this road. Barring that, his brother hadn't lied to him. Which was seeming more and more likely the longer he walked with no signs of…well anything.

He was more or less just shuffling along the side of the road now. He couldn't lift his right leg up at all anymore and whenever he moved his left the now constant burning sensation in his side grew more intense. His vision was getting a little black around the edges and there was a weird rumbling sound echoing in his ears. Everytime he blinked it got harder to reopen his eyes so he tried not to. That just made his eyes burn. The rumbling was getting louder in his left ear. His eyelids were really heavy for some reason so it was harder to keep them open. The rumbling was really loud now, it was annoying and even though he knew it wouldn't do anything he reached up and yanked out his left hearing aid where the sound was the loudest. It was a surprise when that muffled the sound.

Clint stared down at his aid in confusion. If the noise was in his head then that shouldn't have worked. Cautiously he fixed it back into his ear and the rumbling grew even louder than it was before.

"-id? What're you doing on the side of the road?"

Clint jumped and whipped around in the direction the voice had come from.

A car had pulled up next to him on the otherwise still deserted road. It was red and there were two people inside it. A man who sat behind the wheel. He had brown hair and glasses and there was a dark haired woman with a visible baby bump in the passenger's seat. Clint just squinted at them in confusion before coming to the very obvious conclusion that they were a hallucination. He turned away and continued walking. The car started to slowly roll alongside him.

"Hey kid? Can you hear me?"

He sounded nice. Clint ignored him.

The car sped around him and rolled down the road a few feet before stopping completely. The driver side door popped open and the hallucination climbed out and started walking towards him. Clint continued with his slow shuffle-walk and figured the hallucination would go away once he walked through it.

Instead when the man got close enough he put a hand on each of Clint's shoulders and stopped him in his tracks. Not a hallucination then.

The man crouched down so he was eye level with Clint.

"I'm going to pick you up and put you in the backseat of my car," sounds like a kidnapping, "then my wife is going to drive us to the closest hospital, ok?"

He sounded calm and reasonable. Clint didn't trust him one bit, but he couldn't really do anything when the guy lifted him up into his arms bridal style. Nor could he do anything when he was placed in the backseat of their car. He felt sufficiently trapped when the backdoor was closed and the car started moving.

Clint could do nothing about any of this. Once he was set down in the backseat his eyelids got a lot heavier, so did his head. He ended up slumped against the man as he pulled a surprisingly large first aid kit from under the driver's seat.

"Still with us kid?"

Clint managed a near silent "hhhhmmmm."

The man nodded, "that's good, how about we keep that up? Can you tell me your name?"

"I dunno."

His tongue felt heavy in his mouth. Talking was hard, his head felt fuzzy, and he didn't want to tell these people anything. It was getting harder to keep his eyes open.

"No no no, let's not do that," the guy tapped against his cheek with one hand and applied pressure to the gaping hole in his side with the other.

Clint stared at it as his brain tried to make sense of what he was seeing. A gaping hole with blood seeping out in a steady stream. He was pretty sure there had been a knife there before. A quick sweep of the car told him the man hadn't pulled it out. Had it fallen out? And he hadn't noticed? Strange.

"Mary?" the man called to the woman in the front seat. "Could you possibly drive a little faster?"

"Darling, if I drive any faster I will lose control of this car," she also sounded weirdly calm.

The man didn't respond to that and instead continued to do what he could with the remarkably well stocked first aid kit. Clint was surprised that the still unnamed man seemed so well versed in first aid and stab wound care.

The man spoke again, "how is it that we keep ending up in situations like this?"

"You're the one that suggested we take a short cut."

"I was just trying to get us to the conference faster! We were running late, if we stayed on the highway we would've missed our lecture."

"It looks like we…"

Clint didn't hear the rest of what she had to say, he was too busy blacking out.

Not really liking the name of this fic. I was thinking of changing it to either one of these. 1) The World's Greatest Marksman, 2) Hawkeye and The Black Widow, 3) Purple Black & Red. I wasn't really the biggest fan of the title when I posted it, actually accidentally posted this whole thing a little early, but we're rolling with it now. If you have any kind of opinion on the title let me know. Either way it's going to change, because I've realized I really don't like it! Thanks for reading! 😊