(no subject)
TITLE: SUCKER
AUTHOR: rubyelf
FANDOM: Avengers (2012 film)
CHARACTERS: Clint, Natasha
RATING: PG
WARNINGS: nonspecific implications of child abuse/violence, AU, alternate backstory for Natasha
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SUMMARY: Clint doesn't make promises very often. But he keeps them.
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NOTE: Just a little one-shot pre-romance Clint/Natasha story that wanted written down. Not sure why. Both are underage at least at the start of the story but the closest it gets to romance is sharing candy, so I'm pretty sure it's all good.
SUCKER
With no more shows left for the day and the scalding sun beginning to dip below the peaks of the tents, Clint had hung up his bow and agreed to run Danny’s dart-tossing booth for an hour while Danny went looking for his girlfriend, who was mad at him about something again.
Didn’t seem like the people he knew who had girlfriends were very happy, he thought, as he handed a grinning teenage boy somewhere around his own age a handful of darts and stuffed the money into his pocket. Then again, the people who didn’t have girlfriends didn’t seem very happy either. So maybe it didn’t really have anything to do with the girls. Maybe it was just the circus.
“Oooh… almost,” he said, his words on autopilot. “You get that close, you know you want one more shot, right? Know you’ll get it this time. Pretty blond girl in the really short shorts is watching you.”
Clint didn’t even know if there was a pretty blond girl anywhere around, but the guy shoved another few dollars at him and took his darts.
While he was throwing, and missing, Clint realized that someone was standing at the end of the booth. He glanced over and found a girl with bright red hair pulled up into a short, curly knot, a dirty t-shirt, and what looked like a mostly-faded bruise under one eye.
“Want to play?” he asked.
“Games are all rigged,” she said.
He shrugged. It was Danny’s booth and he wasn’t interested in selling it too hard.
“I want to go with you,” she said.
He turned and studied her more closely. She couldn’t have been much older than twelve or thirteen, thin and wiry, with wary eyes and a pouting, determined mouth, and that was definitely a week-old bruise on her cheekbone.
“What, with the circus?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re just a kid.”
“So are you.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m older than you. And besides, I’m the world’s greatest marksman. I do three shows a day. What are you gonna do?”
She shuffled her feet. “Whatever I gotta do.”
Clint shook his head. He felt bad for the girl, but there were rules about things like this. The only reason the circus had taken him and Barney so young was that they were orphans with no parents to complain about it, and this girl probably wasn’t.
“Your parents would make a fuss.”
“They wouldn’t care,” she muttered. “They don’t care what I do. Except when I do it wrong.”
Clint didn’t have to ask what happened when she did it wrong.
She watched him for a moment. “Come on. Let me go with you.”
“Why you even asking me? I don’t get to decide stuff like that. You gotta go see the manager. See that blue tent over there past the funnel cakes? Go in there, tell them Clint sent you to talk to the manager, and see what he says. It’s not my call.”
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As he’d expected, she was back a few minutes later, unshed tears bright in her eyes. She leaned against the side of the booth in silence.
“Sorry,” he said, looking around to make sure no one in the thinning crowd was listening. “Look, I’ve been there, okay? It… well, I guess it doesn’t get better. But you get tougher. And you find a way to get out. This is the way me and my brother found… it’s not the best way. It’s the only one we had. You wouldn’t like it. It’s hard and mean.”
“Don’t care,” she said, voice tight. “Just want out.”
Clint looked at the faded bruise again and sighed. “Look. You really think this is your game, you gotta learn a skill, okay? Something you can show off to convince them you’re worth it. Think you can do that?”
She looked over at him and nodded. “Yeah.”
“Okay. You do that. And next time this show comes to this town, you come right here to the dart booth right about sunset, and I’ll be waiting for you.”
“You’re a liar,” she muttered, stalking away through the hot, dusty air.
“Am not,” he said, to no one.
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Clint recognized the town even after four years; it looked like all the other towns and all the other fairgrounds, but he knew as soon as the trucks started unpacking that he remembered this one for a reason. It wasn’t until the second day, halfway through a show, that he remembered the redheaded girl, and he had to force his mind back on track instead of wondering what she looked like now, whether she’d ever made it out or not.
The air hung as heavy as sandbags as the shadows lengthened across the bare ground. Clint walked and listened to the familiar voices calling out to the dwindling crowds.
“Hey, Kitty,” he said. “You need a break?”
She grinned. “Honey, you know I do.”
She handed him the darts and a handful of bills to make change, then stopped and looked at him for a moment.
“What in the world is a grown young man doing with a rainbow lollipop?”
He clutched the white cardboard stick defensively. “It’s for somebody.”
“You got a girlfriend? Nobody told me.”
“No. Go take your break. I’ve got a show in an hour.”
She laughed and ducked off into the crowd, and Clint settled back to study the under-inflated balloons and the rows of cheap stuffed toys, all of them coated with a fine covering of the dust that rose all day under the feet of people passing by. He reached up and took down a rag doll with a mop of red hair and dusted her face off before hanging her back up.
When he turned back around, there was a young woman standing at the booth. Her red hair was longer and she wasn’t a little girl anymore, but her eyes were the same. She reached out and set down her money on the counter, and Clint found himself looking at the patchwork of scars and bruises that traced from her hands up until they disappeared under her shirt.
“That’s five darts,” Clint said, reaching for the bucket.
She smiled and shook her head. “Nope. I only play if I get to throw this.”
Her other hand came up, and it held a small pocketknife, the bone handle polished from long use, the blade gleaming sharp.
That was against the rules, of course, not least because the darts were all awkwardly weighted to make it impossible to hit anything. But he shrugged and stepped back.
There was almost no movement, only a flick of her wrist, and the knife was vibrating in the board with fragments of a pink balloon hanging around it.
“Five throws,” she said.
The next four shots were as effortlessly perfect as the first. Clint handed her the knife back, and she flipped it closed and slid it into her pocket.
“Am I good enough?”
He swallowed hard. “Still gotta talk to the manager.”
She met his gaze for a moment, then nodded and turned away.
“Wait…” he called. “If you hold on till Kitty gets back, I’ll go talk to him with you. Maybe that’ll help.”
She grinned wryly. “I guess if I waited four years, I can wait a few more minutes.”
Her eyes fell on the lollipop, and she grinned.
“You knew I was coming back.”
“Did not. Just… like lollipops.”
“Eat it, then.”
He scowled. “I hate lollipops.”
“Yeah?” she said. “I love them.”
They stood in the deepening twilight, and Clint watched her chew on the edge of her lollipop for a few quiet minutes.
“What’s your name?”
“I supposed to tell you my real name?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It’s Natalie. But that doesn’t sound very exotic, you know?”
“Hmmm. There used to be a Russian lady named Natasha.”
“Huh. Natasha. I like that. What did she do?”
“She was the bearded lady.”
“Was not,” she said, and slapped his arm with the lollipop.
He grinned and licked the stickiness off before the dust could settle.
“Maybe you could grow a beard and be Natasha the bearded knife-thrower.”
“Maybe you could grow some boobs and be… wait. What’s your name?”
“Clint.”
“Is that your real name?”
“Yeah.”
She smiled. “Good to meet you. Again. Clint.”
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