More FtM!Clint Scenes
Scene 1
2.in my headcanon for Hakweye he wears a necklace with Saint Sebastian on it, the patron saint of fletchers and arrow smiths (not originally from this head canon, it just migrated over, and yes I blatantly stole the Scarlet Witch’s name for odd reasons. This evolved from being about more than the pendant and about Clint’s time in the circus.)
TW: Comtemplated and attempted self-mutilation, violence, serious injury.
Rating: M (for above mentioned violence and language)
Wanda was probably one of the few people at the circus that Clint said more than a few sentences to on a regular basis. Sure, he kinda talked to Trickshot, but that was mostly monosylabic (and yes, Clint new that word. Don’t ask him to spell it, but he knew what it meant.) and with Barney… it usually was just one of them telling the other that they were going “out”.
Wanda was the tattooed lady. She was almost completely covered with tattoos, except for her face and a few spots on her hips. “They hurt too much” is what she’d told Clint when he’d accidentally walked into her dressing room while looking for Barney and seen a lot more than he’d planned on. He’d asked why some of the tattoos were certain places and what some of them meant, his search for his wayward brother quickly forgotten.
It became a habit, a routine of sorts. When Clint needed Barney and he wasn’t there (which was increasingly often), he’d go to Wanda and ask questions about her tattoos and then life. How are babies made? What is love? Why am I bleeding between my legs? Why is the sky blue? What am I? This last one was a big one because while Clint had been Clint since he’d joined the circus, some of the “employees” still insisted on calling him “her” and “Claire” and “freak”. He didn’t understand how he got to this weird in between that he knew he was a boy, but no one else seemed to see that, or at least mostly no one. Wanda gave him a sad look when he asked that question, barely sixteen then, and she reached into a drawer and tossed him a pendant. It was gold painted, as seen by the chips of the edges, and was embossed with a dorky looking archer outline with the words “Saint Sebastian” above and “Pray for Me” below.
“Clint,” Wanda placed her hands on either side of his face, looking into his eyes, “I’m not the one to answer that question. That one is something I’m not sure I can answer for myself. What I do know is that you can shoot like Artemis and Apollo combined.”
Clint looked back down at the pendant. “Who’s this Sebastian fucker? and what’s this got to do with figuring out what I am?”
Wanda gave her head a little shake, grabbing her half finished beer and taking a swig before returning to Clint. “He’s the patron saint of archers, at least that’s what the guy at the shop told me when I picked it up. He’s the saint for some other stuff too, but this one’s for archers.” She reached under her shirt and pulled out a similar, nicer looking pendant with an old bearded man on it. “This is Saint Giles, Patron Saint of Outcasts… and breast feeding women.” Clint gave her a side ways look. “I didn’t come up with it!”
They laughed a minute about a saint of boobs and then Wanda finished, “When I really feel lost I think about how there are some many people like me that there’s a saint for it, that I’m not really lost, just waylaid from my people. You’re not a what, Clint. And it’s going to take awhile to figure out WHO you are, but just remember that there are enough archers out there for their to be a saint for it and that you’re not the only one. There’s probably some of them who are trying to figure out the same things you are. You just got to make your own way and decide who you’re going to be.”
Three weeks later, Clint catches the Swordsman and Trickshot stealing money from Carson’s payroll. In that moment, when he was being offered a piece of the money for his scilence, he remembered that Wanda had said that he had to decide who he was. And he wasn’t the kind of person to stab Carson in the back for his kindnesses. The fall from the tight rope broke his right arm and fractured a rib. Barney heard what he’d done and came to see him where he was laid up in Wanda’s dressing room.
“You stupid girl!” Barney screamed, hauling Clint to his feet. “Why didn’t you just take the money? We could have left this shit pool.” He shoved Clint back down, and the archer winced at the pain blossoming in this chest. “We could have run.”
Clint just glared at Barney through his tears. Everything inside him hurt. “Not a girl.” Clint muttered.
“What did you just say, you silly girl?”
Clint took as deep of a breath as he could with his rib, “I’m not a fucking girl, Barney. I’m Clint. I’m a boy… going to be a man. That’s why I did it. Because real men don’t stab people in the backs, Bernard Barton. Not like Dad did. not like Mom did. Not like any of the shit faces who beat us up in the homes. Those weren’t real men, and I don’t want to be them.”
“You freak idiot, no one cares about being a “real man” when you have boobs.” Barney kicked Clint’s knee that hung of the side of the bed. Clint gasped, in too much pain to really scream. “The Swordsman offered me a job on his way out, I’m going with him. Done with you’re dead wait, Claire.” And Barney left his little sister broken in a stranger’s bed.
When Wanda returned, she’d gone to get some Kodine(?) for Clint’s pain, she found him sobbing silently into his arms, muttering on repeat “No one cares about who you are when you have boobs, Clint. You’re pathetic. Men don’t cry. No one cares about who you are.” She hurried over to him and pulled at him to look at her, he pulled away. “Leave me alone! Don’t look at me!”
Clint rolled to face away from the tattooed lady. He looked down at his bare chest, with wraps low around his ribcage, holding the fractured rib still. He look at how his small, but not invisible breasts sat unnaturally against him. He didn’t want them. He was only thankful they were so small, because more than once Trickshot had said that if he filled out, he’d have to dress as a girl for his act, “The Amazing Hawkeye” and that he’d have to give up “acting” like a boy. Clint glared at the soft flesh that mocked him. No, he hadn’t “filled out”. His hips only widened somewhat and his curves remained mostly flat. From what he’d seen, most girls and women had serious curves, like a winding road, which is something he admired, but didn’t want on himself. And now, he didn’t want any of it. He want the curves and edges to harden and go away.
Clint heard Wanda leave, most likely surrendering to his wish to be alone. Clint rolled back over, because lying on the other side put pressure on his rib. As he refocused his eyes, landing on a set of fabric sheers that Wanda had out the cut the wrappings. He’d seen them cut through the cotton fabric like butter. How would they do on ridding himself of… his issues. He levered himself up and shifted across the bed to grab the edge of the counter. The movement went slowly and he was constantly wincing. As he move along, he saw the Kodine Wanda had bought off some dealer somewhere. What he was planning to do was going to hurt more than he already did. He opened the baggy and pulled out one of the pills, popping it in his mouth and dry swallowed it. He finished shuffling to the sheers and sat of the ottoman that Wanda had occupied earlier as she’d wrapped his arm and ribs. This would be hard with one arm splinted from elbow to wrist, but Clint grabbed the sheers with his good hand and pulled them open. They were gleaming sharp and Clint shook. He moved them toward her right breast and just before she moved to cut into her self, Wanda came back it and dropped the coffee she was carrying. The sound of the glass shattering startled Clint into dropping the sheers, accidentally cutting a shallow, but long slice across his right breast and abdomen as they fell.
“What in fuck’s sake do you think you were doing, Clinton Barton?” Wanda screamed. She side stepped her broken glasses and snatched the sheers from the ground and throwing them across the room, away from Clint, who was still shocked and starting to succumb to the Kodine he’d taken.
“Can’t be a real man…” He was slurring his words as he started to shed the last of his tears, “Real men don’t have boobs.”
And with that, as Wanda held him close, he fell asleep.
When he finally dragged himself from the drug induced haze of sleep, Wanda was leaning on her counter with a roll of bandages. Her eyes red from lack of sleep, or tears, or both.
“Clint, I have something to show you.” she said.
At age sixteen, Clint figured out how he could be a real man.
Scene 3: tba