Work Text:
English
I have wings and I can fly away
~
Clint Barton is barely three years old, and his brother is sick with fever. His father is drinking somewhere and he's learned even this young that beer and Daddy are a bad combination. His mother strokes sweaty hair back from Barney's forehead. Clint watches meekly from the doorway.
Clint Barton has also learned that silence and stillness will keep you alive.
Mama stands just as the door to their home slams shut. Clint knows that means Daddy and means that he should run. He's learned this even if he can't read or write well yet. Clint knows, but right now his Mama is some foreign creature and a few bruises is nothing to getting to see this.
Mama stands, walking to the bathroom. On light feet, Clint follows her. She splashes water on her face and stares into the mirror. Clint thinks his mother is beautiful, flowing dark hair, olive skin. But for some reason the circles and bruises around her eyes seem so much uglier.
Mama stares at herself in the mirror and her face is different, isn't the one Clint sees watch over him when he has nightmares, or kiss his scrapes better. It's once again the foreign creature, and Clint gazes transfixed.
Mama speaks suddenly and softly. Clint almost doesn't catch it.
"I have wings and I can fly away."
It's silly, his Mama doesn't have wings. But Clint finds himself rolling the syllables in his mouth days after the fact. Wishing that Mama would fly away, and take him and Barney with her.
~
Italian
Ho le ali e posso volare via
~
Clint is four and Mama hasn't flown away yet. Instead, when it is just them two, and Mama is taking a break from teaching Clint to read, she'll speak to him with odd words. Words Clint has never heard before.
When Clint asks, Mama calls them Italian. When Clint asks, she agrees to teach it to him.
It's like learning to read and write all over again, and worse, learning to talk. But Clint is transfixed by the musical sounds of the words and when Barney is at school, Clint will name items and Mama will teach him the word in Italian. In this way, Clint Barton learns his second language.
When Daddy or Barney is home, they all talk and yell in English. But when it's just Clint and Mama, they chatter at each other in Italian. It becomes their code, their safe place.
In the heat of summer, while Mama makes him lunch, Clint asks what has been on his mind for months.
"Mama, how do you say 'I have wings, and I can fly away' in Italian?" Mama freezes. She gives Clint an odd smiles and asks,
"Why do you want to know, sweetheart?" Clint tilts his head, tapping his fingers on the table.
"You say it tons."
For a few moments, Mama is a foreign animal again. Clint is still transfixed.
"Ho le ali e posso volare via." Clint smiles. It's no different from other Italian and yet, Clint feels attached to the phrase. Mama has him repeat it back to her, over and over and over. Until it feels like the words and syllables are burned into his brain.
~
Anger
~
Truthfully, anger is the first language Clint Barton learns. Before he can speak English, or formulate his thoughts in Italian, he learns the meaning behind raised voices and clenched fists.
Anger is the language of clinking beer bottles, Mama cleaning up after Daddy's mess. Anger is shouting and screaming and yelling. Not the words, but the tones. Clint learns that different volumes mean different things from different people. He learns that almost every single one of Daddy's volumes means run and hide.
He learns that Mama's highest pitch means tired and please and stop.
Clint Barton learns the language of anger in bruises and broken bones and scrapes. The subtle accents hidden in a broken bottle, smashed against his back. The slight uplift of a cigarette butt stubbed out on skin.
Clint learns the language of anger and learns to be afraid. When it's most fluent speaker is silenced, Clint wonders if anger itself killed his parents or if it was just all Daddy, crashing he and Mama into a tree.
It continues to be spoken, even after the orphanage. Clint can't forget rage, and it seems no one else can either.
~
Russian
У меня есть крылья, и я могу улететь
~
The circus is bright and loud and very far from home. Barney is four years older than him, thirteen, and says that he's confined by the orphanage. Clint is nine and doesn't understand but he goes anyway.
He thinks he understands what his mother meant, about having wings and the opportunity to fly away. She never took it, and Clint isn't all that happy taking it himself. But, he keeps his mouth shut and practices his Italian when Barney is out with the other roustabouts.
Clint is nine and far too young for the circus. He gets lost in the noise and clamor, but so does Barney. Clint thinks his brother likes it this way. Now, when someone isn't after Clint for not doing something right, he likes to wander the grounds. He'll pretend that he's only there for a day, and that he isn't trapped there like an animal. Some of the carnies let him play the games for free, and he can never get tired of watching the shows.
Clint is nine and altogether forgotten about. He learned silence and stillness far too young, and they come in handy in the circus.
It's a surprise when the old Russian fortune teller spots him, and tugs him back to her tent.
Clint is secretly scared, because he's seen the woman watching him before. He wonders if he should scream, or if anyone would come to save him.
Instead, the woman grins with her few teeth, and pulls Clint up a chair. Years later, the smell of incense will remain fresh in his memory. That, and the chocolate bar she offers him.
Food is food and Clint eats it eagerly. The woman still hasn't said anything and neither has Clint.
Finally, the fortune teller speaks.
"У меня есть крылья, и я могу улететь." Clint tilts his head.
"What does that mean?" The woman smiles, and speaks this time in heavily accented English.
"That is for you to find out, boy. Though I think you already know."
Despite the words, the fortune teller spends the next year and a half teaching Clint Russian, pressuring him until his accent is impeccable. He speaks it as well as Italian and English and the old lady looks proud of him before she dies. She leaves him her Russian dictionary, and when Clint translates the phrase that started it all, he stares.
I have wings, and I can fly away.
Clint wonders how she knew.
~
Spanish
Tengo alas y puedo volar
~
Eventually someone notices Clint. His name is Trickshot, and he's the circus's archer.
Clint has never been shy about his interest in the bow the man carries, and when he can get away with it he watches Trickshot shoot. Lying in a tree, he'll imagine that someday he will get the chance to fire it. Clint practices his form with tree branches and tries to force strength into his wiry eleven year old frame. He enacts great archery performances in Russian and Italian and occasionally English.
When Trickshot finally notices Clint's spying, he drags the boy out by the ear. Clint has only one thing to say.
"Can I shoot the bow?" Trickshot makes Clint a deal. If he can just hit the target the archer will take him under his wing, and mentor the kid. Clint agrees, picks up the bow, and with his long studied form hits only a few inches left of the bullseye.
It's impossible, and unlikely. But the reason Clint doesn't count the arrows and singing of the bow a language that he learns, is that he feels as if he has always known it. Drawing the bow and letting the arrow fly is like revisiting an old friend. This is, perhaps, the language Clint Barton is born understanding. It's impossible and unlikely and beautiful all the same.
Trickshot takes him on, and he's performing within months.
Finally, the man who has become Clint's mentor and friend loans him to Jacques Duquesne. Clint doesn't like the man, and knows that Barney works for him illegally. Duquesne doesn't want his affection, and instead drills other skills into Clint. He's called Swordsman for a reason, and it's soon obvious that Clint's accuracy is in everything.
The Swordsman speaks French and Spanish, but seems most fond of the latter. Clint learns the curses of the language inadvertently, and revisits his old friend anger. He won't ask the Swordsman to teach him Spanish, but he asks one of the flame throwers for her Spanish-to-English dictionary.
Clint teaches himself a little, but it's difficult with no one to correct his pronunciation. He makes sure he gets one phrase right, repeating it over and over again until it sounds natural.
"Tengo alas y puedo volar." Clint tells Trickshot, when he and the older man shoot at targets.
"I sent you to learn knives, Hawk, not Spanish swears." Clint doesn't correct him.
Late at night, he repeats the phrase to himself, in English, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. Clint wonders what his Mama would think of him now.
~
German
Ich habe Flügel, und ich kann wegfliegen
~
The acrobats take an interest in Clint when he's about thirteen. He's become somewhat of a sensation in the circus, the youngest member to hold a steady act. Trickshot's nickname for him, Hawkeye, has become his stage name. People throw around the title Greatest Marksman. Clint wishes for less spotlight, so maybe Barney will look at him again.
In learning all these new languages, it seems he's forgotten how to understand his brother.
Clint is running from a pack of older boys trying to beat some respect into him. Clint has respect, but he only gives it to the people who deserve it.
The boys are closing in, because Clint lets them. What happens next is practiced and perfected.
Clint rounds a corner, and to the boys, disappears. They spend about five minutes looking for him, before wandering off. Clint sits up, and drops down off the roof of the storage container.
The triplets are waiting for him. They stare at him, eyes narrowed, and Clint stares back. He is no longer ruled by fear or what he understands. He cannot afford to be. All three women grin at him simultaneously. Despite Clint's courage, it's unnerving.
"You're quick." The one on the left tells him. Clint says,
"I'd like to be quicker."
They teach him, when he isn't busy performing shows or hitting targets. They teach him how to bend his body impossibly, and fly through the air. They teach him landings, and to use everything around him to his advantage. It helps with his regular act too, let's him make it even more daring, so Trickshot doesn't complain.
One day, while the three women are nattering at each other in their native German, Clint interrupts.
"Teach me." He says. Clint has learned that it's best to just ask for what you want, and see if you'll get it.
"Languages are hard." Clint refutes that fact in the four that he knows.
The three women teach him German.
When Clint asks to be taught the phrase, what he has come to consider his phrase, they all share an amused glance.
"We have taught you to fly, no?" Clint smiles, big and large. They give in, and teach him the words.
"Ich habe Flügel, und ich kann wegfliegen." It's harsh and sharp and Clint thinks he understands this better.
It isn't Italian and it isn't about escape and opportunity. In German, Clint understands that the words are of the trapped and ensnared and imprisoned.
The acrobats say he has an extraordinary gift for language. Clint shakes his head and flies through the air. In this at least, he isn't caged.
~
Betrayal
~
Betrayal is Clint's newest language and it tastes like copper and dirt.
Barney watches as the Swordsman kicks his ribs in, watches as his brother is beaten to within an inch of death. Clint watches Barney watch him and mourns. When they toss him into the dirt, bloody and whimpering, Clint watches Barney turn his back.
Betrayal tastes like blood and mud and this taste will haunt him, for the rest of his life.
Clint lies in the dirt, tossed aside and useless. Barney walks away from him, so Clint walks away from the circus. He buys gum, and chews it and chews it and chews it until all he can taste is peppermint.
He tells himself that he is finally flying free in Italian, Russian, Spanish, and German.
Clint believes it in exactly none of them
~
French
J'ai des ailes et je peux m'envoler
~
Clint picks up French for a job, and it starts with only a few sentences. He can say hello, and goodbye, and hold a conversation about the weather. He can say I have wings, and I can fly away.
Generally, Clint doesn't need to speak another language to kill people, but this job is special. He's 20, and been in the mercenary business three years, when someone comes knocking at his door. Clint has always been very careful which contracts he takes, both for moral code and safety reasons, but this one seems fine and legitimate.
Sneak into a European drug lord's facility, sabotage the product, get out. Simple, easy, and extremely well-paid.
Nothing is ever simple.
The contractor forgot to mention the drug lord doubled as a human trafficker.
Now- now Clint holds a dying little girl in his arms. She's stick-thin and abused, three bullets in her stomach. The girl (Gretel she whispered blood on her lips and tears tracking down her face) watches Clint with big eyes. Gretel can't be more than seven.
She will never get the chance to be more than seven.
Clint isn't fluent in French and regrets it enough to hurt. Dying in his arms, all he can tell the child is: J'ai des ailes et je peux m'envoler. He thinks that if he can't give her anything else, this is a fitting last rite.
Gretel bleeds out in his arms, little mouth tightened around the word Merci. Clint lies her on the ground and drapes her with his jacket.
He burns the entire compound to the ground. For good measure, Clint hunts down the man who hired him and kills him too. More importantly, he becomes fluent in French, and grieves for the little girl who found her wings
Clint isn't aware of it, but it's this that puts him on SHIELD's radar.
~
Pain
~
Clint learns the language of pain as a child, and throughout his life it is reinforced. Fists and cigarettes and more recently, bullets. Clint thought he knew pain, thought he spoke it and understood it.
Then Clint is captured in Shanghai and he realizes, no, he was not fluent in pain, but he certainly is now.
Clint has never been tortured this long, this insistently, this creatively before. While he floats on the pain, he watches it burn its meaning onto his skin. Pain is trying to convey detachment Clint concludes, watching from far away as the man cuts another slice into his body. Clint feels nothing.
No one is coming to get him. Hell, everyone wants the infamous Hawkeye dead. Clint thinks that at least before he dies he will have learned one more language.
When his captors leave, Clint sits in his cell and practices. The words roll off his tongue, old friends, the last words he has always wanted. He's not sure they sound human anymore, not sure they're even saying what he wants.
Clint crests a wave of pain, egged on by knives and car batteries, when the door smashes open. Dimly he hears gunfire, and retracts his statement that pain is detachment because he is coming back now and fuck can he feel it. It hurts like nothing else.
There's a man standing in front of him, in a suit. It's a dark suit and Clint thinks it would be useful for hiding bloodstains. He must figure out words again, because the man smiles.
The man looks beautiful when he smiles.
"My name is Agent Phil Coulson, of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. We'd like to offer you a job."
Perhaps pain isn't the worst language he's learned. Clint might have managed a nod before he passes out.
~
Portuguese
Eu tenho asas e posso voar
~
The language of hatred and SHIELD are surprisingly entwined Clint has found. At least when it comes to him. Two years and upwards of twenty handlers later, Clint decides he's flown himself into another cage.
The boss himself, Director Fury, tells him this is his last chance. Clint nods and smirks and resigns himself to making his last chance a good one.
His new handler is the man in the suit from two years ago. Clint hasn't seen him since the cell in Shanghai, but he looks the same. Coulson, his name is. Agent Coulson doesn't even look up from his desk when Clint walks in, just holds out a folder. Clint feels something in him shift uncomfortably.
"Agent Barton. Your new mission." Disappointment, that's what that heavy feeling is. Coulson is just like the other handlers, and Clint is nothing more than a tool, a trigger to be pull. He glances at the date. Okay, Clint can handle another week of this and a mission, then he's gone. He turns to go. "Report back to my office 0800 tomorrow. I'd like to go over the specs with you, get your opinion. We also need to teach you Portuguese." Clint freezes. He turns to stare at Coulson incredulously. He gets another bland smile in return. "I believe in getting to know and working with my assets personally. Will that be a problem?"
Clint shakes his head.
The next day Coulson goes over the mission with him, piece by piece, and listens to all his input. After, Coulson hands him a packet of must know Portuguese phrases. Clint repeats them and the handler adjusts his accent and phrasing impeccably. There is nothing demeaning or condescending about it, and gradually Clint relaxes. There's couch in the room, and Coulson says nothing when after an hour, Clint moves over there. He simply spins his chair to accommodate.
Near the end of the booklet, there's another phrase scribbled in. Eu tenho asas e posso voar. Clint stares up at unassuming Phil Coulson. The man offers a half-smile.
"You never know what could come in handy."
Clint says the phrase out loud, testing it, and a warm feeling settles into his gut. He doesn't understand how this stranger could know what oddity he found essential, but Clint is grateful all the same. He can't help the wide, real smile.
Perhaps- perhaps Clint won't flee the nest quite yet after all.
~
Phil Coulson
~
Of all the languages Clint learns, he never finds any as important as this one. Clint learns Phil Coulson over crappy fast food and long plane trips. Discovers hidden depths in the tolerance his handler has for Clint's comm chatter, discovers that sometimes he can be prodded to snipe back. A gift of chocolate donuts gets him another word, another layer to the enigma that is Phil Coulson.
Quick glances in a decontamination shower reveal scars and battles won.
When Coulson is tired, dangerously, days-awake tired, he gets snappy. Clint learns how to handle this, how to be the one person that won't aggravate him. During missions and sparring it becomes obvious that his handler is no push over, no pencil pusher. Coulson is a fighter and a killer and Clint recognizes the better parts of himself in the man.
He makes a study of the slow way Coulson relaxes around him, the way that he no longer tenses up when Clint lies on his couch. How he'll roll his eyes when Clint does or says something stupid. The very real irritation lines when the archer refuses to get fixed up by medical. Clint watches them all, watches Coulson slowly wear down, and falls in love.
Clint works up to counting him as a friend, which is wonderful. He doesn't remember his last friend. When he gets captured on a mission, the pain feels like nothing because Coulson came, he rescued him. His handler sits watch whenever he's in medical, and Clint pays him the same courtesy.
Clint makes a study of Phil Coulson, learns the language of his body, but he should have been paying attention to himself. Clint should have predicted the way his heart would stop when Coulson got shot.
While his handler recovers, Clint sits with him, and when he's completely sure the agent is asleep, Clint holds his hand.
Coulson is his new favorite language, and Clint doesn't even think of flying away.
~
Polish
Mam skrzydła i mogę odlecieć
~
Clint is sent to kill the Black Widow.
He makes a different call.
Later, strapped in the passenger seat while the Widow drives far too fast, Clint will try not to throw up at the Polish countryside racing by. He'll also try not to bleed out. The woman with fiery red hair tells him her name is Natasha, and now Natasha watches him like he is confusing.
Clint supposes that's normal and tells her so. The corners of her mouth twitch up, just a little, and she says something in Polish.
The Widow is not Polish, Clint knows this. She hails from Russia, but in a little car she drives way too fast, Natasha speaks Polish. Clint asks her to teach him. She does.
It keeps him conscious which is great, and talking, which by most people's standards, is not that great. They're going over the word death for what feels like the thousandth time when it hits Clint.
"How d'ya say 'I have wings, 'n I can fly away'?" Clint slurs. Sharp eyes flick to his. The Widow is obviously confused, but Clint can already tell she'll never admit to that. He explains, even as the world gets spotty. She's taking him back to Coulson, she deserves to understand. "'T's m' touchstone. Thing m' Ma used t'say. Reminder y'know?"
"I never had a mother." Natasha replies. Clint's eyes flutter shut. "Hawkeye- Barton. Keep your eyes open and repeat after me. Mam skrzydła i mogę odlecieć."
Clint repeats it until he passes out.
~
Natasha Romanova
~
Natasha is... complicated. Clint doesn't understand her, not really. Speaking Natasha is like speaking a dead language, but Clint does it anyway, because he's a stubborn bastard.
Coulson wasn't happy when he decided to bring the Black Widow in alive. His mouth did that crinkle thing which meant he was seriously pissed. Clint's sure that if he hadn't been in a hospital bed at the time, Phil would have killed him. He still got the dressing down of his life when he got out of medical.
But now, all three of them are a team and it's good. In fact Clint has never been so happy. Natasha is little touches and sharp words. Clint learns the way she works missions, figures out how to mesh her into the system him and Coulson already have. Natasha and Coulson are both wary around each other at first, but now they like to gang up on him.
Clint doesn't complain because he is worth something now, to other people. Natasha is blank looks and fiery hair. She is vodka and cutting humor and she is Clint's best friend.
Clint learns the language of her body too, intimately. It doesn't work out, but it doesn't matter. Natasha loves him in her own way, and Clint will always be in love with Coulson it seems. All three of them though, they're a team. Natasha is his other half, grounds him.
Clint doesn't need to be fluent in Natasha. He doesn't have to understand himself
~
Hungarian
Szárnyaim vannak és elrepülhetek
~
Budapest. Clint remembers Budapest as pain and gunfire and Phil bleeding out under his hands. In Budapest, Coulson is taken and tortured, and Clint and Natasha burn the city to get him back.
Budapest should have killed all three of them, but instead they are better. Clint and Natasha fought an entire government together, fought back to back with guns and knives, and when those were gone, fists. They forged a bond of trust, more a weapon than anything Stark could make.
When they finally reach Phil, it's to find him delirious and badly wounded. The bullet wound in his shoulder bleeds far too much, and sometimes the only thing that reminds Clint that he's alive is Phil muttering under his breath. Clint can't understand it, to his ears it sounds like Hungarian, a phrase repeated over and over again.
Natasha performs hasty surgery on Phil's shoulder in the back of a train car. Clint, for lack of anything to do, lends his lap as a pillow and strokes Phil's hair. His thumb finds crow's feet and smooth them out, gentles the lines of pain. He can't do much, but he can do this, even as his heart bleeds out in his arms.
Sue him, Clint's always been a romantic, and right now Phil is actually dying.
Blood has never made Clint sick, but he can't watch as Natasha digs into Phil's shoulder. Blood has never made Clint sick but god, if he has to smell it one more second and know it's coming from Phil, he's going to throw up. Natasha does something to make Coulson whimper and Clint's fists tighten convulsively. He has to distract himself.
"What's he saying? Do you understand it?" Clint asks. He hears Natasha huff in surprise.
"You don't know? 'Szárnyaim vannak és elrepülhetek'. It's Hungarian for 'I have wings, and I can fly away'."
The world stops spinning, just for a moment. When it starts again, everything is slightly, fundamentally different.
Clint remembers Budapest for a lot of things. For fighting in the streets with Natasha. For the relief in Phil's face when he finally recognizes his agents come to rescue him. For Phil, bleeding, dying in Clint's arms. But mostly? Mostly Clint remembers what came afterward.
Clint remembers Budapest because when Phil woke up in the hospital, the first thing Clint does is kiss him. Clint remembers Hungarian because it's in the language that Clint first realizes that Phil might return his feelings.
Funny, but no matter what is said in Hungarian Clint never, ever feels like flying away.
~
Love
~
This is the hardest language for Clint to learn. Touches that aren't meant to hurt, secrets laid bare. He stumbles over the words, over and over again. Everything that he's learned before is useless, and Clint is left fumbling like he hasn't since he was a kid.
Phil, Phil makes it easier. Late into the night, when only the alarm clock lights the room, there are confessions. Phil confesses he's not very good at this either, and that he's scared sometimes that he's dreaming. Clint without fail proves to him that he isn't, in gentle kisses.
Clint is a killer and a fighter and so is Phil. It's odd, getting used to using his hands, his entire being, for something that isn't destructive. He gets better at it though. Soon, it flows off his tongue like English, or Italian with his mother. There is something musical about the words I love you, even more so when they are uttered into the still of night, or into flushed skin. There is something whole and true and beautiful, and Clint is so afraid to break it.
Everything is brighter when Phil whispers the words into his lips, arm slung around his waist. Clint thinks that this is a language that is better to listen to. Finally, Clint doesn't want to run, doesn't feel caged. He isn't leaving an opportunity for escape, he's throwing himself in all the way here. Clint's jumped, and it's too late to open his wings, he's just got to trust Phil to catch him.
When Clint learns a language from now on, the first phrase he looks for isn't 'I have wings, and I can fly away'. No, Clint isn't interested in going anywhere.
The first phrase he translates is I love you, and when he goes home at night, he whispers the newly learned words into Phil's skin. Again and again until he falls asleep.
~
Epilogue
~
Years later, Clint will be mind controlled and then save the world. He will have fought aliens and gods and persevered. None of the languages he learns after will be as important as the earlier ones, the ones that shaped him.
Clint Barton will be called an equal, next to a supersoldier, a billionaire, a god, a monster, and a super-assassin. He speaks the most languages of them all, even if no one knows this, and it is his pride.
One day, he'll be forced onto a talk show. The hostess, obviously trying to get information about his former career, will ask him a stupid question.
"So, Hawkeye. We hear you were a spy before the Avengers. Can you speak any other languages?"
Clint will not think of his mother coaching him through Italian syllables, or of a fortune teller teaching him Russian. He will not think of Spanish or German or French, nor Portuguese, Hungarian or Polish. Not anger and pain and betrayal, not even love, is what his mind will go to.
Instead, Clint Barton will think of his husband, laying home in bed, injured but alive. He will think of Natasha who is his other half, and probably has one of these interviews coming up next. Clint will think of his new team, one that he isn't fluent in yet, but he's learning. Clint thinks of them all, and smirks.
"Yeah. I speak a few."
Clint has wings, but for once he has no urge to fly.