Chapter Text
PAST
Location: The Hunan Province
Clint was six the first time the world turned upside down on him.
The day started the same as the week before had. He woke to his sisters crying a few feet away and his babysitter Li, his parents' friend, coming to get them all for breakfast. They were with Li cause mom was in trouble and dad had to go alone to get her since Clint, Daisy, and Kora were too little.
In hindsight it would have been safer for them if they went with their father. It was lunch time when the first crack of gunfire rippled through the air. Li was in the kitchen making food while they played.He shot upright, dropping the toy he was rattling for Daisy and Kora to make them laugh and raced to the widow. The two girls jerked, getting startled by his sudden movement. They were too young to know what the pop pop pop! meant.
The toy hit the ground with a dull thud that Clint ignored. No no no, they were coming. The people that he overheard mom and dad talk about. He was gonna get taken like mom was if he didn't hurry. But what was he gonna do?
His dad didn't think they knew about him and his sisters. What was he supposed to do? His hands shook and his breath came out fast. He couldn't remember what mom told him he was supposed to do incase they came back.
“ Come on, Clint, think.” He whispered to himself, “ what was step one?” He ran his fingers through hair and frantically looked around Li's living room.
Li himself ran into the room carrying his and his baby sisters bag. “ Put on your mother’s sling for holding your sisters.”
He'd never held both of them on his own before. Dad said he was still too little no matter how much he begged. Even though both his sisters were so tiny that they looked like infants instead of two-year-olds.
Clint’s small fingers fumbled with the sling, the fabric slipping from him in his panic. He'd watched his mom put this on a hundred times but never thought he'd need to know how. Li saw him struggling and helped him with sure quick fingers.
Clint watched with hawk eyes, committing the movement to memory. He would never be unprepared again.
“ Take the girls, go through the back door and run.”
Clint slipped his backpack over his shoulder and then picked up Kora and put her on the left side of the sling and Daisy on the right. He put his hands on both of their little heads and rubbed their hair in an attempt to quiet their crying.
“ It's ok,” he promised even though he didn't believe it.
The bag on his back and the girls on his front were a heavy weight combined and he had no idea how he was going to be able to run away as weighted down as he was but he didn't have any option but try.
“ What about you? You have to come with us!”
“ Clint, listen to me.” Li took his face in his hands, forcing him to look the man in the eye. “ I don't know who these people are or what they're here but your father trusted me to take care of you and your sisters, and that's exactly what I'm gonna do. Now go and don't look back.”
His mouth trembled, and in his eyes watered with tears, blurring his vision.
The front door slammed open and Clint turned and raced out like he had been told without so much as a look back.
Clint's legs pumped as fast as they could go. Every step jarred the weight of the sling against his small frame, making it harder to breathe. Kora and Daisy whimpered against his chest, their tiny fists clutching at his shirt, and all he could do was keep going and try not to cry out loud too.
The back door slammed behind him, Li’s voice shouting something he didn’t catch. Clint didn’t stop. He couldn’t. He didn’t want to think about what was happening inside the house.
The backyard was wide and open, the grass flattened under his small feet as he charged toward the trees beyond the fence. The village his family lived in was small. So small everyone shared one car that the oldest couple in the village owned. His legs burned, and the weight of his backpack and sisters made him stumble, but he didn’t fall.
He was six, and terrified out of his mind.
Another pop! went off behind him and Li's voice cut off.
He was six, but six was older than two which means he has to keep running. His sisters needed him to be strong. His parents needed him to protect them since they weren't here to.
The dirt and sticks that broke under him hurt his bare feet and Clint did his best to block it out.
He had no idea how far he got when the sound of heavy boots snapping sticks and leaves found him. He tried to push his body harder – he did but he got his foot stuck under a big branch. He heard it pop and felt his ankle twist painfully. Clint bit his tongue to muffle his own scream of pain as he fell on his knees.
He sniffed and tried to stand back up but his body was too heavy and his ankle throbbed in time with his heart beat.
A hand wrapped around his shoulder. He was ripped back on his butt and fell back on his bag.
A group of men in helmets hoved over him. One of them stepped close to him. Clint desperately curled his arms around his crying sisters.
One of the men said something in a language Clint didn’t know and his arms were pried apart.
“ No!” He cried, watching helplessly as they took his sisters out of the sling and away from him. “ Give them back!”
He kicked and bit anything he could, shouting and crying out. “ Don’t hurt them!”
“ Daisy! Kora!” He begged, they ripped him off the ground and started dragging him in a different direction.
Clint’s throat burned from screaming. His tiny fists swung uselessly against the armored men, his ankle a searing fire that made every movement send sparks of pain up his leg. He screamed their names again and again, the words going hoarse.
“ Daisy! Kora! Don’t take them—!”
He clawed at the dirt as they dragged him away, tears streaking his dust-covered cheeks. One of the soldiers barked something at the others, and Clint was hoisted into the air and carried toward a waiting SUV hidden just past the treeline. The vehicle’s engine was already running, a low rumble in the background of Clint’s frantic sobbing.
The soldier holding him didn’t speak. Just threw him roughly into the backseat and slammed the door.
Clint pounded his fists on the window with the last bit of energy he had, sobs wracking his tiny chest. He could still hear them crying. Or maybe that was just in his head now. He didn’t know. His body curled in on itself, pain radiating from his foot and his heart at the same time.
The SUV jolted forward, bouncing over roots and debris as it pulled away from the place that had been their hiding spot. Clint’s head hit the window and he winced but didn’t stop trying to see out of it. He didn’t stop crying, either.
Then came the distant sound of something slicing through the air. The SUV’s driver shouted, and the vehicle skidded violently. The tires squealed against the forest floor.
A second later, the front windshield shattered.
Gunfire. Not from the men that grabbed this time—but sharper, faster.
Clint screamed and ducked, curling around himself in the seat. The vehicle rocked again and then came to a hard stop.
The back door was yanked open.
“ Got a kid!” someone shouted in english, a female’s voice clipped and loud. “ He’s alive!” Only Clint’s family spoke that language here.
Strong arms wrapped around Clint and lifted him from the seat. He flailed at first, terrified, unable to register who it was. “ No! No, let me go! Daisy—Kora! Please!”
“ Hey—hey, kid,” the woman’s voice said gently, trying to cradle him without jostling him too much. “ It’s okay. We’re here to help. You’re safe now, alright?”
He didn’t believe her. Not at first.
But then came the sound of more gunfire, not toward them, but away—like people were fighting the men who took him. His sobs grew harder, more panicked, the adrenaline mixing with the pain until he couldn’t make sense of anything.
“ Medic!” the woman called out as she crouched behind a tree, cradling Clint tight against her. “ He’s in shock.”
Two more agents closed in—one securing the SUV, the other guarding them. At least that's what it looked like to Clint.
The woman tapped her ear, it looked funny. “ Avery to HQ, we’ve got a civilian child, approximately six years old. Multiple kidnappers engaged. We need medevac extraction, now.”
Clint gripped the woman’s shirt in both fists, his small hands trembling. “ They took them,” he choked out between gasps. “ My sisters. Daisy and Kora—they took them.”
Avery’s jaw tightened. “ How many others were with you?”
Clint’s mouth opened, then shut. The world was spinning too fast. He couldn't keep the thoughts straight. “ Li…” he murmured, “ Li told me to run.”
“ Who’s Li?”
“ He was watching us. He—he stayed behind.”
Another explosion sounded in the distance. Clint jerked in her arms, curling closer. “ Please, I have to find them. I have to—”
“ Hey, look at me.” Avery tilted his chin up. “ We’re going to find them. But I need you to stay with me, alright? Can you do that?”
He tried. He really did. But everything inside him was stretched too thin—his body shook from head to toe, and the pain was starting to win over the fear. His head dropped to her shoulder, his eyes fluttering.
“ I’m sorry,” he mumbled, barely audible.
“ Don’t be sorry,” Avery whispered, her hand on his back as she moved toward the evac team’s drop zone. “ You did so good. You kept your sisters safe as long as you could.”
Clint tried to nod, but his head felt like it was floating. “ Daisy…Kora…” he whispered, his eyelids closed without his permission and the world around him went dark and quiet.