AN: I hope you enjoy. Includes mild swearing, this chapter is darker. I have also made it easier to identify which reality characters are in by naming the chapters. I don't no Marvel.

Something was not right. In fact, Clint suspected that something was horribly wrong. It was a feeling deep in his gut that worked its way up to his heart and then his throat and eventually he was crying though he had no idea why. There he was, a grown man in the middle of a grocery store silently crying. Clint felt disgusted and disappointed with himself, very disappointed.

Shifting from foot to foot he looked at the milk for a minute longer before turning and walking down the aisle, bringing one hand up to wipe across his eyes. The last thing he needed was people giving him looks. It was a miserable walk from the checkout to the street and then eventually to his apartment. He had tried to walk as slow as possible so that he didn't have to face the shit hole that is his home, but it didn't help. He still made it back in less than 30 minutes.

The building was rough, messy and just by looking at it you could guess what sort of people lived inside. There were single mothers that worked too many jobs at all the wrong places, old people that had a few run-ins with the law when they were younger leaving them all alone and foreigners that could and never would speak a word of English. Then you had the drug dealers and prostitutes and god knows what else. Clint really tried to avoid them all and just stay in his apartment. It was a crap apartment, but it was his.

Running his tongue over his teeth he studied the outside of the building for a few seconds longer before walking up the cracked pavement towards the stairs. In the summer time it would be filled with young kids trying to make the most out of the holidays, mothers yelling at them to get out the street, and sometimes there were parties. Summer was a happier time, but it didn't make up for the rest of the year. If there was a hell, Clint suspected that the building was some sort of portal to it. Inside was no better. There was a constant smell of something musty and damp. The lights flickered and if they didn't they were always too bright for Clint's liking, always grumping about something that closely resembled "fucking shit hole" but his words fell on deaf ears.

As soon as he was inside his apartment Clint made sure that all seven locks on the door where tightly shut so that if by chance someone did want to break in they would have one hell of a struggle. Without any real care or thought Clint placed the groceries away in its rightful place. Not even bothering to do anything else he flicked the lights off and walked to the bedroom where he fell onto the bed face first. He was tired, shattered really, the last time he had more than 5 hours sleep had been at least a week ago and since then he had been taking short naps so he didn't collapse in public like some idiot. The naps didn't really help though he could still see the nightmares every time he closed his eyes. It wasn't just the nightmares though. It was the people inside of it. He never saw their faces, but he took special note of other things, long red hair that made him tense up and want to run but in a good way. Something large and green that frankly scared the shit out of him. Then there was the American flag only it was wrapped around someone like a suit, a man in armor but the color was dulled. There were other things as well. A circus that for a brief moment made him feel at home, a boy that was older than him and somewhat resembled him in looks, something long and thin flying through the air.

It didn't matter though, by the time Clint's mind tried to identify it all he was already awake and forgetting. They were always there, on the tip of his tongue and at the back of his mind every time he closed his eyes Clint felt better and happier. Until he awoke and felt that feeling like he did before, something was horribly wrong and he didn't know how to fix it or where to start.

He hadn't always been like this, so depressed and utterly alone. He had been a happy child with friends and a dog whose name he had forgotten. He could remember the way his mother smelled like flowers and the steaks his father cooked, his father was a better cook than his mother and everyone knew it. Then something happened, an event his mind tried to forget, and suddenly he was sleeping in a different bed waking up screaming. Then he was running, running so hard he gasped for air and threw up. All he did was run and run and run until one day he had enough. He got shitty jobs that paid the minimum wage and no one asked for his real name. He lived in a crappy apartment building that smelled like vomit and looked like something out of a really bad horror movie. The water was always cold and there was always something crawling in the walls.

Clint used to be happy, he used to have a family and a brother and he was surrounded by love.

So what went so horribly wrong that left him lying face down on a second hand bed crying because everything was wrong and there was nothing he could do to fix it?

What had made Clint forget?

Or rather who, who had turned the happy little boy into such a sad old man.