On the Run Together

Chapter 1: Run Away to the Circus

(Author's note: This story is also on fanfiction under robbiepoo2341 and on A03 under magnetocerebro.)

Clint sat up on the hill overlooking the circus with wide eyes as he took it all in.

He and Barney had always said that one day, they were going to run away and join the circus. They'd always said that. And here was the circus.

Clint stared at the big tents and the mob of people, his too-big shirt slipping over one shoulder. He didn't have anything that actually fit him, if he was honest. He hadn't had time when he ran away to grab anything more than what he was wearing. He just knew that he wasn't going to stay in that home any more.

Barney was getting older now, hard to place in homes, but Clint was still young. Six was still young. People still wanted kids like him, with a few freckles and his front tooth missing from where someone had knocked it out before it was ready to grow back in. His last foster dad had said that it was one of the kids on the playground who hit him in the mouth with a soccer ball.

It wasn't.

Barney wasn't six. Barney was old enough that he didn't have freckles. Barney was old enough that he knew every curse word in the book, and Barney had gotten them kicked out of their last home for knocking the guy's lights out.

Clint got a new home, but Barney didn't, and Clint wasn't sure who had been luckier.

It had taken Clint five days to decide that he was going to run away. The first day had been the best. After that, it had all been downhill, but when that first crash of a bottle being broken and not because it had been dropped echoed in his ears, Clint's heart was pounding so hard in his ears that he'd only heard every other word shouted after him as he ran and ran and ran.

Mr. Nelson was probably looking for him, and he was going to get dragged back to that place... but maybe not if he ran away. Maybe if he could hide in the bearded lady's beard, or if he could stow away in one of the magic boxes, maybe Mr. Nelson would go somewhere else.

But now that Clint was looking at it, he was suddenly unsure.

Before, he'd always run away with Barney. And if he went with the circus now, how was Barney supposed to know where he was?

Clint heard a noise behind him and startled, scrambling down the hill as fast as he could until his foot caught underneath him and he came tumbling down the rest of the way - on the opposite side of the hill from where the circus was. Green and blue and brown and a little bit of red all rushed up in front of him, and when Clint finally rolled to a stop, he had rocks in his elbow and dirt in his eyes, but he scrambled to his feet anyway, scrubbing the dirt away from his eyes so that he could see, because if it was Mr. Nelson, or if it was someone official to get him in trouble for running away again, then he needed to know about it.

But when he looked up at the top of the hill, there wasn't anyone there, and he shook his head to himself as he picked himself up.

Maybe he'd just heard nothing. His hearing still wasn't totally better anyway after his dad had screwed it up and than up and died on him.

His jeans were all scraped up now, and his elbow was pretty busted up, but he made his way back toward the circus he'd been looking at from on top of the hill. Probably safer if he was around a lot of people.

In his little boy imagination, he was sure he'd heard something, at least, and since it wasn't someone in a suit or Mr. Nelson, he couldn't help but think that maybe it was one of the lions. Or an elephant! Yeah, it was probably an elephant.

Clint was back to grinning to himself as he wandered around the circus. No one tried to tell him that he wasn't supposed to be there as he peered around the tents, looking at some of the posters and the games that he didn't have any money to play. There were a few other kids around who looked like they'd been roughhousing and playing around and who didn't exactly have strict supervision, so he might have just fit in, so that was good.