Not very many things from his days at the Catholic Orphanage stuck with Clint after he and Barney ran away. But it was impossible to spend three years of your life someplace and not pick up some things. Three years of reading the Bible, and even if Clint wasn't sure if he believed it or not, there were still some parts of it that struck a chord with him.

The stories about being brave and standing up to supposedly unconquerable foes. The tales of men who were wise beyond their years. Of people who had suffered so greatly, yet still felt so blessed.

These last ones were the ones he understood the least.

If God existed, why did bad things happen. Why had his parent's died? Why had he ended up in an orphanage? Why had he and Barney spent so many years in the circus? Why had he been forced to flee and start doing freelance work? Why had so many horrible things happened?

So Clint had more or less given up all of the beliefs that the nuns had tried to drum into him. Because a part of him believed that, even if a god did exist, with all of the shit Clint had done in the past, there was no possibility of him making it into heaven. He accepted that fact. And it didn't bother him.

But there was one small little thing that Sister Agatha had told him once that, no matter how hard he tried, he could never forget it. And in so many ways it was the one thing that he most wished he could convince himself was a lie. Because it was the one rule that he had always wished didn't exist. It was the one rule that infuriated him. That rule was probably the driving cause of him convincing Barney to escape with him to the circus.

It was the rule stating that suicide was a sin. As Sister Agatha put it, an unforgivable sin. A sin that would get you sent straight to Hell.

The number of times in his life that Clint had wanted, more than anything, to simply just put a bullet through his brain was astronomical. He had sat on the edge of his bed, his fingers dancing along the cool metal of his gun. Just thinking about how quick and easy it would be. Or whenever he was cooking and picked up a knife, the idea would pass by without fail. How simple it would be to slice across an artery and bleed out within a matter of minutes.

It was such a habitual thought that it didn't even matter anymore if it was a good or bad day. The thoughts were always there. Because Clint had had enough bad days to know that good days were temporary and bad days were certain.

But every single time he had raised the gun to his head or held the knife to his wrist, Sister Agatha's words would play through his head. Suicide would send you straight to hell and no matter how horrible you think your life is now, hell is unimaginably worse. And while Clint didn't believe in God or heaven or hell, per se, he wasn't sure if it was a risk he was willing to take.

So he never pulled the trigger. And he never sliced the blade across his skin. He kept fighting and surviving and living through things he wished he could have avoided. And he constantly kept wishing that Sister Agatha had kept her thoughts to herself so that Clint could finally give in to the overwhelming awfulness that was his life, and just end it all already.