The ground would remember the way Kate’s nails dug uselessly into its topsoil, twisting the grass into knots, dispersing the ants. The way she tried so desperately to pull herself through to somewhere else. Too bad she was only digging her own grave. The dirt clung to her fingers and the lines of her palms, smearing the fate written so clearly there.
If she could speak, it would have been: “I’m sorry, it was real to me too.” Yet, as it was, the only sound that came was the blood gurgling out between gaps in her ribs. The only sound was her dying. Besides, who would have heard the words? Just the birds. On their next flight, her soul would trail their wings to kiss the sky. She’d see her dad. Oh, and all the wonderful things she would tell Natasha.
She would say: “I made the wrong choice. In the end. Yelena was right, she was right, and I was stupid. I could have stayed with her, I could have stayed with Clint. With Lucky. You know, she did that little scrunch with her nose? It made her look like a rabbit. She told me about the Thumper toy she carried around as a kid - yeah, the one your mom got her, because she called her bunny. The one she said was lucky. She said you would steal it, hide it in places she couldn’t reach. You had it that night they came for you. She said you had kept it the entire time, even when you got out, and you’d put it in front of mirrors and on doorway ledges, and in window sills. She said you thought it would bring her back to you. She said you were superstitious that way. You know, she was too. She slept with the mirrors covered after the Blip. She got it back, but you already know that. Clint had it, after, well after you saved the world. He gave it to her that night she almost killed him. One lucky fucking rabbit, huh?”
She would say: “God, what was I thinking? You saved the world, and brought her back. You brought her back knowing you’d never see her again. How could you? How could you know that and still choose to do it? Did you think - why me? Did you almost, just the tiniest bit of hesitation, want Clint to be the one? For a moment? No, no, you’re right that’s not a good thing to ask. I shouldn’t have.. I’m sorry. I just, I thought… I thought… Well, I didn’t really think, did I? Not now, not during any of it. It all hurt too much, and you know about that kind of hurt, and everyone else - they, they all get to just say fuck it. They get to say fuck it and just take all that hurt, all that anger and load it into a weapon and just shoot until they’re tired of it. I thought I would just shoot until I was tired of it.
A rare moment of reflection, “Then it got tired of me.”
She would say: “I wanted to tell her I was sorry. I wanted to tell Clint, and the dog, and you know what sucks the most? I wanted to tell my mom I was sorry. For almost all of it. But I was especially sorry to Yelena and the dog. You saw her face, that… on that last night. You heard me say your name. You heard the crack in her voice. My hands were shaking..”
A hiccuped half laugh: “I wasn’t a Hawkeye anymore - couldn’t get that arrow to shoot true at the end. Got me here, didn’t it?”
Then a wet noise, maybe a sob, the suck of teeth. The flare of a memory fresh and raw, ringed in salt: “You know, her hands were shaking too. She always pulled her punches… She really, fuck, she really always pulled them until that point. Until I pushed her over, until she saw me for what I had become…”
She would say: “There really isn’t anything I can do now? She’ll never know. Oh. God, oh god, she’ll never know. I didn’t want to leave it like that. It was all real. It was all real to me.”
She would say: “I blew it huh?”
She would.
She.
She would.
She would say: “I’m so sorry.”
