@shewidows
He wandered the festival alone, his hands, still greasy from the dozen or so dumplings he’d already polished off, tucked in his pockets. He felt loneliest in crowds like this: groups of friends, dates, teammates, families. Seeing them all pinged him with a bitter jolt of envy, an ache of memory from a long time ago. Maybe, Clint was starting to realize, he they do so great solo. Kate was off being Kate, doing God-knows-what, and Lucky had been deemed “not a good idea to take to a festival, Barton, look at him, he’ll start a mob” and reluctantly left at home with an extra half a pizza as an apology.
They stopped at another stall and bought another round of dumplings, then kept walking on ahead. He wouldn’t admit to looking for anything or anyone; he was just... wandering. Exploring. Browsing. Hoping to catch a flash of red in the crowd, sure they’d recognize the sway of a pair of hips, the set of shoulders, the silent footfalls. It wasn’t so hard to imagine; he’d seen her every day, around every corner, up every flight of stares. Every redhead in the supermarket checkout line, every woman in a black jacket across the park. They were all her. Everything was her. She was dead. Clint knew that. He was seeing fucking ghosts. The one time he’d made it to therapy, he’d been given a bunch of psychobabble bullshit about how it was a manifestation of his own guilt, yada yada, they couldn’t let go of her and move on until they got over it.
And he’d been trying! Really! He’d been working on it! And then the dead started rising, and Clint couldn’t keep saying it was all in his head. If Steve and Tony were back, she was too. She had to be. Any of those faces around any of those corners--that could be her, for real this time. Flesh and blood and breathing and not a fucking guilt-induced, sleep-deprived traumatic hallucination. She could be there, getting a drink, or there, admiring some jewelry, or--
No. There. She was there.
Clint stopped dead in his tracks, a dumpling falling sadly from his hand. He gawped, blinking, his mouth opening and closing silently. “Nat.”