@yourleft :
i just came to check on you.
is there a word in any language to describe how she is ? sad doesn’t quite feel like it cuts it. she’s sad, of course, but there are other things too — angry, distraught, lonely. all of the above. devastated feels like the closes thing she can get to, but even that doesn’t cut it close when she’s got a wreck of a man that hasn’t left her bed in two days. not that she can bring herself to kick clint out, no matter how thick with heartache the air feels whenever he walks into the room nowadays. normally, she’d kick him out, because normally, he isn’t reliving his best friend dying in front of him. it’s not right.
so there’s bobbi and clint, bobbi and clint and the endless, gaping space between them. it’s bobbi and clint, and they’re missing natasha, both literally and figuratively, because all they’ve got is a stupid headstone with an empty grave on a lakefront. ridiculous, bobbi thinks, even as she uses the back of her sleeve to brush dried leaves off of it and reveal carefully carved lettering that feels both too big and too small for who natasha was. ‘ when clint and i got married, i was . . . jealous of her before i ever met her. i was worried i’d have to compete for his affection, you know ? you hear stories about the black fucking widow, and how can you not be scared for your relationship ? ’
NATASHA ROMANOVA. THE BLACK WIDOW. AVENGER. FRIEND. HERO.
‘ instead, i met her, and we knew each other for all of ten minutes before it was like clint didn’t matter anymore. ’ i’m a third wheel in my own home, clint had said once when he’d been shoved off his own bed because his wife and best friend had wanted to have a sleepover. there’d never been bobbi and clint, or clint and natasha. it had always been the three of them, one barely managing to exist without the other. the best mistake of his entire life had been bringing them together. the worst, bobbi assumes he thinks, had been bringing natasha with him to vormir.
‘ i’ve lost more people than i can count, but i don’t know how to move on from her. i don’t know how to help him move on from her. i’m . . . at a loss. ’ it feels selfish to say, like out of everyone she’s ever lost, this is the worst, but there’s a hole in her chest and she feels numb all over. even natasha’s favorite red feels hollow on the tongue. like it’s not right that bobbi’s drinking it without her. but bobbi drinks anyways, with brows furrowed, and nearly two decades of having natasha as her person on the brain. bobbi’s head twists, eyes squinting as the mid-afternoon sunlight hits over steve’s shoulder. he looks simultaneously larger than life and smaller than she remembers, all at once, and briefly, she wonders if it’s fair that she’s dumping the grief of two people onto him as well. ‘ that’s a lot more than you probably bargained for. sorry. ’
