#ic response.

natasha watches from her corner as she heads to the elevators,  and she doesn’t know why she feels her stomach drop so suddenly.

they don’t tell each other everything,  but they have always told each other enough.  she’s known the names of every date he’s had for ten years,  and he’s known the names of hers.  sure,  he’s always had a thing for blondes,  but this feels different.  this is different.  she’s dressed the way none of the women she’s seen him with dress,  and she seems so young yet so tired,  the way she moves.  natasha catches sight of half her face before the elevator doors close,  and thinks she can’t be more than twenty.

( next week,  she will see josephine’s jacket.  she will be sitting on his counter in one of his sweaters,  and she will tell him that she’s too young for him.  he will not tell her who josephine is for ten more years. )

natasha?

“... sorry — phil just told me he’s busy tonight.  suppose i’ll have to get another taxi.”  she offers a theatrical but reassuring sigh as she picks up her bag again and heads back out into the cold rain.

— ДВА.

it’s dark,  for nine in the morning.  overcast with thick late-winter storm clouds with a chill to boot,  natasha is both glad for the short distance between the door and her car,  as well as the sharp coldness that helps keep her startled awake.

she checks herself in the rear-view mirror,  notes the shadows under her eyes and the tired set of her face and sighs.  it’s been three,  maybe four days since roman had called her,  and truthfully she has not slept more than a few hours in that time,  has not eaten more than the sandwich or burrito that sharon and clint brought for her,  and it shows.  after rushing to the warehouse,  after watching over bobbi as she cut into his skull,  after calling maria,  after slicing into hospital records and leveraging her SHIELD clearance to ensure that he’d have his own secluded and secure corner of newyork-presbyterian’s ICU with no questions asked,  natasha has found her way back here.  nobody told her to come,  nobody asked her to,  and in truth,  she wonders if josephine will even want to see her.

it has been chaos upon chaos,  something that natasha thrives in when she needs to,  always able to tuck away her fears and push on.  but this …

josephine has not left her mind since that night.  the red wrap of skin around her neck,  the watery eyes,  the silence.  even amidst roman’s panic and the need for natasha to do what she has done countless times before,  it was josephine that stood out like a light,  flickering violently through it all.

natasha hopes that after it all,  she hasn’t been snuffed out.

something tells her that she hasn’t.  and truthfully,  though she’ll not admit it,  she’s worried what that might mean for when she knocks on the door.

with a sigh,  she pats concealer under her eyes and brushes her hair,  takes a generous drink of water and steps out of her car.

— ТРИ.

she doesn’t mean to fall asleep,  really.  but natasha has been so exhausted,  josephine had to step away to answer roman’s call,  and the sofa is just so comfortable in the way that only sofas can be,  that she simply couldn’t help it.

it’s well past eight at night when she blinks awake,  the dimness of light from another room and the drawn curtains jarring her enough to realize where she is — rather,  where she has been for the past five hours.

natasha pushes up to sit,  groaning with residual grogginess and the special kind of dehydration that comes from a good nap,  and curses under her breath once she glances at the clock.  she can hear shilah’s voice sounding softly from another room,  and josephine in the kitchen nearby.

hey.

“josephine, i’m … so sorry,”  she begins,  voice graveled,  hands running over her face and surely worsening the smudge of mascara already beneath her eyes.  “i didn’t mean to pass out on the couch like that.”

no,  don’t worry about it.  you looked so tired all afternoon,  i figured i should just let you rest.  josephine brings her tea,  no doubt reheated from what she couldn’t finish earlier,  and natasha smiles.  there’s a distinct concern on the other woman’s features hidden beneath her own smile that natasha knows she is trying her best to maintain,  and all things considered,  she cannot blame her.  it’s been a long week,  and jet lag is one of the few things she’s not ever been able to beat.

“i should probably get going.” natasha fishes in the pockets of the coat she’d laid over the back of the sofa for her phone,  sighing as she sees the missed call and text from phil.  are you good to drive?  i could drive you, or call a taxi?

“no,  no,  it’s okay.  i’ll be fine.”  unsurprisingly,  when she looks up again the worry hasn’t passed from her face.  gently,  natasha reaches for josephine’s arm and squeezes.  “really,  i just need a good night’s sleep,  i’m still on paris time.  don’t worry about me.”

— ЧЕТЫРЕ.

she’s learned to expect the unexpected.  to not make promises she can’t keep,  especially when it comes to her schedule.  it had hurt when josephine told her that little isabel was coming in another week or so,  and it had hurt more when natasha had to say that she might not even be in the country then.

despite how much she had reassured her,  natasha still cannot help that pin prick guilt of her own absence even while sitting on a rooftop in prague.

josephine is strong,  and in truth there should be little to worry over — they’ve known each other long enough to understand what will and will not separate them,  what will and will not allow their time to be shared — despite the needling concern that in the case that josephine and roman needed her,  she wouldn’t be there.

perhaps it’s selfish of her,  to overestimate her place in her life.

it’s another hour of looking through scopes and idle banter with isaiah when her phone buzzes.  it’s not the best protocol to keep it on her person,  but really,  she’s been bored,  and even if she won’t admit it,  anxious with anticipation.  sue her.

natasha leans away from the scope to check.  she liked your flowers.  isabel is beautiful.

if she is surprised that he had been invited,  that josephine had let him see their newest addition ( she hadn't with ridley, natasha recalls ),  she does not say.  with a quiet smile,  she texts josephine congratulations.

— ПЯТЬ.

after the wake,  after the few days that the coulson clan had stayed in the guest rooms to catch up and reminisce before all traveling back to boston,  natasha had herself returned to brooklyn.

josephine had asked if she still needed help with going through things,  and natasha hadn’t had the politeness or will to say no.  if nothing else,  the company and the sound of children running and laughing would be better than the profound and heavy emptiness that would have been with her otherwise.

so,  the house has been all but cleared,  save for some beds,  sofas,  larger furniture that would take too much trouble to move again,  and basic supplies for the occasional beach trip.  phil had left her everything,  but everything is far too much for even natasha to take care of,  so it had only been fair for her to tell the bragins,  elliot,  shilah,  that if they ever need to get away from the city,  she already had keys made for them.

but that would be for another time,  and now that the weekend has ended,  they have to go back home.

we can stay a little longer if you need,  josephine tells her,  both of them lingering on the large porch as roman loads their bags and the children into the car.  it’s a courtesy,  she knows,  but she knows just as well that she means it.  she hates pity,  hates feeling coddled,  but this is different,  and it makes her hate how difficult it is to keep herself from crying of gratefulness,  if nothing else.

natasha has always been a quiet woman,  but it isn't difficult to realize that she’s been quieter than usual.  she’s barely said anything these past few days beyond the occasional direction,  answer,  or soft question.  even now,  she thinks that her voice would be silent and hoarse if she responded — but she tries all the same.

“it’s alright.”

josephine reaches for her hand,  squeezes,  and she smiles.  the weather is lovely today,  perfect for a sail on the water,  something she’d promised phil she would give him.

“i still have something to do.”

they hug,  she presses kisses to the childrens’ heads,  and natasha watches the car as it disappears beyond the trees.

somewhere between the bathroom and the bed,  it suddenly strikes her how easily and how quickly she had slipped into defensiveness,  into the kind of tactical evaluation that only a wife with an unstable husband knows how to do.  be unassuming,  be demure,  don’t escalate,  don’t dangle meat in front of the starving lion.  even in this,  she cannot help that pinprick of acquiescence that maybe he was right,  maybe this is all too real,  maybe she should act like his god damned wife.

the lock on the bedroom door,  she remembers,  is broken.  he’ll want to apologize at some point,  natasha is sure of it,  but she does not plan to punctuate her caution with forgiveness so soon.  if he wants to make his bed,  then he can lie in it.  if he wants this to feel real,  then she isn’t keen on making it easy for him.  there are weeks left still to the operation,  and even when all is said and done,  there will be no forgiving and forgetting unless he grovels because no matter how much they pretend,  she is his friend,  and she deserves more than being the post that takes the brunt of his problems with a woman who no longer speaks to him.

quietly,  natasha takes one of the old wooden chairs sitting unused in the corner and rests it on its hind legs on the floor in front of the door,  tucking the top of its back snugly under the knob.

later,  she will hear his steps down the hall and hear him try to come in,  only to quickly give up and return to the living room.  tomorrow,  he will apologize over breakfast,  and she will tell him we still have a job to do.  if he wants her to be her,  then so be it.

— ДВА.

her head hurts.

everything hurts,  in fact.  it hurts to even open her eyes,  look around at the room,  take a deep breath  —  but she won’t complain.  if she isn’t too horribly concussed and her memory still serves her alright,  being in a hospital bed is far better than a grave.

hey.

natasha turns,  sees him with a file laid out in his lap while he finishes off a cup of pudding they both know she hates the flavor of,  and smiles.  her lips are so dry on top of being split that that hurts too.

“hey,  yourself.”

nice work.  next time you decide to fall ten stories,  let me know so i can at least put down a trampoline.

she laughs,  and regardless of how it’s always such a painful ordeal to enjoy each other’s jokes when they greet one another after days of unconsciousness,  she doesn’t complain about that either.  if anything,  it gives her a better sense of just how much she’d injured herself.

fractured ribs,  broken radius,  broken wrist,  likely a few dislocations,  and other things she’s too tired to figure out herself.

“did you at least get me the good stuff?”

he sets his empty cup on the table,  and shifts to fish in one of the pockets of his suit jacket that’s hung over the back of his chair.  as expected,  he presents her with delectably cheap,   store-bought and beautiful chocolate pudding,  rips the seal off for her and sets it on her tray with a smile so smug she rolls her eyes so far it hurts.

— ТРИ.

she has the decency not to start interrogating him with the door of his office open.  after another briefing,  another overstep on hill’s part,  another stronghold of bureaucracy on a job that she needed to be clean,  that he told her would stay clean,  natasha is frustrated.

“i thought we agreed that you would keep shield off of this.”  she stands at his desk,  glowering down at him where he flips through files.

things changed, tasha.  just because i have some power doesn’t mean i have all of it — unlike you, i can’t  go whine to fury and be taken seriously.

“it’s hard for anyone to take you seriously if you turn on a dime like this.”

his gaze lifts, and the air of the office is suddenly pulled taut.  it goes on like this for some time,  the volume rising and words becoming more barbed between them.

when he tells her regardless of whatever you wanted to happen on this, i’m not going to just let you go and leave you out there all alone,  she feels herself snap.

“of course you won’t,  because someone needs to keep an eye on me,  and you’re all too willing to leverage this in your favor.  you can pretend to be noble all you want,  phil.  you only follow orders when it benefits you,  because at the end of the day,  you’re an empty, expensive suit full of nothing but selfishness and greed.”

it isn’t often that natasha regrets her words,  but it takes so little time for the insult to come back and sting her.  phil says nothing,  nods with that resigned downward curl of his mouth and looks back down at the papers she’d pulled him from.

this is your job,  he tells her after a considerable silence too heavy for even her to bear.  it makes her sick.  if you don’t want it,  i’ll find someone else to do it.

— ЧЕТЫРЕ.

they haven’t seen one another all week.

after kern’s beautiful showcase of footage from the raft,  phil hadn’t gone to her continued hearing,  and she hadn’t attended his.  isaiah had told her that it wasn’t good for appearances,  all things considered,  but she didn’t care.  if he could be scared or ashamed or whatever the hell,  she could be angry.

she has been angry.

so when he tells her he is sorry,  that he just wanted to hurt him,  that she doesn’t need to explain what leonid did to her,  natasha does not care.  she tells him,  watches him go pale,  watches him realize in real time what it is that he has done to her,  watches him drop to his knees like some pathetic,  penitent sinner.

she had already been hurt,  but seeing him now,  kneeling before her and begging for forgiveness,  she feels the scattered fragments of it splinter into dust.  it would have been so much easier if she felt nothing for him,  if the apathy with which she had spoken of him when she returned to continue her testimony had continued on when she walked out of the courtroom for the last time.  as it is,  she cannot contain the care she still has for him regardless,  cannot toss away a love that they have spent more than a decade nurturing.  he’s her friend,  and that fact alone makes all of this feel like he has cut her open and let the secrets of her viscera spill out just to say that he could.  makes it feel like he has broken her heart just to see if it was possible.

there are tears in his eyes when natasha tells him that he cannot fix this.  that he is different,  that he is special,  that there will be no way for him to undo or pay or remedy what he has done.  that when she leaves,  they will go about their lives and will not speak to one another again.

it takes all the willpower within her to look away when he slumps back and does not protest.  in any other circumstance she might have felt proud to have cowed such a large,  proud man.  after all of this,  after everything,  this just makes her feel sick.

“i loved you,  phillip,”  she whispers after a long moment of quiet.  the past tense stings,  and a dark part of her is satisfied to know that it stings him,  too, no matter how much of a lie it is.  as she stands,  she looks at him one last time.  “i hope you know that.”

— ПЯТЬ.

“what the hell was that?”

she’s cornered him in an empty and dark conference room,  and she doesn’t hide how infuriated she is that he’d called her back in prematurely.  natasha doesn’t need to ask him why he did,  having felt the tension and the bitterness and the misplaced and uncharacteristic jealousy wafting off of him through the comm line when the mark started getting too comfortable.  she just wants to hear him say it.

it takes a while,  but he tells her i don’t like people touching my stuff,  and they both know he’s slipped,  because when she asks him what he means he backtracks,  explains it away,  calls her an asset for SHIELD,  for the agency,  and she knows it isn’t what he means.

this isn’t like him.  they’ve play-acted at marriage and jealousy and being territorial for fun,  because for two people who get into as much shit as they do for a living,  they need to relax.  unwind.  the last time he brought this into work was damn near twenty years ago.  if she weren’t so offended that he’d pulled her out of the field so suddenly,  she’d more willingly acknowledge her worry.  she’d bring up his long silences,  his thousand - yard stares,  his dwindling memory,  the odd things he says in his sleep lately.

she will,  eventually,  ask him about all of these things.  but here,  now,  she is thinking about the line he has crossed and how it runs parallel to the line he crossed with leonid,  with oklahoma,  and when he finally does admit to his jealousy,  she remembers his promise to her that he would make it all up to her,  and she doesn’t want to hear anything else.

“if this is how you show that you can be better, then don’t bother.”

there’s a tag on the back of her sweater that’s making her itch.  it isn’t her sweater,  actually,  but his:  a dull white thing with large red letters that obnoxiously spell out  HARVARD,  and it’s so damn big on her that she feels like she’s being swallowed by a formless creature that smells of dryer sheets.

it’s making her itch,  but she doesn’t mind.  not really.  the back of her neck is surely red - raw by now after sitting in it for hours,  through dinner and wine and their thousandth rewatch of octopussy,  but it’s given her something else to think about other than her run-in with matthew and how awful she’s felt all day.

for a while,  at least.

she tells phil that she’s going to bed once the movie ends,  tells him thank you and goodnight before she heads upstairs to the spare room that they’ve both silently agreed has become her room by now.  truthfully,  she doesn’t think she’ll be sleeping at all tonight,  and already finds herself standing at the floor - to - ceiling windows with her dimly - lit reflection staring back at her while she hears him clean up glasses and plates downstairs.  she really does look ridiculously tiny in this sweater.

it has to be ten minutes that pass by her when she hears the door open and sees him come in through the reflection.  natasha realizes she’s been chewing the inside of her cheek tender when she turns,  abandoning the habit when he approaches and wraps his arms around her without saying a word and without being asked.  that’s something she’s come to love about being around him,  the fact that they so rarely ever have to speak to each other to know what the other needs.  but tonight is different,  because when he holds her and she starts to break,  starts to cry and wet his shirt with her tears,  he tells her in russian that he’s got her.  that he’s here.  that it’ll be alright.  and after a long moment,  her sobs become quieter and her shudders stop,  and she lets herself calm.

“tell me you love me?” 

she almost doesn’t mean to say it.  nearly doesn’t,  but she is aching and she is hurt and she is sad and it comes out like a wound that needs to bleed out an infection and she does not regret it when she does.  “please.”

she expects him to hesitate,  but he doesn’t.  i love you,  he says first in english,  then russian,  then french because it’s one of the things he actually sounds fluent saying in the language,  and after he’s gone through every version he knows how to say,  he pulls away to make her look at him just so he can sign it,  too,  because he knows she’ll laugh.  he’s good at that.

“i love you too.”

— ТРИ.

it takes some time to adjust.

in their more than fifteen years of friendship and intimacy,  they’ve never once voluntarily gone more than six months without contact of some sort,  if they could help it.  assignments,  vacations,  being off-grid,  no matter the reason for separation they had  always found a way,  a reason to call even if just to say hi.

after the hearings,  the security footage,  after leonid,  she did not speak to him for seven months and he never dared to reach out,  because even after getting him down from the ceiling and bringing him back home from the hospital safe and sound,  he figured that you and i are not going to talk for a long time was still something she meant.  and then they saw one another again,  they spoke again,  things were okay again,  only for her to get hauled off to the few weeks of hell that was being dropped onto a blacksite by kern.  it was no surprise that she needed the time off,  that she needed to get the hell out of the country for a while.

so yes,  it takes some time to adjust,  because after a year away,  everything is different.  he’s different.  but when she notices the shadows under his eyes that not even the glasses can distract from,  hears just how much more exhausted his sighs are,  she pulls him aside and tells him my door is still open for you.  you just need to knock.

it’s a few days later when he does.  he hadn’t called and they haven’t had the time to talk,  but she knows it’s him by the way his knuckles rap against the door.  who else would be brave enough to show up unannounced at ten o’clock?  natasha opens it,  allows the silence to sit because she doesn’t know what to say to him and he seems not to know if she wants to hear anything from him,  before she steps aside to let him through.

the sudden proximity ignites something,  and she feels a spark of something warm and familiar and when she catches his cool hand it’s out of instinct and out of the insurmountable feeling that she’s really,  really missed him.  before the door has even fully shut,  their fingers intertwine and she pulls him down to kiss him for the first time in more than a year.

they do not speak for the rest of the night.  she pulls him close,  wraps him up beneath her covers and presses her lips to his head as he sleeps.

— ЧЕТЫРЕ.

roman had stopped by the rehab center earlier.  she’d been glad to arrange the meeting,  but seeing him now she cannot help but concede to that small part of herself that wonders why he couldn’t have waited just a bit longer, why he couldn’t have waited until phil was walking completely on his own again to call her.  it’s odd,  how the thought feels selfish to her.  it isn’t even herself that she feels so defensive of,  but phillip.  they have spent nearly every waking moment of the past five months together,  one would be forgiven in thinking that they’ve melted into one another,  wholly and completely.

it’s difficult seeing him like this.  the physical changes are one thing — she’s used to the fading scars and the exhaustion and the way he’s grown so much thinner from the near-constant nausea, knowing it’ll pass in time — but the way he does not hide his sadness,  how the corners of his mouth pull downward and his eyes do not so easily lift to meet hers are another entirely.

so when she slips into bed beside him and he turns half on his side and half on his stomach,  head against her chest and arm slung over her waist,  she does not hesitate to wrap herself around him.

“tell me you love me?”

her eyes open,  and suddenly she no longer feels so tired.  natasha doesn’t tell him immediately,  wondering if he simply needs to hear it after an arduous day of guilt and shame and inadequacies, or if he needs to hear it from her.  the difference would change very little,  she thinks,  except that if it were the latter,  she may not be able to dam the tides of what she feels for him the way she has for too long now.  her chest tightens with it,  and in what is only a few seconds for him,  natasha feels every ounce of care she has silently held for him like a well - kept and well - nursed secret crash down onto her with the weight of years.

“i love you,  phillip,”  she says,  finally,  shifting to lay her hand against his face to guide his gaze up to look at her.  they have told this to one another before,  many times in passing,  in lighthearted jest,  the way that friends and family do because they have been friends and family for a long time.  but things have been different and the old thrill of being called mrs. coulson has become something new,  and when she tells him that she loves him this time,  she means it more than she’s meant anything.  “i love you.  you know i do.”

and when she kisses his forehead,  he wraps his arm more tightly around her,  letting her know that he does.  that after it all,  he loves her,  too.

— ПЯТЬ.

“are you sure you don’t want to try another tylenol?”

she asks from the couch,  head turned to look at him over her shoulder,  her legs folded and tucked comfortably beneath her.  he says no,  just need to rest,  and makes his way into the living room,  rounding the couch and letting her unfold her legs so he can more comfortably rest his head in her lap when he ultimately lies down with only ten minutes left to when harry met sally.

it’s still their first week at the new house.  greenport hadn’t been her first choice when they were discussing places to move to,  places that could make dream home become forever home — in fact it hadn’t even made top five — but it didn’t take very much to convince her.  they’d tossed around reasons,  it’ll still be close enough to headquarters,  it’s a quiet place and the pets will love it,  and the final nail into the ordeal,  you always tell me how much you’d like to settle down and sail off into the sunset,  well this is the perfect place for it,  tasha.  yeah,  she supposes it is.

would have been,  anyway.

it takes a bit for him to actually doze off,  because the ending is still their favorite,  and when harry tells sally about the crinkle above her nose,  phil has to crack an eye open and reach up to poke that same spot between natasha’s eyebrows to make her laugh like he always does.

at some point,  between when you realize you wanna spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible  and the beginning of the credits,  he falls asleep.  she knows because his breathing changes and he untenses,  like clockwork.

but it’s different,  this time.  it’s different because his eyes are still open just enough and when she says his name and asks him if he’s trying to sneak a peek at her,  he doesn’t respond.

her heart drops into her stomach.

she has him in her arms,  holding him up with her on the floor in the next second,  phone beside her on the rug with an operator telling her the ambulance will be there soon,  asking her questions that she barely knows how to answer because she’s telling phil to please wake up and he isn’t waking up.

the paramedics come and she listens to them speak to one another in the back of the ambulance,  trying to stay out of the way in the cramped space while she holds his hand and tries to reconcile his lack of response with his still beating heart.

when they make it to the hospital and tell her she needs to wait outside,  it isn’t long before someone comes out to see her.

or maybe it is.  she doesn’t know.

we’re very sorry,  mrs. coulson.  there’s … nothing we can do.

a trickling stream of words unspool themselves between natasha and the doctor that sound like aneurysm,  ruptured,  common,  fatal.  braindead.  she cannot tell in what order they come,  and truthfully she does not think she needs to.   he’s a neurologist,  taller than her but not by very much,  must be in his mid-forties with shadows beneath his eyes that make him look older.  his hair is short,  unassuming,  his tennis shoes are clean,  but worn,  and he’s got a modest gold band on his left ring finger.

natasha hears phillip’s voice,  stop trying to distract yourself,  tasha,  something that he’d often say to her when he noticed her eyes darting around the people around them,  taking stock of minute details so she wouldn’t have to deal with whatever was bothering her.  he might have said it here,  leaned down to whisper it in her ear if he was next to her.  if he was alive.

the doctor makes to push open the sliding glass door,  pausing with his hand hovering just over the handle as he asks her if there’s anyone she needs to call.  anyone they should expect.  she nods,  and the door quietly hisses open as he steps aside to let her into the dim room.

we’ll give you as much time as you need.  just let us know when you’re ready.

when the curtain shuts and the door is closed again,  natasha finds herself sat on the hard vinyl sofa that doubles as a bed near the window.  the machines are loud,  and in the whirring and the beeping natasha closes her eyes and keeps hold of whatever sense of control she still has to pull out her phone.

she calls roman first.  tells him you need to come up here. it’s phil … i’ll text you the address and room number … drive safe.

then jess,  phil’s sister.   i’m at the hospital,  with phil.  he’s … jess,  he’s.  dying.  dead.  braindead, and it’s — it’s real,  this time  … yeah,  i’m here.  i’m here with him.  they have him on life support  …  no,  just me.

and bobbi.  hi frankie,  baby,  is – is your mama there?  thank you,  baby  …  bobbi,  hi,  can you — can you and clint come up?  i know it’s late,  i just …  no.  no,  it’s phil,  he’s,  um.  he’s on life support …  i’m waiting for roman …  he had an aneurysm,  he was just resting his head in my lap and — can you come up? please? i don’t – i can’t … okay.  i’ll need a ride back to the house  … thank you ...  can you let everyone know?  … okay,  thank you. i love you,  too. 

at some point after she hangs up,  she puts one of the arms of the bed down and crawls in next to him.

she doesn’t know what she will tell roman and josephine when they arrive.

she doesn’t think about it.  and truthfully,  for the next few hours  ( two hours and six minutes with no traffic,  which should be the case this late at night.  but it’s just past 8pm on a tuesday,  there’s no cops on the road,  and they could push 70, maybe 80, to get into the parking garage in an hour and a half.  it will take them at least fifteen more minutes to get up to the ICU ),  she won’t.  later,  when the nurse comes in to tell her family is here,  mrs. coulson,  and when they move to the side of the bed opposite of where natasha lies holding onto his still warm,  still breathing body,  all she will have to say is  i wanted to wait for you.

but that doesn’t matter,  right now.

a small,  selfish and cruel part of her wishes that she had been more tired,  that she would have moved to lay behind him and hold him like she often does and fall asleep with him while the film kept on playing. maybe then,  she would have slept til morning and could believe that they at least had had this,  that they at least were able to fall asleep together one last time.

natasha pretends that he can hear her when she speaks,  nestled against his deceptive warmth.  she reminds him of how they had talked about the next week’s weather earlier that day,  deciding if they could spend their tenth anniversary out on the water,  and tells him that the forecast has changed,  that it should be sunny and warm and a beautiful day for a boat ride.  just the two of them.