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There were lots of things about Coulson that drove Nat crazy. He was damn near impenetrable, even to her, after all this time, and he had a downright perverse sense of humor that manifested itself at the most inopportune moments. Like how, when they’d first met, he asked her why she’d changed her name.
She’d been brought into an armored car in the shredded remains of a vintage Valentino dress, blood trickling down both of her legs, shrapnel embedded in one of her arms, doing her damnedest to stay conscious, and Coulson had said:
Why drop the ‘a’? Romanova is pretty.
Natasha probably would have gone for his jugular had Clint not wrapped his arms around her. She’d passed out ten seconds later anyway.
But all the other asinine things Coulson had done to piss her off over the years—almost completely fucking things up with Clint, for one—paled to this.
He’d had the audacity to die. And he still had the nerve to be teaching her shit from beyond the grave.
(Not that she should have expected anything different.)
S.H.I.E.L.D’s stick-up-the-ass memorial service had been today, and so Nat had dragged Clint home with her and threw him in her shower to clean up before bed. Clint liked to think they were evenly matched, but he was really no match for her in willpower. Coulson had softened him. Generally Nat thought that was a good thing.
But maybe Coulson had softened her, too.
Clint was in the shower, and she was sitting on her kitchen floor reading a letter from a dead man, wanting to cry. Definitely soft.
It was handwritten, and on S.H.I.E.L.D stationary, no less.
Don’t concede anything.
Nat crumpled it into a ball in her fist and bit her lip so hard it bled. Her chin trembled. She didn’t like this. She didn’t like what it…
Coulson had known what he was doing on that Helicarrier. He’d known he could die. And he…
It had been a long shot, getting Clint back. But they had gotten Clint back, in the end.
Nat knew Clint hadn’t seen the letter, and she planned to keep it that way. There was too much empty in their lives right now.
Don’t concede anything.
Her space, her time, her protection of Clint, her love of Ginny.
Coulson had always made time. Always been there. He had the strangest way of showing he cared, but his presence was almost ethereal—it was just in the building, around those he was watching. It was a knowledge. A feeling, an intuition.
Nat wasn’t conceding Coulson. He was staying with them, somehow. She didn’t do a lot of thinking about death or what happened after. But Coulson…
She shut her eyes. Coulson couldn’t just leave. He was too big to just leave.
Nat wanted to talk to Ginny—who, she was sure, had far better-formed ideas on the subject of death and afterlife than she had.
Don’t concede anything.
Like pride, perhaps. Probably not what Coulson had in mind.
Calling Ginny was a stupid idea.
Best to check on Clint and make sure he wasn’t drowning himself in the shower.