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draw the cat eye sharp enough to kill a man
you did some bad things, but i’m the worst of them
sometimes i wonder which one will be your last lie
they say looks can kill and i might try
i don’t dress for women
i don’t dress for men
lately i’ve been dressing for revenge
It’s not true.
God, how many times has she imagined this? Getting the call that he’s gone, really gone? How many different ways has she pictured it happening? He always goes down with a fight, in her imagination. He’s always a hero to the last. Because that’s the kind of man he is. She can’t imagine losing him any other way.
Certainly not to a sniper shot to the neck, completely and utterly defenseless.
She would have felt him die, right? When he died before the Battle of New York, she swears she felt her stomach drop before she ever learned that something had happened to him. She felt that he was gone. If he’s really dead, she’d be feeling that now. Right?
The man Banks from the ATCU must be mistaken. That’s the only explanation for the call. Someone else must have been at Rosalind Price’s apartment tonight, someone who is now dead. Not Phil Coulson. Please, not Phil.
Normally, Phil would examine the crime scene. But even though he definitely is not dead, he isn’t on base either, so it falls on Melinda to power up the quinjet and summon Daisy. Then she’ll see for herself that whoever died with Price isn’t Phil.
Her hands shake as she and Daisy approach Price’s apartment to join up with the ATCU agents already inside. Melinda is more scared than she lets herself believe. Doubt has begun to creep into her mind, and she’s started to question her convictions. Daisy makes it even worse. While she also doesn’t want to believe Phil is dead, Melinda can tell she doesn’t think Banks was mistaken on the phone with her.
And Phil has been missing for a few hours. He should have reported in by now…
No. Melinda won’t accept that he’s gone until she sees his body for herself. No matter how scared that idea makes her, of seeing his lifeless and bloody body on the floor of Rosalind Price’s apartment. It’s exactly the kind of thing she wakes up from nightmares about in a cold sweat, silently screaming.
“Should we go inside?” Daisy whispers.
The two of them have been standing at the door for over a minute, Melinda’s hand hovering above the doorknob. She can’t bring herself to turn it.
“I…”
“It’s okay, May. I’ll do it.”
Melinda steps back and lets Daisy open the door. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath before following the younger agent inside.
The first thing she notices is how much blood there is. It’s everywhere. All over Price’s table, chairs, floor, and…
Oh, God. And the two corpses on the floor, on each side of the table. Those are covered.
The one closest to the door, and therefore to Melinda and Daisy, is clearly Price. Melinda can’t see her face, but she recognizes the haircut and clothes. This makes sense, at least. It’s tragic, but it makes sense that one of the bodies in Price’s apartment would be, well, Price.
The other body is on the opposite side of the table. Which means the two agents will have to walk to the other side in order to identify it. As Daisy starts to move in that direction, Melinda closes her eyes and takes another deep breath.
It’s not him. It’s not him. It’s not—
An ear-piercing scream suddenly cuts through the silence. Melinda’s eyes fly open, and immediately, she rushes to Daisy’s side.
She looks down and sees the body.
She’d know that face anywhere.
God, no. It can’t be. Not him. She can’t lose him. No. No. He isn’t gone. That’s not him. It looks like him, but that dead man is not Phil Coulson. Is the nano-mask back in play? That would explain it. It has to.
But Agent 33’s mask deactivated when she died, didn’t it?
It can’t be.
A wave of nausea hits Melinda out of nowhere. She’s going to throw up if she stares at the body— his body—any longer. She doesn’t know how she manages to tear her eyes away from his face, but somehow, she manages it.
“I need a minute,” she mutters. She walks back out to the hallway as fast as she can and slams the door to the apartment behind her. She tries to breathe, but it’s like she can’t get enough air into her lungs. She gasps for breath, trying in vain to get a handle on her emotions. She closes her eyes and tries to clear her mind, but it’s no use. She sees him behind her eyelids, haunting her.
It’s not just his corpse that she sees, although that’s certainly an image she’ll never forget no matter how hard she tries. She also sees him. Phil Coulson, as she knew him in life. She sees his face, looking at her while he laughs at his own stupid pun. Smirking as he somehow manages to drag her into something she doesn’t want to do. Comforting her in the wake of the hardest moment of her life. He was there through it all. She hasn’t known life without Phil Coulson for nearly thirty years, save for about a week after New York. She doesn’t know how to live without him.
The tears are flowing before she can stop them. Melinda can’t remember the last time she cried, but here she is, all-out sobbing in the hallway outside Rosalind Price’s apartment. She didn’t expect the grief to set in this quickly. She didn’t think she’d register losing him this fast, but oh, God.
She lost him.
It’s too early for him to be gone. There’s so much she still has to tell him, so much she left unsaid for three decades. Is he the same way? Does he have something he’s been burning to tell her ever since they met? Probably not. He was always better at letting things go.
But now he’s dead, and she never even told him…
She never even told him that she loved him. She loved him and she never got up the nerve to tell him, and now she never will. Somehow, she always thought there would be more time. They’ve had decades together, and in her mind, she always imagined they’d have decades more before they’d have to worry about losing each other. Sure, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents died in the field all the time, but it always seemed like she and Phil were invincible, even after Bahrain. She’d had a little scare after New York, but even that had turned out fine. Even then, they had managed to buy some time.
And now their time is up.
The tears that have been streaming down her face turn into all-out sobs as she buries her head in her hands. Melinda is aware of how utterly pathetic she must look. She’s crying her heart out, leaning against the wall next to the apartment of the woman that had been on a goddamn date with the man Melinda was too cowardly to admit her feelings to. Pathetic.
She has to pull it together. There’s no time to mourn him, not when his murderer is on the loose. She’ll have plenty of opportunity to cry over him when that monster is good and dead, and not a moment before.
She knows exactly what monster did this.
And she slept with him.
“I’d say I want to kill him, but you’re probably first in line.”
Daisy stands beside Melinda in Price’s living room while the ATCU agents investigate the crime scene. Melinda wishes they could leave the place altogether, but they can’t, not while evidence is still being collected and Phil…Phil’s body is still on the floor.
“Damn straight.” Melinda looks at Daisy, who appears every bit as broken on the outside as she feels on the inside. “But if I miss, you’re welcome to take the next shot.”
“Good. Because I want Ward dead for this.”
Daisy pauses to think for a moment.
“Well, actually, I’ve wanted him dead since the moment I learned he was a backstabbing traitor. But now…”
“I get it,” Melinda says softly. “He won’t get away.”
God, how hard must this be for Daisy? Melinda has been so wrapped up in her own emotions that she’s barely had time to consider those of the agent beside her, but how badly must she be struggling with this? Phil was like a father to her. No one ever said it, but everyone knew. Those two had a bond like Melinda had never seen before. Daisy may not have known him as long as her, but Melinda knows without a doubt that she’s in pain.
“Daisy?”
She turns around. Melinda wants to say something, anything, to comfort her, but the words don’t come. She’s never been much of a talker, but now her head is swimming and she’s having trouble thinking about anything but Phil’s bleeding body on the dining room floor behind her, and—
Swiftly, she steps toward Daisy and wraps her in a tight hug.
She’s stiff in Melinda’s embrace for a few seconds, clearly stunned by the unprovoked display of affection. Eventually, though, she loosens up and hugs back. Melinda can’t remember the last time she hugged anyone. Without warning, tears prick at her eyes, threatening to spill out.
Melinda lets go. She can’t afford to break down. Not here, not now. Daisy needs someone to be strong, and regardless of her own feelings, Melinda knows she has to be that person.
Truthfully, she needs to be that person for herself just as much as she does for Daisy. Because if she lets herself break like she did after Bahrain, how long will it take to put herself back together this time?
She makes a beeline for the quinjet as soon as they get back to the Playground. Doesn’t bother to hide it, either. If people are smart, they’ll stay out of her way. People rarely ask questions when the Cavalry gets to work. She’s always cringed at the nickname, but she has to admit it’s intimidating, and right now, she needs to be as intimidating as possible.
She powers up the aircraft, throwing her bag onto the copilot’s seat and flipping several switches. The actions are so familiar to her that she barely even looks as she goes through the motions. The old Bus is more familiar to her than a quinjet, but the mechanics are similar, and she’s fairly certain she could fly this in her sleep.
She won’t, though. She needs to be wide awake for what she’s about to do.
Melinda takes a moment to pause and think about the absurdity of what she’s doing. It feels…unreal. She’s tracking down a man she once trusted (with more than she’d like to admit) and somehow she doesn’t need Director approval to do so because she is the interim director now that Phil is—
God, no. She can’t cry again, not when her mission is so important. She takes a deep breath and surveys the switches on the quinjet one last time to make sure she set everything up properly, even though of course she did. She’s procrastinating leaving the base. Why, though? This job has to be done, and Melinda is enthusiastic to complete it.
It’s fear. It’s fear and she knows it. Because although she’s been mostly fearless her entire life, losing Phil threw her for a loop, and nothing feels safe anymore. In all the years they knew each other, Melinda always felt safer with him around, even though that was slightly ludicrous because she was the one protecting him more often than not. He was always a safety net, someone she could fall back on if she ever needed to.
And now he’s gone.
But she can’t wait any longer. She walks by the ramp of the quinjet, right where the button is that closes it. She raises her hand to press it when—
“May?”
Melinda looks down the ramp to see Jemma Simmons standing at the bottom. Her face and eyes are red and there are tear tracks on her cheeks, which could mean one of two things: either she was exposed to some chemicals in the lab, or she’s been crying. Probably the latter, since Simmons has always been too organized and precise to forget her safety glasses.
Melinda looks closer into her face. Her expression is utterly stricken, as if her heart has been broken. She looks the way Melinda feels. Someone must have told her the news about Phil, because she has definitely been crying.
“Simmons. What do you need?” she asks with all the gentleness she can muster.
“I heard the quinjet. What’s going on? Do we have a mission?”
Melinda decides to dodge the question, at least for the moment. She knows someone will try to talk her out of her plan. Simmons wouldn’t; the girl is more bloodthirsty than she looks, especially under these kinds of circumstances. Still, there are a few people on base who will tell her that what she’s doing is against S.H.I.E.L.D. protocol.
Phil Coulson is dead. Fuck S.H.I.E.L.D. protocol.
“Mack is the Director until I get back. You should all—”
“Wait, back from where? Where are you going?”
She looks Simmons dead in the eyes.
“I’m going to kill Grant Ward.”
There he is.
Unfortunately, Melinda would know that face anywhere. She recognizes him even through her grainy binoculars, at a distance so great she probably couldn’t make a shot with the sniper rifle she brought even if she wanted to. She knows that’s exactly how she should handle this operation — get a clean shot from far away, avoid engaging him face-to-face — but then this isn’t so much an operation as it is a personal mission. If she’s out for blood, then she wants to see him bleed in front of her.
Revenge is dangerous. She’s seen the desire for it turn good agents into murderous monsters.
But what better way to kill the greatest monster she knows than to become one herself?
As she follows Ward with her binoculars, Melinda watches him dip into a restaurant. She groans quietly. No telling how long he’ll be in there.
Suddenly, the comms in her watch sound. She jumps at the unexpected noise. She didn’t mean to bring any comms on this mission, but she wears the watch every day, and she must have left it on out of habit.
Should she answer? On one hand, there’s no risk of getting caught. She’s perched on the remote rooftop of a long-abandoned office building, with no one anywhere close to within earshot. On the other hand, she’s fully aware of the nature of what she’s doing. S.H.I.E.L.D. has no jurisdiction anymore, and even if they did, they were never authorized to kill without very good reason even back when they were a legitimate organization. Melinda has no authority to kill Ward.
Still. She has a duty to her fellow agents, even now. She sighs and pushes a button to answer.
“Agent May, reporting.”
“What the hell are you doing, May?”
Okay. So this clearly isn’t a friendly call. Melinda recognizes Bobbi Morse’s voice. An excellent agent, but she’s always leaned more toward the side of honorable action. Melinda doesn’t put much stock in honor anymore. Not when it comes to Ward.
“I’m going to put a bullet in Ward’s head,” she says. Plain and simple.
“Think about this,” Bobbi warns.
“What is there to think about? Ward killed our Director. He’s harmed countless S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. He needs to be put down.”
“Come on. Don’t try to tell me that’s what this is about.”
“What else would it be about?”
Melinda hears Bobbi sigh. Over comms, she can’t tell what emotion is behind it. It could be sadness, resignation, irritation…anything, really.
“We all know what he meant to you.”
Melinda goes silent, pursing her lips. Bobbi is wrong. Nobody could ever possibly know just how much Phil meant to her. All the years they’d spent together, all the times they had each others’ backs, all the things they never told each other but both just knew …no one else had those. No one else had any idea what she would have done for Phil. What she would still do for him.
And nobody knew that she loved him.
“May. Would Coulson want you to get revenge for him? I mean, I know he wanted Ward dead already, but this—”
“I don’t know what he would want,” Melinda snaps. “And I’ll never know, thanks to Ward.”
She’s nearly shouting now. It’s not fair to Bobbi and she knows it, but Melinda can’t help herself. She isn’t doing this because of how Phil would feel about it. She’s doing it because of how she feels, and taking action is easier than dealing with the grief. Easier to stop Ward’s heart than to try to heal the massive crack in her own.
“Killing Ward won’t bring him back,” Bobbi says after a long silence. Her voice is softer now. “Don’t get me wrong, I would love to put a bullet in that bastard’s head, but that’s not what S.H.I.E.L.D. does.”
“And do you think your ex-husband shares that opinion?”
Hunter has been tracking Ward viciously ever since Bobbi’s injury. Melinda never liked him much, but now, she certainly feels more connected to him. Ward shot the woman he loves, just like he shot the man Melinda can’t live without. If anyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. can empathize with her right now, it’s Lance Hunter. And it should be Bobbi, but her damn moral code is getting in the way even now.
“That’s not what this is about, May. Think about who you work for. This reflects on all of us.”
“Then until Grant Ward is dead, I’m not working for S.H.I.E.L.D. I’ll be a lone vigilante until the job is done.”
Melinda shuts off her watch before Bobbi can respond. She won’t be getting any more calls now. Until her work is finished, she doesn’t want a single distraction. Never mind that this whole operation is a distraction from her feelings. She can’t hide from them forever, but focusing her mind on a single thing is a good enough way to keep them at bay for now. Especially if that one thing is something as satisfying as killing Ward.
Suddenly, Ward walks out of the restaurant, completely alone. There’s no one on the street as far as Melinda can see, even from her vantage point. Once he walks away from the windows of the restaurant, he’ll be in front of a completely solid brick wall.
No potential danger to civilians.
No witnesses.
So much for seeing him bleed. The circumstances are too perfect. She can have him dead now . One little shot and the world is safe from Grant Ward forever. She reaches for the sniper rifle she positioned beside her. She never meant to use it on this mission, but she can’t miss this chance. She can end this.
Right when she gets him in her sights, she knows he’s too far away. He’s moving in her direction, though, and there’s still no one around. If he just moves a little closer, he’ll be within range. And as soon as he’s within range, he’ll be dead. For the first time since she saw Phil’s body on the floor, Melinda smiles.
NOW! He’s within firing range. Melinda lines up her weapon with his head, following him as he continues to walk. She makes sure her angle is precise, checks the street one last time for civilians, and…
She fires.
And she misses.
Shit.
This isn’t good. This isn’t good at all. Not only is Ward still very much alive and well, but now he knows he’s being followed. Worse still, his head snaps up to where the bullet came from. Right up to where Melinda is perched atop the building. Still watching him through the rifle, she sees his eyes widen in recognition.
He knows she’s on to him.
Immediately, he ducks behind a building, and Melinda loses sight of him. He’s not an idiot, after all. He was never going to just stand there and let her take a second shot, but she still feels so disappointed. And stupid. So very stupid.
Damn it. Taking Ward out was never going to be easy, but now, the job is appearing even more difficult than she first thought.
She should get some sleep. She knows her chances of success will be better if she’s well-rested, and that she needs her wits about her for tomorrow. She also knows there’s no chance of rest, not tonight. Not when there are so many thoughts flying around her head.
So Melinda lies awake in her cheap motel room, staring at the television but not paying any attention to the 24-hour news broadcast playing. She’s a million miles away from this place, this time, this moment, thinking about anything but her surroundings.
She could have stayed on the quinjet for the night. It would have been safer, for sure, to barricade herself on the armored, cloaked plane until morning. Ward would have no chance at her there. But she needs to keep an eye on him, and she can’t exactly park a quinjet on a civilian street. This motel, for all its dinginess, is just a few buildings away from the last place she saw Ward. If she wants to find him, she has to stay close.
Besides, something about staying in questionable lodgings gives Melinda a nostalgia for the old days. The days of her undercover missions as a young woman, when everything that could possibly go wrong did just that, and yet it all felt so right. How many times did she and Phil share a bed at a motel just like this while they were posing as a couple? She can almost feel him beside her now, taking off his tie and settling under the covers beside her with a book.
The memory is like a shot to the heart. Melinda snaps out of her nostalgic reverie. She needs to sleep now if she doesn’t want to torture herself with memories like this. If she doesn’t, she’ll feel him beside her all night, and it will hurt twice as much tomorrow when she wakes up alone.
She shuts off the news and reaches for the lamp beside her bed. She’s just about to pull the string when the room phone rings loudly. She jumps and immediately reaches for the knife she placed on the nightstand.
It’s just the front desk. No need to worry.
Melinda takes deep breaths, trying to calm her racing heart and shut down her instinctive panic before picking up the phone. She sighs one last time, then takes the handset in her hand.
“Hello?”
“May! So good to hear your voice.”
Melinda nearly drops the phone. She knows that voice, knows it just as well as she knows the face she saw earlier.
He found her.
She should hang up. She should hang up right now, but she can’t force herself to hang up. Against all logic, she can’t help her curiosity. What does he have to say? What could he possibly say to her now?
“You know, it’s dangerous to be out in the open like this. I’d think the Cavalry would know better than to stay in a motel this close to the target. Or does the Quik-Nite Motel have some sort of hidden appeal for you?” He laughs, and it’s a terrifying sound. “The name kind of reminds me of our thing. Like the old days.”
Intense revulsion courses through Melinda. She grits her teeth, and she wants to punch Ward in his. Last time he made a joke like that, she fractured his larynx. Next time she gets her hands on him, she’s going to snap his neck. The only reason she hadn’t killed him before was because Phil ordered her not to. Now Phil is dead by Ward’s hand, and there’s no one holding her leash.
“I’d watch my back if I were you. Otherwise, you might just end up like Coulson.”
Immediately, Melinda ducks beneath the window she’s been standing in front of. Is Ward watching her? She has no idea, but she can’t take that risk. She knows how he operates.
“He looked so helpless as he died. Just bleeding out like that, with no one to stop it. No one to save his neck like last time. I wish you were there. I’d have kept you alive just to watch you lose your mind as you tried and failed to keep him alive.”
Melinda clenches her jaw so tight it’s a miracle she doesn’t break something. She nearly slams the phone on the ground. Her heart is racing and her face is hot and she wants to cry and scream and curse Ward out, all at the same time. She can’t do this. She can’t think about him like that.
This was Ward’s goal, of course. Get her riled up until she finally responds to him. She’s smart enough not to take the bait. When she speaks, it’ll be to tell him she’s going to kill him. Once and for all.
“Your shot earlier was pathetic. What, you think I don’t know how to avoid a sniper? I won’t go down that easy, May. Surely you know that.”
Now’s her chance. He made his threat, now she’ll make hers.
“Oh, I’m not going to shoot you from a distance. I took that shot because you were right there, but a death like that is too good for you.”
“I thought S.H.I.E.L.D. was supposed to capture, not kill.”
“That was before you murdered Coulson. Now, all bets are off,” she growls. “You won’t die from a sniper bullet. You and I are going to meet, face-to-face. I want to look you in the eye while I kill you. Because I’m not a coward like you.”
She slams down the handset and hangs up the phone without another word.
It’s only then that she realizes how violently her hands are shaking. That call, Ward’s threats, the way he described Phil’s death…it all leaves her more shaken than she’d like to admit.
There’s no chance of sleep now.
So the rumors are true.
For months, S.H.I.E.L.D. has been hearing rumors of a HYDRA waystation located in an abandoned office building in this area. They never had enough intelligence to act on them, and they weren’t even sure if such a waystation actually existed, but now Melinda can confirm the rumors. At about 6:19 p.m., she watched Ward duck into an abandoned building on Jefferson Boulevard. In the hour since, five men in dark suits did the same. Definitely too much traffic for an old, empty office building.
She doesn’t know how many HYDRA men she’ll have to fight through if she goes in now. She also doesn’t know if she’ll ever get a better opportunity to take Ward down.
So at 7:36 p.m., Melinda knocks out both guards stationed at the front doors and rushes into the building, fists flying and weapons at the ready. She’s not sure how many men she fights through. Sometimes, when she’s fighting, she detaches herself from the world around her, focusing only on the movements of her body and that of her adversary. She blacks out as she takes down HYDRA goon after HYDRA goon.
And then, on the second floor of the building, she sees him.
Grant Ward, sitting calmly in a ratty old office chair. Like he’s waiting for her.
“Ah, I wondered when the Cavalry would come in.”
Aside from a floor lamp, he and the chair are the only things in the otherwise empty room. Is this a trap? It’s either a trap, or Ward is dumber than she thought, and she knows better than to underestimate him.
Wordlessly, Melinda raises her fists. Taking the cue, Ward stands up and takes a knife out of the sheath on his belt. For a charged moment, neither of them do anything. They just stare at each other from opposite sides of the room.
Melinda summons every emotion she’s felt since she saw Phil bleeding on the ground. Every repressed sob, every bitten-back scream of rage comes bubbling to the surface, ready to explode.
And at the same time, she and Ward rush toward each other.
This time, she doesn’t black out during the fight. There’s too much at stake, and besides, she wants to savor this. She wants to enjoy kicking Ward’s ass, letting out everything she’s feeling onto him and making him suffer the way she’s been suffering.
She lands a kick in his gut. He doubles over in pain, and Melinda takes the opportunity to swing for him again, this time with her fist. Before she feels the impact, however, a searing pain suddenly shoots into her face.
Shit. She let him get a hit on her. At least it wasn’t his knife.
“What is this about, May?” Ward asks as he dodges another kick from her. “This really S.H.I.E.L.D. business? Or is it something else?”
She doesn’t answer, just aims a punch toward his face. Annoyingly, he dodges that, too. He was trained as a Specialist, just like her. She needs to get creative if she wants to beat him.
“Come on, May, we all saw how you looked at Coulson. Even me. Hell, I thought you were in love with him the entire time you were sleeping with me.”
She doesn’t dignify that with a response. Unfortunately, Ward knows her well enough to understand what a silent ‘yes’ looks like from her.
Her eye catches on the lamp next to the office chair. If she could just get to it…
She guides the fight in that direction, throwing punch after kick after punch all the while. She needs to distract Ward. She’ll give him a response after all.
“Maybe I was looking for something better. You left a lot to be desired.”
Ward’s face is emotionless, but she sees the briefest loom of irritation cross over it. She fights back a smirk. There are few things she enjoys more than taking jabs at him while they fight. The bastard deserves it, anyway.
Finally, she’s close enough to the lamp to grab hold of it. In one swift motion, she takes it in her hands and swings it into Ward. He collapses, shouting in pain. Melinda thinks she may have heard a cracking sound as she hit him.
He’s down. He’s still armed with his knife, but he’s down. Now is her chance. Either she kills him now, or she’ll never get another opportunity. Somewhere in her heart, she knows that.
She begins to wrench the knife from his grasp. Despite his injured state, he’s holding on tight to it, and she can’t get it out of his hand. Frustrated, she jerks his wrist and hears a snap as it goes limp. When she tries to take the knife again, she has no difficulty doing so.
She raises the weapon…and plunges it straight into his heart.
Despite all her years as a Specialist, she can’t help but close her eyes for a moment. In that moment, she sees Phil’s face flash before her. She sees him as he was when they first met, an awkwardly charming eighteen-year-old at the Academy. She sees him when they first became partners, an agent starting to come into his own. She sees him after T.A.H.I.T.I., a broken man no longer sure who he is.
And she sees him as he was when she found him dead on the floor of Rosalind Price’s apartment.
Melinda forces herself to open her eyes. To look at what she’s done to Ward. Despite the violence, it’s almost poetic to watch him bleed out. Like they’ve come full circle from that horrific moment a few days ago.
She watches the light leave his eyes.
Breathing a sigh, Melinda turns her eyes upward to the ceiling. She closes her eyes again, and in her mind, she’s staring toward the open sky. Toward heaven. She’s never really believed in an afterlife, but now she desperately wants to. She hopes Phil is comfortable where he is now. She hopes he’s watching over her.
A hot tear falls down her face. She barely even notices, but it feels so good to finally let herself experience these emotions. With the job done, she feels free. Free to remember and to cry and to grieve.
She presses her lips to her fingers and plants a soft kiss. Eyes still closed, she raises them upward to her imagined sky.
“I love you,” she whispers.
For Phil.