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Clint can't function. Doesn't eat, except when Natasha drags him out of his nest, sleeps constantly and not at all at the same time, stuck in this small void that he's built himself, and most of all doesn't think.
Because Phil, his Phil is gone.
Clint thinks (in the rare times that he does) that if he isn't already mad, he would be if he had to remember Phil.
He avoids the team, even Nat, who's slowly giving up on him - he can tell. Steve used to come over - Clint thinks that it was out of respect to Phil - but he stopped soon enough, this silence more deafening than even the ice. Banner never came at all, and Stark brought him booze once, but he doesn't remember much from that even, and Natasha had expressly forbidden the engineer since then.
Clint thinks that he'd probably try and drown himself in ridiculously expensive alcohol if Natasha hadn't ruined that. Spoil sport.
But now he's standing in front of Phillip Coulson's gravestone, knows home is buried ten feet under, knows that he can never go back.
Knows that he is alone.
It’s snowing, and isn’t it ironic, the little marble maker frosted over and cold when he touches it. He didn’t bother with a parker, it didn’t really matter to him anymore, because Phil isn’t there to drag him back into the loft and tell him he’d catch his death.
He places the forget-me-not's he picked on his way here carefully at the base of the headstone. Phil would like them, would think they were cute and kiss him on the cheek for being a romantic.
God, Phil.
"Stop it Barton, damn it!" Clint pulls at his hair (its longer now, Phil wouldn't like it) until his eyes sting from the pinpricks of pain and not his chest constricting around emotions and words he never got to say.
He waits until he's in control again before pulling a small velvet box from his pocket. "I was going to wait until I got back from Science-ville to give you this," he says, he's aiming for his usual cocky-and-self-assured, and it's so familiar, yet so broken - and he can't, he can't - tears slipping over his eyelashes and crashing into the flowers. "I wanted to marry you P-phil."
He sinks to his knees then, because not even a superhero could hold this much grief and rage and hate, and rests his forehead against the cold marble, hands clutching the little jewellery box.
He sobs until he's spent, his eyes stinging and hands stiff, and he moves them - he has to - to trace Phil's name and open the little box. A soft gold ring inlayed with tiny purple stones lay on the plush velvet, and Clint knows he bought it so that Phil always had a little bit of Hawkeye with him.
But he hadn't had Hawkeye at all when Loki stabbed him, so Clint thought the gesture was rather useless now.
"Anyway, I thought you should have this," he says, setting the now closed box before the gravestone before shifting to sit, leaning against the grave marker to get some rest.
(He didn’t even notice when the cold became too much and the world slid away.)
When he woke up he was cold, so cold, and Phil was there, so it didn't matter that he was probably dead or hallucinating.
"Hey you," and god that was so Phil, and Clint smiled for the first time in what felt like forever.
"Am I dead yet sir?"
"Yes, I'm afraid so," and didn't Phil look somber, and Clint found that he didn't like that in death just as much as he didn't like it alive.
"What now?"
"Well I guess we'll have to find out," and that was warm, and Clint figured that he didn't mind being dead if it meant he could stay with Phil.
And he had to say it now, more than anything, so he half blurted - half sobbed, "I love you," before he was pulled into Phil's chest.
"Love you too, idiot."
He was home.