Chapter 3
She lets go.
"Damn honey, ain't there more where that came from?" He says, cheap liquor coming off his mouth like steam from a sewer grate.
"Shut up." She says, pushing the random asshole away, as she wishes she had never done this, her heart actually hurting in her chest and her throat choking up. This was a mistake.
Waking up from the dead isn't as simple as Lazarus made it seem.
Kobik had erased all trace that anything had happened but it feels like a phantom itch, a self-imagined crick in the back that occasionally will radiate down her entire spine.
And the other itch is one she can actually scratch, as she tails James into the crowd, getting out of the apartment for the first time.
He seems okay, a small smile actually on his face as he looks at the kids and her head is screaming that she shouldn't be here. She has things to do and risking James knowing she's alive, endangering him again, is not only selfish but dangerously arrogant of her abilities not to be seen. And that's what trips up everybody in the end.
Someone brushes past her and she acccidentally gets too close to him, her perfume registering on his radar and the thing that was meant as an underlying assurance has now escalated into something that could fuck up everything.
Nat walks fast into the growing crowd as she feels him behind her.
"Three!" The countdown continues almost painfully and she scrambles to think of a way out.
"NATASHA!" He yells, not angrily or exposing but like how she feels whenever she sees him now, so close yet so damn far.
There's a man alone and she reaches for him, planting a deep, convincing kiss on lips she doesn't know, making sure James would only ever see the back of her head. Letting her body language convince him as she feels disgusted at the man, and that she can actually feel James' heart breaking.
She sees him walking back into the crowd, and slowly walking back to his apartment, his face white and his posture speaking everything. Defeated. Lost. Mourning.
--::--
She recognizes the thing he's playing with, Strange's puzzle orb that he promised was worth solving.
His eyes are far and away, his hands working the energy he isn't giving his mind. After a while, the thing opens spectacularly but..she can't what he's seeing. There's something possibly eminating from the blue, glowing sphere but to her eyes, all she sees is the thing himself.
As she's about to close the binoculars, she sees him throwing the glass against the wall, yelling before seemingly crying.
And she's never felt more angry at herself. Angry at the circumstances. Or, more alone.