Work Text:
It was strange, watching someone grieve her.
It was an emotion Natasha never thought she’d witness.
Over her brief life, she had experienced grief for others, of course. In college, her sixteen-year-old cat had passed away on a cold January night. As she drove home alone in the dead of night, Natasha thought the gaping void in her chest would never close. The next morning, with no companion calling for her attention, the empty food bowl sitting abandoned on the floor nearly made her crumble to her knees.
She also witnessed grief as an outsider, slightly detached but still overwhelmed with helpless dread as she watched a stranger cry uncontrollably in a hotel lobby. The girl's head resting on her father’s lap as he gently ran his fingers through her hair. Or Natasha’s mother, entering her room one afternoon during high school, tears blurring her usually stoic eyes, delivering the news of her mother’s passing; a grandmother Natasha hadn’t truly known or been close to.
There was nothing she could do in either scenario, except watch them cry and project herself as the protective pillar of salt she always tried to be.
But watching someone cry and suffer over her when she was gone from this world was not something she expected to experience.
Death was supposed to be final.
She wasn’t supposed to be here to handle the aftermath. She wasn’t supposed to know who cried and who didn't after discovering she was gone.
Natasha didn’t even believe in ghosts until she became one.
A part of her felt off, disconnected, from the world around her. The world seemed to rush past her in the blink of an eye, but all she could do was stand still and watch. She knew she didn’t belong on this plane of existence, knew that she needed to go onward…wherever that may be.
But how could she leave when her sister was hurting so deeply?
Yelena’s destructive habits first became clear to Natasha when she followed her sister to work one morning. She watched Yelena weave through the busy streets of New York City, skillfully avoiding the touch of fellow commuters and pushing shoulder-first into a crowd of tourists occupying the sidewalk. Yelena ignored every traffic and pedestrian rule the city had, walking confidently through the crosswalk on a red light. Unbothered, as cars honked horns and slammed on brakes, their metal bodies screeching to a stop inches from her.
She walked on, her spine slumping as if disappointed today was not the day she was taken out in the middle of a street.
If Natasha’s heart could still beat, it would beat out of her chest. Or perhaps her heart would silence itself altogether under the stress Yelena’s actions were causing her.
Every time her sister would approach a crosswalk, her steps never faltering as cars zoomed by on the street, Natasha would dash forward, hand outstretched to yank her back to safety, but her dread mounted as her fingers slipped through the fabric of her coat, like trying to catch running water.
Other times, Natasha would watch from the corner of the darkened room as Yelena sprawled on her couch, the eerie glow of her television illuminating the glazed fog in her eyes. It was during situations like this that Natasha felt something odd happening to her. She could never describe it, but it was almost like she couldn’t move; like she’d been dropped into a vat of molasses and had to swim her way back to the top. Every step was a mile, every blink took ages, and the darkness of the room began to engulf her until Yelena’s highlighted face was the only thing she could see.
Then, a loud noise from the TV would startle her sister, drawing her attention, and Natasha felt normal again…well, as normal as a ghost could feel anyway.
Natasha also noticed that Yelena had started to destroy her fingers. Not by training with a punching bag or taking up a craft, but in a more subtle way, usually amid the droning voices of her work conference room.
Yelena tended to zone out when her coworkers stood at the head of the room, rattling on over presentation after presentation. She’d bite her nails down to the quick, using her teeth or whatever nail she had left to rip open the skin around her thumb and her cuticles. Sometimes, small, red droplets would fall onto the desk, and she’d wipe them away without much thought. Her hands became constantly raw and red, made worse by the blistering cold that blew into the city during the winter and the gloves Yelena refused to wear.
And Natasha was slowly, inexorably spiraling.
It felt like drowning in slow motion. She couldn’t do anything except watch her sister succumb to the mounting sadness. In private, Yelena had stopped pretending she was fine. She no longer moved with that stubborn spark that once made Natasha half exasperated, half proud.
Sometimes, Natasha would fly into a rage as she attempted to grab Yelena’s attention. Thinking this is what being tortured must feel like; to see her sister, alive, breathing, right there, yet unable to save her from the grief that was devouring her inch by inch.
Every night, when she finally collapsed on the couch, Natasha stood helplessly beside her like a discarded memory.
And when Yelena passed out, her phone slipping from her fingers, breathing shakily, Natasha would lose the thin thread of composure she clung to.
She’d throw herself at the phone, reaching with all the panic of someone watching their entire world teeter on the edge. Her hand would stretch and fall straight through the device.
Through the cushion.
Through everything.
That moment always hit her like a punch. A violent reminder that she no longer had substance. No weight. No ability to protect the one person she’d sworn her entire life to keep safe.
A sound would rip out of her; raw, guttural, instinctive. A cry that wasn’t a voice but something older, torn from the center of her being. She’d slam her hands against the couch again and again, trying to force herself into matter, into existence, into anything that could reach Yelena.
But she couldn’t. The world refused to touch her back.
Frustrated, Natasha would scream and wail, bending low over Yelena’s sleeping form, and she’d yell, expelling the anguish festering in her heart. She’d scream her sister’s name until she felt herself splinter at the edges, her form flickering with grief too enormous for her spectral body to contain.
It was no use.
In life, Natasha was never very religious. Still, in Yelena’s darker moments, Natasha would beg whatever existed, pleading with the universe itself to help her contact her sister and ensure that Yelena would be okay.
She couldn’t leave until she knew for certain that her sister was looked after either by herself or someone else.
There were times when she watched Yelena dance around her cramped kitchen. She’d move without thinking, hips swaying in that clumsy, earnest way of hers as her favorite song blasted from her phone speaker. She’d stir her mac and cheese like it was a potion meant to revive her, tapping the spoon against the pot in an off-beat rhythm. And for a few seconds, she looked alive again. Not haunted. Not drowning.
Just Yelena.
An emotion would tenderly punch through Natasha, and the lights would get brighter, whiter, as if they, too, gasped at Yelena’s seldom joy. The bulbs overhead flared, their white glow swelling until the walls dissolved in it. The light didn’t feel like electricity or heat; it felt like memory. Like childhood summer sun. Like home. Something within beckoned her to step forward, to embrace this new warmth, but then Yelena coughed, the lid of her spice container fell into the cheese sauce, and a voice in the back of her mind reminded her to wait, to stop; she couldn’t leave her sister.
Not now.
Not yet.
When Natasha finally spotted Kate Bishop, it was as if the universe had answered her prayers. Out of all the crowds and vendors at the Bryant Christmas Market, Kate stood out to her the most. Natasha waited; she observed as customers flocked to her stall. Kate took her time with each individual, listening intently to their stories, spreading smiles on even the sourest of faces. There was a cheeriness to her that seemed contagious. The people who visited her stall left with a pep in their step. And the icing on the cake, when Kate’s gaze roamed the bustling park, her eyes briefly landed on her. Not in a way that suggested she recognized Natasha, but as many eyes often looked through her or passed her completely, Kate’s landed for the briefest of seconds.
Kate Bishop could see her, a ghost, a memory of the past.
It was in that moment, Natasha knew she needed to get Kate and her sister together.
After her Bryant Park trickery, Natasha was proud to notice that her sister seemed happier. Yelena didn’t experience a drastic change in mood or personality, but she’d smile more, and the picking of her skin lessened. There were fewer frequent stupors on Yelena’s couch, and it was all thanks to Kate.
So, Natasha thought it safe to disappear for a while, to linger peacefully, to drift through the city like a loose breath: unnoticed, unanchored, unhurried. Out there, she could pretend she wasn’t suspended between worlds. Out there, she could forget the constant fear crawling beneath her ribs.
The passage of time isn’t the same for ghosts as it is for the living realm. Ghosts didn’t feel minutes; they felt moods. Natasha didn’t notice the shadows growing longer, the golden hues of the setting sun, the flickering lights as New York’s electric grid ran overtime, outshining the stars above.
She didn’t know how long she’d been gone.
That realization hit her only when she finally drifted through the apartment wall, and everything inside her seized.
It was dark.
Not the peaceful kind. Not night. But a kind of darkness that felt abrupt, heavy, wrong.
The TV, which Yelena kept on as a constant companion, an artificial heartbeat, was silent. The pilot light she typically left on the stove was out. There was only the thinnest sliver of light appearing from the crack under her shut bathroom door.
A warning. A threat. A plea.
Trepidation rising, Natasha phased through the wood easily, nearly falling through the floor at the sight before her.
Yelena was on the ground.
Unconscious.
Folded in on herself like a collapsed marionette.
Head slumped forward, chin sinking into her chest in a way that pierced Natasha’s very essence. Her shoulders sagged against the tub, her body sagging with them. One leg flung out recklessly, the other curled inward as if trying to find comfort. Her plaid pajama pants were stained, lived-in, and creased in a way that screamed exhaustion. Her sweater slipped down her shoulder, revealing a frayed undershirt strap that felt too intimate, too human, too helpless.
Three bottles of vodka lay on the floor, spilling their last drops of liquid onto the tile, surrounding Yelena like downed guards protecting their queen. A fourth bottle rested lightly in Yelena’s lax grip, already halfway consumed.
Natasha’s entire world narrowed to a pinpoint.
She hovered closer, footsteps silent, her fingers trembling out of habit rather than muscle. Ghosts don’t have nerves; she’d learned that the hard way, but they do have muscle memory of fear. And right now, it gripped her like frost.
“Yelena,” Natasha whispered, leaning closer. Her voice sounded like the wind in the cracks through old windows; soft, lost, never enough. “Yelena, please. I’m right here.”
Not even a shiver.
The room felt smaller. The air felt wrong. The silence pressed against her like a hand over her mouth.
For one unbearable moment, Natasha thought: I’ve lost her. I’ve been gone too long. I can’t get her back.
The terror hollowed her out.
In that tiny, dim bathroom, Natasha felt the weight of death all over again, but this time, it wasn’t hers.
Lips thinning, Natasha pressed her hand to her sister's shoulder, trying to push, trying to make something in the world acknowledge her. Her fingers passed through like mist, leaving behind nothing but a temperature drop too small to notice.
And then, a groan. Low and barely audible, but it was a small acknowledgment that Yelena was still with her, still on this plane of existence.
On instinct, she cast her eyes downward, seeing the glow of Yelena’s phone trapped between her thigh and the shower rug. It was a notification. A yearly reminder to ensure Yelena never forgot to wish her sister a happy birthday.
The room darkened. A strange buzzing grew in Natasha’s ears.
Today was her birthday.
The day she would have turned thirty-six. The day her life continued.
Desperation sparked within her.
Natasha crouched in front of Yelena, her outline flickering, a fragile glimmer like heat above pavement. “Yelena!” Her voice broke into a ragged, hollow echo. The lamps above the bathroom sink buzzed sharply, dimming and sparking. Natasha pressed her palms flat against the floor, pushing the way she used to shove open heavy grocery-store doors; shoulders low, breath held, all force.
The Excedrin bottle rattled inside the medicine cabinet, barely audible.
Yelena never reacted, and that, somehow, was the cruelest part. Natasha could make a volcano explode, and its vibrations and rumblings would never reach her sister. And as ash settles from the eruption, the darkness fluttered down upon Natasha.
The pill bottle stilled.
The buzzing filament in the lamps shattered.
Natasha knelt on the tile, its coldness seeping into her, spreading within her in a way that shouldn’t be possible. Darkness slithered into the corners of her vision, engulfing her, penetrating the deepest parts of her soul. The image of her sister began to fade, the porcelain now transparent.
There was a pop, the sensation of being squeezed through a tube that sent panic coursing through her, and Natasha was nothing more than a hazy suggestion, as thin as dust drifting through light.
She was alone in the dark void.
“Yelena!”
Her voice vanished around her.
No one heard.
No one saw.
No one remembered.
She was gone.
If there was one thing Kate hated, it was being rudely awoken from a good dream. That night, as snow began to flutter through the buildings, the wind kicking away discarded hot-dog wrappers and cigarette butts, Kate lay snuggled in her bed. Lucky, her heavy lump of fur, lay sprawled over her feet, putting pressure on her shins, but Kate slept on.
In her dream, she was jumping from rooftop to rooftop, leaping across Manhattan’s skyline, unworried about the dangerous fall. It was the closest Kate would ever get to flying.
Woof!
An ear-rattling bark filled the apartment, Kate’s bed jumping with the force.
Kate’s dream shattered out of existence, and she blinked blearily into the darkness, groaning. “Lucky,” she moaned, shifting her legs to dislodge her dog. “Go back to sleep.”
He barked again, loud and reverberating off the walls of her bedroom, echoing maddeningly through her ears. The sound was like a drill whirring against her brain, and he barked again, and again, and again.
“Lucky!” Kate fumbled for one of her stuffed animals, lightly throwing it in his direction. “It’s just a pigeon, my guy. Geez, every time!”
But her annoyance at her dog fizzled away as a new sensation overtook her. Chills erupted over her body, her stomach swooped, and that telltale prickle she hated spread over the back of her neck.
She wasn’t alone in her apartment.
Someone else was with her.
Her palms moistened as she fought against the slight tremor of terror mounting within her. The fissure of fear that always grew within her whenever a ghost startled her. She followed Lucky’s headline, watching him growl and bark at the inky shadows in the corner of her room.
“Hello?” she winced, glancing at her bedside clock, the red numbers blinking at 3:15 in the morning. Oh, she despised how easily these ghosts could find her and pull her out of her well-earned rest. Her anger emboldened her. “If you want me to reach out to a loved one, can it wait until the sun is up?”
The sound Kate took to be the whistling wind changed.
At first, it was a tremor. Thin, high, like a wire being plucked far away. Then it grew, winding upward in pitch until the sound seemed to scrape along the walls. A wail. A real, keening wail, too layered, too raw to be anything human.
Lucky barked louder, adding to the overwhelming cacophony.
Kate’s lungs forgot how to work. She sat frozen, the sheet clutched in her fists, pulse roaring in her ears. The noise came again, closer this time, vibrating through the mattress, thrumming under her ribs. A cold draft curled around her ankles. The shadows in the corner began to move. Not flutter, not shift.
Condense.
Kate’s mouth went dry. She’d never seen a ghost form like this. Whenever they’d found her, they’d already been wholly formed. In her twenty-four years of living, she’d never witnessed the traumatic birth of a ghost.
The shape kept swelling, drawing light from nowhere, edges trembling like liquid trying to remember how to be solid. Then the wailing returned. This time from inside the forming shape. A sound of mourning and fury braided together.
Kate clamped a hand over her ears, loathing the foreign feeling of anguish piercing her, but it did nothing; the sound vibrated straight into her bones.
The darkness rose into the vague silhouette of a woman: hair like drifting smoke, arms hanging limp as if weighed down by her grief. A face, or the suggestion of one, pulled forward from the shadows, features sharpened by despair, and Kate could feel it like a pressure in her own skull.
Her breath hitched. Every instinct screamed at her not to look. She was trapped between terror and fascination, heartbeat skittering like a terrified animal.
The ghost’s mouth opened.
“Kate!” The wail that poured out was worse than before; sharper, louder, as though the very air were being torn in half.
The ghost lurched a step forward.
“Kate!”
Kate finally screamed, launching herself from her bed, Lucky scampering after her. “What?” she cried, cowering against her desk in her pajamas. “What do you want?” Her fingers searched for her lamp, flicking it on and illuminating her room. Safe, warm light flooded the room, and the ghosts' screams subsided as did Kate’s raging heartbeat.
“Kate?”
The lamp brought color to the lost soul standing confusedly in Kate’s bedroom. Red hair cut to her shoulders, perfect skin, petite, lithe body. Kate clutched her chest, feeling her calming heart beneath her skin. “N-Natasha,” she gasped. “What the fuck. You nearly gave me a heart attack!”
Yelena’s departed sister blinked at her new surroundings, her attention finally landing on Kate. “But, but I was gone!” She looked down at her hands, flexing her fingers. “I was nowhere. There was nothing. I kept trying to find my way back. I screamed for hours,” terror etched itself across her features. “I was trying to get to you.” Natasha finally settled her gaze on Kate. “Where was I?”
Kate shook her head, even more flabbergasted than Natasha. “I don’t know,” she whispered incredulously. An alarm bell began to ring inside her. “Why were you trying to get to me?” she asked suspiciously. “Shouldn’t you be watching your sister?”
Natasha’s form wavered violently. “Yelena!” She rushed Kate. “You have to help her!”
Kate changed in record time as she listened to Natasha describe the state she discovered her sister in. She pushed away any lingering bashfulness. Considering ghosts occasionally popped in on her in the shower or bath, Kate was getting used to feeling exposed. “She’s at her apartment?” she asked in a rush, quickly throwing Lucky a rawhide as she slipped out her door, locking it behind her.
“Yes,” Natasha phased through the wall, floating down the stairs as Kate took them three steps at a time. “The bathroom. I think she’s locked the door.”
Once on the street, Kate took off at a run. The subways would be closed, and she didn’t trust taxis at this hour. Natasha kept pace with her, a singular spectator as Kate exerted herself in the frigid air. “Explain to me how you were stuck?” she panted, counting down the street signs as she sprinted through the city.
“It started after Yelena passed out, when I couldn’t wake her up. Then it was like I was being engulfed, that something had snatched me away from the world. I don’t know how long I was in there,” Natasha’s voice trembled, the memory still clinging to her soul. “Time didn’t behave. It didn’t move forward. It didn’t move at all. Nothing moved.”
She stared past Kate, her eyes darkening as if she could still see it, as if she were still half-anchored somewhere else.
“It was just black,” she whispered. “Not even black, actually. Black is a color. This was the absence of anything. No light, no direction, no floor, no air, just this endless space that felt like it was swallowing me without touching me. Can that happen to ghosts?” She asked Kate fretfully. “Can they just cease to exist like that?”
“I don’t know,” Kate exhaled harshly, turning a corner. “I learn something new about ghosts and the supernatural realm every day. I can’t say a ghost has ever described that experience, at least not to me. But it doesn’t sound like you ceased to exist. Your consciousness was still present.”
“Maybe that was hell,” Natasha considered. “Maybe that hammered tin Moscow Mule cup I stole from P.F. Chang’s finally caught up with me.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “Did you even believe in hell when you were alive? Most afterlives reflect the beliefs the person held before they died. It’s your subconscious's final comfort as you drift away for the last time.”
“I don’t know,” Natasha groused. “I didn’t give it much thought, honestly.”
“What else did you experience in there?” Kate huffed.
“It felt endless. Just the expectation of forever. I screamed, I think. But the sound didn’t go anywhere. I heard it in my own head, but there was no echo. No proof I’d made a noise at all. The worst part wasn’t the darkness. It was the stillness. Like the world had been paused, and I was the only thing left running. I kept turning in circles, hoping something—anything—would change, but every direction felt identical. Like I was spinning in tar. I couldn’t tell if I was moving or if the void was moving around me.”
Natasha pressed her palms against her eyes, as though to push the memory back down. A habit she must have had when she was alive.
“There was this moment when I realized I didn’t even know where my body ended anymore. The dark felt like it was inside me as much as around me. I couldn’t feel my own shape. I thought if I stayed one second longer, I’d dissolve. Just unravel.”
“I hate to break it to you, but you don’t technically have a body,” Kate skidded down another street, running through the red light.
“You know what I mean!” She shivered. “I tried to escape. I begged. I ran, I screamed, I cried, but the void didn’t respond. It didn’t care. It was like yelling into a place that didn’t even understand sound.” She looked at Kate, eyes glassy. “Then I remembered the only person who could hear me would be you. So, I started calling for you.”
Kate stumbled to a halt at the end of Yelena’s street, bending at the waist as a stitch erupted over her side. “Well,” she gasped, “I heard you.”
Natasha floated beside her, considering the darkened street. “I’m not sure if you actually did.” She looked as serene as ever, dry and glowing compared to Kate’s sweat-slicked hairline and red cheeks and nose. “I kind of found myself in your room. I still don’t know how I got out. I know it wasn’t because of anything you or I did.”
Her shoulders lifted, as if Natasha were taking a long, trembling breath.
“I didn’t escape. I was released.” She paused. “Whatever that void was, it either didn’t want me anymore, or it couldn’t hold onto me anymore.”
Kate pursed her lips. She had an idea about this void that snatched souls from the realm of the living. She even had a sneaking suspicion it was the same mysterious force that changed how a spirit looked the longer they remained on this plane of existence; the reason why they went from colorful and bright to drab and grey. It was like the longer they stayed, the more energy was sapped from them, eventually leaving nothing.
If no one remembered them, if no one cared: how long could a ghost wander until they dissipated? Until they were forgotten? What happened to them then?
Kate shook her head, approaching the apartment's front door. “What’s the code to get in?” she asked Natasha.
She wrung her hands nervously next to her. “That’s a good question.”
Kate inhaled deeply. “You’ve been following your sister around for months! You mean to tell me you don’t know what code she punches in whenever she goes into her apartment?” she seethed.
“It never seemed important,” Natasha argued. “Plus, I never needed to enter a code. I always just…went in.”
“This seems pretty important!”
“Oh! Yelena always keeps a window in her apartment unlocked. Actually, I don’t think it can even lock. It’s the one by her fire escape.”
“Are you kidding?” Kate fumed. “I can’t just break into her apartment! I could get arrested.” She was immensely thankful for the late hour. Kate was well aware that, to the passing pedestrian, she looked like she was arguing with a brick wall.
“Kate,” Natasha pleaded, “only you can help her. I can’t run and get help from anyone else.”
Reluctantly, Kate held Natasha’s gaze, and it was a sucker punch to realize that her once startlingly green eyes had greyed. “Why am I such a nice fucking person?” Kate asked herself, swinging around to the back alley of Yelena’s apartment building. Relying on her college Division One gymnastics title, Kate launched herself onto the rusty fire escape, counting the row of windows until she reached the fifth level.
Natasha materialized next to her.
“This is her window? Yelena is on the fifth floor, right? Right? I’m not about to enter some random person’s apartment?”
“Let me make sure.” Natasha disappeared through the wall, leaving Kate crouched, shivering on the metal landing, but a second later, she popped her head and shoulders through the brick and mortar. “It’s hers!”
Kate wrenched the pane upward, tumbling into the heated air of the apartment. She had landed in Yelena’s bedroom, clothes littered the floor, and pillows strewn across the mattress. Swallowing, Kate averted her gaze, not wanting to pry into Yelena’s personal space. She had only been invited in once before and wanted to ensure she’d be invited again.
“You said she was in the bathroom?” Kate questioned as she stepped further into the dark apartment. But nothing answered her. She pivoted. “Natasha?”
Silence.
Kate’s feet automatically led her to the closed door of the bathroom. If Natasha was once again fighting the void, the best course of action was to wake Yelena up. Besides, the quietness was starting to grate against Kate’s nerves. Even if Yelena was only sleeping, the place shouldn’t have been this soundless.
“Yelena?” she knocked harshly on the closed door, immediately trying the knob, but it wouldn’t turn. “It’s Kate, can you unlock the door, please?”
There was no movement on the other side.
“Damnit.” Kate pounded harder, the rhythm of her heart increasing with her banging fist. “Yelena!” She took a step back, shaking out her body and tensing her legs. “Okay, high school squat champion, don’t fail me now.” She kicked at the door with all her might, with every ounce of strength she possessed, and after the third hit, the latch splintered apart.
The sight that greeted her was much worse than Natasha suggested. Kate flew into the room, her throat pinched painfully closed, a heavy stone sinking into her stomach as she reached for her friend.
Yelena hadn’t moved from her crumpled spot on the tile, resembling a ragdoll thrown aside.
“You didn’t say she’s consumed four bottles of alcohol,” Kate hissed, her heart in her throat. She kneeled delicately in front of Yelena’s slumped form. She cupped the blonde’s cheek, hoping the iciness lingering in her fingers was enough to shock her system into waking. Kate slid her hand down to her chin, slowly lifting Yelena’s head. “Come on,” she whispered. “Wake up.”
Yelena’s eyes shot open, bloodshot and unrecognizable. Quick as lightning, her arm shot forward, her hand latching around Kate’s throat, tight as a vice. With surprising strength and agility, Yelena pushed them upward, forcing Kate to shuffle backward. Her other arm, still holding a bottle of vodka, came at Kate’s face. Instinctively, Kate grabbed the arm coming at her, her biceps straining as she held Yelena’s emotional fury at bay.
“Yelena,” Kate choked. “Yelena, it’s me, it’s Kate! I’m not here to hurt you.”
Her center of gravity tilted, Yelena spun them in a circle, and it was everything Kate could do to keep her feet beneath her and not send both her and a very drunk Yelena crashing to the floor. Instead, her back hit the wall, hard. The force of their impact sent several brushes and a bottle of nail polish clattering to the ground.
The bottle came toward the side of her head, but Kate raised an elbow, knocking it out of Yelena’s grasp. It fell to the floor, but thankfully didn’t shatter.
“It’s okay,” Kate chanted. She pulled Yelena entirely into her, wrapping her arms around her in a tight hug. “It’s okay,” she repeated.
Yelena’s breathing kept catching, stuttering, like her body hadn’t figured out how to stop fighting. Then the adrenaline broke, and Yelena crumpled in on herself, Kate’s arms the only source holding her up. “Ka—” she tried to speak, but her face shifted, twisted inward, turning shame-soft and fragile.
Kate pulled her in, slow and sure, her chin settling gently on top of her head. When Yelena’s knees gave out, Kate steadily slid them down the wall until they sat tangled together on the bathroom floor.
Her fists, still clenched from the rage, hovered uselessly against Kate’s chest. Then the tightness inside Yelena cracked, and a thin, splintering sound broke from behind her ribs as the first sob tore free. It wasn’t graceful, but raw and shaking and wet, falling from Yelena like she’d been holding her sorrow back for far too long.
Kate tightened her grip as if bracing Yelena against the weight of her own collapse.
“I’m sorry,” Yelena hiccupped. “I’m so sorry.”
“Breathe, just breathe,” Kate murmured against her hair.
The sobs kept coming, unstoppable once they’d begun. Her fingers finally unclenched, grabbing at the back of Kate’s sweater like she feared she might disappear without something to anchor her. Kate rocked them, slow and quiet, a grounding rhythm in the middle of the storm Yelena had become.
Kate didn’t ask what happened, didn’t inquire about why or how Yelena had ended up like this, didn’t judge her for falling so far; she held her close as if her life depended on it. Kate hoped some of the warm, fuzzy feelings that had begun to form in her chest would transfer to Yelena, easing the pain she was obviously in.
“Oh no,” Yelena choked, burying her face deeper into Kate’s shoulder. “Is she here?”
“No,” Kate answered softly, tucking a strand of hair behind Yelena’s ear. “It’s just you and me right now.”
Yelena’s breath stuttered harshly in her chest. “I don’t want her to see me like this.”
Kate said nothing, carting her fingers through Yelena’s locks until her friend stilled against her.
“Kate,” she started carefully. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”
“Natasha.”
Yelena pulled away slightly, covering her face with her hands, chuckling humorlessly.
The silence lingered, but Kate didn’t mind. She played with the frayed edges of Yelena’s shirt, allowing the slightly swaying girl still in her arms to collect her thoughts.
“Today’s her birthday,” Yelena finally said, voice low. “She would have been thirty-six.” She swallowed thickly. “We were planning a trip to Japan to celebrate.”
Kate’s heart ached at the pain in her voice.
“I can’t decide if I want to see her one last time or forget about her completely. I don’t know which one would be easier.”
Humming, Kate smoothed a hand over Yelena’s back, slow circles meant to soothe, but also to steady herself. Grief was a language she understood too well; its strange syllables, its rhythm, the way it hit in bursts like unexpected weather. She felt it stirring in her own chest now, a soft ache echoing her father’s absence. She shifted her knees, cocooning her friend further in her embrace. “I don’t think either of them is easy. I don’t think it ever will be.” She licked her lips. “What outcome were you hoping for tonight?” She felt Yelena’s stuttered inhale.
“Forget,” she croaked. “I want to forget everything. The window seat I purchased for her so she could watch the sunrise as we traveled over the sea. The hotels, the hikes, all of it. I never want to remember her smile, how she snorted when she laughed, or her Sunday calls asking me which spice is best for mac and cheese, even though my answer was always the same.” New tears leaked from the corner of her eyes. “I want to forget everything because the thought of her makes me want to tear myself to pieces. It hurts so much, that emptiness. The despair when I realize she’ll never call me again, asking about stupid mac and cheese, feels like a hole I’ll never dig myself out of.
“Then I get so angry at her because she left me alone. We had so many plans, a whole lifetime to live together, there were so many things she still had to do, and now it's gone, she’s gone, and it hurts, Kate,” she cried. “Why does it hurt so much? Why can’t I rip those feelings out of me?”
Kate took her time in answering, wiping a stray tear from her cheek. “Because,” she whispered, the image of her dad’s smiling face conjured in her mind. “You loved her, and you will always love her. I know it seems impossible now, but someday that love will shine brighter than the pain. You’ll look back on your memories with her, and while it’ll still be sad, it won’t hurt so much anymore.”
Yelena sniffled.
“Accepting loss,” she said quietly, “doesn’t mean you stop missing them. It doesn’t mean the sadness vanishes or that you’ll wake up one day and feel completely whole again. I think accepting loss means letting the pain breathe. Giving it space, instead of trying to strangle it or pretend it isn’t there.”
Yelena swallowed hard, listening.
Kate continued, voice low and steady. “Grief is love with nowhere to go. And when someone you adore dies, the love doesn’t die with them. It has to find a new shape. A new purpose. Sometimes it feels like carrying a stone in your chest, heavy and impossible to bear. But over time, it becomes something else. Something softer.”
She drew in a breath, searching for the right words.
“You won’t forget Natasha’s laugh,” she whispered. “Or the way she snorted, or how she bragged about cooking mac and cheese like it was a Michelin-star dish. You won’t forget her excitement about Japan, or how she planned outfits weeks in advance. You won’t forget her dimples or the way she used to shove you when she thought you were being dramatic.”
Yelena let out a fragile, wet laugh at that.
“You’re not supposed to forget those things,” Kate said gently. “Those memories are proof she existed. Proof she mattered. Proof she was loved, fiercely and fully. Besides, I think Natasha needs you to remember her. I think it’ll help her as much as it’ll help you.”
“What do you mean?” Yelena wiped at her eyes, tear tracks cooling quickly against her skin.
Kate hesitated, not because she didn’t know what she wanted to say, but because the truth felt delicate, like something that needed to be held gently. She gathered everything she’d learned about ghosts and spirits, all the scraps of knowledge she’d pieced together through instinct, research, and the strange encounters she never talked about at parties. “When a soul departs its body,” she began softly, “it isn’t meant to stay here. Not forever. There’s some place beyond, I think. Maybe several places. I don’t know the details. I suppose Death keeps most of its mysteries to itself. But I’m sure there’s somewhere they’re supposed to go. Somewhere that makes sense to them in a way it never could to us.”
Yelena watched her, breath shallow, eyes still rimmed red.
Kate continued, choosing each word with care. “But sometimes a soul lingers, maybe because they’re afraid. Or confused. Or they’re clinging to something they haven’t resolved. And I think that lingering…it hurts them just as much as it hurts us. It keeps everyone trapped in the moment of loss. Nobody moves forward. Nobody heals.” She winced slightly, embarrassed by how fragile her explanation sounded out loud. “Death is a natural progression,” she murmured. “Terrifying, yes. Complicated, yes. But natural. And if a soul refuses to leave, or if we cling too tightly, it’s like we’re fighting the tide. It keeps us from accepting what happened.” She groaned and rubbed her forehead. “I’m rambling. I don’t even know if I’m making any sense.”
“No, no,” Yelena said quickly, straightening as though physically trying to catch Kate’s drifting thoughts. “I think I understand. Moving on is accepting the loss, not erasing it.”
“Exactly.” Relief softened Kate’s shoulders. “But accepting that someone is gone doesn’t mean forgetting them. It doesn’t mean pretending they never existed. In fact,” She paused, gathering her courage. “I think remembering them is part of what lets them go.”
Yelena blinked. “How?”
“Because memory is a kind of light,” Kate said. “A kind of tether. If you wipe everything away, every laugh, every stupid argument, then what happens to the soul of the person you loved? If no one remembers them, if their existence disappears from every mind they ever touched, where does their consciousness go? What holds them together?”
A faint shiver went through Yelena, as though she could feel the hollow of that thought.
“I’ve learned over the years that it takes a lot to truly destroy a soul,” Kate said, voice low. “They’re stubborn. Resilient. But memory matters. Memory gives shape. It gives direction. It gives meaning. If we remember them, they’re not trapped. And neither are we.”
She brushed a strand of hair from Yelena’s cheek. “Remembering them lets them live on in you. Not painfully forever, just as something woven into your life instead of tearing through it.”
Yelena’s eyes shone with a new kind of tenderness. “And it helps them move on, too?”
Kate nodded. “I think so. Letting go isn’t severing. It’s setting free. And carrying forward what they meant to you.”
Yelena inhaled shakily, placing a hand over her own heart. “That sounds better than forgetting.”
“It is,” Kate whispered. “It’s love growing into a different shape. You don’t have to choose between seeing her again or forgetting her. You just have to choose to live with the love. Even when it hurts.”
Yelena let out a shaky exhale, somewhere between a sob and a sigh, and leaned fully into Kate, exhaustion and grief softening into something quieter. “I don’t know if I can do that yet,” she murmured.
“You don’t have to today,” Kate said. “Or tomorrow. Healing isn’t a switch. It’s a long, uneven road. And I’ll walk it with you. Every step.”
Yelena shifted, small and tentative. “Even on nights like tonight? When remembering Natasha feels like being imprisoned in pain forever?”
Kate buried her nose in Yelena’s hairline. “Especially on nights like tonight.”
Kate quietly shut Yelena’s bedroom door, tiptoeing into the living room, where the unexpected sight of Natasha standing next to the coffee table nearly made her pee. “Oh, you’re back, good. Hopefully, this go-around wasn’t too traumatic.”
Natasha smiled sadly. “Not too bad, no.” She took in the apartment before her, as if just now seeing it for the first time. “She’s rearranged the furniture since the last time I was here, in person. Now that I’m gone, I can’t even tell her putting the end table next to the couch like that disrupts the flow of the room.”
“Want me to relay the message?”
“No,” Natasha chuckled, an airy sound, as if her soul was also feeling the weight of existence. “Kate,” she said softly. “I heard what you said to Yelena, about moving on. I want you to know that I’m trying. I want to, but not before I know she’ll be okay.”
Kate considered her in the room's darkness, the color drained from her, and imagined the opaque wraith she could become a hundred years down the line. Kate could see her wandering, lost, alone, looking for a Yelena that no longer existed, nearly forgotten.
“What if she’s never okay?” Kate challenged. “Her recovery is not something you can put on a calendar.”
“She will be,” Natasha pressed. “I know my sister, she's strong, and she’ll be okay. I want to make sure.”
Kate reached out, cupping Natasha’s shoulder. It wasn’t exactly a physical touch. Natasha was still nothing more than a memory and a soul, but it was the closest thing Kate could manage. “Then, you’ll know when you’re ready. You need to heal as much as she does.”
Natasha closed her eyes, letting the words sink into the raw edges of her heart. And for the first time, the love for her sister didn’t feel like something trying to tear her apart, but a soothing balm she could cherish and carry with her for the rest of eternity.