Love Like Ghost

this is me trying

And it's hard to be at a party when I feel like an open wound
It's hard to be anywhere these days when all I want is you

10 months later

I blinked. A breath that left a soft sigh. My eyes stayed stagnant even though the scenery in front of me moved at the 80mph Natasha was driving. It was a blurry green haze. There was a soft lull of noise coming from the car speakers as the radio played mindlessly in the background. I glanced up watching the sky stay in its place as we moved through the earth meaningless; dead weight to it. Dead weight. Wasn't that funny? You could live on a planet for years and then finally feel like you were a nuisance to it. My body took up habitable space. I just...existed until the earth sucked me back inside herself only wasting more of her time on me.

I blinked. A breath.

My hands shifted in my lap my elbow hitting the empty wrapper of something she had eaten on the road. I felt her gaze shift towards me for a moment, but then it went back to driving. She thought I was going to say something. She's been thinking it this whole 5 hour drive. But there was little to say anymore.

I blinked. A breath.

It never got easier. Breathing. It's funny how something so minuscule, involuntary, was such a hassle. It hurt. It was a mental block to overcome every time my chest rose letting air fill my lungs.

Life is hard. Life without him was the most difficult thing I ever had to do.

And honestly a majority of me didn't want to do it anymore.

I blinked.

I breathed.

Never much beyond that.

Just the motions.

"You aren't even curious where we're going?" She tried to pull me into a conversation again. I glanced over at her not responding. "A little bit?" I looked back out the window. "Nothing huh..." Natasha sighed her hands moving around the steering wheel. "Kat."

I closed my eyes, "Don't." My head fell slightly back against the head rest, "Just don't."

I didn't want to talk about my feelings or my pain or anything. The moment it leaves my mouth makes it all the more real and I didn't want to feel that. I didn't want to feel anything. Her shoulders relaxed in disappointment, but she didn't say anything else.

I blinked.

I breathed.

~

The car rolled to a stop in front of a house. It honestly looked like a cabin with the lake outstretched before it. Nat turned the car off and threw the door open standing at the front of the car waiting for me. I unbuckled myself and stepped out following her around the front of the car. My eyes wandered around the property trying to take it all in before we walked up the steps of the porch to the door.

Nat knocked.

Tony Stark answered.

"Took you guys long enough." His voice was filled with relief as he threw the door open. I stared at him my brain trying to comprehend what was happening as I heard someone groaning loudly from inside. "Hey kid." His eyes met mine with that soft Tony gleam inside of them.

Questions were swirling around my head unable to land on any. "He called, Pepper wanted you." Nat answered one of them maybe I wasn't sure.

Tony leaned on the door frame. "She said she didn't trust anyone else."

"With what?"

Everything moved quickly after that. Nat rushed back to the car Tony ushered me inside, and there she was. She was sweating her body curled in on itself in pain as she groaned into the couch on her hands and knees. I could hear it in her pain, see it in the creases of her forehead, the redness in her face. I knew without even having to see her.