For the last few yards she'd been trying to sort out the sense of familiarity she'd been feeling against the back of her mind, and had, ultimately, decided that she was just tired and it was the sense of familiarity that being on the property always brought. It was the first place that had actually almost felt like home, and even though she was the only one there at the moment -they still hadn't managed to bring the Bartons back through from the Between, and Clint was still off doing his vigilante thing- but that voice, that one word was enough to have her freezing in her tracks.
For a moment it felt like gravity had shifted. Like the world had tilted off its axis again the way it had when she'd first felt him die. She had long since stopped poking at that empty space in the back of her mind and the periphery of her senses where he'd always been. A gap that had been like a lost tooth for too long, something that she'd finally learned to live with and work around.
The freeze was only momentary, barely more than a heartbeat before she practically dove forward, dragging him bodily into a hug, face buried against his shoulder in a vain attempt to keep herself from crying and it took a minute to unstick her voice from where it had lodged the back of her throat, "Where have you been?"
His heart is in the wrong place, stuck in his throat as he watches a dozen or three different emotions play across his sister’s face in that agonizingly long moment before she leapt toward him, crushing him in the tightest hug he thinks she could manage.
“You know,” he murmurs softly into her hair, not answering her question any further than that. He still doesn’t understand being here. Standing in front of her. Whole and alive.
He clings to her tightly, pressing his cheek to the top of her head. “It is so good to see you,” he mutters quietly.
She did know, that was maybe the worst part, that she knew this was something she should probably be suspicious of, or at least wary, but she wasn't.
She couldn't be, not when he felt right, like himself, and if there was something out there that could fool her senses -or her mind- that thoroughly then it deserved to take her down, because she definitely didn't have any kind of defense against that.
All she managed was an equally quiet: "Missed you. So much." It was going to take a moment to actually get her equilibrium back and invite him in, reasonably sure he'd forgive her for not doing so immediately.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2022-09-10 10:56 pm (UTC)For a moment it felt like gravity had shifted. Like the world had tilted off its axis again the way it had when she'd first felt him die. She had long since stopped poking at that empty space in the back of her mind and the periphery of her senses where he'd always been. A gap that had been like a lost tooth for too long, something that she'd finally learned to live with and work around.
The freeze was only momentary, barely more than a heartbeat before she practically dove forward, dragging him bodily into a hug, face buried against his shoulder in a vain attempt to keep herself from crying and it took a minute to unstick her voice from where it had lodged the back of her throat, "Where have you been?"
no subject
Date: 2022-09-22 11:15 pm (UTC)“You know,” he murmurs softly into her hair, not answering her question any further than that. He still doesn’t understand being here. Standing in front of her. Whole and alive.
He clings to her tightly, pressing his cheek to the top of her head. “It is so good to see you,” he mutters quietly.
no subject
Date: 2022-09-25 01:47 am (UTC)She couldn't be, not when he felt right, like himself, and if there was something out there that could fool her senses -or her mind- that thoroughly then it deserved to take her down, because she definitely didn't have any kind of defense against that.
All she managed was an equally quiet: "Missed you. So much." It was going to take a moment to actually get her equilibrium back and invite him in, reasonably sure he'd forgive her for not doing so immediately.