Forgotten Ghost | Natasha Romanoff

Alternative Ending: 1.3

Warning for alcohol abuse and suicidal thoughts.

Katya was still way too drunk for this. 

She gathered her clothes from the strange woman's bedroom floor. The woman whose name she couldn't remember at six in the morning. Last night she was good enough company to forget Natasha for a while. If Katya didn't focus too much and drank enough alcohol and closed her eyes while the woman kissed her, she could almost picture it.

But then the sun rose and Katya saw how her red hair color was slightly off and wasn't nearly as fiery as Natasha's. That's when the guilt crept in, the guilt she had slept with another. Five years had passed, but it would always feel like cheating. Because nobody could ever replace her fiancée, no matter how hard she tried. 

The thing was, Katya didn't want to replace Natasha, but the pain got so much sometimes that she had to try and forget her. It never worked. She'd always show up in her dreams or in a memory flash playing behind her eyelids. 

It had been five years and Katya Petrova was still hopelessly in love with Natasha Romanoff.

Tokyo was crowded, even after the Snap, and Katya pulled her hood over her head to block the loud noises and bright morning sun. Her weapons she had left in her own apartment. Tokyo was her base of operations, the farthest away from home she could find. This was also one of the only countries she hadn't been with Natasha.

The nightlife was lively and the busy city distracted her during the day and the nights she didn't work. On the nights she did though, she didn't wear the short dress she wore now. No, at night she wore her suit, staff on her back and knives and guns on her hips. How Tokyo police hadn't traced that vigilante back to the Russian woman living in one of the better neighborhoods, Katya had no idea. 

Maybe they expected her to have brown hair still, like she had with the Avengers. But it was blonde again. Like Katariina, like Natasha loved so much. Also because brunette Katya had lost her fiancée and blonde Katya still had her in another life.

She knew she was being pathetic, but this was her life now. It existed of alcohol and blood, anything to distract her from reality and from the hole in her chest. She simply didn't care about anything anymore.

Katya's neighbor came out of his apartment when she put the key into her own lock. She tried avoiding his eyes, but the Japanese were always friendly and didn't say anything about the state she was in. She was pretty sure she had scared the young man away a long time ago. She could see in his eyes he feared her, even though she had never done anything to make him that way. The smell of danger hung around her.

''Kon'nichiwa,'' the man greeted with a kind smile, ready to leave for work.

Katya gave him a curt bow and repeated the words, the smile falling off her face after the door of her apartment fell into the lock. She sighed, looked at the insane mess inside and fell onto the bed, wishing she could sleep. But sleep didn't come easy anymore.

She dragged herself into the shower, ignored the hickeys on her chest and tried to wash the shame away and swallow the nausea. She did not want to throw up today. Making some coffee for herself after showering, she sat down on her bed, opening the laptop she had stolen from a guy on the street somewhere in Europe before she had permanently settled in Tokyo.

Her phone lay next to her crossed legs. It was number three this month already. She kept changing her phone and number every week to prevent anyone from finding her. For some reason, they had never pinged her laptop. Probably because she had forced a Japanese hacker under gunshot to install the best firewalls for her.