Inky darkness stares him in the face as he bides his time. Rage unspoken swirls within his chest at the unfairness of the world and it takes everything in him to school his form into one of utter stillness. The ticking of the clock on the bedside table creeps along--nothing more than background noise. His fingers itch--ready to snap out at a moment’s notice. Deep in his chest silent emptiness echoes back at him. Small groans and grunts lift into the air around him as he waits, his lip captured between his teeth to keep him silent--an altogether unnecessary habit. Her breath scents the air with tattered remnants of spearmint toothpaste from the night before as she lets out a hefty sigh. 

The bed moans.

Excitement swirls within the caverns of his mind and he shifts himself silently onto his side. He couldn’t have made a sound if he wanted to. With the shifting of position, a tiny sliver of light crawls into his eyes. The sun has only barely broken the horizon, just enough to slip through the thin gap in her curtains and sprawl itself over the dark wooden floors of the bedroom. Every inch of his body is tense, ready for the moment of truth as he listens to her fighting her way free of the sheets and blankets she tangled herself in through the night. Not even for a moment does his gaze waver from the bit of the room he can see. His eyes stare straight out as he gnaws on his lip, his fingers inch toward that stretch of light.

Tick tick tick. Seconds crawl away as he awaits the perfect moment.

THERE!

Slender and pale, her foot slips down into his line of sight. He’s seen it plenty of times so far but that doesn’t stop the excitement which lights in his soul. The second she connects with the floor his hand slithers out from under the bed. Fingers strain toward that porcelain skin. Just...a little...further…Her second foot connects with the ground and he lurches forward. Panic curdles his core and drags at his attention.

His hand slips, contactless, through the flesh and bone of her ankle.

She doesn’t even pause. Her light footsteps trail away from him and into the bathroom. With a low groan he collapses onto the floor face-first. 

Dammit Clint. His mind rages at him.

He shuts down the train of thought at once and pulls himself up from the ground. 

Just a little distraction...pull yourself together.

With a slow exhale he shakes out the long lines of his slim body, he no longer has those small aches which plagued him for the past few years. Honestly it doesn’t feel like much of anything any more. As pale as a drifting cloud, his eyes slide to the ceiling. After a moment has passed he pulls useless air back into his shell of a form and floats forward.

His body slices through the deep red wall of her bedroom as easily as it did her own flesh. At first he was amazed by it, now it's just the day to day. The sound of crashing water reverberates through the house, only slightly dimmed by the crackling yowl of her singing voice. The nuisance in his house has got to go. If covering his ears would have worked he definitely would have, instead the sound just feeds into the anger which makes up the majority of his soul as of late.
Clint floats down the stairs without taking a step--that’s taken a lot of getting used to as well...three months later though and it’s as easy as pie. In seconds he has made his way from the second floor bedroom to the middle of the ground floor. Hellfire tingles over his skin as he takes in the sight.

Walls the color of the sky span the width of the living room, they settle the soul in spite of oneself; it's almost enough to distract from the state of the room itself. Furniture is placed haphazardly, strewn in places which make absolutely no sense. Couch cushions are stained and smooshed from years of careless usage. On every available surface and in every inch of floorspace her boxes are scattered. There is trash tossed in the corners, newspapers from what few necessities she has actually managed to unbox are torn to shreds are thrown haphazardly through this room and the next. The artwork of her cat.

An industrial size dishwasher worth of plates, still smeared with hardened food, is stacked dangerously high on the stained, scarred, decrepit coffee table. Clothes hang over the back of the couch or mingle with the trash in the corners. It's only been a week since she moved in, how has she managed to destroy everything so quickly?

His non-existent skin positively crawls at the sight of it. How could she have ruined his home the moment she moved in?

Everything in him yearns to straighten it, to return the layout to what it had been when he lived there. His chest aches at the memories of soft touches Ellie had added to his home when they first started dating...but that just leads to darkened memories unavailable to him. For long, drawn-out minutes he hovers there. Staring into the hollowed out room of his past. His death itches at the edges of his mind, biting him and teasing him with all that he doesn’t know, it's impossible to draw himself away from it.

Each time he feels himself drawn toward the warmth of memories with the woman who had been his soulmate that darkness lurches back at him. It's as devious and strong as a cobra, ready to rip him apart at the seams the moment he presses too hard. His mind longs for the promise of happiness barely remembered even as that well of black venom burrows into his soul--it dissolves him from the inside out. Sends the fire of his anger raging higher than ever, he feels the way that his rage pulls power into his core. It thirsts for blood to satiate the pain gleaming from the corners of forgotten memories.

Silence snaps him to attention once more. 

Grumbling waters and her screeching voice die out all at once. His eyes shoot to the ceiling, he can’t see through it but he knows that he doesn’t have long before her haphazardly dressed form stumbles its way down the stairs. Sharp and clean as the bones of the dead, his teeth snap audibly together. Heightened by anger, his power swirls like a tornado within the confines of his ethereal form. Immediately he spins and flies into the next room.

Snarling hisses follow him from the living room into the kitchen and he rolls his eyes at the pointless animal. He didn’t like cats when he was alive and it seems the sentiment is returned in death. Free of the holds imposed by mortality, his fury makes him swirl around as quickly as the blink of an eye, the calico hovering in the doorway yowls--almost as horrible a sound as that of its owner’s singing--before scrambling at full speed away from him. It's easy to let a little chuckle pass through his lips, though a thump from upstairs jumpstarts his mind once more.

“Goddammit!” Her yowled curse bounces around inside his skull and he groans in response. With a shake of his head he floats around the island in the center of the kitchen. Black marble gleams up at him. It's one of the few things in his home she’s actually managed to keep within reasonable bounds of cleanliness. At least she has some respect for his home…

Her first night in the house clatters to the front of his mind. After countless people had rushed in and out of his home all throughout the day, awakening him from a fitful batch of melancholy, he had been irritable and shoved more than a few things off of surfaces in the home. Though she didn’t seem to notice in the slightest. He had raged and snapped with all the gusto of the newly dead, begging her to notice the destruction he left in his wake. Apparently it was nothing new to her. Nothing different from the terrible aftermath of her own presence within his beautiful home. 

Eventually he had given in and gone to find where she was within the house. All the strangers had left except for her, the little fluff ball of terror she had brought with her was cowering in a corner of the living room when he passed by. He ignored it and entered the kitchen to an image of her dancing through the widely sprawling space, her screech of a voice vibrating high and off-pitch within his mind. It had shattered memories of his favorite song as black earbuds pulsed a throbbing beat from her skull. Every sound felt liable to rip him apart that first night…

In spite of his state he had felt as though his teeth would have snapped with the pressure of his anger that first night. She was as graceful as a ballerina dancing through his kitchen. And had no right there. She was nothing like the steady, well-thought-out motions of his Ellie. She was a whirlwind of destruction wrought upon the peace of his home. A plague upon his afterlife. One he would be more than happy to be done with.

He just had to get her out.

His non-existent heart ached with memories of his love as that ink crept at the edges of his vision, it told him he was getting too close to the end. Instead he focused his attention on the kitchen around him. It was just as he’d left it. None of her multitudes of trash had been allowed within this room. What few appliances she’d brought had been reasonably placed on the counters or in the cupboards. With his eyes closed he drifted a palm over the door of the cabinet by the stove where Ellie had stowed her candies for so long. The hurt just swirled itself into the rage simmering at the center of his being.

For four years this had been theirs. It was their home. Should have been the home for their children.

Strands of acid bit into the flesh of his closed eyelids as he toyed with that tantalizing shred of the forgotten.

Maybe it would all be given back to him if he could just get her out of their home. Filled with swirling strands of shadow among the cloud-white color of his eyes, his gaze takes in the clean and well-maintained appliances. They’d done everything right. It should have all been theirs for the taking. Should have been…

It’s like a missing tooth, he just can’t keep himself from prodding that thing torn from his soul.

Quiet humming lifts onto the air from the next room and his mind stills immediately. All thought of Ellie drifts into the background. Heat to the flames of his rage.

“Come on Roe,” she calls out in a sing-song voice just before her hum returns to that curdled thing she calls singing. His hands press into the countertop in a bid to ground himself. Energy lifts in the air around him, a silent wind swirling softly with him at the center. She crosses through the doorway into the kitchen on a high note and he wants oh-so-dearly to scream at her to stop. Instead her caterwaul ricochets through his walls and burrows itself into his skull. His gaze turns toward the knife block in the center of the island as she sways her way through the room.

If only…

His focus zeroes in on the handle of a steak knife. For only a moment his eyes jump to the butcher knife. A whip of darkness bites warnings deep into the back of his mind but there is nothing to be done for it. He pulls his eyes back to the steak knife and doesn’t allow his attention to waver for even a second. Her voice mumbles--dips, weaves, rises--in the back of his mind and the cat’s growls inch their way down his spine. They are nothing. Just a nuisance to rid himself of.

His fingers inch toward that handle. Burning with the weight of his energy, positively aflame with the need to break free of this hell he’s been cast into where this stranger thinks it's fine to take over all which was supposed to be his. Something unspoken settles itself around his shoulders as he wraps his hand around that handle. It is rough and gritty within his grasp. Hope flares in the midst of his rage and that little flicker of goodness increases the tempo of that raging tornado of power. 

Everything in him pinpoints upon that handle. It’s all he can feel and the very focus of his being. He counts the strands of long-decayed muscles where they would have moved under flesh he can no longer claim as his own. Each finger tenses, the memories of holding knives countless times in the past flood through him. They stumble over one another and drench him as they bid to be remembered, each one a little louder than the memory before. Every memory paints his movements in painstaking detail.

The urge to end this occupation bubbles beneath the surface of his memories, lending added strength to his non-corporeal form. Around him the air positively vibrates with the intensity of his intentions. Heavy, much heavier than it has any right to be, the blade slips an inch free from its bounds at his direction. Each shred of movement takes all he has and moreso. Barely a sliver of the metal remains within the wooden block as satisfaction surges through his soul, his determination flares anew, powered by the success. His once-blue eyes widen in anticipation as the knife slips free that last little bit. With the full weight of it in his grasp his fury surges to the forefront of his mind, it blacks out anything in its path.

The knife is snatched from his hold. Her hand slices cleanly through his wisp of a form and grabs at the handle; instinct shoots his gaze to hers, hunting for the proof that she knows he is there now. She doesn’t even pause her motions.

Silence burns through him. Broken only by the snick of her knife against the cutting board.

All energy floods out of his body in one massive wave as he drops his eyes to the new positioning of the knife. In her hand. Slicing a bagel. 

Her terrible voice hums in absent-minded comfort and breaks him. His growl of a voice bounces violently from the walls. It is thrown with all the viciousness of a racquetball as he screams in the face of his failure. Filled to the brim with anger but devoid of the power he had grasped mere moments before, he flings his arms against the countless appliances on the counters. Not a single item stirs in the wake of his presence. No coffee much shudders, no toaster shifts, even the spoon she left next to  Clint collapses to the ground in a heap of desolation as her voice eats into his mind--blissfully ignorant of the ghost throwing a tantrum on her kitchen floor.

“The love shack is a little old place…”