It wouldn't have felt right, maybe, hearing something like that about Bucky from another person, but Steve's shoulders slumped nonetheless. It meant he'd have to bring it up himself, that he had a difficult conversation in his future. Still, it was probably for the best - he owed Bucky the choice as to what he wanted to tell Steve, if he even wanted to tell him anything at all. Although Steve hated that thought as well, because at one point in the not-so-distant past, there hadn't been any secrets between them; the idea that Bucky would have purposely kept something from him would have been completely foreign.
Now it seemed a little too likely, and Steve couldn't stand it.
Steve sighed, and he let his eyes slip closed for a moment, thinking, uncertain which question he wanted to ask first. In the end, he went with the one that had been niggling at him since he'd left Natasha's. "Why'd Natasha start those rumors about me?" he asked. "Why would she care about keeping me away from - from all of that?" Because she'd been correct in her assertion that Steve wouldn't have been able to handle it, there was no doubt about that, but she didn't have a reason to care about that. Hell, it probably would have made her life easier if Steve were dead, considering that she didn't seem to have any interest in challenging the way things were.
"I just don't understand why she'd bother protecting me like that," Steve said quietly.
There were other questions he wanted answers to, plenty of them, but right now, that was the biggest disconnect for him, and as the person who probably knew Natasha best, he was hoping Clint might have an explanation.