Clint fingers stilled against Steve's scalp and his face twisted with misery. He knew he'd ask this, sooner or later. Steve had a much lower tolerance for horror than the rest of them did; his threshold for dealing with these things was much lower. It made sense that he couldn't comprehend it. But it didn't make the truth any easier to say.
And Clint would tell him the truth, or at least the closest version he could come to it. He would, because he'd kept so much from Steve from so long, and he was tired of secrets, tired of the veil that always hung there, static and heavy, between him and everyone he dared to reach for. How necessary it was, how crucial to everyone's survival, this myth that any of them could stand it. That this was something that, twenty years later, Clint was somehow able to bear.
He closed his eyes. He couldn't look at Steve. Not now. Not for this. "I can't, Ace." His voice was so fragile, like a sheet of sugar, thin and ready to break. "I don't. I survive. That's all. I wake up and I choose to keep doing this, because it's not fair to the eight kids I've got on my conscience if I just give up. It's been twenty years for me. You get... number, at a certain point. You have to. Because either you keep going, or you don't. Right now, I'm going. Because the only other option is to... stop."