It was harder, somehow, disappointing Clint - in a multitude of ways, really, more than just the romantic. The little cuts she inflicted on him and the way he just absorbed them all, the way he always seemed to tell Natasha that it was fine. How he never got angry, he never got upset, he would never call her out on it when her behavior was objectively terrible, how he always just let her, and it was...
Well, it was nothing she felt like she ought to articulate to Scott, at any rate. When she couldn't just give him the kind of gentleness she knew he looked for. When she said something acidic or let him down in more concrete ways, when she just failed to be helpful. Of course she cared for Clint, deeply, it was unarguable and she'd have never said otherwise. Certainly more than she cared about anyone else, if it was a thing that needed to be put into quantifiable terms.
Maybe in the short term, it was better for her to not be a thing that Clint so obviously valued, because it put a target on her in the event that he ever stepped out of line. In the long run, though, she wasn't the one who would benefit. And she could have asked Scott then, she supposed, if it had been like that with Maggie. If when they'd finally split, it was because Scott thought the same thing Natasha did, deep down, that she wasn't a person who was really capable of being with anyone.
They'd seemed happy to her, once, but then what did she know? She'd been younger.
She could have asked, but it wasn't her business, and that was how they'd gotten into this mess in the first place, Natasha saying things she had no business saying. "Suppose it all becomes easier once you know what you need," she said, still quiet. "Which always ends up looking a hell of a lot different than what you want, doesn't it?"