"Tony and I went back and forth about that a little bit. Ranking the usefulness of each district. I wouldn't count Eleven out, we need to control at least one major food source, but it's low down the priority list," Natasha said, and closed her eyes with a quiet sigh, relaxed enough to let his fingers keep traveling up her neck, beneath her hair. The one spot where all the tension seemed to have coiled itself up into a maddening pressure point, though Clint was working very diligently to force it into surrendering its grip. And he might actually get there. It went against years of instinct, really, to let him touch her like that, but years of instinct were a thing that she'd more or less decided to set aside at this point.
There was no harm left in it. There was nothing to protect, there were no real secrets left to guard - aside from the obvious larger one that they were all working towards, she supposed. But it didn't seem like there was any real value left in safeguarding - she wasn't sure how to phrase it. Herself, maybe, because for a long time, survival had been Natasha's only real religion. She had done everything that was asked of her, everything that was expected of her, she had left no soft spot undefended and she had covered her own ass at every angle.
But now, safety was no longer a thing she could guarantee for herself or anyone else through careful modulation of her own behavior. It was out of her control, and maybe the only thing in the world Natasha truly feared was ending up in a situation - again - that she couldn't control, that she couldn't manipulate to her advantage or think her way past. Now, though, there was really nothing left to risk, there was no chance of protecting anyone.
So if there was one upside to this, she supposed that was it. The way Stane's proclamation had a way of smoothing out any other issues, making things that had felt impossibly big seem smaller.
"And I still think we'll need a gamemaker," she said, tilting her head back into the cup of Clint's hand. "If the immediate goal is getting out, we'll need to know what's coming. When we lose people, I don't want it to be because of those fucking traps."