His face softened as she spoke, the knots of muscle beginning to loosen, his pulse beginning to reset. It was the exact right thing to say, so complete in its rightness that Clint's eyes burned a little as he looked back at her. He would have forgotten without her, that this sense of self he'd scrapped together to try to cover all the anger and violence wasn't just a fabrication. He'd tried so long to be beyond this, to be separate from it, but that was the real lie, that he could cut himself off that way. But she was right -- these deaths, this desperation, they were part of him, but they weren't the only part. He could be cruel and generous all at once.
He opened his mouth to speak, to thank her, but she wasn't done yet, and when Don't you go full martyr on me, Barton left her lips, Clint lost it, his laughter thick in the air as his arms recircled her, his head thrown back further now, as his stomach rippled. "I wouldn't dare," he said. "You'd break my fingers if I tried."
His hand slid up to her cheek, cupping it gently as he looked down at her, his eyes serious, though still lit up from laughter. "Tasha," he said, in that voice that only ever existed when he was talking to her. "I don't have anything to give you. I don't want it to be for them, just for you, but if we make it out. If we both make it out and we can get somewhere that's... something close to safe. Will you marry me?"
She could say no, he knew that. But he couldn't give her anything but this, anything but the truth. And if he was going to die, he wanted to do it knowing that she knew, and he had to tell her now, before it looked too much like desperation, like something he wouldn't follow through on. Maybe it would break them, but he needed her to know while there was still a little time for her to think about it.
And maybe it was the talk of martyrdom that brought it on. Clint couldn't say he hadn't thought about it, the idea that maybe if it was him and Scott, he'd do whatever he had to to get Scott out, so Cassie still had a father on the other side of this. But what he wanted was to stay alive. He had to stay alive.