"Yeah, I wanted you to know," Natasha said, and she sounded exhausted as she said it, the kind of bone-deep weariness that even an entire night of good sleep would no longer be enough to eradicate. It wasn't hard to get there. Everything about this was exhausting, and that was even before taking into account the fact that this could still all end up being entirely performative; it couldn't buy her more time, it couldn't buy her safety, it could do nothing but line up a few dominoes and then pray that someone would push them over, because it was the one thing that she couldn't do herself. She had spent so long keeping such careful control over her circumstances and now - now there was nothing to do but fall and hope for a moment of divine intervention that would catch her. That would catch them all.
"I wanted to say it to someone, I guess," she said. "Which was selfish, maybe but since it feels a little bit like there's a ticking time bomb inside my uterus..." Her mouth screwed up at the corner, like she'd tasted something sour, then relaxed again. "We stopped being careful, because what did it matter, and it turns out it mattered a whole fucking lot."
She shoved her hands into the pocket of his coat, pulling it more tightly around her. Bucky was built like a brick wall, still, even after all this time; she was dwarfed by the coat, made small and vulnerable inside of it. "How am I supposed to tell him? You know what he'll do. He'll take stupid chances in there, you - you already know his whole plan is to make sure I'm the one that gets out, and this is just going to make him more inclined to take unnecessary risks. How does telling him help anything? If he wins, it means I'm dead and he'll have had to watch me die knowing his kid died with me. If I win, fantastic, he'll still never get to meet it. It doesn't do him any good either way."
He was right. When all the weapons at her disposal had been wrapped up so long in her femininity, it would have been such a very obvious trump card to play. In fact, it would have been the adult version of the gambit she'd played when she was twelve; present herself as fragile and vulnerable in some obvious way, and then swoop in for the kill. Like Tony had said, it really was brilliant in its simplicity. It was just that this time, it was Steve's feelings she needed to sway instead of an entire arena.
She swiped an arm over her eyes, quickly, because this much, at least, was true: "He's always wanted this, too. He knows how fucking stupid it is for a victor to - and I think he was at least smart enough to know that he wouldn't, but he's always wanted this."