Bucky flinched slightly, but he shrugged, metal fingers flexing and chin ducking. "I know," he said. "I know that, you know. Most of us know it'll never change. Some people need to believe in something. Some of us can't believe in anything. I know which side of that line I'm on. You could come back here and not have the kid. You could not make it all the way out. You could lose it. Sometimes, the softsell lie's the kindest thing I know how to do. Think I really believe any of it would work?" He didn't specify what it was, because this was the Capitol, and he was careful, but Natasha knew. "All I can do is act like I do." He'd try, fuck knows he would. But Bucky didn't believe. He just tried to soldier on like he did now that there wasn't any point left to arguing about it.
Bucky watched her, the flinch away from her anger there again, but slight and unconscious. Bucky wasn't afraid of her - he didn't have it in him to be afraid of much for himself, most of the time. But he reacted automatically to strong emotion sometimes, more for the sake of his own previously-tenuous control than anything else.
"You're not," Bucky said. "You're not responsible. But if you didn't give a shit, you wouldn't be upset about telling him. No one asks any of us what makes us happy. If I asked you, what could you say? There's nothing anyone can give us that would make us happy like this, or make it better. If you don't want to survive, I don't fucking blame you. So go out however you want. But if you do - then you might as well try to make him happier on the way out, since he won't, and if you didn't want that for him, you wouldn't be here upset now. It's not fair, but that's all they left you to want - how it plays out and how far you want to go to try to stay alive."
He understood it, when she said it. Bucky wouldn't have thought of it because there was no asking what made you happy or what you wanted, not to him, not in their lives. The only thing that had any weight to him in the past few years was the little he'd done that had maybe helped someone else. Everything else was a waste of a life, pointless and just there. So not doing something at the last to make someone you cared about a little less miserable, having that not be something more important, Bucky didn't understand that, not really. He would have asked, if he'd known. Or maybe not. They hadn't been close enough. But he would have wanted someone to. Maybe he would have nudged Clint. Something. But Bucky didn't see everything. He hadn't even known to look for that.
He wasn't a woman with an impossible choice and a baby he hadn't asked for in his belly either. Bucky didn't think the picture could ever look the same for him to know. "No one gets to be happy here," Bucky said after a second. "But first time I met you, I saw a girl who was nice when she didn't have to be, and was more real than anyone else had been in the Capitol to me. I'd want you to be happy as much as I wanted Barton to be. You don't get the choice. It's wrong, but it's how it is. You get to go out with him, or try not to. If you try not to, then you can use everything you have to use and make someone else less miserable for five minutes maybe in the process. When it's done, if you don't want it and you're still standing, then you figure out how to fix it. I'll help you, if I can. If you want." It was all she got to want - a narrow and terrible set of choices, and it wasn't fair. But it was all there was. He'd change it for her, too, if he could. But Bucky couldn't change anything and she knew it, and it was one more pointless thing to say.