It crashed into her abruptly, as though she was a child playing at the edge of the ocean who hadn't noticed the wave building up behind her and was shocked when it broke over her head. Selfish. It was a loaded thing to think when she had tried for a very long time to be anything but in an attempt to keep tipping the scales. Maybe it wasn't fair. Maybe it was her being too hard on herself in the wake of what had been a devastating day for anyone, had they been in her position on Vormir.
But selfish was the word for how she had broken the news to people. Wasn't it? Maybe not Clint: Clint she could forgive herself for, she had crashed into his shop actual moments (for her, at least) after telling him what she had believed to be a permanent goodbye. She would not take those moments back for anything, because if she had been too much, he had caught her in it. He had held onto her through it, joined her in it, and they were allowed for that moment to belong to the two of them exactly the way it unfolded. Even now, she couldn't think of another way she would have been capable of handling it. And Carol too, but this Carol didn't have all those years of friendship backing it up, not yet, it had landed hard on Carol, but it hadn't been a thing badly done.
But the way she had told Tony.
It felt like shame. It felt as though she had dropped it on him blithely and expected everything to be fine, for his world and life to keep on moving exactly as they had even when she'd explained the circumstances. She'd done it over text. She had tossed it off and Natasha Romanoff - Natasha who thought of everything, who saw every angle, who prided herself on being able to understand the way the world looked to almost anyone - hadn't let herself believe that this was a big deal. That this could hold the potential to break a heart. She'd denied Tony his feelings about it at every turn, too, in a way that was easy to do, when you weren't looking directly into someone's eyes.
And now James was standing in front of her. Now she had to do it looking someone in the eyes: someone from her own home world, who had been there in Wakanda the same as she had, someone who understood her life and the players in it. Someone to whom she hadn't realized she mattered, and looking at him now, the full force of what had happened to her, what she had to tell people, struck her for the first time. She would be grateful, later, that he had shown her that this was the way she needed to tell Thor. The way she would need to tell Steve.
But right now, she had to tell him.
"Yes," she agreed quietly, and she did not let her voice waver, because Natasha Alianovna Romanoff had gone to her death with clear eyes and a fearless heart, and if this would hurt, if this would be hard, she would step into this the same way.
She stroked his face once, with both her hands. An apology, a preemptive one. She hadn't realized she owed it. "Five years later, the world hadn't moved on. Steve hadn't. He tried, but he was - still limping along through life, it was awful to see. Thor had PTSD, it was awful to see, Clint was - " Her breath hitched, when she remembered what Clint had become, without the people he loved. Even when he'd still had her. He always had. "I was trying to keep the Avengers running. New team, you know how there's always work to be done. And then one day, we got a shot to put it right. Tony worked out a way we could manipulate time to get the stones before Thanos and set it right. Pull everyone we lost through time, like for them, they never would have been gone. We each went after a different stone, and there was - "
Another breath. She would look him in the eyes. She would look him in the eyes. "The one that Clint and I went after couldn't be taken without an exchange. A soul for a soul. And he had the possibility of his family - he'd had a wife. Kids, three of them. So I decided it would be me." She paused. "I like to think it was enough. I like to think they were able to pull it off, after. I suppose I won't know unless one of them turns up, but I like to think so. You're here in front of me, you remember me now. It seems like it's okay to let myself believe the best."