"And you're acting like it doesn't matter!" Bucky snapped. "You're so busy thinking about what you had to lose that you're not thinking about the rest of us and what it meant that we lost by losing you!" God, he wanted to hold her shoulders and get in her face and start shouting you matter at her. "Did you forget that Steve needs you too? That I-- That everyone needs you? You can think you did the right thing all you want but don't think the rest of us aren't pissed and fucking broken from losing you. Goddammit. The price was too high, Natalia. It was too high for anyone to have to pay. You or Barton. Your lives aren't worth less than anyone of us. And I can fucking promise you all of us would've said the same thing."
Bucky was, and had been, a man of few words over the last handful of years. He kept to himself mostly, especially when emotions were involved. It was easier that way, it was better. Steve could usually pull a great deal out of him. Sometimes Sam or Shuri could get him to emote a little. But this? With her? It was the most he'd shown in a very, very long time.
"And if it works? If what you did, what everyone was planning to do works, we all come back and you're not there? Then what was the point?" It hit him that if he came back, and she was gone, they'd never have this. They'd never have gotten to have the better part of this conversation where he told her he remembered her. And that hit him hard right then. Right in the chest.
"I never got to tell you this. And I won't, if we all are returned to where we came from and can't find you if that plan works," he said. The anger was still there, but there was a brokenness in his tone, too. "I should've told you before. Somehow I still think you would've made the same choice, but you should've known."