"He had his moments. I'd give him extra style points," she said. Maybe she was only doing the same thing she'd done to Tony, really; trying to deflect more than she should and deny him whatever he wanted to feel about it. She didn't want to do that. But still, she'd prefer to find a halfway point between James feeling as though he'd been understood and Natasha not snarling herself deeper into an argument that would always be unwinnable.
"I thought about this. A lot of times, over the years," she admitted. If it had been further away in the last five, it had never - left, entirely. When she was counting up the list of grievances in the wee hours, this one never fell from the list, not all the way. This moment here, and the fact that she had never hate it, that he'd slipped through her fingers the way half the world had. "I'm not - saying that to try and get out of trouble, or back on your good side. I'm saying it because it's true. I thought so many times about what I'd say if you ever..."
The biggest what if she'd ever tried to put to rest. Back in some other world, they had run out of chances.
Here, she could feel his hand under her heart. "That's a good feeling," she said. Soft. "James. I'm grateful, too. Can we let that be enough?"