Clint had always loved her. That was the hell of it, wasn't it? She had never had reason to doubt that: how much she had mattered to him, the place of extreme importance she held in his life. How they had at one point been the way she'd described herself and Steve to Carol, people who lived in each other's pockets. There had always been so much closeness, and respect, and love - she was his best friend, and he was hers, and that meant everything. It had never gone the place she had wanted it to go, but it was there, connection and closeness and innate understanding of who the other was, as a person.
Clint had always loved her. Clint had never looked at her like this.
Her lungs felt like someone had looped a belt around them and pulled it tightly, like all of the air had pressed itself out of her. It was so much, that look. And the more time she spent with him - he looked different to her now, even, standing next to the version from her own world, they could have passed for brothers but not twins by any means, the longer she looked, the more she noticed. But the Clintness of him (what a terrible word; she couldn't think of another) - if that hadn't been there from that very first moment she'd run to him. None of this would be so affecting.
There was no explanation for it. How much he was still her best friend, how much she hadn't found herself using distinctions like my Clint and this Clint even in conversations with other people. He was just Clint, always, even in this slightly altered body and personality and different world, and it did not have to make logical sense - if there was one thing Natasha knew, after all this time, she knew Clint when he was in front of her, and she knew every look his face could have but this one.
"Is it weird that it's not weird, you and me?" she asked, because she didn't want to look away from him. "I showed up and just, right away, that same minute, we were still Clint and Nat. I just - when I'm around you, there's no...caveat to it, there's not an asterisk I feel like I should be putting on it. I look at you, and you're just you. Still my favorite person. And when you look at me like that, I don't - you've never looked at me like this."