"Excellent evasion tactics there, Danvers. If I didn't know better, I'd think you'd served in the air force or something," Natasha told her, but there was no judgment in it. She knew people. That was her thing, and it always had been, long before she'd ever started the process of becoming a person herself, and there were ways to make a person open up who was reluctant. Natasha could have rattled off every one of them, could have put them into effect like a sculptor surveying a block of marble and determining where to put the chisel, where to apply the pressure. It had been how she'd made her life, for a really long time.
And then somewhere along the line, it had become a more simple thing. People like Steve, people like Carol - they did not like to bleed on anyone else, not if they could help it. And if Natasha had closed herself off in response to it, they never would have gotten anywhere. Sometimes to get a person talking, you had to be the one to talk first. No one felt comfortable sharing bits of their soul with someone who never shared back.
In a nutshell: she wasn't going to make Carol work for it. "And it was - good, I think. I mean, out of everyone I know, Steve Rogers knows he's not the person who can give somebody shit for making the sacrifice play. His whole life is an ode to the sacrifice play. So - it was hard, to tell him, it was as awful as I expected it would be. He and I, we're family, you know? But I think it'll be okay. I do." She drummed her fingers against the book's cover once, then added, "I might have also jumped Clint."