Her face wavered, then. Wobbled with something she didn't know how to define. That had become a thing in the last five years, too; if she could hold a neutral face when she needed to, when it was business, work, jobs, life, death, she'd fallen out of practice at being able to do it - like this. When it was something personal. When it was someone she loved standing raw and bleeding in front of her and it would have been the absolute height of dishonor to give them nothing back but neutrality. His words had landed. His tone landed, the open earnestness in it, the insistence that this was real, and true, that this was immutable fact. That this was not the Winter Soldier reaching through time to grab onto Natalia Romanova: this was Bucky Barnes, wholly himself, and his love was for Natasha Romanoff and not some ghost who lurked under her skin.
"Can we - ?" she said, and she gestured to the sand, because she wanted to sit, now, walking and thinking at the same time was too much. And when he followed her, after a moment, she leaned her head against his shoulder. It seemed less loaded than holding his hand, she'd needed that beat after learning why, exactly, Steve had gone cold on her, but - well, she was allowed to change her mind, she thought. She was allowed to want to be next to him while they unknotted this rope. "You don't have to say anything, how very you, James. Of course I'll say something. I would never leave you in this alone."
She drew circles in the sand with her other hand, her fingertips trailing out little patterns. "It would have been a lovely year, wouldn't it?" she said, so wistfully - not to hurt, but God, God, she had thought about it, too. "I would have made the absolute worst farmer's wife, I wouldn't have gone near your goats, it would have taken about two days before I'd have begged Okoye to - I don't know, put in a good word so I could have interned for Shuri, maybe, but I thought about that, every now and then, when I wasn't torturing myself about plenty of other things."
Natasha lifted her head to look at him, shoulder still pressed tightly to his. "Of course I love you too, James, that's not a question. It shouldn't be, at least. You aren't - are you kidding me, of course after all these years I'd still... you were the first real thing in my life, too. Until now - Jesus, James, until I showed up here, no one but you did ever love me again. You and I were the standard everything else was held up against. I carried you with me. Odessa - after Odessa, when I woke up in the hospital, they had to sedate me after I came out of surgery, because when I remembered who shot me, I tore out the IV and pushed myself out of the hospital bed to see if the trail hadn't gone cold yet. I couldn't even walk yet. I ripped all my stitches back open, they had to operate twice. Clint screamed at me for almost an hour the next time I woke up."
She dug her other hand into the sand, deep, like her fingers just - needed to clench around something, right then. "A few years ago, I was ready to settle for a friend. For companionship, and kindness, and someone who maybe wouldn't touch me all that often just so I wouldn't have to - be so fucking alone all the time. You - when I look at you, I burn with it. But - Clint. It's like that with Clint, too, he means everything, and - it makes me feel like a monster, James, it does, it makes me feel like the most selfish being to walk the planet that I can hold that in me for more than one person at a time. I love you. And I love him. And I would cut my own hands off before I would reach for anyone, even you, if it would cause him a second of doubt, or hurt or pain, and I don't - I don't know how else I can - I don't want to hurt you, either, do you know that? Please know that."