"All right. Then we won't bother with that," Natasha promised, because it was about what she expected. She wondered, sometimes, what it would be like to live in this world that other people - even people they both lived - let themselves live in. This world where people actually gave credit for trying. Where points were scored for good intentions, for wanting to get something right. There were large swathes of the world that Natasha viewed in grey; most of her life existed in the grey places, playing jump-rope with the line, tiptoeing up to it and walking away, crossing over and darting back again, but even so - even so. There were some things that were black and white.
Sometimes you failed. Sometimes you just did. It was bullshit to pretend otherwise. No one could love you into earning a different outcome when the thing was done. Partial credit was for essay questions.
And here Natasha stood, a contradiction all by herself: a liar, the liar, as Tony had once said. A liar who wouldn't lie anymore, and if she would, it wouldn't be about this. Tony knew who he'd come to, and he hadn't chosen Natasha's company because he wanted her to spin sweet, pretty fictions.
Instead, she squeezed his wrist once, gently, then let go to sit on the edge of the bed, looking up at him. "Tell me about the kid," she suggested instead. Open-ended enough that he could run in any direction he needed to go with it; her job, right now, was to listen.