I didn't invite you in, Natasha thought, but the point of this was not to pick a fight. She had never needed to pick a fight in order to get her point across; if Steve's preferred method of attack was generally to fling a wrecking ball at something, hers was to approach it with a chisel and consider where to land extremely precise strikes. To chip away in degrees, networks of cracks and lines.
So she turned to face him. "You got caught up, really," Natasha said, and it came out almost idly. "You say haven't been here, and you say you should have put it aside. But that's still not why you're here, either. No. You didn't show up because you've missed me, or because you have regrets. You've only showed up now because I was....unkind to Tony? I said 'hard words' because I stated a fact to him about an action that you took?"
They designed girls like me to be disposable. That was what she'd said to James as they'd sat by the lake, as he'd pulled down the curtain and showed her what was happening behind the scenes, the things she would need to know if they could ever begin again from an honest, open place. They had been careful with each other the day; gentle, even, because there were endless impossibly hard things to say, and they had taken such care with them, and that had been one of the most awful things James had needed to tell her. Why it was that Steve had - well. Where she ranked, ultimately.
And here he was to make it clear all on his own.
For a moment, she almost told him to leave, but that was never really the way to chisel at Steve Rogers. "If it means that much to you, fine. I will apologize to Tony for reminding him about something you did," she said. "And I was on my way to sleep, so - if that about does it?"