Natasha stared at Steve, aghast. You don't understand, you can't ever understand, and for a minute, she didn't speak, because anything she could have said would have been something she would never be able to take back. You can't ever understand juxtaposed against a total lack of understanding - empathy, even, of her own history with James, all of it no less fraught, no less traumatic. Every time they had made love, they had done it believing they would be put to death if they were caught and they had decided, over and over again, it was worth it. What had been done to the both of them, when they had been caught, what she had watched them do to James in punishment, what they had done to her once he'd been taken away. A shotgun blast through her stomach in Odessa and his blank eyes. How many years she had carried it in silence, for the both of them, because there were no words that could have ever been enough.
She buttoned it back. She did not speak of it. She would not, because that belonged to herself and James - and Clint, now, it belonged to Clint, too, who had made room for both of them, made a space for the weight of their past and trusted that Natasha's love was not something finite, that it was renewable. If this had been another kind of conversation, maybe she could have tried, if she had felt that he wanted to understand, but - not like this. No. Because it was not only her story; it was nothing she would use as a defense against an accusation, and it was nothing she would use as a weapon.
"Everything," she echoed. "But you're not here because you have regrets. You're here because you think I was - what, trying to poke at you through Tony? Which was not the case, incidentally, but you showed up and said you're here because of Tony. I don't need forgiveness for reading the gestures you're giving me."
She couldn't have removed his hands from her; he was stronger than her, and Natasha knew her own limits. Steve taking liberties like that did not used to be a problem. Now the lines of her body were tense under his hands. "I told you I died, and you disappeared. And I will never be sorry for not telling you about James. I will never apologize to you for that, that was something that belonged to me." Natasha didn't say it to hurt, she didn't say it to wound. It was gentle, her tone of voice; she did not feel inclined to gentleness, but she offered it anyway, because she wasn't cruel, either. "So - what do you want me to say here, Steve? What's the ideal way this conversation goes, for you?"