At the mention of the Winter Soldier, Natasha inhaled sharply. This agony was worse than any bullet wound. She had been working to push down all of those emotions, but now they were bubbling to the surface. She felt Clint wrap his arms around her neck in a partial embrace, his forehead touching hers. He gently moved her hair so that it rested behind her ears. He smiled and told her plainly that he was worried for her; he was never sure if, when she left on all those missions in the last six months, she would come back alive or in a body bag.

"You finally figured out if he's still alive."

She blinked back tears and refused to confirm or deny this.

"I already know from talking to Fury exactly what the Winter Soldier means to you, and I know he's still alive."

Clint smiled at her again, reassuring her that he wasn't mad that she didn't tell him. For what it was worth, they were only friends after all. When he professed to Natasha that he loved her, he knew what he was getting himself into emotionally from the start. He took a deep breath, and confessed to Natasha that when he first met her, she was a fireball of emotions and hallucinating and delusional. She kept fighting him any time me tried to get closer.

Natasha teared up, recalling that horrible scene.

But that wasn't the full extent of Clint's confession. He admitted to her that he had heard her in the medical room deliriously repeating something about someone not understanding.

Natasha widened her eyes in surprise. All she had remembered was fighting Clint and his team. She smugly recalled how she had given the other agents hell and sent all of them to the medical wing to recover from their injuries.

Clint continued. He did hope, once, that she would treasure him the way he did with her (she protested that Clint was her closest friend in the world besides Steve, who was like a brother). But he had always known that Natasha's heart was elsewhere and that there was a slim chance that she could really be with him. Despite the knowledge, Clint had chosen to stay with her anyway.

Natasha sighed. For all the time she spent hiding her memory of the Winter Soldier from everyone, Clint Barton could truly see through her.

Clint looked at her lovingly; he wasn't mad. He was just disappointed that Natasha didn't trust him enough to tell him what she'd been doing in the last six months. She didn't have to do this alone. He may love her, but he was willing to set aside his own feelings to help her get what she wanted and let her make her own choices. He comforted her: "It's okay."

With nothing else to say, Natasha apologized for keeping this a secret from him.

Just when she thought that was all that Clint needed to say about this, he mentioned one more thing, which revealed that he knew her as much as the Winter Soldier had. In other words, he knew her far too well.

"You're on a suicide mission, aren't you?"