The grief and the pain of this loss is one she cannot see ever being... smaller, hurting less, and there are so many things tangled up around it that make it even harder to let go of. Meeting the man who was, by Valentina's account, the reason her sister was dead had done nothing to simplify it, either. Clint Barton was broken by her sister's sacrifice, too, and she hasn't really been able to unpack everything from that last fight.

It's weak. It's childish. She hates herself for it and the way it goes against everything she's been taught and raised to be... but she curls into Melina, "It isn't fair," she mumbles against her mother's shoulder; she knows it's stupid to say- nothing has ever been fair in her life- but it's all she can think, "Why couldn't it be someone else?" Anyone else at all. Just not Natasha.