[ As soon as he has it. He won't tell her he's got it all worked out; he doesn't even know if it would solidify her faith in him to have a plan at the ready, or if it'd just have the opposite effect. He's been following her lead as much as he's been capable, and she knows everything he knows. She's his— partner, and if he'd thought there was a better way than her way, he would've said so. More than that, he would've acted on it.
He also wouldn't be opposed to her input — has grown used to it over the last couple years and felt its loss keenly after the Accords — but that can come later. There's more here than just a memory, just like there had been for Bucky, he knows, even though Steve hadn't been able to ask him. Natasha doesn't need to tell him anything about her past. He's never required that from her, whatever he may have wondered. He's found a kind of happiness with her that he'd never really expected to come by again, not because of their pasts or even because he has any grand plans for the future — hell, he's got no idea how this will fit with the situation back home — but because she gives him a present that he can be grateful for. Glad to be alive for. Even in this place.
Besides, he'd be the worst kind of hypocrite to ask her for something he's only just begun to figure out how to offer, all those pieces of himself he holds close to the chest for one reason or another. But he does need to know if she's only saying it because she feels like she's out of options, or if she actually trusts him to lead them to the right place.
And it's still not really why he reaches for her. He does that because he's crazy about her, because she's his girl — not something he'd say aloud anymore, not in those terms, but still something in his vocabulary and his heart — and her pain is inevitably his own. He reaches for her hand, a silent request to talk to him, not to disappear into the bathroom like the routine is what matters. ]
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[ As soon as he has it. He won't tell her he's got it all worked out; he doesn't even know if it would solidify her faith in him to have a plan at the ready, or if it'd just have the opposite effect. He's been following her lead as much as he's been capable, and she knows everything he knows. She's his— partner, and if he'd thought there was a better way than her way, he would've said so. More than that, he would've acted on it.
He also wouldn't be opposed to her input — has grown used to it over the last couple years and felt its loss keenly after the Accords — but that can come later. There's more here than just a memory, just like there had been for Bucky, he knows, even though Steve hadn't been able to ask him. Natasha doesn't need to tell him anything about her past. He's never required that from her, whatever he may have wondered. He's found a kind of happiness with her that he'd never really expected to come by again, not because of their pasts or even because he has any grand plans for the future — hell, he's got no idea how this will fit with the situation back home — but because she gives him a present that he can be grateful for. Glad to be alive for. Even in this place.
Besides, he'd be the worst kind of hypocrite to ask her for something he's only just begun to figure out how to offer, all those pieces of himself he holds close to the chest for one reason or another. But he does need to know if she's only saying it because she feels like she's out of options, or if she actually trusts him to lead them to the right place.
And it's still not really why he reaches for her. He does that because he's crazy about her, because she's his girl — not something he'd say aloud anymore, not in those terms, but still something in his vocabulary and his heart — and her pain is inevitably his own. He reaches for her hand, a silent request to talk to him, not to disappear into the bathroom like the routine is what matters. ]