"I don't need to imagine anything," Clint said, and it came out a little colder than he had expected. He liked to think he was fine; in most cases his way of dealing with things was to pretend there was nothing really wrong, and, through the power of positive thinking (he liked to believe) it tended to go away. Or at least leave his radar, which was good enough for him. Most of the time.

But he couldn't shake off not having belonged to himself. And how the memory of what it had felt like still left a strange taste in his mouth. The memories were past events that hadn't felt bad while they'd been occurring, that was the strange thing. But their existence haunted him in the aftermath, and he felt altered, like his mind was more open, like it could catch hold of sounds or sights or ideas better. That was the worst part; things would have been easier if, after everything, he'd felt the same as before it had all happened. But that was wishful thinking.

She said she'd gotten Loki to set him free, but Clint didn't remember any of that. But that meant nothing, to him. Either Loki lied - very possible - or their worlds had split, somewhere. It would make sense. Maybe the girl sitting with him was just one of the many possibilities of Natasha Romanoff. Maybe in another world, he'd fired the shot when he was supposed to. Thankfully, that wasn't the world he lived in.

"I trust you, Tas," he said, after a moment, picking up his coffee again.