Despite the similarities in their situations, never once did Natasha ever feel that Clint was overreacting. Yes, she had gone through years of being brainwashed and manipulated and his encounter had only lasted days, but that didn’t make it any less traumatic. He hadn’t gone through what she had, he couldn’t know how it felt, just like she couldn’t really know what he was dealing with. Painful situations weren’t measured in time.

She watched his face when he mused about the survivor of his attack here, and though she understood where he was coming from she shook her head.

“It may not make things worse, but it wouldn’t make them better either,” she said. “Do you think he would want to hear that you had been forced to shoot him? It won’t make him feel any better about it, and would only cause him to relive a pain he has probably moved on from.” She didn’t mean to sound harsh, and her voice was anything but, but sometimes people needed to hear the direct truth. “You can’t live in the past, Clint. You can’t go back and fix things, you can only try to atone for them now.”

If anyone knew about atonement it was her.