[ Well, if he's going to ask her up front like that, she'll actually stop to think about it. She doesn't need to have Bucky Barnes training her. There are a dozen qualified, skilled operatives who can teach her about the Matrix. They'd probably be gentler. Less demanding. (She didn't think anyone could be more hard-up than Ward and May: he is.)

So why him? Reluctant and uneasy, she swallows her discouraged expression, dropping her gaze to the floor. One fist bobs in the air before her, as if trying to pull at a thread and get the rest of her thought out, to properly articulate it. She turns away, paces a few steps, then rallies with an answer, eyes back on him and burning bright. ]

I want to feel like it mattered. Like everything we went through, everything they put us through, can't just be wiped away like that.

[ He has to understand. Better than anyone, right? HYDRA warped and changed them both. Broke them down. That can't have been for nothing. She's been building herself back from the ground-up since she got here, like day one on the bus except worse, and keeping her head above water feels all but impossible when it's wave after wave of people trying to tell her that it was never even real.

It was real. It was real to them, while they were in it. ]