It was strange to talk about a memory that he had just gotten back, a memory that she had no doubt had and kept locked inside. A part of him, small and snarling, wanted to avoid any more of them because they put a new perceptive on her, on life, and on his situation. It made him realize that there was a life before the mission and the killing, before he had been wiped clean and built up again as the fist of Hydra. She knew, and for the first time, he could perhaps mention a memory and she might be able to talk to him about it rather than look scandalized and beat him for it.

His eyebrows knit together at her words, looking at her with a strange intensity. "Am I now?" His voice dropped in tone and temperature. "Are we... were we...?" He couldn't find the words, couldn't remember what that kind of intense bond was even called, but he struggled to understand why anyone would take a bullet and find him irreplaceable. He was... no, he had been different then.