Natalia looks back, her thumbs sweeping over the restored, familiar lines on his cheeks, and no amount of careful choosing could make the words easy to find this time. "You were so..." she begins. "Everything I know, everything I've read about you as you were then, Captain America's boy sidekick, it didn't compare. You were so spirited, so eager." Her mouth lifts in the smallest of smiles. "Shameless."

In truth, much of it had hurt her to see, not because of any ill on his part, but because it always hurts to see what's been lost, twisted by time and crueler devices. She doesn't wish him to think she longs for that boy, even if, in a way that hurts her too, she wishes life might have let him remain that innocent. "I was glad for you, but I was selfish," she admits. "I missed you."