In the other room, James makes a noise in his sleep, and Natalia watches that line form between his brows, the unhappy one that reappears no matter how many times Natalia smoothes it away. That makes three times he's lived through something no one should. It's only her fingers curled hard around the flat of her chair that prevents Natalia going to him. Three times Steve could do nothing to stop it.

"You did what was necessary to escape from the loop," she says, her voice bearing all the tightness of tenuous control. "What is necessary is not always what is deserved. He knows that."