[She's quiet for a moment, trying to decide where to start, how much of it to tell. She sighs softly, leans into his fingers, into the warmth of having someone to hold onto. from the beginning is too much, and there's just so many holes, it feels like it gives more questions than answers. But the mission; she can give him the mission. His thumb strokes her chin affectionately, and the way he looks at her, attentive even in the dark, makes it feel a little bit easier.]

I'm doing my best. [There's a slight smile, and she breathes a little easier. Fingers curling against the side of his neck. Always tactile, always easier when there was contact, something to touch, hold onto. Rumlow was probably the only person alive that knew that about her. She sighs softly, and then she slowly starts talking, recounting not the details, but at least the events, the important ones.]

Ivan had set up a lab in the cisterns under the Sultan Ahmet mosque in Istanbul. He had over a hundred people with guns. People like me, except the ones he'd kept. Snipers on the scaffolding, just- bullets everywhere. Alexei was trying to draw their fire so I had enough time to deactivate the machine. He got hit right as I got it to work. And then it exploded.

[She quiets for a moment, a blink of her eyes as that vague feeling of the loss curls in her just from talking about it. She hasn't really talked about losing him, about how she felt. With her team she was pragmatic, facts-only, pretending that anger was the only thing there. Rumlow could probably tell that wasn't the case, and so she wasn't pretending.]

The machine had eight power sources feeding into the central unit. [Like an octopus, like a skull with tentacles.] If we'd just tried to blow it up, it would have leveled the mosque and a not insignificant portion of the surrounding area. So you're right. I saved people, I just didn't save Alexei.