do you know what really hits me when i read Secret Empire. How much Natasha cares.
She does not know how to be good, but she tries. She will defend them until her dying breath because they are just kids, and she does not, and has never known, how to be around kids.
She is aware, Natasha is one of the best spies in the world, she has to be aware of how the younger heroes admire her.
She believes she does not deserve it. That she is a liar and a killer to her core. She knows this, and she acts accordingly - to spare everyone else.
Natasha already has blood on her hands. What is a little more? One more body for the pile. She can compartmentalize, she doesn't care.
(Natasha does. Of course she does. But she would gladly kill again to save someone else from enduring what she goes through.)
Natasha wants a better world for them. She aches and craved, fought, bled, and killed and will kill for it. But it's just gotten worse.
I love this panel because you can see the raw vulnerability in Natasha's eyes when she tells Miles: "I can teach you how to survive [this world]. The same way I was taught. It is my curse - it can be your blessing."
She is protective. She was raised in blood, but maybe she can help them, stop them from making the mistakes she had made when she was young, when she was naive, when she saw the world like they did.
god these panels mean so much to me. She may have prepared them to kill, but she doesn't want them to. Not really. She can't let Miles kill him, because she knew it would ruin him, just like she had been ruined.
Even when he breaks out, when he disobeyed- She still fought to save Miles, to spare him. She died for him.
Look at how her eyes widen when she sees him, how she leaped to stop his fate. You can almost see the thoughts running through her mind. I left him behind. He was supposed to be safe. He can't become me.
She fought through dozens of HYDRA soldiers. She scraped and clawed and pushed, desperately. Because this wasn't supposed to happen. She couldn't let this happen.
They were supposed to be better than her. He was meant to be good.
And in the end, she dies. She died fighting. At least that's how I see it. To be fair, Natasha motherfucking Romanoff wouldn't have gone out any other way. She's a survivor like no other. And she is loyal. But most of all, Natasha cares.
I know most people don't like this run/event, and for rather good reasons, but if there's one thing I think they did right, it was Natasha.
All panels/pages are from Secret Empire(2017)
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