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#11
OCT 11 |
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“Don’t Say You Don’t Remember”
It was the summer of 1941 and, while Europe burned, the Romanovas had found safety in Stalingrad. Here was both family, albeit distant, and the security for raising their newborn daughter. The girl was named Natalia and she grew into a smart girl. Even when Natalia was still quite young, she already knew three important things: that she was loved, that she was happy and that she wanted to dance.
The fourth important thing she learned in life was that happiness never lasts. There was a false rumor about her parents’ loyalty to the party when Natalia was six. The shots woke her up in the night. She heard strangers in the house and tried to sneak downstairs to investigate, but a soldier stopped her and would not let her go until the bodies in the sitting room were covered with white sheets.
Scared of further reprisals, all distant relations in Stalingrad refused the orphaned Natalia. It fell to that very soldier from the stairs, Ivan Petrovitch, to adopt her. Ivan had a wife, son and daughter already, and little room or food to spare, but the Petrovitches were big-hearted people who felt the Romanovas were wronged and would not let their daughter go to an orphanage.
Slowly she became aware that she was watching her own life flash before her. She felt detached and distant from the actions she observed. She could see how excited the Petrovitches, Ivan and Yelena, were when the state sponsored Natalia for ballet classes. Natalia was a prodigy, her teachers all said, and transferred her from class to class until she was in Moscow studying under Oskana Bolishinko. It was Oskana who first started calling her Natasha, though whether by mistake or on purpose she never knew. It did not matter; soon Natasha was what everyone called her and the name stuck with her for the rest of her life.
She was still studying in Moscow, at the age of 12, when she learned that Yelena, who had been like a mother to her, and Aleskandr and Arina, who had been like a brother and sister to her, had all died in an accident. Ivan, like Natasha, had been out of town at the time, and they became the only family they each had left. At that point, excelling at ballet became less about Natasha pursuing something she loved and more about making something of herself to make Ivan proud and bring him some happiness again. Her training became her obsession throughout her teenage years, until Oskana was sure her star pupil would become the best ballerina in the world.
The years were flashing past for Natasha, none impacting her with the feelings of grief, loneliness or sadness that she would have expected. She was 18 now, about to meet Alexi Shostakov, three years her senior, for the first time. Their whirlwind courtship and early marriage would follow before the day, two years later, when she was told Alexi had died in a plane crash. Another family, her third, lost and this time before she had barely had time to build it. And while she was watching all this unfold, Natasha slowly began to wonder, if she was only watching these events, then where was she watching these events from?
At that moment the images around her turned gray and foggy. In fact, Natasha was becoming aware that there was gray fog all around her and someone in the gray fog was calling her name. Natasha looked all around and finally spotted a black silhouette standing out in the gray fog. She stepped back into a defensive position while her senses were alert to an ambush from behind or either side.
“Who are you? Step out where I can see you!” Natasha said.
The figure did step closer, or perhaps the fog rolled back? Either way, she could clearly see the person who was calling to her was dressed like Daredevil.
“This is turning into a pretty sick joke,” Natasha said.
“Sorry it seems that way,” the man who looked like Daredevil said as he stepped slowly even closer.
“One more step and you’re going to feel some serious hurt,” she bluffed. She had glanced at herself and saw she was somehow in her familiar black costume, but lacking her wrist-mounted weapons. Normally she had great confidence in her martial arts training, but after months of inactivity while pregnant she was not so sure of herself.
Daredevil just shrugged his shoulders. “I thought the costume might help, but I can see it’s not,” he said. He carefully reached up with both hands, grabbed his mask and pulled it back over his head, revealing a good-looking face and a full head of orange-red hair.
“Have we met?” she asked.
“Not in this lifetime,” he said.
Natasha relaxed her guard a little. “Where are we?”
“Ah, the question that was bound to come up sooner or later,” he said with a grin. “Well…it’s sort of a Limbo, only not the Limbo where Immortus lives.”
“That sounds evasive,” she said, starting to walk clockwise around him to see what he did. He was slow to follow her with his eyes, but shortly he was. “Will you tell me how I got here?”
“The Skrull cruiser you were in exploded.”
She stopped on his right flank with him peering over his shoulder at her. “You’re trying to tell me I’m dead?”
“I’m saying it doesn’t look too good for you, does it? Hyper-drive explosions are pretty big, I understand.”
“And you came to me in a Daredevil costume because of the rumors that Daredevil is dead?” she asked, still not buying this.
“Because I am Daredevil, or was. My name was also Matt Murdock, just as yours was Natasha Barton...and Natasha Romanoff…and Natasha Shostakov…and Natalia Romanova.”
“Okay, okay, so you did your homework. And now you’re an angel?”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” he said, nodding to his Daredevil costume.
“Well, where are the Pearly Gates? Or do I go in the other direction?” she asked, her hands moving to her hips as she abandoned being ready for combat.
“Relax…this is more like your own personal Purgatory, if you will, where all you have to do is talk to me.”
“Do I get to ask you what the meaning of life is?”
“How about we talk about the meaning of your life?”
“Can anything I say about it be used against me?”
Daredevil smiled again. “You don’t need to keep assuming this is an entrance exam you’re going to fail. Yes, there were times when you were a spy when you did some reprehensible things, half of them while brainwashed but the other half not. But you have done a lot to atone for your past and that is why you deserve a second chance.”
January 24, 9,500 AD
Central Command, Robotopolis
Robotopolis lay in ruins, the wreckage of robots, computers and even some superheroes scattered about the three-mile wide battlefield. Toward the heart of the complex that was called Robotopolis, the remaining superheroes were even now uncovering the last of the remaining supercomputers that had, until now, ruled Earth. And, sitting at the very center of the city, both awaiting and fearing its own destruction, was BAAL, the most powerful computer of them all. It hated and loathed the hoard of humanity, with its overblown senses of freedom and justice, bearing down on it. And, knowing these were its final moments, it beamed the last of its non-reserve energy across time and space to its agent in the past, Mr. Kline, in the hopes that Mr. Kline could yet undo this future where Man was fueled by the illusion of Heroism.
In Limbo
“Why didn’t you deserve a second chance?” Natasha was asking.
“Maybe I did,” Matt said, “but I was a helpless prisoner of the Zodiac when my old foe, the Terminator, found me. Not content to move me to some exotic, elaborate deathtrap or use some untested invention on me, he shot me in the chest with an ordinary gun and waited around to watch me die and make sure I was dead.”
“So that’s the secret of life and death? It’s only your time when someone is watching?”
“Remember, we’re supposed to be talking about you and that’s just it – it might not be your time.” Matt smiled serenely at her, his hands clasped in front of him. “With me there was a fatal gunshot wound and a cold corpse left for everyone to find. With you it’s completely different – an exploding ship with no body to be found? Heck, maybe they’ll find you floating in an escape pod.”
“What you’re saying – it’s crazy!” Natasha shook her head uncomprehendingly. “The universe can’t really work this way, can it…?”
“Why not? Is it really so hard to imagine that in a world with beings like Galactus and the Watcher that there might be angels and demons waging a war for our souls on a daily basis, and that they might be governed by certain laws handed down to them from even higher powers? My Catholic faith instructed me as much and, as a lawyer, I can appreciate the heavenly powers taking advantage of certain legal technicalities, or…” he shrugged “…when at least they’re moved to do so. In your case you’re both a brave hero and a new mother. That tends to put you in their favor.”
“So they really might let me go back to my life?”
“No,” came a strangely modulated voice. “Not if I have my way, woman…and I most certainly will see that I finally do…”
Natasha whirled about. The fog was parting to reveal a sinister figure standing amidst the cloudbanks. It appeared to be a solidly built man of about six feet tall with short brown hair. But the man she saw immediately was not a man at all. Through the many tears in the business suit he wore she could see gashes torn in his flesh underneath and the exposed circuitry that might only belong to some kind of android.
“At last we meet,” it said with a malevolent smile, “and no more a fitting place than at the literal precipice between life and death.”
Natasha dropped into a crouch as the robotic assassin made its way towards her. She glanced over at Matt in confusion. “What the hell is going on here?”
The deceased vigilante winced at her poor choice of words. “Watch your language, Natasha. Remember where we are.”
“Oh, right.” Astonished, she turned back to face her oncoming foe.
“Okay, Mister, what in Heaven’s name are, you anyway?”
“Call me Mr. Kline,” said the robot, “or the Angel of Death if you prefer, seeing as how I have been seeking your demise for several months now by your reckoning. Here in this timeless place, though, I will no longer be denied!”
Natasha did not have hardly a chance to absorb what he said before the robot rushed at her, driving a fist into her sternum. She staggered back with a great cry of pain. How she could feel pain in this place she had no idea. None of this was making any sense. Was she dreaming all this after all?
Mr. Kline slammed a foot into her stomach and, as she doubled over, brought a knee up into her face, breaking her nose. She struggled to evade him but the assassin’s robotic-powered speed was too overwhelming. He grabbed a fist full of her red hair and savagely punched her in the face again and again.
Natasha finally brought a leg around and drove the toe of her boot into the robot’s damaged side, causing it to let go the grip it had on her. When Mr. Kline had involuntarily done so, she quickly slammed him in the chest with the palm of her hand as hard as she could, momentarily knocking the mechanical man away from her.
“Matt!” she cried out. “Help me! I can’t take this thing on myself!” With a split lip to go with her bloodied nose, her skull ringing, it was a struggle to even keep standing.
“Sorry, Natasha,” Matt answered her, his voice so calm in comparison to hers, “I’d help if I could, but I think this is your battle to fight, not mine."
“Oh, don’t give me that!” She just barely sidestepped a powerful upper cut as Mr. Kline came at her again in a blur. “This thing’s as fast as Spider-Man! I can’t–”
A lightning-quick fist caught her in the side of the head. With Limbo spinning around her, Natasha futilely raised her hands to ward off another blow but was unable to stop a second punch that sent her flying.
Mr. Kline smiled as he moved after her through the fog, almost inclined to take his time in killing her.
Shaking her head, trying to clear it, Natasha ran a hand across her face, wiping away her blood. She had faced many dangerous opponents hand-to-hand over the years, but few could compare to this merciless robot in sheer physical power. If she couldn’t disable it quickly she knew she was done for.
She heard Matt shouting, trying to get her attention “Natasha! Natasha! Listen to me!”
“If you’re not going to help me,” she said angrily, bracing herself into an expert combat stance, “just do me a favor and shut up, all right?” She rapidly assessed Mr. Kline for visible weaknesses, noting that his mechanical form did not appear to be at its full optimal condition. It, in fact, appeared to have sustained damage from a previous battle of some kind. She hated to think how much more deadly he might have been otherwise.
Matt’s voice echoed again in the limbo-like void. “It’s your heart and soul that empower you here, Natasha. That thing – whatever it is – doesn’t have those things to call upon like you do.”
“It is true that I am a creation of science and technology,” agreed Mr. Kline. “And by way of science and technology I have crossed the far reaches of time and space – have even penetrated the realm of what you call life and death – all in order to carry out my assigned mission.”
“My death,” said Natasha.
“Yes,” the robot answered hatefully as it lunged at her once again. “Through your death I will create a tidal wave throughout the time stream, washing away future generations of super–”
“I don’t care about the future!” cried Natasha in a rage, somersaulting over him as she blasted him in the side of the head with a ‘widow’s sting’ that seemed to come directly from her hand. “I have too much to live for in my own present…a husband and a daughter who need me!”
Landing directly behind him, she quickly ducked under one of his mechanical arms as it spun about to try to nail her. She came back up with a powerful uppercut aimed at Mr. Kline’s jaw. The flesh and bone of her knuckles should not have so much as dented the futuristic metal alloy it was composed of yet somehow the force of her blow crushed it in even as it snapped the robot’s head back. The next blow she dealt collapsed in its chest plating, severely damaging a number of internal systems beneath.
Mr. Kline’s optics widened in alarm even as his computerized mind deduced that Matt Murdock had surely been correct that a soulless machine was at a distinct disadvantage here in this dimension of souls that Men called Purgatory. Perhaps if he had not been so damaged in his fight with the accursed Last Sons of Man and had perhaps also fully prepared himself for the rigors of—
His right knee suddenly shattered apart as Natasha smashed a fierce kick into it. All her own injuries she had received at his hand were gone upon her taking to heart that here she was merely a projection of her own soul and as strong as the strength of her will and the passion for life that sparked within her.
Like its creator, BAAL, from Mr. Kline surged something very human, a palpable loathing for organic creatures: their lack of uniformity, their illogical thought processes and their chemically induced emotions all sickened him. But unlike his computerized brethren, Mr. Kline had an unexpected fluke. Surged with power beamed to him from across the millennia, Mr. Kline had transcended the physical laws of reality in the same way human souls could. “I have-SKREE-something to live for too!” Mr. Kline cried out with a metallic ringing to it. “I too have a heart and soul and I too deserve a future to come back to!”
“No, Mr. Kline,” Matt said as he stepped up and took its right fist and held it in an unbreakable grip. “You have a central processing unit instead of a heart and your soul is an elaborate algorithmic simulacrum. There will be robots and androids in the future that will make their own souls through love and sacrifice instead of cold computation, but they will not come from your future.”
“Noooo!” Mr. Kline cried out as Natasha used the distraction to punch her fist into Mr. Kline’s heavily shielded chest cavity, grab his power source and yank it back out in her fist.
A powerful wind gusted suddenly through the fog enveloping the battle scene. At the front of the gust were two points of light, exceedingly bright yet not uncomfortable to the eye to look at. The points of light separated and came back around, zeroing in on the spasming wreck that was Mr. Kline. They passed over the robot again and again and, with each pass, more of Mr. Kline vanished until there was little more than a metal skeleton left kneeling before Natasha. And, with a final pass, even that was gone and no trace of evidence of the battle remained.
“What was that?” Natasha asked.
Matt shrugged. “No one wants to see a messy Purgatory, do they? Come on.”
Natasha paused as Matt turned his back to her and started walking away. She remained hesitant, even after he looked back and prompted her again. In a moment it looked like he would be enveloped into the all-concealing fog so if she was to follow him, she would have to do it now, she realized. As she followed the fog seemed to open up around her. Indeed, in moments, the fog seemed to have formed a tunnel around her and she had the sensation that she was moving much faster than the slow pace of her steps.
Finally, she saw Matt stop up ahead. He was standing by something that, as far as she could tell, looked like a stream of water running downhill – through mid-air.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Time stream…get it? No, seriously, this is your ‘out’ to get back, Natasha. The explosion throws you out of space and time for awhile, until you find your way back.”
Natasha walked up much closer and peered into the stream. She could see reflections of the moments of her life flowing past in the stream. There were faces both familiar and unfamiliar to her in the water, the image of Clint Barton being most pleasing to her to see again. She reached out a hand to touch them, but paused and looked to Matt.
“It’s okay. Go on…reach for your life. Live it well,” Matt said.
Steeling her resolve, Natasha jumped forward and plunged in.
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To Be Continued...
Next: In Black Widow #12: For Natasha’s adventures lost in time, see Amazing Adventures of the 1970s: Featuring the Black Widow Annual #1, but first, see how it all ends in our 12th issue wrap-up – “Nice to Be with You!”
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