Template:Featured Articles/34-2021

Moment of Awesome - Natasha Romanoff/The Black Widow: In the aftermath of the fall of Roma's world, Natasha and Gabriel Cohuelo try to figure out what happened. Natasha was doing her own cognitive recalibration at the moment, blinking back images of her own death and the carnage and destruction that had come before that. She shuddered slightly at the chill that crawled down her spine. Where had these memories come from? Were they resurfacing from prior Red Room programming? Had they been hit by something while doing this investigation? The unanswered questions made her shift her weight from one foot to the other and skate a quick glance through their surroundings. Empty except for birds and the distant and not so distant sounds of cars driving by. They were out there by their lonesome. Just like it should be. She made herself unclench her jaw and relax back into nonchalance. They were fine. They were absolutely fine. "...Yes, dirt samples." Then the slight offness in Gabriel's manner registered. She frowned. "Did we just get hit with some mental powers bullshit?" “I don’t...” Gabriel rose, looking at her somewhat blankly. “What did you see?” He asked her, somewhat dumbly. “I mean, the part... I saw you — well, I didn’t see it, but you...” He trailed off, as he recalled a vision of the straight-from-the-movies ambush. “I don’t know what happened,” he said. Images of her last moments superimposed themselves over their surroundings and Natasha shook her head to clear the deja vu. She hated deja vu. "Death and destruction, my own included." It wasn't the way she'd have chosen to go out but if the fractured memories were anything to go by at least it had been in service to a greater good. "It was a world different from this one. Do you think it has anything to do with the case we're working on?" Gabriel shrugged. "I guess? I mean, like... the simplest explanation is usually right or whatever." He studied Natasha, genuinely curious about her reaction. "Are you... okay?" Whatever this was, it was not the first time Gabriel had presented with another version of himself. He knew how jarring it could be. Natasha arched an eyebrow. "It's not the first time someone's messed with my memories. I take some small comfort in that it was created out of whole cloth rather than events that actually happened and I was made to forget. It does make me question what the purpose of everything else was."