Black Widow (2016 series) #7

Black Widow approaches the cold headquarters of the Dark Room with Platch Liev, as she needs his psychic powers. They head toward the building….

Flashback in sepia to Natasha’s first kill mission. The target, a man called only the Yugoslavian, surprised his young son Ilija by picking him up from school, revealing that he had just been released from prison. They got into Dad’s new car and drove off, Dad giving his son the lesson to always avenge a wrong done to their family. At the red light, young Natasha leaned through the window and stabbed the man repeatedly, being wounded in the process. And as there should be no witnesses, she stabbed the boy as well and fled, unaware that Ilija’s cousin was asleep in the back seat. He woke up and spotted Nat as she escaped. The boy recovered and trained his cousin to be the strong one in their mission of vengeance. And then Ilija recognized the Black Widow on television as his father’s killer. So they laid their plans, the burly cousin as the face of the Weeping Lion and Ilija as the brains, melding their minds to capture the Black Widow….

As Natasha and Ilija enter the enemy complex, Ilija takes too much time mentally torturing a guard to extract the building’s floor plan from his mind. Ilija takes the passwords and leaves the guard with a headache…that makes his head explode. Nat hurries him along and they find the Headmistress in a darkened conference room, her daughter Anya by her side. The now elderly woman tells Nat she is too late, the trainees have been dispatched to their missions; Nat orders Ilija to extract the information from her mind but the Headmistress puts a stop to it by drawing a gun and shooting herself in the head. Ilija does what he can but the info is now in fragments. Nat orders him to search Anya’s mind but finds nothing, her mother having kept everything of importance from her and Anya didn’t know it. What the psychic does extract from her is that Anya is afraid of Natasha. Anya calls him a liar and threatens to shoot Nat with her mother’s bloody pistol, wanting to know why her mother loved Nat more than her. Nat explains that it was because the Headmistress respected her, knowing she had the will to conquer without doubting herself, which Anya never had—noting that if she did, she would already have pulled the trigger. Anya allows Nat to take the gun and Nat rubs it in, “You wasted your entire life trying to be me. That will never happen. You’re too weak.” As Nat walks out, Anya vows revenge. Nat responds, “Let me know how that goes.” Ilija offers to pop her head but Natasha says she isn’t worth it. “Besides her mother did just die. I’m not a monster.” Ilija remembers his father’s death and says, “Right.”