I belong nowhere [semi-hiatus]

“Do they start that young?”

marrow

The setting that prevents your work being used to train AI models is turned off by default! I had no idea about this until now! Artists, go to your settings, click “visibility”, and turn on this setting! Protect your work!

Go to your blog (you have to do this for each individual blog) and the visibility tab

It's this last option here

                  I don’t tend to weep over over that. I’m Russian. Or was.

I’m Natasha Romanov, the Black Widow Don’t think I’m helpless just because I’m soft and cuddly

WinterWidow my beloved

Submissive yearning longing Bucky 🥰🥰

It’s not a dumb question because we’ve never been given an exact timeline of how this part of their lives played out. What we do know is that Natasha’s marriage to Alexi Shostakov (aka the Red Guardian) was an assignment given to her by the KGB. She knew it would be her upcoming mission when she was training with the Winter Soldier and it was something they both knew when they started their secret relationship.

Captain America #27

What’s important to understand about Natasha’s relationship with Alexei is that in the very beginning she did not love him and married him because that was the mission she was given. BUT – and this is a very important but – it’s also important to understand that she did eventually fall in love with him. The page you described was set in 1963, so six years after her marriage to Alexi (and six years since the Winter Soldier had been put back into stasis). By that time Natasha loved him very deeply, and to this day her relationship with him is still one of Natasha’s most important relationships.

Black Widow: The Coldest War

As for whether Natasha cheated on Alexi with the Winter Soldier, because we don’t have a definitive timeline there isn’t a definitive answer. It all depends on whether Natasha was introduced to Alexi during her training with the Winter Soldier or after they had been separated and Bucky put back into stasis. 

Personally, I read it as the latter because it doesn’t make much sense to begin implanting Natasha’s cover story (that she was a 17-year-old ballerina instead of a 29-year-old KGB agent) into her brain when she was in the middle of her special ops training with the Winter Soldier. It makes more sense to me that Dept. X had always planned on brainwashing/implanting the cover story after she completed her training – so the discovery of their relationship would have just sped up what had already been preplanned. In that case, Natasha wouldn’t have actually been involved with him yet during her relationship with Bucky, but she did know that as a KGB agent she was going to have to eventually marry Alexi. I do know some people have read it the other way, that Dept. X began implanting her cover story while she was still training with the Winter Soldier, so yeah, in that case you could say she technically cheated on him with the Winter Soldier. Either way, we do know that the Winter Soldier was one of the truths her implanted cover story struggled to hide from Alexi during their first meeting.

Black Widow: Deadly Origin #2

not all who wander are decent human beings // she’s the only one i’ve ever loved!!