I have done it again.

One year in every ten

I manage it –

A sort of walking miracle, my skin

Bright as a Nazi lampshade,

Natasha Romanov is not unfamiliar with miracles. After all, the mere fact that she's not six feet under in an unmarked grave is a miracle in and of itself. That doesn't mean that there aren't those who can claim to have seen her dead and buried.

Actually, yes, it does. They might have claimed it once, but dead men tell no tales, and Natasha always did hate gossip.

Peel off the napkin

O my enemy.

Do I terrify? –

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?

The sour breath

Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh

The grave cave ate will be

At home on me

And I a smiling woman.

Natasha has always been willing to do what she must to survive: smiling like a coquette during dinner only to serve as a Grim Reaper at dessert, letting herself get tied up in order to give the enemy all the rope they need to hang themselves. If only they could see the truth of her, they would run long before she ever got close.

And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.

What a trash

To annihilate each decade.

Natasha has always been willing to do what she must to survive, even if it means leaving everything behind: her name, her heritage, the truth. She has been Natalia Romanova, the Black Widow, the hero, the villain. They're all masks, easily discarded if it comes down to it. At heart, she's the dichotomy of a self-preservation instinct wrapped up tight in a death wish.

Dying

Is an art, like everything else.

I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.

It's easy enough to do it and stay put.

It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day

To the same place, the same face, the same brute

Amused shout:

"A miracle!"

That knocks me out.

She's left it all behind before, and maybe she'll do it again, but rebuilding herself seems to get harder every time. She's been pulled out of her own head so something else can get stuffed in too many times for clawing her way back to feel like anything other than a well-practiced, maybe not worth it work-out. But, ever since Hawkeye saw fit to make a different call, she's known that the red in her ledger needed to be erased. She owes him that effort. And so, Natasha crawls back from wherever she has to in order to pay her unpayable debt. And, maybe that eternal effort will one day be enough.

I am your opus,

I am your valuable,

The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.

I turn and burn.

Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash-

You poke and stir.

Flesh, bone, there is nothing there-

Natasha knows that she has never been a person. Rather, she has been a weapon made of flesh and bone, aimed at the enemy and let loose.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer

Beware

Beware.

She has long been aimed at the enemy, but the enemy changes based on who is taking aim.

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.

Natasha likes to think that finally, after so long, she has learned how to be the one at the controls, and she has some enemies she'd like to see fall when they forget that she is familiar with miracles.