CATWS through a blackhill lens
before i get into this is just wanna say that these are just my headcanons, when i have a non canon ship i like to find a way to ship them that allows me to still enjoy the canon story meaning i often find a way around the story that we get, this means that with blackhill i have to find a way around nat and steve, nat and bruce, but most importantly, the undeniable tension between nat and maria in catws, if you don’t like blackhill or disagree with this that’s fine, just don’t read
in my headcanon nat and maria get together during their shield days, maybe even before we first meet nat in iron man 2, i believe they're going strong during avengers and their relationship is tested during catws which i will discuss in these posts
there's a lot happening in catws and blackhill wise i think it's by far the most interesting movie, i'll be discussing several scenes but this post is about fury's "death"
when the scene where fury is in surgery starts we see nat and steve looking into the operating room (i won't be discussing how weird it is that they can do that), steve is already there and nat joins him in the room, on the left we can see maria on the phone
pretty soon maria joins nat and steve, she looks into the operating room for a second, the three of them briefly discuss what happened which leads to my favorite canon blackhill moment, nat guesses the bullets that were used to shoot fury are soviet made and maria confirms this by simply saying "yeah", now this doesn't sound like anything interesting but i recommend ya’ll to rewatch this scene cause the way she says it is just so so soft, with the way she says this one simple word maria is trying to say "i'm here for you, i know this is hard, this isn't your fault, you did everything you could, it's gonna be okay, i love you" because she can't say those actual words, she cant hold nat's hand and hug her an let her fall apart against her, neither of them want that, both because there's other people there and because nat isn't ready to feel her feelings like that just yet, she doesn't want to accept this and she doesn't want to acknowledge her grief, maria knows this
maria also knows better than anyone what fury meant to nat, he was (is) the closest thing nat had to a father and at this point he’s one of the very few people that know about her relationship with maria, maria knows losing fury would mean losing a family member, knowing what it means to nat and also losing someone very important herself we can tell that maria is extremely emotional, i have to say that to me it isn't clear whether maria knows fury's death is fake at this point but considering her reaction i don't think she knows, maria is a good liar but nobody can act that well
after the doctors call time of death steve walks away (it's important to note there are still a few people standing behind maria and nat, at no point are they alone during this scene), we get these two shots of just maria and nat that i am absolutely in love with, the first is of both of them still looking into the o.r. we can tell both of them are absolutely distraught, as i said before fury meant a lot to them both as individuals and to their relationship, nat is absolutely speechless which doesn't happen often and our “hardass hill" has a red nose from stress and crying, if you rewatch the scene you can even see maria’s lip quivering
in the second shot we see maria leaning against the windowsill in front of them, i interpret this is her offering her hand in case nat wants to take it, you can see her left hand is at shoulder width while the right hand reaches towards nat, she would never take nat's hand in front of coworkers without asking and she also wants to give nat space which we will later learn she needs a lot, but she wants to offer that comfort to natasha regardless, maria taps her finger a few times to draw nat’s attention to her hand and to tell her she can hold it if she needs to, after a few second natasha still doens't take maria's hand, it’s too much, too soft, there’s too many people there, she simply can’t
in the next scene we see nat saying goodbye to fury with steve standing in the back, again it start with the two of them and then maria enters the scene, she tells steve that she needs to take fury's body, by saying this she implies she wants steve to tell nat it's time, we don't know if maria and nat talked in between these scenes but i don't think they did, i believe their relationship started to slip after new york and fury's "death" was the final drop, there's so much strain on their relationship and they're both going through so much that at this point they're feeling more distant from each other than they have in years, natasha shuts herself off and puts her walls back up that maria spent years breaking down, they're scared that if they talk about what's going on they'll either break down and lose sight of the mission or lose each other, so they don't talk at all
again we see maria more emotional than we have ever seen or will ever see her, after a few second steve goes to get nat
and then this last shot i'll talk about is also the most heartbreaking to me, i can't imagine how heartwrenching is must be for maria to not be able to comfort nat in this situation and have to see someone else try to do this, deep down she wants to wrap nat in her arms and let both nat and herself break down but neither of them have time for that so instead she watches the love of her life lose one of the most important people to her and be comforted by her new friend that they barely know, first she looks at them, then she simply can't bare it anymore and looks away, she can't look at fury's body, she can't look at natasha's heartbroken expression and she can't look at steve standing in the spot she should be in, so she looks away
finally nat walks away and maria can't resist, she glances towards nat, she has to look at her, one second of eye contact will tell her enough, will nat leave forever or will she come back to her, will she feel her feelings or will she focus too much on the mission and self destruct, will she dissapear or will she break her old pattern, nat doesn't look up, so maria never finds out what she needs to know, and more importantly, she doesn't get to look into nat's eyes which is the only thing that could bring her the slightest bit of comfort and ease
part 2: the bunker scene (coming soon)
part 3: nat and steve (coming soon)
part 4: snippets (coming soon)
