Note, I have not read the comics, or studied the character outside the recent Avengers movie. I just have a huge lady crush on her, and am being creative with her backstory. For all those who would take offense at the fact that I am not from the comic universe, stick it in your pipe and smoke it.

I do not own anything from the Marvel Universe except a Captain America coffee mug. And the cold coffee it contains, if that counts.

Chapter 1

A first mission was a very big deal in the Red Room. Natalia was only six, but she was going to prove that she could do her job. It was essential. It was the only way she would live to sleep in her bed that night.

There was a doctor to be lured. She was to run to his house, through the frozen street of St. Petersburg, and find him, then lure him back to the assassin's house. Natalia had watched several young girls, only a few months older than her try such a mission. This assassin, she knew, did not like hunting her targets, and so let that job go to lower minions such as herself. The other young girls Natalia had watched, some succeeded, and joined her in the dorm that night, with cold eyes at seeing someone murdered in front of them. The others, the ones that had failed at their mission, that had given the assassin away, that had tried to run away, they never came back. And Natalia, though young was not delusional enough to think they had gone back to their families.

Though still tiny, most of her training so far had been with languages. She could speak French, English, Mandarin, Arabic and German quite well, plus Russian of course. She had been doing a lot of running and lifting things, what ever The Master had asked of her. She had been taught by older girls how to move silently, how to climb, to balance, to pass unseen.

And she was going to prove she was good enough to live.

Dressed in a ragged coat that did nothing to slow the wind against her skin, she ran through the street. According to the handler, she was to head to the market, above a potatoe seller, there would be a small flat. Her breath catching in her chest, she ran and ran and ran, until she reached the market. The potatoe seller was easy to find. His stalls were empty. She snuck quickly up the stairs and began to bang on the door.

She banged for a solid three minutes, before a man, bleary-eyed and foul smelling opened the door. He looked left and right, before looking down and spotting Natalia.

« What do you want. » he growled at her, clearly about to slam the door shut. His breath smelled of vodka, and his unshaven face made Natalia want to back away. But she didn't. She wanted to sleep in her bed tonight, not in a grave. She stepped up to the door, so he could not close it without moving her out of the way first.

« My sister is ill. » she said in a small voice, putting a look of worry on her face. « She will lose her job if she does not go to work, but she cannot move. Please help. »

The man took stock of her again. She knew she was small for her age, but her red hair made her stand out a bit. Her eyes were green and looking up pleadingly. As he watched her, she pulled several ruble notes the handler had given her.

Nodding once, the man opened the door and let her in.

« Wait a moment, and we will go. »

She looked carefully around the one room appartment. It was the second part of her mission. She needed to observe all the weapons the doctor might bring with him, and which ones he had at his place. She spotted a gun in the dresser, and a knife on the bedside table. The doctor, however, believed her story. He did not take either with him, instead putting medicine and a few other doctor's tools into a small black bag, grabbing a shirt and shrugging into a coat.

Natalia handed him the rubles as he held his hand out for them. He put them in his pocket. Then he opened the door and were on their way.

Natalia could not run as fast now, or he would lose her. She jogged, and he followed, huffing and puffing. She could tell he was out of shape. They made their way back to the house Natalia had left from. She opened the door and waited for him to pass, before closing it, and leading him upstairs.

Lying in a bed, moaning as though she was really sick, was the assassin known as Illness. She could fake a fever to get men to come check up on her, and then she killed them. Natalia was to watch. The Master had been crystal clear about that.

The doctor bent and openned his bag. He began poking and prodding her, listening with a stethescope and taking her temperature. He was turning to Natalia, started asking about some hot water when it happened. Illness reached up, her fingers found a spot just below his throat and before he could even finish his sentence, he was unconcious on the floor. Illness glanced at Natalia.

« Don't look away. » she said.

Illness straigtened, wiping her brow, and shaking off her pretend sickness. She turned to a dresser, and pulled out several knives and a set of handcuffs. She tied the doctor to the single chair of the room, and laid out her knives on the scrub wooden table, and without hurry, began cleaning them.

She cleaned for several long moments before the doctor came to. He tried to move and pulled at his restraints, before jerking his head up and staring at Illness with horror.

« I am certain you know why you are here. » Illness said in a cool, dangerous voice.

« What exactly do you want? » he said, his voice betraying his fear, like a mouse is terrified of a cat.

« The whereabouts of a certain blond child, and her mother. I believe you know them. They are your wife and daughter. And they are needed. »

« I won't tell. Never... »

« Pity. »

For the next half an hour, Natalia watched as the man screamed. First he lost a finger. Natalia watched as red blood flowed from the wound, fascinating her. This was not blood turned brown from drying, but red blood, fresh with a distictive smell to it. Then he lost a toe. The red began spreading across the floor towards Natalia. It shined in the light, and moved sluggishly across the dirty floor boards. When he still would not talk, Illness had pulled off his pants and began cutting him along his thighs, before chopping off one testicle at a time. The bits of mutilated flesh joined the others on the table, and Natalia noticed there wasn't much difference between them once they were off. Illness continued to stalk her prey, walking in circles, and playing on his fears. Natalia had never seen anything like it, but she watched and learnt, storing every piece of Illness's techniques for future use. The man spoke just before the assassin could cut off his most precious appendage.

« They are in Siberia. North of Kemerovo in a small shack, two miles off the main road! » he screamed in pain again, and Illness gave a smile.

« I will be sure to send them your love. » She took another knife and slit his throat. Blood spurted from the wound, but Natalia did not look away. She watched as it joined the blood on the floor, all one color, even if one part had only been torture and the other had been death. Blood was blood. It was red when fresh and brown when dried and smelled of metal.

Illness wiped off her knives before calling to Natalia. She handed the small girl the knife that had ended the poor doctor's life.

« The handler is downstairs. Tell him to come clean up. »

Natalia did as she was told, and was led back to her bedroom by another handler. She had done what the others had done. She had survived.

Several weeks later, a new arrival entered the training room where Natalia was learning to use the knife Illness had given her. She had blond hair and a terrified look in her eyes.

The girl did not last two weeks before she too was killed.

Natalia went back to her knife fighting excercise.

Natalia Romanova had very few memories from her early life. As far back as she could remember, she had been training. She had been obeying the Master and she had been fighting to stay alive. It was all she knew, even though she was only seven years old. The Master, that is the only name he was allowed to be called. She was one of his Daughters. He had a lot of them, Daughters like her. She did not think that he was her father. But she was his Daughter. He was a large man, though not as big as some of the handlers he had employed. He had dark eyes, black to most, but Natalia knew they were actually dark green. And a beard. It tickled when ever he leant in close to breath down her neck as she trained. He always wore a suit, and it was always clean, even if the people around him were covered in blood and dirt. His voice was one that Natalia hated and loved. It was deep and gravely, and depending on the time, it was either a mercy, or a death sentence.

The Master often had clients. She was never supposed to look at them, but they were intriguing, as they were the only people from outside the center she had ever seen. They varied greatly; men, women, black, asian, caucasian, tall, short, and everything in between. They would often look over every single girl there, and sometimes, they would take one of the older ones with them. Sometime they would ask to see their skills, and the Master always obliged, showing them what his Daughters could do.

The Master only ever told her once about her past. Well, not told her exactly. He had been bragging to some possible clients about his abilities of obtaining girls to train. It was what happened in the training room. He bragged a lot.

« I found her in St. Petersbourg. Such potential I have never seen. She obeyed her mother like a dog obeys his master. I knew she would be a good one for the academy. » She wondered if this was what an academy was. It must have been. She did a tumble and pulled her knife, attacking an invisible opponent.

« I always find it easier to remove the parents from the girl's life. It takes away any hope and gives them nothing to live for but me, making them utterly loyal to only one person. This one was by fire. It seemed right with her hair. The house in flames, I saved her from it. Parents dead, and little sister too. She came here. She has never asked me about them, not once! Give her a few more years and she will be one of the best. » The large Russian man gave a hearty laugh. It was the only time he talked about her parents, and she stored it in her mind, information to be used at a later date.

The Master was all about information. He said anything that came out of a person's mouth could be used against them. Their posture could reveal more about them then anything. Their tone of voice could be used to determine exactly what they would do. He taught her to be observant.

But he wasn't the only teacher. Natalia had several. Many were faceless burly men, that pushed and pulled her until she wanted to cry. They were the punishers, they hit her when she did not do something right. Then there were the other Daughters, who taught her to wield different weapons. Already, she was good with a knife and with a spear. She could defeat any other girl her age, and even a few of the older ones. Sometimes, one of the older Daughters disappeared. Nothing was ever said. It didn't take Natalia too long to figure out that they had died. Either killed on a mission, or at the hand of the Master himself, they were gone and they could not help her anymore.

Natalia was a very skilled girl. But she was also determined not to die. She did not want to become lifeless, like the many she had watched. That seemed like an easy goal. She had seen several girls die. She had seen grown men and women die. She supposedly had heard her own parents die. But she did not want to die. So, she trained as hard as she could, until all her muscles hurt and she could barely move. She did exactly what the Master told her. When she screwed up, she never screamed when she was beaten. She knew that people who screamed often ended up dead. So she never opened her mouth as a handler hit her. Sometimes it was with a bat or a whip. Sometimes it was only with his bare fists.

After a beating was always the Doctor. Maybe somewhere else in the world, Doctor meant someone who healed. This particular doctor was one that the Master had found. He had developped a cream that rendered any wound or scar tissue practically invisible. It healed skin perfectly. Apparently it was important for her to be flawless. It did not matter than the cream seared her flesh like the seven hells. It made tears esacpe her eyes and she bit her tongue until it bled and he had to put cream there too.

But it meant that Natalia had not one scar to show for the treatments she had. At least on her skin. Her outer layer was perfect, soft, creamy whiteness that she heard the Master talking about to one asian man with relish.

The training center where she lived was a place most would probably hate. It was usually dark, and had very few windows. Natalia was almost sure a lot of it was underground. There were dormatories, where the Daughters slept, and washed. There were the suites for the finished Daughters, ones that had earned favour with the Master and were fully accomplished. There were rooms for the Doctor. All these were connected by dark hallways Natalia could navigate easily. And Natalia supposed there must be rooms for the Master as well, but she had never seen those rooms. And then there was the training room.

It was at the bottom of a set of stairs, a large rectangular room with a high ceiling, and dim lights. The Master said it was because they would probably never fight in a well lit area. The room was divided into sections. One, almost half the size of the room, had various weapons on the wall, and was used to train the girls to use each and every one of them. It had a boxing ring, and usually a handler or two to watch over it. Next was what one of the other Daughters had called the seduction room. It was where the Daughters, when they reached their early teens, were taught to « use their assets to attract targets » or that was what the Daughter had told Natalia. It was a rather nice section. She had not yet been trained for it, but she knew it was only a matter of time before she was.

There were two other parts to the training room. The first was a pit. Ten feet deep, it was a hole in the ground, that the Master used on occasion when he had several clients coming in. All the Daughters were to watch while two selected Daughters (usually two the Master wanted to sell, or get rid of) fought to the death. The clients always cheered. The Daughters always watched in silence and the blood always flowed into the drain set in the center of the floor. Natalia remember watching her first fight. She hadn't understood why the other girl was not getting up. Neither girl was seen again. In the end, Natalia understood. One girl was killed and the other was sold. The pit was the entertainement given with their skills.

The last section was the worst. It was the one Natalia hated the most, and the one she did everything she could to avoid. There, handlers were given free reign to beat the girls. She had been in there twice so far. The doctor's rooms were right off it, and one could always hear a girl scream from there, no matter where else in the training room you were. The handlers, they were the ones in charge of disipline. Unless it was an older Daughter.

Natalia had only seen a punishement like that once. It had been an older girl, at least eighteen, and she had been chained up. The Master himself had come down. Every girl in the room held their breath as he walked to her, and lifted the bat. And he had beat her himself, for hour after hour, until she was unconcious. Natalia had shuttered, and then returned to her hand to hand excercise, determined to never be in that situation.

Along the top of the room, was perhaps another section, though not one any Daughter had entered. It was a viewing area, one that went around the whole room, and allowed a person to see everyone down below. The Master was there, and that is where the clients came. Even from below, Natalia could see the comfort there. The carpet, the soft looking chairs, the smell of cigars. It was the upper looking down on the lower in its most direct meaning.

Training was something she might have enjoyed in another life. It at least felt like she was doing something with herself, to keep herself alive. No matter the weapon in her hands, she wielded it with as much ferocity and skill as she could. At seven years old, she could kill a man in less than thirty seconds with a knife, or gun. She had muscles that clung to her small frame and she had a fieryness when she attacked that made the Master smile every time.

That was Natalia's life. She slept in the dorms. She trained in the training room. She forced herself to be the best she could be, in the hope of not dying. And she did what the Master ordered her to do.