Papa sometimes calls Natasha the Ребенок апокалипсиса, "Child of the Apocalypse." He tells her how some people believe the world will die in fire, others in ice. He tells her about her Father and Mother - how Father died in the ice to save Mother, and how Mother died in the fire to save her Ребенок апокалипсиса. Papa says that the world is dead - and it's time for Natasha to take out the ones that struggle to survive. Father and Mother left her a playground to play on.
Papa teaches her how to kill with the other girls. But she's different. She's better. He stays up late at night with her, teaching her how to angle the knife as it splits through the voice box, strangling cries of the weak. He coos in her ear, telling her how she's his favourite, how there will be a day when she gets to prove herself, slicing the throats of her sisters in their beds. She waits for that day with eagerness. That day never comes. She sleeps through her childhood dreams and wakes up in the real world.
Papa shines a light for her to follow, and she complies. She climbs ladders for him. His head tilts up a little higher to watch the sky, and she climbs up so he can finally see her. She joins HYDRA, infiltrating government bases because she gets to pretend that it's the blood of Yelena, or Tatyana, or bossy Darya spilling over her hands. It's simply physical disgust that stops her from tasting how victory feels on her tongue.
Papa tells her to marry a man, and she does so willingly, but she keeps the name Papa gave her. Papa likes Alexi Shostakov, but not enough to take away the label he put on his toy. She doesn't fool herself - she knows she's secretly nothing to Papa. She understands that she's the weaker one in the dynamic. She relies on Papa, something that will be the death of her. She never gets that attachment with her husband, feeling indifferent to his attempts at domesticity. It's a pathetic attempt. She lies in bed with him, feeling only bored when he finishes and collapses next to her. She gets a better adrenaline rush jumping out of an airplane the next day. She cries when she's informed that Alexi Shostakov is dead, and wipes her crocodile tears with the edge of her sleeve when the soldier leaves the room.
HYDRA sends her off to Budapest, Hungary for a vacation - steal from SHIELD. The official name for it is a mission, but everyone knows better. Even HYDRA, world-renowned organization of evil, found her addiction to work mildly concerning. So they give her easy jobs that she likes, give her more time than necessary to finish the mission. She doesn't mind that she knows.
HYDRA informs her during her flight that SHIELD was sending an agent to cut her off. She smiles at this. She loves a challenge. Her challenge - the agent - has eyes like midnight snow outside the Red Room, the moonlight making it glow blue. He is like ice, and she is like fire. They clash like an explosion when they weave in between their weapons and limbs. She loves to dance, and he never needed rehearsal to follow her steps. He makes the acquaintance of the shadows, and is most at home with height. There's one moment, in a dark alley, where she checks to see whether a spider's venom was fatal to a bird of prey.
Natasha never kisses anyone else after him.
The agent wins. The final fight, she always called it. That moment when she'll rise up and defeat him. But she feels her destruction coming, like watching a rising wave in the distance get closer and closer. He knocks her knives from her grip, and pins her hands above her head. He discards his arrow to hold a blade to her throat.
"Do it," she begs, "I cannot go home with a lost battle weighing in my chest. I want the blade,"
The agent meets her gaze, his eyes like snow. She feels the ice creeping in, freezing her veins. She would die like Father, then. Slowly, like sleep. She would die how a Black Widow should - choking on her own blood.
"I'm not that nice," the agent says. He drops his knife, and slams her head into the brick wall.
SHIELD uses enhanced interrogation. They are cowards. At least in the U.S.S.R. they're not afraid to call it what it really is. Torture. They never touch her, instead playing tricks with her mind. She'd prefer the blade. The scars remain long after they're dealt, hiding under the surface of her skin. In the merciful moments of solitude, she is with Father and Mother. She is consumed by fire. The ice draws around her, thick like a blanket. A one-eyed man visits her, a man by the name of Nick Fury. She's heard horror stories of him, and the real life figure is a disappointment. Her laughter gives her five hours of non-stop water boarding. The agent who captured her stops by. He's one of the merciful moments. She talks to him, more than she's ever talked in her life. She curses him in Russian for letting her live. She weeps freely before him, begging for death. Eventually, she muses life.
"I am unmade," she says to him, "You erase who I am and put your bricks in Papa's place."
The agent doesn't reply. He never does. He stays until sleep invades her, and is gone by the time she wakes up. Sleep. It creeps like ice, and consumes like fire.
SHIELD breaks her after nine months. It's okay, everyone has a breaking point, they tell her. They are like a doting mother, wiping the sweat off her brow, feeding her up. She tells them anything they want, as long as she's allowed to curl up in someone's lap as they spoon food into her barely working mouth. She tells them the weak spots in their own security, HYDRA's plans for global domination, even the fairytale Papa read to her as a child. (They tell her that Little Red Riding Hood didn't cut herself out of the wolf's stomach.) They bring her back to peak condition, and send her out to test her. She's meant to spy on an AIM associate, working undercover as a teacher by the name of Nancy Rushman.
(Nancy Rushman is everyone's favourite teacher. She loves kids, and would be a mother herself if not for her white blood cells constantly destroying her eggs. She has bright red hair, unlike Natasha Romanoff, who had Father's blonde hair. Mrs. Rushman has a boyfriend, the man who showed up at the classroom window to give her flowers. She looked surprised, but she tells the students that he's just been away for a while when they notice. He starts picking her up from school every day, and she beams every time she sees him. He always gets her favourite flower - daisies.)
The agent who captured her follows her, most likely to keep an eye on SHIELD's little test. Shoot her with your arrows if she runs away, back to her colony. She is an ant to SHIELD, and she knows that they will crush her unless she plays their game. She doesn't mind, as long as she doesn't go back to being unmade. Anything but that. She plays with his mind like SHIELD did with her, telling the children she takes care of that he's her boyfriend. The look of surprise on his face is easy to kiss away. His surprise tastes like victory on her tongue.
(Nancy Rushman and Cal Barrett end up living together. Nancy holds Cal's hand. Cal takes her out to dinner to a Hungarian restaurant. Nancy and Cal love each other. Cal proposes to her during a school assembly, and she's about to say yes - when she turns around and kicks the gun out of the principal's hand. Nancy Rushman stops working at the school, but she will always be everyone's favourite teacher.)
The agent's real name is Clint Barton, and is as warm as fire. She doesn't know what happens, but her bed is too cold, and her blanket is always gone. She slips under covers with him, with or without clothes. Their relationship is one great big game, with small challenges littered about. He is the challenge that defeated her, and she loves a challenge. Clint makes her giggle. Not just laugh, giggle. She trusts him. He loves her. He is the weaker one in the dynamic.
She feels sick one day, years after she is reborn as a SHIELD agent, and knows the truth before she has to check. One little white stick with a plus sign on it. She trashes it and burns the trash can. Clint worries - will his spawn survive? She never tells him of course, but a father would worry about his child. She chooses instead to go back to Russia to stop her once employers. It's a dull interrogation, when Agent Coulson calls her. Barton's been compromised. She does her job, flying over to Calcutta, India to recruit Bruce Banner. The tears that run down her face during the flight are not crocodile tears, but nevertheless they are gone by the time someone checks in on her.
Natasha Romanoff saves the world. She doesn't bother saving the dying child inside her. The child dies how a Black Widow should - not in ice or fire, but choking on her own blood.
AN: This has taken a while, in between bad research and figuring out how to end it. I said screw it, hit save and ran for cover. I never meant for a full Black Widow life story, but I was working on a small headcanon for Natasha's childhood, and it spiralled out of control from there. I've made it best I can fitted to movie!verse, taking bits and pieces from the comics' Earth-616 and Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. For a show that is targeted at boys between the ages of six and ten, it's quite the emotional roller-coaster. Thanks to my friends for screaming at me in emotional agony when I sent them WIP drafts, and thank you for actually reading all the way through! Leave a review, tell me what you think!
PS: Sorry for bad Russian translating.