Author's Note: To all those asking about a sequel to Application Process: yes, there is one, already written, which I will start posting within the next week or so. Until then, here is a oneshot I wrote about Natasha's life before SHIELD, completely unrelated to my Classified Files Universe. Everything in the story is based on my own headcanon, which is horribly inaccurate in regard to the comics, because, well, I've never read them. I get my info purely from the Marvel movies and other fanfics. Warnings for language and mentions of underage sexual activity. I do not own the Avengers. Reviews are lovely. That is all.
1.
There is snow on the ground, and her father's blood stains the ice scarlet as it slithers out of his body. Natalia crouches next to him, heedless of the slush under her legs that is slowly numbing her thighs. Her father's coat hangs heavily on her shoulders; she had been too proud of her angel-white Odette costume to consider covering it after her recital. She had even left her pointe shoes on, treating her father to an encore of her performance, dancing down the street in front of him.
Her toes have lost all feeling, and she now regrets her vain actions.
Her back aches where the bullets hit her. It had happened so quickly – first her father had yelled and fallen, then two sharp bursts of pain bloomed across her back, one over her left shoulder blade and the other hitting her lower back. She had sprawled face down in the snow, like her father. But only she had gotten up again.
The man with the gun stood near her, a phone by his ear and his eyes trained on her. She had cried, screamed, called for help, but it had been hopeless. The old lady in the house closest to the scene had shaken her head sadly before rolling her blinds over the window. She was afraid, Natalia knew, afraid that she would be the next to die in the winter snow.
The man with the gun was speaking hurriedly, and Natalia didn't recognize the language. It was not her native Russian, nor was it the Hungarian or Polish her father had sometimes spoken. It sounded less like a language and more like a code – a shadowy tongue spoken by a shadowy man.
"дочь," the man said, switching abruptly to Russian. Her eyes snapped up from the cooling body before her. The daughter, he'd said.
Waving his hand impatiently, the man gestured at Natalia. When she simply stared, he pointed to his coat and mimed removing it with his free hand. Natalia slipped the coat off; it was thick and black and made of smooth, dull felt. It was her father's favorite, and therefore hers as well, for hidden among the folds were the smells of tobacco and aftershave, her mother's cooking and mint chewing gum. Her father's scent.
The man motioned for her to turn the coat around, and she complied. Her mind was rapidly turning as numb as her body, and had she been less innocent, less naïve, she might have recognized the warning signs of shock.
Two twin holes had wormed their way into the coat, carved by the bite of a bullet. The coat was thick, and the bullets had only penetrated about halfway through – enough for Natalia to feel the impact without being harmed. Her ivory leotard was still whole and unravaged.
She picked at one of the holes curiously, and under the felt she found another material, one she had no name for. She looked at the gunman, and he smiled at her.
"сразу," he assured the man on the phone in Russian, before ending the call. He held out his hand to Natalia. Right away.
"Вы должны пойти со мной." You are to come with me. It was not a request.
"где?" she questioned dazedly. Where?
He did not reply, his gaze steady on her face. She tried again.
"почему?" Why? He remained unmoving.
"Но ты ... ты убил моего отца. Я не хочу - я не хочу идти!" But you…you killed my father. I don't want to – I don't want to go!
The man kept his right hand extended to Natalia, using his free hand to pocket his cell phone and draw his gun. His thumb slipped over the top, and something clicked loudly in the silence.
Standing hastily, Natalia donned the coat again and grasped the man's hand. She carefully avoided the corpse on the ground as they swiftly departed.
Her pale slippers were crimson with blood.
2.
"If we do this, they will kill us."
Alexei pushed his pale hair out of his face – the limp strands were too short to tuck behind his ears, too long as to always be falling into his eyes. His hands, smaller and more delicate than even hers, were trembling slightly.
Natalia smiled softly as she gripped his arms. She was only 14 and he was nearing 30, but she always took care of him, protected him, fought for him. Some, she knew, would ridicule their marriage and Alexei's seemingly feminine role in it, but Natalia preferred it this way. It was comforting to know that, when a life was placed in her venomous hands, she could defend instead of destroy, if she chose to.
"If we stay here, it would be worse than death." She held his eyes steadily, for she had already made up her mind. She wanted to leave, now. Tonight. And she needed her husband by her side.
"Why provoke them, Natashka? This is suicide – it's unnecessary. They give us food and a home and let us live in relative peace. You've never questioned this life before. Why now?"
Natalia ran her hands gently down his arms, stopping when she reached his wrist. There, she traced the raised outline of an old red scar. It was smaller than her thumbnail, circular in shape, with a neat red 'X' dividing the circle into quarters. It had been put there by Alexei's own father after Alexei's body had rejected the Red Room's super soldier serum. Only his father's tenuous affection had saved Alexei from the same fate as the other failed experiments – but the scar was remained to forever mark him as inadequate, useless. He had wed Natalia soon after.
They were each other's reward, and, as Alexei often lamented, each other's punishment.
"I am ready to live my life without them. I only need you. I do not need their limits, their orders, their will. I am ready to live for myself."
Natalia's small, white hands curled over Alexei's fingers, pressing them tighter to the handle of his gun. He nodded, slowly, then drew a second pistol from the holster at his ankle. He stood up, shoulders back, head proud: her brave Red Guardian.
Natalia stood too, slipping her own guns into her hands. They were a warm, comforting weight in her palms. She started for the door, only to be halted by Alexei's voice.
"Natashen'ka!" She turned as he strode towards her, pulling him into her arms, kissing her soundly on the lips. "I love you."
"Love is for children," a voice sneered in the darkness.
And then the bullets rained down.
3.
Sixteen-year-old Natalia was bright, passionate, and untouchable. She was too bitter to be angry, too jaded to feel any tender emotions. And so she excelled at her work, closing off the part of herself she had been with Alexei, luring men to her arms with a smile that was fixed coldly to her face by pure habit.
Then he came, the Winter Soldier, with cold hard eyes to match his steel arm, and she faltered. She had never let another man willingly into her life, into her bed, not for her pleasure. Not since Alexei. And though love was for children, honor and loyalty were for soldiers, and she could not find herself equal to betraying his memory.
He was patient, though, and he waited for her longer than anyone else had. He was enraptured by her beauty, yes, but also by her spirit, her fire, all that simmered beneath her carefully crafted shell.
He became her partner in the field, and Natalia resented him for it. She had worked alone for too long, and she neither needed nor wanted the unwelcome addition to her missions. He watched her back, covered her six in the firefights and offered to wrap her wounds when the smoke had cleared. Natalia turned away each time, lip curled in disgust and shoulders hunched against his attempts at wooing her.
Every night, long after the others had retired for the night, he came and knocked at her door. Natalia sat inside with her blanket pulled over her head, hardly daring to breathe until he left. And once he was gone, she'd lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, her heart and her head at war with each other.
Then came the hardest mission, the one she would never forget, always regret, that would send her screaming into consciousness with nightmares still clouding her mind for the rest of her life. A little girl had died, only 7 years old, and she shouldn't have been in the line of fire at all, dammit. And now she was dead and there was more blood on her hands, more red in her ledger, and Natalia didn't think she'd ever felt more tired.
When he came that night, she was waiting by the door, Alexei's picture turned facedown on the bedside table.
4.
She wasn't sure how long she had been plotting her escape – the plan came fully formed to her mind, as though her sleeping brain had been working on it for years. She had returned to solo missions when they had taken Barnes away – he was somewhere deep in the Red Room's laboratories, frozen in time until he was once again useful to their goals. There was nothing holding her to the Red Room – her sisters watched her jealously, waiting for her to stumble so they could slit her throat. Her handlers turned their backs, letting her fight her own battles, hiding their own cowardice behind trite sayings about making her a stronger person.
But Natalia was strong, and she had been strong for years. She was strong enough to survive on her own. She didn't need them. She could leave tonight without a backwards glance and never regret the choice.
Switching sides was never easy, but over the years, Natalia had learned that her greatest loyalty was to herself.
She left while on a mission, faking her own death in the fire that eliminated her mark as well. The young redhead's body was burned almost beyond recognition, but she left her comm. and several of her weapons behind in the wreckage, hoping it would stall her handlers long enough for her to leave. It wouldn't fool them forever, and soon they'd be searching for her. Perhaps they'd even send Barnes, and Natalia hid a grim smile at the ironic reunion between herself and her former lover. He wouldn't remember her, of course; like the girls in the Red Room, Barnes' memory would be modified when he was awakened once more. Unlike Natalia, Barnes was not yet immune to the Room's drugs.
Natalia stowed away on a train headed out of the country, not knowing where it was headed but neither did she particularly care.
When her old handler Yasmin tracked her down 8 months later, Natalia carved a message into the arm of the corpse before dumping it into the river. They would find it soon enough.
Я сам себе хозяин теперь. I am my own master now.
5.
The first man to offer her a freelance job was the leader of the local drug cartel. He tracked her down a dark alley on night, waving cash in front of her face before she could snap his neck. Natalia eyed him suspiciously while he explained his predicament. She had been poor for so long, having no formal education or experience needed to find a job. She stole her food and camped under bridges at night, shivering as she recalled the luxurious housing provided by her old associates. But those lodgings came at too high a price.
She had been free for so long, and she was loathe to take the money, to put herself once again under the thumb of another. He explained that the hit was a one-time job, that he'd pay whatever she wanted to eliminate his competition and give him unrivaled control over the drug trade.
She warned him that should a better offer come along, he should expect no loyalty. She warned that she could not and would not be controlled. The man had agreed.
When she came to him later that night, he smiled grimly at her blood-spattered dress as he wrote her first paycheck as a contract assassin.
She slept well for the first time that night, on silken sheets at a five-star hotel, her new shackles weighing but lightly on her mind.
+1
When the archer came for her, wanting her allegiance, she very nearly snapped. So many men had offered hit-and-runs, one time jobs, single missions, still believing they could use money to sway her to their side permanently. Sometimes she lingered at one well-paying job for months at a time, but ultimately she left. She could no longer pretend to belong to herself, not when she depended on these men and their jobs for her livelihood. But that didn't mean she belonged to them either.
The archer told her that she was free, though. As long as you have a choice, you are never truly chained, he'd said. And there is always a choice.
Natalia didn't believe him, naturally, as there were many men with prettier words that amounted to the same empty promise. She'd rather die, she replied, than keep living her life according to others. SHIELD wanted her to follow their orders, march to their drum, and she wanted no part of it. At least with the life she was living now, she could leave when she grew tired without repercussions.
The archer looked surprised when she said this, his eyebrows arched with disbelief. Well, no offense, lady, but it's just a job. Haven't you ever had a job before? You do what you're paid to do, and at the end of the day, you go home to be whoever you want to be. He promised no lies, no aliases, no fake lives on her own time. Exactly what she was doing now - except that she could drop the act when she went home.
Home. With a warm bed and maybe even a stereotypical fireplace. Hell, maybe she'd go the whole nine yards and get a damn dog.
She laughed, and it was the first real time she'd laughed in years. The archer, still confused, chuckled with her, undoubtedly questioning her sanity. But there was lightness and freedom in the sound, in the feeling of laughing in an unguarded moment just because she thought something was funny.
And so, Natalia Romanova became Natasha Romanoff. She became SHIELD's most legendary recruit – and, for the first time since she was a child, she became her own person.
Hope you liked it! Again, all Russian comes from Google Translate and may be inaccurate, in which case I apologize. Thanks for reading!