This has been published elsewhere on the internet for a long time. I've only just now had the patience to upload it here. This is supposed to be read in one sitting, as one large document. However, this site will not let me upload it as such. Therefore, it is in four smaller chunks followed by the afterword.
Warnings: Implied/referenced rape, implied/reference child abuse, violence, language, etc.
Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. Enjoy!
The Rite of Spring
Using her arms as a brace against the counter to hold up her weight, she pushes herself onto her toes and tries not to remember.
Ballet was an exercise in discipline. To be the best possible dancer, one must subscribe to a brutal routine of practice and nutrition. It was meant to maintain the girls' strength as well as wear them down to the point of refraining from rebellion. Each morning, the girls were woken up, attended class, ate a meager breakfast, and went on with the rest of their day. Ballet made the girls beautiful and deadly.
Natalia Alianova Romanova was the favorite of Madame. Her neck was always long, legs consistently extended to an inhuman length, her feet perfectly pointed and winged. She always stood at the front of the barre, and had the most natural looking fouettés. And then, once it was time for their other lessons, Natalia was the strongest on the mats and the most accurate shot.
But to Natalia, being the favorite was never good enough. It was the only way to survive, but it brought other attention upon her that some of the other girls never received. (Then again, she was still alive, wasn't she?)
Snow fell outside the window in the studio, and Natalia stretched out her back, feeling her vertebrae click. She picked up her pistol and aimed at the paper target hanging before her. All of her shots were deadly; she never missed. She had been trained by the Red Room for eight years. For weeks, Madame had been promising a reward for Natalia's success.
A few minutes passed, and then there was a shaking man kneeling on the ground before her. A burlap sack was covering the man's face, his hands bound with rope. One look at Madame and Natalia's order was clear. She raised her pistol and, without thinking, fired. He fell back to the floor, blood staining the burlap.
Natalia was filled with a surge of pride.
The year was 1997; she was thirteen years old.
That night, Natalia handcuffed herself to her bed and thought of the rush of adrenaline she felt when the man fell to the floor. One of the younger girls in the dormitory was crying. Natalia remembered Ariadna having been in the room when she eliminated the enemy. Based on the girl's presence, Natalia concluded the man had been the girl's father and an enemy of Russia.
Natalia had been recruited by the KGB before the fall of the Soviet Union, and she had a near-perfect memory. While her beloved country might no longer be the just land it once was, the ideals instilled in the Red Room were aligned with those of the last century. She knew what she stood for, knew what was important to her and those she idolized.
It had been roughly eight years since Natalia was adopted into the Red Room. She did not know what happened to her parents, and didn't care. She was happy in the Red Room, serving her country.
Shortly after eliminating the threat presented before her in the studio, Natalia was sent on her first mission. It was simple: meet a man at a cafe in Moscow and retrieve the information he had. Natalia found it laughably simple. When she would look back on this in later years, she would regret ever thinking an assignment simple.
Natalia waited out in the frigid Russian winter for two hours. She was not going to return to the Red Room empty handed. Natalia Romanova neverfailed. But then an enormous man arrived and treated Natalia with kindness. He introduced himself as her handler: Ivan Petrovich. They exchanged the safe words to verify identity, then she followed him back to his small home to gather the information.
She left a different girl; the only intel gained was a new understanding of how the real world worked. But Natalia was not weak and she never failed.
Lying in bed that night, Natalia had nightmares of a heavy man on top of her. She shook in the cold but did not dare cry out in fear. She knew what would happen if she showed weakness.
Madame was proud of her beautiful Natalia, and a few months after Natalia first met Ivan, Natalia was sent on her first real mission. Ivan had been training her in the ways of men and women, teaching Natalia how to use her body as the ultimate weapon. The mark was an American government official with a weakness for beautiful women. She was to seduce him, steal his briefcase with state secrets, and kill him.
Natalia succeeded.
Nights spent with Ivan were unchained, leaving her feeling more naked than simply lacking clothing. She never slept as well as she did in her icy, squeaky bed in the Red Room with its threadbare sheets and clanging pipes. The nicest hotels in the world could never be comfortable to her.
Natalia felt a bead of sweat roll down her back as she sank down to the floor, arm rising into first position, then out into second as she stood back up. Up onto releve, toes resting just at her knee, let go of the barre and hold. Eight counts, twelve, sixteen, developee, hold and slowly release to lower the leg to the floor.
She could feel Madame's and Ivan's eyes on her, but forced herself to concentrate on the give and take of her muscles. Absolute control was required to be the best girl in the Red Room, and she would never achieve control if she allowed herself to be distracted with trivial things like the lack of blood between her legs. Madame would never let Natalia be anything less than careful, but did she have the same kind of control over Ivan?
Distracted, Natalia's weight shifted forward over her box and her ankle gave out, sending Natalia to the floor. The other girls in the room gasped, but continued with the work. Bozhe moy.
Natalia could not rise to her feet in time; she was not injured, just shocked. Madame, face red with fury, stormed over to Natalia and yanked her to her feet by a vice-like grip on her arm. Dragged into the hall, Natalia tripped over an uneven floorboard and scraped her knee on the hard floor, nicking a run in her tights.
Once in the corridor outside the studio, Madame released Natalia and backhanded her into the wall. Natalia hit the wall and barely managed to keep from falling. Ivan clicked his tongue at her and once Natalia was righted, Madame slapped Natalia with her other palm.
"You show promise and I recommend you to the next stage of training six months early, and this is how you repay me?" hissed Madame. "If you lose your concentration on a mission, you lose your life. If your cover slips like your balance just did, you will be captured, tortured, and killed, and no one will cry for you." To Ivan, Madame said, "Perhaps it is time you teach her proper discipline."
Natalia did not fall again.
Sometimes Tony sneaks into Natasha's private workout space and leaves teddy bears in tutus on the chair and shelves. She never says anything to him, but leaves the furry carcasses in hidden places around the Tower for him to find later. He does not know why she has a room with mirrored walls and a metal bar in the middle (not the right direction for the only kind of dancing he approves of), but never asks.
Natasha has never slept in the room provided for her, and Clint won't reveal his friend's secrets, so Tony tries to stake her out when she does sleep in the Tower. He never finds her secret bedroom, only ever finds her using the workout space to do little kid dance.
But he never hears a complaint from Natasha when he has the concrete floors redone into hardwood one weekend while she is on a mission.
Russia's history was a tale of hard winters and hardened people. Natalia was no different. She danced her way across Europe, flirting and cutting throats. No one ever suspected a teenage girl with the face of a princess and the smile of a spider. Really, it was no wonder Madame insisted on calling Natalia her "little spider." And with the reputation Natalia was quickly gaining as a dangerous woman to spend the night with, Black Widow seemed frighteningly appropriate.
Natalia bloomed into a young woman of sixteen through the hardness of her life, like a flower in the dead of winter. She followed orders without question and was the greatest success to ever come out of the Red Room. "I am so proud of you," Madame would say, trailing her fingers down Natalia's cheek. "You never fail, little spider."
But then things changed.
It was the dead of winter and she was leaving the New York City Ballet, her hands sunk deep in a black fur coat. Her heart beat steady but her mind was in the irregular rhythm of Le sacre du printemps. In five minutes, when the ballet was over, the patrons would find Rudolf Volkov in his private box, dead.
Grinning to herself, Natalia felt an uneven beat in her step as she stopped on the pavement and held her hand out for a taxi. A yellow cab stopped before her, and she climbed into the back. "JFK, please," she said, running a hand through her short, brown hair. She hated that she had to cut her hair; it was such a source of pride for Natalia.
In the terminal, the American media was starting a witch hunt for the killer of the Russian ambassador. No one suspected the charming Southern belle on her way home for her sister's wedding. Once she reached Atlanta, Natalia boarded a flight to Paris, then changed planes to Moscow. There was a floaty feeling in Natalia's stomach; she knew that after she was properly rested from this mission, she would be given the final test that would proclaim her as an official KGB agent and Red Room graduate.
There was only one girl older than Natalia: Rada. Before Natalia could undergo her final test, Rada had to complete hers. It was only because they were so close in age that Natalia and Rada often shared clothing that she found out the truth behind the final test.
She was collecting a basket of laundry when she overheard Madame explaining to Rada what had happened. The last thing that had to be done before graduating the Red Room was a procedure that sterilized the girls. Rada had never been particularly kind, so it did not surprise Natalia that she did not seem to care. Madame said that removing the possibility for distractions would make the mission easier.
Natalia's stomach sank. She had never thought of the future; she was raised knowing she had a short life expectancy and to only focus on the mission. She had never thought about having a family—a real family. The other girls in the Red Room were her sisters, Madame was like a mother to her. Had she ever had the choice of leaving the service to have her own life?
It had never occurred to Natalia, and now that she thought of it, her mind felt suddenly clearer. She had never even thought of any other life, seeing women who focused their efforts on childrearing as weak. But now, faced with the possibility of never having a family of her own, Natalia wanted it.
On the morning of her graduation exams, Natalia felt shaky. She hadn't slept well, the chill of the handcuffs sinking into her bones. Her anxiety never showed in the morning ballet class. She was steady and graceful throughout floor work, letting her drown her thoughts out with the pull of her muscles.
She passed all of her spy work tests and the "red test," and then it was time for the physical examination. If she passed this, she would undergo the surgery. Natalia tried to shake the thoughts from her mind; she had never wanted anything but this life, she only ever wanted to be the Black Widow.
But she wanted the choice.
Natalia fought dirty, but let herself make mistakes. If she failed, she would be punished, but she would have time to think this through. Natalia let her opponent hit her in the head hard enough to be knocked out: a certain failure.
When Natalia regained consciousness, the ceiling was moving above her. Madame's face appeared. "My dear little spider, you never fail. But thinking you could fool me was your greatest failure of all." To the doctors around her, Madame added, "Go ahead with the procedure."
Natalia felt no different the following day, and woke to attend the morning ballet class with the other girls, the only difference being the scar four inches below her navel.