Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history's fingers, down it goes
-V, V for Vendetta
She's born out of blood and fire, like a Phoenix in the ashes of her late parents.
(She's Natalia Romanova, age five-and-two-quarters, and one day the world will be her oyster.)
There's men with needles and women with false smiles (She learns the difference between le vrai et le faux quite early on), guns and ballet slippers, ink stained fingers and blood stained floors, there's vicious madams and soldiers of the cold. No one is permanent and she learns not to get attached. She's pitted against those who they tell her are her allies and they all fall, one by one (And sometimes by two) around her. Her little pawn is crossing the bored, one square closer to becoming a queen. Her life is worth nothing but her body, full of serums and conditioning, is worth a Tsar's ransom. The bloody red of the flag that she serves matches the scarlet she'll never be able to wash off her hands. She kills and lies for killers and liars and calls it what it isn't: Justice, duty, retribution, life. Love has no place in the Red Room.
(She's Number 5331111, age ten-and-three-quarters, and all she desires are pearls.)
There are cities and towns and little outposts of civilization and places so far off the map that they don't really even exist except in her memories. There are mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers, children and lovers and friends and foes. She kills them all, kills them in the name of Materii Rossii and the Krasnaya komnata. She kills them but she honours them, remembers their names and faces, the way they screamed, begged, or were completely silent as they died. So that she can always remember the high cost of living. Death will not be kind, not to her.
(She's the Chernaya Vdova, age eighteen, and the world is within her grasp.)
She thinks of the blood unnecessarily spilt, of the comrades who have died defending ideals that are not their own. She think of the red that simply gushes from her ledger, red that will never be erased, no matter how many good deeds she performs, no matter how much she drowns in regret and guilt. She kills and lies for killers and liars but she can't bring herself to call it what it isn't anymore.
(She's Natasha Romanoff, age twenty-five, and she's prised the world with her bare hands.)
When her boss presents her with an opportunity that seems to be a surefire way to wipe out all that red and then some she jumps at the chance, even though she knows it's too good to be true. Babysitting a narcissistic billionaire and make sure he doesn't kill himself yet. It's easy, simple, child's play. Yet she enjoys it, she can playact at being something she will never be allowed to be. Stable. Normal. She doesn't enjoy spending time with Tony Stark but she finds him refreshing to be around. She sees the same haunted look in his eyes as the one she sees in the mirror, albeit to a lesser degree.
'Why do you do this?' He asks her later, after all is said and done.
'I've got red in my ledger that I want to erase.' He smiles a sad little smile, the asshole billionaire façade melting away to show, for a brief second, a broken, child-like, shell of a man. She'll never tell him this but she knows he understands her desire to purge any traces of crimson from her ledger, the disgust at the fear and meaningless death she has wrought.
(She's Natalie Rushman, age twenty-seven, and the world's pearls are the only thing worth having.)
She is and always has been a creature in control, even when she isn't really in control of what is happening to her she still maintains an aura of self-possession that make even those pulling her strings believe she does everything by her own free will.
So when she meets him, a being so obviously aware of his own complete lack of control she's fascinated, fascinated and more then a little frightened. Because he's got perfect control, perfect control that absolutely reeks of someone whose welfare is completely dependent on uncontrollable factors. Watching him change is terrifying, while she'd known he was Dangerous she'd never really thought about exactly how dangerous was Dangerous. She shies away from him after that, afraid of him, a variable in the equation that she has absolutely no control over.
The worst part is he hides from her, treats her as if she's repulsed by him, apologizing whenever he can, which makes her want to scream. It's not his fault it's her's, she forced him out of Kolkata, forced him into a situation that breaks his perfect control. His long-desired contentment was disrupted by a need that has completely destroyed him.
A man calls her 'Red' once, and she knows he's talking about her hair, yet she can't help but think how appropriate the nickname is. Red is the colour of the ink in her ledger. Red is the colour of the flags she serves. Red is the colour of the love she will never give. Red is the colour of the womb that birthed her. She may play at being the little girl in the red hood but she knows she'll always be the wolf underneath.
When her Hawk comes back to her he no longer trusts her as he once did. She feels as if she's flinging him out the window, crying 'Fly little birdie, fly!'. He is broken an so she tries to fix him, as he had done for her all those years ago. But all she does is break him more since the only thing her hands are meant for is destruction. She does not deserve his trust.
(She's the Black Widow, age twenty-eight, and suddenly all the world's pearls don't seem to be worth so much any more.)
As the Widow lies dying she thinks back to a chilly November a few months before her parents died. The Berlin Wall is crumbling, Gorbachev is leaving the Kremlin for his last hurrah, and revolution of an entirely different kind then that of the equally frigid November seventy-two years ago is in the air. As her father stares at the newspaper a few tears slide down his cheek. Her mother collects her family in her arms and rubs soothing circles on her father's back.
'Do not cry. We are Russian, regimes fall every day.'
(She's Natashenka, age five, and she knows nothing of pearls)
When she dies, she dies alone because no matter how much those men loved her she will always tell you that love is for children and the Black Widow was never a child. It doesn't matter if she's Nasya Rykova, age thirty-five or Nicola Reynolds, age ninety-five. She's always alone.
(Her pearls are all she has left.)