Warning: Red Room activities and missions are alluded to and spoken of.

"Hmm… Let's try that again. Shall we Natalia?" She could hear the disappointment in her instructor's voice as she moved to reset the simulation. "This time try to be a little more precise with your shots. Alright?" She asked handing her charge another fully loaded gun.

Natalia took the proffered weapon with a slight nod of her head and lined it up to the target. Taking a shot, she hit it perfectly on the mark.

"That's it Natalia!" Her instructor exclaimed with a hint of a smile. "Now, repeat that for the rest of the clip."

Natalia knew she was special. While none of her instructors had ever mentioned anything to her, she could tell she was. With her they were more patient, more willing to be understanding, and seemingly kinder. While the other girls were punished for not behaving or performing as well as their instructors wanted, the only thing her instructors had ever done to her was simply increase the intensity of her training. They never laid a hand on her even if she didn't meet their expectations and while she wished she could turn a blind eye to the obvious favoritism, Natalia knew why. It was the same reason why she was given all of the "special" lessons on the history of the Motherland and why by the age of 10, she had been trained to speak and understand all of the major diplomatic languages of the world. It was the reason why in addition to her classes on how to use her body to best seduce a mark, she had been taught how to behave in the presence of royalty and diplomats. She was different from all of the other girls and the writing that graced the area just beneath her hairline proved it to everyone around her. She was special.

They had wanted to form the perfect weapon and had she been anyone else, she would have been molded and shaped just like all of the other girls at the academy. Yet with her, they knew they not only had their perfect weapon but something far more unique and valuable. "You are going to change the world Natalia." They would murmur to her as she trained. "You are our perfect weapon and so much more."

Sometimes at night she would run her fingertips over her words and wonder what he was like. Would he understand her life and what she had been trained to be? Would he see her and suddenly know who she was? Would she see him and realize immediately that this was the man who would change her life? What could cause him to say the words that were inked on her skin? And above all, would he love her? She knew it was dangerous to think like that and to wonder such traitorous questions, but all her life they had engrained in her all the knowledge that they possessed on soulmarks and she couldn't help but dream of a life like that of the fairy tale princesses that she had read about. She was being trained to be the perfect weapon, but along with that came a certain type of innocence that only the Red Room could create.

A type of innocence that could have only been created by the way she was trained. She was to be exactly what was needed for them to change the world and thus for all the devastating events and all the deaths of innocent girls that the Red Room was responsible for, with Natalia they treaded ever so carefully and treated her as if she was a precious, delicate china doll, one that with too much pressure or one wrong action could easily be broken. Yet sometimes when her instructors were asleep, she would sneak out of her room and into the massive bedroom that all of the other girls shared. There the girls would talk about their marks and dream of what it would be like to meet the one who would say those exact words to them. Sometimes Natalia would share a bit of what she had learned from her books or lessons, but most often, she sat off to the side where she was content to watch and listen to what the other girls had to say. There, she was simply happy to be around others her age and for once, to not be the center of attention.

As time passed and as the girls grew older, she watched them disappear one by one. Sometimes there were "training accidents", sometimes they were lost to benefit the Motherland, but most often they became someone they were not due to the simple stringing together of words in one specific and particular order. She had heard of it happening time and time again. Girls would go out on a mission, be told their words and suddenly become someone, something, else. It was as if they had been programed to act that way. Natasha knew that they had never attempted that sort of training with her – she was far too "precious" to risk incase something happened and Red Room lost her forever – yet that did nothing to soothe her occasional worries.

Yet it wasn't until after she dragged herself back to the headquarters after a successful but rather messy mission that she realized something needed to be done. How could he accept her with all the blood on her hands and red in her ledger? Yes, she was the Black Widow, however due to her training and background, they had only ever used her when they needed someone with her specific skillset and that, in itself, was very rare. Those were highly classified, highly specialized, high priority missions. Missions where they needed to use their precious weapon, as no other would do. Yet never had a mission been as messy as this one had and while she had taken so many lives before, there had never been so many innocent lives lost in one single blow.

"You must be more careful Natalia." They told her as they patched her up removing pieces of shrapnel from her body piece by piece. "We don't want anything to happen to you, драгоценный оружие."

She shuttered remembering how they had looked at her, as if she were their savior and would accomplish everything they had never been able to do. She looked down at her hands lying against the pale cream duvet that covered her bed. While she knew they had been cleaned from any remnants of the mission, one of her instructors (the one who had taught her how to shoot) had taken care of that, all she could see was crimson, warm blood dripping off them and onto the floor forming a stream that flowed out of her room and down the hallway. How could she have done that to all those poor innocent children? They had never done anything to her, they were just beginning their lives and then with one single movement, in one single breath, it was all over. It was over before it had even begun and she alone was responsible for ending it.

Something needed to be done if she was ever going to be worthy enough to bear the white writing that lay hidden beneath her scarlet curls. She needed to do something to prove that fate had been right when it chose her. Lifting up her right hand she gently traced the writing that had separated her from her peers and that had given her the life and the privileges she had had for as long as she could remember.

"I don't know who you are," she murmured ever so quietly, "but I promise I will work my whole life to try and make things right and be worthy of you. I don't know how I'm going to do that, but I promise I will do everything I can to be someone you could love." She paused for a moment remembering one of the stories her instructors had told her such a long time ago it seemed to be a dream, "and if it's not love you need, then I promise I will be anything you need me to be. A friend, a confidant, someone you can trust. I promise you that. And I promise that one day I will wipe all the red from my ledger and be the girl I was supposed to be. The girl that in another world I could have been."

It was then, in the pure white moonlight that she started to plan how she was going to escape and begin to fulfill her promise. Plans that she made with one hand gently tracing the messy scrawl along her hairline.

White is the color of purity, of perfectness, of perfection. It is a tabula rasa. It is like a blank canvas just waiting for someone to draw or paint on it and lead it to its destiny, into what it was meant to become. It is something that is waiting to be imprinted upon, to be created into something. Throughout history only a few have been blessed to bear a white mark upon their skin and it was these few chosen ones who changed the world. Little has been truly documented on this rare type of soulmark, but what is known is about those who have this sort of writing upon their skin is kept secret and hidden from the world for the fear that if one were to fall into the hands of the wrong people the results would be disastrous.

драгоценный оружие - precious weapon

A/N. Hi everyone! Thank you Ealasaid Una and intanfania who reviewed, Dragon Reverb and Dynasty101Warriors who added this story to their favorites list, realityisanillusion, intanfania, Your-Addictions, Under the Blue Sea, G01DF1NCH and AshWeeeeee for following this story and everyone who took the time to read the last chapter. I know this chapter was a bit dry for lack of a better word but somethings about Natasha's background needed to be built/clarified in order for it to make sense later on.

I hope you had/have a wonderful day and thank you for reading this chapter/story! :)