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While we got a wonderful look at certain facets of Natasha's life from your application, we still have some questions. In some cases, we'd like to see what you've given us expanded, and in others we're faced with aspects of her that even the movie doesn't go into, and we'd like to hear your thoughts on those as well.

First, her history. While we understand that the movie franchise leaves a lot of mystery about Natasha, we need to know that you have thought through the progression that made her into the character we're shown. Loki comes at her with a great number of her past deeds that he genuinely believes will be enough to break her. We'd like to hear more about these things and the horror of them, and how and why you feel Natasha was able to put them behind her.

Loki mentions three things when trying to gain the upper hand with Natasha: Drakov's daughter, Sao Paulo and the hospital fire. These are not canon events in the comics and therefore unique to the Marvel cinematic universe. To my mind these are three separate events that have had a great effect on Natasha as a person in turning her into the woman she is today.

Drakov's daughter refers to a person rather than an event. As Natasha said, she had a specialised skills set, and she didn't care who she used it on or who she used it for. That isn't necessarily the entire truth as Drakov's daughter is an incident that continues to haunt her. 

Nadia Drakova was a girl of five years old that Natasha kidnapped in the interests of one of her clients of the time. At the time she had no qualms about it, the child was the daughter of a Russian drugs baron and the rivalling drugs lord wanted him off the market. It was well known that the child was the apple of Drakov's eye, she was fiercely protected, and if anything happened to her then he'd be a broken man. The task had been simple enough, collect the child from pre-school pretending to be the new nanny and then bring her to the warehouse to send the ransom demand after ten hours. It should have been a simple task were it not for the child struggling when she realised that Natasha was not her new nanny through some odd intuition and kicked up a fuss. 

The reason that the mention of 'Drakov's daughter' has such a profound effect on Natasha is that it was the first mission that she ever failed at due to her own human error. Rather than trying to reassure the child, she opted to silence her. Intending to use a simple technique that would knock the child out, she failed to catch her. Nadia fell to the floor and cracked her head, dying almost instantly. Natasha had to escape both her client and Drakov's wrath after the event leading to her having to skip Russia and into hiding by calling in a good deal of her precious favours and debts. It wasn't so much the death of the child that scared her but the consequences of her failure. In reminding her of this Loki reminds Natasha of something that scares her; that she is ultimately human and <i>can</i> make mistakes that if she hadn't been so lucky would have cost her life.

Natasha forced herself to put this aside as a one time event and sought out guidance from her fellow Red Room alumni to see if this had happened to any of them. When she found that she wasn't the only one to have of made a fatal human error in her career it relieved her somewhat but it also worried her that she <i>could</i> make such an error. It spurred her on to be a better spy and made her into the world class infiltrator that she is today. It was a formative event that could have been the ruin of her but ultimately forced her to better herself.

Sao Paulo was what convinced Natasha that she had to keep other people at an arm's distance for their own safety. After six months on a mission Natasha returned to her home country to visit her adoptive father to assure herself that he was being kept in comfort and luxury. She was shocked when she found his house ransacked and trashed, a clear message to her that he'd been kidnapped with a great struggle. Immediately she flew into action to find him, using her network of informants to find out where he was. A big name weapons dealer whom Natasha had brought down by destroying a revolutionary piece of technology that could have made him billions had taken Ivan upon learning his connection to her in the interest of drawing her out in order to exact revenge.

Natasha was faced with a difficult decision, go and face her own death or allow Ivan to be killed. Ultimately she knew now that Ivan was a person known to be close to her that he would never receive any peace because of her identity. She went to Sao Paulo, recaptured him after a long battle where they were both greatly injured and returned them both to his home. Natasha administered a fatal injection to him while he recovered from the ordeal, telling herself that he was an old man now and this was a far better fate for him then suffering a painful death at somebody else's hands. Sao Paulo taught her that if she let people too close it would end up in them being hurt or killed. Natasha has allowed herself to become close to Clint as a partner and friend so Loki's attack on Clint and his control over him reinforces this mentality of keeping people at arm's length. Loki uses this event to gain power over her because he knows that mentioning Sao Paulo will bring incredibly painful memories both recent and past.

The hospital fire taught Natasha that having red on her ledger was dangerous and she needed to do everything she could do to obliterate that red. A fellow assassin called in a favour with her, asking her to carry out a mission that she herself was too injured to perform under the agreement that it would wipe out Natasha's debt to her entirely if she did so. It was too tempting an offer to pass up. The mission was to infiltrate a private hospital and destroy several medical records. Despite her uneasiness as to why a big favour would need to be called in for such an easy mission Natasha took up the offer instantly.

It proved not to be quite so simple. The documents were stored in a locked underground bunker - a definite draw for the kind of paranoid and rich clients that the hospital attracted - which was easy enough to infiltrate but the problem arose when a rival assassin caught wind of the documents being destroyed and went to collect them to prevent them from being targeted. Natasha had just reached the files when the other assassin showed up and attempted to stop her. Once again Black Widow found herself having to make a life threatening decision. She could put herself in danger and destroy the documents now while wiping part of the red off her ledger or surrender the documents and live but end more in someone's debt.

In the bunker she set fire to the files, trapping herself by doing so and starting a massive fire that destroyed the majority of the hospital and killed most of the patients and staff once the ferocious fire burnt through the hospital and brought the roof of the bunker in on itself. There was no escape for most of the residents of hospital. Natasha was only able to put this behind her as she became determined to wipe all of the red off her ledger and become a completely free woman.

She was also a SHIELD target before she was an agent. We'd like to get your thoughts on that transition. What made her give up her old life, what allowed her to truly feel a part of this new team, if she even does? What is it that reformed her and how does she feel about that? What we'd really like is a look at her life before SHIELD as compared to her life after SHIELD. What is different? What is the same? We'd also like to hear a little bit about her progression during the movie itself. It's enough for Clint to point it out, so we're interested to know what your thoughts on the subject are.!

The convincing factor in making her change alliances to SHIELD agent from SHIELD target was the choice she was given: join them or be killed by Barton. As Natasha said, she didn't care who she worked for and to an extent she still holds this belief. SHIELD are just another organisation that want her specialised skills set. That wasn't surprising to her considering she was the best in her field but that they were allowing her to live was. She had expected after the month long chase with Barton and taking stock of his abilities that they would keep her far away from him. However to the contrary Barton was made her mentor during her induction to SHIELD and made to 'keep an eye on her'. 

At first during her 'probation' Natasha was incredibly suspicious of both Fury and Barton's motives in attempting to recruit her. She was conflicted, on one hand this was stable, safer and apparent 'legal' employment but on the other hand their moralistic approach made her slightly uncomfortable. For a good while she moved through her probation with apparent total stoical professionalism.

Her life with SHIELD during the transition from target to agent was a lot smoother than she expected. Natasha found it difficult to let herself be under SHIELD's protection and not be always on her guard for dangers or revenge attacks. All the same the work was essentially the same but it was above the radar and she was drilled into only killing targets if absolutely necessary and only when sanctioned. As ever she applied herself with stern professionalism and under the guiding hand of Hawkeye did well at proving herself. Eventually, with a lot of cooperation and hard work and proving herself she was made a junior agent. She had to make her methods slightly more orthodox if she wanted to work as a SHIELD agent.  She and Barton were put together to make Strike Team Delta.  They worked well together as a Team and made up for each other's weaknesses and complemented each other's strengths. Slowly she opened up to him, treating him as a friend and a partner and sharing her secrets with him when they became too much for her to stand on her own. She trusted him implicitly, a complete difference to her past life, she had never been able to trust anyone like that before which was what inspired her ability to drop a mission immediately when she was told that he was compromised.

While she felt comfortable around Barton and Fury, she never felt a part of the SHIELD team. As Loki points out, Natasha keeps herself separate with her own 'code' and while she proved herself a willing agent and spy she was never fully comfortable with the rest of the SHIELD team other than select few. She forged exceedingly few friendships and treated everyone else with staunch professionalism. All the same, the threat that Loki poses to the few people that she has forged friendships with - Hill, Fury, Barton and her handler Coulson - is enough to prompt her into action. As Barton points out, she's a spy not a soldier and it's unusual that she wants to get herself into the middle of a war. Loki had done nothing to her directly. However he did something far worse in bringing out an internal comparison of herself now to who she used to be through brainwashing Barton and turning him against her, attacking SHIELD and attacking her past. Natasha prefers herself as who she is currently to who she used to be. She knows in herself that she's more of a stable person and able to actually forge friendships now and in a way she's relieved with that, it makes her certain that she's human but in a positive way rather than being human being associated with failures such as in her past.

The attack on the person she's become is enough to prompt this development of wanting to protect what she has now.

Finally, we'd like a bit of a deeper look at her personality. We want to know her thoughts and emotions as they pertain to everything we've asked you to clarify from her past. Also, there's a difference between being protective of one's emotions and not having them, and we'd like to know more about where Natasha falls on what she really is feeling versus what she shows. If she really is that cold, what does that mean for her interactions and the way she feels about herself?

Natasha definitely falls more on the protective spectrum than then not having emotions. It's part of what she was taught as a spy, being able to keep a good mask up, whether it be cold or friendly, is a learnt skill and one that was so drilled into her that it became like second nature to her. While SHIELD attempted to get her to break down the cold front that she displayed to almost everyone but lucky few she couldn't stop herself and so treats everyone with her cool professionalism.

Natasha has a very pragmatic approach to herself, she prefers who she is now to who she was previously but is well aware that she doesn't make friends or allies easily. She is aware of the bad things she's done and perhaps that is part of the reason she keeps a cold personality, to protect them, just like with Ivan. She may act cold to protect herself from people she doesn't know or knows that she can't trust but it's mostly a defensive front. Because of this and her reputation as the Black Widow, people often take her coldness at face value which Natasha in all honesty doesn't mind. People are more frank and professional if they don't think they can charm you.