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Mad’ouk: Experienced or toughened by life.
She has had a hundred faces throughout her life. More than she can remember, more than she cares to know. Somewhere, in the sea of faces and personalities, the young orphan girl got lost.
Natalia Alianova Romanova got lost in the sea of fake identities she took up.
Funnily enough, she has no idea how, or when she started getting lost. Was it when she joined the Red Room? Or the first time blood painted her hands red? Or when she took up her first fake name? She can’t put a finger on it.
But she can put a finger on when the world called her fearless. Said nothing could scare her. But that was a lie, she knew it. She was scared. She could be terrified. She could be afraid. For herself, for those around her. The reason why the world called her fearless was the fact that she never let the fear show. She kept it down, she forced to remain unseen. Because she knew that showing fear never did any good. The Red Room had no place for people who were afraid. They were useless.
She was young, barely twenty when an organisation named S.H.I.E.L.D sent someone to kill her. The boy couldn’t have been much older than she was, maybe two, at the most three, years older to her.
He was supposed to kill her. But he didn’t.
He let her in.
She was taken to S.H.I.E.L.D. They said she would be a valuable asset to them if she stopped being an assassin and instead became a spy for them.
She agreed, thinking this was a chance for her to remember herself. But it lead to more fake names, more facades. More lies.
What difference was there between the Red Room and S.H.I.E.L.D?
Time went on in a blur, yet it went slow. She couldn’t remember who she was, yet she remembered every mission she went on. Every eye that stopped seeing because of her.
Funny how memory works, right?
Then she became Natalie Rushman for the one and only Tony Stark.
She evaluated him. She saw him nearly die. Palladium poisoning.
She scored him not exactly fit to be an avenger. Iron Man was an asset, not Tony Stark.
But when Avengers happened, Tony was there.
For the first time, they treated her as Natasha Romanoff. Not her facades, but her as she was.
Then why did it still hurt?
Because she was not Natasha Romanoff, she was Natalia Romanova. But they did not know that. How could she tell them who she was, when she couldn’t remember it herself? Who she was before? Who she could be if the Red Room never happened. She would still be fierce, but would she be strong?
New York happened. Followed by Sokovia, Washington D.C., Lagos, Leipzig. Everything moved way too fast for her liking. People knew that the Black Widow loved to lead a fast life, but what about Natalia? Given a choice, she would sit back, relax, do nothing for a day or two.
Wakanda was a beautiful place. All the time she was there, she realised the people of Wakanda made it beautiful. Made it full of life. After all, a beautiful place that is abandoned, is not beautiful. Time stopped moving too fast. But still, there was a nagging worry, something in the back of her mind, telling her that peace won’t last too long.
But then the Decimation happened.
There was news that some aliens had attacked New York. There was a round, doughnut-esque type of spaceship. Tony Stark was gone. She also saw that spider-kid being taken. And there was someone else they did not know.
Then Bruce called.
The time became painstakingly slow. And she hated it.
Because whenever time slowed down like this, meant that something was going to happen.
They saved Wanda and Vision, then went to meet Rhodey and Bruce. They made a plan, faulty but a plan nonetheless. They went back.
The moment they landed in Wakanda, the time which had stopped till now, started moving in a blur. Too fast.
One moment she was standing in the airport, next she was in the princess’ lab, with Vision on the table. Next moment the Black Order was at their border.
There was another fight.
Then Thanos happened.
He came, he did not give them a chance to fight. She tried to attack, but he trapped her in a stone structure. She couldn’t even move. She hopelessly watched, as he battled Steve, only for him to hit Steve once in the head, and that caused him to fall like a rag doll. Then she couldn’t see anything else.
Screams, shouts, all those were meaningless noise for her. They did not mean anything. She tried to hear what was going on, but years of experience had automatically tuned out screams or shouts when she was in the middle of battles.
All of a sudden the structure turned to dust and collapsed on her. She did not have time to waste, she needed to know what happened. But in hindsight, she knew what happened. The stillness of the air, the quiet was not a comfortable one, it was one that reeked of despair, of the loss that was to come.
And that’s when she saw it.
Wanda dissolved into dust just as she rounded the corner. Right next to her was Vision’s body, turned blue.
They lost.
Thor was standing there, in shock, Steve had collapsed to the floor with his head in his hands.
They lost.
The numbers started to pour in, billions were gone. The world government was in shambles. Abandoned factories started fires. Buses crashed. From having a deficit of food, the world was now wondering how to deal with hundreds and thousand tons of rotting food. People were dying of car crashes, fires. Some were dying when buses crashed into their cars.
The zoos said the animals were almost extinct. Too many were lost in a matter of moments.
She was out to buy water when someone grabbed her hand and tugged. Turning to look, she saw a tiny little boy, not possibly older than five or six.
“Miss, my family left me alone. They took my dog too. Do you know where they went?”
“What happened? Tell me the full thing.”
“I was playing. Ma called to come home. But they were not there when I came home. Th-th-they left without te-telling m-me. D-do you kn-know wh-wh-where they w-went?” He started to sob.
She couldn’t say anything. She only hugged him as he sobbed on her shoulder.
“This is a nightmare.”
“I’ve had better nightmares.”
She was terrified. She sat and stared at the wall of her room. She didn’t see anything, just stared. Playing back in her head all the times she was happy. Life had toughened her. Given her experience of pain, of everything a person needed, if not more. She has had enough experiences in her life to give her a lifetime of nightmares. The little boy, asking her where his family went, that lady on the news begging for news on her daughter, the nurse saying her girlfriend was not picking her phone and she couldn’t even go home, given the number of casualties in the hospitals due to accidents. What did they have to do anything with Thanos, or his twisted plans? She had woken up screaming from nightmares more times than she could count before. But all those times she knew that if she woke up, she would be safe. That she would know it was in her head, it could do no real harm. But what do you do when the nightmare is alive? Where do you run?
What was she supposed to do?
What was she, not the Black Widow, not Natalie Rushman, not Natasha Romanoff, but Natalia Alianova Romanova supposed to do?