Giving me to you

Author's note

I would have to admit that this story and the idea orientating it is not very polished, indeed, developing and writing the idea has taken less than an hour, and the book is likely a creation when I have spent minimal amount of time over, letting emotion reign more than logic.

When approaching Natalia (Natasha) as a character, I wanted to explore how she's changed from her teenage years in the Red Room, her inner struggles with the crave to survive and her natural instincts.

Writing Natalia isn't easy, especially because we know nothing from her experiences in the Red Room, and the new Black Widow to me, seems a bit out of character. I do not thing that any resistance would have been tolerated, and from Avengers 1 we have gathered a lot of information which is later lost, never explained in the later series. I wanted an explanation for these, for example, Natasha's view on love, her regret, her constant struggle between duty and her own wishes. Unlike Steve, Natasha went through a time that she is not only brainwashed by others, but in order to survive, she has to brainwash herself into an obedient yet genius figure so she could be deemed 'useful'.

What I struggled with hard in the Black Widow Movie, and in many fictional universes, such as Harry Potter, and Percy Jackson, is that the hero seems unsurpassable. The Red Room has created more Widows, yet their skill in fighting seemed to be appalling. It almost seemed as if the glory of the Red Room was at its height was Natasha was trained there, yet from the movie we also noticed that it wasn't true.

However, I'm not here to discuss how the 'hero' should work, or works presently in movies such as these. I wanted to create a character that Natalia conflicts over, a character who survives in opposite to Natalia's laws of survival, who, despite circumstances which Natalia thinks could only end in distancing herself or banishing her emotions, which is instead breached by warmth.

Then I got to hear a song, called Dancing With Your Ghost. The version I heard was a cover sung by Kelly Yu, and what struck me greatly was the loneliness of the song, and the character of Aria begins to form.

Physically, she is separated from the Widows by her frail body and her seemingly harmless stature, she is then further separated by the suspicion they have for her, the jealousy that she is able to be special and don't have to endure the trainings... She is separated from them by mindset. They can never understand why she is so hopeful and she cannot understand why they have no hope at all. In this circumstance, Aria, although kind, is an extremely lonely character, a character so lonely that she seems to be out of place.

Natalia latches to that loneliness, that gentleness, that quiet yet kind nature, because it was so familiar to her in America when she was with Alexi and Melina, yet it is also very different. It makes her drawn to Aria, yet wary of her. The kindness draws Natalia to her, yet that loneliness drives them apart. Natalia's unusualness towards the girl does not go unnoticed. She herself noticed, Madam B noticed, Dreykov noticed, and Aria too, noticed. Under this circumstance, the story is formed.

Then Natalia becomes Natasha.

Natasha wanted to escape her past, sever herself from it. It too her a lot of time to face it, the Red Room becoming a nightmare, her flaws, her feelings, becomes a source of exploitation which she still feared, even from Clint and Fury, and thus, the story progresses....

Hope you enjoy:
Giving me to you, inspired by Dancing With Your Ghost, song by Sasha Alex Sloan.