On a normal, standard street in Russia, there lived a small family of three...soon to be four. They were a happy family for the few years they lived. There was only one daughter with fiery red curls and a smile that would melt the heart of anyone. Her name was Natasha, and she was five years old when it happened.

It was the typical winter night in Russia. Blizzards raged, and people hurried inside their houses to their warm fires. Natasha's mother, Alena, was busy around the stove, making preparations for dinner. Natasha was entertaining herself by running in small, little circles, trying to make herself dizzy, and chortling happily. She was a creative toddler and loved to 'dance' and draw. Tonight she was pretending to be a ballerina while waiting for her father to come home from work.

"I'm home!" A male voice called out from the entryway. Alena dropped the lid on the pot of soup she was making for dinner with a loud clang and hurried to the entryway.

"Viktor!" She called out. Natasha hurried along after her. This was her favorite time of day when her father came home, and they ate supper and told stories until her bedtime. Natasha turned the corner to see her parents in a close embrace, kissing. They broke away, and Alena looked at Viktor with a serious look on her face.

"What happened?" She whispered.

Viktor frowned angrily. "Gleb didn't come to work today, and there are rumors that his family was taken into custody."

She gasped. "Not their sweet little daughter too?"

"I wouldn't be surprised!" His voice rose angrily, "This is the second family in three weeks that has been arrested for no reason. I'm worried!" Natasha listened, wide eyed, to their conversation. She didn't understand most of it, but she did know something bad was going on. She moved in cautiously to hold on to her mother's leg.

"We shouldn't be talking about it here. She's frightened." Alena picked up Natasha and squeezed her hard. "Let's go eat." She hurried into the kitchen and placed Natasha down on the floor.

"How is the baby?" Viktor asked.

She smiled slightly. "It was kicking today." She placed a hand on her stomach. "Only two more months." She whispered softly and looked up at Viktor happily.

Natasha returned to her role as a ballerina, and her parents finished the last preparations for dinner. The little five year old was pondering some serious things for a toddler while she was dancing around. She was unusually observant for her age, and many strange things had been happening lately that needed to be thought about. There were the many references to a baby, and she knew they weren't talking about her. And the scary stories she overheard about missing children and dead families.

"Natasha." She looked up to see her mother placing bowls of hot soup on the table. "Come eat."

Two hours later the kitchen was cleaned up, Viktor had read her a story, and she was tucked into bed in her small room in the attic. She eventually fell asleep to the comforting sound of her parents voices, rising and falling in the background.

She woke up to the shrill, panicked screams of her mother and the angry shouts of her father. She was out of her bed in a second and running to the door, screaming. Five black men suddenly opened her door. They were huge men, and Natasha shrank back, crying hard.

"Don't take my baby! PLEASE!" A shot rang out, and Natasha heard a moan and then an enraged, horrible, inhuman voice yelling her mother's name.

One of the men picked her up roughly, and she struggled wildly, scratching and biting. The men laughed.

"This one has spirit. She will make a good one."

Natasha screamed at the top of her lungs. "DADDY! HELP!" She sobbed loudly, still struggling.

"NATASHA! NATASHA!" She heard her father yelling her name. Then another shot rang out, and she heard another moan. Then complete silence. She was surrounded by huge men, and her parents would not come. She collapsed in the man's arms, in complete shock. She was carried out, and set down outside of her room.

She saw her father and mother lying on the ground with dark pools of blood surrounding them. She screamed loudly, so loudly she hurt her own ears, trying to take away the pain that tore her heart. She understood what had happened, and she was in shock. The men laughed again, and she stopped. Tears streamed down her face in torrents, and she stood there on the floor in front of her parents and watched them, hoping they would stand up and tell her it was a dream. But they didn't.

"Don't worry little one." She felt a hand place something cold in her own hand, and she looked down to see a knife in her hand. She looked up at the men, completely and utterly confused. They smiled at her, but it was not the warm, happy smile of her parents, but a cold, cruel smile that sent shivers down her spine.

"Don't worry." The man repeated. "They are not dead. We will let you have the honor of killing them yourself." She could not register what he had said. Already her hopelessly confused mind was in shock. She could not understand.

The man pushed her until she was standing next to her father. She saw him twitch, and she knelt down in a rush onto her little knees. "DADDY!" She yelled, shaking him. The men shook their heads, laughing.

"He's not going to wake up for a long time." One of the men picked up the knife she had thrown to the side and handed it to her again. He forced her fingers to close over the knife, his fingers engulfing her whole hand. Then he was forcing her to move the knife down...down...down...She screamed as the knife went down, ripping the skin of her father's neck. Then the man was forcing her to move it to the side, splitting his neck in half.

"Remember this moment. It will be something to remember your whole life." She heard the words, but she was staring at the disfigured body which had been her father's. She stared at it, not saying anything. Just staring. She looked at the knife in her hand, dripping with blood and then back at her father. She had killed him. She had been forced to kill him.

Then the man was pushing her over to her mother. Her eyes were still open, but they weren't focusing on anything. Then the knife was coming down slowly. It was plunging down into her mother's heart. She couldn't stop it. The man was too strong. Then the man let go of her, and she dropped the knife. It was too much for her. She stared at her father's body, the head hanging to the body by a small sliver of skin, and her mother's body, covered in blood with eyes open wide in shock. Everything swam around like a merry-go-round. Then everything went black.

I seriously can't believe I just wrote that. I always tried to imagine what Natasha's past had been like, and I assumed it had been a horrible nightmare. This story is going to continue through Natasha's life in training as a Soviet Union agent, an assassin, meeting Hawkeye, and then becoming a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Hope you enjoy!