Black Widow from comics and movie
natasha romanoff
Hey, it’s Age of Ultron fic! Featuring the most minor of minor characters, naturally. And spoiler-tagged to heck.
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My Hero, By Lila Barton
We are not allowed to write this essay about a family member and I think that is stupid because my dad is an actual hero and my mom looks after me and my brother and my baby brother which I think is good. [Lila, it is not nice to call anything stupid – Mrs A] Anyway I decided to write this essay about my aunt. She is not my real aunt, although I have a real aunt who lives in Canada, she is my dads best friend. She is also my moms best friend. When Mom thought her baby was going to be a girl she was going to name it Natasha but it turned out to be a boy so she called it Nathaniel. I like my new brother a lot but he doesn’t do much. Mr Rogers (not that Mr Rogers) came with Auntie Natasha and gave him a bunch of toys and I thought that was silly because he won’t play with them. When I said that Mom told me to show some respect but Mr Rogers just laughed and said I had a healthy attytude [attitude – Mrs A] to grown ups and that was nice.
Auntie Nat brings people to the farm a lot to talk with Mom and Dad. Sometimes she brings Mr Wilson and he is my favorite because he always has sweets and he plays video games with me and Cooper and I think he lets us win which is good because Cooper gets mad when he loses. Anyway one time Auntie Nat came she had another lady with her, who had brown hair and a red jacket, I didn’t know who she was but when she saw the baby she started crying and crying and crying and Mom and Dad and Auntie Nat were nice to her until she stopped crying and she had dinner with us and she left.
Mom says she is the sister of the man who died saving Dad. I forgot to mention that happened. Anyway that was sad but Auntie Nat was nice.
Another thing I remembered just now is when Jessica made fun of me for not having Dad at the father’s day show and we had that fight and Mom had to go to the principal’s office but she had to work and Dad was in England I think because of Thor so Auntie Nat went to see the principal and [this sentence is way too long, Lila – Mrs A] he was really scared of her and she told him Jessica was bullying me and everything was all right. Then she took me to get ice cream and she said that though getting back at people who hurt you feels good it‘s not good and she quoted lots of Star Wars at me and I laughed.
Also she was at the Battle of New York and saved a lot of people. [Maybe this should have been in your opening sentence – Mrs A] She has super abbilitys [abilities – Mrs A] and can kill monsters and robots. That is very good. Mommy says some bad things happened to Auntie Nat in her life and she is honest about them even to newspapers and I think that is good too because people should always tell the truth. But she is mostly my hero because she is nice to me and my brothers and lots of other people and she did not have to be because lots of people who have bad stuff happen are not nice. But she is. That is my essay. Signed Lila Nicole Barton aged 6
trans natasha
Sometimes I think really intensely about Natasha being trans.
And it’s not that she’s ashamed of being trans, but it’s a conversation she doesn’t really want to have with her new coworkers, so Nick Fury promises to keep it under wraps.
But then when she’s in a meeting JARVIS identifies her as “biologically male” in front of all the others for some reason and she’s like fuuuuuck and prepares herself for a really shitty time but like
Steve’s all, “Well, ma’am, if you identify as a woman that’s all I really need to know.” She keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop there because he’s from the forties for God’s sake, but it never does.
Thor doesn’t understand why this revelation is a big deal, because in Asgard trans people are embraced and accepted, like there are special magic/science reassignment procedures that require no gatekeeping or fuckery, just self-knowledge, and he tells her that she should have been born there, “for not only are you a mighty warrior, but I think my people would have been able to spare you much pain.” She does not cry about that, but she thinks about it for a long time.
Bruce acts awkward but when she calls him out on it he’s like “I just realized that you have more of a right to be afraid of violence than any of us, and I’m so sorry I contributed to that,” and she ends up buying him a latte so he’ll stop looking so damn anguished.
Sam doesn’t say much, but quietly lets her know that he runs a support group for trans folk that meets every Wednesday, and she doesn’t realize what that means until a day or two later and can’t stop smiling.
And Tony? Tony disappears for like a week, and she thinks it’s because he’s finally revealed himself to be a complete asshole, but then he reappears on her doorstep and, without preamble, says, “I’ve recalibrated JARVIS so it’s got a more nuanced understanding of gender identity and biology, I’m so sorry it outed you, also I built you this new gun as an apology gift.”
(Clint already knew, obviously. Because Clint knows pretty much everything about her.)
I will probably need to write this eventually because it is literally my very favourite headcanon.
you honestly expect me to believe that natasha fucking romanoff got thrown into a cell and didn’t find a way to break herself out and she had to wait for a man to rescue her??
Thank you.
But she singlehandedly built herself a morse code system (in a CAVE, from a box of SCRAPS…) and telegraphed for someone to come get her? That is finding a way to break yourself out!
The Bartons (or, one thing Age of Ultron did that was a HUGE improvement on its source material)
I hate The Ultimates, guys. I hate it even more because this was my first introduction to these characters, and so for ages I actually thought that Steve Rogers was a xenophobic jerk, Black Widow a murdering traitor and so on. But I think I can pinpoint the moment (beyond ‘you think this letter on my head is for France?’) when I started hating it:
Laura Barton and her three children are killed in the Ultimates not long after they’re introduced. Laura’s shot in the head, one of the children is shot in Hawkeye’s arms, the baby is killed in its crib, and you see one of the children later lying dead in a puddle of blood because of course you do. Their deaths are later used for Hawkeye’s enemies to taunt him with. “The children swallowed bullets, and that fat wife of yours.” It’s a really gruesome, over-the-top fridging. Oh, and it was Black Widow who ordered the hit, by the way.
So even though I doubt the Barton family’s inclusion in Age of Ultron was a deliberate fuck-you to all that, I’m still really glad it stands the way it does. Laura’s alive and fine, her children are alive and fine (though they appear to have had their names and ages switched), Laura is close enough friends with Proper Not-A-Murderous-Traitor Black Widow to name a child after her (hooray! lady friendships!), the kids call Black Widow Aunt Natasha and adore her and she them (aww), and everyone seems happy and well-adjusted etc.
Basically I always thought ‘Laura Barton and her kids deserved better’ and I’m really glad they did eventually get Better. (Of course, if any of them die in a future movie, this is all moot.)