(no subject)

Name: Paley
OOC Journal: baneofpaley
Preferred Contact: Email, Plurk, or here.


Character Name: Natasha Romanoff
Fandom: MCU
Canon Point: Post Civil War
Canon Wiki/Source: Here.
Contact Method: An Also Human approached Natasha in her safe house in the form of a kind, Russian speaking woman. The accent was broken and the words were slightly jumbled, but between the conversation and the images that the Also Human managed to show her in her own mind, Natasha got a good enough idea of what was being asked of her. She asked for a day to think about it, and when they returned, she agreed.

Character History: It's difficult to explain exactly who Natasha Romanoff is because, in the end, Natasha Romanoff doesn't even know the answer to that question. When she was a very young girl she was recruited into the Black Widow program, forced to train in the Red Room during her most developmental years, and beyond the physical combat and mental steeling there were two things that were ingrained in her; she never fails, and she is only a shadow. Natasha believed that for years and, admittedly, still believes it in her lowest moments, causing her to doubt her abilities when it comes to being a person, and not an assassin.

Her training in the Red Room shaped her into the woman that she is, a violent and lethal weapon capable of taking down threats that hold more strength than she. She's agile and fast, manipulative and sly, but all of the traits she's managed to 'gain' had never been truly gains at all, instead being masks she's learned to perfect over the many years she spent being other people. This has caused a bit of a crisis for Natasha when it comes to being herself, because in the end, Natasha doesn't know who 'herself' is. After being liberated from the Red Room by her close friend and teammate Clint Barton, it took Natasha a while to recover from the fact that she had been all but brainwashed into thinking that she was less than human, and she switched sides to instead fight for S.H.I.E.L.D who, at the time, she thought was a force for good. In reality, Natasha traded in on mask for another; she was still committing espionage and killing people, she just thought they were the Bad Guys. The real Bad Guys, not the ones that the Soviets had pointed out.

To find out S.H.I.E.L.D was nothing more than a cover for H.Y.D.R.A shook Natasha to her core, although she refused to let it show on the surface. Perhaps she could make an excuse for becoming the Black Widow, having been absconded at such a young age and forced into battle without knowing what her true options were, but to willingly trust S.H.I.E.L.D after she thought she had switched sides was a serious blow to her self certainty. She questioned whether or not she was capable of telling the difference between good and bad at all, but she found comfort in her friends, a precious rarity for someone who had lived her life. She saw men like Clint and Steve as good, truly good, and truly good men wouldn't see good in her unless it was there. Natasha held onto that, and found comfort in the fact that, although she couldn't trust her own moral compass, she could trust theirs. Her loyalty to her friends is unwavering because of this, as they define her, and the person who she wants to be instead of the person she afraid she really is.

Throughout her life, Natasha never made a decision that was truly her own, having been following orders for as long as she could possibly remember. When she was asked to sign the Sokovia Accords, Natasha did so out of both a sense of obligation to protect innocent lives and a desire to keep the team together. The Avengers was the first place that Natasha didn't have to wonder if she did good, she knew she did, and preserving that was all she truly cared for. It didn't work out that way, however, and although Natasha worked hard to try and bring her teammates together, she failed in the end, something that she alone takes the blame for. After making the call to save Steve and Barnes, Natasha went into hiding, effectively putting herself away to keep herself from doing any more damage to the world if left unchecked.

Abilities/Special Powers: Master spy, master martial artist, master acrobat, master assassin, multilingual, intellectually gifted and capable of processing multiple streams of information at once, master interrogator, master hacker. She can also dance. She makes a mean margarita. I don't know if that last one is true.

Prose/Action Bracket Sample: (From old comm)
Aliens, killer robots, werewolves, gods, goddesses... fuck it, that she could handle. That, Natasha could take head on, but people being here back from the dead? How far could that go? And if people from her world could just show up, what did that mean? Clint? Steve, Tony, Wanda? God forbid, Bruce? That wasn't why she came here, she came here to get away and now Natasha felt like the possibility of having everything follow her was hanging over her head like an anchor waiting to be dropped. And it was the exact opposite of what she was trying to find in this place.

Despite her twisting and turning, Natasha slept through the night and she woke up early before the sun. Natasha stripped out of the clothes that she found, her catsuit still slightly damp but wrapped around her like a makeshift towel, and Natasha followed the barely worn path to the rest of the camp before heading to what looked like the largest hut and sticking her head in to see what she could find. Exactly what she was looking for, apparently - there were the extra clothes that someone had mentioned. She tossed her catsuit onto the hut, draping it against the roof to let it dry there for when the sun came up with the legs hanging low enough for her to pull it down, and she walked into the shelter naked to dig through the clothes and see what sizes she could find. It didn't take her too long, and although the shirt wasn't really her style she decided that she could deal, pulling it on after finding a bra that didn't fit terribly and a pair of shorts. And then she saw the building materials. What the hell, why not? It wasn't like she was going to be able to sleep. Besides, with her head running in circles; Natasha needed something to do with her hands.

She wasn't an architect by any means, but she knew survival. She had been all around the world, had seen safe houses that varied from castles to literal wooden sheds in the middle of a forest, and Natasha had no intention of letting her lack of home building limit her on what she could and couldn't do. It wasn't that complicated anyway; ground support, floor, walls, roof. And there seemed to be no roofing materials so, naturally, she would just use more wood. That was what it was there for, right? She started at roughly 5AM although she didn't know it, and she had been working for hours without noticing the passing time. She was sweating, her shoulder was sore from carrying large pieces of lumber back and forth to the site she decided to set up, but the basic shed-like shelter was coming along nicely, and most of all, her head was clear. That was her goal.

She didn't notice that the sun had come up so long ago until someone was standing behind her, blocking her light and thus her clear view of the nail she was trying to hammer in to keep the third wall was building flat on the ground together. She huffed a sigh of annoyance, her head turning with her long red hair pulled up in a tie she had found, stray strands falling into her green eyes. "Do you mind?" She asked blindly in annoyance around the nail she had in her mouth. "A whole island, you need to stand right behind me?"

Network Sample: For those of you who have been asking, I decided that I was going to make some basic blueprints of home and shelter layouts for us to be able to choose from. I'm halfway done with the island map, and it might be good for you all to know that there's actually a natural hot spring further toward the center of the island. Usually it's too warm to enjoy it, but I think that we could find some use for it as a natural source of heat if we ever need that.

So, there. I've been helpful. It's only taken me a couple of weeks.