In the mansion on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York, Pepper was in her dressing room picking clothes for Natasha, helping her with her evening date look.
Surprisingly perhaps, Natasha's private life is quite simple. Her wardrobe mainly has casual wear and lacks dresses for major occasions.
As a beautiful female agent, she does need to wear gorgeous dresses to infiltrate certain formal events. However, these dresses are work supplies from S.H.I.E.L.D., not her personal property.
Before carrying out similar insidious missions, professional agents investigate the target thoroughly, understanding his background and preferences. Based on this information, they create the image most likely to attract his attention. Then a professional stylist gives Natasha the makeover. The hairstyle, clothes, and accessories used are not Natasha's personal aesthetic, but are designated by the professional team.
Generally, when Natasha attends friends' parties, she rarely dresses up. Most of the time she goes in a T-shirt and jeans, and nobody minds. Everyone is used to it.
So now, suddenly having to dress grandly to fully showcase her charm, she truly doesn't have any fashionable clothes and jewelry, so she asked Wanda and Pepper in the group where they buy their dresses.
Clearly, this relatively high-end dress needs to be custom-made. The store-bought ready-to-wear, even if well-cut, might be lacking in fabric, not to mention the matching jewelry. Without ordering a year or two in advance, they wouldn't match the clothes at all.
In this mom's group that Natasha pulled together, Pepper certainly has the most dresses since she attends many grand occasions. Moreover, most of the dresses lean towards luxurious and formal, which suits Natasha's temperament well.
The only issue is their body shapes differ quite a lot. Actually, they are of similar height, but their measurements significantly differ. And the dress custom-made to Pepper's body wouldn't fit Natasha.
So they called Wanda in, who played the role of fairy godmother. Using her magical scarlet magic to adjust the size of the dress was perfect.
Natasha tossed the previous black dress out of the changing room and reached for the silver sequin dress from Wanda's hand. As she stepped out after changing, Pepper and Wanda both gasped in amazement.
"Wow!" Wanda exclaimed, her eyes wide, "Pepper was right, this one suits you so well. Why do you prefer darker clothes? Light colors clearly work better."
"Maybe it's because I'm called Black Widow." Natasha shrugged. She walked to the mirror and checked herself, feeling a bit surprised. She was wearing a very simple silver sequin strap dress. The dress reached about her calf, without any superfluous decorations, cut very slim-fitting.
"No doubt, you fit these light shiny slim-fitting dresses." Pepper said as she stood behind Natasha, looking at her through the mirror, "That figure is simply extraordinary."
Wanda circled her and said, "With your waist so slim, how do you fit so many organs in your abdomen? What principle is this? And the muscle lines on the side. I do over 100 crunches every day, but the lines aren't as smooth as yours."
"Alright, girls, did you forget?" Natasha spread her hands helplessly, "I'm a Genetically Modified Person, just like Steve. Lie down on the operating table and wake up like this. This isn't trained."
Natasha turned and turned in front of the mirror, twisting her head and shoulders to pose, seemingly feeling somehow novel. Most of the years of her life she hadn't worn such sparkling clothes.
When she was young, she mainly executed combat missions, wearing combat uniforms. Later, her image crafting was mostly constrained to mystery and sexiness, mostly some dark dresses with significant skin exposure, paired with makeup that highlighted facial contours.
"Oh my, this makes me look like a girl in her twenties." Natasha marveled, "Like the type who argues with her parents, sneaks out to a bar at night to mess around, meets an unreliable boyfriend, dates him for two months and after breaking up, drags her girlfriends to the bar counter to cry."
Wanda was full of question marks, "What kind of description is this?"
But obviously, Natasha was quite satisfied with this new style. After all, she wasn't very old when she was transformed, and she could barely be considered a young girl. Only due to her defined features and stunning face did she appear more mature. But nobody dislikes looking a little younger.
"I know where the problem is," Pepper said, "it's the hairstyle."
Natasha turned to look at her, smoothing her red hair. She naturally had wavy curls, probably due to genetic modification, the shade of red was deep, even leaning towards purple, paired with the slightly pale complexion of the Slavic ethnic group, it has a unique mysteriousness.
"Have you tried straight hair?" Pepper said, hugging her arms, "just straighten it out and let it down. Ideally, longer."
Natasha looked at Wanda. Wanda snapped her fingers lightly and with a swish, a head of long, straight, shiny healthy red hair fell down. Natasha turned back to the mirror.
"Wow." She couldn't help but exclaim.
"You look like a character from 'Ghost in the Shell.'" Wanda said as she walked to her side, "A very beautiful female robot, the kind that can shoot lasers from her chest at any moment."
Natasha couldn't help but laugh. Her straight, meticulously groomed long hair rendered her less lively, giving her a more non-human appearance. Coupled with her overly-defined facial features, she indeed looked more like a beautiful doll manufactured artificially.
But admittedly, the hairstyle paired with this dress was quite nice. Even without makeup, she was already strikingly beautiful.
"And then, a pair of shoes. Don't wear those ridiculously high heels of yours; they don't fit this style. I think these are pretty good." Pepper directed the butler to fetch a pair of silver pointed lace-up shoes from the shoe cabinet on one side of the wall, with barely any heel, only about two or three centimeters.
After Natasha changed, Pepper handed her a bag. Natasha looked at it in her hand and asked, "Is this Hermes?"
"No, no, no, this is Chanel. Hermes would be too heavy, not suitable for your attire today. Chanel's new model is nice, the silver hardware perfectly matches the dress you're wearing."
Pepper clearly had significant expertise in fashion coordination. Their home had a dedicated image butler in charge of the wardrobe, two stylist assistants, two makeup artists, all monopolized by her instruction.
Natasha brushed her hair in front of the mirror, looked at herself in the reflection, and said with a sigh, "I look like a 19-year-old youth. I can hardly imagine the expression on Nick and Coulson's faces when they see me now."
"Then snap a photo and show them!" Wanda immediately raised her voice, "Even if you're an employee of S.H.I.E.L.D., you should have some personal life, not wear that dark operational uniform all day. You should spend more time enjoying life."
Natasha opened her mouth as if to contradict, but eventually, said nothing. She sank into her memories, remaining silent for a while before saying, "This is quite novel for me. Half of my life was spent learning to obey orders. Sometimes I feel I don't exist, just a construct made from one directive after another."
"Oh! God! Certainly not!" Wanda said, stepping in front of her, "At least, the stories I've heard about you are completely different."
"What stories did you hear, girl?"
"I heard from Doctor Schiller that when you were young, you were an idealist, and through your efforts, you became an excellent warrior. Of course, I know becoming strong and outstanding requires a lot of tedious training, but it doesn't mean you lose yourself in the process. It's the knowledge and skills you've acquired that become part of you, not you turning into them."
"Perhaps." Natasha smiled softly.
"Actually, I'm a bit puzzled." Pepper said as she walked over to help her adjust her shoulder strap, "Your attitude towards Bucky is quite strange. If you were forced to separate during your passionate love, reuniting now should make you happy. Why do you..."
"What about me?"
"Of course, I'm absolutely not saying you shouldn't remain single. But if you're going to reject him, you could outrightly refuse, even knocking him down so no one dares to persuade you. That would be more like your way of resolving things. But you didn't, you want to meet him, even dressing up for it. I'm really a bit baffled."
"It's a long story." Natasha said, pressing her lips, "Do you think we were genuinely in love back then?"
"Weren't you?"
"Maybe at one moment we were. But perhaps we weren't forced apart; maybe we just chose to accept it simultaneously."
"Why?" Wanda couldn't help but question, "I actually wanted to ask earlier, you two definitely had the ability to disobey orders back then, right? Even if not violently refusing, wouldn't there have been chances to flee?"
"That's why I said it's a long story." Natasha said as she brought over a chair, sitting beside the mirror, "From a young age, I received the most orthodox Communist education. We called everyone around us comrades, aside from different duties, we were equal in personality. We fully respected everyone's opinions, yet each person willingly and fervently contributed to the collective."
"I wasn't just willing to accept the transformation, I was passionate about it, eagerly hoping to be selected, because that way, I could also contribute to this great collective. I could serve my motherland and help it become better."
"In the long period before and after the transformation, this is how I thought. I believed I would become a better person, meet many more outstanding comrades, encounter soulmates with whom my spirit resonated, and together we would contribute to building the motherland."
Though Natasha's tone mimicked the lively optimism and hope of her youth, Wanda was vaguely uneasy, knowing that as later arrivals, they were well aware that the motherland Natasha once loved had completely disappeared in the stream of history, and now everything she described was likely just a fleeting illusion.