It was 1981 when Melanie Rushman moved from Boston to Russia for work and met one Ivan Petrovich, an up-and-coming manager in the technology department. He was sweet, he was clever, and he swept her off feet with apparent ease, making her feel like she’d just stepped into a fairy tale. Within a year, the two were married and mere months later, they were expecting their first child. Nikolette Alianovna Petrovich came screaming into the world on November 28th, 1984. Complications with her birth led to the news that Melanie would never be able to have another baby, but both parents agreed that their buddle of joy was worth that sacrifice.
In 1987, Ivan was offered a big promotion at work. It included a significant raise, more responsiblity, his own secretary, and a move to the Saint Petersburg. While Melanie had her own reservations about it, she dutifully packed up their house and daughter and did her best to make the transition easy on the toddler. She became a stay at home mother and devoted herself to Nikolette. She taught her all the tradition pre-school lessons, arranged playdates, and when Nikolette decided she wanted to try dancing, Melanie became a willing taxi and even headed up the carpool.
Despite Nikolette's obsession and the fact that her mother never missed a recital in support of her daughter's dreams, she was still required to attend regular schooling and have friends outside of dance, even when she began participating in competitions at the age of eight. It was one the way to such a competition when she was eleven that her love of history was awakened when one of her teachers gave her a biography of Anne Boleyn to keep her occupied on a long bus ride. By the end of the weekend, the book was done but the fascination was just beginning.
Around the age of fourteen, Nikolette began to notice some weird tension in her house. Her parents went from barely speaking to having yelling matches in the middle of the night that always ended in her dad leaving and her mom crying. They tried to act normal when they knew their daughter was around, but it was impossible to hide all the cracks. Two weeks after her 15th birthday, Melanie sat her daughter down and broke the news of the divorce. Nikolette found out later that it was all precipitated by her father sleeping with his secretary, but at the time all she knew was that her world was falling apart. And to top it off, her mom was getting custody of her and they were moving to the United States that summer.
To say that Nikolette was unhappy about being forced to leave everything she’d ever known and move to a whole new country would be a gross understatement, but for her mom’s sake, she sucked it up and tried to make the best of it. She gamely threw her focus into improving her English, a language she only knew because of her mothers insistance while she was growing up, and trying to understand an entirely new culture. By the end of the school year, she had managed to find both a small social group and a new dance studio. Despite the fact that some kids liked to make fun of her heavy accent, she found that she enjoyed the freedom of the American teenager more thans she had ever enjoyed the restrictive nature of Russia.
By the grace of whomever, Nikolette managed to make it through high school intact, graduating with a GPA of 3.85 and acceptance to Boston University with the intention to study history. It was here that she had her first brush with love, falling for a guy a year older than her. For a time, she thought things were going well as she tried to balance his demands for attention with her studies. All that crashed to the ground when she walked into their apartment to find him in bed with a sorority girl, only to have him blame her for making him turn to someone else.
Heart broken, Nikolette only threw herself deeper into her studies because books couldn’t hurt her. She entered an accelerated program that allowed her to work on her Master’s and Doctorate simultaneously and eventually graduated with a 3.9 GPA and a PhD in history. With the recommendation of her favorite professor, she applied for a freshly opened spot in the history department at her own alma matter and was hired as an associate professor, teaching 100 level classes.
In one assignment, Natasha helped American mercenary Danny French steal a unique energy globe from Project: Four, though French absconded with the globe, betraying their employer, munitions magnate Damon Dran. Subsequently, when Logan, his memories of their past relationship suppressed by Weapon X, traveled to the USA following his recruitment by Canada’s Department H, Natasha protected him from Hydra assassins, as did his former intelligence comrades Nick Fury and Carol Danvers. Natasha and Logan ended up on opposite sides when he joined Danvers and pilot Ben Grimm to steal a Russian asset she oversaw, the top-secret Red Storm Project. She also trained fellow Russian operatives, including Boris Bullski, who became her partner in various assignments.
After Russian scientist Anton Vanko left Russia to work with Iron Man (Tony Stark), Natasha’s superiors sent her and another operative, Boris Turgenov, to assassinate both men. When Turgenov stole Vanko’s Crimson Dynamo armor, both Turgenov and Vanko died in battle but Natasha escaped. Later, feigning repentance, she romanced Stark long enough to steal his experimental anti-gravity ray. With it, she performed several acts of sabotage against the USA until Iron Man deactivated the device. Her cover blown, she romanced and manipulated the outlaw archer Hawkeye (Clint Barton) into working with her, helping him enhance his archery arsenal with high-tech arrows. The pair attacked Iron Man, who deflected one of Hawkeye’s explosive arrows, its impact felling Natasha and ending the battle when Hawkeye rushed her to safety. While recovering, she persuaded Hawkeye to attack her superiors’ next target, Williams Innovations, but Spider-Man’s intervention drove Hawkeye away. The idealistic Hawkeye’s growing influence upon Natasha led her to rebel against her communist superiors, who extorted her into returning to action with a new costume and weapons, but she and Hawkeye again failed against Iron Man. (more)
