BIOGRAPHY - Page 19
Black Widow and S.H.I.E.L.D. remained on the tail of the Red Skull and his A.I.M. splinter cells, while Falcon and the new Captain America were also searching for Sharon Carter. Their paths crossed in Albany, where the Skull planned to elevate his pet Senator Gordon Wright with a fake assassination attempt at the Presidential debates. Bucky saved Wright while Natasha led a 
S.H.I.E.L.D. strike team that rescued Sharon and seemingly killed Arnim Zola, the Red Skull and his host body, Lukin. In the aftermath, Black Widow gave Wright an ultimatum to resign and withdraw his candidacy for President or face a public scandal tying him to the Skull and Lukin’s Kronas Corporation. Natalia and James reunited at his loft in Red Hook, as the old flames of their past relationship were rekindled. [Captain America (5th series) #41-42]
Natasha started to see the full picture regarding Iron Man and Spider-Woman when Jessica Jones came to live at Avengers Tower. Jessica had been living on the run with her husband Luke Cage and his unregistered Avengers, but threats towards her child led her to accept registration and 
take asylum with the Initiative. When Luke came to argue with his wife, he warned the registered Avengers that, if any of them were Skrulls, he’d kill them for touching his family. From the context, it became clear to Black Widow that the unregistered Avengers knew something about the shape-changing Skrulls being active on Earth, and Spider-Woman’s defection from their team to the Initiative had something to do with that. [New Avengers (1st series) #38]
The mystery revealed itself when S.W.O.R.D. detected a Skrull ship on a crash course with the Savage Land. Both the registered and unregistered Avengers raced to Antarctica where they confronted each other and the mysterious ship. More than a dozen super-heroes emerged from the vessel, presenting themselves as captives of the Skrulls who had been systematically replaced on Earth over the years. With the Avengers tied up in the confusion and paranoia of this situation, Iron Man’s StarkTech was disabled worldwide by an alien virus, as the Skrull invasion of Earth began. The Avengers and new arrivals were scattered by a dinosaur attack, leaving the Black Widow to stalk the Savage Land with no clue whom she could trust. She spied on Spider-Woman, now openly declaring herself Queen Veranke of the Skrulls, trying to convince Tony Stark that he was a Skrull sleeper agent who heroically helped set this all in motion. Natasha’s instincts recognized a con when she saw one, and she drove off the Skrulls to help Iron Man get his head on straight. Moving on to Logan, Black Widow began gathering those she could trust until Reed Richards arrived and revealed the remaining Skrulls in their midst. The Avengers returned to New York and ended the Skrull invasion, although at a heavy cost. [Secret Invasion (1st series) #1-8]
Tony Stark was removed from office as director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Initiative, replaced by the scheming Norman Osborn taking advantage of his public valor against the Skrulls. S.H.I.E.L.D. was dismantled and replaced with H.A.M.M.E.R. while Osborn assembled his own team of Avengers loyal to him. Like most of her comrades, Black Widow quit the Avengers when Osborn took over. Her public status during Osborn’s reign isn’t clear, but she was living at least part-time under an assumed identity in New York. [Invincible Iron Man (1st series) #14] Natalia continued her personal and professional relationship with Bucky, lending him her aid in the field and for intelligence gathering. [Captain America (5th series) #43-48]
Early in Osborn’s rise, Black Widow was signaled by Nick Fury. He reported to her that Osborn was putting together his own black ops team of Thunderbolts, and digital evidence showed he planned to recruit Yelena Belova. To take advantage of this opportunity, Fury arranged to set Natasha up posing as Yelena, use genetic disguise technology to alter her appearance. Osborn 
then recruited Natasha as “Yelena,” making this Black Widow his team’s field leader and first officer. Black Widow oversaw the initial recruits for the Thunderbolts, including paid mercenaries like Paladin and Headsman, the sniveling new Ant-Man culled from the Initiative, and an unknown quantity in the anti-corporate terrorist known as the Ghost. Fury directed Natasha to make intelligence reports on the Thunderbolts to determine how loyal they actually were to Osborn, and if they could be turned as useful assets.
“Yelena” did her best to run Osborn’s kill squad without actually causing civilian deaths. This proved complicated as the Thunderbolts’ first mission was a false flag operation bringing down Air Force One with Osborn and the President on board in order to make Norman look good in a crisis. When Deadpool got it in his head to attack Osborn, Natasha had to secretly reattach his head after the Headsman decapitated him. Her internal monitoring of the Thunderbolts at their base, the retrofitted prison known as the Cube, caught the Ghost’s attention. The paranoid hacker correctly 
deduced Natasha’s real identity, but he claimed he was playing a long game to bring Osborn down from the inside. Natasha was forced to think on her feet and claimed she had “poisoned” the Ghost’s personal MRE stash with nano-bots that congregated into a bomb in his guts, the sort of unverifiable threat that would most haunt a conspiracy theorist like Ghost. [Thunderbolts (1st series) #128-133]
Osborn soon added two additional killers to his team, Mr. X and Scourge, and the latter replaced “Yelena” as field leader. He sent the Thunderbolts to hunt down Songbird, a former member of the old roster who went underground when Osborn came to power. As Natasha gave her latest report to Fury on the Thunderbolts’ loyalties, he instructed her to break her cover if necessary in order to extract Songbird and bring her safely to him. Reverting to her true appearance, Black Widow made contact with Songbird in the wilderness and got her away from the Thunderbolts. Ghost actually proved true to his word and diverted the team away from Natasha, so she returned the favor and admitted she lied about the nano-bomb.
Black Widow alerted Nick Fury she was coming in and brought Songbird to a former S.H.I.E.L.D. safe house hidden under Yankee Stadium. Unfortunately, Osborn followed them with the Thunderbolts, some of his Avengers and H.A.M.M.E.R for good measure. Once Natasha was restrained, Osborn laughingly detailed to her how severely she had been duped. Norman had been “Fury” all along. He digitally mimicked Nick’s voice and holographic appearance for his calls to Natasha, all the way back to alerting her about Osborn’s “interest” in Yelena. The whole time, Natasha had actually been feeding Norman reports about how trustworthy his agents were. 
Bringing Songbird “to Nick” just tricked her into revealing Fury’s location. Fortunately for Natasha, she had a better read on Norman’s people than he did. When the Thunderbolts were left alone to execute Black Widow and Songbird, all of Natasha’s original team refused to commit cold-blooded murder, and they fought against Mr. X and Scourge long enough for Natasha and Songbird to escape. [Thunderbolts (1st series) #134-136, Secret Warriors (1st series) #7-8]
Late one night, Natasha received an urgent phone call from Ivan Petrovich. He told her the Icepick Protocol had been activated and she was the target, before gunfire at the other end of the line cut his call short. By the time she made it to Moscow, Natasha found Ivan’s body desecrated in the morgue as a message to her. Even with his head missing, though, she knew the decades of scars on his body and confirmed her old friend was dead. At a Russian command outpost, Black Widow gained access to the system and learned about Icepick. The Red Room had infected her with nanites years ago, and these nanites spread to anyone she had repeated contact with. Once Icepick was triggered, the nanites inside the secondary carriers would trigger a psychotic rage in 
anybody nearby, causing the deaths of anyone and everyone Natasha was ever close to. Natasha acquired counter-nanites from Nick Fury and began making the rounds among her loved ones. Her friends in the super-hero community survived (Daredevil, Bucky, Clint, Hercules, Logan), but other less obvious targets like an old teacher friend and the boy who used to deliver her newspapers were killed by those they loved before the Black Widow could find them.
Black Widow followed the trail of the Icepick Protocol into near-orbit, finding a commissioned Russian Helicarrier model called the Dreadnought. Commanding the Dreadnought was Ivan 
Petrovich, still alive albeit as a cyborg, a preserved brain in the mechanical body of an Imperial Dynamo model. Ivan had finally snapped, turning against Natasha for rejecting the love he tried to show her. It wasn’t the Red Room who triggered Icepick but Ivan, infecting Natasha with the kiss he gave her when they last met. While torturing his little Tzarina with all her lost loves, Ivan also courted the rich Russian oligarchs to build the Dreadnought and fill it with all the nuclear warheads “missing” since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Ivan was happy to explain all his plans to Natalia once she got on board the Dreadnought, for the nanites in her system could be used to kill her on command, thanks to his own nanites. Ivan tried to sell Natalia on the idea that she was as utterly amoral as he, always betraying others, switching sides and backing the parties she liked best. Black Widow rejected his allusions, though, and defended that, regardless of her allegiances, she was always committed to doing the right thing. The only thing his plot had shown her was that she never truly became a whole person until he 
finally left. She taunted Ivan that he would never trigger the nanites to kill her, so long as she was still defiant and he hadn’t “taught her a lesson” like he planned. After playing for time, Natalia revealed her counter-nanites had accessed and overridden his. She now controlled the Dreadnought and could prevent him from killing her. When Ivan refused to back down or get help for his madness, Natalia killed her first father-figure and oldest friend. After scuttling the Dreadnought, she raised a glass to toast the man she remembered. But that was all. [Black Widow: Deadly Origin #1-4]