BIOGRAPHY - Page 20
Black Widow and Captain America remained active as partners, fighting crime and dealing with terrorist threats. Natalia and James eventually learned the truth about Captain America’s assassination from Sharon Carter and discovered that Steve had become unstuck in time. The Red Skull had survived their last attack inside one of Arnim Zola’s robot bodies, but he intended to recover the Captain’s body from space-time and use it as his own. Black Widow and Captain 
America’s many friends and allies came together to defeat the Skull once and for all, as Steve Rogers was miraculously returned to them. [Captain America: Reborn #1-6] When the question was raised as to who would remain as Captain America, Natalia stood up for Bucky and argued to convince him he was worthy of continuing the legacy of Captain America. Steve agreed, as he had other matters weighing on him since his return, and he supported James in wielding the shield and retaining the identity of Captain America. [Captain America: Reborn: Who Will Wield the Shield?]
When Rikki Barnes arrived from the Heroes Reborn universe, her first instinct was to seek out the new Captain America to talk about her own Steve Rogers, whom she lost as well. Natasha spotted Rikki shadowing them and discouraged her from interfering with James, who certainly knew better than to ask for a kid sidekick. Still, Black Widow covertly encouraged Rikki by providing her with an anonymous new costume and equipment as Nomad, honoring Cap’s legacy in a different way. [Nomad: Girl Without a World #1-4] After Steve Rogers returned and pressed for Rikki to retire and live a normal life, Natasha privately defended Nomad’s choice to live her own life as a hero. [Captain America (1st series) #609-610] Because of her aloof demeanor, Nomad thought Black Widow disdained her, so she was surprised when Natasha recruited her to infiltrate a doomsday cult and extract an informant. They were captured, but Rikki managed to escape custody by breaking her own thumbs. She was struck by a bio-weapon defeating their captors, and Natasha cared for the girl until she got an antidote. It was only after this mission that Rikki learned (indirectly) that Black Widow was responsible for her Nomad gear and had the greatest respect for her and her abilities. [Captain America (1st series) #611-614]
One morning, Natasha’s cover identity as “Ms. Heck” was undermined when Maria Hill painted a black widow on her front door to get her attention. Maria had been AWOL since being fired by Osborn along with Tony Stark when he took over. Both of them were named “persons of interest” and became fugitives from H.A.M.M.E.R. when Stark refused to turn over the Initiative’s database of secret identities. Maria worked with Tony in his plan to wipe his own bio-technologically enhanced mind (the only existing storage for the database), and he sent her to Texas to recover a particular drive from a Stark subsidiary and bring it to Captain America.
Maria’s mind was rattled when she encountered the Controller in Texas, and she wasn’t operating as the cool, rational agent Natasha was familiar with. She initially wanted nothing to do with Maria Hill, but eventually agreed to set up a meet between Maria and Cap. Her own curiosity about the Stark drive led her to reach out to one of her contacts, however, and that criminal technologist 
ratted her out to H.A.M.M.E.R. Maria and Natasha were captured before Captain America showed at the meet and held as collateral at Avengers Tower. They were rescued by Pepper Potts, who was also working with Tony, and the three women in turn escaped H.A.M.M.E.R. with the drive. Through the efforts of Pepper, Maria, Cap, Thor and Rhodey, Tony Stark’s body and mind were rebooted and he returned to action as Iron Man. [Invincible Iron Man (1st series) #14-22]
With the downfall of Norman Osborn, the resurrected Steve Rogers was given command of the Initiative and he ushered the heroes out of their darker days. While Bucky remained as Captain America, Steve was still active in the field. He and Sharon Carter wanted Black Widow for their team, but Natasha was interested in more traditional spy work than super-heroics at the moment. She took a job for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service to secure an assassination device codenamed “Tiny Dancer” from the arms dealer Sarkis Sakal. The exchange was meant to take place at the ballet in Moscow, bringing back memories for Natalia (even if they were false memories). As she observed Sakal, however, Natasha realized the weapon exchanging hands was actually the teenaged girl at his side, Tatiana. Seeing a lot of herself in Tatiana, Natasha extracted the teenager and expected to explain to the S.I.S. how Sakal was trafficking in a human being, not a weapon. When she got to the meeting, though, Black Widow determined the S.I.S. had been expecting a human weapon all along and didn’t share the intelligence with her. Natasha finally remembered why she left the spy trade in the first place. She reached out to Steve Rogers and accepted his job offer, in exchange for getting “Tiny Dancer” to safety rather than using her as a tool. [Enter the Heroic Age #1]
Black Widow joined Rogers and several other operatives as a covert branch of Secret Avengers, running ops until a functioning version of S.H.I.E.L.D. could be reformed out of the ashes of H.A.M.M.E.R. They developed a running feud with a secret organization known as the Shadow Council, who worshipped a malevolence known as the Abyss. The Secret Avengers sought to 
prevent the crowns of the Darkest Children of the Abyss from being released on Mars, and later opposed the resurrection of Shang-Chi’s illustrious father when the Shadow Council attempted to forge an alliance with the ancient crime lord. Among the Shadow Council’s chief operatives was Max Fury, a rogue S.H.I.E.L.D. LMD of Nick Fury who had gained sentience and his own mission in life. [Secret Avengers (1st series) #1-10]
One evening, Natalia was out having dinner with James when she received an envelope containing a black rose and ribbon. These were personal symbols of her stillborn child and lost lover Nikolai from the war, showing somebody had an intimate knowledge of Natalia’s most private thoughts. As far as the Black Widow was aware, everybody who knew about her lost child was dead. Unnerved by the implication, Natalia reached out to her contacts in the spy world but found no answers. She was assaulted on the street by an individual answering to “Sumi” and 
injected with a paralytic agent. Sumi was even more informed that Natasha had feared, as he quickly performed surgery on the helpless spy in the middle of the street, removing a tiny data drive implanted in her stomach years earlier. This drive was the Black Widow’s ultimate failsafe, containing wirelessly updated information on all her fellow heroes in case they ever went rogue or she needed to bring them down.
Black Widow’s body was discovered and brought to the hospital before she bled out from the wound on her stomach, but this only furthered her torture as Sumi intended. The hospital could not anesthetize her without knowing what knocked her out in the first place, and so they 
performed their surgery while Natasha was still seemingly unconscious from the original drug. The Black Widow was awake through the entire procedure, experiencing the pain of invasive surgery without any outlet to cry out. As the drug wore off too soon thanks to her enhanced constitution, she ended up needing to keep herself still by force of will alone until the surgery was complete. [Black Widow (4th series) #1]
As she recovered, a former H.A.M.M.E.R. operative explained to Iron Man, Hawkeye and Captain America that “sources” within the intelligence community had reported Black Widow was selling their secrets to the highest bidder. As if to emphasize the point, Stark got a call that Pepper Potts had been shot, and the operative pointed out the Widow’s files said an attack on Pepper was the best way to get to him. Natasha sensed the danger she was in and escaped from the hospital before she could be taken into custody, despite her need to recuperate. She was holed up in a safehouse before news hit the air that she was now a wanted woman, with allegations of treason and a million-dollar reward on her head. [Black Widow (4th series) #2]
In London, Black Widow tracked down the son of the man who invented her data drive. Ned inherited his late father’s business files and knack for engineering, and Natasha expected Ned hadn’t been as discreet as his sire. Ned had been hired by Sumi for his knowledge of cybernetics, and the mystery man had a preserved human brain he was also looking for a way to access. Sumi 
showed interest in Natasha’s drive when he learned about it. Before Black Widow could learn more about what Ned did for Sumi, Sumi himself arrived with assassins to kill Ned and taunt Natasha. Ned died, and the Black Widow discovered “Sumi” was an artificial robot body which the real planner animated from a distance. As the robot Sumi deactivated, he taunted Natasha one more time to “follow the rose.” [Black Widow (4th series) #3]
On the way to check on her daughter’s grave in Slovakia, Black Widow identified Lady Bullseye as the assassin who shot at Pepper Potts and reached out to her. Natasha wanted to know more about Sumi, and Maki’s confidence and curiosity led her to get too close. Before Lady Bullseye even approached her, Black Widow had already scratched the assassin unseen with a paralytic drug. The drug took effect just in time for an interrogation. Maki knew little about Sumi, but he 
expected Natasha to get the better of her and planted a thumb drive on his operative. As Lady Bullseye slowly lost the ability to speak, the Black Widow calmly explained how she would appear dead to anyone who examined her, long enough for Maki to be buried deep in an unmarked grave Natasha had planned for this eventuality. And if the Black Widow ever chose to show mercy and dig her up, it would be with confidence that Lady Bullseye had learned her lesson about going after the people Natasha cared about.
Bucky caught up with her on the train ride, but Natalia told him this was something she needed to complete alone. Still, she asked him for a favor and he complied. Out in the woods of Slovakia, Natasha reconnected with the family of the midwife who delivered her child. That woman was long passed and her daughter was now a grandmother, but they remembered Natalia well. After confirming they were safe and also knew nothing about Sumi, Natasha traveled on to Germany where she decrypted Sumi’s drive. She learned it contained memories from the preserved brain of 
Ivan Petrovich, somehow recovered and tapped for knowledge after his death as a cyborg. She also learned the identity of Sumi – Imus Champion, the brilliant financier she once brought down and then promptly forgot about. Imus’ ego nursed a grudge, and he eventually found the means of coming after her. At an outdoor café, Black Widow stabbed his gloating cyborg avatar before Captain America and the American authorities arrived to take her into custody. [Black Widow (4th series) #4]
Natasha was turned over to Imus Champion’s pet H.A.M.M.E.R. operative for enhanced interrogation. The operative hoped to break Natasha with threats of prosecution, but she escaped her manacles and quickly turned the tables on him and “Sumi.” Under pressure, the operative admitted he and others still loyal to Norman Osborn set her up in exchange for new weapons technology Champion promised them. Thanks to a sub-dermal voice recorder in her palm, 
Natasha had his confession, and with it the means to clear her name. Furthermore, Black Widow told Sumi that her drive’s files had always carried a computer virus with them if copied, which she activated days ago, leaving them and any system they were transferred into irrevocably corrupted. This meant the Sumi cyborgs as well, as Imus was forced out of his avatar when its software started to implode.
After touching base with Logan and Bucky about restoring her reputation, Black Widow pursued Imus Champion’s real body to his home in California. As they fought, Natasha located Ivan’s brain and smashed its case to finally let her old mentor rest in peace. Imus continued to provoke her, and Black Widow was on the verge of killing him when she finally read the situation. She realized Champion wanted to die. His living body had a terminal disease, but his mind could live on in the 
Sumi avatars. Champion lacked the will to kill himself, so his entire plot was an effort to get revenge on Natasha and trick her into doing it for him. Instead of killing him, Natasha destroyed him cybernetic technology and forced Imus Champion to go on living as himself. Natalia watched through binoculars as her anonymous tip led to Lady Bullseye’s grave being exhumed and, after burying her daughter’s rose one more time, she too chose to go on living. [Black Widow (4th series) #5]