"You don't ask the easy questions, do you?" Again, Natasha considers not answering. With someone else—someone human, someone who hadn't clearly been trained to be a weapon and changed to forward that purpose—she wouldn't have answered. She would have deflected and moved on.

But Alex is here along. The fact she's asking these questions says a lot about who she is and what she's been through. And whatever stories she spins, Natasha doesn't doubt there's a connection between her and Russia.

So after another pause, she starts a story. "I was born in Stalingrad the year before the war broke out." At Natasha's age, where she's from, there's only one war that could mean. "By the time it ended, I didn't have anyone left. The KGB got me out of an orphanage an off the street. If things had gone just a little differently, if I hadn't attracted attention and been recruited first by the KGB and then Red Room, I would have died a long time ago."

She licks her lips. This is more exposed than she likes being.

"I learned a long time before I was changed not to regret the things I did to stay alive, or the things I didn't have a choice in. there's only so much energy you can put into something like that, and regret doesn't change anything that happens. I want to get off that track. I'm trying to take the wheel and do better, but there's a difference between that and regret"