Ohhhhhhhhhh, gotcha. I just tend to go with actual!brainwashing and comics!brainwashing - so, to clarify, I don't think Natasha has ever been comic!brainwashed, but she's absolutely been actual!brainwashed, in a number of ways.

Yeah, I tend to have Clint at eight years older than her, and my Natasha got out of the Red Room when she was twenty-one. She didn't join SHIELD until she was twenty-nine - IMO, that gives her enough time to stick herself somewhat back together again and to develop a reputation as an assassin who didn't care who she worked for (that phrasing made me think she got her reputation while freelancing, because if she was still Red Room, she'd have the Red Room holding her leash).

And, yes, I didn't explain myself very well (note to self: stop posting after midnight, you make no sense). Of course Communism itself is still around, but the USSR collapsing...it was the Soviet block that Natasha was raised to defend, in my take on her and the Red Room, and now it's disintegrated, and being taken over by the worst form of capitalist excess and essentially controlled by the maffiya. The Red Room can play with that as they go a bit rogue, and I absolutely seeing them as essentially going rogue. And I don't think Natasha ever quite recovers from the idealistic shock of her purpose just....collapsing on her.

:P I have...several fics planned on where the girls are friends! (admittedly, one of them is "Natasha and another one of the girls go on a revenge kick to avenge one of the other girls whom they broke out with", which is the hunt for Natasha, so it's all Clint's POV, but oops) I just make puppy-eyes at the rest of fandom.

*nodnods* that makes sense! I'm just a...I like knowing the world, somewhat, before I go out and play. Different styles for different authors, and all of that :)

Oh yes, she's definitely had her brain played with.

I like your ages explaination :) Although since we don't actually know I've had fun reading all the different fics putting her at different ages. I seem to be able to hold two Natashas in my head at the moment - one who left the Red Room and joined SHIELD straight after somewhere between 15-18, not a kid because of what they've done to her but still a kid in so many ways, and another, more self-assured Natasha who left the Red Room and went her own way before being recruited by SHIELD.

I suspose it depends on the 'purpose' the Red Room has given her. If it's to follow the Red Room, then the fact that the objectives of the Red Room and the state of it change in the face of the collapse of the USSR would be a big deal, but not as much as if the 'purpose' she's been given is the communist ideals/objective of the Red Room. If that makes sense? It's the fact that she says she tends not to weep over regime changes. Also, if a self-assured Natasha didn't care who she worked for after she left the Red Room...I don't know, maybe the Red Room cracking after the collapse of the USSR would mean she'd have no one to follow and therefore wouldn't care, if her purpose was to follow the Room and not the objectives of the Room... *is thinky and possible incoherent*

I will look forward to reading those :D

That's what makes it fun :)