#me trying to connect a new fave to an old fave

Consider: years ago, Okoye is on a mission outside Wakanda, and a young Black Widow agent crosses her path. She’s heard of the Red Room, is disgusted by it and its mockery of service to country. A nation that must turn its little girls into soulless dolls to ensure their loyalty is a nation that has nothing worth fighting for.

This particular doll isn’t directly interfering with her mission, and it’s not worth her time to kill a broken white girl that isn’t threatening Wakandan interests. But she thinks it never hurts to send a reminder to the Red Room: stay in your lane. Okoye leaves the girl roughed up and bound, but as she walks away, she knows there’s power in another message too, so she says, “where I come from, we choose who we will be.”

The agent has heard of the Dora Milaje, has been warned to avoid contact. She never expected to survive an encounter. As baffled as she is to still be breathing, she pushes the woman’s strange words to the back of her mind, escapes her bounds, and turns her focus on completing her mission and the consequences if she doesn’t. But a seed is planted, and when an archer spares her life and a man with an eye-patch holds out his hand to her, Natalia Romanova finds herself ready to make a choice about who she will be.