Prologue
He watches as the girl laughs with her friends. Her smile as brights as the sunshine she sits in. Her long hair shimmers like sparkly thread, fluttering in the wind. His lip twitches when she laughs so hard that she rolls about in the grass. She was beautiful to look at, pure and innocent. How she was the daughter of a man so evil he didn't know. He didn't know a lot, didn't remember a lot. But every time he was woken, he remembered her. The first time he had seen her she was nineteen, now she was twenty-two. A woman living with her father, a man so repulsive that the soldier wanted to watch him burn.
He turns away from the girl and her friends. She lived in the light and he, he was a creature of darkness. Tainted, polluted, a blight that needed to end. With a last look at eyes that shined with life, he heads away. Back to his shadows, back to her father, the man who kept him in the dark, used him for dark deeds. His life was misery, he hadn't known any better. Not until her, not until he saw that smile and those eyes. He always remembered those eyes.
Temperance had seen him watching from the shadows, he often did. A sad look etched into his pale face. It never bothered her that he looked for solace in her happiness, that he searched her out to see her smile. She had seen his lips twitch, how he held back a normal reaction so easily. And it broke her heart, his blue eyes were beautiful and he deserved a beautiful smile to go with it. But it never happened, he always walked away before letting himself feel something.
She had often wondered about him in the beginning, her father telling her to keep away form his associate. She didn't believe for one second he was a business man or anything remotely close to it. He held an air of danger, like he could snap at a moments notice. There was an edge of darkness about him that drew her in, she had looked for him many times, but never found him. Even though he lived in her house, he was never around when she wanted him to be. He always turned up when she least expected, when she was sad or happy. Like he lived through her emotions, used them to keep something. She couldn't say what, but let him have those moments. If they helped ease the shadows away, he could have them all.
***
Temperance had joined Shield willingly, after her fathers downfall she had let them take her. She had known nothing of his nefarious ways, a man so twisted, she didn't want to know. They had helped her come to terms with the fact her father was a madman. To her he had been kind and caring even as he was a little distant, but now she knew why. He had plans to destroy the world as she knew it, using anything within his means to do it.
When she had been taken, they questioned her about everything. Including about a cryochamber, she knew nothing about that. But she heard whispers about a soldier and when she joined Shields ranks she heard more. He was a ghost story, a dark fairy tale only to be whispered about. Most didn't believe in him, she knew better. Along with a few others who had encounters with him. Nat included. But he had already been gone when Shield had invaded her house. Now she understood why she could never find him, never thinking to look in the basement of her house.
And now Shield was compromised, she was on the run with Steve and Nat. Helping where she could, she had helped read the datastick Fury had given to Steve. And driven them both to the army base to find out what was going on. And then it had exploded, Steve climbing out of the rubble with Nat in his arms.
"Is she okay?" she asks worriedly.
"Yeah, just a bump to the head. Tempy can you get us here" Steve hands his phone over with directions.
"Yeah, I know some backways so we won't be seen" he nods and wraps Nat in his coat.
The drive wasn't long, the three of them looked ragged as they stood at Steve's friends door. His face a mask of surprise as he lets them in.
That was the start of her journey, the start of finding him. She didn't know then, how many times she would find him and lose him. How many times it would break her heart, how many times he would break her heart. But he held her captive from the very first time she had seen him watching, held her heart and emotions in those bright blue eyes. She would give it all, lose it all for him. The ageless soldier.
