Heart Too Cold, but Friends of Gold*Captain America*Avengers*

Prologue - Just my luck

Happiness did not last. It was a known fact, it was clear as day. Yet, you had let yourself believe for a while.

When you opened the envelope, scolding yourself for your naivety was truly the first thing you did. Or rather the second thing, because the first instinct was to curse.

"Fuck."

Only then came the realization and the flash of anger aimed at yourself.

Happiness was not something to last. When did it ever in your life?

When you had been four years old, you had found the best friend for life or at least you had thought so. Her name had been Emma, she had owned the biggest collection of hair-bands and she hadn't minded sharing them with you.

Her family moved out from your neighbourhood before you turned six.

Few months after your first day at school – where you had loved it, finding a cheery boy with chubby cheeks and long-ish blond hair to sit with, immediately making friends with him and meeting his other friend, this time a girl again – you had started feeling dizzy and weak.

You had been diagnosed with a disease of incidence of 1: 100 000 000. Just your luck.

While the headmaster of your elementary school had been promising they would provide you with an individual studying plan, they hadn't. You had to switch schools and you had lost contact with your friends again.

By the time you turned thirteen, you had been to tens of doctors, but all they had been doing had been slowing down the progress of your disease almost insignificantly. You had been sleeping twelve hours a day, exhausted all the time. Any sort of sport had been out of question except walking – short walks, of course.

Your parents loved you nevertheless, even when you could tell that taking care of you, running from one doctor to another with zero results had been draining them. They had dealt with your puberty and depressing thoughts. You had never told them you had wanted to kill yourself and that the one time you had actually started gathering pills, you had flushed them down the toilet in the end.

What you had told them was when you had met a guy at your support group. Ian had been a really sweet guy who had been diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Ian had been your biggest love so far and the first serious relationship. You had been going through the hard times of therapy; together, since a new hope for your successful treatment had risen.

Ian had achieved a complete remission and his family had moved three states over to get a fresh start; it had been a heart-breaking goodbye. The goodbye fell even worse when not even two months later, the doctor leading your experimental treatment had gotten inappropriately handsy with his ten-year old son and went to jail, crushing your hopes completely.

You had been almost shocked when the alien invasion of New York hadn't taken your parents from you, considering your luck. It had been the opposite actually, at least you had thought so – there truly had been some kind of luck, because relatively shortly after the City of New York had got hit, a new doctor had appeared out of nowhere.

Of course you had say yes to the new treatment – maybe rather for your parents than yourself.

Once again, you had learned that happiness never lasted. The experiment had gotten out of the team's hands and it blew up to their faces. Or rather made their blood run cold. You had.

You dying to protect everyone you ever loved and who had stayed – that only being your parents at that point – had been necessary. You had said to yourself that it had been for the best, ending your parent's misery. After all, they still could have another child, or adopt at least. Cutting the ties had been the only option.