Winter's Soulmate | Winter Soldier ✔

Chapter Two

~Winter's POV~

Soulmate. Soul. Mate.

I had one.

They lied to me.

All of them. They all lied.

I wasn't meant to know, of course.

I had seen that man again, the blonde one who always seemed to throw me off course, and I had slowed down. The mission was still completed, but the leading commanders didn't care... I had stopped because of that man, and they wanted to cleanse me again.

I didn't remember about my previous cleanses until I saw that man.

I was strapped to a table on wheels, and abandoned in the hall outside, waiting for the room to be prepared when I heard it for the first time.

I had a soulmate.

I forgot about my soulmate after that cleanse. And then I saw the man again.

I heard the commanders talking about me. The blonde man was a distraction, but at least I hadn't met her... She was still a mystery to me, but they knew she would be a problem.

I was let out one evening, on a training exercise with new recruits, when we saw them. The team who were against us. The blonde man was the leader, a proud looking man living by the name of Steve Rogers. I still didn't know who he was.

There was a kid with them. Not exactly a child, but young enough that he stood out against the others. He was on a phone, and I could hear her. A gentle laugh sounding through the speaker by his ear.

And I knew.

I tried not to be cleansed again. I stuck to the plans; go in, kill, get out. I was doing well, and they were none the wiser on my knowledge of my soulmate.

I didn't know her name. I didn't need to.

Until they threatened to cleanse me again. Just in case, they said. Just in case I began to remember. Remember what, exactly, I wasn't sure, but I knew I didn't want to forget her. I had to find her. I had to keep her safe.

So I fought. And they knew. It wasn't just about that man any more, it was about her.

I forgot.

For about a year, I was none the wiser about her existence. She continued to live, exist freely in the world without my knowledge.

I was almost the same as I used to be.

But there was something different. A quiet ache in my chest. A dull, empty hole which needed to be filled with something; a something I couldn't pin point.

The so called carers within the HYDRA base picked up on my failing interest in the jobs. I was disinterested, putting less effort in... they knew.

Then I heard her name. I didn't need them to specify it was my soulmate - I knew by the sound of the name itself.

Amelie Parker.

It was a similar situation to the last time. I was bound to a bed, waiting for them to cleanse me. And I heard them.

She was a distraction. I was no longer loyal to the group of assassins I led, as my loyalty had strayed to the unknown woman I shared a soul bond with. They assumed I'd met her, but I hadn't. I didn't need to.

They wanted to kill her.

I was frantic, but I knew I couldn't let them know.

They wanted to kill her.

The bond was too strong for me, although I had a feeling she wasn't as attached as I was. She wouldn't know of my existence. My entire being was a heightened, scrambled mess of emotions and hormones, scattered in the wrong directions from too many years of damage they had inflicted on me.