Chapter Text
The first rule of the hunt was that you were never supposed to love it. The second was that you were never supposed to hate it, either. You were supposed to be a tool, a finely honed instrument of death wielded by the guild, as cold and unfeeling as the silver daggers they placed in your hands before you’d even lost all your baby teeth.
You broke the first rule before you were old enough to understand it, and the second the night you killed your first vampire.
You couldn’t remember a life before the guild. Your parents were a hazy photograph, a ghost story told in hushed tones by the elders. They were hunters, too, and their deaths were a cautionary tale—a sad but common occupational hazard. You’d been found, small and terrified in the wreckage of their deaths, and taken in.
The guild became your family, your world, your religion. They raised you on a steady diet of survival, killing, and the intricate dance of poisons and potions. They taught you about the things that lurked in the dark, the pure evil that had no right to exist.
And above all, you focused on vampires.
It was a vampire that had torn your family apart, a fact that was seared into your soul. While other monsters—werewolves, ghouls, and the like—were still abominations, vampires were an affront to life itself. They were walking corpses, their skin chilled to the touch, the scent of death clinging to them like a shroud. They were the servants of the night you were born to destroy.
Your first kill came at sixteen. It wasn't a clean affair, but it was yours nonetheless. A lesser vampire, young and arrogant, had made the mistake of thinking you were just another foolish child. The other hunters felt the rage roll off you in waves as you launched yourself from a rooftop, your silver-plated dagger sinking deep into the space between its shoulder and neck.
It wasn’t a killing blow, but it would hurt like a bitch.
The creature threw you off with inhuman force, but you were up before you’d even fully hit the ground, a silver bullet from your pistol tearing into its chest. Another wound meant to maim and punish. Then you were on it, your hand-whittled stake clutched in a white-knuckled grip as you tackled it to the ground.
“How’s it feel to be killed by a human, you vile creature?” You’d snarled, before driving the stake home.
The surprising warmth of its blood splashed over your hands, a stark contrast to the icy cold of its skin. Just as the last bits of the creature’s pitiful existence faded, a cold chill crept up the back of your neck. You whipped your head around, only to find a cloaked figure watching you from afar. And then it was gone, like it had never been there.
But you knew you’d seen it.
That night, you earned a reputation. It wasn't for the kill, but for the sheer, unadulterated fury you’d channeled. The blood speckled on your face and chest, the wild look in your eyes. It was also the first time you’d felt such raw power, from yourself and from that figure.
It had been a shadow in your periphery, filled with a suffocating cold that promised an ancient and terrible power. There’d only been one tale of something existing like that: the oldest, cruelest vampire known to man. No one had ever seen his face. He was always cloaked, always untouchable.
After that incident, other hunters, especially the girls, started giving you a wide berth. No one wanted to spar with the girl who fought like she enjoyed bringing pain and death—regardless of it being used against the creatures they all hunted. Your skills began to dull, your edge softening with disuse.
Until Clint Barton arrived—an ex-marine with a wry smile and eyes that saw straight through the walls you’d built around yourself. He took you aside, not with pity, but with a grudging respect. He wasn't a large man, but he was all coiled muscle and unyielding strength. He became your sparring partner and your teacher. He showed you how to handle every firearm the guild possessed, how to throw a knife with deadly precision, how to twist and turn your way out of any hold. He was the one who helped you live.
He was like the father you’d never gotten the chance to know. He wasn’t the one who'd given you life, but he was the one who'd helped you live.
A couple of years later, you found a witch tangled in the claws of a newly turned vampire. You didn’t know she was a witch when you hauled her back to the guild, just a woman in desperate need of saving. Wanda Maximoff. After a tense vote, she was allowed to stay, becoming the guild’s healer and potions apprentice.
It was she who discovered her ability to sense supernatural energy, a unique signature for every species, with the oldest and most powerful radiating an even more potent aura. You became friends, and you roped her into your hunts, using her gift to try and get a lock on the one signature you craved above all others: Winter’s Eternal Soldier. It was a stupid, melodramatic name, but it was the name of the creature that had defined your entire existence as a hunter.
And you were the one who would end it.