Chapter Text
Life is a tapestry woven with fleeting moments — laughter that echoes like tinkling wind chimes, tears that carve rivers into the soul, and the briefest flashes of love and loss. Some moments are wisps, barely grazing the canvas of our existence, while others etch themselves into the very fabric of our life stories, shaping the essence of every individual.
Moments, brief or lasting, guide us through life and make us who we are. And yet, it takes mere minutes, if not seconds, for a single moment to forever change the trajectory of our existence. It just takes one spur of the moment decision and your life will never be the same.
My life in this case.
The event that shaped the trajectory of my life was, undoubtedly, meeting the Winter Soldier: a man with the saddest eyes, dirty, wet hair plastered to his forehead, bleeding out in my shed. Every sane person would probably run for the hills, but oh no, not me, Hazel McMillan Stark. Oh no, I ran towards him, with a med kit in my hands, silently praying for two things: me surviving an encounter with the most notorious assassin ever and him surviving a very unprofessional bullet removal surgery performed by a Languages & History student who hates the sight of blood.
And the rest is history. Literally.