Chapter I

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by annabethers

by annabethers

10:58 pm. Manhattan was bustling despite the late hour. I sprinted down the busy streets, my converse landing heavily on the cement, slowing only at crosswalks for the cars and taxis who didn't seem to care that I was in a hurry. Pedestrians and buildings and kiosks blurred together as I finally turned down my street. I stopped briefly to catch my breath before entering my building, and then dashed to the fourth floor. As I slowed to a stop in front of 427B, I pulled out my phone to again check the time. 11:01. My heart was pounding. I was late.

Before I could even get my key into the lock, the door was pulled open from the inside and I proceeded to stumble forward. "You're late."

I placed my key in my coat pocket along with my phone and slowly looked up into my uncle's face with a forced smile. My uncle was tall and incredibly muscular. He really was a great guy - very caring, especially regarding my situation and his being my legal guardian. On the other hand, he is not a very fun person to be around if you make him angry, and hell, did I make him just that. "I'm sorry, I was jus-"

"Violette Marie," he said sternly. Okay, yeah, he was using my middle name. I definitely made him angry. "We've been over this before. Your curfew is 11. Not a second later. With everything that has been going on recently I absolutely cannot have you running around the streets this late. It just isn't safe. Okay?" I nodded. I knew he was only trying to help, to keep me safe, but I had lived in this city nearly my whole life, and now that I was sixteen I would have thought that he could trust me to go out on my own. But as usual, I was wrong. He sighed and stepped backwards, letting me into the apartment. "There's pizza in the fridge, don't stay up too late. Nat will be here early tomorrow morning to pick us up."

"Goodnight, Clint."

"Night, Violette."

I waited for my uncle to shut his bedroom door before releasing a heavy breath. I kicked my sneakers off by the door, hung up my jacket, and proceeded to grab a slice of pizza from the fridge. Not bothering to heat it up, I headed into my bedroom, shutting the door behind me. I switched on the light and flung myself onto my bed beside the window and glanced down at the still bustling streets below. Manhattan was beautiful. Not in the way you might have seen in photographs, but if you looked closely, you could see small things. The flowerbeds outside apartment windows, the smiles of tourists seeing a skyscraper for the first time, the street performers, well, street performing. Every little bit of this beautiful city made me wish that I was able to experience it the way that so many other people had. But unfortunately, I was different.

My father was not a good man. I never knew my mother. When I was one, my father simply decided that he didn't want to have to take care of his daughter anymore and dropped me off at his brother's house upstate. Shortly thereafter, my uncle Clint decided that it was best to find a small place in the city in order to be closer to his job. He still had the house upstate, of course, where his wife Laura lived with their two kids, Cooper and Lila. Clint went through many job changes, but the two of us stayed in the same apartment in the city, a space I had grown to love. I grew up here, sometimes on my own when he went back upstate for a few weeks at a time. Clint has a stable job now, and a very good one at that.

I was still in high school. I had some friends, but mostly acquaintances, and mostly just my best friend Isla, who was very smart and very nice and helped me with my studies because I never really had the time to do them all by myself. She was also very pretty and lots of boys liked her, but she put her studies, and mine for that matter, before any of that. I had to put my job before anything else.

Again, I was different. My job was very much unlike any of those of my classmates, like a cashier or a dog walker or a fast food worker. I was in the family business.

I was an A.I.T. An Agent-In-Training.

I worked for The Avengers Initiative. I worked for S.H.I.E.L.D.