Nightingale | An Avengers Tale

Flashback

It had been several months since Lily had left the Hydra base to visit the Triskelion. Since then, her days had consisted of awakening far too early in the morning to train with Buckyaroo under the watchful eyes of the very grumpy Brock Rumlow.

Rumlow had begun referring to himself as her handler. Lily wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but she did know that he suddenly acted like he could tell her what to do all the time. Which naturally made her new favorite pastime doing everything in her power to annoy him as much as possible. She had quickly learned that didn't take much effort on her part.

"Did I tell you to stop?"

Lily jumped at the sound of Rumlow yelling at her. She glanced over at the man in annoyance as she refused to continue reading the History of S.H.I.E.L.D. book he had assigned her. "I'm tired." She whined. "Why can't we do something fun?"

"Look kid." He sternly began.

"I want to read Harry Potter again." She began to plead. "It's more interesting than this trash." She motioned to the thick book. "I'm tired of reading about a bunch of dead people. " She groaned at the thought. Peggy Carter. Daniel Sousa. Jack Thompson. Rosalie Collins. All of them were a bunch of old dead people. And if any of them were still alive it couldn't be by a lot.

At least wizards lived for hundreds of years. And in her five year old mind, reading about Professor Mcgonagell was way more exciting then reading about Peggy Carter.

"How will Harry Potter help you on the field?" Rumlow flatly responded. He was such a killjoy.

"But what if I'm a witch?" Lily began. "Knowing magic would be helpful." She flashed a huge smile at his scowling face.

"I'll make you a deal." Garrett loudly exclaimed as he ambled into his office which was now doubling as a classroom. "When you get your Hogwarts letter you can read Harry Potter as much as you want."

Lily rolled her eyes at both men. "Stupid Slytherin." She mumbled under her breath as she glared at Garrett. "That won't happen until I turn eleven."

"Careful Princess." Garrett began to chide her. "The hat may just sort you there."

"I'm a Gryffindor." She proudly exclaimed.

"And how you do know that?" He questioned as he dropped his black duffel bag down on the floor.

"I went on Mr. Rumlow's computer and took the test." She slowly began as she glanced down at her feet.

"I have a password on that." Rumlow began to argue.

"I got around it." Lily shrugged as she plopped down on the floor. "He needs to get more games." She paused. "The only fun one was the game about sending people coal for Christmas." She smirked. "I put so many people on that list."

She smiled to herself as she considered what she had done. That dumb Project Insight. Grant had told her all about it. He had said that was S.H.I.E.L.D's special mission to help Santa know who was on the Naughty or Nice list. It had only taken her a few days to hack her way into that system, but it was completely worth it.

She had added so many people to the naughty list; she had also taken quite a few people off that list. It had taken a while, but she had figured out how to alter the algorithm to make it look as if all the people who were supposed to get coal were still on the naughty list. When in all honesty, the only people who were actually getting coal were the people who had annoyed her.  It was the perfect prank. She'd show Rumlow that he should be nice to her. The look on his face when he got a lump of coal would be absolutely priceless.

Garrett ignored her as he turned to address Rumlow. "Brock, pack your things. You're being reassigned effective immediately."

Rumlow happily nodded. "Who's getting stuck with babysitting." He motioned to Lily who was now intrigued with a small bug she had found on the floor.