WE HAVE NO IDENTITY HERE, NOT FOR US.

[wolfintheherd]

This is what Grant Ward remembers.

He remembers agent 33, Kara. SHIELD agent level nine. It's enough that he could put a gun to the head of an enterprising hacker and make him find out enough about her to hold over her head. To help her find strengths and weaknesses. She's not level nine anymore, she's expired and neither of them are good people. Budapest, Sudan, hell there were protege moments with people that John Garrett despised.

Here's what he doesn't remember. John Garrett's face.

The good, the bad, the ugly, the desperate. It fades. It all fades. He remembers the name, he knows there are confusing feelings associated with it, but he can't remember his face.

Face, faces there's agent 33 and that's her face that's important here. Popping three vicodin pills he resisted the urge to embrace satisfaction over how his body was performing. He had to compartmentalize it and not share it with the woman going under the knife today. Zemo's doctors were working on her.

They had been for several hours.

He leaned against the window, arms crossed over his chest just in time to watch her buck against the bed frame. The doctors worked rapidly, yelling at each other in German before he pressed a gloved hand against the glass just in time for a nurse to slide a curtain over it.

minutes passed before a nervous man appeared in the doorway, ringing his hands.

"She's stable sir, we're going to attack it again tomorrow. There was...a complication."

"What kind of a complication?"

"It's ... in short the agents used have fused to her skin. We can take the time to detach it but it will take several surgeries."

He'd expected something like that he supposed (had he?) This was payment for her skill and his, for his...burden and hers. For taking Zemo's men and training them to be something better. It was easier to think about that, to think tactics and military and..." Hell I could probably perform the surgery if I'd been watching closer.

"I'll see her."

It's easier to live in the now. That's what Grant Ward knows. Sitting beside his partner's bed, attention divided between the television and her bed, watching the monitors and her bandaged face.

Comments

[facemyenemy]

[they said it would be simple. they said she’d be out for all of it, that she wouldn’t feel a thing.]

[The burning started to wake her though, and the jolt she felt, mask to face shocked her, making her wake more in the process. Wake more to pain and burning, electric jolts running from her face through her body. At first she didn’t know where she was. It felt like drowning. She bucked, started to swing, started to gasp and was unable to realize where she was at until it was too late.]

[They sedated her yet again. She was out like a light once more.]

[When she woke up again, her face was bandaged, which felt stifling. There was a TV on, and a presence beside her. She mentally ran through where her weapons were and realized she was disarmed. Not tied down though. There was a IV in her arm though. It made her hand twitch.]

[Then she realized that her face was bound, one eye covered. There was a sudden panicked intake of air, gasping for breath and she moved, hands coming up as if to try and rip the bandages off.]

Get them off me! Get them off! [her voice was rough, and it was clear she was freaking out a bit. It was also clear that she was still drugged to stay calm, because her fighting this made her real tired, real fast.]