Scarred (Nate)

[AUDREY ANNABELLE APPLEBY]

The mission seemed quite simple enough. Get in, complete the objective, and get out. All this while not getting caught or dying in the enemies’ hands. It should have been a routine mission, but it went wrong. All wrong and now there was one less member of the CIA.

Audrey sat quietly on her cot in the medical bay after the doctors attended to her wounds. She had a couple of cuts, a lot of scrapes, and quite a few bruises. A nasty gash graced her forehead and down the left side of her head. That one required the most medical attention and the doctors had to stitch her up. She reached her hand up and gingerly traced along the raised bump, counting the stitches, but loosing track after a couple dozen.

She brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. She clasped her hands around her forearms, digging her fingers into the skin a bit to give her hands something to do. She took deep breaths as the numbness that she felt back in the orphanage slowly came over her. One of them was gone. Dead. That made Audrey shudder as she squeezed her eyes shut.

They somehow tripped the security system that they were almost positive they switched off. Triple A ran down the hallway, trying to remember which one of these doors was the way to safety. She heard the gunshot and looked over at her shoulder and down at the lifeless body on the floor. She stopped in her tracks and froze. Her partner was dead. Triple A wasn’t thinking as she grabbed the gun from her holster, turned around, and fired at the gunman. Usually, she would pull out her knives, but she wasn’t thinking. Once the gunman was dead on the floor, she looked down at the body of her partner. She stood there in disbelief until she snapped out of her trance and quickly took down one of the hallways. Or maybe one of her other partners yanked her down the hall and that’s when she broke her trance. She couldn’t remember. She wished it was just a horrible dream.

She opened her eyes again as tears pooled up in her eyes. Pressing her trembling lips together, she tried to hold back the sob caught in her throat threatening to escape. Her partner was dead, just like her parents. Yet, she couldn’t help but feel that bullet was meant for her. Was she supposed to be dead? She brought a hand up to her eyes and furiously swiped at her tears as one or two escaped.

[NATHANIEL ALEXANDER DUNNE]

I'M COMING HOME TELL THE WORLD I'M COMING HOME LET THE RAIN WASH AWAY ALL THE
PAIN OF YESTERDAY I KNOW MY KINGDOM AWAITS AND THEY'VE

Nate was all beaten up. His arm was in a sling, and he had stitches on a gash on his leg, as well as bandages on his torso, and one set of butterfly band aids on his forehead. He was sure that the doctors had been exaggerating when they'd said he should be in a lot more pain. More like, they were giving him a bottle of pills and telling him not to get dependent. He'd popped too, and felt glad that after a few minutes his vision hadn't been skewed or anything of the sort. The CIA had a funny way of giving it's agents all the means they needed to get dependent on painkillers, but most of them never did. Lucky for the higher ups, he thought, and smothered a snort. He was holding back on thinking about the op that had gone so very wrong. He didn't want to think about the man that they'd lost, he didn't want to think that that kid was just a few years younger than him, and he certainly didn't want to think of all the ways he could stop it.

So he'd push it to the back of his mind and think about it another time, write about it like his therapist made him write about everything else. Not only would he have to go to his therapist after this a bit more regularly, she'd probably also make him do a bit more than he usually did, maybe talk about what happened in greater detail than he needed to in his debriefing. She was horrible like that. He looked over and spotted Audrey - his third and only other partner on the op - and spotted her wiping at her cheeks. He took a deep breath. He'd been the one that had found Audrey, seen the body, and then grabbed her and pulled her away from the scene. Their third man was dead, but that didn't mean they had to die, too. And so he'd managed to get them out of there, but after that, everything was a hazy blur. Protective mechanism of the mind, the doctors had explained, but he hadn't paid much attention to what they'd been saying, either. Even though he valued their words most of the time, he didn't exactly find what they had to say at that exact moment pressing enough to gather his attention. "Audrey ..." Nate murmured, before shaking his head. "It wasn't your fault, you know. We did everything we could. Things just went wrong, and that was that. It's a good thing we even got out of there." He said, hoping that he could try to make her feel even remotely better.

T A G G E D ? ! audrey!
W O R D C O U N T ? ! four sixty six
M U S E ? ! maybe he was afraid of you enough to work? xD
N O T E S ? ! so hype for this thread omg
C R E D I T ? ! graphic credit goes to v-va-vanessa of caution two point oh. lyric credit goes to diddy with the song coming home.

[AUDREY ANNABELLE APPLEBY]

Audrey looked down at the tears on her fingers before she heard her name. She looked over to see her third partner, Nate, talking to her. He looked even worse than she did. His arm was in a sling and he had stitches on his leg. She couldn’t remember how he got those injuries, unless he was away from her, but she thought they were together the entire time. She couldn’t remember now. It was becoming one giant blur. She just closed her eyes as she shook her head.

“I know… but it didn’t just go wrong,” she whispered as she opened her eyes and looked at him. “Going wrong is when the gun doesn’t fire or when the target doesn’t show.” She took a deep, shaky breath as she felt that sob caught in her throat try even harder to escape before she whispered, “He died, Nate. Died.” She hugged her knees tighter to her chest. That was bugging her the most since they managed to escape. Her third partner died. She squeezed her eyes shut as she unwrapped her arms from around her legs and pushed her hair back out of her face with both hands. She kept her hands in her hair as she rested her elbows on her knees, supporting her head somewhat. “He was only a couple months older than me…” she whispered as she scrunched her face up as a couple more tears streaked down his face. “He’s only a couple months older than me and he’s dead.” Something else was haunting the back of her mind, but she didn’t dare admit it to her partner. She was supposed to be dead and with her parents right now, not here with Nate trying to comfort her over what happened. That was the gunman’s plan, right?

She quickly straightened up as she brought her hands out of her hair and brought her knees down so she was sitting on her bed once more. She looked down at her hands and started ripping, tearing at her fingernails, deciding there was too much dirt underneath them, and that they needed to be shorter. There was one fact that just kept bugging her and she couldn’t figure it out. She looked over at him as she continued making her fingernails shorter. “We did turn it off, did we?” she asked him softly before she took a break to wipe the tears from her eyes. “We turned the security system off… then why did we trip it? Did we do it wrong?” She couldn’t help but believe that. That’s why the operation got botched. They didn’t turn it off completely and then they tripped it. And because of that, one of their partners was dead.

[NATHANIEL ALEXANDER DUNNE]

I'M COMING HOME TELL THE WORLD I'M COMING HOME LET THE RAIN WASH AWAY ALL THE
PAIN OF YESTERDAY I KNOW MY KINGDOM AWAITS AND THEY'VE

Nate shook his head as Audrey kept talking. She wasn't helping herself by putting herself through the wringer. She wasn't helping herself deal with the fact that maybe now wasn't the best time to think about it. She'd get time to heal, physically, and maybe then she could work on her mind. He didn't know what was going to happen to him, what with the way his father pushed him and would probably let him return to active duty before he was ready, CIA physical probably barely passed. But Audrey didn't have it like that. "Horribly wrong, then." He corrected himself softly. He was upset, too. He just couldn't bring himself to deal in front of someone else, especially when she was hurting right this very second, and he had the ability to push away his own pain, even in a very dysfunctional manner it came in handy at times like these. He was someone that hated seeing people in pain, even if he didn't know them well. He and Audrey had worked together before, and now after this, he felt like they were on the same playing field. They'd been through the same horrible experience, they'd both lost a partner ... there was something to be said for the fact that one of the three of them had died but the two of them had made it here, and were alive, even if they were beaten down and couldn't honestly remember every detail of the op just because everything had gone so downhill. Not that he thought either one of them wanted to be able to action replay it in their minds - as if their nightmares needed help providing vivid imagery.

"Do you think we're any better off?" He asked, running a hand through his hair, and then wincing at the movement. That pulled way too many things, and he put his hand back down in his lap, forcing himself not to move too much. "We're the ones that have to live with it on our shoulders, the ones that get to go to the funeral and think about what we could've done to save him or what we did wrong and how we can improve and why it had to happen on our op," he said. He knew it sounded selfish, but it was true. Their partner had been wiped from existence, but they were the ones that had to live with that death on their conscious, and losing someone due to something that you did wasn't something that ever went away. It waited in the back of your mind to kick you when you were already down, that he knew. "I don't know, he was the one to dismantle it ... he was too smart not to do it right," Nate said with a shake of his head.

T A G G E D ? ! audrey!
W O R D C O U N T ? ! four eighty five
M U S E ? ! my brain is so /dead/ rn and so is nate
N O T E S ? ! so sorry for the long wait
C R E D I T ? ! graphic credit goes to v-va-vanessa of caution two point oh. lyric credit goes to diddy with the song coming home.

[AUDREY ANNABELLE APPLEBY]

Horribly wrong. That was one way to describe how the mission went. Along with botched and screwed up. Nate was trying his best, she could tell, to comfort her about everything that happened. Usually, deaths were something that Audrey could handle. She blocked them off in a separate part of her mind. Bad guys were supposed to die. That’s how she didn’t break down like this before. But she never had someone die close to her age before either.

She stopped tearing at her nails, leaving them at rugged edges as she looked over at Nate as he went on his rant. Were they better off? Every point he made was valid. They were the ones that got screwed over. They had to deal with his death, his funeral, and his memory. Audrey sighed as she pushed her hair out of her face. Despite every valid point he was making, it was not helping with this guilt she was feeling boil in her stomach. “So you think we were better off dead?” she whispered. She knew that bullet was meant for her. He just got in the way.

Suddenly, everything got too much for her. She needed to move. She couldn’t just sit still anymore, despite what the doctors told her. She got up and crossed her arms across her chest as she walked over to the window on the far side of the room. She looked outside thinking that she shouldn’t have gotten this chance to see the view. He should of and she was supposed to be with her parents. That would make things simpler, right? She pushed her hair back and out of her face, trying to avoid the stitches that ran across her face. “I should be dead,” she whispered, barely audible that she wasn’t sure that Nate heard or not. “That bullet was meant for me.” She hugged herself tighter as she closed her eyes and a couple more tears streaked down her face.

Then he said it and it just ticked Audrey off. She opened her eyes as she spun around to look at him. “Then why did we trip it?” she asked, needing to know the answer. “He turned it off and it should’ve stayed off. If they realized it was off, we would have been surrounded before we tripped it.” She took a deep breath as she shook her head. This mission added to the collection of botched missions she’d been on recently. “It’s like someone or fate doesn’t want us to succeed,” she said as she reached up to wipe her tears off her face.

[NATHANIEL ALEXANDER DUNNE]

I'M COMING HOME TELL THE WORLD I'M COMING HOME LET THE RAIN WASH AWAY ALL THE
PAIN OF YESTERDAY I KNOW MY KINGDOM AWAITS AND THEY'VE

"That's not what I said," Nate said with a shake of his head. But wasn't that what he meant? Their partner wasn't here anymore. That meant that he didn't have to deal with the CIA or their ops or anything anymore. He was wherever dead people/souls/whatever went. Nate wasn't religious by any means, but he knew that wherever he was, he sure wasn't on this earth, in this life anymore, and that had to be a good thing on some level, right? They still had to get over the fact that their partner had died, mourn him and the fact that they couldn't do their jobs well enough to save someone else's life. That was their job, wasn't it? Get the bad guys. Protect life as they knew it. Do jobs that other people didn't even dream about, because they got to be regular, everyday people that went to work at banks or grocery stores or schools, and do simpler tasks. They got to sleep well at night because of the CIA, because of them. That was what they were told ever since entering the agency. That they were doing the right thing, helping people, protecting people, putting bad guys behind bars, even if regular civilians didn't know they even existed.

He heard her mutter something, but he didn't hear what she said. He raised an eyebrow, looking at her, though her back was turned. She shouldn't be on her feet, but he wouldn't say anything. She was just as stubborn as anyone else in the CIA, and would do what she wanted, regardless of what he had to say. When she snapped at him, however, he couldn't help but snap back. "I don't know," he said. "I don't have all the answers. I don't have any more answers than you do. We're in the same boat here, Audrey, and I don't know what to tell you." He said. He was trying to be a comfort, and he knew that things were hard, but things were hard for both of them. When she said it was like fate, he shrugged, and then winced. Ow. He stayed quiet. He didn't know what else to say, really. They messed up. Big time. He didn't know how, and he didn't know why, but things had gone wrong. It was over now. It was in the past. They couldn't do anything to fix it. He had to keep thinking that way, or all of the what ifs that were surely swarming around in Audrey's mind like bees around flowers would slowly eat him alive.

T A G G E D ? ! audrey!
W O R D C O U N T ? ! four fifty seven
M U S E ? ! not here leave a message after the beep
N O T E S ? ! finally posting here, sorry for the wait!
C R E D I T ? ! graphic credit goes to v-va-vanessa of caution two point oh. lyric credit goes to diddy with the song coming home.

[AUDREY ANNABELLE APPLEBY]

That’s not what I said. Audrey knew he didn’t mean it, but she couldn’t help with the different interpretations of that simple rant Nate went on. Maybe they were better off dead. That they didn’t have to worry about the scars and wounds not visible seen by the doctors. If only Audrey took that bullet instead of him… Audrey wasn’t close to many people like her partner, so her taking the bullet wouldn’t have left so many behind wounded. But no, she had to be the selfish one and have him die.

She leaned towards the window and rested her forehead against the glass. She couldn’t be thinking like this and she couldn’t afford thinking like this. Once the CIA found out, she would be in therapy talking to a therapist about her emotions and crap. They couldn’t afford to lose an agent because of some mental stuff she had floating around in her head. She had been able to hold out this long, why couldn’t she hold out a little longer?

Audrey sighed as she reached up to push her hair back out of her face. She was getting a headache from all this thinking. The doctors said she had a possible chance of a concussion because of the gash on her head. Maybe she did. Maybe she didn’t. Wasn’t she supposed to have memory loss or get severely nauseous before it was just considered one? Then again, she couldn’t remember when she got it. It was sometime after she saw her partner dead and before they got rescued.

When Nate snapped back at her, Audrey flinched. She didn’t like his words at all or the way he said them. However, she completely deserved every one of them. She sighed as she shook her head. “Sorry,” she muttered as she finally walked over to her cot to plop down on it. She leaned back and stared at the ceiling. But he kept running through her mind and she just couldn’t stop. He was supposed to be alive and she was supposed to be dead. But no. Someone screwed up. She screwed it up. She had to live. “This sucks,” she said with a loud sigh as she continued looking at the ceiling. “This is the suckiest boat I’ve ever been on. Can I get a refund?” She smirked at her attempt at humor, but she wasn’t sure how well it did for the situation.

[NATHANIEL ALEXANDER DUNNE]

I'M COMING HOME TELL THE WORLD I'M COMING HOME LET THE RAIN WASH AWAY ALL THE
PAIN OF YESTERDAY I KNOW MY KINGDOM AWAITS AND THEY'VE

He wasn't looking forward to talking to his therapist about any of this. He hated talking to his therapist all together, really. He had him do the stupidest things, when Nate was completely capable of handling things on his own. Sure, he worked for the CIA, his relationship was in the toilet, his girlfriend would probably break up with him soon, his father paid absolutely no attention to him, and he felt like there was a hole in his chest that was progressively getting bigger day by day, but those were all normal people problems, right? Okay, well most of them were, and that was enough for him. He'd work through this, he'd work through everything, on his own. His mind was simple, he just had to figure out a way to deal with it. If anything, he didn't need to talk to someone that would psychoanalyze him and tell him what to do. Instead, he needed someone that would just listen to what he had to say and how he was feeling. He was truly a simple person, and that's all he wanted, really - someone that could give him some attention. Simple attention. Nothing that required effort or hardship or - maybe that was too much to ask for, though. He wasn't overly close to anyone, and he knew that everyone that he wasn't close to was busy, and he'd never been the type to ask for things that weren't a necessity. And even then, he had trouble asking for them. His father hadn't raised him with the ability to ask for anything.

When she said that she wanted a refund, he let out a choked laugh. "I think this is a point of no return type of boat. At least we haven't been thrown overboard yet? That's something." He didn't know why he was continuing on with the boat metaphor, but why not? He was tired, injured, and in pain, he was allowed to use weird metaphors that he would never be able to make sense of except for in this moment. But he knew Audrey would get what he meant. She'd probably even appreciate his attempt at making this moment normal. He knew he appreciated hers'. He didn't want to think about anything right now, nothing except getting better. He didn't know how long he could go around injured, and he didn't like the thought of being left to his own devices for too long.

T A G G E D ? ! audrey!
W O R D C O U N T ? ! four twenty four
M U S E ? ! entering the wardrobe to go to narnia
N O T E S ? ! poor them >.<'
C R E D I T ? ! graphic credit goes to v-va-vanessa of caution two point oh. lyric credit goes to diddy with the song coming home.

[AUDREY ANNABELLE APPLEBY]

Audrey couldn’t help but chuckle to herself as Nate decided to play along with her humor. It was somewhat of a relief for her. She needed something to keep her sanity and humor seemed to be it for now. It kept her mind off of the fact that she was supposed to be dead or whatever and not her partner. “Oh darn,” she said as she sat up slightly and propped herself up on her elbows as she looked at him. This simple act caused a bit of pain and discomfort as she discovered that both of her elbows were bruised. When did that happen? “If I knew this was a point of no return type of boat, then I wouldn’t have boarded. However, how could you resist? They had cookies.” She smiled to herself as she pushed herself off her elbows and sat up straighter. She raised an eyebrow at Nate, even though it hurt from the stitches on her forehead. “And everyone knows you can’t resist the cookies. It defies all laws of nature.”

She looked around the room, but found nothing of interest. It was just a sterile, white room that would not be out of place at a hospital. However, this wasn’t the hospital; it was just the medical bay full of sick and or wounded agents. That wouldn’t be a typical scene in a hospital. “And good thing we didn’t get thrown over,” she said as she continued with the humor. She just needed something to hang onto for while the memory was still fresh. In a few days when it faded a little, maybe she would start sliding back on said humor. “And because of three reasons.” She held up her hand with three fingers like she was doing a Girl Scout oath. “One. I hate sharks. They scare the crap out of me that I can never watch shark week.” She put a finger down. “Two. I heard the water’s cold and I’m pretty sure I can’t swim.” Another finger down. “And three. I don’t look good in those lifejackets.” She put down her finger as a wide smile broke across her face. “And I doubt you could even pull those off. In fact, I don’t think nobody looks good in them except for… nobody.”

[NATHANIEL ALEXANDER DUNNE]

I'M COMING HOME TELL THE WORLD I'M COMING HOME LET THE RAIN WASH AWAY ALL THE
PAIN OF YESTERDAY I KNOW MY KINGDOM AWAITS AND THEY'VE

The boat metaphor lived on. He got that it got them both from thinking, and wasn't that what he'd intended in the first place? So he'd kind of gotten his wish. He wondered if she'd be okay, after this. He knew that the road to recovery wasn't a short one, and he knew that the CIA didn't respect the process. He knew that they treated them all like robots, and he knew that that wasn't healthy. However, he felt like she was going to be fine when she brought up cookies. They were still kids, right? They liked to pretend they were adults, mature and responsible and ready to handle anything, but really they were kids with outstanding qualities on their best days. They didn't live like them, or most of the time get to act like them, but they were being forced to grow up. They were being forced to handle ops like these where nothing went right and that was the end of it. It was a sort of sickening feeling, when he thought about it all in plain terms. So he didn't. He was banged up enough without his mind helping.

"No one can resist cookies, that's very true." Nate said, and quirked a half-smile. When she talked about being thrown overboard, he had to chuckle. He could agree with her on two of those things. He could swim, which was a good skill to have. His father had forced him to learn when he was younger, even though Nate really didn't like large bodies of water. He'd been thrown into the ocean, with his father sitting on the beach, with barely water wings clinging to his arms, and told to tread water. It'd been a traumatic experience, but at least he'd learned. "I hate sharks, but I can swim. Cold water is a big turn-off, though." When she mentioned the life jackets, he made a face. "You're right, no one can pull those off. It's the same color as 'prison uniform orange', which, according to my girlfriend, no one wears of their own free will." Nate didn't really like orange in the first place, but his fashion-conscious girlfriend would surely have his head if he tried to wear anything that she didn't approve of first.

T A G G E D ? ! audrey!
W O R D C O U N T ? ! four hundred
M U S E ? ! with thelma and louise over the grand canyon
N O T E S ? ! this boat metaphor has officially become long winded xD
C R E D I T ? ! graphic credit goes to v-va-vanessa of caution two point oh. lyric credit goes to diddy with the song coming home.

[AUDREY ANNABELLE APPLEBY]

Audrey couldn’t help but smirk a bit when Nate mentioned something about his girlfriend. “Thank goodness your girlfriend has enough fashion sense to agree. Orange is just a horrible color,” she said. She never met this girl that her partner was seeing, but she heard that she was a civilian which had the potential of being a bad thing. Audrey found out quite a few times the hard way that getting close to people only gave you potential with getting hurt. It happened with her parents and it now happened with her partner. That’s why she never had that many friends around her. She didn’t want something to happen to either them or her and then have the surviving party suffer. It was kind of ironic that she was scared of the concept of death and here she was working with an organization that worked with death constantly. Sometimes, it just hit a little closer to home like now. She took a couple of deep breaths as she shook her head. She wouldn’t allow herself to think like this, not now. She pushed it in the back of her brain dealing with it later when she was in a better shape, physically and mentally.

She let the ship sail, since it was almost getting a little too drawn out. At least it did its purpose of keeping her mind off of her partner’s death. But she had to face reality sooner or later, despite how much she hated to admit it. She leaned back onto her elbows and then lay on her back once more as she stared at the ceiling. They had ceiling tiles here, so she saw designs the little holes made. She couldn’t help but wonder if she could put up with this every time. It seemed like more and more of her missions kept getting botched. Were more missions going to end up this way? She really hoped they didn’t, because she wasn’t sure she was going to last that long before she finally cracked. The CIA would just have to add one more agent that needed therapy or something of the sorts.

“Do you regret it?” she suddenly spurted out as the idea crossed her mind. She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling completely ridiculous that came out of nowhere. “I mean… do you regret joining the CIA?” She knew that she was supposedly doing good, but she couldn’t help but wonder some days.

[NATHANIEL ALEXANDER DUNNE]

I'M COMING HOME TELL THE WORLD I'M COMING HOME LET THE RAIN WASH AWAY ALL THE
PAIN OF YESTERDAY I KNOW MY KINGDOM AWAITS AND THEY'VE

He smirked lopsidedly at her comment, but he couldn't help his thoughts being dragged back to Zaria. Sometimes, he wondered if he did the right thing. By dating her. Some people knew that she was a civilian, while others just knew of this girlfriend that he mentioned but they had never seen. He never gave away her identity, of course. He wanted to make sure that she was safe. He couldn't endanger her in anyway, because he cared too much to do that to her. Maybe it was stupid. Maybe he shouldn't be doing it. He couldn't honestly bring himself to detach himself from her, however. Even when they were having issues. Even when he was afraid of a break up. Even when he knew that he loved her more than he should, because he was nineteen and she was twenty two and they were a bit young for anything so serious. But he couldn't help it. He didn't wear his heart on his sleeve, not like this, but she was different. Thinking about her when he was in the building, with another agent, almost seemed wrong. It made him feel dirty. She didn't know. He would keep it from her as long as possible, really, because the less she knew the better. He'd never believed in 'ignorance is bliss' until he'd met Ari. Then, everything changed, and his ideas of right and wrong went a bit topsy-turvy, to make everything fit. But wasn't that life?

Audrey's blurted out question made him pause. Did he regret it? Everything about him screamed yes. Sometimes, he wished he could've had a boring old civilian life with Zaria, that they could've been a normal couple, that everything could've been so much simpler. Then, there were times that he didn't know if he could see himself doing anything else, because he didn't know anything else. "Audrey, before I answer your question, you have to understand something," he started cautiously. "I've been with the CIA for nearly thirteen years. I don't really know anything else. I don't remember anything else. My adoptive father is even an agent, but you don't know that." He stared at her forcefully for a minute, making sure that she got the fact that she couldn't tell anyone that. "Do I wish I could've gotten to live a simple, normal life? Yes. But who doesn't?" He sighed softly, careful not to hurt anything. "Then again, I don't really know what I would've done if I wasn't doing this. So I can't really say yes or no." He bit down on the inside of his cheek for a minute before asking her the same question. "Do you?"

T A G G E D ? ! audrey!
W O R D C O U N T ? ! four seventy three
M U S E ? ! visiting atlantic city
N O T E S ? ! he couldn't give a simple answer. poor triple a, lmao
C R E D I T ? ! graphic credit goes to v-va-vanessa of caution two point oh. lyric credit goes to diddy with the song coming home.

[AUDREY ANNABELLE APPLEBY]

Audrey widened her eyes and nodded her head when she got the hint. There were lots of secrets running around the CIA and this happened to be one of them. She could not help but feel a little bit honored that he was willing to divulge in that kind of information. But, then again, they did go through a traumatic experience together, even if the details were starting to get a bit fuzzy for her. But he trusted her to a point and she trusted him. He survived the incident with her and did not stab her in the back, which was a good thing for their professional relationship, right? But she could not help but feel a little bit jealous of him. At least he had family, even if it was adoptive which was better than nothing. Her family had to go and get themselves killed in a house fire since they were too cheap to buy smoke detectors. Those stupid things were the difference between her current life and a different life she could have had.

She sighed and glanced up at the ceiling as the question was turned on her. She stayed silent for a couple of seconds as she tried to work through her thoughts before she slowly sat up to look at him. “Some days I do,” she said slowly as she tried to keep her voice steady and even. Just the thought of this was working her up and making her all emotional. “I mean, whenever the mission goes wrong, I wish I was back in Indiana where I didn’t have to worry about things like that.” She pressed her lips together as she shrugged a bit. “And then I just miss Indiana in general. It’s a big change going from there to here. I mean, Indianapolis is a big city, but it’s nothing compared to New York.” She sighed as she pushed her hair out of her face, being extra careful around her stitches. “But then I have to remind myself that I’d be with whatever foster parents who decided to pity me and I’d be tormented and teased at school every day.” She didn’t admit it much, but it was one of the secret reasons she joined the CIA. The teasing and taunting were barely starting when she left, but she knew that it was going to get worse and worse if she stayed there. “And I’m doing good here than I would be in Indiana… because we’re the good guys, right? The government wouldn’t fund us if we weren’t.”