Simon 'Ghost' Riley - The Spiders Web

11

The road to recovery had taken months. Six months out of action. It had been rough.

Without even realising she had reacted slightly violently to most of her medics, especially the first ones who had seen to her. It had taken sedation to allow the woman even close to her wounds and although it had been traumatic, Tina had been so thankful. It had been the first time she had been allowed rest, a break from it all.

The first month of her recovery had been a complete blur between all the sedation, all the people swarming her and trying to get out of her what had happened. But Tina would not talk.

Her hands had been the most difficult part to fix. After surgeries and physio she had managed to get most of her function back but it had been painful. Metal pins had been inserted into the third and fourth finger on her left, and the middle on her right, along with a plate at the base of that hand.

The skin healing over her back had taken agonisingly slow. Every movement she made no matter how small would reopen the scabs, pull at the stitches and staples.

Her vision was still a bit fuzzy around the edges from being kept in the pitch black so long. Bright lights gave her headaches and made them water after too long.

Her nose had been reset, though now had a permanent crookedness to it that she despised looking at in the mirror.

Her neck had small, rugged little slashes all the way around that quickly turned an angry pink. The thin skin had been glued and in some deeper places where the barbs had dug too far under, stitched. They soon turned an angry deep red colour, which would then turn pale and white.

Her hands were covered in scarred markings, nearly warping the entire backs of her hands and winding in sharp, jagged lines along her fingers and knuckles. In the deeper places, the flatness of her skin was actually altered, some bits of it dipping as though the wound was still there. From her wrists to her fingers, the scars were ruthless and messy, deeper in colour in some places.

Tina did not care about the visuals of the scars on her body; she had accumulated tons in their line of work, and some before she even joined the military that she never enjoyed thinking about. Now, her body was covered in angry ones that were hard to dismiss. And she didn't care what she looked like.

It was the memories and emotions it brought her when she gazed down at them that fucked her up.

After eight months of recovery that was nothing more than rocky, to say the least, Tina had been granted the permission to get back on the field.

And she had been grateful. Because the recovery and the idiots trying to get her to talk about it all because it would make her feel better, it would make it all easier to process - she wasn't sure how much she could take of it. It was its own unique form of torture.

And although she had had contact with Captain Price, she hadn't had much with the rest of her team. She hadn't seen them since they had found her. And even then she only remembered fragments.

But she wanted to hear their voices because it had been all she craved during her time locked up. She wanted the friendly banter back, the poker games late at night when none of them could sleep, the thrill of working together in the middle of the field. She needed the old routine back, to feel normal again, not like she was some science specimen for doctors and psychologists to gawk at and question.

She wanted her team back.