NO GOOD DEED || S. REID

1.5

FOUR MONTHS LATER. It had taken all of four months for Katharine and her team to fully infiltrate and take down a major HYDRA operation in Northern Ireland.

Now Katharine wouldn't lie, she'd miss Ireland and all the beautiful wonders it had to offer, but she missed her bed back in America a little bit more. So when she had been given the go-ahead and all clear, she found herself sitting through a seven-hour non-stop flight back to Washington DC.

When she landed, she contemplated calling Nina to come and pick her up but ultimately decided against it. If Nina were to discover that she was back in the states, she'd be forced to go to a bar or something rather than be allowed home. So she called a cab instead, nearly falling asleep during the short ride from the airport to her apartment, and almost forgetting to pay her fare due to the fact that she was extremely sleep deprived.

Not even five hours into her nap, Katharine was woken by her cellular device ringing obnoxiously loud. She reached over and slapped her hand onto her nightstand in search of her phone. When she finally found it, she pressed it to her ear and mumbled a sleepy, "Hello?"

"Agent Morgan," Kathrine shot up in her bed, hastily attempting to wake herself up, "Did I wake you?"

Katharine stumbled out of bed, looking around frantically for her pants. If Agent Coulson was calling her direct line, she was sure it was because she wanted something. And she felt weird talking to a superior officer without having pants on, even if it was over the phone.

"N-No," she stammered, finding her pants on the opposite end of the room. She pulled on the article of clothing, struggling to find her balance. She slammed a hand against her door frame and used the structure of her apartment to prevent what could have been a nasty fall.

Coulson must have heard her struggle from the other side because his next question was if she was okay, to which Katharine replied, "Fine and dandy, Agent. What can I do for you?"

"No need to call me Agent, Morgan. We've known each other long enough to drop the niceties," Coulson spoke. "I have a mission, a simple information extraction. It shouldn't take too long, a quick in and out at best."

Katharine weighed her options. She could either, a) accept this mission and be on a plane within the next thirty minutes, or b) say no thank you and go back to sleep.

"I'll be there in thirty," she responded, her inner workaholic craving to be back out on the field again. It was a drug, she would admit, but it wasn't one she'd be willing to kick anytime soon.

Coulson hung up the phone, satisfied with her answer.

Katharine sighed, looking around her messy and unkempt apartment. A person would think the place would be spotless after a few months of unuse, but this was untrue. She spotted her go-bag on the floor by her bedroom door. The clothes that had been in it beforehand were strewn around the place like a drunk person had been the one to pack it in the first place, and the rest of the items that used to be inside the bag were now outside the bag, messily placed in groups on her desk.

Her eyes flickered to her mirror and she was greeted by someone that resembled more rat than a person. Her hair was everywhere, no doubt accumulating knots and tangles by the second. Her outfit looked like it had gotten in a fight with her sheets, her shirt was now missing a button and was wrinkled to hell. The only put together part of her outfit was her pants, which she had struggled to get back on in the first place.

Katharine's eyes drifted to the top left corner of her mirror where she had stuck a photograph of her and Nina. The two were laughing in the photo, Katharine had on a kevlar vest and Nina wore a floor-length ball gown. The two looked so out of place next to each other but at the same time, they just fit.