Chapter Text
Clippers buzzed next to her head and she unclenched her jaw as auburn clumps fell to the floor.
They had numbed her for the stitches despite her protests. The nurse leveled a flat look at her before continuing putting in neat rows of stitches. Her scalp itched at the tugging sensation and she balled her fists.
Stupid. A stupid mistake. It wasn't even a big deal, but head wounds bleed and need to be kept clean.
Now she was going to walk around with a sign on the side of her head telling the world how she fucked up.
The nurse finished up and pat her shoulder. A mirror was placed in her hands and she saw her tired face staring back at her. Tilting the mirror, her eyes traced the raw pink slice that ran from just behind her temple past her ear and down the back of her skull.
It was an angry thing, uneven and vivid, but better than it had been hours before. Apparently a screaming, blood covered demon was enough to scare the Covies into a corner. Still her armor had been a mess and the techs had seemed skittish as they helped her out of her kit.
The face looking back at her was blank. She raised an eye and felt a slight tug. Turning again she looked at the scar and the shaved stripe. The nurse who had done the stitches had offered to even her hair out and she had numbly agreed.
Sarah Palmer was not vain. She hadn't put much thought into her hair. Now the back and side of her head were exposed to the cool air and the remaining strands were tied back away from the fresh wound.
It was...something. Different.
She sat quietly through the instructions on how to keep it clean and when to come back, chewing over this new thing. She had plenty of scars, the blamite round in her left shoulder, hardlight blade on her right bicep, bullet wounds and plasma rounds having left their marks on her. She'd been born into this war and it had made her its own.
She sits there and looks. Makes faces and bares her teeth.
Huh.
This might be something.