Don't Waste My Time

send me a symbol and i’ll tell you:

GIVE ME TWO CHARACTERS AND MY MUSE WILL TELL YOU WHICH THEY WOULD RATHER DATE.

“Rosie.”

Pax froze as the word left his lips, heart thumping a little harder than normal. There was an odd feeling in his gut - like it was all twisted, strangled, constricting. Because he hadn’t had to think about. Not once. Not even for a second.

What the fuck did that mean? 

.

.

.

A few moments later, and he decided it didn’t matter. Sometimes… Sometimes, people moved on. And somewhere, deep down, Pax knew that he’d understand - even if it shouldn’t have mattered if he didn’t.

“Always Rosie.”

“pax if you leave the house dressed like that I will never acknowledge you again”

“My apologies for not sooner offering,” Centossa said lighting the woman’s cigarette. “I’ve been occupied trying to figure you out, my dear. You must forgive me.”

Centossa clicked his tongue softly. He was amused by the woman’s claims.

“You wouldn’t have told me your scandalous story if you were indeed a foolish girl with a soldier fetish afraid to admit her faults,” Centossa smirked. “And hiding any type of microphone under clothes would never be anything a journalist would do in fear of losing information due to lack of clear sound.”

“No,” Xavier stepped towards the woman. “You’re not that simple. The heels are a sign of intimidation. You want to be feared and respected. I can see no fault in that. The dark lipstick is a sign of confidence. You aren’t afraid to do or say anything that others wouldn’t dare. Your shoulders are drawn back. It is the natural stance of someone who holds a leadership or high position. It makes them appear larger which is in turn more threatening. Each step you take is a stride. You have a goal in mind and nothing will stop you from meeting it.”

The agent brought the cigarette to his lips.

“You hold some sort of high position over this base,” he commented after breathing out the smoke. He smirked devilishly.

“As for the matter of my work, it’s highly classified. I work for the SIS in creating riot control weapons. I am credited with several inventions involving chemical warfare but, for my own safety and the safety of those I work with, all of that is classified. I can tell you that I’m here to present some new equipment.”

“Now I do love a tease...” Rose smirked, talking a nonchalant drag of the now lit cigarette, her head bowing in brief gratitude. She blew out a stream of smoke to her side, avoiding the stranger’s face out of courtesy. “Perhaps I am journalist who values sound quality above everything else and decided to leave her underwear at home?” She threw him a playful wink. “Perhaps x-ray vision is another one of your special skills, hmm?” 

She raised her eyebrows during his monologue, impressed to say the least with how he read her. It made for an astute, well thought out analysis to say the least, picking apart her character, or rather the side of her character that she chose to show at any least. It struck her as a thought process that was taught, rather than innate. One that spoke of someone who promised to be more than just the humble engineer he proclaimed to be, no matter how classified his work might be. 

“You hold yourself with more confidence than most engineers I’ve met. One might argue that the way you tried to analyse me might be the same as you pour over your test tubes and chemicals, but I’ll bet there’s more to it all than that.” She took another drag of her cigarette, surveying him with keen eyes. “A lot more, if I had to guess.” 

All of that paperwork pulled out for nothing. Casting a glance at the small mountain, her eyes cut back to Artemis, mouth a thin pink line. It wasn’t like it was much of a statement, but it really could have saved some time had exact intentions been laid out beforehand. Telling herself to let it go, that one day it could be as dramatic as she expected, she laid her hands flat against her desk, trying to come up with some sort of answer.

“She did not say much about it. As best I can tell, she got a wild hair to wander the base and found her way into my department. Thought some of the soldiers files were craigslist ads.” A pause. “She called me a burrito.” It was one of the little details from the whole event that stuck with her, that burrito line. It was apropos to nothing, save perhaps to add some depth or believability ot her version of events.

The Russian was not about to say anything about her own weakness, how the encounter left her dry-mouthed and close to heaving. Too much innuendo, too much impliance, too much lust hanging in the air had left the older woman choked. She would not share how she had flung herself backwards to the wall in an ill-born escape attempt – she knows the captain would claw her alive for even thinking of running away while there was an intruder in the pt.

Alright, so maybe it was not so bad to be lacking a security camera in times like that.

“A burrito?” Rose quirked an eyebrow at the statement, her voice incredulous. Although her voice had a pained and confused quality to it, Rose didn’t truly doubt Mayfair’s story. In her heart, albeit very cleverly buried of course, Rose knew Julia’s worth as an operative. She had no reason to lie to her, not over something like this anyway. In truth, the entire conversation was moot. Julia could throw herself to her knees and profess her own guilt and there was little Rose could do about it. With the civilian in question disappearing into what felt like thin air and no real hard evidence to prove what had or had not occurred in that intelligence room, Rose had precious little to go on aside from her own intuition. 

The humiliation of Shepherd’s stern words still stung her but the rage they had stirred upon Rose leaving his office had waned at least. Now her head was cooler, her emotions more in check. Pinching the bridge of her nose, Rose looked back to the other woman. “I’ll need a description of this civilian, as descriptive as you can manage if you please. If she steps foot in this base again, I will haul her insolent little arse into questioning personally.”

With her mind focused on conducting further business, Rose stepped towards Julia’s desk, pulling a chair up in front of it. She sat down delicately, her hands knotted across the desk. Expectant eyes rested on Julia.

[I’ve been meaning to pull together some of my general headcanons about Shadow Company into a post for ages, but like with everything it’s been a half formed idea in the back of my head. Even so, now I officially have three shadow company muses (Artemis, Ares and Quinn) I thought that was as good as an excuse as any to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard but you get my drift :P). As a disclaimer, these are my headcanons based on an incredibly vague portrayal in a video game, I’m not pretending they have to be canon for anyone else, they just so happen to be canon in my head.