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technically brilliant, remarkably calm; ( they can’t spot what you really are. )

independent shaw from person of interest, written by kelly ( they / them, 25+, gmt+10 ). shaw is a former government operative turned vigilante, and the best damn sociopath ever written into existence. she works to prevent violent crimes from happening based on information from an artificial intelligence.

affiliated as hell with @herinterface​.

private & mutuals only & plot-based. personals please do not interact.    

carrd.       memes.       headcanons.       other half. mutuals, like this post and i’ll approach you to start an interaction!

@ceremonicls / maria said: "the world is run on secrets."

Okay– so it might not be strictly protocol or even regular human courtesy in a conversation, but you just can't help the deep sigh that comes out of you.

Your expression speaks for you, but just so you're clear:

❝That's not an answer.❞

It's not that you aren't familiar with the levels of secrecy and red tape around here, or that you weren't already expecting some form of evasiveness to your line of questioning, it's just—- can't a girl get a straight answer for once?

But you're not getting one today, and you're sure she didn't call you up without knowing your file back to front. Thing is, you don't really need the finer details of the job you're doing– you're used to going in blind; and that's why you're here pretending you care about the reruns they play on Half Price Wednesday at the movies.

❝So, let me get this straight: I follow the target but don't get close, and I'll know when I see what you're hopin' to find.❞

Pretty sure you sound incredulous enough.

she blended in effortlessly into her surroundings,      softened         &       commercially packaged for the five pm crowd dwelling around them.         she reached the top shelf without needing to lift herself from the ground,       pulling the box of macaroni toward herself      &      hiding the condescending smile that hitched at her lips once shaw finally started to catch on.       if their survival didn’t impinge on their fooling Samaritan of their budding romance she would be enjoying the way shaw’s entire body was resisting this charade like a rejected organ transplant a lot more.

her smirk started taking full shape as an inch of that burden on her tensed shoulders lifted.       “  atta girl, ”    she murmured like an breath she didn’t know she was holding,    relief expelling with it.        she avoided eye contact with shaw as she placed the box into the basket    &    set her worry aside in favour of a flushed   &    flustered smile typical for these sorts of admissions. 

then she was onto the rest of the items on her imaginary list ,     walking past shaw down the aisle      &      turning her head with an eagerly edging smile    &    words that struggled to form around their giddiness,    “  —   well,   i promise-   you won’t regret it.    it’s  actually an old family recipe of mine.   ”   

once she rounded the aisle      &      effortlessly avoided the traffic of the post work shopping carts,   the smile threatening her cheekbones fell into more of a pout,    slowing her step for shaw’s sake.        now that they were out of eye   &   earshot she could speak a little more candidly with her acting partner,      “  you know  i always thought you’d have a little more experience in the dating arena under your belt,   sameen.    ”    

All those weird late night text messages are starting to make sense now. Your thoughts are racing, but the one thing your brain keeps going back to is how –apparently– that “old family recipe” she’s talking up so much is mac and cheese. Seriously. Like it’s not already hard enough for you to hide how much you want to walk out and leave and not have to play crushing teenagers for this stupid cover of hers.

But you still play your part, following along ( at least you’re hoping this all comes across as lovestruck dumbness ).

You feel the shift in tone like a tenseness crawling up your spine. You know a dig when you hear one. ( Funny how everyone thinks you’re so unfeeling it’s scary, but all you want to do is threaten her with bodily harm. ) If it wasn’t too risky to even think of dropping the act. 

You shrug. 

❝I’m not really many people’s type.❞

You glare at the floor. Maybe being flagged and killed by an AI isn’t worse than this. But you have to.

❝—That’s why I’m glad we met.❞

@herinterface​ sent: [ stroke ] — sender strokes receiver’s hair as they cuddle in bed

You can’t explain it: there’s something about having a body pressed against your back —warm and soft and firm all at once— that makes you feel like you’re not in an unending battle anymore. —Not just any body, but hers; you know the sound of her breaths and the shape of her ribcage and the measure of her grip blindfolded, drugged, or thrown off by a thousand simulations. Focusing on all that... you could almost call it certainty. 

The sigh leaves your chest before you even know it’s there. 

You muscles unwind, and you think you can actually close your eyes without the prickling feeling crawling up your back that’s bare and turned to the room. 

You don’t know what it is about her that makes your body stand down when you’ve been at war for months, or why feeling her hand in your hair convinces you that it’s just you and her, alone— no one watching you under a microscope. What you know is that coming back this compromised may have been a mistake you’d never have made before, but somehow, trusting yourself has become less important than making sure she makes it out of this alive. You know, from experience, that that’s something you can definitely do.

You feel the fabric of her shirt shift against your back, and you know she’s thinking about something, but you don’t move away and she doesn’t ask. The details aren’t important now. Seems like she agrees. 

she’d lurked in the corner of the room,        feeling the clean light of her five-star surroundings clarifying the angles of her face        (      &     she suddenly wished it were much darker in here    —- despite always being perfectly comfortable working in broad daylight,    in plain sight.   ) 

she’d slipped inside the hotel room with the master key card she had stolen from the front desk on her way in,        shaw already two floors down by the time she set foot inside.           she’d made nice with some CEO downstairs for plausible deniability later while shaw was busy gift wrapping her new friend,           her slowly edging smile sorely mistaken for something flirtatious as he eyed the expanse of skin along her bare shoulders.       lucky for him he wasn’t worth her time let alone a drop of the chemical arsenal she’d brought along with her tonight.

she’d been staring ahead at nothing when she suddenly heard shaw’s voice filter in through her right ear instead of Hers,       she tried to douse the sudden rise of devotion coming up her throat like an sickness.              she unfurled her crossed arms,            “  you shouldn’t have,    ”          she murmured as she finally looked over the woman whose skin she was supposed to slip into—-     she felt a new life calling to her like a deprived breath of air      &       then she was taking up space in front of the bound woman.        but instead of paying her a second glance she simply pressed a smile onto her mouth as she carefully lifted her purse into her hands,            nudging through all of the puzzle pieces of her life she would take for herself.      

a sheen of concentration washed over her features as she continued to peruse her new props,     “       i hope you don’t mind,     i just need to borrow a few things so i can start to undo this mess you helped create.    —    including your name.   ”        was she just oblivious or perfectly aware about the part she was playing  ?     it didn’t really matter.       &     she didn’t give the life she was stealing a second thought as she begun digitally assigning the woman a new identity using her own phone that she’d pulled from her purse,       standing not two feet from her as she sounded against the gag.        

“   &   since I can’t have you interfering,    i’ve booked you in for a nice break at the nearest hospital.     nine-one-one are going to come pick you up in the morning,    ”      still,     barely a glance was given her way as she embedded the syringe into her neck,     her less than comforting smile the last thing she would see before her month long coma      (   —   not that she’d remember any of this,        the concoction she’d brewed up especially for her would make sure of that.  )     but it could be worse—- she’d get her identity back once she was finished with it.        

she took that moment to finally respond back to the woman waiting on a reply,     breathing out as she took her time capping her needle    &    lifting her new purse,    leaving her own behind,         “   not yet,    but I’m on my way down.     we should leave so I can start erasing the feeds.    ”     s he’d rather spend half a day cracking this encryption in some dingy diner than spend more than five minutes pulling it from the source itself,      dirtying her hands with the spill fragile parts that made up a life.         the heat that would sing through her when it was just her   &     human mind     &    a body to manipulate had been absent as of late—-    maybe she was just getting bored.

The skin at the back of your neck prickles. Something’s- off, you just can’t put your finger on what. 

❝—Already? Wasn’t the whole point of this —❞ farce of a romantic encounter ❝-thing to get intel from our guy?❞ 

Even you know that these kinds of systems need keys to be able to get past. It’s the type of thing you tie up your target and settle in for the night to question them for, because it’s a lot less work than sitting in front of a screen playing code breaker— ...or maybe you shouldn’t have believed her too much when she’s that high from listening to someone else’s screams. 

Either way, it’s not adding up. She doesn’t tend to hurry about these things, and you don’t see a pressing reason to rush. Plus, if you had known how quick this was going to be, you probably wouldn’t have spent so much time making sure everyone around you knew that the two of you were going to be busy for a long time. It’s not like you find it fun to work while she’s giving you... actually, you don’t even want to know what that look means. And also-- not your fault. She should take it up with the machine if she doesn’t want to be there to see you do what it told you to do.

If you didn’t know better, you’d say this was all on purpose. But you’re not sure even it knows how she’d react to-  you  being provoked on any given day. 

❝I’ll meet you at the security office.❞

Must be something else you’re here to help her with. 

You’re still not seeing the full picture here. Now might a good time for her to read you in. 

( You don’t usually need to prompt conversation. -—You didn’t. )

her grip remained on the shopping basket tying the two of them together,    her smile the only thing visible to the camera she could feel blinking over her shoulder. 

“   –  just  trying to help pick a few things up for dinner,   actually.     since  i’ll be the one doing the cooking  tonight,   ”   &   while her voice teetered on the edge of light    &   playful,      something in the corners of her eyes conveyed that she was cruising miles ahead on a freight train,     waiting as shaw attempted to catch up. her hand fell onto shaw’s arm,       keeping them wedged in close contact    &   out of the camera’s prying eyes   (   thanks to the way shaw was seething beneath her   )—-      “   i’ll explain later,   sameen,   ”   she intoned under her breath,    her mouth still brushing her cheek.           her hand sliding higher as it took in the shape of the tensed muscles beneath her shirt was all It would be able to see.        &   then she was stepping away,        using the moment to heft the basket into her arms     &     out of shaw’s reach.          she begun surveying the selection on the shelves with her searching gaze      &    rising chin    before throwing the disbelieving amusement of someone making an absurd realisation in their own mind over at shaw,     “   unless-–    you  haven’t   changed your mind   about finally having me over,    have you,   sam  ?   ”     &    while there was a vague reference to hurt lurking in the surface of her gaze,    her expectantly raised eyebrows were a signal for shaw to play along. 

You take a long breath. ( Not that it helps. )

—And have to release it right away. Could even be misinterpreted as a laugh, to someone who doesn’t know you. Thought you heard her say she was going to cook, which shows exactly how far this unhinged fever dream of a scenario has gone. 

But whatever you were planning to say doesn’t make it out because your senses are suddenly all on alert, and it’s nothing to do with the way she’s pressing up against you. 

If there’s one thing you know, it’s when to follow orders. 

And you ( unfortunately ) know her well enough to recognise that tone. Despite whatever this crazy cover story of hers is, apparently, 

❝We’re supposed to know each other.❞

( Bit slow on the draw, but in your defense, the kinds of surprises she springs on you tend to be of the shoot quick variety. )

❝I mean—- no-- I haven’t. You’re, uh, welcome to come over for dinner. At my place.❞

You must look like a deer in the headlights. There’s a reason you never did any long-term undercover work, okay?

@herinterface said: "what are you doing here?"

❝I—❞

don't know. Why are you making rounds around the one-block radius of the safehouse at four am in the rain?

You shake the question off and push past her and try to get back to your pace, because you knew exactly what you were up to before she interrupted you. You're lucky too— she hasn't said anything since you grabbed her hand to force her along. Good. You needed the break. You need the quiet to retrace your train of thought.

But her behind you doesn't help the feeling of being watched. You feel her wide-eyed stare on you. You feel the glare of every street light burning into your back, making your skin crawl, making the scar at the back of your ear itch. You can practically hear the high-pitched whining of the information it's sending back to its source, louder and louder as it cross-checks all the frames of you to everything they know about you ( and they know everything about you )

There's nowhere to hide, nowhere that's safe, and- yeah, she's looking at you with that stricken look the same way she did when... --doesn't matter what was going on, anyway. You know that look. You know what it means. Hell, you can't even refute it like any of those other times someone's assumed you were down and out.

You're compromised. Too compromised for this, in any case. You're not sure when exactly, but Samaritan broke you hundreds of simulations ago. How are you still here, when you don't even know who's behind the wheel anymore? How can you be sure if you're still here because this is your fight ( and you never abandon a fight ) or because you've been programmed to keep coming back?

See, if you were in your right mind, you'd have retired yourself before ever becoming this much of a liability.

You should have, because now you're just a tickling time bomb waiting to go off in her hands. When you do, you don't know if you'll lead Samaritan straight to the team or destroy them all yourself.

So far they haven't managed to make you lay a finger on her, but you know it's only a matter of time.