Chapter Text
Sameen Shaw leaned further in her chair and tried very hard not to fall asleep.
Banks tended to have that effect on her; the slow, tedious atmosphere in combination with the lack of natural lighting and musty smell tended to make her very, very tired which was a problem for Shaw because someone was going to rob the bank in the next five minutes.
Which was something she probably should be awake for.
She checked the information on her phone again before stretching her arms over her head, trying to keep her blood flowing. Lazily, Shaw observed the people in the bank, watching for any signs of suspicious activity. Everyone seemed to be acting natural which meant that someone was either a fantastic actor or he hadn’t arrived yet.
Which pissed Shaw off to no end. The least this guy could do was be prompt for his own death.
A cold draft came through as the door opened and an anxious looking man walked in, his eyes glued to the teller’s box and his hands firmly in his pockets. Shaw grinned and stood up, walking briskly towards the man, intentionally barging into his shoulder and taking a few steps backwards. She turned to face him and mustered up her most apologetic look.
“Oh, sorry…David Turner?”
He looked confused, probably wondering where he had seen her before.
“Do I know you?”
Shaw suppressed a victorious grin and shook her head.
“Sorry, thought you were someone else…named David Turner. Gotta go.”
Without another word she pushed past him again, taking his soul with her out the door.
As soon as she left the building, Shaw huffed a breath that manifested in the cold before immediately disappearing. She pulled out her phone and dialed a familiar number.
“Finch, I just got my last number.”
“Well done, Ms. Shaw. But are you sure you got the right person?”
In lieu of her response, she held her phone out towards the bank where David shouted something inaudible before the deafening sound of gunshots cut him off. She pulled the phone back to her ear with a grin.
“Pretty sure it was him.”
Like clockwork, people rushed out of the bank and pushed past Shaw as the alarms rang out shrilly. David exited the building last, his arms going through the door when he tried to push it open. He took a few hesitant steps outside and stopped beside Shaw, carefully looking at his hands.
“Am I dead?” He asked incredulously.
“Pretty much.” Shaw said without taking her ear off the phone.
“You can see me? What’s happening? How did I die? How am I still here?”
Shaw tuned out the rest of his questions.
“I’ll stop by the diner anyways before my shift at work.”
“Very well, Ms. Shaw. We’ll see you then.”
She hung up her phone and checked her watch, wondering if she could making the diner before work. An arm in her peripheral vision broke her out of her thoughts and she sighed at David pathetically trying to tap her on her shoulder.
“I can see you because I’m a reaper, yes a not the; it’s a whole thing. I took your soul before you died so you wouldn’t feel any pain when it happened. You got shot by a security guard who has had way too much coffee this morning…and you’re not still here,” Shaw pointed behind David, “because your ride is.”
David turned around, his eyes widening at the blinding beacon of light.
“That’s for me?”
“Pretty much.” Shaw checked her phone again.
He turned around to face her.
“Should I go?”
Shaw snorted in response.
“Why the hell would you want to stay here any longer?”
That seemed to appease David as he turned around and walked slowly into the light until it devoured him whole and he disappeared from view. The sound of sirens destroyed whatever peaceful feeling the beacon evoked and Shaw waited only a few seconds longer before walking away in search of somewhere away from the New York cold.
The heightened traffic around the bank caused Shaw to be last at the diner which meant that everyone would have their food before her which in turn meant that Shaw had to sit through a whole meeting hungry while everyone else ate.
David had effectively ruined her whole day with his whole dying thing.
Shaw pulled off her beanie as she took a seat in the booth, the other three participants looking up for her arrival.
“Look who decided to show up today.” The woman sitting across from her teased around a sip of coffee.
“Bite me, Carter.” Shaw responded, desperately trying to get the attention of the waitress.
“In your dreams, Shaw.”
Shaw caught the waitress’ eye and turned back in her seat to face Carter properly.
“You know it.”
“Ladies,” The man beside Shaw said, “Can we not do this at breakfast?”
Shaw rolled her eyes and swapped a grin with Carter, they both enjoyed making their boss uncomfortable which was great because it was incredibly easy to do. Of all the people Shaw had worked with (in her pre and post mortem jobs) Joss Carter was probably her favorite. Steadfast, smart and righteous as hell, Carter was a total badass. She had died sometime in the 1990s at the hands of a corrupt cop with a grudge and a gun. Unlike everyone else at the table (including Shaw) Carter didn’t linger on her death, instead using her talents to rise up the ranks of the NYPD and become one of the best detectives in the city.
She also had a reputation for being bulletproof but that had more to do with her death-sponsored immortality than any particular skill.
“Your guy is on the news.” The third person said in a low, quiet voice as he pointed to the television in the corner.
Shaw turned around to see the bank where a body in a bag was being stretchered out behind a burly man being interviewed captioned as ‘hero security guard’. She turned back around in time for the waitress to bring her stack of pancakes and a cup of coffee which she immediately reached for, warming her hands against the mug.
“Saw a graveling giving that guard free refills all morning, made him real twitchy, probably how he got the drop on our number.”
“What did his portal look like?” The man, John Reese, asked.
John Reese was a bit of a mystery. Shaw knew next to nothing about Reese’s life pre-mortem partly due to the fact that he never spoke of it and partly due to the fact that she didn’t care enough to ask. Shaw assumed he was in the army, some covert special operations based on his stature and brooding nature. Searching the name John Reese provided no results, meaning it was an alias from a shadowy government organization he was in prior to his death. His death was also a mystery to everyone but their boss who was the master of secrets so that was a bust. Post-mortem, he was a narcotics detective but more often than not, he would find himself in the right place at the right time to stop all kinds of crimes. That was probably the defining feature of John Reese, he had a hero complex the size of Superman; he cared in a way Shaw would never understand, about the numbers, about their little group of misfits and about the people he tried to save. He was distant, but he was warm and he cared in an awkward but genuine way that Shaw didn’t mind so much; he had a good nature and a sense of humor and she didn’t hate spending time with him.
Shaw shrugged at his question, she didn’t understand why Reese was so curious about people’s respective Tunnel of Lights. Though they were unique to every person and took the form of that person’s dream location, most people had really shitty imaginations so it usually cycled through the same six things. She called Reese out on his fascination a few times but he would only shrug in response and say it was just curiosity. Shaw didn’t care enough to investigate further, so she would usually just inform him and let him do whatever he did with the information.
“Mansion.” She mumbled around a mouthful of pancakes.
Reese nodded thankfully and leaned back in the booth.
“I’m sending everyone their numbers for today. Ms. Shaw, I know you already had a number this morning but I’m afraid you have one more for later this evening.” The man seated beside Shaw said as he typed away on his computer.
Shaw shrugged.
“Find me a way out of work then, Finch.”
He sighed and nodded an affirmative before continuing to type away on his computer. Out of everyone she had ever met in her life, Harold Finch was the biggest mystery by a wide margin. Though she could correctly assume general facts about Reese, she knew almost nothing about Finch beside the fact that he was a man who enjoyed his privacy. Pre-mortem was a bust, Harold Finch was an alias and not one given by the government based on his aversion to gore and violence. She didn’t know when or how he died and she doubted that Reese knew either, even though Harold was fully aware of Reese’s circumstances. Post-mortem, he didn’t work a day job which meant he was independently wealthy and incredibly reclusive like some weird Batman without the cape and cowl. Shaw only knew that he enjoyed literature (based on a glimpse of a worn hardcover in his briefcase) and computers based on his effortless manipulation of them. Regardless, Finch was professional and distant in a way that Shaw both respected and admired.
Shaw looked around the table at their little group of immortal misfits. She had been with the group for going on twenty years now, joining after Finch and Reese and before Carter. Out of all the rotations and the other reapers she ran into during her work, the people around her made up her favorite group (though she’d never admit that) and she didn’t hate the company they provided in their shared purgatory.
But if she had to choose between moving on and staying behind with these people, she would leave in a non-existent heartbeat.
Not that she was leaving any time soon; their quotas were kept secret but she was sure that hers was a long, long way off which was unfair because the person that Carter replaced, a man by the name of Leon Tao, got his out after only three years of community service.
Her musings were cut short by a beeping around the table, indicating the arrival of Finch’s numbers. Shaw checked her phone and caught a fake doctor’s certificate Finch had created which meant a day off from her day job from hell. She then checked her number and furrowed her brow at the details.
S. Groves
New York University Palladium Residence Hall
E.T.D : 11:45pm
Shaw sighed, annoyed that her early start would be accompanied by a late end.
Whoever S. Groves was, they were already a giant pain in her ass.