Work Text:
"Shaw, Sameen." Her files says and you wonder what "Sameen" means.
You have a job. You always have a job. You ARE your job (no one is as good as you). Sameen Shaw is homework. A mark, a stepping stone, a pitiful cog in the machine that you plan to destroy.
Today? You need intel and fast. And this woman is the key to getting that intel. You will have to torture her, maybe even kill her... that will depend on her, really. On how cooperative she decides to be. You have to travel light these days, just a taser and zip ties and whatever else you can fit in a handbag. The torture will have to be improvised (your favorite kind), so you dig in, hoping for mentions of a weak knee or dental records or anything you might be able to use to expedite the "involuntary information exchanging process."
It is six am on a Monday morning and you crunch on an apple as you wait for the coffee place across the street to open. No injuries to report. No dental records. Clean bill of health and perfect shape all round... Sameeeen. Shaw. You try out the words in your head, roll them around a bit, long before they ever reach your mouth. It is one of the prettier names. You wonder, idly, again what it means. Did someone assign it to her, or did she choose it?
You can't possibly know, at this point, just how MUCH Sameen Shaw will come to mean for you in the future. If you could, well, you probably wouldn't believe it.
Because Sameen Shaw is a person, and at six am on a Monday morning, you only know people as disappointments. As sad simulacra. Weak and sloppy and mostly pretty stupid (you have no way of knowing just how much Sameen will make you unlearn, just by existing).
To you, Sameen will come to mean a world of things- thrill, pleasure, danger, trust, the light in her eyes, the currents of her voice, her small, strong body, her steady sure manner, thrill, pleasure, danger. Trust.
Sameen will teach you that "precious" does not mean weak. That strong does not mean cruel. That you can love someone with all of yourself without ever saying it-- or needing to. That garlic breath can be sexy. That there is more to life than the utter perfection that is technology. So much more.
You already know that humans are a messy sort, but Sameen will teach you that sometimes the mess is worth it. That sometimes messy can be fun. Enjoyable, even.... Eyes rolling back in your head as you rut around in sticky sheets and scream her name levels of enjoyable. Having to dig a bullet out of your arm and getting blood all over the couch because you took one for someone who MATTERED and mattered hard. Feeling grateful and relieved that it's your blood, for once, not hers.
Sameen will mean a raw, primal fear for the wellbeing of another person, and that will be a brand new feeling. Sameen will mean hope, a reason to keep fighting, a person worth living with and dying for. Sameen will mean comfortable silence and quiet strength. Sameen will mean loyalty and faith. Sameen will mean a secret world of wordless, uncoded pleasure. She will make your mind shush and your body sing. She will make you, for the first time, thoroughly enjoy being in your own skin.
She will crinkle her eyes at you just once and make your whole day rewrite itself.
Sameen will mean all the good things that you are afraid are true, all the things you try hard not to see because humanity is bad code, all the beauty that can't possibly be human, but is.
Sameen will teach you how to spar, how to do laundry properly, why protein is important, that the fridge is the best place to store weapons, and that "Axis II Personality Disorder" does not mean unfeeling or uncaring or inhuman. She will teach you that sometimes the kindest people are the ones who have to work hard at it, and sometimes the worst people are just. perfectly normal. feeling, caring, human, people. She will teach you that difference can be exquisite and she will loudly concur with your conclusion that dogs are still better people than people (most people).
Sameen will become the antidote to the anger you feel at the world. At the stupid, writhing, oblivious, peons. Sameen will be the balm that soothes your existential burns. Sameen will remind you that you are a human, and that that isn't a coding flaw. Sameen is bright and clever and strong and funny and you will love her more fiercely than anyone or anything in your whole life. Even the Machine.
Sameen Shaw will lay behind you and hold you in her arms the night she returns from Samaritan. She will lace her fingers through yours and you will smell her sweat mixed with your sweat, and taste her in your mouth, and stare down the bed at her small feet poking your shins and feel her real, breathing, warm body beside you. Your blood will echo hers. Your body will feel like it's floating but still so, so anchored to her. You will decide there is nothing more human than this. It will make you so happy, you will almost cry.
But that is all to come.
At six am on that Monday morning, you still want to usher in the age of chaos, to burn everything down, to hurt and ruin, ruin and destroy.
You don't know that by the end of the day, your curiosity will have been irrevocably piqued- or that by the end of the year, your heart will have unfurled so much that it will have to pry itself free of its little box and take you over almost completely. You don't know that in two years, everything will be different, better, different. You will have a partner and friends, real friends, and a dog (sort of) and a purpose. You will have someone who pretends to hate your jokes but keeps coming back for more. You will have. so much. and every time you hear her name, hear Sameen, you will be reminded of all of it.
"Shaw, Sameen." Her file says, followed by eleven impressive pages and one smoldering professional sort of photograph. SAT scores, perfect, GMAT, perfect, boards, perfect, GPAs, perfect, residency reports, perfect (and abruptly ended), military record, perfect, face, perfect... so pouty and sullen and bored and perfect. You decide that's where you'll start, should the time come to interrogate.
Sameen Shaw is human, but she's exceptional, so maybe this will be... fun.