Sociopath.
A word that had outlived its usefulness in psychiatry, but sustained a life in common parlance. Shaw had long ago taken it up as both shorthand and armor.
Everyone knew sociopaths didn't have feelings. Everyone knew you should be a little bit scared of sociopaths.
Still, Shaw was smart enough to see through her own defense mechanisms. She considered it a practical move, and one done with some amount of consciousness. Its foundations had stood firm throughout med school, basic training, marine training, ISA training. No-one had come even slightly close to poking those foundations until Gen had proved to be far too insightful for a kid.
Gen was the first person she ever hugged voluntarily. She remembered being hugged by others, and having her mother teach her how to be hugged cus she'd only ever stood there and let it happen. But Shaw did not initiate hugs. Except that Gen had, for the first time in Shaw's life, given her a second thought. And probably third and fourth ones too. And come to a conclusion about Shaw's personality that no-one had ever reached before. It had made Shaw feel something - an indefinable something, but a good one nonetheless. It felt like she had been seen for the first time in her life. Shaw had got used to people telling each other she was a robot, emotionless, weird, a freak..whatever the epithet, people would always say that stuff in her earshot. Maybe they thought her lack of outward reaction meant she was either deaf or mentally underdeveloped. It always made her feel a little bit invisible.
It was just another one of the ways people underestimated her. Shaw had learned to use that underestimation to her benefit at school, spurred by the desire to sate those hormonal awakenings that made themselves persistently known to her body. Observation, patience, practice. When no-one was watching you, you got pretty good at that stuff. And after a while, it became easy enough for Shaw to play along to the scripts that dominated adult sexual interaction.
She had always been smart. Going to med school had been an easy decision. Shaw got science. It made sense to her, and there was no need to detach herself from the body on the operating table when she got that far. Cadavers never made her squeamish - the only thing she felt when she looked at them was an appreciation that someone had donated their body to medicine. The human body, knowing it and fixing it, was something Shaw was passionate about for a while. Hell, when you don't feel the need to make friends you end up with a lot of study time on your hands.
Those same smarts served Shaw well when it came to blending in. Not that it could save her medical career, but she could ham it up and resemble a regular person if she cared to. When it suited her needs. The marines had been a bit of a relief after all. Probably the only decent career when Shaw's particular disorder was a benefit rather than a hindrance. It didn't hurt that Shaw had a talent for marksmanship and combat.
ISA training had taken her skillset and run with it. She was a blank slate, she'd been told, able to observe a situation and turn her behaviour into a malleable asset. Her ability to blend in was sophisticated enough to fool even the most suspicious of people, and her ability to turn it off at a moment's notice and become a ruthless killer made her invaluable to the agency.
She remembered Hersh telling her he'd never trained anyone so gifted.
The way Shaw looked at it, she'd always lived on the sidelines of humanity, occasionally participating but never really part of it. Working in espionage might have been a sacrifice for other people, people like John, having to step out of life like that, but for her it just seemed natural. Like she'd found her calling.
Finding out her government was out to kill her hadn't surprised Shaw, it just presented a new challenge. She spent a while not doing much, but it got boring fast, and Shaw knew what she was good at. Finch had the opportunity open. Unlike the public image of sociopaths, Root did have a moral compass, it just wasn't guided by emotion like most people's. It would have been a lie to say it didn't feel good doing Finch's work, and if she got to drive some fast cars, shoot a lot of people, and break the law frequently in the meantime, then all the better. But it was never about morality for her.
And then, of course, along came Root. Smart, hot, good with guns, computer nerd, genius. Root was a better foil than Shaw could ever have asked for. Plus Root knew how to have fun, and she knew Shaw. Without even really trying, Root had seen through everything. She could read Shaw's moods with laser precision, not that Root felt any compunction to be play along. She never tried to change Shaw though, never suggested it'd be better to change. Just saw her skillset and gave her the opportunity to use it. She also had the ability to get under Shaw's skin like no-one else.
It was aggravating to say the least. Maybe a little embarrassing. And yet…
And yet she respected Root. Admired her even. Root didn't have a personality disorder, unless being excessively annoying had made it into the DSM since she'd left medicine, but she had sidestepped the world nonetheless. And not like Reese, who'd been recruited into it, or Finch who'd realised too late the lengths the government would go to for secrecy. Root had simply looked at the world, at normality (whatever that really was), and found it wanting. Shaw respected that decision, that ability. Root had faced death on numerous occasions, met it with guns blazing and a smile on her face. Shaw could really get behind that.
She might have even been up for a civil conversation with Root every now and then if the irritating woman hadn't taken a shine to her and decided to make sport of making her know it. Pushing her. Shaw had never been flirted with so persistently before. Well...usually she ended up doing violence to anyone who couldn't take a no. Root got away with it time and time again, for a reason that Shaw couldn't place. She feared it had something to do with liking Root in return.
Well, that was kind of a lie. Shaw had woken up with a hand between her legs on more than one occasion after particularly vivid dreams with Root in a starring role. From the beginning Root had dropped hints about her sexual...interests...and how they just so happened to align with Shaw's own. Shaw's subconscious was evidently having a bit of a field day with that. The trouble was that Shaw had a sneaking suspicion that Root would be really fucking good in bed, at doing the kind of stuff that really turned Shaw on.
So liking her didn't cover it really. It was more complex than that, and Shaw had never been particularly interested in trying to give names to the squalls of emotion that sometimes ruffled her usually calm surface. Well, unless they were really simple ones like anger. What she did know was that Root couldn't die. That Shaw would try everything in her power to prevent that happening, despite the woman's recklessness.
Not that Shaw was pissed at her; Shaw herself was reckless to a fault. She just wished Root would ask for help sometimes.
Shaw sometimes tried to imagine what it'd be like if they started sleeping together regularly. Whether Root would still flirt with her and tease her at every opportunity. Whether Shaw would enjoy it more or less. Whether Root would push for some emotional connection that Shaw couldn't give. It was a hard relationship to imagine. They would never settle down into suburbia, or have remotely average lives, or likely be in the same city at any given time...but that was ok with Shaw, and she thought it might be ok with Root too.
Of course it was all theoretical. At this point Root was just as likely to crow about getting Shaw in the sack as she was to want any kind of relationship out of it. Though at least Shaw was confident in her ability to knock Root unconscious if she got too crude about it.
It was funny really that Shaw had ever given Root a second chance. Not to say punching her out hadn't felt good, or shooting her for that matter, but it had surprised Shaw that of all of them, she was the one to forgive Root first, to see her as an ally and not a threat. Maybe it was an emotional thing with Finch, one of those things that clouded a person's ability to read a situation clearly.
Whatever it was, Shaw had learned to appreciate Root's abilities, if not her fanaticism for the Machine. Shaw was a pragmatist though, and the Machine got things done. If God had picked Shaw for Her prophet, whose to say she wouldn't hop to it.
Which is all a really roundabout way of saying, despite being a sociopath, despite all of Root's flaws, and despite Shaw's inability to articulate whatever was going on, she was currently leading Root back to her apartment with the full intention of them getting naked and sweaty together.
It was only when Root pushed her back against the wall of the apartment and kissed Shaw, hard, that Shaw ceased to think about it at all.