i am the loved, the yearned for, the praised,
the vilified, the condemned and the hunted.
but one thing in me remains unchanged:
i have you all on your knees
- Salma Deera, Letters From Medea
When Waller doesn't release them after their rushed first aid, Shaw is pissed, but not surprised. Nor is he surprised when she doesn't look up as he and Michaels enter the conference room, too busy perusing the updated files they'd almost died for to acknowledge their presence.
As she reads, Shaw imagines what it would be like to level the barrel of his 38 at her smug sculpted face and put a bullet hole through and out the back of her skull. He imagines the gore of the gaping hole in the back of her head, ruining her perfectly coiffed hairdo; the blood spatter on the wall behind her, the little pieces of brain and skull mixing in. Her lifeless, expressionless face as blood drains out.
That's what dreams are for, huh?
He rubs the side of his face instead and ends up wincing when his fingers make contact with the skin directly under his brow. Some wacko with a sword almost split his face two earlier that night, leaving him with one hell of a gash over his eyebrow. Which would be fine - chicks dig scars, right? - except for the fact that his face feels like it's got a second heart under his goddamned cheekbone, 'cause the motherfucker just wouldn't stop punching until Michaels split his skull open with her 38. That woman's unnatural aim has saved his life more times than Shaw can count. (That's a lie - he knows the exact number).
Shaw sighs heavily. Fucking League of Assassins motherfuckers. Brainwashed asslicks, the lot of 'em. Missions like these make him miss the simplicity of hunting down rebels in the jungles of the cracks ass of nowhere with boots that used to skin his feet. So really, excuse the fuck out of him if all he wants after getting all up close and personal with those nutjobs is some good oxy, food, a blowjob and a shower - the last two preferably at the same time - before passing out somewhere horizontal.
Instead, he has to sit his ass on the most uncomfortable chair on the planet and listen to the dry staccato of Waller's stiletto's punctuating the silence. The steady drumming is an impatient sound that juxtaposes Waller's blank face as she reads.
A wry, unpleasant smile twists Shaw's mouth. He may not be a genius, but he does know patterns and intent when they cross under his nose, and Waller - she is all about intent. There is nothing about the woman that is not calculated. Even her freaking footwear is used to make a point: a tick-tacking sound designed to make the fine hair on her operative's arms stand to attention whenever they hear it from the end of the hall. She always knows what she's doing, there is always a 'why' and she doesn't give a fuck about who bleeds along the way, as long as the job gets done.
Case in point, here they sit, two of her best fresh out of the field, with the stench of sweat, dust and blood and fuck knows what, coming off the both of them like vapor… and they stay, like obedient dogs, waiting for her to finish her file. 'Cause when the Wall says 'jump', all you get to say is 'how high'.
Bitch!
He looks to his left, to where Michaels is sitting, straight-backed and as alert as ever, despite the cracked ribs and the hastily patched up second-degree burns on her arms. The left side of her face looks like raw meat and it's starting to build up a swell nice enough to rival Rocky fucking Balboa. If she had been anyone else, Michaels would have grimaced - but, Shaw thinks with a silent snort, that is the god damned Harbinger sitting over there! Michaels is too well trained to show outward signs of distress. And Shaw… well, Shaw is just as well trained, but he doesn't have Michaels' unflappability and he hates Waller enough to push her as far as she dares.
So he slumps even more in the uncomfortable as fuck chair, lifts his feet on the one next to it and lights up a cigarette. Michaels gives him some side-eye, but Shaw just winks at her and goes back to checking the profiles on the large screens nailed to the wall in front of him.
The League of Assassins aren't as much of a secret as they liked to believe they are. Bodies that drop unexpectedly tend to create unmistakable trails. What they are, is a formidable force (and one that Waller has avoided antagonizing for a long time, despite them being what they are and doing what they do). Their talents at taking lives is not what Waller is interested in however. Nor is her attention captivated by the void of power left, now that almost half the League has basically disintegrated.
What the Wall is looking for, is potential acquisitions.
The list of people whose names and kill-tolls litters the multiple screens in front of them is proof of it. Now they have real names (as real as they can get, anyway) and more importantly, faces, to go with the profiles.
Nyssa Raatko, aka Nyssa al Ghul - daughter of the Demon himself, apparently. International assassin who has dropped bodies in about fifty-eight different states, wanted under different identities in fifteen of them. Until lately, Waereth al Ghul and as of twenty-four hours ago, the new Ra's of what's left of her League.
Shaw recons that panther's gonna come down the wall of fame soon. When she was just another knife in the dark, Waller might have gotten hold of her, cause there is nobody better than on her in getting people to act against their will and wellbeing, but now that Raatko is Head of the Freaking Demon, that babe is way out of Waller's reach.
To Raatko's left there's a picture of the one known as Taer al Safer - the Canary… aka Sara fucking Lance! If Shaw hadn't seen that girl snap the neck of a man twice her size like it was a fucking twig, he wouldn't have believed it.
Lost at sea about seven years ago, presumed dead. Well, she ain't so dead anymore!
Her resume is more modest than Raatko's, but then again she only stated recently. Just as brutal, though. Mentioning her efficiency is at this point redundant – the League doesn't make sloppy killers. Though Lance is a bit… messier than the average League killing machine. She has a whole range of issues she works off on her targets – violently speaking. There's a lot of un-dealt rage in that kid.
But then again, Shaw's not one to talk.
There are others in Waller's hall of fame. Killers, fanatics, terrorists, anarchists. People who were born to take lives and people who were warped into doing it. People with a talent for murder, but who chose not to apply it – like the Gotham freaks and those in Central City. Batgirl, Catwoman…
In the last year, Helena Bertinelli got upgraded to it when she decided to get herself a mask and go around killing mobsters. That in itself was no strange thing, but her efficiency was something the Wall wouldn't overlook. Shaw gathered the file on that babe himself – couldn't really say he didn't enjoy it. He's rarely seen a finer ass on anyone.
He takes a long drag off his cigarette, eyes fixed on Sara Lance's face. Looking at her without knowing anything about her would make one think the word 'angelic' was made to describe that face. But that's the kind of sappy bullshit only gorgeous women yank out of the old dusty corners of him, from time to time. The photo is recent, snapped in passing in a hospital hallway. That dimpled chin of hers is cute and looking at her mouth makes it hard not to imagine it wrapped around his dick, but those blue eyes – they are ice.
They're all real nice-looking birds, Waller's killer pets. And born predators, the lot of 'em.
Shaw knows their kind: they're the sort of women that scream trouble and smile like sharks. You see them and your brain starts going off like a fucking World War II alarm, but you still manage to ask them for their number. It's the only kind Shaw has ever wanted to get between the legs of, but these babies… they could probably pull your nuts through your nostril in about 47 different ways. Not the kind of women you'd survive antagonizing.
Especially the Lance kid. The Canary, that is. She's themed, that one, with a real taste for cutting men to pieces. She's not even subtle about it – though to be fair, it has been a couple of years since some would-be rapist was found in some alleyway choking on his own dick.
Michaels types on her iPad and their latest profile (or oldest, depending on one's point of view) gets updated with a picture… and Shaw finds his spine straightening, the pinch behind his neck making his hands itch for a weapon.
He knows this one.
Well, he knows of her, anyway. He really doubts there is anyone on this planet who knows her. But there are enough whispers about her going around in the dark side of the world to make Shaw's stomach drop, even just looking at that face as a lifeless picture on a screen.
The picture of what seems to be a teen on a rebellious faze stares back at him. Black hair with the occasional burst of violet through it, frames a longish, pale face. The dark make-up she has on is immediate and draws her every feature into the exact sharp relief she wants it to. Shaw has spent enough time with female infiltration operative to know a mask when he sees one: it's there to distract and take center stage on her most vulnerable point of contact: her face. A mask that she will shed like snakes change skin, and nobody will be the wiser. It's there maybe to age her up a little too, and yet it only manages to yank into visibility how painfully young she is.
The lines of that young face are pulled in a pitiless look and there is enough awareness of it in her eyes, to make that ghost of a smirk on her dark-painted lips terrifying. She's looking right into the camera, dead center, and straight into his eyes… and maybe that's fitting. Maybe this picture really is the summary of who this - this thing really is: she only gets caught when she wants to be.
The debacle on the CIA base in Kandahar three years ago proves it. He'd almost died that day. His every breath is a reminder that he is alive just because she had decided to let him live, and that knowledge gnaws at him.
He hates her for it the way he's never really hated anyone. A fucking burdensome hate. He feels tainted by her; by that game of control she played that he can't seem to break free of.
I own your life.
Shaw takes a deep breath and focuses on that face, wondering not for the first time if emptying a clip in that girl will set him free.
Girl… A lifetime of preexistent thought-pattern can't but point the obvious out to him: she's chillingly young. Is she even 20? Shaw repeats that in his head, and yet no matter how many times he says it, he can't bring himself to give the thought full credence. He's seen too much of the destruction she's sown to for age to matter. It's those like her that are the truly dangerous ones, in Shaw's experience: not because of what her makers warped her into, but because she's so fucking good at it. Because she has the kind of talent for effortless mayhem that it could split one's blood.
That girl was born to end lives…
No wonder Waller wants her so much she's wet with it every time her name comes up on their back-channels.
Wants her… Shaw snorts. He knows what the Wall wants. It's not the killer that has her salivating; she has plenty of killers on her leash.
She wants the invisible shadow. The nameless, placeless girl-shaped weapon that can be anyone and get anywhere. Who doesn't know the meaning of impossible and never leaves a single trace of herself behind – literally. The files ARGUS has on her - on the ones who bore that name before her, are proof of it: the only evidence they could gather to string her hits together was the fact that there was no evidence! Whatever the mission, the problem would be impeccably put-together, creatively solved; the solution immaculately organized and flawlessly executed. She left nothing behind: no fingerprint, no signature.
There was no ego. Just the job.
Maybe because there was no real person with a true self, behind that face. Maybe Waller was right: she really is whatever her masters want her to be, and nothing more. Maybe that's why most of the Intelligence community don't even believe she exists.
"She's too young." Shaw says to nobody in particular, eyes never leaving the photo. The list of the hits they suspect her for is longer than anyone else's. It's impossible for this kid to be the one they're looking for.
"Titles in the League can be hereditary. If she is who we think she is, then she was the apprentice of the last one who held the name." Michaels corrects him, even more impatient with imprecision as usual. "The original Spider could very well be dead."
Shaw huffs.
"Yeah, no shit." He mumbles. "She's still too young."
The Spider, he repeats quietly in his head, unable to help the sneer that name causes him.
They make you give up your name and chose another, when you're initiated in the League. The Canary, the Tiger, the Ax, the Wolf. Nice little depersonalization tactic: an animal or a weapon. Anything but human.
The Spider - That's what ARGUS calls her now. They used to have many names for her. The Widow. The Red Death. The Eastern Shadow. Nobody ever knew where she was from, but there were those that insisted she was Asian. Clearly not anymore… Who the fuck knows anyway? Whispers about her started more than eighty years ago.
Waller closes the file with a snap and sets it down. She doesn't sit, choosing instead to plant her fingertips on the cool glass table and lean on them a bit, doing a pretty good impression of a coiling snake getting ready to strike as she stares at him and Michaels in turns. The downwards turn of her lips doesn't speak of any good things in Shaw's future and damn it, he's too tired for one of Waller's tantrums for missing one toy out of her precious collection of psychopaths!
"Agent Michaels, you were the head officer of this operation."
"Yes ma'am." Michaels nswers evenly.
"Explain to me then, how it is that you failed so spectacularly." Waller's dark eyes cut from Michaels to him. She's using that familiar tone Shaw hates: she already knows the answer but wants them to spell out their failure. It's part of the punishment; that way she can keep her hands clean of it and lay it all on their incompetence.
The Wall: What. A. Woman.
"We secured the virus itself and made sure it was the last batch to make it out intact. There were no civilian casualties and no need for a drone strike to contain an infection that did not happen. Every objective of the operation was fully met, ma'am."
Shaw feels his eyebrows rise a bit and then tempers his reaction. As far as explanations go, that is not a bad one, but both Shaw and Michaels know that that is not what Waller is talking about.
As if to make a point of that, Waller straightens, thundering expression frozen by the ice-cold rage hardens her eyes and the line of her mouth.
"Are you playing me for a fool, agent."
Shaw feels the hair on the back of his neck rise up a bit at that tone.
"No ma'am."
"Then answer the fucking question," Waller snaps, her mouth a thin line of anger.
Michaels doesn't even breathe differently.
Goddamn…
"I believe I already did."
Shaw almost chokes on his spit. Well, you gotta admire the woman's nerve. It's like watching someone shove the barrel of a gun in their mouth, but still, Shaw has to recognize Balls of Steel when he sees them.
Anger radiates off Waller like a cold draft, sucking all warmth and air of out the space around her, creating a vacuum.
She narrows her eyes at her best operative. "You disobeyed direct orders, agent."
"I had no orders pertaining Felicity Smoak."
"She is the Spider!" Waller says slapping her hand the file with a thud. "Apprehending her is always a standing order."
"There was no evidence at all to indicate even the hint of a connection between the Spider and Felicity Smoak, so there was no way for me to be sure - and I was not willing to risk my mission and thousands of lives on a hunch." Michaels says steadily.
The calm she is facing this with is exemplary… and a bit insulting. Waller doesn't miss either.
"Do you think this is a game, Michaels?" she says then, with the kind of calm that hides something meaner.
"No ma'am." Michaels answers tonelessly, as if this is just another debriefing. No hesitation at all. That doesn't surprise him though. In all the years he's known her, he's started to believe that Michaels is physically capable hesitating.
"Then do tell what the fuck do you think you're playing at, because you're starting to damage my calm."
Michaels finally blinks. She purses her lips for a moment and then speaks. "Permission to speak freely, ma'am."
Waller purses her lips and for a moment Shaw thinks she's not going to agree to informality when she's so hellbent on grilling them for meatballs, but then the impossible happens.
Waller's lips thin even more, but then she sits down and one blink later she's as collected and detached as ever.
"Permission granted." Waller says crisply.
Michaels takes a breath, exasperation coating her face as if her mask just slipped off. The effect is staggering: it's like watching two different people living beneath the same skin. Maybe his inability to split himself into many different people is what had first ruled Shaw out as an infiltration operative, years ago.
"There was no goddamned way I would have been able to contain her even if I had been sure she is who you think she is." Michaels says then, tiredness coating her tone despite its inherent steadiness. "She would have killed us all and for all I know, Queen would have helped her do it."
Waller snorts. "I doubt Mister Diggle would have allowed that."
Michaels' eyebrow twitches. It's all the room her irritation has to breathe before she squashes it.
"That kid just went to war with one of the most powerful and deadly organizations on the planet to win her freedom back. You think she would have stopped at John Diggle? Come on Amanda, you know better."
Waller leans back on the chair but instead of making her look relaxed the action seems to be a step closer to formality.
"Felicity Smoak is too dangerous and most of all - too volatile - to be left roaming loose. She needs to be apprehended." Waller says firmly
Michaels sighs. "The Spider needs to be apprehended but the fact is that we don't know who she is or even if she's…"
"Every piece of evidence you brought me-"
"Was flimsy and circumstantial, at best!" Michaels interrupts, impatience seeping into her tone. "I could have been saying those same things about Sara Lance, if she had stuck around long enough for me to try to profile her! And I was the only operative on the field making these connections. We are an intelligence agency! As your second in command, I cannot and will not approve of any mission based on a single individual's uncorroborated opinion, even if it's my own."
Waller leans forward, eyes hot with rage.
"She has a goddamend fire-brand on her back!" She snarls, so uncharacteristically loudly that Shaw's spine tingles. "That is not the kind of thing you just blink and miss, Lyla?"
Her voice ricochets around the glass walls and leaves only silence behind.
Michaels' even and steady voice, colorless and bloodless, is a stark contrast. "With all due respect Amanda, I did not ask the girl to strip."
Shaw values his life, so he keeps his amusement mute.
The silence that falls is the one that permeates the air like the stench of a three days old corpse in the desert. Shaw doesn't even dare breathe. He honestly feels lucky that he's been forgotten and he's happy to stay that way until this is over. Playing dead rarely works with the Wall - she has a funny way of smelling bullshit - but it's his first instinct.
It's long, heavy moments before either of the women speaks again.
"Felicity Smoak is a highly trained, highly dangerous human weapon." Waller says evenly, enunciating slowly to drive the words home, as if somehow it was the failure to understand them that played a part into Michaels letting the girl slip away. "She is intelligent, yes, but even the highest caliber rifle is - at best - useless without someone aiming it; at worst, lethal. She is most of all, volatile." Waller bites the word off like it's a curse. "Too volatile for her leash to be in the hands of an ex-AGUS agent with questionable ethics and narrow worldview."
"I understand that." Michaels confirms.
"No, I don't think you do." Waller snaps, biting off those last few words in open anger. If Shaw hadn't know before just how much this woman wants her claws into that girl, this would be the moment he would have understood it. "It's been made painfully clear how easy a marks she is by howeffortlessly Oliver Queen - a man of scarcely above average intelligence - was able to manipulate her for his own ends."
"I don't think…"
"Yes, I know what you think, Lyla." Waller interrupts deliberately, her voice even and implacable. "You think she made a choice. What you do not seem to understand is that she is not capable of choice. She wasn't made that way."
Michaels shakes her head. "That might have been true at one moment or another in time, but as it stands, that piece of intelligence has proved to be outdated."
"And that's where you'd be wrong." Waller states, raising her chin a fraction, to drive her conviction home. "We don't know if Felicity Smoak is the Spider or not. But we do know that she is part of the League, and as a member of it, she has been conditioned by the programming that is part of her training to react a certain way, given a certain command. Nyssa al Ghul was the one who made a choice. She just so happened to have slipped Felicity Smoak's leash out of her Ra's hands when she did."
"We don't know the details of her programming." Michaels reminds her with the last bit of open ground for personal opinion she has left. "She could have broken through it. Old thought-patterns crack even the most complex layers of programming all the time – we've seen it. She was wide awake when I met her, and completely independent emotionally."
"She is a lab rat." Waller retorts, managing to sound both obvious and dismissive. "She is whatever whoever is controlling her wants her to be. If Queen wanted her to be emotionally available to him, that that's what she became. That is what you saw."
If Shaw had never had a reason to want this woman dead, she would have just given him one right now. It's not that she strips people of agency. It's that she considers them stupid for it.
Waller straightens, and the mask of professionalism and cold detachment is back in place. Informal talk is over. Michaels senses it immediately and reacts to it. Her poker face is back on faster than Shaw can take a full breath through cracked ribs.
"Your repeated failure to understand something as crucial as this is why you'll be removed from the care here onwards. You're dismissed, Agent."
"Yes ma'am."
Michaels leaves the room silently as she entered it. Waller then turns her eyes to him and Shaw groans internally.
"Agent Shaw. Did you gather the information I asked you to?"
He sighs.
"No ma'am." Shaw admits and seen the danger solidify in Waller's eyes even as he speaks. "I couldn't even break the first firewall and by the time I got close to it, she had a gun to my head. But…" He takes the USB drive out of his pocket and slides it on the glass. Waller catches it without even looking at it. "I did manage to make a partial copy of the base programming of her virus. Its…"
He takes a deep breath, tries to find the words.
"What?" Waller snaps. Patience is not among her virtues and if there are any the Wall would fake it for, well – it's safe to saw Shaw is not among them.
"Well, it's unlike anything I've ever fucking seen… ma'am." he adds, like an afterthought. "It's like a goddamned cancer growing at the back of the internet's head and nobody ever even noticed it. I'm willing to bet she used it to hack ARGUS a couple of times and nobody had a clue."
Waller stills, eyes come back to train on him. Her scrutiny feels like ice water down the back of his head.
"So she's a cybernetics expert too?"
Shaw shrugs. "It would explain a lot. Especially how she gets a hold of information she has no business knowing."
Waller considers this carefully. Shaw can practically see the wheels of her brain turning and he wishes to Lucifer he were anywhere else right now, because he knows what's coming. He can sense it the way animals sense danger.
"I'm making you the head of the Hornet operation." Waller states and this time Shaw's groan does not stay silent.
"Goddamit!" He hisses and leans his head back.
Waller pretends she didn't hear that. She's probably only allowing it because she knows she's just given him the choice between suicide by glock or by sword.
"This ain't the kinda thing I can say not to, is it?"
Waller doesn't react to that either, but gives him that 'look' that Shaw feels like a steel blade at the base of his dick.
Right on, then.
"I want her brought in." She says instead. Shaw pretends not to notice the fire of greed burning behind her dark eyes. It so fucking creepy he'd rather tell himself he's not seeing it form this close. "I want her alive and undamaged in any permanent way, Shaw."
As if he needed to be reminded. Shaw slumps even further on his chair.
A sword it is, then.
A hundred and forty seven miles away from the ARGUS's glass building, Oliver punches the gas pedal even further down and the car speeds through the highway like a bullet, just the way she likes it. She lets the wind pick up her hair and swirl it around her head, tickling the sides of her face, enjoys the way the setting sun is still warm and washes everything in red and gold, like in a dream.
It's not a dream. It's real.
This is really her, breathing with her own lungs free air as a free person. The laughter that that provokes in her comes from a quiet place of deep contentment within her that she didn't think she would ever find.
And when she lets her head fall back, eyes closed and her fingers twisting in his sleeve, Oliver smiles too