abrightboy | Voicemail (IC Contact Post) NEW

"When I was younger, I got tattoos for milestones I wanted to honor, or people I wanted to honor," Shaw says, sinking back down into the couch with a quiet sigh. "Variations on a theme. So, uh, if you changed your mind and wanted to get more, that could be your theme. Aspects of yourself."

"That's a good reason to do them," Malcolm says. "But I don't think it's really me. That's why I got this one so big. I think it's all I need."

"It must've taken hours. Did the pain really suck?"

"It took ages, yeah, but I have a high pain tolerance and instant healing, so it was fine. Will was worried about touching it at first, but it already didn't hurt at all by the time I got back," he replies.

"Did you get bored, just sitting there waiting? I think I would have."

"I found his technique fascinating, actually. I was pretty well occupied. I'd like to say he had a lot of cool stories to tell, but he actually barely spoke at all. Kiryu says that's normal," Malcolm tells her.

Shaw sets her drink aside again so that she can pull up her right shirt sleeve, holding out her arm with her palm facing up. Several tattoos are visible: there's Morse Code dots and dashes wrapping around her wrist, and a Rod of Asclepius on her inner forearm, with two lines of lettering (USMC and SEND ME) arching above it. She taps a finger on the Rod of Asclepius.

"This was my first. Got it when I was accepted into med school."

He looks at her arm with interest.

"So... this section is, like.... your resume?" he clarifies.

"They're all kind of my resume. I have one for every job I've had."

A pause.

"Well. Not for that semester I worked doing shelving at the campus library."

He smiles.

"Well, you could. Just... fit a little book in right here," he says, wiggling a finger at a blank space amid the other marks.

"Ugh," she says, wrinkling her nose. "No thanks."

She points to USMC next, and says "The Marines, and also my dad"; then she points to SEND ME, and says, "The ISA, which was also a military thing. Black ops, basically."

He considers that. "Are you... ashamed of having been a librarian?" he asks. "However briefly. Is it too civilian?"

"I'm not ashamed. It was just a college job that meant nothing to me. Not... because it was a civilian thing; I don't have anything against civilians."

"I get the thing that it didn't mean anything to you. That makes sense. And I believe you don't bear ill will against civilians. You'll give your life for them. But you also don't have any faith in their abilities or find them... competent in any useful way," Malcolm points out matter-of-factly.

"Okay, that's not true," she says, raising an eyebrow. "And we were having a good conversation, so why are you trying to start a fight? Is it some kind of, like, anxious compulsion to self-sabotage? You do this a lot, and I seriously don't get it."

Malcolm frowns faintly. "Why is any dissenting opinion offering debate seen as 'starting a fight'?" he asks. But he doesn't pursue it. He waves it off with one hand before wrapping it back around his cup to overlap with the other one. "What do the other ones mean?" he asks, looking over curiously.

"You're not someone I can have casual disagreements with," she explains, rolling up her other sleeve in preparation of answering his other question - after she says this.

"You get offended easily, and you take things personally. 'Dissenting opinions offering debate' are a minefield with you, and conversational minefields aren't my thing. So. I don't think civilians are incompetent or useless. I think civilians should be protected from danger no matter how competent they are, because if they wanted a job that required them to dive in front of bullets, then they'd have one. I don't wanna debate about it, and I've told you why I don't wanna debate about it; does that make sense?"

He just looks at her for a moment, then tilts his head in concession, but doesn't say anything about, for example, how some people get fired from those jobs for being weird, no matter how much they meant to them.

Then, like there was no tangent, "So are they, like, non-professional life highlights?" he asks, gesturing to her arm.

He doesn't push her, doesn't say anything snide, doesn't storm out. She locks eyes with him, giving him an acknowledging nod of her own before continuing.

"I didn't really think about organizing them that way. The med school tattoo came first, then the Marines tattoo, and then I stopped being able to get tattoos because identifying marks are a bad thing when you're undercover. I did the ISA slogan on the Barge."

She taps the Morse Code with a finger.

"I did this one on the Barge; it's for Root."

Over to her left arm now, where there's a forward slash mark '/' on both the top and bottom of her wrist, and the words INDIGO FIVE BETA on the inside of her forearm.

"These are for Root, too," she says, gesturing to the slash marks. "And Indigo Five B - he was my partner in the ISA. And I have one on my ankle for the job I have at home now, but this doesn't look like the kind of couch you put your feet up on."

"You can put your feet on it," Malcolm tells her. "It's wipeable. The dogs sit up here with us."

Permission to defile the fancy NYC penthouse granted! Without further ado, she plops her low-cut boots on the couch and pulls down the edge of her sock, revealing a little drawing of a payphone.

"Had to get Rogers to do that one for me; I can't draw."

"What does it mean?" Malcolm asks.

"It's..."

A pause.

"This is gonna sound weird, but it's how I talk to my boss. Or, my boss's boss. The AI I work for, which is different from the AI who tortured me."

"You call a computer on a payphone?" Malcolm clarifies.

"No, the computer calls us. Or it calls Root; she's got a direct line in her head."

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