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Moira wakes in a restless night and stretches her hand out to the other side of the bed.
Cold. The wind outside is tossing leaves and sticks against the window. A strip of moonlight falls through a crack in the curtain, streaking across her hand.
She turns to the dark and curls up, trying to sleep.
Ana’s voice was golden, like honey roughed by the desert sands. Moira always felt aglow in her presence, less worthy of her attention than she was afforded. Even when she revealed her ties to Talon and the sniper turned on her, she still called. Angry, biting calls, grinding down Moira’s patience.
But now she is gone and that doesn’t matter.
Moira sometimes wants to kill Amelie. Revenge for what she did. When she sees Amelie in the halls of the Talon headquarters her fingers itch to tear her eyes out, to make her scream and collapse to the floor just like Ana had done.
She hadn’t seen it happen. It didn’t matter. Amelie had told her all about it, tossing her sleek hair, bragging as she stepped into the headquarters.
Romantic engagements were supposed to be off the table. At least for high-level Talon operatives anyway. It had taken a long time for Gabe to get over Jack Morrison, but when he died they’d already convinced him he was bad news. When Doomfist was broken out of jail, Gabe had seen him as an appropriate substitute for his affections.
So Moira thought it was hypocritical that he demand she and the others stay out of romance.
She has heard rumours that Sombra has a soft spot for the weightlifter, Zarya, but she knows that will never happen. Not with Zarya’s staunch views on justice and goodness… Sombra doesn’t fit into that squeaky clean narrative. Sombra isn’t even loyal to Talon, Moira muses. She’s just using their resources for her own goals. Whatever they are.
Moira knows she’s being hypocritical. Whatever, it’s her job.
Sometimes she wishes she could be injected with that shit they put in Amelie. To remove all feelings and attachments. So she could forget Ana and stop caring. Maybe her heart is half-infected with the pulsing purple madness that took her hand and eye. But there’s still enough humanity there to let it ache and ache when she thinks about Ana Amari.
Sometimes, her pride softens enough that she can admit she fucked up. This whole “good vs evil” thing leaves a bad taste in her mouth but even she recognises her immoralities. But her methods help people. She stopped Gabe from dying, from fading out like Jack had done. She helps people. Oasis thought so. Talon thought so. Even Blackwatch had been impressed with her technologies.
But the real fuckups - they’re on her.
Ugly purple, veiny and raw, her hand is one of the first things she modified when she started her experiments. She’s proud of what she’s created, along with the pack on her shoulders that facilitates both healing and destroying.
Moira is less concerned with morality and more with humanity. And her humanity has already half fled.
You were the only thing keeping me human, Moira had written once. In her diary, to be destroyed in a caustic chemical fire later. Now that you’re gone, what is left here for me?
Ana had been so vibrantly human that it hurts to think about. Even when she was younger, lines engraved into her face held the evidence of her years fighting. Her two dark blessed eyes, one framed with the wadjet symbol. Palms gnarled and hardened, permanently stained with gunpowder and burns. And her daughter - that little fighter, the strong-willed and gorgeous Fareeha - she had been so wholly human.
Ana had instilled a strong sense of justice in her daughter from an early age. The fighting spirit, it ran in the Amari blood.
Moira thinks about having a daughter. A daughter with claws and blue veins and brown eyes.
She turns to the moonlight again. She can see it now, the full moon a circle in the black sky. It illustrates the bumps and imperfections on her hand.
She screws her eyes shut and thinks of home.