Work Text:
moira o’ deorain does not believe in God.
during the preparation for her confirmation they browse a book of saints, as a class. her teacher lists the common ones for girls and for boys, talks about their meaning and significance. she is told, again, about accepting the holy spirit, how important this step is in life as a follower of Christ. the final initiation into the fold.
“choosing a name is no simple matter,” her teacher says. “reach out to the saint you feel will guide you best, as when you take their name you take their protection into yourself, too. you may pray to them or to God for guidance as you begin your life as a mature member of the church.”
her best friend picks anastasia, laughs about how it reminds her of the singer. moira feels some jealousy at the ease which she plucks it from the book, the way it settles in among her other names.
nothing has fit for her yet. she prays, and gets no response.
a day before the deadline for choosing she picks st. jude. her friends find it funny, her mother finds it weird, and her teacher doesn’t have the time to talk her out of it. her aunt’s hand on her shoulder during the mass is tighter than it need be.
she doesn’t remember what her baptism was like, remembers the novelty of her first confession and communion outweighed any holiness a child could feel. here she is old enough to understand, old enough to take to heart the words drilled into her beforehand. she recites her lines perfectly; the bishop stumbles over her name. she feels no holy spirit, no growth nor acceptance, and when she cries and prays to the patron saint of lost causes, he leaves her in the dark.
she lost her faith at twelve years old, she will say. gained faith in science and never looked back. she slowly forgets the apostle’s creed, and the lord’s prayer.
--
moira does quizzes online to find what circle of hell she will be sent to, and keeps getting heresy. she turns off the power to the little red light with a cross in it her father reveres so much. she reads dawkins and hitchens and mocks her friends when they pray along at school. she smugly keeps her mouth shut when the teachers recite the morning prayers, and cuts out the cross stitched into her uniforms.
she is called into the headmistress’ office when her mother agrees to let her drop religion as a subject, and is asked: “how can someone so young lose their faith?”
when religion is being taught, she sits apart from the other girls, although she is much too used to that. the teacher mentions humanism, and one of the other girls asks, “is that what moira is?” and they titter. she frowns and corrects them - she is an atheist. the girls don’t even hear her.
she passes a graveyard, and her hands burn.
--
she gets a degree in genetics at trinity college and thinks idly on the irony, if only to herself. her aunt gifts her a rosary for her 21st birthday, and she drops it in a box and leaves it in her childhood wardrobe when she leaves home. she studies medicine and puts her faith in science and observable truth, qualifies as a geneticist and writes increasingly risky papers on gene editing. her experiments become more wild; her peers become more enraged.
when she is cast out of her profession, gabriel reyes welcomes her into his.
“we can help each other,” he says. “not like you have much choice if you want to keep your research.”
she is sceptical. “apparently my research is unethical. i have received condemnation from your organization directly. why would you help me?”
reyes smiles. he wears a chain around his neck with a small silver cross and he gives up drinking for lent. “I don’t work for overwatch.”
--
moira doesn’t get on well with angela in the lab, but finds her fascinating outside of it. there is a divide between them she revels in, likes it when angela seems annoyed when moira flirts with her. likes it even more when it works and they find themselves in a closet somewhere on the swiss base, before a mission, hurriedly redressing to make it back to their stations in time.
angela never mentions faith, but she does mention God a lot in those closets.
when moira rests over her experiments, the way she folds her hands is like a prayer. when someone in angela’s care dies, and she hears, moira finds herself making the sign of the cross more often than she cares to admit.
there is some level of blasphemy to what she does. she tests on anyone willing, animals, herself. always so close to the secret of creation, but she settles for changing what she can. she changes bodies as she sees fit, allows them to become what they want instead of what God designed. when reyes asks her to make him a better soldier, she obliges and works tirelessly to give him a body he can mould for himself.
it fails, of course, as she is not divine. her creations are as flawed as she is, and God judges her unworthy. as overwatch breaks down, so does reyes.
she takes communion at his funeral, and flees switzerland for talon.
--
reaper keeps her at arms length, only ever approaching her when ordered to by doomfist. she, in turn, can only stabilize him, knowing there is no cure for her arrogance. she is nearly fifty and she takes an online quiz and gets sent to the seventh circle for violence against God.
when her mother dies, she gets the rosary in the mail. she keeps it in the bottom drawer of her desk in oasis, and it burns a hole there, asking her why she no longer prays to God for help. she uses jude as an alias when she needs to. there is a heaviness to it.
sometimes she will go home, back to dublin, and go to the church where her family used to pray, where she stood for communion and confirmation and where she lost her faith. the people will chat kindly to her, ask after her family and friends without truly knowing who she has become.
moira does not believe in God. but she carries with her the time that she did.