Work Text:
She won’t take off the mask today. Amanda notices right away.
It’s not so strange when they’re working, or when Amanda is working and Gabi is hovering around her expectantly. Amanda herself sometimes finds some solace in the quiet muffling of the mask. The sounds of tools and gears and grinding can really get to her after a while.
But they’re not working now, they’re just wandering the warehouse and soaking in the quiet. And Gabriella’s face is still shrouded. Her dark brown eyes can be seen peeking through the eye holes. Her hair pokes out and blends in with the black hair streaming from the mask.
She sits on one of the benches that’s cleared of tools with her head down and her whole body hanging strangely limp.
(One hand cradles the other gently, even if her wrist is primarily healed it might not ever be the same again. Not after it was broken and healed awkwardly under their lackluster medical care. Amanda said as much to Lawrence’s face.)
“Gabi?” Amanda tries as she approaches. No answer. Not even her head turning in Amanda’s direction as she sits, slumped over on the bench. Her hands are picking at the edge of her white coat, the one thing she kept with her from Mexico.
(It made Amanda ache. Even her room, scant and shitty as it is, has more comfort and security than that. Only a few things she owns have her blood on them. But it’s soaked into the collar of Gabi’s coat.)
Amanda sits down next to her. At the very least, Gabi doesn’t tell her to fuck off. But she doesn’t say anything else either. Her eyes are trained on the floor.
(When she first brought Gabriella back she didn’t speak for weeks. It had pissed Hoffman off, and he didn’t hesitate to tell Amanda as much. John wasn’t happy either, even if he wasn’t as open about it. In the end John had deemed Gabi “her responsibility” and left it at that.)
Gabi’s not an engineer, she’s not a doctor, she’s definitely not a killer. She won’t see anybody that’s brought in, won’t look at any profiles, and she flinches away from chains and their rattles like somebody burned her.
(Those are on the good days, anyway. On bad days, she curls in corners and cries silently, or muffle her screams by biting into the numbed skin of her hand until Amanda holds her close enough that she stops.But if there was one thing Gabi did seem to enjoy, it was the mask. When she had first gotten one from Amanda, she had seemed to marvel over it. She had put it on without much hesitation and Amanda swore she saw something light up in her eyes.)
Amanda doesn’t say anything else for the current moment. She just sits by her, resting her boots on the floor underneath the work bench.
Gabriella’s breathing is muffled and heavy, Amanda can hear it even from where she’s sitting. It’s possible she’s been crying, but it’s more likely the way her lungs are still impacted by the radiation. There’s no telling when that will go away. Or if it will go away.
(Amanda’s tongue traces over the rough scar tissue on the inside corner of her mouth in a gesture of sympathy. But she swats that idea away quickly, there's no comparing what she's gone through to Gabi.)
“You wanna take it off for a sec?” Amanda asks.
“No.” The first word she’s heard from Gabi all day, accompanied by a slight shake of her head. That’s progress in her mind, so she keeps going.
“Why?” Amanda makes sure it doesn’t sound like an accusation. She doesn’t think Gabi would react well to that. Hell, she wouldn’t blame her. Amanda’s not in the place to accuse anyone of anything.
“I don’t want to.” Gabi repeats. When she does speak, she can get stuck in the repetition. Amanda learned quickly. She’s been there herself.
(She has the vaguest memory in the back of her mind, of herself in the hospital after the reverse bear trap. Before the police came for her. The nurses asked her questions and her brain could only say the same thing. That she was alive. The nurses gave her looks of such scathing pity, but she still couldn't stop.)
“Okay.” Amanda says softly. Hoffman accuses her of treating Gabi like a child often. And every time Amanda tells him to fuck off. Gabi’s been through a lot, and Amanda will be damned if she won’t try to make life easier for her when she can.
“Too many mirrors.” Gabi says, almost absently. As though she’s talking to herself more than Amanda and Amanda is lucky to just barely grab her words. That's not wrong, there's shards of glass and mirrors all around the warehouse.
“What?” Amanda frowns.
“I don’t like to see-” Gabi’s hands move and flutter around her face.
“Oh.” Amanda nearly flinches at how stupid she sounds, but what is there to say? Of course that’s why. Gabi had been inconsolable for days after seeing herself in the mirror for the first time.
(It wasn’t like she didn’t know something was up the minute she woke up in the hospital, with how bandaged she was and how much everything hurt. But seeing was different from knowing.)
And what can she really say that she hasn’t said already? That Gabi is always beautiful to her, that she’s certain she’ll keep healing, that someday her face will look like her own again. All of that sounds like pure condescion now and Gabi deserves better than that.
So what she does is sit by Gabi and take her hand gently. She doesn’t force it, the last thing she wants is for Gabi to feel like she’s forcing it. Her hand rests limply in Amanda’s own for a moment before squeezing it for a brief moment as well as she can.
(She knows she won’t ever be able to shake off the guilt of her role in Gabi’s mutilation. She pays her own price every week with a new round of stinging cuts on her thighs and the bottom of her stomach. It feels fair in her own way. If Gabi can be scarred forever, so can she.)
Maybe she’ll take it off tomorrow, Amanda can hope, and really that’s all she can do for Gabi now.