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This was it. Moira had messed around with her body too much and it was struggling to hold itself together. Her vision was spinning and it felt like her limbs were going to fall apart any second now. Pain pulsed through her scorched nerves, everything burned. The tips of her fingers tingled, and she could almost feel each cell dying, struggling to keep going. She fell against the wall and allowed herself to slide down it till she ended up seated, hands planted either side of her.
What a sight she was leaving her lab in. A burner still on and papers and files everywhere. It was also quiet apart from the usual whirring of machinery, all kept to a quiet seeing as it was late in the night. Or maybe it was really early in the morning? Moira wouldn’t know, she was having trouble remembering the last time she saw the sun. She looked down at herself, and what a sight she was in, alone on the floor in her lab clothes. Of course she’d die in her lab coat, what a joke.
Moira wasn’t sure her eyes were playing tricks on her, until she was certain that she wasn’t alone in the room. Not sure when it had come in, there was a dark figure walking towards her. A shiver ran down her spine, but her body was too numb to react. If it was danger, it would probably end her suffering faster than the progressive degeneration of her body, but it wasn’t. The figure moved quietly across the room, slid down the wall and sat down next to her. Tan skin, clothed in a black suit, features hard to make out. Moira caught sight of a white shirt and well kept black hair, maybe even a black tie. It wasn’t important though, as she closed her eyes, welcoming the visitor’s presence.
She heard faint rustling, then a light brush of air came from the figure stretching out his hand, and as Moira looked up, she realised it was two cigarettes.
She shouldn’t smoke, especially not now as she was on her deathbed, but she may as well have one last one.
Too weak to lift her arms, she nodded with a whispered ‘Thank you’. Leather touched her lip as the figure gently placed the cigarette between her parched lips before lighting it. Moira inhaled, feeling the familiar feeling of smoke entering her mouth, running down through her throat. An unexpected cough came out of her, but the dark figure continued to help her smoke. He had lit his own cigarette too, breathing it in while Moira was savouring the burn.
She let her head fall against the wall and closed her eyes, embracing the stinging she felt as she held the smoke in for a bit too long. Her life was slipping away, like the ash at the end of the cigarette, falling into the darkness of the room.
The figure was silent, and they sat together in the silence of the lab. Moira had always enjoyed how far her lab was from everything. It fit her personality, secluded and alone, usually how she liked living her life.
But as she sat there, feeling her life drain out of her, she wondered whether there was more she could have done. Yes, she was a highly accomplished scientist in the genetic field, but her discoveries were kept hidden from public eye. Being a part of Blackwatch, her entire identity was kept under lock and key, and to the average person, Moira O’Deorain didn’t exist.
It worked in her favour. She could carry out whatever unruly experiments she wanted, with access to unlimited supplies and funding. Her life goal has always been to advance the field of science, that’s what she lived for. Other scientists disapproved with her methods, claiming they were too radical, too controversial. And it led to her wondering, did they not want to see how far they could push the human biology to?
Even Angela, her lab partner in her years at Overwatch, disapproved. She was a scientist too, for God’s sake. Hours spent disputing the ethics of each other’s work. She’d always been so patient, why? Moira looked down on her, bounded by some stupid red tape she wanted to call the “Hippocratic Oath”. She just saw it as a restriction preventing easy progress. She’d always thought Angela was a hypocrite, sporting a halo and angel wings and bringing back people from the dead. Going by the name of Mercy, of all things! Another coarse cough rummaged through her as she tried to laugh, her god complex truly knew no bounds. So why was it wrong when she also meddled with death? Why was she seen as the devil incarnate when Mercy was seen as an angel?
But then again, it was Angela Ziegler. Oh, sweet, sweet Angela. The only person Moira ever thought of as an equal. She’d loved her from the start, from the first day Angela stepped into the lab holding her big box of case files, she mistook it as curiosity. But Moira learnt love from Angela. True love, not the kind of love you get from sleeping with strangers. The kind of love that makes you weak, fragile, vulnerable and open to attack from all sides. And yet, Moira never hated the feeling. It warmed her up like nothing else did, a fire burning in her heart, slowly unwinding the complicated knots of emotions inside of her. She’d felt like a dog at Angela’s feet, lying there belly-up begging for love, verging on the edge of prayer. And Angela loved her back. Oh, Overwatch’s Golden Girl, she just melted her, knocking the wind out of her lungs whenever she flashed her blue eyes at her, left kiss marks all over her with perfectly applied lipstick, unravelled her with her fingertips.
A hand rested on top of her right one. Leather again on her bare skin. It felt distant, but still present. Moira was losing her reach to sensation, so she savoured it for the last few seconds as it faded. Her right arm was stained purple after years of decay and rot. Her experiments were finally catching up to her. She took a deep breath, smelling the sterile environment of her lab mixing with the nearby cigarette smoke, imagining what her internals were currently doing while shutting down. Her heartbeat was present, slower than usual, and Moira imagined a metronome ticking in time.
Angela wanted to know, and who was she to deny her the truth? Moira never felt herself to be in the wrong, but when she thought about the last time they saw each other, she wonders whether she regretted anything. She always wished for Angela to come back to her, for her to forgive her and accept her for who she is, the gruesome nature of her interest. But what if she was in the wrong this entire time?
Moira had never stopped missing her. She swore she’d never let her go, and truthfully, that’s exactly what she did. Despite the moving across the world, the photo smashing, the drinking, the smoking and the burning, Angela always had a place in her heart, and she always will. If you scratched away at her skin, tore apart her muscles, looked into her bone marrow under microscope. If you explored the depths of Moira’s soul, within those depths, you would find gold. True gold, almost like stardust. Angela runs through Moira’s veins, her gold spindles of hair, her sweetness from the sugar she poured into her drinks, the light she shines over Overwatch.
Despite everything, Moira only ever held respect for Angela. She’d always felt like her other half, and years later it stills feels so. They understood each other in a way no one else could. They never were that couple who were too busy with work for each other. Their lab time was their together time. Working in the same room on their own projects, reminding each other to eat, to take a break. Helping each other with their projects, sharing new facts they’ve discovered, new working of the human body. Some would describe them as codependant, but they never saw it as such. They were truly just two scientists wanting to change the world, playing a little too much like God.
She shuddered, her body dedicating the rapidly dwindling resources towards keeping her heart beating for as long as possible. Oh, God would be looking down on her now. Moira grew up religious, but as she got older she stopped believing. The thousands of nights spent praying to be normal, praying for someone to finally notice her. When the praying didn’t work, she turned her back on God. But in her worse moments, she prays to no one. She pictures no one, she sends her message to no one, but she just wants someone to know she’s struggling. She had no one to beg to once Angela left her, so that’s exactly who she prayed to.
It’s simply ironic, they both pursued reversing death, and Angela has been thriving with her Valkyrie suit and her Caduceus staff while Moira has been rotting away in her lab, with her self inflicted heterochromia and artificial decay. Angela really was made to fly, shine her success story across the world, an orphan becoming a scientific prodigy and advancing nanobiotics. She deserved this, while Moira deserved to be 6 feet underground from the day she was born.
Really, where had it all gone wrong? Was it the decision to join Blackwatch, become the director of genetics in Oasis? Was her damned paper the start of her downfall? Was it her inability to change her principles? She always been a stubborn one, was that her fault? Or was she doomed from birth? Born surrounded by scientists, taught to never back down, to never stop trying. Learning her ABCs from her parents’ anatomy books, isolated from everyone because she was different. She was so different. Her mind had always worked differently, sometimes she barely felt human. She felt untouchable, but oh so lonely.
When she was younger, she told herself that she would never feel small again, and sitting here, in the corner of her dimming lab, she had never felt so minuscule before. Sitting here she realised she'd always been alone. She got sent the grim reaper to stay with her as she passed, and she was still so alone. Moira O'Deorain died trying to play God. In her last breaths, her last moments of coherent, running thoughts, she apologised. Sorry to Angela for derailing her hard work and leaving a wreckage behind. Sorry to Reyes for messing up with his recovery, condemning him to a cycle of pain. Sorry to field of science for tarnishing its reputation. Sorry to the universe for trying to play with the fabric of nature. And sorry to her parents, to her family, to her entire bloodline, for never being able to let go of who she is.
Her last breath was a conflicted one. Of course it would be, Moira O'Deorain never felt peace. She was never allowed to feel peace, not even in her last breath. She breathed sorry to her younger self. Sorry for pushing herself too far. Sorry for never being good enough. Sorry for never making connections with people. Sorry for failing herself. Sorry for leading her down this cruel, cruel path.