Author's Note: This is actually a scene lifted from the novel I'm writing for National Novel Writing Month that I thought would apply very nicely to Gippal. Here we see him in a bit of a weak moment, which we don't encounter very often when dealing with this particular character. Many thanks to Lee for the inspiration, as always.

The Mirror

Gippal felt the right side of his face, something he had done every morning when he woke up disoriented and lost. It was becoming a familiar feeling, like waking up next to an old friend... except that the old friend was shaking him and making his stomach reel with confusion and nausea.

Yes, it was still there. The tape still covered his skin, rough against his fingertips. He blinked his eyes - no, his eye. He blinked his eye. He only had one now.

He was immensely grateful that his left eye was still intact, perfectly formed, and completely unharmed. He wasn't sure how it was possible with the number of scratches and scars which lined the right side of his face, and the bandage which covered them all.

A gauze pad kept him from seeing it when he looked in the mirror, but he knew what was behind the white covering... or, rather, what wasn't there. He would be with one eye for the rest of his life, and he hoped that he would eventually learn to wake up without the distorted nausea that accompanied him in the mornings.

He put his hands over his face, trying to keep the world from spinning. His brain hadn't gotten used to seeing in two dimensions, and he always had to take several moments to reacquaint himself with the strange phenomenon of the lack of depth perception. It usually made him vomit.

Gippal opened his eye very slowly, blinking to adjust his perception to the bright lights above him. He hadn't gotten used to the light that came on in his room every morning at the same time, the level that he couldn't adjust no matter what he did. At one point, he had stood on the bed and detached the power wires to the light, which gave him blissful darkness for a little while before he was sane enough to get up and walk. After a few hours with the doctors, learning to work his way through his lack of depth perception, he returned to his room only to find that the light had been mysteriously repaired. The same thing happened each day, and eventually Gippal gave up.

He had even asked for another room, but the people he was currently working for refused to grant it to him. They said something about overcrowding, but Gippal wasn't inclined to believe them. It didn't matter anyway; he rarely slept as it was.

The memories of what had happened ran through his mind constantly. The careless mistake he had made with the wiring of the engine of the hover, how he hadn't bothered to make sure the fuel line was absolutely secure before connecting the electrodes to the battery...

Gippal would never make that mistake again. He had been careless, but he was constantly reminded of the perils of carelessness every time he reached for an object and found it to be further away than it appeared. Many people thought that he would be too frightened to ever touch an engine again, maybe even to ever lay his hands on machina... but that wasn't the case. Even when he was supposed to be sleeping, the ideas for designs, connections, and wiring ran through his brain like a monologue, inspiring him for whenever he would be able to stay on his feet and see straight for long enough to work on his creations.

Biting back the nausea, Gippal sat up in the stiff white hospital bed and put his bare feet on the cold tile floor. It was nothing like the warm sands of the desert; it was cold and uninviting, unforgiving and hateful. Gippal had started to wear thick socks at every moment during the day to keep the cold tile away from his feet, but he still couldn't stand to wear them as he slept.

Pulling on a pair of thick knitted gray socks, Gippal shivered as he drew a dark mauve sweatshirt over his shoulders. It was cold in the building; too cold for Gippal, but he couldn't exactly leave when he couldn't walk down the hallway without running into half of the objects on the way.

The door to the room creaked slightly as Dr. Collin Mahmoud opened it and slipped through. "Good morning, Gippal," he said with a bright smile.

Gippal let a smile escape to his forward features, then winced as the tape of the bandage over his eye caught on his skin and pulled sharply. He liked Collin quite a bit, and it showed as he continued to grin even as he cursed at the adhesive. He had no idea what made the doctor so likeable; maybe it was that bright smile that had been the first thing Gippal had seen when he woke up thinking that he had lost both of his eyes in the careless, stupid accident.

"It's about time for that tape to go," Collin said, pressing an object wrapped in a white plastic bag into Gippal's hands.

Gippal flinched, but looked down at the gift, then back up at Collin questioningly. "What's this?"

Collin grinned. "I know how you feel, but it's time. Go try that on."

Gippal shook his head. He didn't know what was in the bag exactly, but he knew what Collin was referring to... he wanted him to take the bandage off. Gippal wasn't sure he was ready, and started to open his mouth to protest when he was interrupted.

"Doctor's orders." Collin grinned and patted Gippal on the shoulder, offering his hand to help Gippal to his feet.

Once he was on his feet and had made his way to the bathroom without running into anything, he stood in front of the mirror. Gippal stared for a moment at the white bandage and gauze that Collin had bandaged his eye up with several days before. The doctor had been instrumental in helping Gippal's face heal to near-perfect conditions; the only flaws remaining were a few cuts along the bridge of his nose that would heal well enough... well, those and the missing eye, but there was very little Dr. Mahmoud could do for that.

Gippal didn't want to see what was underneath that gauze. It would be terrible, disgusting, revolting; he wasn't sure he was prepared to handle the reality that there wasn't an eye under there.

He needed to distract himself before the nausea set in again. Opening the top of the white bag, he reached his hand inside and pulled out the gift. It was a heavy black piece of soft leather edged in silver stitching, formed in a rounded shape with a strap and a light silver buckle... an eyepatch.

Gippal swallowed when he saw it. An eyepatch. He would have to wear one for the rest of his life, unless he wanted people to see the disgusting mess of flesh which was likely to be hidden beneath that innocent piece of white gauze.

Well, he knew he would have to see it sometime. Besides, he was under doctor's orders, and his machina were waiting.

A small ripping sound indicated that the tape was releasing itself from Gippal's skin, and the gauze pad came with it. Gippal kept his eye firmly closed as he removed the makeshift patch, not wanting to see what was underneath. His fingertips glanced along the skin just slightly as he pulled the gauze off, and he was surprised at how sensitive the skin was there.

Gippal flickered his eye open slightly. He caught one horrific image of the marred flesh; it was a little like he had thought, and it burned itself into his memory. Red and rough skin covering where a pale green eye used to be, crossed with scars that he knew would never heal. He had to close his eye to the image of it, but the memory remained like an bitter aftertaste.

Turning his body away from the mirror, Gippal struggled blindly with the buckle on the black eyepatch for a moment before realizing the need for sight. Begrudgingly opening his eye, he slipped the clasp free, leaving the black leather open in his hands. With careful motions, he laced the strap back through his hair, feeling an odd warmth in the feel of the soft material on his tender skin as the wide circular part slipped over the aberration of flesh where his eye had been.

The strap ran through his hair and around the back of his head, circling around underneath his right ear to connect with the patch over his eye. Gippal had to adjust it until it felt comfortable so that part of the buckle wasn't digging into the backside of his ear, or that his hair wasn't laying in some uncomfortable way underneath the strap. After much adjusting to make sure it was comfortable and that it was fully covering the terrible injury, Gippal chanced a look back at the mirror.

"Wow," he said when he caught the glimpse of himself. The black offset his yellow hair, contrasting strikingly with the light color of the rest of Gippal's face. The green of his remaining eye became brighter and more noticeable, if possible, and the patch adequately hid all that was imperfect about his injury. The only signs remaining were the cuts across the bridge of his nose, and those were well on their way to being healed.

He turned his head, looking at where the strap ran through his hair. Running his fingers through the spikes, he adjusted them so that his hair covered as much of the strap as possible, and so that the spikes on top covered what would be otherwise visible. It seemed like the black leather now simply emerged from his hair as though it was a naturally occurring feature. He turned his head to several angles, looking at himself from all sides. He stood in different positions, tilting his head up and down, turning his shoulders, and putting different expressions on his face. From all angles, the new black accessory didn't look bad at all. In fact, the way it complemented Gippal's already handsome appearance made him almost thankful that he had blown his eye out in a stupid accident. Gippal admitted to himself in his own thoughts that he actually liked it, and his mood lightened immensely. Only he could make a stupid injury look good!

"Damn," he finally said out loud to his reflection, which was grinning back at him as he posed. "Black makes me look sexy."