He watched as her colorful eyes ran up, down, and across his topless form, searching for any differences or imperfections. It was the way she looked at him, Gabriel concluded, that made him so uneasy. Moira wasn't performing a check-up on her patient; rather, she was analyzing the effects of the tests done to her lab rat. That was the sort of gaze she gazed, cold and unsympathetic. That truth always left a pit in his stomach. He couldn't fathom seeing his teammates as she did: nothing more than walking lumps of meat, perpetually ready at her command, whether they chose it or not. It didn't quite matter if the person were respectable or not; it made no difference to her. All and everyone were rats: scummy, worthless things that were beneath the Doctor.
This was the way she looked at him, and it was frightening.
She wouldn't (or perhaps couldn't) empathize with him. Moira would brush his pain and agony right off her shoulder, just as she did with the rabbit a few weeks ago. That's all he was to her, yeah? A rabbit. He wasn't above that pitiful, insignificant creature she so brutally murdered on that table.
Truly, a frightening thought.
Everything was already in motion, however. Gabriel couldn't back down now. There was already so much progress made. He had passed the point of no return too long ago.
"You're not experiencing any pain?" Moira questioned. Gabe shook his head. "Nope."
"Is there an extremely dull pain in either your temples, molars, hips, calves, or testicles?"
"Uh, excuse me?" She looked up from her clipboard and seared his retinas with her gaze, an unspoken I'm not fucking around in the crossfire. He cleared his throat before answering. "N-no, there's not."
"Thank you," she sounded as she wrote down what he assumed to be his answers on her papers. He wasn't sure why, but an employee asking him how his nuts were doing filled him with this unexplainable awkwardness, and no matter how many times Gabriel told himself that Moira was a doctor doing her job, the sensation didn't seem to want to leave for a while.
Once he relinquished himself from his thoughts, he found that his gaze traveled to her arm. Metal plates took up the locations where her protruding veins once were. Apparently with this, she was able to control the life-draining ability they now both possessed.
The woman messed up her own body so his would stay healthy.
That was...nice of her.
In a strange, screwy way.
He examined the long red, acrylic nails that hid what Gabe deemed her "claws" and compared the length with the short nails on her left hand. There were no fakes there, just the natural ones, painted to match the color of the plastic on her right hand. Such an unusual style would have looked strange on anyone but her. He questioned why she didn't want the left to mirror the right at some point, and she responded with something along the lines of "It would be too difficult to write with such long nails." He understood after that conversation.
"You appear to be stable, Reyes," Moira told him, peering up once more and flashing that infamous smirk. "And I've already started on your newest abilities. Everything is coming along well."
That cool fade ability, he thought. "How bad is that going to hurt?" The commander quirked an eyebrow.
"Well," her head tilted to the side, "because this procedure's never been done before, we'll just have to wait and see."
"Comforting." An exasperated sigh left his lips along with the participle. "Especially after how 'painless' the last procedure was, really comforting."
"It's for science, Commander."
On that note, she spun the chair behind her to face him and planted herself in the seat, crossing her long, thin legs. "Any questions?"
"Not so many questions as concerns," Gabriel said half-heartedly, earning a laugh from Moira.
"If that's all, then I believe we're done here." She reached for the cup of coffee in behind her, gripping it at the strip of cardboard wrapped around its white material and twirling it, resulting in a very unhappy Moira. "Out of coffee?" he smiled, throwing his shirt on over his head. The woman stood and set the cup back on the table. "Coffee is repulsive," she sneered, "I prefer tea."
"How the hell do you stay up for half as long as you do living off tea?"
"Practice." She removed her white coat and folded it over her arm. "And just so you're aware, I'm not an insomniac."
"You're close to one, though," he accused her. Moira shrugged. "We must all make sacrifices, Reyes."
His eyes darted to the side. "I guess," and as she walked over to the trash (located only a few feet away from him) to throw the empty cup away, he added, "I just don't think we should sacrifice our wellbeing to our jobs."
"If I recall correctly, Commander, you were willing to alter your genetic makeup so your body would be better suited for the circumstances your 'job' brought about without knowing the possible negative consequences. As a matter of fact, I would not be here without you sacrificing your wellbeing to your job."
God-fucking-damnit.
She was too fucking right.
Blood rushed to Gabe's ears as he thought of something to say, even though there really wasn't much to be said. "Listen," he started, "the difference between you and me is my sacrifice didn't have me end up looking like a...a-a toothpick." The laugh that had erupted from her moments afterwards, hearty and condescending, yet so calm, danced upon the grooves of his cartilage and down his spinal column, causing the hair at the nape of his neck to stand and prickle at the sensation of that oddly melodic sound. "I am a bit androgynous, aren't I?"
"I never said that."
"Could it not implied from the title Toothpick?"
"I just meant you were skinny, nothing else!" She began laughing again. That seemed to be the only reaction he could get out of Moira: laughter. She was mocking him. She knew what he meant, she just wanted a reaction.
"Oh, whatever," he huffed. "To hell with you."
"Oh, don't be like that, Gabriel, I'm just poking fun." She leaned on the desk and crossed her arms, looking at the patterns the wires and tubes created above their heads. "You must admit, however: the sacrifice was worth it." He watched her content expression for a few seconds, tracing her sharp cheekbones with his gaze, before nonchalantly peering lower and studying the flowers on her formfitting shirt.
Wow, she really did look like a toothpick, didn't she?
Gabriel has been in and out of this lab for around two months, the hours spent with this woman uncountable, and not once has he truly noticed just how, well, toothpick-y she was. Her physical appearance never mattered much to him, and it still didn't really matter, he simply...
Well...
He's never seen a woman look quite like her.
A thin waist connected to (very) narrow hips, and narrow hips connected to her flat rear. Her boney arms led down to large hands and thin, spidery fingers, and he hated to admit, but she boasted just about the tiniest pair of breasts he'd ever laid eyes upon.
Truly, Moira O'Deorain was the weirdest-looking lady Gabe had ever met.
That wasn't a bad thing; it made her even more unique than she already was. An odd appearance suited her so well.
"Well, I'm going to head out," he explained. She glanced over to him, her calm smile lost and replaced with her ever-present cold stare. "Let me know if anything feels off."
"Got it."
"I'll see you when the time comes, Commander." He nodded and headed out of the lab and up to the banquet hall in search of something to eat.
I'll see you when the time comes.
That was bit ominous; but then again, it was Moira, and as he had learned, one may only expect the unexpected from her.
