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plants - 3.2k words, incomplete

ft. a lot of jack comparing himself to lena and feeling guilty about it, speculation about the slipstream & overwatch's involvement in it, and government coverups

hi all - i figured i'd start posting some of the fic i've written over the years to make this a better archive. note - none of these are complete :(

this one is titled just "plants" and was written late 2020. i think i was aiming for an overarching theme of perennials vs annual plants (ie ones that last and ones that die to put it bluntly) thus some of the plant based commentary.

only change i've made is cassidy's name.

Lena Oxton is, by far, the best candidate for the Slipstream. Her test scores are perfect across the board, her commanding officers give glowing reviews of her abilities and all mention her natural aptitude for taking on challenges, and leadership abilities that shine despite her position as a non-commissioned officer. Despite the flight program not technically being under Jack Morrison’s command, he is currently the highest ranking officer in Switzerland right now, and Director Petras wants to give this ace pilot a warm welcome. And neither he nor Ana Amari, his second-in-command and the woman sitting directly to his right, know anything about this mysterious pilot.

“They didn’t even give us her age,” Ana comments idly, legs crossed at the ankles and fingers tapping on the table. “She could be older than you, Jack.”

“I thought you said that was impossible?” Jack tosses back, smirking a bit despite the uncomfortable situation they’re both in. First meetings in any military-esque organization are rarely actually first impressions, due to the personnel files stored on anyone who’s ever so much as sneezed on a recruiter. He runs a hand through his grey hair, thinning and receding at the front. Ana’s has gone grey as well. Gabe, the lucky bastard, is the only one out of the three of them to even have a hint of his original hair color left, and he shaves most of it off and sticks a beanie on top just to spite them.

Jack’s pulled out of his musings by the sound of a knock on the office door, and he and Ana stand up straight. “Come on in,” Jack says, a little unprofessional and hits the button to open the door.

Lena Oxton is, in fact, not older than Jack or Ana. Ana stiffens a bit next to Jack when she sees the younger girl, smiling wide and walking confidently in RAF service dress, two chevrons on her arms denoting corporal rank. Her hat is tucked underneath her arm, and the sergeant who walked her here nods and salutes to Jack. Jack nods back at him, and he takes his leave. It’s a meeting just between the corporal and Overwatch, after all.

“Good morning Strike-Commander Morrison, Captain Amari,” Lena Oxton says, maybe out of turn but her eagerness and the sharp salute she gives them, all with a cheerful grin on her face, makes Jack let it go.

“At ease, Corporal,” Jack says, waving his hand and motioning towards a chair across the table from him and Ana. Ana is still silent next to him, and it’s only from years of service together does he know that she’s silently furious. He hasn’t let himself feel any anger yet, and instead pulls a notepad out from underneath the limited files he has on Oxton. Clicking his pen once, he gives her a small smile and says, “I have to say, you’re not exactly who we were expecting.”

Lena smiles wider, back straight but legs kicking in the seat a bit. “I get that a lot,” she admits, tilting her head. Her hair is short, obviously growing back out from a buzzcut, and is already beginning to show signs of wildness. It makes Jack wonder how recently she got out of basic training.

Ana’s one step ahead of him as she asks, “When did you become a corporal?”

“Earlier this year,” Lena answers. Ana frowns, and Lena’s posture becomes nervous, looking between Ana’s own displeased face and Jack’s clearly shocked one. “They streamlined me, sir, they said because of natural aptitude. I’m far from the youngest enlisted.”

“How old are you?” Jack asks, a bit afraid of the answer. The RAF would know better than to send them a child. Cassidy was strictly kept off the battlefield and not given an official position until six months after he turned eighteen, all at Reyes’ hand. Even then, it made them all uneasy. Jack and Gabe knew too much about being selected for a special program when they were too young to understand everything that was going on behind the scenes, blinded by patriotism and the concept of being special. They were eighteen then, too.

“Eighteen, sir, as of a few months ago,” Lena replies, grin gone and face now matching the solemn feeling of the room, although she doesn’t seem to understand it. She looks as if she wants to argue for her case, prove her worthiness, tell them to give her a chance and let her show her skills, thinking they might reject her because of naivety. Neither of them doubt her skills, though, and neither does Director Petras, who all but ordered Jack to approve this girl for the Slipstream.

The rest of the interview goes normally, with Oxton thanking them effusively when Jack tells her the position is hers. Jack knows this was all orchestrated over their heads when she tells him the RAF already shipped her belongings over to Zurich. They insist on walking Oxton over to her new quarters, where her room is designated by a fresh new nameplate and a singular cardboard box on the desk inside.

“Wicked,” she says, looking around the room, and then turning back to them and saluting crisply. “I’ll do my best here, Strike-Commander, Captain!” She promises, and Jack just nods and gives her a thin smile as he and Ana walk away. It’s not until they’re in Jack’s office again does Ana speak.

“She’s younger than Fareeha when she left home, for goodness’ sake!” Ana yells, Jack sitting in the office chair and looking thoughtfully at the personnel files. Mysteriously, they only showed up when Jack had approved Oxton for the Slipstream position. Ana reads them over his shoulder, flipping the page before he finishes, making him look up at her, annoyed.

“Listen to this. Lena Oxton, age eighteen. Applied for the Royal Air Force when she was fifteen, Jack. Fifteen. Enlisted as early as she possibly could.”

Jack rubs at his eyes tiredly, already resigned to the whole situation. Petras already strong armed everyone into it, and it seems like he has the backing of the United Kingdom.

“I know that, Jack.” Was he speaking out loud? “What I’m saying is, she’s maybe not the youngest person to ever be drafted for Overwatch, she is the youngest one enlisted on base right now.” Ana frowns, sitting down on the desk across from Jack and sighing. “I just don’t like it.”

“Me neither. But it seems like it's gone above our heads, again,” Jack grumbles, running a hand through his hair again and leaning back in the chair. “Best we can do is offer a support system. Maybe introduce her to Cassidy.”

The conversation switches to a less disheartening topic, from the new recruit to old friends and their new updates. After an hour or so, Ana excuses herself to go to dinner, chiding Jack lightly and reminding him to eat. After threatening to set Angela on him, she leaves, the door shutting quietly behind her. Jack gathers up Lena Oxton’s scattered files and reviews them again, this time without Ana grabbing the papers out of his hands.

The majority of it is test results in more detail, seemingly to justify choosing Oxton over a more experienced candidate. They even included her high school transcript, which shows a fairly average student before it stops abruptly, replaced with military academy grades. It shouldn’t surprise him. The United Kingdom had increased their recruitment rates for the Omnic Crisis and continued to take on new recruits after it ended.

At the very end of the file are photos from various points of Oxton’s career. The most recent was only taken a few days ago, Oxton giving a half-smile at the camera. The oldest two are most striking, however. They seem to show a before-and-after: in the before, Lena Oxton scowls at the camera, head half-shaved and hair dyed white. The after shows her, still scowling, in a military academy uniform with a nearly-bare head. The pictures give him more insight into Oxton than any of her official records do.

Jack makes a note to himself to talk to Lena Oxton before she leaves the base for the Slipstream project.

--

Of course, he never gets that opportunity. It isn’t until a week after the Slipstream incident that Jack gets to read the report. One pilot missing in action. One teleportation matrix currently being searched for. The scientists note that the chances of finding the matrix are likely, due to the magnetic fields or whatever the technobabble is, but that the fate of Lena Oxton is completely unknown.

“It’s none of your concern, Commander Morrison,” Director Petras tells him over the phone. “Research and development isn’t your jurisdiction.”

Jack grits his teeth. “I understand that, Director.”

“Great. I know I don’t need to remind you that the Slipstream project is highly classified. As such, our official stance is that there was no experimental flight program, no test flights, and no missing pilots. Understand?”

Jack stays silent as he thinks. He thinks about a twenty year-old young man laying in a hospital bed in a classified military hospital. He thinks about the way the injections made him feel like he was burning from the inside out. He thinks about seeing doctors wheeling covered bodies to the morgue, whispering about another failed subject. He thinks about being told to never speak of it again.

“Of course, Director,” Jack says, and the phone line goes dead.

He hasn’t forgotten the lifeless bodies in the beds next to him. He doubts he’ll forget Lena Oxton, either.

--

They recover Slipstream’s flight recorder two weeks after the crash, one week after the gag order is placed. In the audio recorded by the cockpit voice recorder, Lena Oxton speaks clearly and confidently, reporting all signals normal.

“Order received,” she says, her voice tinny. “Activating teleportation matrix in fifteen seconds.” And then, almost too quiet for the recorder to pick up, Oxton says, “This ought to be fun!”

A few moments pass before Oxton speaks up again and announces the activation of the teleportation matrix. Harsh static follows, and the recording ends.

Morrison isn’t sure if the hint of a scream before the static is real or just his guilty conscience.

--

Lena Oxton was never a part of Overwatch, officially, so Jack Morrison has no flags to place over caskets and no next of kin to inform - not that Oxton had any, he remembers grimly.

There were no flags or ceremony for Soldier: 75, the teenager in the bed next to him who cried out in the night, whose bed was empty when Soldier: 76 woke up in the morning. Jack hadn’t even known his name. He hadn’t even thought of him for decades.

That night, when he sleeps, he dreams of the soldier enhancement program for the first time in years. In his dreams, Lena Oxton is wheeled out of Jack’s room, her still body covered by a white sheet. The doctors tell him not to think about it, tell him that the bed next to him was always empty. The doctors tell him to forget.

--

Ana brings it up first, when they’re sitting alone in his office. Jack has his hands folded and pressed against his face. Someone who didn’t know him would assume he was praying.

“We failed her,” Ana says. Jack doesn’t look up. “What are you going to do about it, Jack?”

“There’s nothing I can do,” Jack replies without looking up. “She accepted the position. She knew the risks. This is what happens in war.”

“I know that. It doesn’t make it any less wrong,” Ana retorts. She’s been a soldier longer than he has. There’s another long pause.

“After I had Fareeha, I fought so she wouldn’t have to,” Ana says. “I thought that she could grow up in a time of peace. I hoped that she would become something - anything besides a soldier. I failed her too.”

“Fareeha made her own decision. She knew the risks. This is what happens in war, Ana -” Jack repeats, but Ana cuts him off.

“What war, Jack? What war are we fighting?” Ana stands and moves to leave. “The Crisis is over. You and I and Gabe each have the medals to prove it. So why are our kids soldiers?” She hesitates by the door. “We failed them, Jack.”

The door slides shut behind her.

--

Lena Oxton doesn’t let any of them forget her.

The Slipstream’s teleportation matrix is found after months of searching, with some reclusive new signals expert named Winston apparently being the one to pinpoint its location. Within a week of its return, the scientists note chronal anomalies surrounding it and place it in an asymptotically timelike chamber in the Swiss base specially designed during the beginning of the Slipstream experiments.

Jack takes a moment to scrub at his eyes, squints at the page, and skims over the next few dozen lines of equations. He respects the scientists, but he wishes he knew how to ask them to dumb their reports down without coming across as dismissive. He flips the page and begins to skim over the paragraphs when he reads:

Upon reactivation of the chamber, the pilot previously assumed killed in action, Lena Oxton - callsign Tracer - reappeared, though she exhibited many anomalies that could not completely be contained by the chamber.

Five more pages of analysis follow. The report concludes by stating that Dr. Ziegler and the scientist from earlier, Winston, have been assigned to her case.

Jack goes back and rereads the paragraph. He rereads it again.

“Athena, where is the, ah, asymptomatic timelike chamber?” He asks out loud.

“The asymptotic time chamber is located on level 2B, wing E,” Athena replies.

Jack sprints the entire way there.

--

---

They make her speak at his funeral in Arlington.

He’s watching from a distance, hacked into some security livestream via drone, less than a mile from the actual thing. All the old heroes of Overwatch, the ones alive, anyways, are gathering around his grave. The sun is shining brightly. He can see Reinhardt sweating in his old Overwatch formal dress. Jack Morrison’s glad it doesn’t rain for his funeral, because it would just be another nail in the empty coffin.

Lena’s been made to speak. It makes sense that they would - the funeral is popularized by the media, with Overwatch’s downfall and the scandals that led up to the explosion, why wouldn’t it be? He wonders where she’s going after the Petras Act, the heroic law that saves the world from any other superheroes trying to do good and fucking up the planet more than it already is, goes into effect. For now, she’s still the golden child, the posterboy of Overwatch, for better or for worse. He’s read his own slander. He can’t bring himself to read anyone else’s.

“He was an excellent commander.” A goddamn lie. He couldn’t run a military company for his life. Maybe he was charismatic enough on the field, enough of a solid figure in a rapidly shifting war-torn field, to be considered for Strike-Commander, but it blew up in his face. He touches the lesions that are just starting to heal, ugly stripes breaking his facial features. Blew up in his face, alright.

Lena’s never sounded ungenuine in her life. She quips advice sometimes, to whoever she feels needs it at the moment, never sounding haughty or out of line. Even now, when she’s spouting lies that he’s sorry she believes, she has the conviction of someone announcing the sky is blue and the grass is green. “He was a mentor to me, personally, after the Slipstream Incident. I could have gone back to civilian life, but he inspired me. I wanted to make the world a better place. Jack Morrison helped me learn how it could be done.”

He tunes out. Stays on the drone’s line for hours, waiting for anyone to say anything about Gabe. He’s not sure why he cares so much. Morbid curiosity? Looking for revenge? Nothing interesting turns up until it’s late into the night, and the motion-activated camera has been off for hours. Its night vision spins on quickly, and Jack sits up, studying the footage.

There’s a small figure standing in front of his gravestone, a baggy hoodie barely concealing the light of a chronal accelerator. Lena’s changed out of her formalwear and is back in front of Jack’s grave, obviously trying to stay hidden. The drone picks up every word she says, and though he can’t see her face, the tears are obvious in her voice.

“I hate you,” Lena says, voice shaky as she lowers herself to sit on the ground. “...I don’t mean that. I hate...I don’t know what I hate. But I hate this situation, and I hate Director Petras, and,” her voice cracks, but she continues, “I hate that you’re gone.” Silence for a few more moments as she picks at the grass around his grave, then picks up the flowers someone had left there and inspects them. “You would’ve hated these,” she says. “This is an annual. One year and it’s gone.” She picks at the petals absentmindedly, voice still thick. “Y’know, I’m coming up on my first year as an active field agent. Streamlined me so fast, people seem to think I’ve been here for years. I think being new is the only thing that’s keeping me from being demonized in the news, like you.” Jack shakes his head. He deserves what they’re saying about him, and more. But he can’t tell Lena that. She drops the flower and stares ahead at the gravestone, not saying anymore for a few more minutes, just crying quietly to herself. Sometimes she starts to say something, but breaks off. It’s not until a car pulls up to the road nearby, and Angela comes out, pausing by the car door as Lena whips around to look at her.

“Listen, C’mander…” Lena begins again, standing up and tugging the hoodie firmer around herself. “I told you about my shit family and all, but, ah.” Jack watches Angela walking closer, his own throat growing tight at the words coming out of Lena’s mouth. He doesn’t want to hear them. Doesn’t want to disappoint anyone else.

She says them anyways. “In the end, I had a pretty good one. I don’t think tossing pulse bombs at me to teach me not to drop them counts as catch in the park, but what the hell would I know?” Lena shifts where she stands, digging a heel into the dirt. “For what it’s worth...I would have liked to call you dad.” The last bit comes out almost silent, almost too quiet for the drone to capture and almost too quiet for anyone but a supersoldier to hear. Angela comes up to Lena and wraps her in a hug, and Lena loses it again, crying into her shoulder.

“Oh, liebling,” she says, guiding Lena away from the gravestone after pausing for a moment at it. “Come back to the hotel room. Winston’s worried sick about you.”

Jack shuts off his connection to the drone, heading out of Arlington through the shadows.

It takes him months to locate Lena, find where she’s settling into civilian life. With the networking today, it hardly takes any time at all to pick out some perennials and have them sent to her apartment. The hardest part, he thinks, as he clicks the anonymous option, was not having them sent with the message, ‘to my daughter.’

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