art is hard

just some practice getting their faces in my mind onto paper. or well screen. this is specific to my pacrim AU timeline, which has not been published in its entirety bc i am a dumdum doodoohead, but you can read the ficlets i have published so far over on my ao3 (please note not all of them are pacrim au compliant but still)

anyway theyre according to that timeline so the ages here:

gabe is 19 - 42 - 57

jack is 18 - 41 - 57

gabe does not visually age past 42, but that doesn't mean he can't get traumatised further and exhausted. moira's experimentations mean he has to feed off others to live (not like a vampire, it gets explained laterrrr) and he is not fully aware of that at the start of the fic, so he often goes long periods without doing so. hence here he is washed out and a bit greyer bc he is essentially dying. the final portraits are taken from the day of the start of the fic; jack and gabe fight each other before realising who they each actually are, and gabe's lip is scarred during this fight. how it actually injures let alone scars him when he is both a supersoldier and a biological war machine is a plot point in the fic! and yea he's been wearing a grey hoodie for nearly 40 years. transmasc habits. thats also why his hair looks insane in the first pic btw i promise thats on purpose he hasn't had short hair ever before my boy is experimenting and kinda losing

jack ages normally; the SEP success is supposed to guarantee a longer lifetime, but as he and gabe are the only survivors of the SEP, he doesn't know what thats going to look like. so far he's aged pretty much how every man in his family has... sometimes, jack thinks, the scars are a blessing. in my AU, jack has terrible vision and is colourblind, resulting in increasing need for visual aids over the course of his life. the vision loss was primarily in his right eye, but after the jaeger explosion that "killed" him and gabe, he needs them in both eyes round the clock. its unknown why the SEP experiments didnt prevent this - it did fix his progressive vision loss for nearly four years before it began again, though (but never fixed his colourblindness). his visor as 76 provides his eyes with the support needed to take actual advantage of the sight improvement promised by the SEP lol. gabe can essentially see as well normally as jack can with the visor, barring the extra HUD options obviously. SEP healing enhancements are only partially passive; light injuries will heal themselves automatically, but moderate to severe injuries need conscious effort and often the aid of nanohealing technology (which they get greater benefit from). jack was both knocked unconscious and suffered temporary amnesia after the explosion, so his facial scarring healed quite poorly. it still wouldve been a lot worse if he was a normal human (to be fair he wouldve just died). also just as a note he was made to dye his hair blonde as he aged for publicity purposes LOL

some important notes for people who arent familiar with my AU: there's a full timeline that shifts ages and events around a bit, but essentially jack and gabe are the only two surviving members of the SEP, which killed nearly 500 others. jack was supposed to die, but gabe... intervened, and so its the two of them. the SEP was invented by the US military to create people strong enough to pilot a jaeger on their own, but ana amari - inventor of the drift - insisted they test the pilots together, at least at first. this bonded jack and gabe and ana together permanently: the two former literally psychically, and ana at first due to guilt then genuine mutual love, respect, and hatred for the military lol

a lot of what happened in-between is too much to post here, but gabe invites moira to blackwatch, and then out of desperation to counter talon's increasing power, consents to her experiments. now originally when i started writing this fic... ten years ago, but most recent rewrite in 2020... we didnt really know the nature of those experiments etc, so i wrote his powers as being nanomachines. i do not know if im keeping that. nonetheless, he can become entirely smoke and like i mentioned, derives power from others' lifeforce (which he isnt fully aware of, just has some suspicions). this enables him to survive the jaeger explosion as most of the rigged bombs were on his side of the robot bc talon knew he had new enhancements but didnt know he could well. do that lmao. now jack still shouldve been killed easily too, but... hmmmm... interesting isnt it?

overwatch 2 lore is so insanely bad it is not relevant to this fic and never will be. i hate it ovw2 lore fans LEAVE!!!! making gabe an lapd cop makes me want to kill every single blizzard employee past and present. He Would Not Do That Actually. and every time i look at the roster i get more of a headache