#pandavalkyrie

Casey stood in his backyard, thumbs hooked into belt loops and pulling against fraying threads. He gazed upward, head tilted back for so long a twinge of complaint had begun to pulse in his neck, into the treeline that bordered the lawn that had seen better days.

Among the branches sat the small grey tabby that had made her home on his porch. She stared down at him, sharp green eyes small for distance but ones he knew were narrowed in what may have been amusement. Her bottle brush tail swayed a lazy pendulum, sweeping up twigs and autumnal leaves in the tangled mess of fur. She would never hold still long enough for him to brush out the mats, before she writhed and twisted and vanished into the woods. Until she returned a day or two later, her paw steps jaunty and her tail held high in her own little triumph.

He was familiar with cats. Never owned one himself; his mother never had the time nor patience for such things, and as he had grown older the pieces fell as they will. No time, no energy, no reason. Childhood friends had owned them, and he had stolen affection from them where he was able. Ran clumsy adolescent fingers between the ears and scratched at chins. Woken during sleepovers with a weight on his chest, buzzing with a contentment he could never hope to match.

It was just his luck then, he thought, that a neighborhood stray would pick him for her favorite. Some mornings he would catch her dozing in one of the cheap chairs he kept out, on the off chance a guest would stop by for a visit. Others he would find her lounging in a sunspot that cut through a sparse garden. She would awaken, then, eyes sharp and narrow and intelligent, as though to say "can I help you?". As though to accuse him of some sort of disruption, before returning to her own business.

She watched him from her perch in the tree. God only knows how she had managed to scale the tree; God only knows what possessed her to do such a thing. Her yowling had hooked into him, a panic that something had happened on his property rising in his throat as he ran outside, tripping over himself in his haste. But there she was, sitting atop a high branch without a care in the world. She had called to show him her accomplishment.

why did you just punch me back in time to a specific period I never wanted to revisit

I don’t go here but they absolutely sent that ask to themselves

is this why someone has you on a list of evil people?

i thought this was about overwatch B.O.B. for a second……………

i mean it might be an improvement

but i mean this guy

you wanted to change the world once, didn’t you, the shadow says, and it’s not a question. she’s settled on the arm of the chair moira was in during the experiment that changed her life, one leg kicking idly.

moira answers, of course, that she still does, and in fact if she could just leave she’d be happy to keep doing just that, thank you very much

the shadow laughs, standing. apologies, doctor, she says. this is your performance review, and, well, we have a lot to discuss.

you wanted to change the world, she continues. you wanted to understand everything. and you were so eager that you rushed in, running tests you shouldn’t have, publishing before you were ready, and, well, goodbye to your career in the field. your star burning out before it even ignited. such a tragedy - you had so much potential!

moira shakes her head, says she’s doing more now, has so much more--but the shadow just shakes her head.

you play around in the shadows of politics, siphoning funding off whoever will hire someone they can keep off the books, she says. and half the work you do now is funded on spite, or fixing your own mistakes. when is the last time you took joy in discovery?

and then the shadow pauses, and grins wide. i suppose it was back when you had a partner, wasn’t it, she murmurs.

moira’s eyes narrow.

still missing her, aren’t we?

the denial is spit out, half-choked, and the shadow just laughs, once.

please tell us more

i blog about it more a bit further down but the short version is i’m gettin friend some r76 dog tags and wanted to make sure that they were canon compliant-ish

so after getting gabe’s and the aforementioned quick discussion on Experiences W Religion, i went to design jack’s and was like “his first name’s john, right? i should just triple check”

and what i FOUND was that a lot of people THINK his first name is john and that jack is a nickname, but the only evidence for him being named anything but jack is from a fansite article. every canon thing blizzard has done uses jack exclusively. and the john thing is... pretty common in fics and such about Younger Jack especially