BLINK AND YOU'LL MISS HER

The time blindness was hitting her especially hard this week. She’d had to keep asking what day it was, what year it was. It was... kind of terrible, being unable to trust the clocks, having to ask for the date and time over and over to keep herself grounded. Most days, she coped okay, but right now... right now she just wasn’t.

Her gaze crawled up from the ground at the slightest hint of movement from the doorway. She didn’t know the girl’s name - she’d seen her around a few times, but they’d never spoken before. Well, they were about to.

FULL NAME: Helena Marie Austen Lena Marie Oxton

ALIASES: Tracer

DATE OF BIRTH: August 15th 1938 August 15th 1992

GENDER: Female

HEIGHT: 5 feet 4 inches

WEIGHT: 100 lb

EYE COLOUR: Honey-brown

HAIR COLOUR: Brown

ETHNICITY: Assumed caucasian

OCCUPATION: Test pilot (former), mechanic

SKILLS: Hand to hand combat training, fighter pilot training, mechanic skills

KNOWN POWERS/ABILITIES:

ABILITY TO SPEED UP OR SLOW DOWN TIME FOR SELF; enhanced speed

ABILITY TO ‘BLINK’ THROUGH TIME; enhanced agility

ABILITY TO REWIND OWN TIME; reverse wounds and injuries

INABILITY TO AGE; physically does not age past age of 19. possible immortality.

KNOWN ALLIES: The Avengers

HISTORY: [REDACTED]

BIRTHPLACE: [REDACTED], United Kingdom

KNOWN CONDITIONS:

CHRONAL DISASSOCIATION; the disconnect from the flow of time - TREATED WITH ‘CHRONAL ACCELERATOR’, EMBEDDED IN THE CHEST

SUSPECTED ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER (ADHD)

FAMILY: Unknown

Lena Marie Oxton was born Helena Marie Austen on the 15th of August, 1938, and lived a pretty normal life until she hit 16 and decided she wanted to join the military as a pilot. It was difficult to pull this off in England at the time, so she moved to the USA, and joined the US Air Force posing as a man under the moniker Leonard James Austen.

Of course, she was eventually found out, but Lena got lucky- she was considered to be an exceptional pilot, and as such was signed onto an experimental project - to eventually pilot a prototype of a teleporting fighter jet.

She trained for this project for two years, having been found out just after she turned 17, and actually undertaking the test flight after she turned 19.

Things didn’t go as planned. Before that flight, a tracker was implanted under her skin, one that gave off a unique signal to identify her. They watched as she activated the teleportation matrix, her signal disappeared for five minutes, then reappeared, flashing all over the radar before going totally dark.

She was presumed dead.

She’s not really sure what happened in that space. For her, 6 years passed - but she’d left in 1957, and returned in 2017. 60 years had passed since she’d boarded that plane. And she reappeared completely disconnected from the flow of time. Her body, physically, was only 19. Mentally, she was 24 - her birthday had not yet come to pass - and legally, she was 79 and dead. Her body is still that of a 19 year old - some bizarre effect of the time displacement causing her not to age, despite her chronologically being well over 70 - even if she isn’t nearly that old mentally.

The signal from the tracker caught attention when it showed up on radars. There was very little file on her left, almost nothing left un-redacted on the Slipstream project or Tracer, her codename. And this woman, a living ghost, disappearing and reappearing and phasing through objects before scientists eyes had them all scratching their heads.

That’s why Lena was handed across to Tony Stark.

After a couple of weeks, he’d developed something that would not only keep her anchored but would wire directly into her nervous system to allow her to control her displacement. That was the downside - the heavily invasive surgery required. But Lena agreed to it, with near nothing left to lose, and came out of it alive and with control over newfound abilities. She’s still learning how to control them properly, even a couple of years later, but she’ll figure it out. Eventually.

———

Backstory out of the way, this Lena is very different to Overwatch canon Lena. Not much changes in the terms of her personality, and of course she’s still lesbian as hell, but being from the 40s and suddenly thrown into a year 6 decades later has thrown her off a lot. By the time Infinity War takes place, she’s adjusted but still struggles sometimes. By the time Endgame takes place, she’s pretty much as adjusted as someone suddenly catapulted into the present from the past can be after spending 6 years there. In verses around/post-IW but pre-Endgame, she’s mentally 25 years old. During and post-Endgame she’s mentally around 31, but she still looks like a 19 year old.

The Chronal Accelerator is a touchy subject with her. It’s the source of her time-related abilities - blinking forward through time or reversing it for herself to rewind injuries - but she’s not completely sure how she feels about it. She’s self conscious of the raised rim and blue glow that you can see through her shirts - it’s the reason she takes to wearing jackets and hoodies over top so much. She has to trust you at least a bit to take off the jacket. Like a literal coming out of her shell kind of thing.

Lena is a lesbian!! She’s only attracted to women, and while she definitely struggled with this at first - it wasn’t allowed in the 40s and 50s, and she’s overwhelmed by the fact that she’s in a year where its acceptable now - she adjusts and is fair game to shipping with pretty much any female character as long as they’re over the age of 20. I do have a small bias towards Carol for shipping, but that might just be mun being a lesbian as well lol.

Lena may have friendships with men! She can have very good friendships with men. I feel like she’d get along well with Steve, as their situations aren’t that dissimilar at least with the whole taken from one year and thrown into another thing. She’s outgoing and gets along with almost everyone.

let’s try that again!