Cactus

Though Cosmos atrosanguineus (Chocolate Cosmos) is Tyson’s favourite flower, he honestly adores cacti.

There is a tiny cactus in his apartment living room, which despite his only green-ish thumb Tyson has managed to keep alive, and the wrap-around patio of his army home in all applicable verses is completely covered in various types of cacti.

From a mathematical standpoint cactus plants are rather interesting showcasing many different forms of geometry, and he finds that aesthetically pleasing in general. 

More accurately, Tyson just likes prickly things. He had a bad habit of collecting things with sharp edges, metaphorical or physical, and then taking care of them regardless of consequences. Cacti, at least, are content to be spiky without hurting him.

Patterns

Given Tyson’s extreme attention to detail, his mathematical mind and especially his love for geometrical mathematics, his OCD, his hyper-awareness of his surroundings and army training to fully catalogue those surroundings, his strict conformation to routine to keep control over his life, and a dozen other idiosyncrasies it should not be surprising that Tyson is good at pattern recognition.

A deviation from a pattern, however, is far more likely to catch Tyson’s attention. He will subconsciously take note of pattern wherever he is and file it away for future reference, but they are rarely worth actively acknowledging even within his own mind. He needs to actively be looking for a pattern to consciously call it out.

However, the very second that something even minutely deviates from an established pattern, alarm bells blare in Tyson’s mind. He doesn’t like change at the best of times, and Tyson has been trained by experience to know how frequently a deviation means danger. He’d been the cause for that deviation plenty of times too.

Changing

Though the six months that Tyson spent travelling through the Middle East and Europe on his own, the time between being abandoned by The Colonel and escaping the army & returning to Britain, are largely dismissed - even by Tyson himself - as simply being a time of travel, of transit, those months were truly a different type of transition.

For the most part, it is true that Tyson was running on adrenaline and instinct to survive. And little else. The major touchstones of that point in his life [2011] from his timeline are that Tyson met Lily, he learnt how to fish properly, Lily caused the dog bite scar on his shoulder, and Tyson realised that he’d survived in Germany.

What happened internally for Tyson was piecing back together a sense of self, a sense of being and finding a purpose in living for himself; without Sebastian, without the army. It was during this time that The Soldier began to manifest as a way to protect the freshly former Lieutenant, in a way that could actually be noticed as a change in his behaviour.

It was a time when Tyson was pushed to his limits and survived on his own. He saved himself. One man and his dog; and a broken heart, body, and mind slowly healing. Not back to where they had been before, but into the Tyson we know today.

Broken, yet never beaten.

In many ways, it was the most formative six months of Tyson’s life. There were bigger moments and more important changes, but those changes happened over a longer time period as he stubbornly clung to who he was. This change was putting Tyson in the oven for six minutes at 1000°C, rather than an hour at 100°C.

He was still cooling down when he met the Moriarty Mirrors. His flight or fight instinct was still a twitch trigger. When he met Sunshine, The Soldier was often at the helm. A less in control version of The Soldier, with a sudden temper and - even for Tyson’s standards - whiplash-inducing emotional leaps.

By the time Tyson - officially - met Mischief, then CCT(V), he had settled into Tyson. He had less experience within the web, his skills weren’t as refined, and he hadn’t properly settled into his environment yet - hadn’t found his specific niche - but Tyson was recognisable as the loyal Pup he is today.

And on the timeline of his life? That only brings us to June 2012. It was a whirlwind year for Tyson. His entire way of life was shattered and reforged anew within the span of a year, following on from a year on the run with The Colonel that had already uprooted the equilibrium he had fought so hard to establish.