Different Paths

If Tyson didn’t have the father he had and if he can’t crossed paths with The Colonel, Tyson would look fundamentally different.

Beyond being a carbon-copy of his father, that is.

Tyson prefers the way he looks with facial hair, yet because his father had a beard, the former Lieutenant almost always keeps himself smooth shaven.

He genuinely loves tattoos and if Sebastian hadn’t instilled such a deep fear of permanent markings into Tyson, he would be covered in tattoos by this point in his life.

Outside of corruption!verse and the sigil designs from the Moriarty Mirrors, Tyson would be unlikely to have tattoos on his hands, but his neck and the rest of his body would have been fair game.

In most universes and threads, it doesn’t matter how many changes Tyson goes through, he remains recognisable at a single glance. A Tyson untouched by his father and The Colonel is unrecognisable, a grown-up Tyson from any of his Orphan AUs would be completely unrecognisable in appearance.

His personality at its core would still be Tyson, the same self-sacrificing idiot of a mathematical prodigy, but his appearance, his presence in a room would be fundamentally different.

Comfortable in his own skin in a way that ‘normal’ Tyson never can be.

Swimming

Though Tyson rarely swims anywhere other than a private pool to avoid people seeing his scars, he genuinely loves swimming.

He feels reinvigorated when he’s swimming. He can only really float whilst facing downwards, but he’s a strong stamina swimmer and his best stroke is front stroke.

He loves swimming underwater and exploring the things around him. He’s pretty easy to keep out of trouble for a few hours by repeatedly throwing things into the water for him to fetch.

Some of Tyson’s most treasured memories are of sneaking out to swim with Jethro in the creak by the family manor or swimming in the rivers in India with Sebastian to cool off, and then heat up, after a day escaping pursuit.

There’s a freedom to it that Tyson can’t fully explain. That weightlessness, yet also resistance in the water, reminding Tyson that he’s still solid, that he’s not drifting off. It’s like having a safety net around his entire body.