Veteran AU verses Veteran

Whilst Tyson has never been given an official discharge from the army, in a weird nebulous place where it cannot be decided if he should be given an honourable or dishonourable discharge and thus trapped in legislation purgatory, Veteran AU Tyson has been given an honourable discharge.

Where Veteran AU Tyson is on prescription pain medication and - reluctantly - seeing a professional for his mental health, the main universe Tyson takes a variety of medication of varying legality far less frequently than he’s supposed to and avoids mental health professional’s like the plague.

Temporary Blindness

During his time with the First Bangalore Pioneers, a chemical attack left Tyson temporarily blind.

Despite its illegality, mustard gas continues to be used and it is one of the tools that the web provides that Tyson is least likely to use. He spent three weeks without sight due to mustard gas and when his PTSD is getting affected, Tyson can still feel his eyes burning.

Though ‘mildly afraid’ - read: utterly terrified - that the blindness might be permanent, whilst feeling like a sitting duck in the compound and useless in his inability to help out during that time, Tyson now looks back on that time as one of the better moments in his relationship with The Colonel.

Captain Samson’s death had already thrown Tyson into Sebastian’s arms, but Moran’s abuses hadn’t started yet. He was rough in his manhandling of Tyson during his blindness, but Tyson honestly appreciated that: not getting treated like glass and in feeling solid where Sebastian’s grip bruised his arms.

As they were already paired as sniper and spotter, Sebastian was largely benched whilst Tyson recovered, outside of a few group patrols. He spent most of his time sitting with Tyson, reading aloud for him, and using the excuse of guiding him around to get away with touching him.

It was …nice. Overwhelming, hallowing, yet - somehow - nice. It felt good to know that Sebastian had his back, that when he was hurting Sebastian would be there to help him, that Sebastian cared about him. He felt completely exposed, but safe so long as Sebastian was by his side.

Nostalgia

Even though Tyson can clearly remember his childhood with great clarity, it is very difficult to trigger nostalgia for his childhood.

A lot of that time, though clearly remembered, is suppressed on an emotional level for Tyson; similar to some of the time he spent on the run with The Colonel. It’s as though he spent those years watching his own life through a window; aware, yet notably separated.

Pangs of nostalgia for his years in the army are incredibly easy to summon - antiseptic and memories of John’s laughter, overripe fruit with Captain Samson’s voice, old PS3 era games with free time between rounds in the compound - but anything before that time is near inaccessible.

Basic Training

Though Tyson will often shrug off the first four years of his time in the army as ‘basic training’ and the remaining seven years as active service, split as five years training the dogs and then two years on the front line with Sebastian, there are glaring holes in that story for those who know better.

Just basic training generally does not last four years and there are entries in his service record before those four years end. In part, Tyson’s additional time training was spent learning how to train the service dogs which - at most - added a few months, but the primary reason is that Tyson was being trained as a specialist strategist; a mathematical prodigy with calculating tactical mind.

Tyson will comfortably admit that he ‘was doing long-term planning before joining the front lines’, though he always makes it sound as though that purely began during his days in Turkmenistan whilst training the service dogs*. Tyson did spend a lot of time in Turkmenistan doing exactly that, but that still leaves the prior service records unaccounted for.

The truth is that the last two years of his ‘basic training’ alternated between Tyson going through increasingly intense training regimes, participating in multiple wargames, and dropping into active combat zones as an ‘in compound only’ strategist; including the first time he brushed shoulders with Captain Samson, before joining the First Bangalore Pioneers.

During that time, Tyson never went out on patrol and his mathematical abilities were hushed up to keep him as a ‘secret weapon, of sorts’**. This was a role that Tyson would end up taking during his actual years on the front line too, before becoming Moran’s spotter, after which only the extent of his strategical abilities - rather than his entire existence - was considered classified.

* When Tyson would go out with the trained service dogs to get them situated in their active deployments, there was always a reason that Tyson was chosen to go to those particular compounds and Hal to others. Whichever compound Tyson would be handing off dogs to would also be one that he had been working as a strategist for, or was needed as a ‘strategic adviser’ to handle the current situation. 

** Any specialised soldier has a target painted on their backs and strategists (alongside doctors) were prime targets to takeout/kidnaps to disrupting efforts/undermind plans on both sides.

Army!Verse and Veteran AU

In army!verse, Tyson was never filled with guilt over the death of Captain Samson, because he lived through his wounds, so Tyson never became too close to Sebastian which means he is still serving in the army, when you meet him it will be during brief periods of time when he is deployed back home, or when he’s in active service in compounds or training service dogs in Turkmenistan.

Without the damage he suffered with The Colonel Tyson was never damaged in the way he is in his normal!verse which means that The Soldier doesn’t exist in this verse. This makes Tyson much more confident than he normally is in his main!verse. He isn’t cocky and is rather insecure about his scars, but he’s more accepting to interactions with other characters and rarely stutters.

In this verse Tyson doesn’t have Lily or Bobby but he does have a Welsh Boarder Collie called Meg that he got from a rescue shelter and Jack. In this verse Tyson still has the dent and all his other wounds but they happened for different reasons, most of which were in a landmine explosion. In this verse he doesn’t work for Jim nor does he run the pet store.

In this verse he gets around on his motorbike.

In this verse he switches between living in the family manor, thought obviously everything is much more up to date and in use since Tyson actually lives there now, and a house he owns a thirty minute drive outside of London, views of the house under the tag army home.

In this verse, the roles of the people Tyson served with also changed accordingly.

• Tyson never shot Melissa, but Emma still died in Moran’s escape.
• Michael was never killed by Sebastian and eventually retired.
• Samson continues to be Tyson’s direct superior within the First Bangalore Pioneers.
• Since John’s injury made him retire, Tyson does his best to keep in contact with Watson.
• Hannah’s retirement was the spark that ignited The Colonel’s escape.

---

Sub-verse of army!verse
Involves: former military characters, Open to all,
↳ Veteran AU

In this sub!verse, after the landmine explosion that caused most of his scars/dents, Tyson recovered very slowly rather than bouncing back. He was deemed unfit for service and given a honourable discharge.

Tyson is on prescription medication to cope with the pain of the dent, but is slowly recovering. After months of flashbacks, during which Tyson refused to see anyone about them, Jethro forced his brother to see a specialist and the former Lieutenant was diagnosed with PTSD.

He spends most of his weekends looking after his nephew, James.

He lives in the army!verse house and has Meg & Jack in this verse too.

Within Veteran AU, Tyson has taken to rollerskating […] as a form of physical therapy in his recovery. He sometimes finds long walks difficult and rollerskating is an easier way for him to move around, Meg and Jack love to run after him like that.

In this verses, Tyson spends a lot of time at The Biscuit Tin and that is where he met Billy, who unofficially hired him to help out with her investigations. Largely Tyson is paid in cold brew coffee, confectionery, and whichever pretty boy Billy sends his way that month.

Scars

Tyson has more scars than purely those pictures below, however, those are a combination of the most severe and the ones that Tyson cares about: ones that came from mistakes, unavoidably his fault and his fault alone, or caused by The Colonel.

He is littered with small scars from a hard-fought life, working in dangerous places in the web/the army and from surviving everything The Colonel/being abandoned in the desert threw at him. These scars are largely small things attained over the years/changeable depending on the thread and Tyson’s experiences within them. Nicks from working with knives in the kitchen and in the web, grazing wounds from shrapnel in the army, et cetera.

Those scars matter more to Tyson than any of his other for a variety of reasons.

The dent in his torso for obvious reasons, his two dog bite scars because they were entirely avoidable, and the scar on his foot because it was the stupidest reason for getting a scar; the barbed wire scars hold similar contempt. The knife scars matter to Tyson because those were some of the rare instances with Sebastian used a weapon against him, rather than his fists.

The hockey injury stands out in Tyson’s mind because it was the only time he was hurt as a child, outside of by his father’s own hand, that his father completely dismissed Tyson’s pain. When his ankle broke, his father fusses.When Tyson wouldn’t put weight on his left leg, his father shouted.

Family

Tyson’s concept of family is in a state of constant flux.

Found family will always be more important to him than blood, that Jasmine is his mother far more than Anne was, and yet he will resolutely plant his feet and insists that every Jewish person is kin to him.

He considers his brothers, sisters, and non-binary siblings from the army as family. Even though Tyson wasn’t close to most of them, they fought together, shed blood together, and were a big broken family. His point is stronger for the more important people he served with: such as Second Lieutenant Malone, Captain Samson, Captain Watson, & Colonel Moran.

However, Tyson does not extend that same sentiment to those he works with within the web. He loves the Moriarty Mirrors with all his heart and Molly is - without a shadow of a doubt - his sister. There are people within the web that Tyson is close to, but he would not consider the web as a whole to be his family.

The Afghanistan Incident

From August 12th 2007 until August 22nd, Tyson was held prisoner.

After an incident in Afghanistan, a mission gone wrong, Tyson doesn’t wear anything with too tight of a collar. He was held prisoner for several days during which his air was restricted for most of the time and he passed out because of it more than five times. Sebastian was also part of this mission and suffered similar treatment.

The clothes that he wears are either very loose and bellow his collar bones [t-shirts and polos] or stop on the collar bone and are tight enough that they can’t slip any higher [basically anything else other than dress shirts and formal dress shirts*].

When he wears a dress shirt he doesn’t do up the top button and lets the tie or bow tie [or any other type of fabric worn around the neck] keep the collar closed. When he wears a formal dress shirt he’ll close the top button but keep the neck wear loose to avoid triggering any flash backs.

*Having come from an upper class family Tyson considers anything worn on the torso that isn’t a vest or item of clothing worn over a shirt [blazer, jacket, coat, et cetera] to be a dress shirt. What most people would normally call a dress shirt Tyson calls a formal dress shirt.

This also leads to him having a twitch trigger attack instinct whenever someone touches his throat.

Touching and holding the back of Tyson’s neck is a good way of reassuring Tyson and keeping him calm, like holding a puppy or kitten by their scruff, but any fingers straying past his jugular will lead to an instantaneous attack. Even hands straying too far up his collarbones from touching his shoulder can put Tyson on the defensive.

For Queen and Country

Though the phrase ‘For Queen and Country’ is rather common in Tyson’s vocabulary, it’s always either flippant or a code to mean the Moriarty Mirrors.

He does not care about the royal family nor does he have a particularly strong sense of patriotism. He loves London and Cambridge, and that is about it.

He finds the history of the royal family and royalty in England to be interesting from a historical point of view, but that is where it belongs to Tyson: a part of history, left in the past.

Tyson joined the army to spite his father, not to serve his country.

Dog bite scars

Tyson has two serious scars from dogs: one on his right wrist from Razor, one of the service dogs that he trained for the army, and one on his left shoulder from Lily, his pet Dalmatian-Dhole.

Give that the former was received whilst Tyson was in a well-stocked army compound and the latter whilst travelling on his own through the desert as a wanted man, most would expect the scar from Lily to appear worse and hurt more. Whilst the scar on his shoulder is hypersensitive, the scar from Razor is far messier.

Tyson was able to give the bite from Lily his immediate attention and the wound was a clean bite. She released him almost immediately after her teeth bit into Tyson. Nerve damage caused the wound to become hypersensitive, but the actual bite mark healed smoothly.

Razor did not release Tyson quickly. He jerked Tyson arm around roughly - as he was supposted to. They were working on bite training at the time, but Razor grabbed the wrong (unpadded) arm - and it was a miracle that the German Shepherd didn’t inflict more damage before finally releasing him, then Tyson was forced to wait around for the doctor to return before his wound could get proper attention.

Tyson had basic first aid knowledge, but not enough experience to handle such a bad wound properly. He was also disadvantaged by having his dominant hand attacked, as it wasn’t until after Razor lashed out that Tyson started along the path towards becoming (near) ambidextrous.

In neither of those instances does Tyson blame the dogs, he made a mistake - the same mistake both times, failing to notice the signs of heatstroke - and then the dogs lashed out. It was his mistake, not the dogs’ fault. A good dog trainer can go their entire carrier without ever getting bitten.

Spotter

When Tyson served with the First Bangalore Pioneers, he did so as a strategist and service dog handler, before being the spotter to Sebastian Moran was added to his duties.

It would have been difficult for them not to bond honestly, with how closely they were working together; often off on their own missions away from the rest of the squadron to avoid having their position given away. There were plenty of times when it was only the two of them together, sent off under cover of darkness.

Though there was a lot of watching silently as still as stone to avoid detection, there were also moments when Sebastian and Tyson could trade quips and stories as they waited or marched to, or back from, their destination. Kisses stolen in secret, always a risk of getting caught even where they were hidden.

There was a lot of Tyson trying not to giggle at how silly it looked, carefully dribbling water down to Sebastian through a straw; because it was the middle of the day, in the middle of a hot summer, but Sebastian couldn’t risk messing up the shot he needed to take at any second.

Even in those quiet moments, hyper-aware and fearful of an enemy stumbling across their hiding spot, Tyson found solace in Sebastian’s company; and the great view of his arse that it provided when he sprawled out to take his shot. Running his hands over Sebastian’s broad shoulders to ‘soothe out of ache of the recoil’.

Less enjoyable was having to stare down a detached scope or binoculars to confirm each kill. Tyson admired the skill it took to shoot so accurately. He had to. It was that or acknowledge the guilt in his chest as his sights locked in on freshly spilt blood, and knowing how much was on Sebastian’s hands that reached out to caress his jaw for a victory kiss.

Options

Tyson tends to get overwhelmed by having too many options, that aren’t related to a mission he needs to accomplish, and tends to prefer letting others make the choice instead.

Given a thousand options and variables to complete a mission for the web, Tyson will patiently work through them all until he finds the best one; or the one that would please the Moriarty Mirrors the most, whichever the case may be. The same could be said for his days in the army as a strategist.

In those cases, Tyson finds it much easier to make a decision, because it affects more than just himself. He has a responsibility to fulfil, rather than his own needs which Tyson will gladly leave to rot. He’ll make a decision if pressed, if Tyson has to make a choice, but he finds it uncomfortable.

His entire childhood Tyson was groomed to be a perfect heir to the Delaney family legacy. He was expected to follow his father’s footsteps and obey without argument. Then in his one spark of rebellion, Tyson ran away to join the conformity and obedience of the army.

Then Tyson found himself securely under Sebastian’s thumb, before becoming the loyal pet of the Moriarty Mirrors. Independent decisions, not hinging on what someone else wants or needs, are uncomfortable for Tyson to make. He never really learnt how to.

With food, this applies thrice over. He has an appalling low appetite anyway, so when Tyson is presented with too much food, he gets overwhelmed and loses all desire to eat. Especially if it’s a lot of foods with strong smells, then Tyson can end up with sensory overload all too easily.

Army Buds

Naturally, Tyson served with many people during his army days. Here are the touch notes on notable people from those days in increasing rank order and faces approximated in Fallout 4′s character creation, because screw finding FCs.

Corporal Melissa Gordon

• She was the chef at the base Ty & Seb last served in before deserting.
• She was always telling jokes whilst hanging out food, the life of the party.
• She had a two-year-old son, Simon, back at home with her husband, Olan.
• During his escape with Sebastian, Tyson clipped her arm with a bullet. Purely by accident, he had been trying to avoid hitting anyone directly.
• Mel loved to dance, dragging anyone looking glum upon onto their feet.

Staff Sergeant Emma Porter

• She signed on as a field reporter and stayed out of a sense of duty.
• She loved pasta and garlic bread, even in operational ration pack forms.
• Emma always got a new book with her mail & was constantly sunburnt.
• She was kinda quiet in compound, just watching everyone around her.
• Emma was the only person killed in their escape. Unlike Tyson, Sebastian hadn’t been pulling his shots.

Second Lieutenant Harold ‘Hal’ Malone

• He served in Turkmenistan with Tyson, training military service dogs.
• He was hard working, usually the first up, but also the first to take a break.
• Hal was excellent at getting dogs through the water training sections.
• He loved rhubarb and custard sweets, and never judged Tyson’s relationship with Kimiko.
• Hal was killed on active service in Iraq by friendly fire: 7th of April 2009

Lieutenant Michael Griffiths

• He panicked and shot Tyson in the chest into his bulletproof vest during a training drill in full view of Moran. He died a few weeks later from friendly fire, that no one could prove came from Sebastian.
• He signed up to pay for his university tuition and intended to retire as soon as possible.
• He served as a mechanic, working to repair the various army vehicles.
• Michael was constantly taking pictures of everything around him.
• He was blatantly afraid of the attack dogs when they were working.

Captain Andrew Samson

• Tyson latched onto him like a baby duckling once he went to the front lines.
• He had several shrapnel scars on his face and his arms were covered in tattoos.
• He died in Tyson’s arms from enemy fire, a shot through his throat. Tyson unfairly took the blame for his death from a grieving compound, which pushed him into Moran’s waiting arms.
• Andrew loved history. He would talk about Rome and the French Revolution with Tyson over dinner.
• He was big on pull-ups and sit-ups as punishments.

Captain John Watson

• John served with Tyson and Sebastian during a joint stationing between Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers and the First Bangalore Pioneers.
• He was the only one to believe Tyson’s innocence in the shooting of General Clarkson.
• He and Tyson are brothers-by-all-but-blood, though for the sake of appearances often pretend to be mere passing acquaintances.
• Tyson rarely lies to John outright, but John was kept in the dark about the extent of Moran’s abuses during their service together.
• Tyson still blames John’s two left feet for breaking his nose in compound.

Major Hannah Smith

• Hannah was Sebastian’s spotter before Tyson went to the front lines and was around to show him the ropes.
• She was incredibly fight-y. Like fight you, her own shadow, and her own reflection at the same time fight-y.
• She hated the taste of coffee, but she was absolutely useless without caffeine in her system.
• She retired to become a mother at the end of her deployment.
• Hannah chain smoked every day, but insisted she’d quit once she became pregnant.

Colonel Sebastian Moran

• Sebastian didn’t enter a relationship with Tyson to abuse him. Sebastian wanted to be with him, he loves Tyson, but Sebastian is simply an abusive person.
• He is an alcoholic and, whilst aware of this, Sebastian has no intentions of stopping.
• Moran’s decision to shoot General Clarkson was not tactical. It was an inevitable temper tantrum as the tension between them grew to a head.
• Unlike Tyson, Sebastian was officially given a dishonourable discharge and continues to be a wanted man.
• To this day, Tyson has no idea how Hannah & Sebastian’s tempers didn’t lead to them killing each other long before he arrived.

Brigadier Abigail Bennett

• Tyson never met her in person, but she was the one in charge of the hunt for Sebastian & Tyson when they abandoned the army.
• She had a ruthless, cut-throat, no-nonsense reputation as a leader.
• When Tyson was proven innocent, she stepped down as head of that assignment and let someone else take over the hunt from Moran.
• Legends say that she got the scar above her eye in a knife fight, and that she won without a knife.
• The truth is that she was drunk during leave and headbutted a lamppost with a rusty edge.

General William Clarkson

• He was a good commanding officer, if very by the books.
• It was that by the books nature that put him at odds with Moran and caused countless arguments between the two men.
• Sebastian shot him twice. Once in the chest and once through the stomach.
• Though he survived Sebastian’s shots, he ended up in a coma for three years, from early 2009 until August 2012.
• Once he was awake, he confirmed Tyson’s innocence and sent him an apology letter, alongside a gun to protect him from Moran.