"What on earth," A fist slammed down on the table Jack had been enjoying a relatively quiet lunch on, "is going on."

Jack glanced up. It was Ana. His gut clenched with guilt.

Ever since the second time he saw that woman two days ago, there was a fresh set of memories (no matter how much he mentally chastised himself for thinking of them like that, he continued to) to sort through.

Among them, multiple memories of the fallout of Ana being killed in action in a mission gone awry. Including a very vivid and upsetting funeral, where he spoke. Staring down at a young woman, who he could only know was Freeha, older, sharper from the bright-eyed little seven year old he knew,staring up at him, attempting to stay strong.

He also figured out, that's where the memory of Gabe slamming him into a wall came from.

He had made a call, and it cost Ana her life.

He couldn't look her in the eye.

"What do you mean?" Jack mumbled down at the salad he was eating, prodding at it with his fork. He didn't quite have an appetite anymore. For someone who's recommended caloric intake was somewhere in the 5000s, that was a bit of a big deal.

Ana scoffed. Loudly. More like announced her disgust to the room. Jack could feel several sets of eyes fall onto them.

"What do I mean ? I'm not a blind woman, Jack. No one else is blind. Reinhardt's blind in one eye and he can see what's going on as if he still had both. If someone blind was working with us, they could see it too." She leaned over the table getting next to Jack's face. "You and Gabriel. What's going on."

"Nothing." Jack said lamely.

Another scoff, this time actually out of disbelief.

"Do you really expect me to believe that?"

No, not really, Jack thought, and almost considered saying.

"Look at me." She commanded. Her voice growing just slightly far away. Jack looked up. Her eyes were pinched at him, glaring down her nose, arms crossed. Ana always had this way of making someone feel like a bit of a kid, both in good and bad ways.

This was one of the bad ways.

"You have been acting strange. Since that night of the Gala when you disappeared. Gabriel told me you got sick so I brushed it off, but ever since then you've been avoiding everyone. And then, Gabriel has plummeted from cloud nine to stomping around the barracks with his hood up, refusing to talk to anyone and glaring at anything that comes his way, and now he's gone and shut himself in his room."

Jack felt another snap of guilt. He was sort of hoping against hope that Gabe wouldn't take his brush off personally, but Gabe had a notorious record of taking almost everything personally. He'd definitely have to apologize if he ever figured out what the hell was wrong with him. A part of him selfishly hoped that this wouldn't jeopardize his chances with Gabe.

Jack sucked in a breath of air.

"It's nothing." He lied.

"Oh please."

"Okay, fine, we had a bit of an argument."

Ana perked up. Her eyes flashing with something almost predatory, but she said nothing, just laced her fingers together, waiting for an explanation.

"It's not worth worrying about." Jack waved his hand dismissively. "Go gossip with Torbjorn."

"Not worth worrying about." She deadpanned, arms slapping down against the table as she stared Jack down, glaring. "You must be joking. I don't think I've ever seen the two of you both pissed off at the other."

Jack perked up. "I'm not mad at Gabe."

Ana raised an eyebrow. He saw her bionic eye scope inward, like she was putting him under a microscope.

"You realize that makes you look like you have a concussion, right?" Jack commented mildly.

"You've been avoiding Gabriel. Rather explicitly above all others. Didn't he say something stupid at the party?"

Jack left out a breath of laughter, but it was short lived. "No."

"You just said that the two of you had an argument." Ana said, squinting, quirking her head off to the side. She pointed at his hand. "And when I mentioned Gabriel, you cracked the table."

Jack's mouth thinned and he glanced down. Sure enough, he had put a small dent in the linoleum of the table's surface, little cracks around the edges. He blinked.

He had no reason to be mad at Gabe, he thought, but the image of his face, hard with determination, glaring at him with contempt, sent a lance of wordless betrayal into his gut. Anger swirled like a thundercloud in his chest, crackling with the urge to spit and curse and shout at anything.

But the moment passed, and as the flash of anger receded, he realized what had just happened.

"Jack?" Ana's expression had shifted, an eyebrow raised in doubt to both knit in concern. Jack abruptly realized he was grinding his teeth. He stopped. Panic rose in his throat.

What the hell was happening to him.

"Look, Ana," Jack said, standing, "Don't worry about it. It's not like Gabe and I haven't gotten into arguments before. He'll cool down eventually." Jack grabbed his half-eaten plate of food from the table, and marched to the trash can where he promptly dumped it.

"Where do you think you're going?!" Ana shouted at him.

"I need to clear my head."

"Like hell!"

Jack marched out of the mess, Ana quick on his heels. He briefly consider breaking out into a run, but he figured that would just get her to rally people to find him and try to hold him down.

"Jack, what is going on?" Ana grabbed him by the arm, trying to slow him down, but doing effectively little to do so. Jack couldn't help but snort in amusement. He wishes he could answer that question.

"Are you and Gabriel alright? Did something happen during the last mission? The two of you were in that chamber with the God A.I. for nearly an hour, don't tell me either of you actually listened to it's nihilistic trite or something, or so help me,"

"Look, Ana, it's fine," Jack said, stopping to face her, "We had an argument. I don't want to get into it. I know how this works."

"Gabriel doesn't seem like the only one in need to calming down to me, Jack." Ana sniped, eyes narrowing. "And Gabriel didn't break a table without even realizing it."

"Look," Jack lifted his hands up, forming a barrier between the two, "This really isn't even your business in the first place, it'll work itself out."

Ana's face scrunched up, like someone had just stepped in dog shit then lifted their shoe to her face. She smacked his hand aside.

"Not my business?" She echoed, nostrils flaring "You two are my friends, coworkers, and teammates. Don't tell me that this isn't my business, because I've saved both of your lives more than enough times for them to qualify as my personal business!"

Jack stared down at her, struggling against the rising panic in his throat. For a moment, he saw the image of her form his memories, older, more tired, black hair turned silver, displayed on a picture, with medals and flowers hung around it. For a moment, he felt tears welling in his eyes, simply because she was alive.

Ana held his gaze for the longest time, breathing slowly and deeply, until something caught her eye, and she turned, expression souring.

"Do you mind?" She snapped irritably before pausing, her head reeling back and eyes narrowing just a bit, "Who are you? This location is for Overwatch personnel only."

Jack glanced at who Ana was talking to.

It was the woman in the aviator Jacket.

Jack felt the floor fall out from under him.

He blinked, hard, and now, the face of the girl was different, smiling, rather than that lost, sleepwalker look she had before. He was actually staring at her picture on a monitor. Underneath, a name: Lena Oxton

He could see someone in the corner of his eye with silver hair. Even though he couldn't turn his head to look at her, he knew it was Ana.

His gaze shifted to a gorilla wearing glasses and a lab coat. It tapped it's fingers on it's lower lip, like it was mulling something over. Then it talked.

"Chronal Dissociation." The gorilla paused for dramatic emphasis. "Simply put, she's no longer fixed to linear time. Or time at all, for that matter."

Jack thought, at this point, why not a talking Gorilla?

"Of course, this also means she's untethered from space as well. Without time to act as a measurement of action, she can theoretically be anywhere because, well, she already has been there, or could have gone there. Theoretically speaking."

"So she could be at anywhere, or anytime." His voice supplied.

"Absolutely. It's even possible that she's not limited to our own dimension any more. No time, no real causality to bind her." The gorilla scratched his head, "Assuming infinite universes, it's possible this isn't even 'our' Lena we're seeing. It's difficult to say. It seems like she has no control over her current situation, so she's just… drifting."

"How long can she survive like that?" He turned to Ana's voice beside him, giving her a glance. Her finger tapped on her chin inquisitively.

The gorilla dipped his head, wincing. "It's impossible to say. No time to dictate her vitals. She might still have the breakfast from the day of the slipstream incident in her stomach. I would guess she doesn't require food or water in that state, but it's possible she can only pop into certain times at once where her timeline is stable for a few moments and that would count as her time moving forward but… insufficient data. Perhaps life and death are no longer concepts that can truly apply to her, sort of like a Schrodinger's cat situation, due to the lack of cau-"

"Winston, that's all well and good, but the question remains: can you save her?" Jack huffed, crossing his arms. He could feel his fingers digging into his bicep, strangling out the circulation.

The Gorilla, Winston, smiled, though the expression looked a little exaggerated and unfriendly on his face, Jack got the impression it was supposed to be genial. He adjusted his glasses slightly before turning to face the monitor

"I wouldn't have called you two in here if I didn't have a plan, you know." He said, sounding rather proud of himself, "Right now the problem, I believe, is that when she was untethered from time, she was moving, and now she's unable to stop. with All forward motion with no friction to slow her down."

Blueprints flashed up on the screen for a device. It looked similar to the odd device on the woman, Lena Oxton's chest.

"This is the chronal friction liminal support generator- Uh, Name temporary."

Jack and Ana shared a glance.

"Anyways," Winston continued, "I figured, if she can't stop, then the best answer was something that could hold her in place. Or at least a space. In essence, it anchors her in time by creating a network of controlled, chronal anomalies, almost like a net woven from time. As long as it's producing a net, she should stay, more or less, on a linear timescale… In theory."

"Is it dangerous?" Jack asked, scanning over the blueprints, but he couldn't make heads or tails of the damn thing.

"I wish I could tell you." Winston sighed, plucking the glasses from his face and rubbing at his eyes, "The data from the original Slipstream project was not recorded with this possibility in mind. Even repurposing the teleportation tech has a risk to it, I just don't have the numbers to run a proper simulation."

"If you don't know the risks then we can't approve of testing this on-site." Ana declared. "We can't have any more personnel at risk of chronal dissociation when we know so little about it."

"Unfortunately, I have to agree." Jack ran his hands roughly through his hair, which felt alarmingly thin to the touch, "If we could still access ecopoint Antarctica, it might be a different story, they have some isolated off site labs, but since that unprecedented blizzard…" He shook his head.

"What about watchpoint Grand Mesa?" Winston asked.

The word seemed to trigger something in his memories, his new memories, and different scene slowly superimposed themselves over his meeting with Winston, the world slowly tinging red. No matter how hard he tried to block out the oncoming memories, The voices of Winston, himself, and Ana were quickly melting into distant chatter.

Instead he was shoving weapons into a duffle bag. A large rifle took up most of the space, but he crammed as much ammunition as he could into the thing, as well as a few odd-looking devices. Not quite grenades, filled with a strange orange liquid. There were also a few grenades.

He turned over the duffle bag to see his last name printed neatly on the side. He heard himself scoff.

"A novelty bag. Of course." He glanced up at the ceiling, where he could hear the stomping of feet. "Well, too late to unpack now."

He slung the duffel bag over his shoulder and turned to find a man with a gun trained on him.

"On the ground!" He shouted, and as he took that brief half second to point downward with his gun, Jack swung the duffle bag in front of him, and charged the man, only for him to disappear into a plume of black smoke.

The duffle bag in his hand morphed into a rifle, and his whipped around to see the reaper coalesce into being again.

The location was different from the last time. Now they were atop the rafters in what he could only assume was some warehouse. Rain roared from outside, and the distant rumble of thunder echoed in the building. His hairs stood on end, like lightning was about to strike.

"Always rushing in." The Reaper mocked, words feeling uncomfortably close to how Gabe would chastise him. "You've already run out of people to bail you out of your mess. Just how much longer do you think your luck's gonna last?"

His legs became solid and he stepped- stomped, really, forward.

"Can't last forever," the mask of the man before him betrayed no hint of emotion, but it was difficult to disguise the contempt that emanated from behind it. "And when it runs out, you can trust I'll be there. Right at your back. Ready to pay you back."

Jack flicked his finger to a secondary trigger on his rifle, and fired a spinning barrage of rockets at the reaper that exploded in a wash of bright blue light, and the floor fell out from under him.

His feet found the ground once more, just in time to see Lena Oxton blink out of existence in a flurry of bright blue sparks.

Beside him, Ana made a choking sound.

Jack's eyes widened to about the size of dinner place. He shoved off the troubling thoughts of the reaper, how he seemed to know him, into a deep, dark corner of his mind to rot, and turned all his attention onto Ana.

"You saw her?" Jack whispered, leaning in close.

She turned to face him, her mouth hanging open, blinking. She looked like she wasn't quite sure if she was going crazy.

"She just…" Ana turned back to where Lena was standing just a moment ago before looking back at Jack, "Vanished." She gestured vaguely in the air in front of them.

Jack tried and failed to fight off a smile. Lena Oxton. The woman who was lost to time. Lena Oxton, who was just spotted by not only someone other than him, but someone who's never been pumped full of mystery drugs at the government's behest. Lena Oxton, who was absolutely, irrevocably, real, and the only thing that kept her bound in time was broken.

Jack Morrison wasn't Crazy.

However, a thought occurred to Jack: If Lena Oxton wasn't a figment of his mind, and Lena Oxton was someone from the future, then did that mean that all of the memories he had been seeing were exactly that? Memories, but of a him that was from the future?

His gut twisted. Ana.

He grabbed her by the shoulders, squaring her to face, him, leaning down so they were eye level.

"What did you see?" He asked. Ana still looked-shell shocked.

"The girl, she just, disappeared, I-" She shook her head slightly, like she was trying to rattle the information into place in her brain.

"Yeah, She does that. What else did you see?" He pressed, shaking her gently.

"What else did I- Nothing, Jack, do you know that girl?" Ana's stare turn piercing, and intense.

Jack's brow furrowed. "Nothing?" he muttered, half to himself, letting Ana go.

By this time, when he first saw Lena, he was already being assaulted by then unknown memories, but Ana looked fine. Concerned, confused, and questioning, but nothing that would indicate to him she got any memories.

This almost raised more questions than answers.

"Jack," Ana said slowly, trying to catch his eye, "Tell me what's going on."

Jack stared at her for a few long seconds before he took a deep breath. He couldn't tell her everything, not yet, but he should tell her something.

"Look, I don't really know what's going on," He said, keeping his voice low, "But I've seen her before. Every time it's blink and you miss it, and she's gone. Thought I was going crazy."

He could practically see the key click in the lock in Ana's head. Her eyebrows rose. "That's why you've been acting so strange."

"Yes." He nodded, but faltered. "Well, it's complicated, but, for now, we should keep this quiet. If we tell anyone about a vanishing girl we'll get written off as traumatized veterans in an instant."

Ana grunted in acknowledgement. "What's the plan, then?"

Jack glanced down the hall either way, making sure no one was watching.

"Let's just stay low. Tell me if you see her- Or anything else that's weird. But other than that, stay separate, See if you can get evidence, vid footage, anything. Physical evidence is probably our only answer here. I'll explain everything once I can figure out what's going on."

Ana looked doubtful. "And how exactly do you plan to do that?"

"I have no idea." He lied. "I'll improvise."

Ana gave him a dry look, but it quickly managed to morph into a smile, she shook her head, chuckling. She cut the action short to give Jack a hard stare.

"This better be one hell of an explanation, Jack."

"It better be," He sighed.

Her sigh mirrored his own


AN: Whoops. Forgot I was uploading this on FF.