A/N: Cue Captain America's backstory… And some fluff! This chapter is essentially Jack's perspective about the things leading up to the event.
There was fighting among them again. John couldn't help but scrunch his forehead, small lines appearing. Who knew joining the army would be so nerve wracking? And he didn't mean the training – while it was harsh, he was used to hard work. Helping out on the farm had been an everyday task for him and that didn't change much here. However, the people did.
Those two were at it again. He couldn't recall their names, as the training had only begun a few weeks ago, but he knew that there had been rumors of one of them stealing the other's woman or something. The whole camp had been buzzing about it in a worse manner than an old ladies' knitting circle.
He had had enough. He stood up and walked over to the two young men who seemed very close to coming to blows. "You two, stop", he said calmly.
They stopped and stared at the nearing man, dumbfounded that somebody dared interrupt their quarrel. "You said what?" one of them slurred. It seemed that he had also accomplished smuggling booze into the camp. Great. "What's yer name?"
"John Morrison", he answered, arms crossed over his chest.
"Look, Jack, we don't need a farm boy mixing up in our business."
"The name's John. You made it my business by shouting so loudly through the camp that I doubt there's anybody who didn't hear", John said. He did notice how people were gathering on the sides. He even heard a distant chant about fighting, something he was eager to avoid.
However, the two other young men were not as eager. Suddenly their differences were all but forgotten. They nodded at each other before dashing against their new common enemy. While he still bore much of the scrawniness of his teen years, he had been listening to the training and, at this point, wasn't completely unaware of how to fight. A rumble followed, with John struggling to gain the upper hand for a while, but finally emerging as the victor. He stood up, holding both up by their jackets.
"Stand up. If we were at war, you'd be dead by now. Do you not understand how much the alcohol affects you? And your stupid quarrel would weaken the moral of the whole camp", he berated accusingly. He disliked these kind of people, the ones that didn't have a clear cause. While he wasn't that passionate about the army, he found it an interesting experience before returning to the farm. Since he was there, he was going to do everything as best he could.
Their brief fight was broken by an officer calling for attention. It seemed that they had finally been noticed. Jack pulled the two fighters on his both sides, trying to hold them as straight as possible.
"Fighting in the camp this late…" the one usually in command of their training mumbled. He continued with a raised voice, "You there! In the back!"
John Morrison looked around at all the other cadets next to himself before realizing that the shouting was targeted at him. "Yes, sir!" he said, his hand flying to his forehead to salute.
"What is your name?" the officer asked.
"John Morrison, sir", he answered. A nervous prickle of sweat rushed down his cheek.
"Good job, Jack Morrison", their commanding officer said. John had been expecting something bad. Receiving an actual compliment caught him so completely off-guard that he didn't even bother trying to correct his name.
Months passed and so did the training. It was odd how it changed people. The two drunkards from the first weeks had become one of the best of the year. Most of the others had started trying for real. John didn't know what affected them so, but it was at least not his lack of trying. He pushed himself and all the other people around him for results, gaining recognition among his peers and the officers.
He had changed as well. The army actually started meaning something to him and he liked the feeling of being able to change the world, even if he was only an officer. He was no longer the farm boy from Indiana, John Morrison, but "Jack" Morrison, part of the army. The wrong name had stuck to him like glue.
It still came as a big surprise when he was offered a place in the soldier enhancement program. That was where he would meet him for the first time: Gabriel Reyes, another very exceptional senior officer in the army. At first John had felt inferior to the dark skinned soldier, but after befriending him better, they became equals. Good friends on the field and outside of it, trusting their backs to each other.
The last years of Overwatch had been tainted by rumors. They were all painted corrupt, and Jack Morrison not the least. In fact, as the golden face of Overwatch, he was the most sought after "culprit". Listening to the news channel, he wondered, when had the world changed so much. When had those laughable conspiracy theorists swept everyone else along with their crazy theories. Overwatch – corrupt? He personally oversaw anything and everything happening, except for Blackwatch.
Reyes didn't want to disclose anything to him – that was the problem. When had it happened, when had the point been crossed when Gabriel, his best friend Gabe, had become "Reyes", a person to address by their surname? They were like strangers.
Jack turned off the radio he was listening to. The old gadget reminded him of his childhood by the farm. Back then the only care in the world was avoiding stepping in the nastier stuff animals produce.
If only he had remembered how easily people turn on a common enemy sooner.
There was only one person who could cheer him up at moments like this.
He opened the door to Angela's laboratory, finding the doctor hard at work. She was fiddling with something, a small round piece of metal with several small tubes connected to it. Her work place was beyond disorganized, small metallic parts decorating every inch of the surface. Books and papers scribbled with messy handwriting composed the layer below them.
"Hard at work, eh?" Jack said and flashed his trademark smile. It felt a bit empty. He leaned against the doorframe with his arm while observing her. There was no sign of movement other than her lips mumbling quietly and her hands continuing to circle the thing she was working on.
He neared the doctor, leaning to look at her work from behind her. Only then did she notice, clumsily hitting him in self-defense before taking note of his familiar appearance. "Jack!" Her eyes fell on his. "I'm so sorry! Are you hurt? Do you need help?" She immediately almost jumped up from her chair, inspecting every visible inch of him to see if there was something she would need to tend to.
Amused by her antics, a small grin appeared on his face, this time a genuine one. "You did hit me here quite harshly", he said, pointing at his cheek. Worry evident in her eyes she came closer to his face, placing her fingers on the "hurt" spot.
Noticing the mirth in his eyes at that moment, she instead flicked it. Jack let out an exaggerated wince, to which Angela answered, "You shouldn't fool your Doktorin."
Jack held her warm palm against his cheek. "My Doktorin?" Jack asked in a teasing voice.
She didn't withdraw the hand, much to his surprise. "You know what I mean. You're always coming here with your arm bleeding through makeshift bandages. Or your foot tied up in a very odd packaging. Or your clothes so torn up along with your skin that I can't even distinguish where all the wounds are." Her cerulean eyes were so painfully honest that it was him who crumbled first and looked away. His eyes fell on the widget she had been working on.
"You have no patients and you're still cooped up in here", Jack said. The headquarters were getting old and a possible issue with mold was being investigated, which meant moving all of her patients away. The vast structure was empty otherwise as well since there were two major missions going on in Norway against Talon. The only reason he had stayed behind was because he was told that his involvement this time could awaken even more rumors against him and Overwatch. Being grounded by his own organization felt ridiculous, but at least Angela was in the same situation, because she had been overseeing the transportation of the patients the day before.
"I can't make out anything from your scribbles. And I thought my handwriting was bad", he added, after trying to find answers from the papers lying around.
"You know what they say about doctors", Angela said and seated herself, eager to continue her hard work. "If I succeed in making this, it'll revolutionize medicine by far."
Jack leaned in once again to be on the same level with her. "Well, what is it then?"
"I won't tell you until it's ready", she said, a mischievous smirk on her face, further enhanced by Jack's apparent disappointment. He didn't care, though, not as long as she was smiling. That alone felt as good as any nanobiotics surging in his veins could.
She was the only thing untouched by all the taint swallowing up his world, and he intended to keep it that way.
A/N: Reviews (and of course favourites and follows) greatly appreciated as I have not written fanfiction before! Also, English is not my native language and all grammar corrections are more than welcome!