Chapter Text
Octane had once dated a girl obsessed with collecting bugs.
She'd been a very careful girl-- very methodical-- who would stop at nothing to further her collection. Her excursions plunged deep into the Outlands to planets nigh unknown, and her preparations were both meticulous and exacting. A carefully plotted path to ensure safe passage, gear for the often toxic atmospheres, weapons to combat the local wildlife she'd studiously researched, gleaned information from explorers purchased with credits in hand.
And a fount of neverending patience to lay in wait for her quarry.
It didn't matter if it was the woods or the sea or the desert. It didn't matter if it was pure ice or molten lava or ravines so deep no light could penetrate their depths.
Nothing would deter her from her hunt. Nothing could.
Not even Octane.
So, instead, she waited for minutes that ticked into hours that ticked into days until the coveted species-- and they were coveted, these little (and not so little) things with exoskeletons and venom and a mind so foreign to a human's that Octane can still hardly imagine it-- revealed themselves unto her. Things to be ensnared and whisked off for safekeeping, so that they could be given a new home.
It was not so much an interest as a compulsion, as a fervent need to study that smoldered insider her like coals in a fire of old.
Octane still remembers, clear as day, the first time she'd heard her wax poetic about the process of preservation with a fervor you would think it something holy. The first time she'd sat backwards on a chair to watch the careful touch of an entomologist as she slid pins into thoraxes and wings and realizing that it was a ritual divine.
It stirred something deep inside her that has not yet settled, an animal loosed from its cage with the taste of freedom still fresh on its tongue.
Octane heaves a shuddering exhalation, tearing her eyes away from Caustic as she gazes upon a vial with an all too familiar intensity. The bitter memories of a time long since gone flutter off into out of mind and out of sight, but that feeling still remains, the dregs of it forever in her belly. A leaden weight to carry with her and inside her, because one thing is for sure:
Everyone remembers the first time they'd been a jealous lover. That had been hers.