Janis had begun to believe that she would never be able to talk again, at least, not in the way that she had once been able to converse with people. Then she woke up one morning and found that, while hoarse, strained, and somewhat painful, she could speak again. She was willing to take whatever version of talking she was capable of doing by that point, even if it was conversing in barks.

That day had been two days in the past, and Janis was still trying to figure out how she was going to tell John what she needed to—what XCOM needed her to do.

It was always nice, Janis mused bitterly, when the man who was supposed to be there to talk to her about her expected role never made it a point to show up to the meetings without someone else entering the room before her. Not that she had any particular reason to want to be alone with him, besides the obvious private conversation she needed to have with John. He always showed up late, and the last time she saw him she suspected that he had been drinking. If that wasn't a sign that the man had zero interest in even pretending to have respect for everyone else in the room, then she didn't know what would constitute respect in the first place.

He came in either last or near last to the meetings that were held, in preparation for the day that would mark the official re-birth of XCOM in earnest. More often than not, he would make some excuse for why he had to leave early. Even if Janis would have wanted to give the once consummate professional the benefit of the doubt, all she had to do to know the truth of his late entrances and quick exits would be to look at the exasperated looks that either Shen or Tygan wore.

When she resorted to sending messages directly to Central, requesting that the man who was, in theory, going to be her Number Two, to talk to her in private at his discretion, she ended up waiting more than a day and then got a rote response back that Bradford was too busy with preparations and overseeing training. Neither of which she was prepared to believe he was doing.

And either because she was getting frustrated with not being able to just talk to the fucking man about her role in XCOM or because the memory of the man who was once her best friend felt like it was trampled with every action the man made, Janis felt a cold rage build inside of her every time she saw the oversized goon walk past her in a hallway without making eye contact. She had really started to notice the limp he had, and where once she felt sorry for him she now wanted to push him against a wall and yell at him when he tried to stride past her with that subtle dip in his walk. She had debated sending a warning email, but Janis knew that she didn't have the patience for whatever game her old friend was playing. She decided, instead, that she had her own goal to meet.

She waited next to the bar in the hour before one of the meetings was supposed to happen, waiting. This time when John walked down the hallway towards her he made direct eye contact and their gazes remained locked together.

Good. At least the man has the decency to look like he's shocked.

Janis had been leaning against the wall with her hands in her dress pants' pockets when John discovered her. She stared at him for a few moments longer, then crossed her arms over her chest. It was a struggle to talk, and even then her voice emerged, a hoarse frog's gasp when it took too much effort to vocalize. Nevertheless, Janis knew that now she had her voice back that she needed to use it.

"Got a minute to talk?"

The boozer's eyes darted over to the bar's entrance before they went back to Janis' face. An unusual thing happened; the man's mouth partially fell open and he seemed to be struggling to find what he wanted to say. Finally, though, his expected excuse emerged. "Have some... preparations I need to make."

Janis' lips started to purse together and she rose one side of her mouth up. "Before the meeting, you mean?"

"Yes—of course."

"Hmmm." Janis looked away, letting the pressure alleviate from the man. "I've been trying to talk to you for a while now. Days, at this point." When she looked back at John she wasn't fully surprised to see the expression he wore. It was as though Janis was pointing a gun at him. "What have you been up to that's made you so busy you can't even have a beer with an old pal who's wanted to treat you for saving her life?"

It only took John no more than two seconds to talk, but she knew that that was too long for someone like him to tell her the truth. "Sorry—everyone's been busy, you know that. Once we're functional we'll have plenty of time to hurry up and wait. We can talk more then." He was about to turn, walk back in the direction he had come from.

Janis wasn't ready to let the man off the hook. "What have you got that has you so busy you can't talk to your direct superior?"

John flinched—a subtle quirk in his facial muscles, but one that Janis, an old hand at body language, caught—and he said, "You can't imagine how much work's gone into getting everything working on the Bridge. The stuff that was cutting edge two decades ago now seems like toys—"

Janis interrupted the man, found that old instincts returned with shocking speed. Felt damn good, like she had just gotten a part of herself back that she had started to believe had been stolen from her. "Shen is still trying to make the combat GREMLINS operational for the first mission, and Tygan is trying to make sure that there still isn't something the aliens left in me that won't detonate or turn me into a Manchurian Candidate. They still make it to meetings. And if I were to ask either to have a private conversation with me, they would do it." She might have imagined it—and she was sure she didn't—but John's adam's apple seemed to bob as he swallowed. "So do you want to have a private conversation with me, or do I have to drag you over to an Interrogation cell?"

That finally provoked an obvious reaction in the apparently seasoned, gruff man. His eyes flashed some strong emotion—shock, perhaps—his pupils dilating as he recoiled a step. Yes, it certainly was a human reaction. A welcome change of pace from the way that he had been acting, like she was infected with something that he was afraid to get if he was around her long enough alone.

John said, "You don't mean that—"

Irritation—that he was focusing on the threat aspect of what was otherwise a demand that he tell her what the hell his problem was—struck a chord with her. "You have a choice, Johnny. We can have a pleasant talk or I'm going to have to put handcuffs on you."

John ducked his head, closing his eyes. Finally, though, he said, "Let's do it in your quarters."

Janis lifted one shoulder to show her affirmation and they both walked the short distance to her room. Once inside, Janis closed the door behind her, turning around in time to watch as John sank into the couch, bringing his knees up, his hands clasped in front of him.

It happened in an instant—a flash of old memory, the look on Johnny Bradford's face when he was brought in for punishment.

The day that Janis had met him, they couldn't have been in more opposite stations in life. At the time she had the far from auspicious role of Commandant of the recruits, and it was what allowed her to meet Recruit John Bradford during his second week in service. He had gotten into the army only because the judge in his case had agreed to shorten his sentence for grand theft auto had recommended it to him for much needed discipline—then had followed up with pulling strings to get the man into the service. The man in question, a scrap of a boy more than a man, really, sat in nearly the same position that his far older self sat.

The polar opposite of what Janis, at the time known as Jain, had been expecting from someone who had gotten in so much trouble already in life. No, what had actually been surprising had been the raw humanity she had seen in his eyes when he finally looked up at her. She could still remember the thought that had struck her. Holy hell, he looks like Bambi when he's scared.

It was weird to realize that buried somewhere deep in that man was the boy who Janis had taught how to put on a strong defense for the world more than she actually disciplined him.

John looked up at her, and any thought she had in her head, that she might expect an argument—or worse—was gone. Instead, Janis realized that she might be looking at the face of a conversation she wasn't really willing to touch yet.

Suddenly, it was Janis' mouth that felt dry.

John looked at his old mentor, still somehow frozen in time two decades past. He realized, too late, that he had been stupid to think that if he stayed away long enough and anesthetized himself with enough alcohol that he could push this conversation away. Foolish, to believe that he could delay, or maybe even stop it from happening altogether.

The way Janis looked at him, so well aware of how much control she exerted in her whole body, John wished he could tell her everything he wanted to. About how he knew that not only was he a poor substitute for someone like her, but also that it went deeper, far deeper than he had ever been truly comfortable. Went beyond him wishing he could live up to her standard.

Most of all, though, he wished that she would say something. Put him out of his misery. Even if she was just going to tell him what he deserved to hear; that he was a worthless bum.

A flicker of something, like doubt, showed on her face before she seemed to shake it off. Janis crossed the space between them, and John thought that she was about to walk over to him. Perhaps stand right in front of him. Instead, she came over to sit on the couch opposite him, a good five feet of space between them. Enough distance between them that he almost felt like he could breathe without a hitch in his chest.

She sat straight up, her spine nearly straight, the soft weight of her dark hair laying against the right side of her face as she stared straight at John, the rest of it bound in a youthful pony tail of sleek black. Earlier, when she had passed by him, John had gotten a breath of her perfume—it had been a present, as it was the very kind that had been found in her quarters years ago. Something not entirely feminine, but nevertheless delicate, pervasive, almost herbal.

And damn, if the woman didn't look like the suit she wore embodied her, or might have been the other way around. Army green, Earth green, as had been the protocol for anyone who joined XCOM to wear until they earned another color, if they wished it. Black skinny pants, a dark green vest over a grey-green polo whose top two buttons were undone—if the way that the uniforms were wasn't already attractive to John, seeing it on her could have made him forget that they were supposed to be utility first and looks second.

Grunting softly, the Commander suddenly laid back, her arm supporting the back of her head in an almost relaxed pose as she stared at John with those wonderfully strange yellow eyes that made her look feral. Her voice was a rasping hoarse note, and he couldn't help but admire her for even trying. It seemed like it hurt to even speak.

She said, "Something you want to get off your chest?"

It was that ache, the pain in his chest, as well as the residual surprise he felt at being confronted, that made him say something he might not have—ever—admitted out loud. A reason I didn't want to be alone with her. "I missed you more than you could ever imagine—" Almost as a desperate attempt to bury what he had just admitted, John added, "Commander."

Janis' eyelids twitched, surprise briefly giving those eyes a glitter of surprise. She swallowed, but her eyes never left John's. "Missed you too, John boy." Maybe it was just because of the healing damage to her throat, but he could swear he heard a genuine, agonized tone in her voice when she said it.

Not exactly a boy anymore, though, am I? It took a lot for John not to breathe a sigh of relief. He did, however, wipe at his face. As though he were forcibly putting that hard outer shell he had learned to wear back on.

"The years—they've been hard on everyone. But I'd be lying if I'm maybe not the worst to come out of it, who's still not alive or... possibly being kept captive somewhere." As he said it, it was though some part of him had been punctured and everything in him, ugly and greasy, were falling out of him. John was embarrassed to realize what he was telling this woman, of all people about his pain.

Not only was she his idol in many ways, but she had lived a hell that hopefully most could only ever imagine.

And she looked damn good standing over it.

Janis had lifted one of those long legs, placing it over the other knee. "I wouldn't know anything about it," she said. "you never told me."

For good reason. "Didn't want one of the first things you hear when you're brought back to be me complaining about what life's been like."

These days, it seemed, a smile on Janis was a rare thing. But it grew, spreading across her face, a tender, warm thing that felt as close to home as John believed in.

"It's never complaining, nothing you ever tell me. You know that." she blinked, then corrected herself, clearing her throat, the smile gone from her face. "You used to know that." Before John could say anything, Janis continued, said, "You have a pronounced limp and you always have that damn knife close at hand." She blinked, and if not for how well he still knew her, John might have missed the stir of emotion in an otherwise emotionless facade. "I get the feeling it's all leftovers from the last time we were together."

His heart hurt. John felt his mouth fall open as he needed, ached to say something, anything. He slunk down in the couch, not capable of meeting those once-familiar eyes. "I'm not fit to take your position. I don't have a cool head—least, I don't have one anymore. It's been difficult, trying to live up to your memory. And I—we thought we'd lost you."

Silence.

John looked back at her, saw the shadow fall over Janis' eyes and she lost eye contact with John. Slowly, she removed her arm from behind her head and crossed it over her chest. "That's something I wanted to talk to you about."

"What's that?"

"I'm no longer fit to serve as the Commander of XCOM—the offensive portion of the missions meant to take control of the Earth back."