All John could do was stare. Any worry that he might look as shocked as he felt, once something that held him in near terror whenever he was around her, was now beyond the man's ability to comprehend. He had crawled through a metaphorical and sometimes a literal cesspit to get to where XCOM was, with any chance at all of success, but nothing could have shocked him as much as her words, almost sheepishly spoken, did to him.

Finally, he spoke. "So you think you'll need some more time to get caught up to speed." It felt like how he had once heard someone describe the experience of being mortally wounded. He was staring at a gaping wound in his chest, monkey brain unable to comprehend his own death.

She gave him a look—almost sad, wry—and once more smiled that strange smile, the one that didn't reach her eyes. "No John, I don't need any more time to wonder if I can ever make the magic come back for me. I'm not good for anyone else."

John wasn't aware that he had stood up—he couldn't tell why he'd stood up, either—but as he stood at a height higher than the still sitting Janis, he could see the expression on her face as it changed to an almost humored, but sad look, then abruptly to a minute flash of worry before it was in turn replaced by surprise.

He said, "What? No, no, you—we still have plenty of time till we're ready to come back, I get it if you're still not sure about the plan going forward. Everyone here is willing to wait until you get your bearings."

Her voice was damnably soft as she damned John. "You're not getting it. I'm telling you, as clear as I can, that I cannot lead XCOM."

It was as if John were trying, desperately, to plug a hole that had been punched into him. He actually laughed, a nervous thing that came out of him without him meaning to. "But—Commander—we're all here. For you." Part of the reason I agreed to resurrect the XCOM Initiative was to have you back. Commanding it. "You have a lot of people on board already relying on you, as well as countless people on the ground. People who need you ."

One thing became clear to John at that moment; the look in her eyes told him that this wasn't something spur of the moment. No, her expression looked haunted beneath the veneer of warmth.

"What we have is a base full of people who need you , John. They need the man who was brave enough to rescue me. Not the person that he had to rescue in the first place."

John had taken a step forward, as if he could just—just touch her, touch her and she would realize how much she meant to all of them. To him. "Janis—"

The woman stood up, her eyes burning with a disapproving glare that felt like it was an artifact of John's rookie days. She said, "You agreed to lead if something happened to me. That day has come, so you'd better start showing up to meetings on time. And if I catch you drinking a drop from this day forward, so fucking help me Christ, I will make this a dry base if I have to drop everything out of a hatch while we're in the air myself." When John only stared back at her, she followed up, asking, "Do I make myself clear?"

John's hands were opened next to his hips, as though he were instinctively grasping for something. Everything felt like it was spinning out of control. He wanted to reach over, fix whatever was wrong, then collapse somewhere until he could get his bearings on reality back.

Instead, he asked, "Why're you doing this?"

Janis' eyes narrowed, but he thought he could see the briefest glimpse of something in them, some vulnerability. "Leave me alone, John. I'm not going anywhere, at least not anytime soon. But give me some space."

"Have you told Shen? Tygan?" The anger that started, low in his gut, felt like it might infect him. It was fueled by an agony that he knew he couldn't vocalize, one that had once felt like a mortal wound that was rotting him from the inside.

"I plan on doing that today. Just—" Janis broke off, her own humorless laugh coming out of her. "for some reason, I thought you deserved to know first. Not have me announce it publicly and let you learn it that way. Old loyalty." Janis scoffed, shaking her head. Disappointment, disbelief was clear in her features as she dove her hands into her pockets and started to turn to leave. She muttered, almost too low for John to hear her say it, "Won't make that mistake again."

He could hear it in his voice, the desperate, almost bleating note that he felt like he had no choice but to nearly cry out in. "How could you do this?"

He wanted to repeat his question, force the answer out of her, no matter what the consequences could be. But before he could, she turned and walked out of the room.

"—so, as you can see, we have every reason to believe that what we are dealing with is a forced evolution on what was once known as the "Thin Man", and what we are indeed seeing on the photos that have been shared with us are—"

The sound, of the door to the meeting room slamming open, made Dr. Tygan stop mid-sentence. Out of her peripheral, Janis could see Shen's eyes dart over and widen. The cause of the commotion was no surprise to Janis. John was late to the meeting—what a shock—and Janis kept her eyes on the research that some of Tygan's scientists had been working on. In spite of everything that had occurred before she had come into the meeting, her first instinct was to get up and yell at the man for being late, today of all days.

She thought that the man would eventually sit down so that the doctor could continue his presentation. What she didn't expect was the feel, of someone grabbing onto the back of her chair, then pulling until she was receding from the table, turning her chair around.

If up till that moment Johnny looked like he was operating with some emotional sub system in that square head of his shut down, Janis was unprepared to see the full fury or passion that made eyes she once described as Bambi-like into the bright pits of an inferno. It managed, at first, to make her flinch instinctually.

Behind her, Janis heard Shen curse then ask, "Are you drunk?"

Instead of hitting Janis or screaming, as she had begun to worry he would, John, with a slow, almost quiet seriousness, asked, "Have you told them that you're quitting?"

As she heard a gasp from one of the two people circled around the desk behind her, Janis recovered some of her composure and looked her once-lieutenant in the eyes.

"I was waiting for our missing fourth to show up." Before John could do anything, make a bigger ass out of himself, Janis stood up, pushing him away from her before she turned around, looking at the two expectant faces of the two leaders of the research and development teams.

"Although I don't see myself leaving any time soon, I no longer believe myself to be the person capable to take the seat of Commander of the XCOM Initiative. What's more, I'm nothing but pure liability with their experimentation done on me." She shrugged. "I essentially revoked Command of the Initiative when I was taken hostage and then used as an experiment. I never agreed to accept the role, so think of it as a refusal, now that I am recovered enough to have use of my full mental facilities."

Prepared to answer any questions from either person she had just told the news to, when John instead spoke up first, Janis turned partially around to look at him.

"Why are you doing this?" When Janis only stared back at him, at first only wishing the man could just shut up, he added, "Just tell me. Tell me why."

No matter how ridiculous he had been acting, in spite of everything she knew better, she'd only felt sorry for him. At that moment, Janis felt something instead of sorry for the man, she felt pissed off . How fucking dare this man, who defiled the memory of a young man she would have trusted her life with, continued to embarrass the both of them like this?

Before she did anything rash, anything she would regret, Janis stared at the man, collected her thoughts, and softly asked, "Is there any particular reason why you feel like you have the privilege to tell me what responsibilities I feel I can take on?"

A slow, somewhat cruel smile ticked at the side of John's mouth. "If you say I'm your superior now, going against my orders would constitute insubordination, then I would have to—"

John didn't get a chance to complete that sentence. Janis swung hard, hitting the man in the jaw although she had actually planned to hit him in his throat. She punched instinctively, just the way she had learned how to scrap, decades in the past: thumb tucked over her knuckles, wrist tilted down, braced for impact. Like riding a damn bike. However, not used to hand to hand fighting and with a weakened body, she was surprised, beneath all of the rage and adrenaline, to watch as his head knocked back, followed by John staggering backward.

At first she couldn't see if she had hurt him. John had covered his face with a hand, eyes overbright with emotion. All it took for Janis' rage to dissipate was the sight of his eyes, staring right at her with everything she wouldn't have wanted to see. Regret filled her so overwhelmingly that Janis nearly forgot where she was. What roles they had to play.

Maybe he recognized something in her eyes as well. Still holding onto his jaw, John walked out of the room, disappearing out of the room before Janis could think of anything to say.

As the poor medic finished the x-ray of his mouth, John sat on the edge of the cot, staring down at the ground between his boot-covered feet. If he told the medic that he was grateful, on some level, for the radiating pain in his mouth, then he was sure the young woman would look at him like he was insane.

And maybe he was, what his problem truly was. The only other answer to the disease that had turned his mind amok for what was half of his life was—

"'k," the woman said, finally turning around from where she had been examining the x-rays that she had nervously taken a minute before. "like you said: I'm gonna need to put a filling in. Lucky it wasn't a front tooth, or else I'd have to get a bonding put in." Was that an attempt at trying to cheer him up? Based on her voice and the way she smiled too-tightly at him, John got the feeling that she was trying to lift the mood for both of them. He could tell she didn't know him very well, in spite of the relatively small quarters of the Base, or else she would be doing the wise thing and only doing what was necessary, getting the hell out of his way before he could do something that would make both of them regret having talked to each other.

Luckily for her, John was still too preoccupied with wanting to get the treatment done. Get it done, so that he could do whatever it was that needed done. Only, he couldn't figure out what that was at this point. He had already followed the person who was supposed to guide him after she had left him, twice.

Luckily, as always, there was something to distract him, this time in the form of a woman wielding a syringe in his direction. He might have been imagining it, but the woman seemed to actually be fighting back a small smile as she approached him.

"Gonna need you to lay back and keep your mouth open, Central."

Thirty years ago

John had arrived at a restaurant where he was told he would be able to talk to someone he had not seen in years. Three years by that point, to be exact.

He had checked himself at least five times in the mirror before he left the apartment, but as John turned the corner of the block, his eyes caught sight of a reflective surface—a parked car's window—and he took yet another look at his reflection. He made a quick adjustment to the wool scarf he wore in a loose but, he had been told, fashionable knot underneath his perfectly clean tan overcoat. He backed away from the car as quickly as he had strode up to it, mindful of being caught worrying over his appearance.

As he walked back onto the sidewalk he nearly collided with a woman. As he let out a hurried apology, John looked at the person, surprised to realize immediately that the woman was taller than him. Not anywhere near the seemingly unflappable man that he would one day grow into, John was too shocked at first to say anything.

The woman giggled and put a hand on his shoulder to calm him. "Whoa there, you look like you've seen a ghost, kiddo." Her eyes were hidden by sunglasses, which made her lips look almost more vivid. Inviting. She couldn't have been more than a few years older than him, surely, but the way she spoke to him indeed made him feel like a boy to her.

Escaping before his face could turn red, John repeated his earlier apology and walked to the entrance of the coffee shop. When he entered, John stood on the entrance mat, scanning the restaurant for a blessedly familiar face. As soon as he realized, with a sinking worry that he couldn't recognize the man's face in the small crowd in the building, John felt something hit him from behind.

As he felt the breath gasp out of him from the soft but unexpected impact, he heard the voice from before, crying out in surprise.

"We can't keep meeting like this!" He could feel her hands, slender, wrap around his upper arms to either brace herself or try to stop him from tripping forward.

John turned around, looking again at the woman that seemingly couldn't stop colliding with him. Dark-haired and kept in a slight bun that still left her hair falling around her face, the woman peered at him from behind sunglasses with soft, curved frames. Her lips, soft things with a protruding, pouting bottom that hinted at an underbite, were accented with a small glisten of soft-tinted lipstick.

That was the moment that John smelled her perfume—not overtly feminine, as he would have thought—but a slightly cloying, appealing fragrance that reminded him of a dimly lit, secluded room. Something in his chest jolted at the smell.

John stared, at a loss for words, then worried she might be able to see his obvious reaction. He took a step away and tried to make it look subtle when he rested his hand against his chest to feel the heavy weight of the rhythm his heart was beating in. At a loss for words, John muttered another apology and began to walk away, this time headed for the bathroom.

Once the door to the private bathroom closed behind him, John let the breath that had trapped in his lungs out. He had not been intimate with another person in months, since he had broken up with a girlfriend who had not been one of his best decisions he had made in a partner. The immediate thought to John was that he had finally gone too damn long without dealing with natural, but altogether unwelcome, annoying, urges. Now was far from the right time to become fixated on someone, even for a brief moment of flirtation.

Once he felt as though he had gotten his head back into the right space, John left the bathroom. He was simultaneously trying to scan the room for someone he wanted to see and was trying not to catch the eye of someone he needed to not see. With a cursory scan of the small place, John realized that the restaurant was missing both people he had been expecting to see.

He sighed—a sound of disappointment, or relief?—and, after a moment of consideration, decided he would spend the rest of his time in the restaurant nursing a coffee. As he ordered his drink of choice, John started to walk towards the pick up edge of the counter when he heard a voice that gave him a start.

"Would have pegged you for a coffee, black kind of guy. Not a heap of sugar with a generous portion of cream."

John turned, saw the woman as she stood a few feet away from him. He had only really ever seen a true to term Cheshire Cat grin on one other person's face before, but this woman was wearing one as sure as she was still wearing those sunglasses.

The smile did something to de-fang the annoyance that he might have otherwise felt.

"Waiting for your coffee?" What John wanted to ask, instead, was, are you following me?

That grin disappeared as the woman's lips turned into an upward, thoughtful slash. "Oh, I haven't ordered yet. I just came from the bathroom," she pointed with her thumb back in the direction of what John supposed was the women's bathroom, down a hallway she had her back facing. "Great minds—bladders—think alike."

Why did that dumb comment make John feel like he was surely turning beet red? With the option of letting her see his face turn more and more red or cutting this conversation short while he had his dignity in his possession, John was grateful when he heard the barista say his name. Without a word to the woman, John turned and grabbed his coffee.

He was walking to the entrance, thinking that he could stand outside and greet his old friend and mentor when he saw the grey quality of the light outside of the window. Realized that the rain that had been promising to dump down on them had finally made its appearance.

Trying to make it look as though he had meant to do it, John walked to the booth next to the doorway and sat down. Knowing the coffee was still too hot to drink, he held it in his gloved hand, feeling the not unpleasant sensation of the heat against his hand.

The coffeehouse wasn't packed, nowhere near in fact, and the few customers who sat around their own cups and occasional light meals had the feeling of regulars, keeping to themselves. John looked out of the window, relieved when he could feel the heat leaving his face.

It felt like he was almost recovered when he saw a person sit on the opposite side of his booth table. The tall woman sat with an ease, as though she were meeting with someone that she knew well.

Too surprised to say anything, John was saved asking the obvious question when the woman said, "I decided not to get anything. I'm waiting for someone. Caffeine makes me jumpy." She gave him a smile that was supposed to be apologetic. "Don't want to have to wait alone. Some things are just better with company." She had a breathy voice, one that reminded John, strangely, of old movie stars, the kind he used to watch on his gramma's antenna tv before he started committing crimes out of sheer boredom. It almost felt like she had a wicked streak to her, reminding him specifically of Faye Dunaway from Bonnie and Clyde. Under the warm lights of the coffeehouse, the woman's dark hair revealed subtle, lighter shades that belonged to errant strands of her partially kept hair.

John stared at her in open disbelief. He worried he wouldn't be able to say anything, like she robbed him of his ability to speak. Finally, he said, "Ma'am, I'm a little busy right now, I can't keep you company—"

She smiled at him again, this time showing a flash of almost predatory, coy teeth as she bit into her lower lip, leaving an indent. ""Ma'am?" I'm a decade older than you, max. I hope someone you're flirting with some say calls you old man."

John was glad that he had not taken a drink of his coffee, or else he might have spit it out.

The woman laughed, likely at the obvious look on his face, then leaned back in the booth. She had a long-fingered, bare hand on the table, and John couldn't help but look at it, took in the slight curve to her fingers, the well-kept quality of her nails. She definitely seemed like the type of person who took care of herself. No one as—classy—as this woman had ever had any interest in him before. To say that he wasn't sure how to react would have been a grave understatement

She said she was waiting for someone. For a heartbeat, something primitive in the man jumped at her earlier remark, a sudden possessiveness, before he had a chance to shake it out of his mind. He forced himself to look at her face, into eyes he couldn't see much of beyond the barrier of those semi-opaque plastic lenses.

John grasped his coffee cup, took a sip of his drink to steady himself. Grateful that it didn't scorch his tongue. "Who're you waiting for?" Not exactly a pick up line, but neither was it anywhere approaching a solid fuck off.

One thing became certain to John, even if he had started to have a feeling about it earlier: she loved this moment, seemed to bathe in his awkwardness like it were sunlight. Still, she surprised him by dipping back, until her head was thrown back, her pale throat exposed above the gentle outward curved collar of her coat. The movement, it was, undoubtedly, fucking erot—

"Whoo," she said, hand already working at the top clasp of her peacoat. "I had a bit of a walk here. Haven't been on public transportation in a long, long time."

What accent was that? It felt a little blunt, but still somehow soft, like a midwest state. Strange; John would have picked her for belonging to a more cosmopolitan place, a city, but her voice seemed to tell of a different demographic that she belonged to. It made a strange dichotomy, but one that was not unpleasant. Somehow, it even fed into the strange Bonnie fantasy that had started to grow in his head.

He might have asked her to just cut the shit if not for how she gave John pause as she worked herself out of that nice fitting coat. With her coat off, John realized she was wearing a sweater . There was nothing improper about it, in a sense, but it fit her frame too nicely without being obscene, revealing too much. Maybe it had to do with how John was already anxious, or because he had gone too long without female company, but it felt like he could read a come on in every movement she made, deliberate, soft.

Without thinking about it, John started to remove his own coat, realizing that he, too, was hot. When he turned his right arm out of the coat and finished putting it on the seat next to him, he looked up in time to see a wicked smirk on her face. Perhaps realizing that she had been caught, the woman cleared her throat and turned away. With a sigh, she finally removed her sunglasses. As she sat them on the table between them, she looked up at John, and he couldn't help but think that there was something expectant in her eyes.

About to take another drink of his coffee to more alleviate the awkwardness that felt like it was choking the man, John stopped as he was about to put the cup to his lips, taking a second look at the woman. More specifically, at her eyes. It wasn't every day that someone had brown eyes that light in color—no, less light, more like they were bright .

She seemed to tolerate his stare, humoring him as she ducked closer, blinking so that her eyes were enlarged. When John frowned, his earlier blush returning as soon as he caught a whiff once more of her perfume over the cozy smell of the coffeehouse, he sat back in his seat. The smell and the closeness of her presence felt like it made him dizzy.

This game his unwanted companion was playing had finally gotten to him, and he had to admit that someone who was unused to women coming to him to, possibly, flirt, struggled with the attention, among other consideration. Like that thumping, irregular heart beat in his chest.

"So," she asked in that slightly husked voice of hers. "who could a man like you be waiting here for?" Before John could answer, she followed it up with, "Got a girlfriend?"

If this was a trap, at this point John had long fallen in it. He blurted out, "N-no. Haven't got—anyone."

He was almost horrified at what he had blurted out. He expected her to look triumphant over the obvious control she had over him. Instead, she looked almost sad for a moment, then a familiar smile spread across her face.

Almost under the soft sound of the light jazz muzak, she spoke in a lulling, compelling tone. "Mmm. You know, on a rainy day like this, it makes me wish I still smoked. I stopped—officially—five years ago, but I had a relapse about three years ago. Stress, and I felt... isolated." It was almost impossible to believe, but she looked sad, introspective, her lips twisted into a tight bud. "Have a lot of memories, some nice. A lot involve the guy I'm waiting for."

John was beyond reason or shame. He had forgotten why he was even in the coffeehouse to begin with, and when he had to stop himself from asking her what the guy she was talking about meant to her, he realized that this had gone beyond a simple attraction. Might have had something to do with him not being the kind of guy a woman hit on—might have had a lot to do with it, actually—but the woman sitting across from him had become in a short amount of time someone that he realized he wanted, desperately, to get the phone number of. He had already looked at her left hand, didn't see a ring on her fourth finger.

He cleared his throat, trying to remind himself, the part that wanted to let a goofy grin stretch on his mouth, that he wasn't here to flirt with some strange woman. "My name's John." he didn't know why, but he added, "You can call me Johnny."

He waited for her to tell him her name, and instead she asked, "Who're you waiting for, Johnny?"

He liked that she said his name, liked too much the way it sounded in her voice. "An old friend."

Something seemed to turn her brown eyes into the exact shade of honey, a gold viscosity. She blinked rapidly and it left, even as it remained burned in John's memory.

She leaned further back in her seat. "What kind of an old friend?"

Something managed to get through the embarrassingly obvious infatuation that turned John into something like an imbecile caveman. "Why're you asking so many questions?"

She actually batted her eye lashes at him, which went against the mischievous upward curve her lips had. "Just curious, wanting to pass the time." John got the feeling that he should have pressed her, demanded she tell him just what piqued her interest in a plain man like him. It was a feeling he ignored, willingly falling into the lush, yet invigorating emotion that he was mainlining.

"The man I'm waiting for—" she stopped herself and then it was finally her turn to blush.

John's heart started to ache, and he felt like his organs were getting twisted up. "What is it?"

She made a soft cough into her closed fist, said, "I wonder if he really wants to see me again. If it'll—give him closure." A genuine look in her eyes, a vulnerability, almost shocked John. "I wanted—I hope he'll come with me."

"Come with you where?"

She looked like she was about to say something, then she closed her eyes, sitting back in her seat. It felt like something in her closed down, closed him off. When she did open her eyes again she didn't make eye contact with him, instead seeming to stare at her hand where it rested on the table.

Without looking at him, she said, "What do you do for fun, Johnny?"

Fun? John was stumped at the question. It took him a few moments to formulate an answer, even a fake one. After all, what kind of a woman would want anything to do with a man who sounded like he spent his days working and his nights trying to fall asleep?

He stuttered, then said, "I like... reading."

She looked up at him. A flicker of that earlier amusement filled her eyes once more. "What do you like to read?"

Shit. When was the last time he'd read something for pleasure? Quickly, he remembered the name of a book, one that a very dear friend had given him to read a long time ago. "My favorite is The Master and Margarita."

She froze. It was the truest description of that term, truer than any other time that he had seen someone stop dead. Her eyes seemed to dart to him questioningly before she feigned a smile.

"That's a strange book to pick as a favorite. Soviet Russian satire and romance."

"It meant a lot to someone who gave me a copy." Yes, a copy that he still kept.

An honest smile seemed to edge at her lips. "That's funny, I lost my old copy some time ago."

John laughed, the sound odd and somehow off-putting to his ears. As he looked at the woman, he realized that her body language had changed. She glanced out the window, as though examining the weather. He had forgotten that she was also waiting for someone and he felt the fear that she was looking for an escape from him, even in the beating waves of the rain waiting for them outside.

He jumped on the attack, pushing his coffee cup to the side as he gesticulated towards her as he spoke. "So, this weather—"

She interrupted him, giving a light wave. "I'm sorry, I need to say something." She cleared her throat and her voice sounded strained, deeper. "It's me, John."

John scoffed, searching her face for the answer to her behavior. "What're you doing?"

She finally gave him a brief look of annoyance. "I know it's been years, but who else would have my eye color? And, really," she motioned towards him, her voice sinking into the deeper baritone with better ease. The Master and Margarita ? Need to cut this out."

He was about to point out that she had been obviously—very obviously—flirting with him when something coalesced in his mind. John stared at the person across from him, and in an instant she transformed from a woman too beautiful to want anything to do with him into someone that was still very close to his heart.

His voice sounded like a hiss or a squeak as he nearly gasped the one word question out. "Jain?"

The woman threw her arms up and an almost apologetic, still somehow mischievous smile revealed her white teeth. "How've you been, Bambi?"

Can you tell I had a great time writing this chapter? It was nice to dip back, before a time when the main characters weren't constantly tense or dealing with the aftermath of the rise of ADVENT.

Right now I'm dealing with some transitions in my life, but I've been trying to wake up earlier to at least try to revise my OW. I've also been writing a short piece long hand, also OW, something I might share... somewhere, someday.