It had been hours since Janis had spoken to John. In spite of her belief that it would be a relief to get away from the man, no more than five minutes after she had left him she realized she wanted nothing more than to turn around. Try to get it through his thick skull that nothing he could ever admit to her would make her want to leave him.

He had been brave, admitting that. Even though it was a tension that, in truth, both had felt for the years that XCOM had been operational, Janis knew how hard it had been for someone like him to admit to something like having feelings for her. Still, she had never forgotten the night of John's thirty fifth birthday.

She wondered what it would take for him to say it out loud, to spell it out the way he had twenty years ago. But then there was the feeling, how she half feared what she would do if he told her how he felt for her this time. And she knew that she was no good for a man like him. Couldn't stand the thought of disappointing him again and again and again. All she was good was for abandoning. And, beneath the veneer of a strong woman was just a shivering, frightened boy, afraid of what he'd find if he looked too closely into his father's dark world, but never able to look away.

She wandered like a ghost for a bit, then found a comforting relic of her past in her room, an old ipod. It was not actually hers, like most of everything that she came to find in her quarters. Most of it seemed to be awfully close copies of things she once kept; it would not have surprised her if most of her items had been destroyed in the ensuing chaos following the day the original XCOM hadgreen terminated, or perhaps had been taken by the aliens as some sort of macabre relics, trophies.

To her surprise when she turned it on, she found it filled with some of her old personal favorites. Who, exactly, put the MP3s on this thing? She pushed away the lingering thought that there was only one person still alive who knew her well enough to stock it so well with music that was her taste.

In need of something to do, to comfort the maelstrom in her mind, Janis plugged her earbuds in and strolled around while listening to music. She was grateful that for the moment the base was almost empty with everyone preparing for the day that XCOM arose from its grave.

She walked into the labs and found them empty. Being around that many scientific instruments reminded her of a woman whose heavy German accent and sharp eyes used to make a lab very similar to this one feel like home. As she strolled around in the tiled, dimly lit room, she remembered the days she once spent in the base's lab. Had learned, early on, that Vahlen didn't like coffee, in spite of how everything else about the woman would have screamed that she was outwardly serious, mature.

When her assistants went to bed for the night, at times Janis would surprise her with cocoa, sometimes made with real milk but always with a powdered base. Nothing wrong with the cheap stuff; it reminded Janis of the happier childhood memories, precious nights spent alone in the trailer. And Vahlen never complained during all of the time both people spent sat at a desk, talking sometimes till the morning.

Those nights were ones she would always treasure, even the ones with some bizarre corpse laid open like a book on an autopsy slab in the corner, sometimes reeking, to the point where Vahlen would insist that they had to wear paper masks over their mouths and noses.

A few years before she came to work in the XCOM Initiative, the only relationship Janis had ever had with other women had been romantic, but if she were in the mood for honesty, it mostly only ever amounted to booty calls. Talking with Vahlen, the first woman she had truly opened up to since her reassignment, it was like peering into a world she long wished to jump into. Sometimes in spite of the occasional "wetwork" left out in the open.

It didn't hurt that the doctor happened to know more than a passing amount about who she came to call her "unique specimen". It wasn't meant cruelly, just a playful nickname that Janis understood the intent of without question. She also seemed to understand that surgery and heavy hormone, coupled with physical, therapy, was something that no one could wade through without support.

In honesty she had cried more than her fair share over those memories—and many more, dealing with the innumerable other people she had lost as well, to either time or to the cruelty of those who had stolen her—weeks ago. Still, she could feel her eyelids sting with tears as she longed to hear that professional-sounding voice softly address her, ask if she had brought anything to drink.

As she watched one of Tygan's specimens float in liquid that Janis knew was close to the type she had been imprisoned in, she couldn't help but recall those words, spoken by a man who she had feared more than anything letting down.

I want to marry you. I love you.

She was haunted by ghosts both living and dead, and she struggled with how she could possibly lead every one of them to something resembling victory. If she were even, in truth, capable of such a thing.

Janis almost missed the man who had inherited her old, dear friend's position as he walked back into the room. Without realizing it, she had been singing softly along to a song that was playing through the one earbud she wore in her ear.

He didn't seem surprised to see the same person who had just rejected the role of Command, sitting in one of his office chairs in civilian clothes, staring at one of his specimens. Still, expecting him to comment on her surprise appearance, it was instead Janis' turn to be surprised by what he said.

"What you were singing before I came in—I can't put my finger on it. Then again, music was never my... repertoire. "Love me till my heart stops/love me till I'm dead...""

Janis smiled at him. She couldn't imagine that it was easy to find a place to listen to pop music from over a lifetime ago. "The Talking Heads. I'd say it's an old guilty pleasure, but I don't really believe in guilty pleasures."

"Ah." Tygan looked awkward.

Janis felt sorry for him; she didn't know how these people were going to feel about her presence, now that she told them that she couldn't take the position of Commander like they wanted her to.

"I see you're looking at a partially regenerated limb I collected during my time at a Gene Bank. I hid it in a jar that a colleague of mine used to keep his pickles in, but ended up forgetting about in our staff fridge. Of course, I threw the contents out before I collected the specimen, although a brine would not have been the worst choices available to me to preserve the specimen. I wish I knew more about true scientific breakthroughs that ADVENT never deigned to share with their conquered species..." he trailed off, a frown marking his face. "You have the look I'm used to seeing on some of the younger medical students I used to mentor in the Gene Banks."

Janis' toes curled in her boots and she hoped she wasn't blushing. Was she that see-through? "I guess I just came to talk to you about Jo—" she coughed, decided in the middle of saying his name that she would rather call him by his eponymous callsign. As though it could distance herself from him. "Central."

Tygan's frown deepened but he grabbed another one of the wheeled desk chairs, orphaning it from its station. He dragged the chair closer to Janis, until he was a few feet away from her. As he sat down, he said, "I'm relieved we have a chance to talk in private. I hope you'll forgive me. It's for the sake of the Initiative that I want to speak candidly with you."

It took some effort to not wince. Since she had recovered, it felt like all anybody wanted to do was be painfully honest with her. Still, she nodded to him. "Of course." What did it matter? Not like they could force her to take command. Unless they wanted this rebirth of XCOM to go up in flames.

"The man you've chosen as the alternative to you is problematic to say the least."

It was a relief to feel something aside from the vestigial feelings left over from her earlier talk with John. Janis crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the man. "I thought I've already explained this to you—"

Tygan lifted a hand up, said, "I don't know what Bradford was like two decades ago, but his actions and activity nowadays I can more than attest to. He is very easily flung into rages, people are afraid to speak to him directly out of fear of what he will do or say to them."

"And what has he done to them to make them fear him?" When Tygan only gave her a pained look, Janis said, "I'm willing to bet—he hasn't made good on any threats he may have made." No, somehow she knew John wouldn't do more than some admittedly not great verbal abuse. Of course, the verbal abuse was its own problem, one that she was ready to correct before John took her place.

The man parroted exactly what she had just thought. "A group like this runs on morale as surely as it does food and funds. We cannot have a drunken pest stomping around the base, barking orders at people."

That she could agree with. But Janis was well aware that she could not show any weakness on this point. Tygan might not have been aware of it, but he wanted to do away with the only man that she could ever envision being able to withstand the stress of the position. In due time, he would be able to make all of the hard decisions, perhaps better even than she once did.

Tygan continued, saying, "And if that were the only issue, I would be willing to let the man take the position, with the caveat of you guiding him. The other issue is one that it seems only I see as... pressing."

"And what would that be?"

Finally it was time for the man to look uncomfortable for a change. "You may not be aware of it, but much of his behavior stems from one source in particular." He stared meaningfully at Janis, and when she only looked back at him, the man made an annoyed groan, said, "His feelings for you may be what, in no small part, inspired him to help in the recovery and much of the work that lead to the rebuild of the XCOM Initiative, but at this point he appears to have allowed the very same... sentiments to lead to a profound decay in his morale and outlook, to say nothing of his behavior."

Janis could feel herself staring at him, a deer in the proverbial headlights. She felt herself ask it, as if it were some fight or flight instinct talking, "What do you mean?"

Tygan gave her a look of veiled disgust, which shocked her. "You know, everyone here seems to be taking part in this macabre betting pool over this, but I see nothing funny in the unprofessional behavior of either candidate for that of the role of Commander."

She could feel her face growing red as rage built inside of her. "You should be careful of who you talk to like that—"

"As I said, I speak candidly only for the good of the Initiative. And at this point the Emperor is nude and believes himself to be wearing clothes." Tygan waited a moment, as though allowing her space to have another outburst—exactly the kind of thing that she never would have been caught dead having. "As I said before, if you are set on leaving XCOM, I only wish you would let us have time to find a proper candidate in your stead. What I didn't say before, out of respect for whatever personal relationship you have with Central, is that if you want me, all of us, to truly accept who I suppose is your protege of sorts, then you must do whatever needs done to help him come to terms with the fact that he is a key member of the Initiative and must be expected to behave as such. And do not mistake me saying this as, again, intruding on your personal lives, but I would recommend that you allow him to come to terms with whatever your relationship is and will be before we crash and burn, hopefully figuratively but perhaps literally."

Janis stared at Tygan, overwhelmed by the experience of being emotionally dissected by the man's words. It was as though he had taken a scalpel to her chest cavity.

She felt her expression grow tight on her face. "That everything you wanted to say?"

Tygan let out a heavy breath, standing up and putting a hand on the back of the chair. "Good God, I hope so. I don't think I could withstand another talk like this, even if it is for the good of Humanity." He shook his head, but Janis got the feeling that there was something good natured in it. If she knew the man better, she might even guess that he was being playful, if not for how deadpan he was acting.

Still, Janis found that she had been clutching the cold, smooth matte-grey ipod very tightly in her hand. She slipped it into her pants' pocket before she stood up. She meant to shake Tygan's hand, but when she looked up, Janis discovered that the man must have quietly taken the chair back to its earlier position and was already halfway across the large room.

He was quick, moved quietly, and when he did speak, it was to the point. Everything that, once Janis got a clearer head, she would come to see as a powerful set of traits to have in the role vacated by the late-great Dr. Vahlen.

Before he had a chance to make an escape, she called out to him, "You don't happen to have any stakes in that betting pool you mentioned, do you?"

Tygan didn't hesitate, only pushing his no-nonsense rectangle-frame glasses further up the bridge of his nose as he answered, "I put money on Bradford not ever telling you how he feels. In spite of everyone knowing his emotional state, seemingly better than he does, the man will never admit to anything." He nodded towards her, a subtle show of respect, or perhaps what was supposed to be a mutual understanding. "If that man ever finds someone, it will have to be some sort of a wild woman, I've imagined. The kind that will knock him over the head and drag him into a cave."

That made Janis laugh. As she watched Tygan flick something resembling a smile at her as a means of good-bye, she had to stop herself from telling the man that he severely underestimated Central.

To the contrary, the man had already made what she could now see as a chasm-like leap two decades prior.

She didn't come to the decision rashly, or quickly. Janis went back to her room, where she sat on a couch and tried to summon every thought she had ever had about the feeling that John treated her differently, not like someone he would consider a friend or a mentor. Thinking about it here or there, seeing how it felt in her heart like she was trying on a variety of clothes, had been something that she did almost as a way of not thinking about her current situation, the feeling that she was abandoning XCOM and not trying to save it. Frustrated, Janis stopped, feeling like she was about to give herself a headache from thinking about it.

Eventually, she found herself moved to stand in front of the small memorial in her room. Looking at reminders of people who would never have the chance of talking to someone they cared for sobered her. It did have the effect of reminding Janis that there were worse things than deciding to confront John.

But a strange thing happened as she walked away from the memorial. It was as though not thinking about it, at least, trying not to think about it, had allowed some mechanism in her mind to slide into place. As she picked out what she wanted to wear, Janis found herself staying in front of the full length mirror only because she wanted to make sure she looked good. As close to perfect as she was capable of.

As soon as she finished, Janis closed the door to her quarters behind her and walked in the direction of John's room, figuring that it was the only possible place where she would find him. When she realized that the room was dark and he didn't answer any knocking, Janis just stood there, fearing that at any moment the unique courage she had needed would desert her.

"Shit."

The first assumption had been that he had gone to the bar. When she went over there and didn't see him, she walked back to the gym and didn't see him there, either. Getting frustrated, Janis stalked around half of the length of the entire base, hoping to find him. When she still didn't find him anywhere, she walked back to his room and this time she let herself in with the, thankfully, still in her possession skeleton key card that had been given to her. The fact that she was, at least for the moment, considered the Commander, why she had that card in the first place, almost made her laugh to think about.

She walked in and realized that John wasn't hiding in the dark and not answering the door.

Hard to believe though it was, he was seemingly nowhere in the base. And, Janis realized then, she suddenly had to pee.

She had considered leaving the light off, sitting in the dark as she waited for him to return. Thankfully, she realized how stupid that was—how much it would make this feel like a "gotcha" surprise, as if she were a spouse catching her partner out too late, or worse, a parent catching their child—and decided to sit on his couch with the light on. It was a good thing that it only took what felt like twenty minutes before the door opened. Even though John surely could have seen the light in the window, even obscured by the blinds like it would have been, she could see the obvious surprise on the man's face when he walked into the room and saw her.

As if by instinct, John closed the door behind him before he turned to look back at Janis. The surprise on his face barely seemed to have faded as Janis said what she had decided she was going to say when he returned.

"So, weeks I hear you never step foot off of the base, and the one time I need to talk to you, you leave."

He stared directly at her, at first not blinking. As though he were afraid that if he would blink she would disappear.

"Just needed some air. Real air, not recycled." The way he looked at her, the sincere feeling that he was totally keyed into her, was so clear that it was strange, especially given the way that they had last seen each other. But was it wholly unpleasant?

Why did something feel weird, flighty in her stomach as she stood up? She said, "I think there's something we've been needing to talk about. For a long time."

John tilted his head to the side and what felt like for the first time since he had come into his room, he blinked. It was uncanny; it felt like she once again saw the young man in him, the one that she had grown to trust.

"What about?"

It might have made her angry, that he was going to play coy with her after their earlier conversation. Instead, Janis felt a smile growing on her face.

It was funny; her entire life, any time she had been with someone, she had never really had to be the pursuer. The women had always come up to her, before and after the gender reassignment, asking her out on dates or, if they felt more forward, for quickies. It was weird to think that it was her turn to be the forward one. And for this, out of all things. Weirdly enough, it felt natural.

"I just needed to confirm something." Still, it was terrifying to think about what could happen. Before, she had been plagued by old feelings of inadequacy, and fears of how she could irreparably damage this relationship if she was reading into John's emotions wrong.

So instead of thinking about it for one more second, Janis went for it, knowing that she might have this kind of courage only for a brief moment in time, the will to walk that distance in the room. To stand in front of her dearest friend.

She was taller than him, always had been, and this exact moment was why Janis, a taller-than-average woman, dreaded a relationship with a man. But this surprised her.

It felt natural, good even, to look down at him, a man whose forehead came to her chin but who was strong, hard all over. Whose eyes, filled with unmistakable shock, seemed to glow honey brown, his mouth falling open. He was older than that man who had professed his feelings for her, and unmistakably, he was more masculine to her now than he ever had been. He smelled indeed like sunshine, the warmth of the world outside of the base, fresh wind.

She never realized how much she missed the smell of wind.

Janis knew this man so well, she realized then that the years separating the decades that he had grown, lived without her, were nothing but a temporary barrier. It was that realization, that she could see her friend in this strange, hard-edged man, that had her reaching down.

Her fingers—God, she was shaking , the trembling starting in her shoulders and intensifying in the joints of her index and middle fingers—curled, braced underneath his chin, guiding his mouth closed, maneuvered his face towards hers.

Looking back, Janis would wonder at the fact that if she had slept for so long in a sort of wicked curse, that it was her who initiated the first kiss.

Notes:

We're over halfway through this story, it's hard to believe I started this months ago. I have to say, just for my own joy, it was well worth exercising my persnickety method of revision with this. I love writing work I can see myself enjoying reading in the future—with my bad memory, I probably won't remember most of this in six months! It really is true; the first time you write something, only the writer gets any kick out of it, revision is when you either find a new love for it or you throw yourself on the rocks until either you or the tangled mess of writing succeeds. Either I am full of shit (the more believable option, I will admit) or I am a lot better at this than I was six years ago, when I wrote in a notebook or on a tablet with a bluetooth keyboard during my lunch breaks.

Ah. Forgive me, I'm just a little maudlin, because I'm going through my OW, summarizing it scene by scene like they're individual parts of some big, bloated equation.

Of course, I have to say that I always seem to find something to "fix" or alter every time I re-read a scene, this piece thus far not being any different. But it feels good to be able to look at the project folder and know that it's finished.