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"Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm."

~Publilius Syrus

Chapter Fifty-two: Distant Thunder

Hell was too soft of a word.

It wasn't always agony, of course: that would have inured Elena Dragunova to it after a while. It was spells and cycles: soft and hard, food and rest and then barbaric assault for what felt like days on end.

And through it all, she stayed where she was: bolted to a table laden with instruments and tools she'd become intimately familiar with lately.

Uselessly, Elena twisted her left arm, tugging at the bracket holding it down to ribbed steel. At first she'd thought it a blessing when they didn't simply drive the bolts through her bones, but after however long it had been since her brawl with prison security...every time she twitched, the rough edges of her fastenings dug into her wrists and ankles, into her waist and thighs. She'd bled a lot, but never quite enough to let her die.

"Idiots. Fools." Talking was the only thing that kept her focused, sometimes. "They should just kill me. I'll get out."

They never let her up. The table took care of her messes, and their method of giving her food and drink was to spoon-feed her. On the good days, at least: when they were in a harsh spell, they simply pushed a funnel between her lips and poured it all in, holding back just enough to leave her alive, and not an inch more.

Movement. Elena twisted her head - hard, with a bracket on her neck too - and caught a glimpse of another prisoner being moved. By the way she slumped in the grip of two stun lancers, this woman was in worse shape than Elena herself.

"Don't give up!" Elena called. "Vigilo Confido!"

The woman jerked. Her gaze snapped over to Elena, and in her lined, aged face, surprise glinted.

"You are XCOM!" Her voice - was that accent German or French? - cracked. "You are-"

The lancers dropped her. She went down hard on her face, and the Adventers paused to kick her a few times. When they picked her back up, she slumped even harder, head hanging low with blood running from her nose.

"Try that with me!" Elena spat in their general direction. They paid her no heed, just taking their charge off down the hall again, toward a door helpfully labeled Extreme Treatment.

She looks half-dead, or worse. Someone of that age, and things like this? She'll never survive. Elena almost laughed, though there was no joy in the bitter temptation. As opposed to me, young and healthy and certain to be just fine. Don't I have enough problems without borrowing someone else's?

She didn't know what had happened to Zhang and Vasilieva. Maybe they'd been taken back to their cell, or maybe they were here in Data Extraction. Maybe they were dead already.

The door opened. Elena glared up at the ceiling rather than dignify her next interrogator with a look.

"You're wasting your time." She did her best to sound bored. "You don't have any surprises left, not after this long. I've seen all your tricks. The same old from the same old idiots won't convince me to spill anything-"

Her breath caught as her new interrogator's head appeared over her.

"There is still fight in you," the Warlock mused, tapping her cheek with one of his long armored talons. Elena couldn't help but yelp when he pushed it in, hard enough it punctured her skin. Red dripped down her chin, and the Chosen smiled, wide and hideous. "No matter. Pain may be a fallible tool, child, but soon, you will think of it as a mercy."

"This is insane. This is wild, this is out of our mind wishful-"

"Can it, Shen Junior." Jane took a test aim with the Spider Suit's grapnel. "Hard on my arm, I imagine, but going up and down like that...I wonder what else I can do with it? One of those old games I found in the archive...um..." She kicked at the ground. "Batman something. He had a grapple launcher, and he could use it to-"

"You're running off into the middle of nowhere with untested equipment on a hunch provided by Julian, of all people!" Jiaying looked, frankly, terrified. "Don't you think this is a bad idea?"

"Name one thing we've done that hasn't been a bad idea." Jane fetched her shard gun, checked it over, and slung the strap over her shoulder. She spent a moment debating, then bypassed her next selection and hurried to a weapon crate. "Damn thing is in here somewhere..."

"We should at least recon the site first. Maybe have Volk send in a team...take a couple of days to-"

"A couple of days?" Jane tossed her head, then swore and caught her cap before it ran away. "Jesus Christ, Jiaying, Dragunova's in there."

"We don't know that."

"If she's not, someone down there knows where she is."

"If we run in precipitously, we could lose you too."

"Yes. Comes with my line of work."

"But-"

"Shut up, Shen Junior." Jane shoved the crate away, hunting for the next one. "I am not talking to Central over this. I bet Mox knows where it wound up though."

"Just what are you looking for?" Jiaying frowned. "Your sword is right there on the wall, Irish-"

"Yeah, well. I think the real Shen did a little..." Jane let out a cry of triumph that a Highlander warrior would have been proud of. To complete that impression, she hefted the first of her prizes. "Check it!"

"I don't think I saw the plans for this project." Jiaying couldn't help but stare. "That is..."

"Yeah, she worked on it before you jumped aboard. We just haven't taken it out since. Don't ask me: Central usually sets the arms orders." Jane flourished the orange-glowing Ionic Axe, beaming the whole while. "Not as pretty as a sword, I say, but it does the job it needs to and that's what counts."

Jiaying blew at her bangs. "Captain Kelly, I really must insist you listen to me-"

"I've been listening. Jiaying, our people could be dying right now. Even delaying by hours could be the difference." Jane slung one axe over her shoulder, then the other. She checked their weight, then returned her attention to the worrywart. "Take it up with Commander Gallant."

"Take it up with-" She burst out coughing. "I think he'd rip my head off and bowl with it. He's gone mad."

"Yes. What else is new?" Jane still shifted her weight uncomfortably. There was something different about him lately, wasn't there? "The world's gone mad, Jiaying. All we can do is beat sense into it one Advent base at a time. And it starts tonight."

"Jane-"

"That's enough, Shen." She raised her hand, very firmly. "Mox and Aileen and Fatima are already geared up. I had to pull rank on David to keep him from coming along, orders be damned. The mission is launching: it will launch regardless of anything I have to say, and I wouldn't call it off if I could." She narrowed her eyes. "This conversation is over."

"It..." Jiaying let out a low breath. "Alright, Captain. So be it."

"Don't sound so dramatic, Junior."

"Junior is a SPARK-"

"And he doesn't bitch about mission orders." Jane started for the hangar bay. "We'll be fine, Jiaying. Put your mind on something useful, like figuring out where Gallant is."

"It's been a while." Angelis strode from the surf as Aphrodite in glory, sea spray blowing up around her glistening sarong. Her violet eyes glinted in starlight. "Commander."

"It has." Gallant cleared his throat. "What do you want?"

"Jane Kelly. We established that." Angelis dug her toes into the sand, stopping ten paces away. "In exchange: I will come to the Avenger, and you receive Moira Vahlen. I shouldn't have to remind you." She pouted. "Did you forget me already, Edward?"

"I don't trust you."

"I'd laugh at you if you did."

"So you admit this is a trap?"

"I admit nothing. I deny everything." Her white smile lit up the beach. "If you want the rose, Edward, sometimes you have to risk the thorns. Is Vahlen rose enough for you?"

Gallant worked his jaw. "If the price of freeing her is the end of my people, that's too much."

Angelis tilted her head. For a moment, it looked like fury shone in her eyes...but rapidly, Gallant began to suspect it was something else.

"You are a man of principle, Commander." Her lips twitched again, but this wasn't as joyous. It was quiet and almost bitter. "Yet another way in which you and I, though separated by allegiance, home, and even species, are very much alike."

"Me? Like you?" Gallant scoffed. "Excuse me, Angelis, but do I show up in your home and blow shit up?"

"I think if it was the future of your race you gambled for, you would blow up as much of my shit as you deemed necessary." A dry chuckle, again tinged with darkness. "Ahem. Switzerland? That was my building, jerk."

"What do you care?" Gallant scoffed. "You invaded my planet for your petty self-interest. I'm trying to save my people."

Something flickered in Angelis' eyes, something that mixed amusement and anger in a quick morass. "A cripple, leading an army in the name of ensuring the people they call their own do not find themselves obliterated."

"Make fun of me, then. Laugh." Gallant's fists clenched. "You don't know what it's like to be weak, Angelis. You don't know what it's like to-"

"-to feel yourself fading away? Or were you going to say I don't know what it's like to have a nurse attached to my hip? To have a medical team on call to run into my office if I fall over, because I'm too weak to stand by myself?" Her eye twitched. "Edward, I wasn't referring to you at all. I was speaking of myself."

"You..." Gallant blinked. "You're an Elder."

"You think this dream makes you feel strong, Commander?" Angelis' eyes flashed. "My body fails me worse than yours ever could! It's not cardiac arrest and stairs I fear, Edward Gallant. Your life? Your waking nightmare, that makes you feel weak?" All that rage in her eyes went away in a sudden flash, and something wet shone in the moonlight as it started down her cheeks. "Do you know, Commander, what I would give in order to walk with the aid of a cane?"

Gallant shifted his weight. Slowly, though, he took a few steps and reached out. Angelis didn't react when he gently laid his hand on her shoulder.

"This body...is not my own." In her eyes, something was missing as she slowly stretched out all of her limbs. "It's proportioned wrong. I'm missing my lower arms. This head..." She turned it, and her eye twitched again with disappointment. "And yet, Edward, despite being nothing I call familiar, despite reminding me of my weakness with its own...I'm not confined to my stasis chamber in this dream." Bitter joy touched her lips, even as tears continued to drip over them. "I know your pain, better than anyone in your Resistance ever could."

Gallant didn't quite know what to say. He stood there, awkwardly holding her shoulder while she cried. He felt old-fashioned, but he wished for...even if she was the enemy, she was...

"What..." Gallant cleared his throat a moment later. Was that how Angelis kept doing it? "Here."

"Commander?" Angelis' eyes fixed on the handkerchief he proffered - the one he hadn't had until a moment ago. She frowned. "Are you a psionic, Edward?"

"No."

"Most strange. We must be very alike, then: you must be feeding off my aura." She took it, then wiped at her eyes with the blue cloth. "Thank you for your kindness. I am not used to it. My children and my colleagues alike would sense weakness if ever I showed..."

"That's life. It's a bitch." Gallant forgot about the handkerchief when she was done with it, and it faded into the air. "Angelis-"

"Enough of this." She cleared her throat. "We are off-topic. Kelly, Commander: in exchange for Moira and myself. I would be happy to resume this conversation once I am safely secured in your brig."

Gallant hesitated. Gone was the human...or, at least, the person. Now she was the enemy again, eyes set and expression inquisitive. "I don't..."

"I won't offer again, Commander. I require your answer before we leave this beach."

Gallant let out a hissing breath. "You don't make things easy."

"Of course not. I am a woman." She mulled that over for a minute. "After a fashion."

Gallant lowered his head. He clenched his fists again, thinking...thinking, and thinking, and...

"Commander?"

He made his choice.

"I'll start the wheels turning when I wake up." Gallant looked back up. "That's a promise. I'll drop Captain Kelly at the appropriate site within forty-eight hours."

"I will be waiting there for you." Angelis smiled. "It will be nice to see you in the flesh for the first time."

Gallant smiled. This time, he felt the dream starting to slip away from him, like a billowing wind that took color and sound from the world and brought it all to black.

And he prayed to God that he wouldn't have to do what he'd just promised.

Running feet. The blare of the mission klaxon. People shouted in the hallways, encouraging each other to move faster, reminding people of mission details, or just demanding loudly that someone tell them what was happening.

Mariah Bradford hugged her knees, perched atop the cot she still struggled to think of as hers. It wasn't as cushy as the one up in the soldiers' barracks. That made sense, she supposed: those stuck in the janitorial duty didn't run the risk of gruesome death in action. The little comforts were less important for their morale.

She'd gotten up twice to watch the hullaballoo outside. Still, she got up again: putting one bare foot down on the deck at a time. She ached, as she always did after a long day of swabbing and scrubbing and making food in the galley, but it wasn't enough to dissuade her. Very little was: nothing had held her back from making her way to Avenger across half a planet, after all.

She poked her head up to the porthole in the door, watching people hurry along. Something big was going down, but she wasn't sure what: no one told the custodial department much of anything. That didn't matter, though. If her cleaning dishes and floors helped win the war, she didn't need glory.

She didn't. Honestly.

But...

"Oh, shit!" Mariah ducked as he appeared, hands behind his back. She risked a glance out the corner of the window after she thought she'd given him enough time to move on.

She hadn't. There he was, profile as strong as ever, face grim and set-

Mariah froze as their eyes locked. She quivered, but hoped the door hid the worst of it. Bradford didn't blink, and that in his eyes...

Mariah broke. She fled back to her bed, making sure to lock the door just in case her father felt like screaming at her some more. He could scream, but she didn't have to listen: he'd already kicked her off the duty roster. What more was he going to do? Put her on the ground? Maybe that would be a mercy.

"No." Mariah huddled back on her bed, popping the last of Julie's delicious brownies into her mouth. She chewed anxiously. "No. If I get stuck on land, I won't...I can't...he'll never..."

Silence fell. Deep inside, Mariah longed for Julie, or Charlotte, or even Sylvie Richard or Lieutenant Liang.

But she had no one. They would all be in the bar, waiting to see how the op developed and if they would be needed. Oh, no rule stopped Mariah from joining them, but what if she ran into her father...what if he saw her there...and facing everyone, all at once? She wasn't one of them. She never had been.

She didn't realize she was reaching until her fingers found her datapad.

"Uh." Mariah felt foolish, but the prickling tears pushing at the backs of her eyes drove her on. Gently, she pulled her datapad up, balancing it on her knees. She hunted through her apps until she found what she wanted. She hit the button, and the red recording light clicked on.

"Hi, older me. I haven't done one of these in a while." Mariah let out a long, slow breath. "I just need someone to talk to, and of all people, I guess you probably know me the best."

Darkness. It enveloped Jiaying Shen on all sides, pressing down on her like a blanket of death.

"Stupid...crawl spaces..." She'd never liked them, not for beans. But, Lily had tasked her with finding the strange noises, and that meant crawling around in the metalworking. If there was one thing worse than finding something back here, it was Lily finding something back here. After all the searching she'd sent Jiaying out on...it would just be embarrassing if Lily came back and hit on what she was looking for in the first five minutes.

"Cousins can be competitive." Jiaying paused to wipe her brow. There was so much at stake...

Don't think about that. Just...don't. Think about...about...

It was hard to find something to think about that would put her fears to rest. Maybe Gallant and his people knew what they were doing. Maybe they were walking into a trap. Either way, Jiaying had plenty to fear.

"It doesn't change anything." Four words that rang cold in the dark. "Whether or not they win tonight..."

All true. None of it comforting. Some decisions were too hard to make. Some fights were too hard to volunteer for.

Jiaying hadn't volunteered. Left to her own devices, she would have stayed out of all of this. She wasn't as brave as Lily, or as determined as Tygan. But life...life had a way of finding you when it was your time, whether that came in the form of an offer or a bomb in the wrong place.

"Think of Alex, Jiaying." Her lips twitched even at the thought of him: her Vancouver love, who'd come all the way to Europe with her without a qualm. The father of her son.

His broken body after the raid...

"For him. For them." Jiaying's feet started moving before she opened her eyes. Her hands moved too: moved up to the control panel on the wall. She still hesitated, but not as long this time. That image burned itself in her mind again, and the thought of her son...

"Don't give up now." She put in the code she needed, and waited while the machinery powered up.

Then... "Time to finish the sweep. I've lingered here too long." Before the words even finished echoing, Jiaying was on her way.

She didn't look back at the humming machine once.

"Repeater." Mox fixed the device in question to the muzzle of his magnetic bullpup. "And an expanded magazine."

"Sure you don't want a kickass laser sight?" Lily Shen had to shout to make herself heard over the low rumble of Firebrand testing her engines.

"No. I use a lot of ammunition. My weapon needs more shots more than I need the sight." Mox spent a moment unscrewing his magazine housing, faster and more assuredly than any mere human could. When he put the extension in its place, he moved just as quickly.

"Ripjack?"

"Ready." Mox jutted it out to prove it, then replaced the blades in their place slung along his arm. He slipped his bullpup strap in place, then fetched a grenade.

"You good?" Shen watched him every minute.

"I am ready for war." Mox thought once of Dragunova, and every other concern faded. "I have a debt to repay. When I was lost in Angelis' grip..."

"Well, don't do anything stupid because of that." Shen gave him a warning look. "Be smart. You tip that facility off to your presence too early, and you'll never get anyone out."

"Rest assured, I know this." Mox set his teeth. "I imagine this place was my eventual fate, had rescue not come at the opportune time. I will enjoy my visit far more than I would have."

"Cut the chatter, Mox!" Jane stood at the base of Firebrand's ramp, waving. "Aileen! Tariq! Get your asses over here!"

"Oh, boy!" Aileen nearly bounded over to the brunette's side. She brandished the Bolt Caster. "Let's kill some dudes!"

"Your mission will not be easy." Bradford stood center of the hangar, eyes on the four raiders. Mox paid him half an ear, hurrying to stand at Jane's left hand. Central chuckled. "Then again, when are they ever?" He sobered quickly. "Yours is to find Elena Dragunova, and Doctor Vahlen if she is present as I hope she is. Do so with speed, and do so..."

It took Mox a moment to realize why Bradford had stopped. It was only when Jane's ponytail nearly slapped him that he figured out heads were turning, and he supposed his fixation on Dragunova had cost him situational awareness. His head turned.

"Oh...shit." Aileen gulped. "Fuck."

"Call me a plus-one, kids." Thump. Thump.

"Sir!" Bradford quickly stepped up into Gallant's way. Feeling generous, the Commander let him have his moment. "Sir...what are you doing?"

"Isn't it obvious, John?" Gallant narrowed his eyes. "I would have thought the pistol and armor would give it away."

"Sir, you walk with a cane-"

"And so what? You forgotten what happened June of '15?" Gallant's lip slowly curled. "I schooled you when you were in your prime, old man. I'm not as slow and green as Kelly."

"You can't do this." That was the brunette herself. Gallant's eyes snapped her way. She crossed her arms definitively. "Sir, I'm not going easy on you, because you told me once that isn't what you need: you're going to slow us down and make the entire operation harder."

"What? You think a cane means I can't fight?" Gallant scoffed. "Guns exist for a reason. I admit the Shadowkeeper isn't a SAW, but-"

"But nothing." Aileen stubbornly took her girlfriend's side. "Your place is on the bridge, Commander. You command. It's your bloody job title."

"I'm not letting you bang up the job rescuing Moira." Gallant couldn't help it. "Not again. Not after DC."

"That wasn't the fault of anyone in this room." Bradford's lips thinned. "That was dealt with."

Jane's eyes flashed and her scowl deepened, but she didn't turn on Bradford like Gallant hoped. "Get upstairs, Commander Gallant."

"You're not the boss of me." Gallant scoffed. "Been a long time since a captain has been able to pull rank on me."

"This isn't the Army, Edward." With one sentence, Jane burned any chance of Gallant's regretting handing her to Angelis. "If I say you're not coming on my goddamn covert op, that's the story. You're not coming on my goddamn covert op."

"This woman gets it." Fatima nodded judiciously.

"I could throw you all off my ship." Gallant didn't mention what worse he could do to Jane in particular.

"Then do it when we get back." Jane jerked her head toward the drop bay. "Menace, mount up. We launch in three minutes."

"Belay that." Gallant started for them. When Bradford reached for his shoulder, he rammed his cane into the XO's knee. The old man stumbled back a pace, and then Gallant was off for Jane. "You don't get a say in this one, Jane. I'm coming. Unless you think you're man enough to stop me?"

"Maybe I'm not." She shrugged. "But then again, I don't have to be."

"What are you talking about?" Gallant glared. His cane hit the ramp, and then he was up in the Irishwoman's face. "John? He had his chance to save Vahlen in the field, and he fucked it all up like you all do!"

"You're not in any fit state to come into the field, even if your body was tip-top." Jane didn't even flinch. "Skipping pills again, Commander?"

"The fuck is it to you-"

Something caught him from behind: something powerful and unyielding. Gallant fought, but it ripped him off his feet and into the air and-

"That's enough, Junior." Jane let out a breath when the SPARK pulled Gallant into a tight, enveloping hug rather than shake him around like a rag doll. "Keep him there until we've cleared the hangar."

"Let me go, you bundle of bolts!" Gallant struck at Junior's armored plating, but he accomplished as much as Jane expected. "That's a direct order!"

"I cannot comply." Junior hummed for a moment. "Please take all complaints about directives up with Lily Shen."

"Shen!"

"Kelly's right, and John's right." Shen didn't twitch. "Do what Captain Kelly says, Junior."

"This is mutiny!"

"It's for your own good. We can't let you kill yourself." Jane inhaled, surprised by the agonized venom in Gallant's eyes. "Sir, you coming along is nothing but suicide with another name."

"You can't take this from me!" He let out an anguished wail. "You can't! I have to save Moira!"

"We are clear for takeoff," Firebrand announced. She sounded oddly level, as if forcing the sarcasm from her system with every word. "Please clear the hangar to the marked exhaust safety points."

"Commander." Jane hesitated. "Edward!"

That got his attention. Jane met his burning, boiling eyes when they came back to bear on her.

"We'll bring her back," she promised, voice so low she worried he wouldn't hear her over the building engines. "We'll bring them all back, or die trying."

He didn't speak. Or, maybe he did. Jane just heard the engines building, and saw Junior pulling Gallant back to the safety markers.

"Come on." Aileen caught her shoulder, and Jane turned into the drop bay. She risked one glance back, wondering if Gallant would break Junior's grip and try rushing through the backblast.

He didn't. He didn't even try.

And his eyes stayed locked on hers until the bay door thundered shut.

Author's Note 52: Shadow Archetypes

One of the most common protagonist/antagonist relationship archetypes - while at the same time being one of the best when done right - is the Shadow Archetype. Slightly different is the Dark Mirror, but the terms are used relatively interchangeably for subsets of the same idea. Basically, the concept is that the protagonist and antagonist are two sides of the same coin: the things that drive the hero are present in the villain as well. Being a huge Batman: Arkham City fan, I will cite the Zsasz subplot from that game. Zsasz, like Batman, cites having dead parents as part of his backstory and his motivation for being a serial killer. Where Batman and Zsasz differ is that they take the same inciting incident and turn it to different purposes.

In this sense, Gallant and Angelis are the dark and light counterparts to each other. While there is more in their backstories I haven't touched yet, they are both essentially cripples entrusted with leadership positions to save their failing races. Those of you who have progressed further in the XCOM 2 plot know Angelis isn't lying: her species' fate is tied to what happens here on Earth and the fate of the human race - which directly propels Gallant into a mirrored position to her own, as he tries to protect his own people from the fate Angelis brings on them. Once you take out their different methodologies, moralities, and species, the two are very similar characters.

Yes, it's a common relationship archetype. That doesn't make it any less fascinating to pare down and consider, or any less brutally effective when used well.

Until next time, Vigilo Confido.