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"We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience."

~George Washington

Chapter Ninety-two: Waning

"Commander." Tygan looked up, bags under his eyes, as the door opened. "Good of you to come so early."

"I saw the notification first thing." Edward Gallant glanced behind the scientist to the shapes of Aileen and Irina, hovering by Jane's bedside. "Is she…"

"Awake, yes." Tygan spared a glance across the room. "A word, first?"

"Of course." Heart beating with the staccato drill of an assault rifle, Gallant followed Tygan a few steps away from Jane and her gal-pals. "How bad is it?"

"Commander…" Tygan sighed gently. "I did everything I could."

"That's promising." Mindful to keep his voice low, Gallant also fought every instinct in his body to keep from looking over his shoulder.

"Based on her testimony and the evidence on her body, I am confident that the blow was dealt by the Assassin's blade. The weapon cut cleanly through her spinal column." Tygan's face was grim. "It's a miracle she lived, Commander. Anything more is the province of the Divine."

"And there's nothing we can do?" Gallant couldn't help it. He shot a glance across the infirmary ward.

To where Aileen and Irina were in the process of setting Jane down in a wheelchair.

"I have applied all the techniques I learned in my operations in New Providence. I have used every gene therapy technology we recovered without destruction, and I have reached out to every single one of our Resistance contacts to make sure I have not missed anything." After condensing a long, long night into a pair of sentences, Tygan could only shrug. "I have no prognosis to give, Commander. She either will heal, or she will not. I have given her the best chance our technology allows. Only the Elders themselves could do more."

"And fat chance of that." Gallant swallowed on his acrid, dry throat. "So she might…"

"Commander." Tygan's expression didn't waver, and it wasn't comforting. "I have told Jane otherwise, but Julian ran the numbers. They do not lie."

"It's that bad?"

"Worse. He considers the chance of her recovery to be statistically insignificant. Even if she regains some function in her lower body, she will have to re-learn how to walk. There is no universe in which she will return to field duty."

Gallant let out a long breath. "I understand."

"However, our conception of alien technology is not absolute." Ah, yes, Gallant knew the sound of telling someone what he wanted to hear. "You never know–"

"I get it, Tygan." He mustered a tight smile. "Don't lie to me."

"Ah. Apologies, Commander. I've had a long night." He at least had the good grace to look chagrined.

"You have. Thank you very much. You've worked wonders." Gallant clapped him on the shoulder. "Get some sleep, Richard. We've got more to do, but you're in no state to be doing it."

"As you order, sir."

And that left Gallant in the cold, in the open, marching across no-man's land under the glare of machineguns and heavy cannons. His cane thumped and echoed once, twice…

"Good to have you back aboard, Major Kelly." He smiled as warmly as he could manage, making sure to stop with a healthy gap for her personal space. "You've been missed."

She glared at him, her eyes hooded, sunken, dark. Tygan may have told her whatever Tygan had decided to tell her, but in that moment, Gallant recognized his own reaction in hers. She knew her future, knew it damn fine whatever the doc said.

"I think she needs a bit of breakfast." Aileen took the handles of Jane's wheelchair. "It's been a difficult experience."

"Of course." Gallant pushed himself back out of the way. "Take care of her, Major Quinn. Congratulations, by the way."

"You hear that, Jane?" Aileen patted her friend on the shoulder. "Twinsies."

No response.

"Good morning, ladies." Gallant stepped back further, cold pain rushing in his chest. "Don't let me interfere."

He watched Aileen and Irina wheel Jane away.

Elena Dragunova knocked on the door ahead. "Sylvie?"

"I'm not decent."

"Well, that's that." Behind Dragunova, Mox nodded judiciously. "We have done all we can."

"Don't you go anywhere just yet." Dragunova rapped more insistently on the psi-cubicle doorway. "We wanted to talk, that's all."

"About what?" Still, there was no sound of footsteps nor movement.

"You know what." Outrider scowled. "Sylvie, we're coming in."

"I said I'm not decent."

"You've never been decent since you came aboard." Dragunova hit the access button anyway.

"Elena!" Mox looked horrified.

"I knew it." Dragunova leaned in the doorway, staying at Sylvie, fully well decent and just lying on her bed staring at the ceiling. "Where's Matthias?"

"Hiroshi has him. Some computer game." Sylvie still made no moves, not even when Dragunova stepped fully inside and Mox approached, careful to leave his toes precisely on the far side of the door.

"You've been hiding a lot." Dragunova crossed her arms, sparing a glance around the cubicle. "At least it's clean in here."

"I am a neat person. And I am fine." Sylvie picked her head up to glare. "I kept myself ready for deployment like everyone else."

"Right." Dragunova scowled. "You've been in this damn cubicle since Cairo."

"Maybe…" Mox reached out to tap her shoulder. "Maybe do not mention Cairo."

"Is that what this is about?" Sylvie sat up fully, her glare sharpening. "I take care of the boy. I keep myself ready. What more do you want? Me to pretend all is well?"

"No. Life is fucked." Dragunova sighed quietly. "What are you doing in here, anyway? Besides mothering Matthias."

"I'm not his mother." Sylvie shrugged. "Mostly caring for him."

"When was the last time you visited the range?"

"Do you care about anything but killing?" Sylvie sprang to her feet, marching up to loom before Dragunova. The fact that she was considerably shorter didn't seem to bother her. "You come here to lecture me on my grief because you don't see me posting scores on the range?"

"I come here to tell you that you are wasting yourself away." Dragunova narrowed her eyes. "To tell you that Julie wouldn't want you hiding."

"She did not mean it like that." Mox held up his hands placatingly. "She has a poor way with words and does not consider them. I apologize on her behalf."

"Whose side are you on?" Dragunova glared at him. "This whole operation was your idea, Pratal."

"It was most certainly not."

"Get out." Sylvie's eyes flared purple. "Now, Outrider."

"Make me." Dragunova pushed off the wall, arms still crossed.

"This is not a good idea." Mox reached for Dragunova's shoulder, wincing when she shook him off. "The Commander would not approve of infighting."

"No, do it." Dragunova leaned down to beam her glare into Sylvie's eyes, doing her level best to call attention to the height disparity. "The Commander's not here, is he? And neither is–"

Bradford. She'd been going to say Bradford.

Evidently, Sylvie had a different theory as to where she was going.

Purple light flared in the cubicle. Warning lights went off at Hiroshi's control station, registering the surge of power. Sylvie drove a hand into Dragunova's chest, purple energy reeling off her fingertips–

Dragunova's head throbbed faintly.

"No!" Sylvie wrung her hand out. "I said, get out!"

"Sylvie." More gently now, Dragunova took her hand. "This is what I'm talking about. When was the last time you trained your power?"

"I…" Sylvie's eyes glistened, and not with psionic energy. "I can't…I don't…"

"You've locked yourself in the dark for too long. Your grief is holding you back." Mox swept in, wrapping an arm around Sylvie's shoulders. "You cannot stop the world to mourn, much as we would wish it."

"But…" Sylvie shrunk into Mox's grip, all her fight disappearing like an extinguished flame. "But without her, I can't…she was always stronger than me. She had the answers when I struggled."

"She started her training first. She wasn't born stronger." Dragunova was not the type to hug and comfort, but she did try to temper the steel of her tone. "Sylvie, we're going to find her."

"And I'll–"

"No, you won't." Dragunova narrowed her eyes again. "You couldn't even move me. What are you going to do to the muton standing between you and Julie?"

"The Commander said I'd be going."

"In the state you're in? I'll break your leg myself before I let you get deployed."

"She did not mean that." Mox shot Dragunova a what-the-fuck look.

"No, I did." She sent it back with force. "Better a broken leg than you dying. Or worse, what about Aileen or Meysam? Father Giovanni or Janet?" Dragunova scoffed. "If you don't pull yourself together, Sylvie, you're no good to anyone–Julie included. And if I have to choose between salving your feelings or ensuring Julie actually returns to this ship, I'll make my apologies at your infirmary bedside."

"You…have a way with people." Sylvie sunk onto her bed, rubbing at her eyes while Mox patted her shoulder, still staring at Dragunova like she'd sprouted a few extra heads. "I want to be there when she comes back."

"And you can be." Dragunova raised one eyebrow. "I'll see you at the range tomorrow morning. And when I check with Hiroshi, you'll have resumed your training program."

"You win. But!" Sylvie hesitated. Finally, her dam broke. "Will you two come with me? When the day comes."

"Of course." Mox gave Dragunova a hooded look.

"What's that for?" Dragunova scoffed. "Don't be stupid, Sylvie. Do you think I'm going to let you run off on a mission like that without me watching your back? Why do you think I threatened you?"

"I believe that is a yes." Mox shook his head bemusedly. "I should not have asked you for help, Outrider."

"No, you shouldn't have." Sylvie and Dragunova said it at once. They eyed each other.

"Tomorrow morning." There was nothing more to be gained by this conversation, so Dragunova turned for the door. "First thing."

"Just wait here." Julie paused to tousle Nathan's hair. "Keep your father safe."

"Okay, Miss Julie." He really was a good kid.

"We'll be back." Julie opened the pack Piotr had given her, fishing out one amber-colored syringe. "Denver, what's the defense look like?"

"I see…two in a tower." He'd make a really good sharpshooter if they made it back to Avenger. Using his scope as binoculars, he examined the perimeter of the broadcast station, chewing on a stick of gum for concentration. "Another two walking the grounds. Probably one or two more inside."

"Okay, here's how we do this." Julie pressed herself up against the tree opposite Denver, pointing with the syringe. "We go loud, they call reinforcements. So we gotta move in quietly."

"No argument." Piotr patted his laser cannon. "She is silent death."

"Shut up." Julie glanced down at her bum leg. "I'm not exactly going to Batman this thing up in my condition, so you two chuckleheads will have to be the mobile units. Keep it quiet, keep it clean–circle the yard perimeter on my signal, then work your way inside. I'll take the tower."

"Alone?" Henri spared her a glance from the glade behind.

"Temporarily. You know what I can do." Julie checked her amp, her mag-pistol, and the bolt-action ballistic rifle strapped over her shoulder. It wouldn't have been out of place in the 1940s. Okay, maybe that was unfair–50s, maybe. "I'll take the tower and call out plays from there. How confident are you in clearing the yard?"

"No problem." Piotr drew a serrated knife from his boot.

"I'm more concerned about pushing in." Nonetheless, Denver opened his backpack to draw a hatchet. "The door will be sealed."

"Here." Julie offered her datapad. "XCOM-issue hacking program. It'll get you in, but you'll have to move fast from there."

Gingerly, Denver took the device. "Thank you. We'll get things done inside, no problem."

"Good." Julie took a deep breath.

She drove the syringe into her leg, pumping every ounce of whatever exactly was inside it into her body. She breathed as slowly and calmly as she could, wincing as she tried to put her weight more fully on the leg.

Then the wince faded as the pain began to abate.

"Okay. I can walk." Running, probably not, but the deadening of her pain was enough to be getting on with. "What's in this?"

"Is distilled from berserkers." Piotr nodded to the case. "Only two more. Use wisely."

"Will do." Fueled by the juice of alien weightlifters, Julie stood on her own two feet, drawing her amp. "Come on. I'll go straight in from here, while you two circle over from the southeast. I'll signal when it's time."

She pushed out of the trees, keeping her head low. No drugs could cure her limp, none could fully take her pain away, but she could move. That was all that mattered.

I keep getting shot. Rescuing Mox, the Haven in China, now this… Sylvie would have words. A pang of longing shot through Julie's bones. One step at a time. Take this tower, take this station, send the signal, get back to my girlfriend.

My fiancée. That thought was still so huge. Good, mostly, but huge. Commitment was scary. And the boy. Resolutely, she would not stake any familial claim to him. I have too much to lose to give up.

And so she walked into the shadow of this guard tower, eyes glowing purple as she drew on her Power.

She couldn't make herself invisible. No one could. But what she could do was make herself small–not in the physical sense, but in every other. A guard looking out over the field would see the trees, would see the birds and the clouds on the horizon, the stars overhead–and compared to that, why would his attention linger on one lonely woman? She could make everything else seem much more important, and while it wasn't going to last forever, it would carry her to the access ladder.

Hopefully.

The door was closed. That wouldn't have been a problem with her datapad, but she'd given that away.

Okay, then. She drew her amp in one hand and her knife in the other. Old-fashioned way it is.

How old fashioned was up for debate, but she wasn't engaging in any such thing. Rather, she reached out through the door, feeling around for minds and signatures. Two in the towertop, sure, but another down below–a harder one. A priest.

Not going to try. Instead, she latched on to the first soldier upstairs. Obey. Purple light flared from her eyes. Above, she faintly heard a query from the other trooper.

She waited in silence as her puppet strangled his partner.

Now come down. She had him deposit the corpse in a corner, then descend the access ladder to the ground floor. Let me in.

"Donut?" the priest asked faintly. Julie didn't bother ordering her man to reply.

The door hissed open. Her soldier kept walking, stiff and jerky like a wind-up toy soldier.

The priest appeared behind him, leveling one finger in demand. He had something to say, something to command–probably ordering the soldier back to his post.

Julie drove her knife into his throat, cutting his jugular and windpipe in one motion. She patted the priest on the head as he collapsed at her feet, choking out his last breaths.

"Come." Julie beckoned to her soldier, leading him into the tower. She gritted her teeth, ascended the ladder despite the pain while her friend hauled the priest's body back inside, sealing the door behind them.

Denver, Piotr. She found their minds with one tug on her amp, beaming her words directly to them. The tower is secure. She glanced at the yard, idly passing her knife to her puppet soldier. One soldier is on the left by the sensor tower, and the other is passing the front door. You have a window.

A soft thump sounded from behind her as the soldier finished cutting his own throat. Julie reclaimed her knife.

And waited.

"Doctor?"

"Yes, Shen. I'm fine." Tygan rubbed at his eyes, shaking his head out doggedly. "It was a long night yesterday."

"Did you actually sleep?" Shen hesitated in the doorway. "We can start this work in a few hours if–"

"No. I am here and I am ready." Tygan pushed himself to his feet, reaching over for the control terminal of the SHADOW Chamber's databanks. "We have a lot of ground to make up, after all."

"We do." Shen took her place at her own terminal, ROV-R floating over her shoulder. "But we need to do this right."

"We will." Tygan accessed the inventory and setup feeds, trying to force his thoughts away from a long night of surgery, from severed bones and the best medical miracles he could work turning to ash and dust. "The plate, if you would?"

"ROV-R, bring it in." Shen waved, her GREMLIN floating past her to pluck up one object from its sealed storage container. The little drone deposited it at the center of the examination cell.

The eyes of the faceplate stared up in silence.

"I believe it is time we uncovered the secrets of the alien data codex." Tygan turned to his console, wringing his exhausted brain into focus. "Let us begin."

None of it felt real. And yet it was: a waking nightmare, a hellish future envisioned.

"It's my fault." Jane Kelly's stomach churned, too hard for her to even contemplate her steaming mug of hot chocolate where it rested at her bedside table. "It's all my fault."

"No, no." Aileen shook her head. "Jane, no one could have turned Scotland around."

"If I hadn't left…if I had been there…" Cameron, Liang, Anne, Barta… The list went on. It would always go on. But that much death, so quickly? Not to mention Julie.

"You'd have died with them." Aileen reached out to touch Jane's shoulder. "Scotland was what it was, that's all."

She doesn't understand. Maybe she did. Who cared?

"Damn them all." The Hunter was the first one in Jane's mental field of vision, but his general came next, then the Assassin–maybe she should have been higher. Against her better judgment, Jane strained to shift her legs.

They sat motionless, numb, devoid of all feeling–useless weight hanging off her broken body.

"Give it time." Aileen wasn't blind to Jane's focus. "You heard Tygan. After all the work he did–"

"Time." Jane almost spat. "I heard him. And I know what he meant, too."

"Jane…" Clearly, Aileen didn't know what to say. "I'm here for you."

"Yeah." Jane contemplated that mug, but if she drank it, she'd throw it back up.

What was there to say now?

"I think–"

"Aileen, I'd like to be alone." It all spilled out in a rush. Jane shot her a hooded look, rapping her fingers on the arms of her chair. "Please."

"Oh." Aileen mustered the fakest smile of the year. "Oh, sure. If you need anything, anything at all, just message me." She made a show of slipping her datapad into her pocket. "I'm always here for you."

"Sure." She has to take care of me now. I can't even walk to the toilet by myself. Caustic, bitter fury boiled deep in her veins. It's not Aileen's fault. She's trying.

Jane kept the lid on the bottle long enough for the door to her quarters to slide shut behind her friend.

It's all my goddamn fault. Cameron had a life ahead of him–Liang too. Hell, Cameron had a child on the way! What was Lilah going to do now? She had nothing. No one. At least Jane still had Aileen and Irina.

Julie had proposed to Sylvie. And because Jane had run away, she was now lost. Another broken family: the only legacy Jane had left in her wake. There'd been a chance for love and light in this world of devastation, and Jane had made damn sure it would die. What point was there to pretending? Julie was never coming back aboard. All the effort XCOM had expended hunting Jane, and only half of her had made the trip. Julie was probably dead already.

And what about Anne and Barta? Guilt gnawed at Jane up and down: guilt that she hadn't known either of them half as well as they deserved. Anne had been the best friend Janet had possessed in the world, and now XCOM's Templar attache was lost in her rage and her vengeance. Had Mox been close to Barta? Did it matter now?

Speaking of people she hadn't known, there was Elias. He'd been aboard for only a few days, and Jane might have spoken to him once or twice. She also might not have. She didn't even remember his face. He'd died in her place, like the rest, and she couldn't even remember what he looked like.

Nui. Jane hadn't known her all that well either, but she'd been aboard for a good long time. She'd died the horrific death of Jane's own nightmares: inundated by Lost. It should have been Jane herself buried in that tide, while Nui lived to keep loving.

Inexorably, that thought brought Jane to Kang Ho-Jun.

I killed him. She had only vague memories of what she'd experienced, but Aileen had told her what had happened on her end. He's dead because of me–not indirectly, not metaphorically. I all but pulled the trigger myself.

Her stomach churned again. The hot chocolate was a nice idea, but it was going nowhere but the drain.

I should have died back there. If the blow from the Assassin had finished her off like she deserved, Kang might be alive. I deserve this. She reached down to pat at her legs, hands shaking as she grappled with the total lack of feeling from the waist down. I deserve worse. This is punishment from God, it has to be.

But the real punishment was the pity Aileen and Irina expended on her. The pity Gallant had tried to.

They don't understand. Jane didn't want their pity. She didn't want their help. She didn't want their sycophantic false promises of hope and light on the other end, she didn't want coddling and caretaking, and she didn't want them to act like nothing had changed and everyone was friends again. She was broken, crippled, and they knew it. They played, they pretended, they spared her feelings–and the falsity, the two-faced fakeness, radiated like the rays of the sun.

This is all my fault, and my condition is my punishment for it. None of them would agree, because they were liars and fools buttering her up to salve their own egos and vanities. They were performative, playactors, lauding their own virtues in caring for her to feel strong. I let Cameron, Liang, and the others die. I killed Kang.

"Why?" A single tear trickled down Jane's cheek. "Why couldn't they let me die?"

Author's Note 92: Foreshadowing Realized

For the record, Jane has been planned to have this fate since the resumption of Season Three last year. She actually had a similar fate planned from the beginning of S3 itself however long ago, but originally I had her physically recovering like any other wounded soldier. I think this works better., narratively speaking If you go back and reread her section on her own in Canada, she has a lot of emphasis on running, kicking, jumping, and other lower-body related descriptors. As the meme goes, "Sometimes foreshadowing is relatively obvious".

My headcanon for the Sylvie scene is that Mox wanted to confront Sylvie, but knew he wasn't going to be able to bring himself to do it. So he brought Dragunova on board precisely because he knew she wouldn't chicken out. And she was happy to have him along to smooth any ruffled feathers. Good cop, bad cop.

Until next time, Vigilo Confido.