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Jordan hadn't expected anyone to be in the room when he came back. His step slowed just slightly as he came into the room. They hadn't talked about it yet, neither of them really wanting to introduce the topic; Jordan knew they had to, and soon, but the twist of dull angry dread in his stomach made him want to just leave again, go to the gym or out to the fields, keep avoiding the whole subject.

He claimed the desk chair, dropped his book on the desk, and put the deck of cards back in the drawer where he kept it when not on one of the more boring duties. "Hey," he said quietly.

"Yeah, of course," Jordan answered. "Find anything you like?" There was a tension between them that hadn't been there before, unlike the charged draw that remained muted, nervous. Rep's cheerfulness was faintly strained. It might not be obvious to everyone, but Jordan could see it clearly, a facade covering discomfort, anger, a fear he didn't like to admit was even there.

He wasn't helping the tension any by keeping his distance, either. Jordan pulled his boots off, got up, and moved over to claim a spot on the bed, his back against the wall and his legs loosely crossed.

That was news, but not really surprising. Jordan figured that Rep had probably forgotten about the book thing, but he hadn't. New information, revise parameters; something that wouldn't be difficult to read.

That thought was a distraction too. "Sort of okay," he said, and unfolded a little to push at Rep's knee with his foot. It had always been hard for him to start problematic discussions, to the point of being a near-physical thing, as though the words stuck in his throat and never made it out. He took a breath. Approaching it obliquely worked better sometimes. "I don't really want to talk about it either, but that's not going to make things any better."

"Kind of like a full-body shock," Jordan said. "Hurt Ferros more. He screamed." Answering direct questions made it easier to keep his tone even.

He hesitated, then leaned over to touch the new scar. "Where'd that come from?"

"Sasha hurt you?" Jordan frowned. "What happened?" Despite Harrison's opinion, Sasha had struck Jordan as a quiet, meek woman, naive and not aggressive. Yet she'd apparently attacked Rep.

He flinched slightly. "I didn't want to take it away from you," he said quietly.

Jordan's eyebrows lifted slightly. "You apologized and she still refused to back you up? I wouldn't have expected that of her."

He listened quietly to the explanation, fitting the pieces together; what he'd seen and understood and felt, compared and combined with what Rep had, and was silent for a few long seconds afterwards, sorting out what he wanted to say. "Before people will listen to you without questioning it," he said evenly, "you've got to earn their trust, so they know you're thinking about it, they trust your decisions, and they trust that what you have planned will go right. And part of that is listening to them when they have concerns. It's not something you get all at once, either. If you don't know people, sometimes you can yell and startle them into doing things, but for real backup ... you need to have built that trust beforehand."

He swallowed a lump of mixed emotions, anger and grief and hurt. "You haven't," he said, bluntly. "Harrison and I, we've trusted you a lot more, because we know you - you love us. Almost everyone else, well." He had to pause, force the words out. "You've been telling them with your words and actions that you don't respect them and you don't care about their well-being or their feelings? Why the hell are they going to trust you?"

He leaned his head back against the wall. "It isn't easy," he said. "Being able to take charge and have people listen is a lot of work, a lot of responsibility, something I have to think about and keep up all the time. When you're leading a group, it's not actually about you. It's about them. If the group ******** up, you're the one who needs to pick up the responsibility for it and decide how to fix it, and then figure out how to get them to do what you've decided on to fix it. When things go right, you give the group the credit, because they did the work and deserve it, and if you say it was all you, the group's going to get angry and you'll lose their trust."

He rubbed his thumb along the band of Ferros's ring. "The leader is the one who has to start things. To go first, so the rest of the group doesn't have to jump blind. So they can follow and know someone's going first, that someone's there with them. And getting them to follow you in that blind jump, that takes patience and work to earn, and it has to be kept up. I have as much influence as I do because I've spent a year here talking to people, getting them to like me, showing them by what I do that they can call on me for help or backup or sympathy. Showing that they can trust me to help them out, so that in return they'll trust that I'm not going to throw them into something that'll hurt them, or at the very least, if I do, that I had a good reason to do so and it was necessary."

"A lot of it is politics. Being polite and patient and sympathetic. Listening to what people tell me and remembering it so that if necessary, I can act on it later. Putting together little things I know about people into a bigger picture that will let me predict how they're going to react and respond. If I can predict what someone's going to do, I can account for it in planning what to do next and what to tell them, or what to ask them to do."

He sighed. "And there's a cost that I'm only starting to understand. There are very few people I trust, and even less who I can trust with my vulnerabilities. If I'm going to lead, I need people to admire me, to look up to me. I can't let them see when I'm petty or mean or stupid, and I can't let them see I'm hurting, particularly when it's them that hurt me. It looks like s**t just rolls off, like I don't get mad or hurt or scared. It's not true. I'm just a lot better at not letting it show, and that's close enough for anybody on the outside."

A small, tight smile. "Remember the first time you and I talked about nightmares, and I said I didn't have anyone to talk to about it? Most of my close friends are from my team - Team Phoenix, a group we pulled together in our testing. I didn't think I did such a good job of leading, but I faked it well enough, and when we came out on the other side, they still called me Boss. It's mostly a nickname now, but it's still hard for me to let them see it when I'm not okay. I'm supposed to be the guy who gets everyone else through it."

He looked back at Rep, his eyes reflecting weariness and hurt and resignation. "Since you've got here, you've made a lot of enemies. You haven't done the groundwork that'll get people to listen. You've just made people not want to listen to you, because what they get back is insults and disrespect, and why should they respect you when that's what you do to them?" A thread of anger, now. "And then you go and lose control and attack us, and prove that you can't be trusted to lead a mission. You know, I keep getting asked, what do you see in him? Because how most people know you? Is as a violent a*****e with a temper problem who doesn't respect anyone."

"It can be lonely because people have to listen to you when you're in charge," Jordan said. The time between the awful mission and now had let his anger cool down, become less immediate, become something that could steady his sense of purpose. "You never know if they're listening to you or if they're listening to the boss."

He gave Rep an uncertain, apologetic look. "When I got out of the net, I wanted to hit you, or scream, or something. But everybody else was falling apart, and someone had to pull it together and get us home, and that's - well, it's kind of what I do. But I couldn't do it if I let what I felt right then affect me. There's the impulse, the want, that thing that your gut and your emotions are telling you to do. I had to learn to not do that, when I was a kid. Think about my kid brother and my mom instead of if I was sad or scared or lonely."

He moved up to sit against the headboard beside Rep. "I know you're more than that. When you're not just reacting, you listen and you think. You're not dumb, and I know you know what's going to piss people off if you take a second to listen to yourself first. It's how you get under peoples' skin so bad, you know. You have this feeling of what to say to make them scream back." He looked over with a wan smile. "And you and Tracey, you're a hell of a pair. If you can manage not to get killed you're going to be unstoppable once you've got more time and training in. Hell, you almost beat an intermediate when you were a couple of days out of the pod." He shrugged one shoulder. "Took me a good six months to hit what I aimed at a decent percentage of the time. Almost hit Caelius once. That would not have ended well. Hey, there's an example," he offered. "If Caelius wasn't a division head and capable of punishing people, nobody would listen to him. He actively lets us know we're disposable morons and he thinks we're scum. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence."

Rep was listening, understanding, being reasonable and almost humble; some small part of Jordan resented that a little, for not giving him the chance to yell and rant and fight. But that wouldn't have helped anything.