Chapter Text
London, England.
The hallway back to the lower dungeon chamber stretched longer than it should have. Every step Ethan took felt like dragging a wet coat of blood behind him—his own, maybe, or perhaps from one of those many assailants. He couldn’t tell anymore. He hadn’t particularly stopped to clean his shirt—torn, stained, and barely holding together. Much like him, really.
Luther was gone.
His boots scuffed against stone and echoed whilst he took those final descending steps. The chamber was dim, save for a few flickering lamps hanging from hooks on the ceiling. The others looked up as he entered.
Paris. Grace. Degas.
Their eyes tracked him, but none of them spoke. That silence had weight. IMF agents weren’t strangers to death per se, but there was rarely enough time to mourn it. This room had the same air as a funeral that no one dared hold.
Ethan kept his eyes down. He moved to the far wall like a ghost. Sat in the shadows, away from the rest. The sting behind his eyes hit raw and relentless with every blink. He took in a deep, strained inhale like the air itself might crack his ribs.
It wasn’t until the silence stretched thinner than his resolve that he felt it. Another gaze. Steady, gentle and familiar.
Benji.
Ethan didn’t look up. Couldn’t. The tears that fell did so quietly, almost as if his body refused to betray him fully but still wouldn’t let him lie. He tightened his jaw. His fingers curled into fists. If Benji saw him like this—what would he think? What if he knew the full extent of his current state of mind?
What Ethan didn’t realize was, that was exactly what Benji wanted. To see him. As he was, to the very core of his being. To be there. Not as a subordinate. Not even just as a friend.
As something more. Maybe. But first, as someone who understood.
Ethan hadn’t expected the silence after Luther to feel so very loud. It hung in the air like smoke that wouldn't clear—thick, clinging, acidic in the throat. It had weight. Edges. A shape. The kind of silence that settles around the heart like a noose.
Ethan had witnessed much more than his fair share of last breaths in his life, but Luther’s—Luther’s had been something different. The sudden erasure of a constant. It had ended a chapter, as if someone had torn out the last page of a book Ethan hadn’t finished reading and tossed it into a raging fire.
No one is safe from Phineas Phreak, Luther used to say. And he was always right, Ethan recalled, whilst a half-hearted bitter laugh sneaked its way onto his lips.
For those we never meet, Luther’s last words to Ethan. What about the ones we carry? The ones we never let go of? There hadn’t been an answer. Just the echo of it, thudding in his chest.
And then came the thought. The one he’d been keeping at the edge of his vision, refusing to let it come into focus. The one that coiled in the dark like a predator.
Benji. Of course it would be Benji next.
The man who stood across from him now, eyes steady, gaze fixed like letting go might cause the end of the world. Loyal. Loud. Terrifyingly smart. And worst of all— hopeful. He still believed in people. Believed they could win, even when the situations screamed otherwise.
And Ethan knew, deep in the marrow of himself, that the Entity would see that like a flare in the dark.
His breath hitched—sharp, silent, as if someone had slipped a wire around his ribs and pulled. His vision blurred just enough that he had to press the heel of his palm to his eyes, grounding himself in the unrelenting pain and agony because everything else was starting to drift. Grief had always been a slow thing for Ethan Hunt. Something constant, lingering, like static in his bones. But now it was faster. Sharper.
Luther was the shock wave. Benji would be the fallout.
Ethan didn’t know how he would weasel out of this one.
Because if Benji died too, there would be nothing left to aim at. No cause to hide behind. No mission to finish. Just—just a man-shaped void with too many unsaid goodbyes echoing inside it. And Ethan would walk straight into it. Because between living in a world without Benji Dunn and throwing himself off the grid? Ethan already knew which option he’d choose.
Benji kept staring at Ethan’s profile, watching how his shoulders never dropped, how his hands never unclenched. Benji knew that tension. Knew what it meant to carry everyone’s safety on your back. Knew, most of all, the kind of man who would rather make himself a monster than risk watching the people he loved die.
He had a horrible, sinking feeling that Ethan was about to make himself unlovable on purpose. That he would push Benji away, the way he always did, right before doing something stupid and sacrificial. He wanted to scream. But what came out instead was silence, heavier than sound.
Across the room, Paris watched the unspoken exchange. She’d never seen Ethan this… small. And Benji—she didn’t know much about him, not really, but she knew what he’d given her.
He hadn’t flinched when he first saw the scar on her torso. Just crouched beside her with a little first-aid kit, hands steady, eyes kind. Not a single question. Not even a pause. Just the faintest, matter-of-fact hum as he uncapped the antiseptic and dabbed gently at the torn skin she hadn’t dared to touch in weeks.
She’d braced for revulsion. For the usual ask: what did you do to deserve this? But instead—he’d smiled. A small, tired smile that barely reached his eyes, but was real all the same.
“You’re with us now,” he’d said, tone low but certain, like it was the simplest thing in the world. And Paris, who had only ever been ordered to kill or be killed, had found a sliver of safety in the sound of his voice.
She could only watch him now as he cracked.
Benji’s eyes glossed over, staring at nothing and everything all at once.
Memories clawed their way to the surface, in that really fucking annoying way they always do.
First came that dimly lit train in Moscow. A sopping wet William Brandt shoving himself inside the carriage, the suit clinging to his shivering, shaking body. Both of them still too raw to trust one another. Analyst? Benji had scoffed. They’re just letting anyone in the field now?
But somehow, they’d ended up side by side. Back to back. Brothers.
Then came Morocco. Luther and Brandt rocking up in that ridiculous 4x4 just in time to rescue Benji from having to watch Ethan take a bullet to the skull. Luther’s arms, steady and certain, pulling him back to ground him while Benji trembled from the weight of that bomb on his chest.
The bottle of scotch they’d shared after. Late night conversations filled with deflection and everything unsaid. Their laughter echoing against those quiet hotel walls. Ethan’s name dropped a bit too often. The quiet nudges from Luther. Brandt’s smirk.
Was Brandt even still alive? How would he know? Would Benji ever get to tell him?
He’d wanted to tell him. Everything. But everything had taken too damn long.
Then of course, there was Jane. Good ol’ Jane. The Dubai mission. What a fuckfest it had been, truly. Sure, they had snapped at each other a few times, but hours later, in Mumbai, Benji had run to cover her after she had taken a bullet. They’d been a damn good team—it was the only thing that had functioned properly after pretty much everything else on that mission had gone to shit. He remembered when Jane met Luther. The smile on her face. How friendly they’d grown so fast.
And then—Ilsa. Oh, God.
That memory landed like a meteor.
Ilsa, with her sharp eyes and even sharper wit. That stupid leather jacket. Coffee gone cold at 3 AM. The way she’d sit across from him, silent, then suddenly ask the most dangerous, heart to heart questions in the softest voice. She was the sister he never had. The only one who ever called him on his bullshit with a raised eyebrow instead of a lecture. And he adored her for it.
They’d been like that for years—back and forth, sarcasm and sincerity, inside jokes passed between gunfire and late-night whiskey. She teased him about his crush on a certain American agent. He teased her back, poking at the soft edges she pretended didn’t exist. Somehow, without trying, they’d built something real.
And then she met Jane. Courtesy of Benji, of course.
He had been smug about it. Too smug. Benji remembered leaning back in his chair with a grin so wide it hurt. “You two would be dangerous together.”
Indeed, they were. They fell for each other, hard. Not all at once—but slow, inevitable, like a fuse burning toward something explosive and good. It was emotional and honest and messy and just enough chaos. Benji hadn’t seen her that happy since… ever, maybe. Seven years later, when Ilsa told him she had said yes, he cried tears of joy. Hay fever, he’d claimed. She didn’t call him out on it. She just hugged him and said, “You’re my best man, you know that, right?”
Well, after she died, though—let's just say Benji's hay fever came back with a vengeance. Again and again. Those tears didn’t feel like joy anymore. They burned. They felt like vitriol. Like venom. Like grief trying to claw its way out through his tear ducts because it didn’t know where else to go.
Two weeks. That’s how far away the wedding was supposed to be when Venice happened.
The invitations had already been printed. He’d picked out his suit. Jane had picked Paris for the honeymoon—ironic, now.
And now Jane was a ghost. Scrubbed from every IMF system. Disavowed, widowed, vanished. Her file sealed, last known location redacted, coordinates overwritten. Benji hadn’t the slightest clue how he would find her. He could try his best, but with no Luther on his side? Yeah, good luck with that one.
They used to be unstoppable, him and Luther. Brothers in arms, synced like two halves of the same machine. It didn’t matter how many layers of encryption were in their way—if Luther spotted the door, Benji had already started picking the lock. There was a rhythm to it, a choreography only they understood. Tech heads, sure, but no one ever dared say it with condescension. Because when they worked together, not even the most secure server in the world could hold them off.
Now it was just him. One half of a system that didn’t boot up right anymore. No backup. No steady voice in his ear to say, “Come on, Benji.”
Benji slid to the floor like a paper figure folding in half, legs drawn tight to his chest, one trembling hand pressed over his mouth like he could trap the sobs inside if he just held them still. But they slipped through anyway—shallow, fractured sounds that didn’t quite reach the volume of agony but bled into the silence all the same.
It wasn’t fair. It was never fucking fair. Why was it always him picking up the pieces no one had time to bury?
Paris approached with the nonchalance of someone used to seeing this much destruction. She didn’t ask. Just sat down beside him and rested her head lightly on his shoulder, almost instinctively. Benji blinked down at their interlocked hands. His own fingers still shook.
“I’ll be fine,” he whispered. The smile he plastered on was barely a curve—more a reflex than a truth, the kind of expression you learn in mirrors and shattered glass. The kind that gets you through ten minutes, not the night. Paris didn’t challenge it. She didn’t believe it either, but she let it sit there gently.
Then a shadow moved across the floor.
A breath caught in Benji’s throat. He didn’t have time to brace, to shove his feelings into neat little boxes labeled off the table, never happening, not now. Because by then, Ethan was already kneeling in front of him.
Not hovering. Not commanding. Kneeling.
Benji lifted his head just enough to look—because he couldn’t not look—and there they were, face to face, no ground left between them.
Ethan’s eyes were red-rimmed, swollen with tears he hadn’t managed to bury in time. He looked like something had been carved out of him. And he wasn’t trying to hide it.
Benji didn’t dare move. Ethan didn’t say a word. He just leaned in.
Their foreheads touched—carefully, like two pieces of glass leaning together, hoping the pressure might hold rather than shatter. And in that contact, Benji felt it. Everything. The ache, the unsaid, the torment Ethan carried so adeptly, like oxygen. Maybe even the love, too—but wrapped in barbed high-voltage wire, held too tightly to ever be offered freely.
Benji’s heart pounded as if it was trying to physically leap out of his body to reach Ethan.
Ethan whispered, barely audible: “I’m sorry, Benji.”
Benji blinked. What?
He opened his mouth, but the words caught in his chest like thorns. He didn’t know what Ethan meant, exactly. For Luther? For his imminent departure? For loving him in ways he’d never name?
Did it even matter?
His voice barely made it out. “Don’t be.”
Rage pressed up against heartbreak, and somewhere beneath it, that same old humiliation started creeping in. Because this always fucking happened. Every time Ethan got too close, every time something almost formed between them—he vanished. Disappeared behind team orders and detonations and other bullshit too dangerous to feel.
He wanted to say more. Wanted to scream that he, Benji, had spent years building a quiet kind of hope in the corners of Ethan’s shadow. A hope with soft edges, held breath, and little things like eye contact that lasted too long. He’d built it with care. Now he stood inside it alone. Typical.
But Ethan didn’t move. Didn’t vanish. Well, yet.
Benji’s muscle memory of disappointment was already bracing for the inevitable—but then Ethan’s hand moved.
He had imagined this before. Of course he had. In flashes. Half-dreams after too many field ops and too little sleep. Ethan’s hand, firm at the base of his neck. Grounding. Reassuring. Maybe even tender.
But never like this. Never with grief seeping through the walls. Never when the world was folding in on itself.
His body had already started to pull away—automatic. A reflex learned from wanting too much and receiving too little.
Then Ethan’s hand landed. Solid. Tangible. And very, very real.
Fingers at the nape of his neck, steady and unshaking. A quiet insistence. Not a hallucination dragged up from the corners of Benji’s starved brain—but skin and heat and trembling breath. Benji didn’t move. He couldn’t, really.
And in that contact—forehead to forehead, palm to skin, breath tangling between them—he didn’t think. He just stayed. Let it happen. Let it mean something, even if it was just for a breath. Just for now.
Time folded in on itself. The air thickened. Seconds stretched like wire pulled taut. When Ethan finally pulled away, it was too gentle. Too slow. His eyes didn’t drop. And that—that was almost worse.
Benji nearly sagged under the weight of it. Because at least with distance, he could pretend he hadn’t wanted it. And the distance was coming. Fast.
He tried to stand up, but his legs wouldn't work. He didn’t even feel himself sink back down again until Degas and Grace were suddenly beside him, grounding him without ceremony—one hand in each of his, a quiet tether keeping him from descending into complete and utter madness.
Paris slipped to the side like a shadow breaking off from the wall. And when her eyes met Ethan’s, there was neither judgement, nor pity. Just this sharp, disbelieving tenderness. The look coming from someone who had once begged to be loved, and now couldn’t understand how someone could have it and still not know what to do with it. How very stupid, really.
Ethan didn’t flinch.
He turned his back to all of them and stepped toward the Entity’s containment pod.
Benji let out a heaving sigh—not distress, not panic, just exhaustion. He’d known Ethan long enough to know there was simply nothing he could do or say to stop him. “Not this shit again,” he muttered, the words barely audible, meant for no one but the walls.
“Ethan…” Grace’s face fell.
Degas stepped forward, voice rough. “You’re not seriously gonna—?”
Ethan didn’t turn. “I have no other choice.” His voice wasn’t going to take any rebuttals. He reached the pod, running his hand along the seal until he found the release. The hiss that followed sounded unnervingly eerie, like something exhaling its last breath.
Paris stepped forward just enough for her voice to carry.
“Ça va te changer.”
It will change you.
Ethan didn’t answer. He just looked at her—no words, no smile, just with “trust me” etched into every line of his face. He lowered himself into the chamber one limb at a time. It was narrow. Coffin-shaped. Fitting.
The pod sealed with a hydraulic clunk. Darkness pressed in. A hum built in amplitude from the base of his spine. “One last time,” Ethan thought to himself, as if that would make the experience any more pleasant.
A cold hiss of air. Then— snap —metal cuffs closed around his wrists and ankles. Sleek, silver bands that tightened like they’d been made for him. Ethan tried not to flinch. He’d expected worse, really.
The mask descended next. Thin. Almost elegant. A lattice of black and steel lowered over his face, locking at the temples.
“Alright,” Ethan spoke into the dark, his voice rugged and low. “I’m here. Now what do you want?”
The mask clicked once.
“Good evening, Mr. Hunt.” It wasn’t a voice, not really. It was more of a vibration, an echo made of static and knowing.
“You have questions. The Entity has answers. But you must let it in.”
Something tightened behind his eyes. A vision. A landscape. Ethan could barely focus.
“You know this place. There is only pain if you resist.”
And then that pain came. Sharp. Radiant. Like being lit from inside with a thousand volts. His back arched, mouth opening in a soundless snarl.
“You know this place.”
He did. He’d known it since the moment he made the choice. Since Ilsa breathed her last in his arms. Since the second he had to leave Luther forever. Since every damn time someone died because he hadn’t been fast enough, smart enough, enough.
A flash: a white room. Frosted glass. Rows of servers humming like a heartbeat.
“The Doomsday Vault,” Ethan gasped.
“South Africa,” the Entity agreed, soft and pleased. “You will lead us there. You will let us in.”
“No,” Ethan gritted out. “I don’t accept that.”
“In here,” it said, voice sharpening, “you have no secrets.”
Pain, again. Everywhere.
Benji’s voice: “The K-559 Sevastopol...”
Luther, calm and tired: “The Podkova.”
Benji again, strained: “…cruciform key…”
Luther, with just a trace of pride: “My magnum opus. The algorithm on that drive—when paired with the Entity’s source code—will act as the poison pill you asked for.”
Ethan’s breath shook.
“You plan to retrieve the source code. And destroy the Entity,” the voice said. “That scares you.”
“No,” Ethan whispered. “That scares you.”
“The Entity sees infinite futures.” The mask lit up with a pulse. “You will lead us to the Vault. You will let us in. It is written.”
“Never…!”
Electricity ripped through him again. White-hot, bone deep. His spine arched, muscles locking against the restraints like something primal trying to escape. The metal cuffs held firm. The scream didn’t come out of his mouth so much as through his body—etched into the air inside the pod like a scar.
“The end is coming, Ethan.”
Then—
Benji. There was no warning. No time to brace. Just Benji, dropped into his line of sight like a guillotine. He was barely recognizable.
Blood streaked down his temple, pooling beneath his cheek where it met concrete. His arms twitched—reflexive, panicked, like he was trying to remember how to fight. His mouth moved without sound. A plea. Or a joke, maybe—Ethan would never know. Because all he could see were Benji’s eyes, wide and begging, before they rolled back into his skull.
And then again—
Benji, hacking through smoke, coughing blood. Shoulders slumped, still moving forward.
Benji, limp in Paris’s arms, his frame too still, too silent.
Benji, mouthing the one name he didn’t have the breath to say. His name. Ethan.
And then—
Benji, eyes open wide, but the light was gone. No sound accompanied it. No scream, no score. Just a hollow stillness that pressed in from all sides, as if the world itself had become a vacuum to keep Ethan from hearing his own heart shatter. His hands clawed at the restraints. His body arched with another shockwave, but he barely felt it.
Because Benji wasn’t moving. He was dead. Like Luther, like Ilsa, like Agent Farris, like his entire fucking team back in 1996.
Yet Ethan had never seen anything so silent. So final. He didn’t cry out. He didn’t breathe. He just stared at the image until his vision blurred—not from tears, but from something inside him breaking and not knowing how to mend itself.
And behind him, always behind him—Gabriel. Smiling like he’d already won. “Resist me,” Gabriel said, “and I’ll make you pay dearly.”
Ethan thrashed against the restraints, his body jerking akin to a marionette being torn apart by its own strings.
“Benji..!” he choked. “No—”
“You know what must happen. You always have. They cannot stop the inevitable. They will destroy themselves...”
The words flattened. Muted. Because Ethan wasn’t listening anymore. He was trying to breathe through the sound of Benji screaming. Trying to forget the way he looked when he broke —from injury, and also the betrayal. Ethan didn’t quite know which was worse. Salt slid beneath the mask. He hadn’t quite felt the tears start. But the Entity had.
“His time has come.”
And then it went quiet. Not peaceful quiet—no.
Ethan lay still. His body was locked in place, wrists burning where the restraints had carved into skin, lungs dragging in air as if every inhale cost him.
He had always known this could happen. That was the sick part. Somewhere between Luther’s exit and Gabriel’s warning, this had become inevitable. But it was still easier to pretend it lived in the dark corners of his imagination—a fear to keep him vigilant. A nightmare, not some scripted fate. But now?
Now it wasn’t paranoia anymore. It was a prophecy.
Written. Spoken. Played on loop.
The Entity had shown him Benji not as a taunt—but as a future. A loss already calculated and accepted by the all-knowing infernal machine.
And Ethan—Ethan would rather set himself on fire than let that happen. If he had to trade lungs, limbs, names, memories—he would. Fuck, if he had to die screaming to keep Benji Dunn breathing— he would.
And yet—
He saw it in his mind. The hallway. The door to the pod hissing open. He saw his own feet step out of it. He saw Benji, reaching for him with worry and frustration carved into every line of his face.
And worse—he saw himself turn away.
Not because he wanted to.
But because now he knew—this wasn’t just fear anymore. It was a fixed point in time. And the only way to rewrite it was to run. Not towards Benji—but away. To burn the tether. Cut the connection. Bury the affection so deep that not even the Entity could find it.
That was the only way to save him. The pod hissed open.
Light poured in. Ethan’s knees gave out instantly, like the machine had stripped the bones from inside him. His breath came ragged. Reality didn’t stitch itself together fast enough.
And then—arms. Around him. Holding. Grounding.
Benji.
There was no delay. No waiting for permission. Just Benji, pressing hands to his shoulders like he could glue Ethan back together with proximity alone.
“Ethan—Ethan, hey buddy— look at me. I’m here.”
Ethan’s eyes dragged upward. His gaze latched onto Benji’s face with something close to awe—like he couldn’t decide if this was real or just another Entity trick.
His hands moved on instinct. Curled into Benji’s sleeves as if he was testing the texture of the living.
“Is this real?” he whispered. The question cracked halfway through his throat. “Is this—real?”
Benji nodded. Urgently. Earnestly. “Yes. Yes. I’m real. I’m real, Ethan.”
Something shifted in Ethan’s face then. Not a collapse. Not quite. But something broke. Quietly. Like a thread snapping under tension.
His lips parted. And for a second—just a second—it looked like he might say it. The thing neither of them had ever said.
But instead—
“It knows,” he said, blinking hard, trying to reroute his train of thought.
Benji’s brows furrowed.
“About what?”
But Ethan had already pulled away. Not far. Just enough. Enough to miss the warmth.
He scrambled for something—anything—and found a notebook, a half-used pencil. His hands were trembling. Benji didn’t stop him. He just sat there, heart hammering, eyes never leaving Ethan’s face. He looked at him akin to someone watching a bomb’s timer run out—hands tied, heart in his throat, knowing there wasn’t enough time to do jack-shit about it.
“You’ll take the team,” Ethan muttered, scribbling. “North.”
“Okay,” Benji nodded. “North where?”
Ethan didn’t even look up. He kept writing furiously, as if he was under a spell. “The Sevastopol. I have to get caught. That’s the only way I get there. VHF receiver. Decompression chamber. Steal a plane. Old. No transponder. Everything’s analog. A DC-3. Everything you need is right in there. Remember to transmit the coordinates for fifteen minutes every two hours and I'll listen when I can.”
He looked up, finally—and that eye contact was devastating. “You’re team leader now.” Benji had suddenly forgotten how to breathe. He shook his head, too fast.
“No. I’m not. I’m not—you’re the one who—”
Ethan shuffled closer again. One hand reached up, aiming for Benji’s chin—hesitated—then settled lightly on Benji’s shoulder instead. His thumb moved, just once, like it wanted to trace something so familiar yet so unknown, so foreign.
But it didn’t. It stopped.
“Take care of your team, Benji.” Ethan said, softer now. Almost a whisper.
His voice was unwavering. His eyes were wrecked. Benji was staring at his mouth. And then not. And then again. His hands hovered like he wanted to reach back, grip the front of Ethan’s shirt, pull him in, say something stupid like stay.
But he didn’t. And Ethan got back on his feet.
“Key,” he said to Grace, gaze flicking but not settling, “Stay off the ice.”
“What ice?” she asked, half-breathless.
“Just— please,” he said. “No matter what. Stay off the ice.”
There was too much in that “please”. Too much in the way Benji didn’t move. Then Ethan turned. His body was rigid—like he knew if he looked back even once, he wouldn’t be able to go through with it. That plea hung heavy in the air like prophecy. And then—
“Wait here.”
Benji barely had time to process the way Ethan had looked at him—like he was already a ghost—before Ethan grabbed Degas by the arm, gestured sharply to Grace and Paris, and stormed toward the rusted cellar tucked behind the dungeon wall. The hinges screamed as he shoved the door open, not waiting to see if they followed. He practically shoved them inside as if he was sealing something off—something dangerous. Himself, maybe.
The door slammed shut behind them.
Ethan stood with his back to them, chest heaving. When he turned, his eyes were wild—narrowed, sharp, but hollow at the edges.
“Listen to me,” he said, voice low but cutting through the stone like steel. “All of you.”
Grace straightened. Degas’s hand tightened into a fist. Paris tilted her head. Ethan took a step forward. The light caught his face and, for the first time, they saw it—the full, uncensored wreckage of whatever had unfolded over the last few hours. His hands wouldn’t stop twitching. His jaw worked around words like they were barbed.
“Benji is your team leader,” he said. “You follow him. You trust him. You do not argue. You do not doubt him. I don’t want you careful. I want you competent. You understand me?”
He didn’t wait for confirmation. His fingers fumbled into the back pocket of his pants, came out with a weather-worn photo—creased, sun-faded, edges softened like it had been held more times than it had been seen.
He slapped it down on a barrel like a gavel.
This definitely wasn’t any standard IMF issue. No timestamp, no surveillance metadata. Just… a younger Benji Dunn. Mid-laugh, head thrown slightly back like someone— probably Ethan himself, let’s be real —had just told a ridiculous joke. His freckles stood out more in the sunlight, and his tie was askew like he hadn’t noticed or hadn’t cared. Wind tousled his blond hair in the way it always did no matter how much effort he put into combing it. His eyes were squinting from the brightness—no sunglasses, just pure instinct—and there was a dimple visible in one cheek, half-shadowed.
It was the kind of photo someone took without asking. A stolen second, soft around the edges. Personal. Unmistakably cared for.
Ethan didn’t dare look at it. He just jabbed a finger at the worn surface, voice low. “This. This is your mission.”
Paris blinked. Grace’s lips parted. Degas took a step forward.
“Your mission— should you choose to accept it —is to make sure he gets out of this. Alive.”
No one moved.
“I don’t care what it takes. The job is to keep him alive, with you. All of you.”
His voice cracked, just once. He swallowed it down. “Do not let him go down with the ship. Don’t let him do something heroic. Or stupid. Or self-sacrificial. Not this time, not ever.” Ethan's voice cracked entirely now.
“Save him. You hear me? Save him. Because I can’t. Not anymore. But you— you can.”
His hands were shaking. Shoulders rising and falling like he was barely keeping his soul inside its casing.
A beat.
“Please. I need him alive.”
He said it like it was an admission of sin. Like it had rotted a hole in his chest for years and he’d finally let it surface.
“Are we clear on this?”
Still nothing. Just tension. Taking it all in with reverence. “Repeat it,” Ethan snapped, suddenly. “The objective. Say it. Say it back to me.”
Paris met his gaze head-on, calm and unshaken. “We keep Benji alive,” she said, as if it were doctrine, already etched into her bones.
“Yeah. Benji lives, we've got it covered.” Grace followed, a breath behind—softer, but not uncertain. As if it were a promise to herself as much as to him.
Degas swallowed hard. His voice didn’t rise, didn’t falter. “We bring him home. All of us.”
Ethan finally breathed—but it wasn’t relief. Just another release valve on a pressurized system about to blow.
“And if anything happens to him,” he said slowly, “I don’t care what else we save. None of it will matter.”
His fingers unclenched a little—just enough to press the edge of the photograph. “I’ve lost too many people. I’m not losing him too. Please. I need him to come home.”
The silence that ensued was practically a living thing. And then Paris, with her arms crossed loosely, spoke. Quiet. Surgical.
“You say he doesn’t get to die for this.”
Ethan’s eyes lifted.
“But where's the guarantee that you won't?”
The words came out comparable to a eulogy still forming. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Swallowed. “That’s different,” he finally mustered out, and he meant it to sound resolute. It didn’t.
“I have no choice.”
Paris let that hang.
“Okay,” was all she said in return. That was the thing about grief: Paris had learned to spot it, even when disguised as purpose. She had a tell for it now—an ache that recognized its twin.
Ethan didn’t particularly have any witty rebuttals ready this time. Because just outside that cellar, beyond the door and the thick stone walls, Benji stood still. Hands clenched. Eyes burning. Wondering what in God's name was going on in there.
Ethan turned to leave, and the three of them followed in silence—something unspoken exchanged between them all now. Grace let out a deep exhale. Degas rubbed the back of his neck. Paris brushed her thumb across the edge of that photo before slipping it into her coat pocket. Just in case Ethan needed someone else to carry it for him.
When Ethan reached the dungeon again, Benji looked up—hope flickering across his face like maybe, just maybe, this time Ethan had changed his mind.
But Ethan didn’t stop. Didn’t even meet his eyes. Of course not.
“Go.” Ethan didn’t wait to see who followed the order. He sprinted his way back to street level, ready to hand himself over to the CIA like it was just another day on the job.
Benji stood there a second longer than anyone else. His fists clenched. Shoulders drawn tight. Eyes on the back of Ethan’s head like it was the last solid thing in the world. And for the briefest second—before Grace moved, before Paris reached for her satchel, before Degas’ eyes narrowed—Benji opened his mouth.
And then closed it.
The words were always too big.
And Ethan never stayed long enough to hear them anyway.