You know how to find me, Ilsa says, and she slips into the dark car and is gone in a whisper of an engine.
He's watching from the truck, ready to finish this mission and haul ass back to his real job where there's a bow in his hand and no babysitting to do, and he's watching the slight smile on Ethan's face, how he shoves his hands into his pockets in thought and his eyes trail after her taillights. Barton is almost eighty five percent sure that if they didn't have a mission to finish, if there wasn't a terrorist in their trunk, Ethan would've disappeared with Ilsa without looking back, and he wishes there was someone here he could argue those odds with: he's out of luck though, because Luther doesn't like him too much and Benji is still in post-panic-depressurization mode.
If only she was here to argue with, like usual, and he thinks that if she were here and this whole catastrophe had been their field-op instead, it would've been done with much more sarcasm. He misses the sarcasm.
He's eighty five percent sure, though, even as Ethan saunters in the direction of their rag tag team with that let's-finish-this look on his face, because he remembers how it feels to be left behind.
You know how to find me, she had said, in that back alley in Bratislava, and there was so much blood that he couldn't tell where the gash across her forehead ended and the matted hair began. He was losing the feeling in his left arm as he slid down the stone wall and she helped him to the ground, dropping the seductive façade she was playing and he noticed, through his fuzzy haze, that there was a panicked look in her eyes, or at least in the one where she had lost the colored contact at some point in the night.
If he hadn't come down from the roof to help her she wouldn't have gotten the upper hand, wouldn't have been able to drug him, but then he never would've seen how wrong the world was because she was so young, so frightened.
Please, she had said, then limped off into the shadows, and he was ninety five percent sure he would've followed her then if he'd been able to walk, but he couldn't so he didn't and he waited until Versailles, when everything was on fire and he took the arrow down from her temple, the gun out of her shaking hand, and gave her a chance to live.
Ethan climbs into the truck, claps Benji on the shoulder and nods; they have his permission to proceed so they do, rumbling along, and Barton leans back and sighs because it's over and maybe Ethan will stay out of trouble long enough for him to get a good night's sleep, back in the shitty apartment where he makes the coffee and she makes the toast, and everything unsaid is understood.
Maybe he'll go back to where he belongs and refuse to work anywhere but by her side.
Barton closes his eyes, along for the (hopefully) final ride. Maybe. Maybe he will.
