Originally started on AO3, I am now trying to upload it here as well.
Safety was never a guarantee. Occupational hazards and all that.
Fieldwork in the IMF came as a package deal with the ever-present knowledge that some day, you will wake up and you would shoot your last bullet, steal your last file, and break into your last facility. Death was around every corner and waiting in every crevice, more persistent than any foe they were ordered to eliminate on the job.
If anything, Ethan Hunt was a man who knew the rules and the guidelines, and most of all he was familiar with the risks that came with it all. When he was not awake, he was plagued with horrors of the mind, twisted and deformed by everything he had lost, and still had to lose.
Julia's smile was something he'd thought to be apt as the last thing he saw before he died. Upon seeing it again in Kashmir, in the arms of another man, Ethan felt like he had been reborn anew. The shackles of guilt and regret that had anchored him to the past disintegrated under the warmth of her laugh. She was happy where she was, and suddenly Ethan knew that things turned out exactly the way he'd wanted them. For her happiness was all he had wished for, and Ethan could breathe the biting northern air like a living man again.
"How is everyone?" She had pulled him aside after the pleasantries were exchanged. Ethan looked to the distance where Luther and Benji pored over something together, the latter gesticulating wildly about something they couldn't hear.
"As well as we can be," Ethan answered, and it wasn't a lie. Over the years, there had been too many close shaves, to many incidents that may have been the one. Despite it all however, they were still here.
"I know that face." Julia had the same, scolding look that she reserved for him when he was being particularly bull-headed about something. "Don't you dare go blaming yourself for anything. They all chose this job for the same reason I did."
"But it's not fair," Ethan tried to say, because how can it be? He thinks to the Torus, when Benji hit the ground before his water-addled eyes as the defibrillator clattered to the ground beside them, Ilsa making a mad dash for escape. Morocco, of bullets grazing their scalps, Benji screaming in his ears about the stairs they plummeted down. He thinks of the moment he meets Benji's eyes, wet and quivering in the glow of the café candles as the vile words of a criminal forcibly leaves his tongue. The red countdown blinking on his chest, rising and falling rapidly as Benji tries to contain his fear.
Benji. From the ever-present voice in his ear whispering him directions, to striding alongside him in covert operations, Ethan had known all along. If there was anybody he couldn't lose, it was Benji Dunn.
Something must have shown on his face, because Julia suddenly let out a breath of laughter. Ethan turned to her, slightly hurt. Then he saw not mockery, but sadness in her eyes.
"Oh Ethan," she murmured. "When were you planning on telling him?"
Of course she knew. For a moment Ethan felt like the worst man in the world, like he had betrayed his former wife's trust. "Julia, I loved you. I still do, truly—"
"Oh, hush," said Julia, and she smiled that lovely smile again. "I know, Ethan. I've never doubted you for a second. But your heart was always meant to belong elsewhere, just like I was always meant to belong here." She made a sweeping gesture around the camp, before returning her hand over Ethan's breastbone, pressing down on his pulse. "Follow this," she said, then she raised her finger to his temple. "Not this."
Ethan looked out to where Benji was now sitting next to a pen of goats with a steaming mug, watching the animals sniff curiously at his hand.
"I don't want to lose them," Ethan whispered. "I can't lose him." And so I cannot possibly tell him, went unspoken but heard just as clearly as if he'd shouted it to the mountains.
"You are Ethan Hunt," Julia replied wisely. "You won't."
-0-
And as he lay on the precipice of the cliff, having watched Walker plummet to his death and detonator clutched to his chest, Ethan could not rejoice like the others in his earpiece, voices thick with relief and adrenaline.
He couldn't hear Benji's voice among them.
Granted, it was rather difficult to make out individuals from the tinny mess that is their radio. Luther's deep tenor was crackling with static, and Ilsa's rapid sentences were hazy. People were coughing and panting, and Ethan's own breath was rattling to his ears. But still, he couldn't hear Benji, and Ethan needed to ask, but his voice escaped him no matter how hard he tried.
Somewhere far away, a chopper was thundering close. He felt the breeze pick up on his aching face, and he closed his eyes.
