Author's Note: What concerns post-Fallout things, it's gonna take a bit more time, but I'm working on it. (Oh, she's working on it.)
Coming soon, I promise. Cheers.
If you want to know who Elaine is, check out my esteemed colleague Ellster (because her stuff is amazing - reading in order is advised, though). As for Skye, I refer you to my own story Dunn and Dusted.
Enjoy.
Rhyme and Reason
Benji didn't bother trying to hide his frown.
Elaine couldn't keep herself from sighing.
Brandt loosened his tie with his left hand.
Luther raised his eyebrows.
Ethan almost succeeded in suppressing a smirk.
Skye finished dealing and picked up her cards. Her expression was indecipherable.
They had met at Benji's and Skye's place, because they were the only ones who had food at home. No one really knew how they had ended up playing poker.
"I'll take three," Benji started, and helped himself to another handful of crisps.
"Me too," Elaine joined him, not seeming entirely happy with it.
Brandt leaned back. "Give me one."
"Two," Luther added curtly.
Skye fulfilled her job as dealer, exchanging two of her own cards.
"Agent Hunt?" she asked.
"I'm good, thank you," Ethan grinned.
"You're kidding me, right?" Brandt said.
"He's bluffing," Luther commented.
"Suit yourself," Skye smiled.
"I don't think anyone can out-bluff our resident poker expert," Ethan commented smiling.
"Cheers," Skye said, focused on her cards. "Coming from you that means something."
"We all learned the trade, kid," Luther reminded her.
Skye placed a moderate amount of chips in the pot, opening up the game. "You're right, but it wasn't me who tricked HQ into a Code Six Lockdown back in the day. And that's just one example."
"I've always wondered, how did you get out of there?" Benji wanted to know. He matched Skye's bet.
"Musgrave helped me," Ethan said. "He slipped me a knife."
"Do I know about that," Skye commented drily.
"What do you mean?" Benji asked.
She looked at him surprised. "You don't know the story?"
/\/\/\/\/\/\
The elevator wouldn't open. Skye wasn't sure what the problem was, everything seemed fine at first glance. Technically there was nothing stopping her from just taking the stairs, if it wasn't for this nagging feeling in her gut that something was going on. She heard footsteps to her left, looked down the corridor and saw a team of security personnel run past her. She frowned and pressed the button again, just to make sure. The doors emitted a sigh, then drew apart at agonisingly slow speed. After a few seconds, Skye could see someone was actually trying to push them apart from the inside.
Immediately she put her hands in the gap and helped, and, apparently having crossed a certain point, the doors opened all the way.
Skye looked down. The cabin had made it barely up to her knees, only a small strip was visible, the rest was stuck inbetween floors. Her frown deepened. "Agent Maddox?"
"Little help," the man rasped. Now that the doors had been successfully pried open, he was holding his abdomen with his palm. His nose was bloody and looked more flat than usual, also when he spoke he sounded quite nasal.
Skye peeked in further. Two more men in suits were lying on the floor and a rollable daybed respectively, hopefully just unconscious. She did not hesitate to lower herself through the narrow opening. "What happened?" she asked upon landing, and turned to the man on the floor, feeling for a pulse.
"Ethan Hunt happened," Maddox said and motioned upwards. The flap of the security hatch dangled wide open. "I need to find him."
"You need to find a doctor first," she noted, pointing at the blood seeping through his fingers.
"Oh, that," Maddox said. "He had a knife."
"They're alive," Skye said after checking the other man's pulse as well. She pushed the daybed below the opening, jumped out with surprising agility and pulled the still unconscious man lying on it through the slit with a rescue grip. At the end of the corridor she spotted a familiar face. "Hey, Yusuf!" He turned to her, eyes widening upon taking in the sight. "Get Dr. Lee here, and tell them at the infirmary we have three incoming."
"Got it," the techie shouted back and took off.
"Can you make it?" Skye turned back to Maddox, who had somehow heaved his colleague on the daybed as well. He was staggering slightly.
"I'll be fine," he wheezed.
Skye reached back in and pulled the second security guard through. He was heavier, and Maddox stabilised from inside. She needed to keep him talking, who knew how deep that stab wound was. "What are you doing with security anyway?"
"Just helping out for a while," he explained, keeping his sentences short. "The director wanted reinforcement for Hunt. Actual field experience."
"Come on, almost there," Skye said, and helped him through as well. He collapsed on the floor and tried to catch his breath.
Suddenly Lee was there, followed by two of her nurses. "What do we have?"
"Punch in the face, crashed into the wall," Maddox pointed at the first one, then the second, "Got a phone against the head and went down."
"And Maddox got stabbed," Skye added. "Do you know what's going on?"
The doctor kneeled to examine the older agent's wound. "We're on lockdown. Code Six."
/\/\/\/\/\/\
"You saved Dylan Maddox," Benji said wide-eyed, as he would whenever talk spun around IMF's legends.
"I just helped him out of an elevator," Skye chuckled.
Benji quickly moved on to Ethan. "You stabbed Dylan Maddox," he said in the exact same tone of voice, making it impossible to tell if it was an accusation or profession of his admiration.
"Desperate times..." Ethan said, and raised.
"Don't give me that," Luther interrupted.
"For the record, he officially forgave me," Hunt noted.
"What about you?" Benji asked, directed at Brandt. "Where were you during the lockdown?"
"Probably in some office filing mission reports," Elaine mused, and called the bets again as it was her turn.
"Actually," Brandt said and pushed a neat stack of chips into the middle of the table, raising just a little, "that was way before my days as an analyst. I got assigned to hunt you down along with Mendoza because no one could find Agent Graham."
Skye barely suppressed a laugh. "Graham was stuck in an elevator."
"How do you know?" Ethan asked.
"A reliable source."
"Come on, out with it," Benji said.
"Because I happen to know who was stuck with her."
/\/\/\/\/\/\
The elevator door opened in front of Connor, revealing Sabrina Graham leaning against the back wall.
"Oh great," he said.
"Believe me, the pleasure is all mine, Agent Mathison," she replied sourly.
Connor sighed, but entered nevertheless. They were adults, after all. Most of the time. Or at least when Graham wasn't being a total bitch whenever she opened her mouth. The doors closed behind him.
The two did their best to ignore each other until one of them would have the mercy to exit, but it never came to that. There was a brief tremor going through the cabin, then it stopped altogether.
"You're kidding me, right..." Graham murmured and ran a hand through her long dark hair.
Connor, eyebrows raised, reached over to the buttons and pressed his floor again, then the one for emergency stop twice, but nothing happened.
"Move," Graham said bluntly, and shoved him aside. Impatiently she stabbed the buttons multiple times without any system, only to groan in frustration.
"Looks like they cut us off," Connor said. "Could be a lockdown."
"They can't just cut us off, as you put it so elegantly," she snarled.
"Maybe try security?" he suggested as calmly as he could. He wasn't sure what her problem was, she just didn't seem to be happy unless she could nag people about something.
"Oh, thank you, I didn't even think of that," she said with an unnecessary amount of sarcasm, and took the phone off the hook for calling security. She waited. And waited. "The line's busy. Like it's jammed."
Connor shrugged. "Lockdown. Told you."
She glared at him. "Oh no, I am not gonna be stuck here with you of all people."
"Look, believe it or not, I could imagine more pleasant company as well."
The phone, still in Graham's hand, suddenly started blaring music. We Are Family. Sabrina stared incredulously at the device, then at Connor.
"Don't look at me like it's my fault." For some reason Connor had to chuckle. The random song, and he just couldn't take her seriously, the way she was parading around in the small elevator cabin.
"What's so funny about this?" she hissed at him.
"That was 'We Are Family' by Sister Sledge," a radio presenter blared quietly out of the phone. "Next up is something a bit more sexy with Santana's 'Smooth', featuring Rob Thomas... enjoy..."
"I don't know," Connor kept chuckling.
She took a step towards him, so threateningly that Connor would have liked to take a step back in response, but there was a wall in the way. Graham's eyes narrowed. "Are you trying to flirt with me?"
"God, no, that's honestly the last thing on my mind. Wait... what are you doing?"
/\/\/\/\/\/\
There was a pause full of questioning glances directed at Skye.
"It's exactly what you think," she elaborated.
Brandt grinned. "So that's why she never showed up. Well, we never got very far either. By the time we managed to circumvent the security measures our target was long gone. Brassel was furious."
Ethan chuckled.
"I fold, by the way," Benji sighed and lay down his cards, face-down.
"I can imagine," Luther said.
"You were with Zhen and Dec at the time, weren't you?" Skye asked.
"That's right. We had just come in after the mess on the bridge."
"They wouldn't shut up about that for months," Skye remembered.
Luther added to the pot. "We didn't even know we were on lockdown until it was half over."
/\/\/\/\/\/\
"You have to know what he was all about, you know him best out of the three of us," Declan said again. "Running off like that, that was insane."
"We would have lost Davian regardless," Luther said, his mind clearly somewhere else.
Zhen was uneasy. The shoot-out on the bridge had made her both terrified and utterly furious. "You heard him on the plane, didn't you? What if he actually tries to..."
"Ethan just wanted to make sure," Luther said calmly, but Declan thought he could feel his unease. "Check on her."
"It's gonna be fine," Zhen said, but sounded as if she was trying to convince herself first and foremost.
That moment John Musgrave opened the door. "They caught Ethan outside of the hospital," he began without any greeting, talking in a hushed voice, trying to get out as many words in as little time as possible.
"Julia?" Luther asked.
Musgrave shook his head. "I helped him escape the holding cell, he's on the run. We're under lockdown."
"Lockdown," Declan repeated. "How...?"
"Ethan hijacked the security channel, it doesn't matter," Musgrave continued methodically. "Davian is en route to Shanghai. Ethan is gonna need you."
/\/\/\/\/\/\
"Unbelievable." Skye shook her head.
"It all worked out in the end." Ethan felt the need to steer away from Musgrave and, more importantly, Shanghai. "What about you, Benji? Stuck at the tech lab?"
"Actually," the Brit grinned at Elaine.
She rolled her eyes, and after a second of hesitation she added to the pot again. "We're really gonna unpack that story now?"
"Come on, we all told our part," Brandt encouraged and put down his cards. "I'm out too."
"Stakes got too high for you?" Luther teased.
"You gotta know when to hold them..." Skye murmured with a smile.
"Know when to fold them," Brandt finished good-humoured.
"He's not wrong, actually." To everyone's surprise Luther folded as well. "I'll leave this to you kids."
Ethan raised again. A lot this time. "So, Benji, you were saying?"
"Right," the techie said, munching crisps. "I had dropped something off at the labs when the blast doors came down."
/\/\/\/\/\/\
The bang of metal meeting floor was so loud that Benji flinched backwards. Where moments before the exit had been was now a solid wall. The bright neon lights flickered for a second, then went out completely only to be instantly replaced by the red emergency lighting. It lasted five seconds, tinting everything an eerie blood-red shade, then the neon fixtures came back to life. They seemed much brighter than before, and Benji shielded his eyes for a second.
"You good?" someone asked behind him.
He blinked and saw a woman. Unruly, short dirty-blond hair masked a frown. She stepped closer to inspect him, but took care to keep her distance. "Yeah, I'm okay. Just made me jump a bit."
She walked around him to look at the blast door. "Lockdown," she stated drily.
Benji nodded. "Code five or six, if they lower the blast doors. That was bloody close, they should consider an alarm or something. As a warning." As a delayed precaution he stepped away from the former exit.
The woman sighed imperceptibly.
Benji shifted. "This could take a while."
She didn't say anything.
"Your name's - Eliza, right?"
Her eyes narrowed dangerously, as if he had insulted her. "Elaine," she corrected. "Bray."
"Elaine," Benji repeated, not taking the hint of using her last name. "Right, sorry. It's been a while." He waited for a reply that never came. "I'm Benji. Well, Benjamin actually, but nobody calls me that, you know how it is. We, um, we've met before. Briefly. When I was helping out in R&D for a while?"
Elaine didn't feel like talking. "Mh."
"What do you think happened? Blast doors always seem so serious, don't they? Must be something big. I hope everyone's okay. You know, sometimes when you're stuck down at the labs all the time you forget that you're part of this huge secret thing, and then something like this happens. Or is that just me?"
"Doesn't concern me."
"I know, right? Field agents are a class for themselves. That's not for us," he chuckled. "Although it does sound so exciting when you here the stories, right?"
"Mh," Elaine humoured him.
"For instance, the other day I was talking to Ethan – yes, the Agent Hunt, before you ask – and he hinted at this huge op they were planning, and what did I do? I dished out some story about university. Completely different worlds, no comparison. Why do I do that?"
Elaine shrugged.
Benji bit his lips. "Sorry. I talk a lot, I know. Bad habit. I'm... working on it."
"Good luck with that."
/\/\/\/\/\/\
"Not my finest hour," Elaine admitted, contemplating the cards in her hand.
"Yeah, you weren't in the best mood," Benji said without being mean. "Me talking the last bit of sense out of you probably didn't help."
"It was nice actually," she shrugged. "People didn't really talk to me much. Not that I was very good company back then"
"Don't be so hard on yourself," Ethan put in.
Elaine smirked. "You didn't know me back then. I just didn't like people. And right then I think I just got kicked out of field training for the second time," she sighed, then before anyone could comment, she added, "All right, I'm gonna be out of chips if it goes on like this. All in."
Brandt raised his eyebrows a little. He seemed impressed. "Have you been taking lessons?"
"I have no idea what I'm doing, to be honest," Elaine replied.
Ethan grinned and hinted a shrug before pushing his remaining tokens into the middle. "Agent Holt?"
"Not today," she smiled. "I fold."
"So this is between you and me," Ethan said to Elaine, never losing his smile.
"Stop being so happy," Elaine countered. "I want to see your cards."