Conrad Stonebanks is dead.

His words rattled around in her mind amidst the cacophony of sounds the plane made. Words that soon became yet another layer of background noise to tune out. Isabelle gripped the back of Barney's seat to steady herself before she slumped onto the empty seat, and slowly but surely, the words began to sink in as she stared at the floor.

Conrad Stonebanks is dead.

"When were you going to tell me?" she said, "Once I felt a shred of loyalty towards you or once I got so deep there was no way out?"

"When would you have preferred?" Barney retorted. "He's dead. I can't take it back, and even if I could, I wouldn't. Take your time to grieve your boss then move on. We have a mission to complete."

Son of a bitch. Grieve and move on? Of course he expected her to be a soldier, but it wasn't going to work like that. There was no grief in her bones, only pain, and fear. The latter made her wonder what would happen to Camilla, and to his wife. The former merely stared her in the face and said there was nothing left on the outside now.

"You're an asshole," she said, shoving off the seat and standing up. Isabelle squeezed her eye shut to fight back the tears, and bit down hard on her bottom lip to hide the tremble. She blinked and wiped her right eye with her sleeve then walked out of the cockpit and down the aisle towards the rear of the plane. "A murderous asshole, just like him."

Barney chuckled. He didn't want to make light of the situation, but how many times had he been called that before? She'd get over it — eventually. People like her always did. The pain would be vented, and her anger would spill out loud like thunder, but at some point she'd come to focus on the mission. "You know I could've told her myself."

"Eh." Lee shrugged with one shoulder while he continued to fly the plane. Her footsteps echoed off the floor till finally they stopped and all was quiet again. Telling her this late into the mission hadn't been ideal but his actions were necessary. Getting their skeletons out of the closet gave them time to solve whatever issues arose prior to their landing in Moscow. "You were taking too long."

"At least I would've shown a little more tact."

Lee snorted and waved him off. Barney didn't have a tactful bone in his body when it came to women. He gave his opinions and didn't sugarcoat the truth. And when in Maggie's presence, he acted like an oblivious fool if no one gave him a nudge in the right direction. "You think she'll try to kill you later?"

"Nah." He hoped not. It'd reveal her true colours to the team but at the expense of knowing she was a risk to everyone. Barney had had no qualms in cutting Gunnar loose after he went for Yang. It'd only been a quarrel after all, and the realisation of having to decide whether he could trust the Viking or not. This was a lot more than that. "I'll be fine: the entire team's between her and me."

"And Maggie."

Barney nodded. Maggie too. If it ever came down to it, to the team divided and Barney forced to take a diversion, he had faith Lee and Maggie would lead them in his absence. He'd already seen what Maggie could do, and how Lee had gathered the team and met him at the hangar that day, Aside from Tool, and Gunnar — not that Barney would ever say it aloud — there was no one he trusted more to keep his brothers alive and breathing than Lee and Maggie.

"I really should—" Barney carded his fingers through his hair and stood "—I should say something to her. It's not every day you tell someone you killed their boss and destroyed what they think was their only chance at a better life."

"Barney Ross, counsellor extraordinaire." Lee watched Barney stand and leave his revolver on the seat. It was a wise idea, considering everything. Give her a chance with a weapon and she'd either take Barney or the plane down. He rolled his eyes and shook his head in disbelief. Barney had tried this with Gunnar before, during his days as a loose cannon meth addict, to no avail. How could he think it would work with someone who was clearheaded and walking on a tightrope?

When she walked past with her hands steepled against her face and her thumbs on her cheeks, Gunnar figured something had been said in the cockpit. Instead of chasing her, however, he stayed seated and returned his attention to his book. Not his problem, he told himself. Unless his name had been mentioned or someone came at him with a knife, Gunnar was staying right the fuck out of whatever messes the others created.

"You really gonna pretend like that isn't happening?" Doc said from his seat. He'd seen Gunnar lift his eyes from his book and show interest, but Jensen still sat on his ass and chose to read. Doc understood partners relied on each other, but he wasn't quite sure either of them were ready for that level of commitment. Too bad the mission overruled that.

"She called him a murderous asshole. You didn't hear? Only one reason she'd call Barney that." There was also the matter of past experience with Casey. Pressing a woman to talk only got them angry at you, or maybe that was just him. They also needed space and time to process, and Gunnar wasn't quite sure being stuck on a plane with eight men and a woman counted as sufficient space.

x - x - x

Isabelle settled onto the canvas seat and wrapped her arms around her knees. Her head rested against her thighs and bile threatened to rise in her throat as her stomach twisted and turned on itself. There was nothing she could she say to herself that would even come close to being comforting, so she didn't speak or make a noise. Isabelle turned her head to face the rear end of the plane and hid the few stray tears that still insisted on dripping onto her bottom lip.

He's dead.

What had happened to Camilla and his wife in the past two years? With her locked up, and the team presumably scattered or dead, who'd been running the business in his absence? His wife knew nothing about the illegal side of things, or so she'd been told, and Camilla — Christ, was she okay? Had Camilla been trying to contact her all this time, probably thinking Isabelle was ignoring her, while she sat rotting in a prison cell?

There were too many possibilities in the end, and trying to calculate them in her head would only mess her up further. Isabelle wiped her eye with her shirt and sniffled before she relented and blew her noise with the hem of it. Her hands had already begun to feel clammy, sweat tickled the back of her neck and she just couldn't get as much air as she wanted to. Isabelle coughed against her chest and pulled her knees closer, lacing her fingers together and shuddering as silent sobs began to wrack her body.

He's not coming back.

She understood that much. Lee's pointing out the obvious had been unnecessary if not downright cold, and calling him minced meat? Was that to plant an image of him being crushed in her mind, or had it been to drill home how much Barney wanted to guarantee Stonebanks' death was permanent? And why Azmenistan of all places, when they'd never even stepped foot in that fucking country. She'd seen it on a map once or twice, however its name was never mentioned beyond it being touted as a politically neutral country that didn't kiss the ass of the US government. Azmenistan was a friendly country, by all accounts, they just didn't like foreign governments trying to boss them around.

"Belle?" Barney said, coming to a stop on the other side of the containers. He didn't want to get too close in case she realised that gun was two feet from her hand, and yet at the same time he wanted to let her know she wasn't the only one in pain. Some things, like killing your former best friend and Marine Corps buddy, lingered in a person's mind and never quite left them.

"Va te faire foutre." Go fuck yourself.

"I would, but we're on a plane and it'd be a little rude to the team."

She glared at him from her seat. "What do you want, asshole?"

"Mind if I sit?"

"It's your plane, do whatever you like."

God, if Stonebanks could see her now, he would've scolded her for acting like such a temperamental child then sent her to buy him the local newspaper or something. A fifteen minute errand usually allowed for everyone to get some air, cool off, and feign the appearance they weren't constantly toeing the line between cooperation and destruction. It also gave her that freedom she so craved. The wind in her hair and the smell of salt and fresh fish on the breeze never failed to appease her inner turmoil.

Barney stepped over one of the containers and moved to sit at arm's length from her on the seat. The canvas sagged under his weight till he pushed back and let his spine press flat against the fuselage, feet dangling an inch above the floor. "There's nothing I can say that would bring Stonebanks back."

Isabelle rolled her eyes. You don't say? Was he aiming for an apology, or some form of condolence for her loss? She couldn't quite tell and frankly she didn't care. He'd put those bullets in the chest of his own friend, valid reason or not. Conrad had been a lot of things, but a murderous asshole like Barney here wasn't one of them. He never killed more than necessary, and certainly he didn't kill anyone who couldn't defend themselves. No, that side of the business had been the team's job. They were the ones he called when bodies needed to be dropped or disposed of. Killing without remorse was much easier than people thought, if only you learnt the key to success. If you mentally turned someone into a target, treated them as nothing more than a landing pad for a bullet, they became exactly that: a walking target on legs.

Once someone ceased to be seen as a human, murder became that much easier.

"And?"

"I didn't want to kill him, but it was him or me. He went for his gun and I went for mine." Some things you just had to take on faith. Barney wanted to trust his instincts, the ones that said given time she'd turn out to be a decent person, but his history of choosing the right people for the team wasn't a mile long lucky streak. There'd been so many bumps in the road Barney was still trying to figure out why God had decided to grace his life with Lee's presence.

"Intentions don't matter," Isabelle muttered. What counted was actions, regardless of intent. Talking of intentions was a way of making excuses after the fact and hiding that someone hadn't thought about the repercussions. She breathed through her mouth, nose clogged and heavy, and edged along the seat to move further away from Barney. What the hell was he even doing? She'd walked away so she wouldn't punch him square in the face but here Ross came as if he wanted to get knocked out. "He's dead anyway. Like you said, he's not coming back."

"What was he to you?"

"He was my boss…" There were a few things Stonebanks was, but it was easier to define what he wasn't. He wasn't a good person, not that anyone tried to pretend otherwise. On the other hand, the family angle was a little complicated. "And a portable bank."

"A friend?"

"No." Besides, who made friends with their boss? That only served to complicate things when the time came for someone to be removed from the picture. She'd been warned when she signed that contract that sooner or later a rift would form, and if she could leave her emotions at the door it'd make the job much easier for the both of them. "We had a strictly professional relationship."

"Then why are you crying?"

Because she was sad and horrified, and thanks to him the well of courage inside her had invariably been dimmed, and now all she could feel was dread at the thought of her future. She had nowhere to turn except Tool, nothing but a bloody past and memories to cling to. And because crying was the only thing she could do that didn't involve violence. "Va te faire foutre."

"People die all the time in our line of work. If we don't kill them, they kill us." There was nothing like waking up one day only to learn half your team had been slaughtered while working in some hole in a foreign country. "At some point, you have to accept that."

"I already accepted that when Hammer and Woodsman died." She didn't see the way Barney sat up in surprise, or the look he gave her. If she had, Isabelle might've taken his reaction as a sign of recognition. "I'm allowed to show emotion, but I don't let it interfere with the job."

"Do you keep it light till it's time to get dark too?" Jesus, she almost sounded like an Expendable already, and it'd only been a day. What had Stonebanks been teaching his team, the Expendables way of life sans any acknowledgement it was something he'd figured out alongside his former buddy? Tactics they'd realised would keep them alive in the long term and maybe even stave off PTSD. He didn't want to be one of those Marines who got spooked by a car backfiring, or be woken up in the middle of the night by the humming noise his fridge made.

Ross also never wanted to find himself looking in a mirror wondering what'd happened with his life. At no point in the rest of his life would he sit in a counsellor's office and try to pinpoint when everything had gone wrong, or wind up asleep on a couch with a bottle of bourbon in one hand and his revolver in the other. That kind of future wasn't for him. He'd set ground rules for the team as a way to keep themselves from losing control and peace of mind. Unfortunately, it hadn't worked for all of them.

"Something like that," she said. Had Stonebanks been parroting Ross this entire time? Those words — keep it light, time to get dark — were far too familiar for her liking. Knowing when to ditch the good person facade and start wading through the mud was part of the job, and it seemed that time was drawing closer.

"How good are you with a rifle?"

"Why?"

"The man asked you a question," Doc said from his seat. Hammer, Woodsman; had she met them too? Eight years wasn't that long ago, and he figured they'd died sometime between his capture and before Christmas and the others were hired. He wanted to press her on it, on who she'd met and where, but the timing didn't feel right. "You're part of a team now, remember? We cover each other's backs, that's why."

Isabelle shrugged. With one eye, she had a hard time aiming if the sun was too bright, or the angle wasn't right. "I'm a decent shot, but I prefer knives."

"There's a rifle. It'll be yours till we return to New Orleans."

She frowned and looked at him. A rifle? She already had the Kimber, and Isabelle imagined there were plenty more knives where Gunnar's Bowie had come from. Albeit the small piece of her that was once screaming for blood and revenge had quieted down in the past few minutes, a feeling of emptiness had begun to grow after she heard Lee's words and it needed to be filled with something. "Why?"

Doc rolled his eyes. So she was one of those types who questioned every decision, or in the least decisions that concerned themselves. He stood and turned around to lean on the top of his seat. "You want to be running around defenceless? Be my guest. I don't need a partner who's unarmed and likely to get me killed."

"I won't—" Isabelle swore under her breath and lowered her feet to the floor. They had her right where they wanted her, damn it. Barney had nudged her towards acceptance of her current position and the realisation that someone's life now rested in her hands, then left her to discover where she now sat on Church's chessboard. "Thanks for the rifle, Ross."

Barney fetched the wooden case from the container and set it down on the seat next to her. If they were going to get along, he had to trust her starting now, and rely on her. This wasn't blind faith, just common sense. The more he treated her as one of the team, the faster she'd find herself adjusting to their situation. "You're not gonna shoot me with it?"

"Don't tempt me."