Episode One: Killer

Epilogue

When the team got back to the IMF house, it was late. Very late.

Jim surveyed his agents tiredly. They all looked worn and as exhausted as he felt, if not more so, and even though he told them not to, Max and Casey sapped the last of their energy constructing a light meal for them in the kitchen while Grant got on the phone to arrange the final details of the job with their contacts in England and Nicholas unloaded Grant's computer and their other basic supplies into the storage room they'd come out of.

It was well after midnight when the four young agents finally moved off to their assigned rooms. Finally doing the same, Jim wondered if he would sleep that night or not, or if he would be haunted again by that elusive dream.

Left to his own thoughts, his mind drifted back to Tom, hollow echoes flitting through his memory.

"You know Jim, I've been thinking," said Tom, lounging stiffly back on the deck of Jim's boat. He'd shown up on Jim's doorstep with an easy set to his shoulders, but a shadowed look in his eye, tired, telling Jim he'd just flown in from a trip back east. He wouldn't say whether it was for work or not, and Jim didn't press.

"I've heard team leaders try to do that on occasion," he answered, leaning back in his own chair, straight-faced and automatic. Rolin had rubbed off on him more than he would have chosen.

Tom let out a burdened laugh before giving Jim his "this is serious" expression.

"Alright," Jim conceded. He wanted to hear what Tom would say. He still didn't know what Tom was working on, or what white bread crumbs he'd been following. He only knew it seemed personal. He'd seen it enough in his former teammates to recognize the signs, and while having a personal stake didn't exclude an agent from being able to handle a case, Jim worried. "Alright, tell me. What have you been thinking about?"

"That you're right," answered Tom.

"Of course I am," said Jim—Willy's influence this time. He waved his hand to cut short Tom's obligated reaction to his sarcasm. "What about?" he asked seriously. "What am I right about?"

"Choosing a team."

Jim peered at him curiously, that being the last thing he'd expected to hear. "You're going to choose a team?" he asked doubtfully.

"Yeah," Tom nodded. "I have one more thing to do, but as soon as I finish, I'll set it up."

"You sound pretty determined," Jim said carefully. He wanted to know if Tom was serious. He wanted to know what had finally changed his mind.

"I've been reviewing some agents already," Tom confirmed. "There are some good agents with us—trustworthy, loyal."

Jim suddenly had a dozen questions in his mind but he opted to let Tom finish explaining first.

"This job is in my blood," Tom continued, "and I've realized I might want to do it a long while yet. But I know without people around me that I can rely on, I may not last very long."

Jim kept his expression neutral, but nodded, feeling relief under his questions.

"Working in IMF—all the deception we create—I've started to see everyone around me with suspicion. I think that feeling wouldn't be so hard to work around, if there were at least some people in the world I never had to look at that way."

Jim sighed, grateful to hear Tom say it. It pinpointed why it bothered him when Tom worked alone. He'd never had to wonder if Barney, or Rollin, Cinnamon or Willy was going to betray him. The thought was ludicrous. If they ever had, or did, it'd be time for him to leave the business anyway. He'd have bowed out or been taken out long ago. "I'm glad, Tom," he said simply, thinking Tom looked more confident, and more at ease, than he'd ever seen him. "I'm really glad."

Jim woke early the next morning to the poignant realization that Tom was really gone. The weight of the feeling, however, was tempered by the remembrance that Tom's killer had been identified and dealt with and that, for the first time since receiving the ugly midnight call telling him of Tom's death, Jim had slept soundly. He was no longer bothered by the lingering trace of an imagined dream.

Yet, even without that sticky feeling to gnaw at him, he knew there was one more thing he had to do.

He showered and dressed, feeling reasonably confident that he could be gone and back before the four young agents even noticed. After their scrambling and rushed mission with the extreme time changes, he expected them to be sleeping deeply and not to wake until far into the day. He was surprised when he made his way downstairs, to hear the three men of his team speaking to each other in the kitchen, trying somewhat unsuccessfully to use low voices.

Overcome with curiosity, Jim stopped in the doorway to surreptitiously listen.

"…the best of the best," Grant was saying. Jim could see he was leaning awkwardly in the stool he sat on, now very obviously favoring his bruised side.

"So was your father," commented Max.

Jim leaned forward discreetly, allowing himself to view the trio from a better angle, watching Max pull several handfuls of ice from the freezer and drop them into long, thin plastic bag.

"It wasn't just them as individuals though," Nicholas added to the conversation, looking oddly casual in his t-shirt and jeans. "They were unified. A genuine team. Where one dropped off another picked up. They fit together."

It dawned on Jim that they were talking about him or—more specifically—his former team.

"If we'd had Tom Copperfield as a team leader, we could have matched them mission for mission," Max claimed. He wrapped a thin towel around the bag of ice and slid it across the counter to Nicholas.

"No," said Nicholas. "For some reason, Tom never let himself build a team like Jim. He didn't… work the same way." He broke off, shifting his weight as he glanced away. "Regardless, we don't have Tom—we have Jim. They're not the same."

Jim suddenly realized what it was about Nicholas that reminded him so much of Tom, and what about Nicholas was so fundamentally different. It had been there from the beginning.

"Jim, I'm not going to let that happen," Tom had said with the same intense intelligence displayed by Nicholas—their pragmatic and blunt natures impossible to tell apart.

"Jim, we're not going to let that happen," he remembered Nicholas saying to him at the start of their mission. Where Tom had been constantly pushing away from the team dynamic, Nicholas counted on it. Jim couldn't help thinking then, that if Tom had thought a bit more like Nicholas he might still be alive. The thought hurt and he felt disloyal for thinking it.

"We don't even have Jim, Nicholas. This job was temporary, remember? Ow!" Nicholas had lifted Grant's shirt and not so gently pushed Max's icepack against the bruised kidney.

"Sorry," he said, wrapping the pack to keep it in place.

"It's too bad that we don't," mused Max, ignoring Grant's expletives. "We'd be pretty formidable. One of us should at least talk to him about it."

"We can't force the man to return to IMF just because we think we should stay together," said Grant, settling back in his chair with the icepack in place.

"You never really leave IMF—isn't that what you said, Grant? It's in your blood," Max protested. "And we all know that's true."

"Yeah, that's what I said, and I believe it, but it doesn't matter what I believe or what I want. It matters what Jim wants."

"Look," Max said, holding up a hand to forestall any of Grant's further protests. "All I know is that we are a team and we should stay a team. We've all felt it. We can't just let this go."

"I agree with you, Max, I do," said Grant. "I've never worked with people so well, so quickly, but there's got to be another way."

"Maybe we could find another team leader, or Nicholas—"

"No," Nicholas protested, not letting him finish. He held up a hand as he took a seat next to Grant. Jim had to admit he'd also thought Nicholas to be the most logical choice. He saw leadership potential in all of them, but Nicholas had the mind for it, and an innate quality the others looked to. It made him wonder about the adamant resistance.

"I'm not a team leader, Max. I don't... Besides, if one part of the puzzle is missing, the rest of the picture never quite looks the same. Jim Phelps is a key part of this picture. Those are the facts."

Jim was taken aback by the their strong feelings on the subject. They had clicked—he'd realized it too. He just wasn't certain he was capable of making a sound decision on the subject—not right then. Furthermore, he wasn't sure he was ready yet to let go of the past.

"One of us should at least try to ask him," Max spoke into the silence, making it clear by his stare in Nicholas's direction just who he thought that person should be.

"Perhaps," Nicholas answered, acquiescing to Max with a noncommittal shrug. "But not right now. Right now, leader or not, he's lost a good friend—a man who was very close to him. He deserves the time to mourn—with the support of his friends."

"That sounds like us," whispered Grant.

"Yeah," Max agreed.

Slowly, Jim backed away from the conversation, awed and oddly pleased by his team's thoughts. And realized abruptly that he was already thinking of them as his team, as his agents.

He hadn't planned for this.

By all accounts this should have been Tom's team, but…

Apparently he had a lot to think about.

The overheard conversation stayed with him on his way to the cemetery and he had to walk around a bit to clear his mind before finally making his way to Tom's grave. Even there, the questions it brought wouldn't leave him alone.

What am I doing, Tom? He asked the granite headstone. I'm too old for this. But he knew his decision had already been made. The loss of Tom had been devastating but the idea of working with the four young agents who'd so carefully helped with the capture of Tom's killer, changed that aching loss into a feeling of hope. You're only in your early hundreds, you're not dead, he heard Tom say.

He stood motionless, dipping his head at the imagined approval.

He shouldn't have been surprised, then, when he turned around and saw the four agents standing together several yards from Tom's grave. Solemn, but determined. He knew they were there to support him, needed or not.

Grateful, he flicked his eyes to Tom's headstone and back. "He was a good friend," he told them simply, letting them know that though the loss was painful he felt ready to move on.

Nicholas stepped forward. "What do you do now, Jim?" he asked carefully.

Jim could see in their faces the preparation to accept whatever answer he gave—could see Max was preparing for the worst, Grant and Nicholas trying to look neutral, and Casey trying not to look sad.

He couldn't help but drag out his answer a little. Dropping his head with a somber expression he—for the first time since Tom's death—allowed a truly complete smile to grace his face. "Well," he said, looking up to meet their eyes, the grin playing at his lips. "I think I'll have to stay." He smiled wider at seeing the relieved expressions they exchanged.

"It'd be a shame to break up a nice team like this, wouldn't it?"

Nicholas nudged Max and Grant tapped Casey's shoulder, every one of them looking as content as Jim Phelps had ever wanted to be. He stepped forward, leading his new team out of the cemetery, feeling them fall in around him naturally.

Somehow, Jim knew their future would hold no shortage of surprise.

The End

Pointless note: The epilog clearly ventures into the realm of cheesy, as does much of the rest of this, but I couldn't help it, so you'll just have to accept it as is. Thanks.

General Episode Review: This is a fun episode to watch but typical of the series there is a lot of exposition which makes writing out the story interesting. Once I had the core dialog written, it gave me some creative ideas on what to do with the rest of it. Though for this episode some of the plot holes were abnormally large and difficult to fill, it sort of seemed to work out. The watcher is required to suspend a few logical deductions and just go with the flow.

One must also assume that Jim has an uncanny ability to read people or find other unique ways to pick around the plot holes—some of which include: Since Drake was only going to be there for the day, and does everything at random—why did he even need to check into a hotel? If we pass that off as the team somehow knowing he always checked into a hotel, we are then left wondering why—if Drake was in such a hurry to make his call—he didn't just use the phone booth at the airport—or the phone on the street outside the hotel before he checked in—etc. etc. There are others, of course, but the overall fun of this episode is to just go with it regardless, and, of course, imagine what the characters might be doing and saying behind the scenes, which is what I enjoyed. Thank you again for coming along for the ride.