OKAY, OKAY, YOU'VE TWISTED MY ARM!

Well, this is awesome! Given how many people expressed their desire to see the story through, I've decided I must reciprocate. The show must go on, after all. (Frankly I'm still blown away anyone's still reading this thing.) Sedona will continue!

A few notes: I'm about to go back to school, so updates may become few and far between. But I want to get this story done, so I'll do my best to keep them coming. Please be patient with me.

Note 2: Past-me said that Brandt only fluently speaks 3 languages (English, Russian, Swaihili). Past-me is a dumbass ho. Brandt was Chief Analyst before Ghotocol. He probably speaks more languages than Rosetta Stone. It's in the story so I can't change it, but please just suspend your disbelief for the sake of the plot.

Speaking of suspension of disbelief: The versions of the characters and the team dynamic is, obviously, pretty different from canon. I was beating myself up for making the characters OOC, but then I decided screw it, this is my octopus of a story, and I can make these little bitches snuggle all I damn well please. So there.

Note 3: In the last chapter Logan tells Jane he's ten. Remember how I said past-me is a dumbass ho? Yeah. He's 13. Don't know why I messed that up.

Overall, there's a lot to this story I would do differently now, but I think it's kinda cool how this will be a time capsule of my writing styles at two VERY different points of my life, and more importantly, I'm honored you guys like it and want it to continue to the end. Well, if you're game, I'm game. Let's do this!

Also please, please, if you have a moment, drop a review and tell me what you think. It really helps with motivation (something I will need intravenously once classes start).

Enjoy guys!

Chapter 10

Regroup

Benji was faring surprisingly well, given that only a few hours before he's had a tiny bad-trip bomb glued to his sternum, Ethan had been resurrected, Brandt had reappeared, and the three of them were now on the lamb with an effing teenager.

Well. Casper was twenty, but still.

Benji wrapped his hands tighter around his ribs as a draft of chilly England air snuck around the makeshift barrier they'd strung in front of the shattered window. The fabric tore loose a little. Brandt cursed softly, rose from where he sat beside the fire, and went to adjust it. After Casper's spill-all, Ethan had gone silent for a long time. He stared pensively into their feeble fire while Brandt and Casper stripped the remaining upholstery and used the fabric to block out the coming cold. Winters in the UK swallow the short days quickly, as Benji well knew, and night had been marshalling by the time Casper awoke and spoke to them. Besides, they were all too exhausted and hurt to storm any mysterious enemy facilities right away. Ethan ruled they would recuperate for the night, before Casper led them to the base in the morning.

Which led to now: waiting. Benji's least favorite part of any mission. Not that he wasn't used to it– manning most ops behind a computer screen made for a high capacity for nail-biting– but he could almost taste the tension vibrating in the air. He couldn't think about Walter or Jane without a vortex of nausea opening in his stomach.

"Ethan." Brandt's voice was unusually soft as he returned to the fireside. Ethan was leaning against one of the dusty, mouse-gnawed chairs they'd dragged over for some semblance of comfort; he looked up at Brandt but did not speak.

"Let me have a look at your back. And your arm."

"I'm okay, Brandt," Ethan replied, but they could all hear the tiredness in his voice. "I self-treated already."

Brandt didn't move. "Was that before or after you ran in here and raised hell, no doubt ripping scabs in the process?"

Ethan just huffed a little. Benji remarked internally how unusual this was: Ethan sitting on the floor, with Brandt standing over him. Usually Ethan was all focus and motion and intensity. He liked to meet both friends and enemies at eye level. The fact that he didn't stir now was all the confirmation Brandt seemed to need. He knelt with an answering huff and dragged Ethan's pilfered ditch bag closer to them.

"Brandt," Ethan murmured, a little more forcefully now. "We should save the medical supplies. We're going to need them again."

Brandt just opened the bag and removed a gallon Ziploc full of various first aid implements. "Calm down. It's not like I'm stapling you."

"Brandt–"

Brandt sat back on his heels and fixed Ethan with a look of such unusual and indignant protectiveness that Benji almost gaped.

"Fuck off, Hunt," Brandt said, in a tone that garnered no further argument. "You were dead, god damn it. You've been blown up and shot at. You're no damn good to the rest of us or yourself if you lose strength over something avoidable. Now let me see your back."

For a moment Ethan gazed back levelly. Even now, after all this time, Benji could never quite tell what Ethan was thinking when he gave someone that look. He wondered if he was going to actually fight Brandt on this one. Next to him, Casper audibly swallowed.

Then Ethan sighed. Some of the iron went out of his shoulders, and suddenly Benji could see a new weight on him that hadn't been there before he left the U.S. He promised himself right then and there that if they survived this mess, he was getting his whole ridiculous team together, making them play Call of Duty until their eyes fell out, then getting everyone, himself included, drunk enough to not feel pain for three days. God knows they'd have earned it after this steaming heap of rubbish.

Ethan started working his jacket off, but hissed when he raised his arm. Brandt took his hands and pushed them town. "Hold still, dumbass. Let me." Brandt gently removed Ethan's jacket and inner thermals, then gently peeled off his shirt.

Despite himself, Benji let out a soft hiss. It wasn't the worst he'd seen on Ethan– not by far– but it was ugly. Ethan's shoulder was swollen and mottled with bruising. A long, narrow cut ran the length of his forearm, and his right shoulder blade and at least half his back was burned. Not life-threatening, maybe, but still very susceptible to infection and quite painful.

Brandt snorted. "Self-treated, my ass. You've barely touched this."

"Had other…things on my mind at the time. Like running for my life." Now that Ethan had conceded to Brandt's attention, all the remaining fight seemed to go out of him, and he leaned almost bonelessly against the chair. He barely flinched when Brandt inspected his shoulder unit.

"Well, good news is, you didn't dislocate it, for once,"
Brandt murmured. "Looks like a bad strain. The burns are more concerning. Are these from the crash?" Ethan nodded, long hair falling into his eyes. Brandt removed a tube of antibiotic ointment from the Ziploc. "I think the saltwater helped clean it out initially, but I'm still worried about infection. And they won't be able to scab properly as we keep moving around, so the deeper ones are going to scar. Not that you probably care at this point." Ethan tilted his head in silent concession. Benji had seen Ethan shirtless before, in situations like this. He knew how Ethan's body was a physical record of almost all his missions. To Ethan, this would just be an addition to the grim history.

Brandt started laying a thin layer of gauze over the burns. "They won't heal great, but this'll help with the contact pain," he said. He taped off the pad. "Arm. Now."

Ethan shifted so he faced Brandt. He offered his cut forearm. Brandt disinfected the wound, then threaded a needle and started stitching. Ethan didn't react, other than to hang his head in tiredness. His forehead dipped lower and lower until Brandt finally rolled his eyes and gently pulled Ethan forward so his head rested on Brandt's shoulder even as he kept stitching. A hidden tension seeped from Ethan's battered frame, and he relaxed into Brandt. Brandt hummed a little.

Benji couldn't help but smirk softly, more in fondness than judgment. It underscored Ethan's exhaustion that he let his walls down like this in front of Casper, a stranger. Benji had only seen him do it a few times before– critically injured, or in the apartment back in D.C., on some of the nights when the four of them stayed up drinking and talking into the wee hours. Ethan had fallen asleep on Brandt like this once then. It made Benji glad to know they'd grown to trust each other so fully, even after everything. He didn't want or need to know the details of Croatia, but he could tell it wasn't as bad as he had been formally led to believe. He almost didn't recognize Brandt the next time he saw him after Seattle. There was a new uplift in his stance, less gravity in his voice, like a profound darkness had been exorcised from him.

Brandt tied off the last stitch, then shifted gently. "Ethan."

Ethan mumbled irritably and didn't move. Brandt sighed longsufferingly and motioned to Benji to throw him a clean sweatshirt. Benji did, and Brandt pulled it gently over Ethan's torso. "Come on, you big baby," he chided, low and gentle, and guided Ethan off his shoulder and into the most comfortable position on the floor he could manage with no padding and several injuries. Ethan settled in, but then grunted and grasped at Brandt's hands.

"Wake…wake me for..watch," he slurred, words heavy with sleep.

Brandt patted Ethan's wrist. "Yeah right, team leader. Go to bed. We're good."

Ethan seemed at least vaguely satisfied by this. He let go of Brandt's hands and curled into a half-fetal position. His eyes fluttered shut.

Brandt sighed heavily. He slumped some, and the firelight caught on the blood still caked around his lips and temples.

"Brandt," Benji said, motioning him over. "C'mon, lad. Your turn."

Brandt didn't protest. He picked up the medical supplies and shuffled closer to Benji.

Benji inspected his face. Bruises, yes, but he was more worries about the welt on the back of Brandt's skull. "Concussion?" Benji asked.

Brandt grimaced. "Probably a mild one. I should be okay to sleep, though." Benji fished out a bottle of higher-strength painkillers and shook two pills into Brandt's open palm. Brandt dry-swallowed them.

"Do I need to take your shirt off?" asked Benji. Brandt's shirtfront was bloodstained under his unzipped jacket, but he thought it was mostly from the cuts on his face.

"Nah," Brandt said. "They shocked me a bunch, sure, but I think it's just welts. I'll baby them when this whole thing is over with."

"Right." Benji started to clean the cuts on Brandt's face. Brandt hissed a little at the cold touch of peroxide, but other than that, stayed still.

"I'm really sorry."

Benji looked up. Casper's eyes stayed on the fire, even as he spoke again. "I didn't want to do those things to you. I don't expect you to believe me, but I really didn't. I'm sorry." His eyes were too hooded and haunted in a face so young, and Benji felt a sudden spike of rage at the nature of the world to break such innocent things.

"It's okay, Casper." Brandt's voice was unusually soft. "We've all done much worse. None of us can hold it against you. We do what we have to do to protect the ones we care about."

Casper sniffed. He looked up at the two of them. "Is that why you're here? To protect what you care about?"

Brandt's eyes cut to Ethan, and softened. Benji looked over to find their fearless team leader, the man he had seen dangle outside the tallest building in the world and barely bat an eyelid, curled up on the floor, head pillowed on his bicep, dark hair falling over his face. He looked, abruptly, very young. A warm affection overcame Benji, and he sent another silent thank-you to whatever gods were listening that the Secretary was wrong and that Ethan really was here, alive, and coming home.

Well. If they made it out of this mess.

"Yeah," murmured Brandt. "That's why we're here at all. He'd do the same for us too."

Casper pulled his knees to his chest and rested his chin atop them. He looked thoughtfully over at Ethan. "Why are they doing this to you? To him?"

"We all have a lot of enemies," Benji said, cleaning up the last cut on Brandt's face. "Ethan especially. It's not the first time something like this has happened."

"And probably won't be the last," Brandt grunted.

"Why don't you just leave?" Casper looked back to the fire. "Go into hiding somewhere. Disappear. I hear spies are good at that." There was a touch of bitterness in his voice.

"Well, we could," Brandt replied. "But we won't. These fuckers have your brother, and almost certainly have Jane and Benji's uncle. Besides, the fact that they're coming after Ethan specifically suggests that something bigger might be going on here. We need to figure out what." He gave Benji a side-eye. "Not that this is, of course, sanctioned."

Benji shrugged. While a few years ago the thought of doing disavowal-worthy moves in the field would have nauseated him, they just seemed a weekly occurrence now. Occupational hazard of being on Ethan Hunt's team, he supposed.

"Well," he said, putting away the medical supplies, "I'm sure they're dispatching a separate team to investigate the cause of the explosion in the jet. Given Ethan's body trail, we may all end up intersecting at the end of this…whatever it is. And if not, I'm sure the Secretary will appreciate the information anyway. That is, if we all come home alive and all that."

Brandt groaned softly as he settled against a couch. "Yeah, there's that." He rested a hand softly on Ethan's shoulder. It was a testament to their team leader's exhaustion that he barely stirred at the contact, tensing momentarily before relaxing into Brandt's hand. Brandt smirked.

"There's that, but we'll be okay," Benji asserted. It was always his job to be the hopeful, cheerful one. Ethan's intense, optimistic single-mindedness, Brandt's cool, detachable realism, Jane's relentless but good-hearted practicality, and him. They were all wildly different, and somehow it worked.

"We'll figure it out," Benji said. And he believed it. "We will. We always do."

"Yeah," Brandt murmured. His eyes were in the fire and his thoughts seemed far away.

The wind gnawed at the covering over the broken window. Night crept on toward morning.