DISCLAIMER: I do not own Mission Impossible or any of its characters.
Warnings: Major Character Death, serious angst + contains SPOILERS for Dead Reckoning Part 1.
A/N: Hey everyone! I'm back with another Mission Impossible fic after 4 years. Wrote this after watching the seventh film and honestly it was incredible aside from the fact they killed off my fave character and I nearly threw my gin glass across the room. So. Here we are. I'm not sure writing this made me feel any better and I'm not convinced Ilsa is dead anyway. But just in case, here's a version where they at least get to say goodbye. Please read and review if you have time. I'd love to know what you think and any theories you might have x
HERE AT THE INESCAPABLE END
There's a shrill ringing in her ears. An unearthly din as the world shifts and churns. Beneath the luminous mist that hangs over the city of Venice, a silhouetted enemy slinks into a shadowed alley, a ghost of arrogant certainty striding in its wake. Necessity demands she follow. But her knees have already struck the ground, fingers grasping at scattered air and discovering the uninvited hand of death.
Somewhere, across the hushed, black waters, a voice calls her name.
Hope carries a promise: that he's fighting to reach her before the unknown void forever separates their paths. All too well she recognises the pelting, muffled thunder that echoes through the narrow, winding streets. The rhythm of determination that calls her to stand and endure. To resist the cold that clutches at her wrists.
The Venetian bridge beckons her onward. To retrieve her discarded weapon and plunge through the meandering labyrinth. But by the third pace she's on her back, cursing softly and yearning for one last glimpse of him.
Overhead, beyond the veil of fog, the glistening stars reflect her outrage in furious blazes of silver and sapphire. Time will not assuage them, but the rippling waters below soften and soothe, carrying an undeniable knowledge her willpower cannot withstand.
Perhaps, if she dared reach up and touch those observant stars, they might stretch out this moment and witness one final goodbye.
At the foot of the steps, Grace's form is unmoving and silent; a steadier observation reveals the slight rise and fall of her ribcage. It's a redemptive consolation in the face of looming bleakness.
Time at last begins anew when a figure comes flying out of the darkness, horror etched into his features as he takes three final stumbling steps and kneels at her side. Whatever fear she might have felt is magnified tenfold in him.
"I'm sorry," she whispers, even as unspoken revelations edge to the surface, threatening to haunt them with what could have been.
Stammering hands move over her. His face is hazy and drawn.
"You're gonna be okay."
"Ethan-"
"You're gonna be okay," he vows, as if one more promise, one more lie might sway fate and grant them an interminable hourglass of borrowed time.
The weapon embedded in her chest determines otherwise.
"Gabriel has the key," she manages, drawing his attention away from the blossoming stain beneath her collarbone. "You can't let him win, Ethan. If he gains control of the Entity-"
"He won't. I won't let that happen."
She hasn't enough strength to push him away, to send him in pursuit of an enemy thought long dead. Still he senses her urgency, reads her pained expression and glances in the alley's direction. Muscles clench and soften. Resigned dread stiffens his shoulders as he guesses her intentions.
"No. Ilsa. I'm not leaving you."
"Ethan, there's no time-"
"No. This is more important. You are more important." Sorrow comes creeping in, casting duty aside. Grief asks, barely audible as he seeks to stem the bleeding, "Why didn't you run?"
"You know why."
Bone meets bone as he cradles her gently, though she cannot feel the tentative motion. There is only the cool of his hand against her cheek, the familiarity of him at her side. No sound but that of his breathless words and little sensation but that of a strange, ephemeral calm.
"Hey. Hey, stay with me, Ilsa. Keep your eyes open."
She doesn't remember closing them.
"You've just got to hold on until Benji gets here, okay? He's gonna find us and then we'll get you someplace safe." Trembling fingers at her jaw, palm splayed over the wound in her thigh, begging her to fight. "We're gonna fix this, Ilsa. Okay? I will fix this."
It's a lie she almost believes. Because this is how they have always lived. Balancing on a knife-edge and cheating death by the millisecond. Forever running in the shadows. And in between: too few precious moments where the rest of the world ceases to exist.
The desperation behind his eyes unveils a medley of emotions they've never found words to name.
"This is my fault."
"No," she answers, firmly, steadily, hoping to relieve him of the guilt he will doubtless carry away from this place. "This was my choice."
Death, having been an impending companion for so many years now, has never truly frightened her. It is the repercussions of her absence, the possibility of what he will become in the aftermath of her passing, that yields her greatest fear now. For she knows, perhaps more than most, how many losses it takes before the balance begins to tip beyond repair.
"I need you to promise me something, Ethan. Your mission-"
"Damn the mission," he mutters, tone overflowing with a dangerous passion, even as she presses her hand to his ribs and demands his unfailing attention.
"Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to live. You live, Ethan. And you find a way to keep on living."
A slow, harrowed nod is all the confirmation she needs. He's closer now, one arm reaching around to rest on the small of her back. Words falter on her lips and she watches breathlessly as he leans in, lets his hand trace the line of her jaw, her temple, drawing her into the gentlest of embraces.
Cold dwells on the fringes of this world. Her limbs succumb to an invisible frost. And yet her heart, here at the inescapable end, remains warm. Loved, perhaps. Though neither have ever dared confess such a liberation. It is an unmistakable truth she holds dear, that rests behind his thoughtful gaze. She has learnt to recognise what his lips cannot bear to utter, and it has always, since their very first meeting, been enough.
"I should have run away with you when you asked," Ethan murmurs, echoing a conversation they've exchanged a hundred times over, choosing now to voice a myriad of veiled dreams. "We could have come here," he envisions. "To Venice. Spent the rest of our lives together. No more missions. No more running."
The admission startles her, gives her strength to return his ghost-like smile. Allows her to recollect the sensation of yesterday, the memory of a single night nestled in his arms. Whispers and embraces that had raged in defiance of the inevitable, watching as a rose-gold sun ascended over the sleepless city of lovers.
Dizziness crowns her thoughts, akin to senseless intoxication.
"I like the sound of that," is her blithe exhale.
Another time she might have asked him what else he foresaw in their shared future, but no reality yet existed in which they were granted such freedoms. And no reality was safe if they allowed their own dreams to overthrow the mission at hand. There would always be another Lane. There would always be those who sought to wreak terror over this vulnerable earth, engaging in spectral games of chaos. But there would never, not in a thousand millennia, be another like Ethan Hunt.
Here, amidst the encroaching night, she wishes she had the courage to utter such thoughts. Instead, without reservation, she whispers, "I don't regret it. Not one moment."
"I know." His features are cast in opaque hues, a reassuring poise against the brutal fallout of their choices. Guilt hangs like a anchor around his neck, drawing him nearer. "But I should've kept you safe, I should've done more-"
A finger at his lips, halting those self-destructive thoughts.
"You need to keep the world safe, Ethan," is her strained reply. "That's all that matters now."
An accelerating phantom engine rumbles over the canal, a figmented hope that someone might discover them in time. She doesn't need to ask, doesn't have to remind him, but it grieves her all the same: that she'll never see her friends' faces again. That the people she has come to consider family will never know the peace of a timely farewell.
"Look after the others." Benji. Luther. Grace. Every innocent who will never hear their names. "They're going to need you."
A glancing nod. He knows. Understands. Continues to stare at her like he always has. As if this is simply one more brief encounter, one more shattering goodbye before their paths are inextricably entwined once again. As if he'll still be here, with her in his arms, come the dawn.
Sleep swallows the heavens. His face twinges and blurs.
"Please, Ilsa. Don't..."
She'd stay here if she could. Forever within his reach. She would follow him through hellfire and water, to the ends of the very earth were it required.
"I wish we had more time," Ethan whispers, eyes crinkling and unleashing a hundred laughter lines she hasn't yet had time to memorise.
"I know," she breathes, feeling her pulse slowing at the tips of his fingers. Drifting into a reluctantly dwindling reality. Suspended and cocooned all at once.
"I'm right here, Ilsa," is the last tangible thing she hears. "I'll be right here."
One by one her senses abandon her. And still he lingers, holding her hand. A comfort against the ensuing darkness that draws her under, until all that remains is the measure of his unrelenting heartbeat lulling her into oblivion.
At least, that's how she imagines her death unfurls.