Chapter Text
It’s relatively easy to brush off questions from the HAO staff as to why there are four unauthorised people showing up this late into their operations, because they don’t actually need to explain anything at all. A lot of the medical staff have worked in high-conflict zones before, and it’s not the first time they’ve had a sudden foreign state attaché inexplicably added to their roster. Which means it’s also relatively easy to procure an emergency helicopter flight over the Kashmiri mountains to search for a single, unaccounted-for man.
Ilsa smooths a large paper map across her lap, GPS device and marker at the ready. Benji and Luther sit opposite her in the helicopter cabin, both armed with binoculars, reporting debris or drag marks in the snow as they fly over the Ladakh mountain range. The trail is obvious; a thin billow of smoke rises above the high peaks of the mountains, a perpetual sign of Ethan.
Ilsa marks points of interest as best she can on the map, logging them in the GPS device and attempting to reverse-engineer the path Walker and Ethan had taken. In many ways their work is only beginning; no detail could be excluded in the case against Lane, and establishing a clear timeline of events is yet another obstacle between her and her freedom.
Benji and Luther call out the two dead helicopter pilots they spot in the snow, one after another. Ethan had mentioned he’d taken control of a copter just before losing contact, although the corpses revealed very little about how he managed to actually get in one of them.
The smoke is deceptively far away. As they fly on, they realise Ethan is much further out in the mountain range than anticipated. Ilsa keeps tabs on the time; twelve minutes since they began their search, then twenty-six minutes, then thirty-nine. As each minute ticks by, the high altitude weather asserts itself further. Uncompromising, harsh, and in the comfort of a helicopter cabin, absolutely balmy compared to its effects on foot.
“Helicopter blade,” Luther eventually reports, pointing out his side of the helicopter. Benji and Ilsa swivel in the direction of his finger. It’s more than a single blade, in fact; the central rotor mast is lodged into the snow, snapped blades poking up above the side of the mountain. There is no accompanying helicopter in sight.
They find other scrap as they fly on, winding through the mountains in low, large arcs. A single landing skid, embedded perpendicular into the snow; a back tail rotor, oddly intact; what was once a mounted machine gun, splintered in pieces in an exposed rocky area; a bundle of supplies bound together in a net, floating in the middle of an icy blue lake; and others more strange, like a single metal sheet lying flat in the snow, unattached to anything else. Still no sign of the actual helicopters. Or bodies.
“How d’you fly a helicopter with no blades and no tail?” Benji asks.
There are no footprints in the snow, only occasional, inexplicable drag marks that lead nowhere, long scores in an otherwise pristine white blanket. Luther checks the tracker he’d put in Ethan, but there’s still no signal. They were high enough above the mountains that signal blockage shouldn’t be an issue. It means that Ethan is either somewhere deep in a canyon, or his body had been so badly damaged that the tracker had been destroyed. Ilsa supposes those two options aren’t mutually exclusive.
One thing is certain: Ethan had been alive recently, at least as far as—Ilsa checks her watch—forty-seven minutes ago. They tend to all work on much tighter time frames than this. She catches Benji glancing at her worriedly as she marks the map balanced on her legs. She ignores him, trying to make sense of it. The trail is winding, and she suspects it’s likely they were finding the debris out of order.
Eventually they make it to a cliff face overlooking a massive lake. They initially overshoot with the smoke trail, entranced by the wreck at the bottom of the cliff where both helicopter bodies are eventually found, smouldering. No footprints lead away from the crash site. At least Ethan hadn’t wandered off.
They hover low over the destroyed helicopters, only fifty metres of air separating them from the ground. “He can’t be in there,” Benji says. He has to yell to be heard above the sound of the engine.
They spot Walker, or what’s left of him; binocular vision reveals a body without much of a head left, a messy blot of red in the snow. “It’s not Ethan,” Luther says. “He wasn’t wearing green.” He looks very small from this distance. No other bodies visible.
Ilsa points to an explosive smear of blood on the rocks. “Walker fell,” she observes. They ask the pilot to fly up.
They finally find him on top of the cliff, much too close to its face. Nobody cheers; he’s not moving.
When they land, Ilsa is the first to reach him. Her fingers go to his neck; a pulse is present. His skin is cold. “Alive!” she reports, and hears two explosive sighs of relief behind her as Benji and Luther unload the stretcher.
The other two rush in. Ethan is a step above unconsciousness, but only a step. Flat on his back, his chest rises and falls; a foot twitches.
“Injuries,” Ilsa says, tapping his cheek, once, twice. “Ethan. Injuries?” Of the spinal variety is her immediate concern. The other ones are obvious enough just by looking at him.
He doesn’t open his eyes. His lips move, but no sound comes out. His skin is red all over, a promising sign; at least he’s not dying of hypothermia. Blood covers the right side of his face and beads along the multiple lacerations across his cheek and jaw. Gloved hands are chalky with grit and ash. The detonator is nowhere in sight.
Ilsa taps his cheek again. Still no response. They can’t wait to move him any longer. “Legs,” she orders, pointing Luther to his feet. Benji grabs a hold of Ethan’s shoulders.
They carefully slide him onto the stretcher. Ethan moans, which Ilsa takes as a promising sign. He can feel pain, so nothing can be too broken, right?
Loading him into the helicopter is another story. The cabin is compact, not meant to transport bodies, and there’s not nearly enough space at their feet to keep him secure in the stretcher. He’s eventually promoted to their laps—his head on Luther’s legs, his feet at Benji’s. It’s not ideal, or even good-enough, but that’s never really been their style anyway.
The cabin’s much quieter with the doors closed, but nobody is in the mood to chat. The hand that Benji doesn’t have clamped around Ethan’s calf is rubbing at the skin of his own neck. He coughs.
Ilsa lets her head rest against the wall behind her. She’s beyond tired, bottomed-out from adrenaline that has long since faded, and her injuries from the fight with Lane have hounded her the entire time they’d been searching for Ethan. She stares at him from her seat on the opposite bench, held in place by his friends’ hands, tucked haphazardly in their laps. She envies his ability to pass out like that, concussion-induced or otherwise.
Ethan begins to stir by the time they’re pulling into the mountains again. His breathing becomes more ragged, and his face pulls into a full squint. A bead of blood rolls down his cheek from the movement.
“What….?”
“We got you,” Luther says, hand on his shoulder, as much to keep him from rolling off his lap as it is to comfort him.
“Luther?” The word comes out sluggish, like he’s surprised Luther still exists. His hand twitches where it lay on top of his chest, and his eyes drag themselves up to look at his friend.
Luther smiles down at him. “It’s okay, man. You’re good. We're all good. It’s over.”
Ilsa watches the sudden turn on Ethan’s face from the other side of the narrow cabin. Luther’s hand squeezes his shoulder, and Ethan breaks, all at once; the squint turns into a wobble, his mouth puckering from tears that come out of nowhere.
“Luther—” he gropes blindly, his arm suddenly mobile, and finds purchase on Luther’s jacket. Benji and Luther react immediately, bracing their arms around him to keep him steady. Ethan’s face gets buried into Luther’s sweater, a sob muffled by the fabric. He clings onto him for dear life, at the edge of a cliff.
Ilsa and Benji both refuse a bed. The compromise is a folding chair for each of them while they’re treated by medical staff that Julia directs with ease. Luther, the only one among them without any injuries, is out of sight, getting a head-start on the least glamorous part of the job: clean-up. Once they’re done here, they’ll join him.
They hear Julia report Ethan’s injuries aloud, a summary of needed medical care as much as it is a long, resigned sigh. Five fractured ribs; frostbite on his left ear; dehydration; a mild concussion; first-degree burns on his face; a laceration on his head that needs stitches; scrapes and contusions on all the major parts of his body. Miraculously, hilariously, no broken bones, no shattered spine, no organ damage.
Ilsa and Benji are treated quickly. Salve is applied across the rope burns on their necks and covered with bandages. The staff give them confused, horrified looks, but say nothing, leaving just as quickly as they came in. Benji sits back against the fold-out chair, slack, like a marionette with his strings cut. Ilsa can see him fighting sleep. There are days of work left yet, and most of it is time sensitive. They couldn’t leave bodies and explosives lying around. She remembers the interior of the house that Lane had occupied; he’d brought with him more than just the plutonium. Allowing it to sit in the open was an invitation for further problems.
“How’s your pain?” Julia asks them both, her back to them as she directs a nurse to stitch Ethan’s head. “Both of you?”
“F—” Benji gags, coughing around the bandage freshly applied across his neck. “Fine.”
Julia looks over her own shoulder, eyes piercing. “Don’t lie to me.”
Benji straightens. “It’s fine, really. I don’t need anything.” He coughs again and looks to Ilsa for support.
“I need something,” she says, suppressing her own urge to gag. “For pain. No opiates. There’s work left.”
“Ibuprofen,” Julia says to one of the nurses by Ethan’s bed, who nods wordlessly before exiting the tent.
Both Ilsa and Benji linger in their seats, part exhaustion and part desire to hover. Ilsa is delivered a dose of NSAIDS, and she pops two, dry swallowing them both. After that, the nurses ignore them entirely, helping to finish up with Ethan before breaking away from this ridiculous diversion to get back to their actual work. Julia remains standing at Ethan’s bedside, face carefully blank.
“What work is left?” she asks, turning to them.
Ilsa speaks. “Body retrieval and site clean-up around the bombs, mostly. We need to find a place to store them securely until we get picked up.” Whenever that is—Ilsa doesn’t report to Sloane, but she knows the woman isn’t in a hurry to play chauffeur. Delayed extraction is about as close they’d get to a vacation.
Julia nods. “What else do you need?”
“Body bags.” Ilsa pauses. “Viable storage sites, places where your staff or civilians won’t be. Can’t think of anything else right now.”
“We have both. I’ll get you what you need.” Julia glances back at Ethan. He already looks remarkably better now that the blood had been cleaned off, stitches had been sewn, and he’d been stripped of his filthy jacket and sweater. His expression is slack now, nothing like the ragged edge he’d been on the cliff.
“He’s okay?” Benji asks.
“He’s fine.” Julia’s voice is clipped, unemotional. She turns back to them. “You don’t need to linger. I’ll call you when he wakes up.”
That had been a lie; Ethan wakes about half an hour after Benji and Ilsa leave, and Julia doesn’t immediately share this fact with them.
She spends the time before that at a nearby desk, opening her laptop and trying to figure out what forms she needs to fill out to report two destroyed helicopters. They weren’t HAO equipment, at least; they’d been borrowed from Solomon Lane. The men piloting them—also borrowed—were dead, presumably, although she hadn’t thought to ask Ilsa beforehand. And Lane himself is dead, too, which definitely requires a different type of form. Was there such a thing as a benefactor incident report? It wasn’t like there’d been a formal grant application or anything this time around, no committee to send expense and summary reports to, just a lot of money in exchange for minimal contact with their so-called guardian angel.
She should’ve known something was fishy from the jump. She did, in fact, because while private donors were common enough, giving HAO full discretion with the money was not. But the amount of capital Lane had promised them was enough to bargain with almost any devil, and she’d taken the risk. The only thing more surprising than discovering he was connected to her ex-husband was her genuine desire for a meeting with an actual grant committee.
Julia braces her forehead against one of her hands, elbow digging into the hard plastic of the fold-out desk. The beginnings of a bad headache are already forming, pulsing at her temples. She’s too on edge to consider sleeping, and besides, there’s too much work to be done. The day is barely half-over; narrowly avoiding annihilation counts for very little against the authority of a twelve-hour shift.
She blinks at the laptop screen. Her administrative team would not be able to describe the events leading to the destruction of the helicopters—or the death of their benefactor—in tax return documents, particularly given the recent revelation of Lane’s status as an enemy of the state. She’d have to talk to Luther; he probably knew someone in the States who could help her lie to the IRS plausibly enough that HAO could hang onto its charitable status for another year. Julia stares at the computer screen for a long time, thinking.
Ethan eventually stirs behind her. The bed frame creaks from his groggy movements, and the sound of limbs sliding across bedsheets is enough to force her back on her feet.
In a few strides she’s across the room, standing by Ethan’s bed. “No moving,” she orders quietly, a hand on his chest, careful to avoid putting pressure on his ribs. He’s slow to listen; his legs shift restlessly under the blanket, like he’s feeling for purchase. “Ethan.”
The sound of his own name grabs his attention. His eyes roll in her direction, lids heavy, and then he stops moving entirely.
She’s annoyed at how easy it is to smile at him. His gaze is just as awestruck as ever, like he’s never quite been able to figure out how someone like her was real. Years old memories of his frequent staring are easily reconciled with the present; if Ethan had changed at all, this much had stayed the same.
“No moving,” she repeats unnecessarily. Her hand is still on his chest. “And keep your arms at your sides. You’ve got a cannula in your left hand.”
His gaze doesn’t break. “Julia?”
She smiles again. “That’s me.”
Ethan keeps staring at her. Julia finally looks away, unable to bear the weight of it, and moves out of arm’s reach before she does something stupid. With her back turned, she doesn’t see his sluggish attempt to grab her hand as it leaves his chest. “You’ve got a lot of injuries, but nothing serious,” she says, and moves to the two chairs in the corner of the room where Benji and Ilsa had been tended to. There are some leftover slips of paper packaging from their bandages on the ground, and she kneels down to grab them. “Fractures ribs, stitches in your head, some burns—”
“Where am I?”
“Kashmir still. Your friends picked you up.” From a cliff, by Ilsa’s recounting, and barely conscious.
“How long have I…?”
Julia remains in her knelt position, her back to him, fiddling with the packaging in her fingers. “Only a few hours. They brought you in earlier this afternoon.”
Silence from his side of the room. She stares down at the garbage in her hand.
“Walker?” He hisses; he’s moving again, dammit. “Lane?”
Julia keeps her head down. “Dead, on both counts.”
“Oh. Good.” Ethan grunts, letting out a breath of effort. “Ah—”
“I said no moving,” she snaps over her shoulder, not looking at him.
“Why are you on the floor…?”
What’s the inverse of bedside manner? Seatside manner? She’s never met anyone more charming when they’re in a hospital bed. Curious, soft-spoken, eager to chit-chat and quick to put people at ease. A model patient, at least when he follows orders. And even now, she can’t resist him—his question comes out cute, devoid of weight, like a dog exploring a new room.
Julia takes a deep breath and stands up, turning to face him again. She holds up the garbage. “Cleaning up a mess.”
He smiles. “You’re a professional.”
She doesn’t want to get any closer to him, to get pulled into his orbit again, but it’s already too late for that.
“How are you feeling?” She keeps her distance, safely separated by a few feet of floor space.
He tries to give a shrug that is quickly aborted, and then opts for a tilt of his head. His hair rustles against the pillow. “Y’know. Been better.”
“Ribs?”
“Sore. But I can breathe fine.”
“Pain level?”
Ethan’s eyes are warm. “I’m okay.”
He looks especially small in the bed, the blanket up around his chest and his arms tucked by his sides. She remembers how much she liked to curl around him when they slept, to engulf him in her arms, and how easy it was to do it. She remembers how nice his back felt against her chest, his ass nestled between her hips. He was broad and bright in public, a natural crowd-pleaser, but in bed he was always small, just hers, just the right size for her to tuck him away underneath her.
“Jules?”
She jolts at his voice, soft and tentative, but no longer doggish. It’s her turn to be caught staring.
Her mouth presses into a thin line. She sees on his face that he recognises his mistake. “Sorry. Julia.” The hand not connected to the IV turns in the bed, palm-up. “Come here. Please.”
Against reason, she does, but finds victory in not taking his hand when she gets there. He’s staring at her again. More awake now, he’s wide-eyed.
“Julia.” His tongue wets his lips, cracked and dry from the mountains. “I’m sorry—”
“Please don’t, Ethan.” She wants to touch him very badly. The garbage balls into a tiny point in her fist. “You don’t need to.”
“Not just—I mean everything—”
“Everything? It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?” Her voice is just as quiet.
Ethan keeps staring. His mouth hangs open, his lips moving ever so slightly as he searches for a response. “You’re here because of me,” he says eventually.
“I know.”
She’s thought a lot about what she’d say to him if they ever met face to face again. It’s crazy-making to think about how little they’d ever actually discussed any of this. It was partially her fault; too many times she’d be left reeling, unable to process a single sentence he’d said as he explained in detail how exactly he was going to ruin her life. It was all too stupid, too fantastic, and then one day her life became one big stupid fantastic drama, severed from all the days that had come before.
“Do you like it?” he whispers, his words a little slurred.
“You mean Kashmir?”
“All of it. Your life.”
He’s thought about this, too. She sighs. “Ethan—”
“I want you to tell me. I want the truth. Even if it’s bad.”
She’s impressed by his gall. “We are not having this conversation right now—”
“Please.” His gaze is intense.
“I told your team I’d call them when you woke up.” Julia takes a step away from the bed, back to the exit. “I’ll go get them.”
“Julia—”
“Not now, Ethan.” Anger finally bleeds into her voice. She turns away from him, and the spell of his gaze is broken. “I’m not doing this with you right now.”
She feels his eyes on her back as she leaves the tent.
Despite how bright it is outside, it’s dark in Ethan’s tent when Ilsa steps through the door.
She thinks at first that he must be sleeping; he’s remarkably still in the bed. Her boots are quiet on the wooden floorboards as she approaches him. There’s an IV in his hand for fluids, and all the open, ragged edges of his wounds have either been stitched closed or covered with bandages. The only part she’d helped with before leaving to clean up the camp was getting him out of his filthy clothes and into fresh ones. The soft grey sweater he’s wearing makes him look a little less pale.
But when Ilsa steps up to his bedside, Ethan’s head twitches in her direction, lids heavy but not closed. She smiles involuntarily. “Hey.”
“Ilsa.” His eyes flick down to his hand resting on the bed, the one not attached to the IV, and flexes his fingers. She reaches for it; his skin is cool, maybe too cool. They should get a space heater for his tent.
“We all meant to come by earlier,” she whispers, keeping her expression carefully neutral. Even stitched up and cared for, he looks wrecked. “Benji and Luther are still cleaning up. Lane left a huge mess. It’s been hectic.”
Ethan hums. His eyes are properly open now, searching her face. In the low light of the medical tent, it takes her a moment to realise he’d been crying, and long enough ago that the tears had since dried on his cheeks. Her chest aches; she really should have come by sooner.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
Ilsa bites back a strained laugh. “You’re asking me?”
“Well.” He gestures to himself with his free hand, the IV drip cord wobbling. “You already know about me.”
She squeezes his other hand. Gently, of course—all of his knuckles are split and swollen. “I’m fine. Tired, sore. Nothing out of the usual.”
His eyes flick down to the bandage around her neck. “What about that?”
“It’s minor,” she murmurs. “Nothing to worry about.”
She can see him calculating, wondering whether to press her on it. It’s hard to tell why he gives up; exhaustion, perhaps, or maybe resignation.
“But you’re okay?” His voice is even quieter now.
“I’m okay,” she replies, just as quiet.
He squeezes her hand. It’s frightening how weak his grip is. “You’re free now.”
A smile breaks across her face. “Just about. I still need to contact MI6, arrange to have Lane’s body delivered. I will once we leave. There’s enough to deal with at the moment.”
“How’s it feel?” Ethan’s thumb strokes the back of her hand.
She can’t help herself. Her other hand comes up to his head, fingers brushing his hair. There’s a nasty line of stitches by his hairline, suturing a cut that’s long but not deep. Ethan’s expression relaxes at the touch.
“I don’t know yet,” Ilsa says honestly. “It doesn’t seem real.”
“I’ll come to London with you,” Ethan offers. She thinks he leans into her hand in his hair, but it’s hard to tell. “If you need help.”
“I’d like that.” She watches his eyes flutter closed, soothed by the touch. It’s nice to touch him like this. She almost gets lost in the indulgence of it. Someone had washed his hair to clear all the dust and debris away, and it’s still slightly damp to the touch.
Then her voice drops even lower. “And afterwards, we could go out and celebrate. I haven’t been to an English pub in years. I can buy you a beer.”
Ethan doesn’t open his eyes. The line of his mouth wobbles, a smile that collapses quickly into a thin, hard press of his lips. “No.”
Her hand goes still in his hair. “Why?”
He finally looks at her. “You know we can’t do that.”
She searches his face; his expression is stony. “But I’ll be out by then. We won’t be at each other's throats anymore. There’s nothing—” Ilsa pauses. “We can finally do what we want.”
“That’s not why.” Ethan wets his lips, eyes flicking to the tent door. “Julia’s here because of me.”
He doesn’t say anything else. She frowns. “Luther told me she had to go underground after you two split up,” Ilsa says slowly. “Are you—intending on staying with her afterwards?”
“No, I mean she’s here, right now, in Kashmir, because of me.” He looks like he wants to sit up. Instead he casts his eyes up at the ceiling, clenching his jaw. “Right before Walker escaped in Paris, he told me he’d found Julia, that he’d kill her if I tried to reach out to her.”
Her eyes go wide. “You never told us about this.”
“She was placed here by Lane,” he continues. “To make sure she died. Nobody besides Luther and I knew she was even alive, and they still found her. Which means she’ll have to go dark again, even deeper this time.”
He finally looks at her again. Ilsa shakes her head as it suddenly dawns on her what he’s saying.
“That’s not the situation you and I are in,” she says quietly. “I’m trained for this.”
“I agree, it’s different.” He squeezes her fingers again, stronger this time. “You have the chance to live a real life. I’m not going to ruin that.”
Her head shakes, not of her own accord. Ilsa stares past his shoulder, at the tarped wall of his tent. Despite how weak he is, his voice is steel, assured. He’s thought about this, and not just today.
“Ilsa.”
Teeth gritted, she meets his eyes. Ethan’s gaze is intense now, more alert than she’s seen him since he sprinted away from them hours ago to jump into a helicopter. “The best years of my life were when I was with Julia. I won’t ever be that happy again. I want you to have the chance to be that happy.” Ethan swallows. There’s a tremor in his voice. “Which means that after London, we go our separate ways.”
The image of his face blurs as tears come to the fore. Ilsa blinks them back, exhaling roughly, finding Ethan pale and small in the bed.
“Let me give you that,” he whispers. “Please.”
“Ethan….” It’s hard to speak around the tightness in her throat. Her voice comes out weak, strained. “We could both have that. Come with me.”
He shakes his head. “It’s too late for me.”
She stops her fingers from clenching in his hair. “It doesn’t have to be.”
Ethan stares at her. It’s not a challenge; the obstinate look on his face is heavy with regret, and more tired than she’s ever seen him. His irises are dark in the low light of the room, nearly the same colour as his pupils.
“Ethan.” Her voice comes out angry. “You’re punishing yourself? Is that it?”
“And I need to ask you for a favour.” His tone switches instantly then, from soft to business-like; they’re still on the clock. “Ilsa.”
She blinks again, looking down at their entwined hands. Her mouth hangs ajar, trying to get control of herself. “Wh… what’s the favour?”
“It’s a big one.” He pauses to catch his breath. “I need you to take over for me while we’re here, make sure everything’s tied up and secure. That includes the operations report. You can put any decisions you make under my name. I’m giving you full latitude. Include yourself in the debrief as much or as little as you’d like. Whatever makes it easiest for you with MI6.”
Ilsa swallows everything down, every last ounce of herself. It’s a muscle she hasn’t had to use since she was undercover with Lane. “I’m already doing most of that,” she whispers. “Luther and Benji know their tasks.”
She feels Ethan go slack in the bed, and she finally looks back up at his face. He’s still staring at her.
“Thank you,” he murmurs. “I’m having trouble… concentrating.”
“You don’t need to explain yourself.” Her hand is still in his hair, but it’s too painful to move it again. “And we can talk more about London later.”
“It’s already decided,” he whispers. “I can’t celebrate with you, Ilsa. I’m sorry.”