Chapter Text
The cafe would be a nice place, Ethan supposes, in some sort of alternate reality. Another timeline where he’s not sitting at this table. Where Benji isn’t staring off into space as he says the words, strapped into a bomb vest, Ilsa sitting next to him as the timer ticks down.
Ethan had come as fast as he could. Kidnapped the Prime Minister, opened the red box. But he couldn’t hand it over. He knows he can’t. And yet, when he sits down, when he sees that crease in Benji’s brow, the terror and cold stoicism in his eyes, he’d almost folded then and there.
But he didn’t. He didn’t, because the world is depending on them and also because they’ll find another way out. They have to. They have to, because there’s no other option. Because Ethan’s the one who got Benji into this mess in the first place, and therefore it’s doubly on him to fix it, to make sure this whole thing turns out alright. To make sure that Benji can come home, and then stay far, far away from him to ensure that nothing like this happens ever again, because the possibility of losing him is too much to bear. Because Ethan wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he died.
There’s a candle on the table. It flickers in his peripheral vision as Benji lists off the facts about the explosives, the Semtex, the plan. Ilsa keeps her hand on the gun under the table, but he knows that she won’t shoot Benji. They both know.
“The drive, please.” The words are cold and clipped and waver in Benji’s voice. Ethan had drilled through it, watched the crystalline fragments spin away. Lane can’t get it. Lane can’t get it, because two billion dollars is enough to do countless terrible things, kill countless people, and Ethan can’t let that happen. Can’t let either of the possibilities happen, Lane getting the money or Benji dying, and so he’ll do what he always does, find the secret third option, the hidden method where he can still make it all somewhat okay.
(He was naïve then. Even more so than usual. Nothing would ever be okay again.)
“Not until Benji’s safe.” It’s odd, looking at Benji’s face, his eyes, all of those little tells that Ethan knows like the back of his hand, but speaking to someone else. Addressing the argument to Lane, because Lane’s in control, here, Lane’s the one with the both literal and metaphorical gun to Benji’s head, but Ethan doesn’t care. Ethan doesn’t care as long as he can stop it, as long as he can save him. Ethan doesn’t care as long as Benji’s alive. That’s all that matters. His priority. The point to the whole mission.
Benji goes suddenly still. No nervous tremors, no shake in his hands.
Later, he thinks that’s when he knew something was wrong. He was still, too still, assured in himself. Alarm bells Ethan should’ve noticed, red flags he should’ve seen. Those moments that he’ll remember for the rest of his life, wracking his brain late at night, why couldn’t he have been better, why couldn’t he have done it differently, succeeded instead of failing, bringing him home in one piece, no matter the cost. Anything would be worth it, for him. He’d hand Lane all the nuclear access codes in the world in a heartbeat if it meant Benji could stay, if Benji could live, if Benji could go back home to his apartment and the CIA desk job and having a heart that still beat in his chest. That’s the only thing that matters. Even though Ethan knows it’s stupid, and selfish, he feels like that’s the only thing that’s ever mattered.
Benji’s still, too still, and Ethan feels a sense of dawning dread at it, the universe playing a cruel joke on him. Awful foreshadowing, like in a play or a horror movie, when you jump and yell at the screen can’t you see it, why can’t you stop it, the same things he will say to himself later, when he knows he can’t still fix it, when he knows he’s failed.
That little touch, that little glance that he’ll remember forever, because it came right before it. Before the world fell apart.
Benji moves ever-so-slightly, brushing his hand under the table, and Ethan reaches for him— it’ll be okay, we’ll figure it out— but his fingers slip through empty air.
“It’s alright, Ethan.”
He doesn’t remember the next few moments very well. Benji’s shaky smile at him, and the words he spends the next eternity wracking his brain trying to decipher. “It’s alright, Ethan.” But nothing is alright, nothing will be alright ever again, because then Benji takes the pocket knife he’d swiped from Ethan’s jeans and stabs the timer of the vest, digging into the sensors, gets up from his chair and turns and bolts across the street.
Ethan will try to figure out what that did, later, at night in whatever empty room he’s failing to sleep in, try to figure out what exactly Benji did to buy him enough time to get away from the crowd. To save them all. But he didn’t need to save them all because Ethan could’ve saved him, too, Ethan had the answer, he would’ve sacrificed fifty million dollars but Benji would be alive and that’s all that matters, isn’t it?
He wishes he remembered more. He wishes he remembered more, because then it would feel like Benji’s death was less useless, because then Ethan could torture himself over it further, analyze whatever he could’ve done. If he should have jumped in after him and torn the bomb vest off with his bare hands, if they could surface sputtering and shivering but alive, if, if, if.
Lane’s guards are too shocked to shoot at first, and Ethan is helpless to do anything but cry out as Benji jumps into the river. There’s a splash, and then the blast, shooting water twenty feet into the air, and he’s frozen before Ilsa grabs his forearm and starts running. The river-water is cold on his face. The explosion. The bomb vest. Nobody could survive that, surely.
Benji’s dead. Benji’s dead. It’s all he can think about as he lures Lane towards the box, as he sprints through the cramped London streets. He’s dead, he’s never coming home again, Ethan will never see him again, he’s dead and Lane killed him.
He almost shoots him, right then and there, to hell with the plan and the box and all of it. He deserves to pay for what he did, for who he hurt. Benji’s dead.
But he doesn’t. Lane lives. They turn him over to MI6, shoving him into the back of a car, and Ethan regrets not putting a bullet through his skull but at least Ilsa can get away. At least one good thing can come out of this.
Luther touches his shoulder that night at the safe house, watches the skyline with him. Normally Ethan would shrug off the touch, disappear into his own room and mourn in private, but he can’t muster the energy tonight. He feels rooted to the floor, as if taking one more step is impossible, as if he’ll be stuck here in London forever— and yet, like he’s somehow above all of it, like he’s become detached from the world like a sticker peeled off its sheet.
”I’m sorry,” Luther says, and Ethan fails to meet his gaze because the guilt is eating him alive and it’s setting in, now, the reality of it all, the could’ve-would’ve-should’ve, the infinite little timelines, if Ethan had been quicker, if he had been stronger, if he could’ve made it work. He makes a little quiet nose to let Luther know that he’s heard. There’s a long moment of silence where it’s just the two of them and their ghosts, their reflections in the window, city lights shining up at them.
“I could’ve saved him. I could’ve fixed it.” The words are ashy and bitter in his mouth. They claw their way up his throat, putting a voice to what’s been stuck in his head all night, even before the explosion, even before the bomb— I should have been better. I should have stopped it before it was too late.
Luther sighs, rubs circles into Ethan’s back. “He did a brave thing. What he thought was the right thing. Let him have that.”
Ethan leans into him, like a lost child, feeling small under the city lights, and he can feel Luther’s tears as they drip off his face. “He was a good man,” Luther says, and Ethan feels impossibly numb. It’s alright, Ethan. Nothing will be alright again. Nothing can be alright again, not with him gone.
–
Luther’s presence isn’t enough, the satisfaction of having caught Lane isn’t enough, nothing could ever be enough, and so Ethan throws himself into work wholeheartedly, pausing missions only to attend Benji’s funeral— a private affair, American flag draped over the empty coffin, because the body was unrecoverable after the explosives, after the river. He wears his nicest suit and he knows that he’ll have to burn it later because anytime he’ll put it on he’ll think of this.
It’s not a full military funeral, no jets overhead or Army band playing, but he thinks Benji would prefer it this way, or at least he tells himself that. It’s sunny, which feels almost like an offense at first, but maybe it’s better like this. Closure. Except he knows that there’s none of that, not for him, not in this line of work. Not when he goes to sleep and dreams about him every night. About what he could’ve done better.
The priest says something generic about how everyone is reunited in Heaven, and how Benjamin Dunn was a good man who gave his life for his country, and Ethan and Luther and Brandt and Jane sit quietly in the folding chairs on the grass, the only people that showed up.
He cries, afterwards, in the car he’d rented to drive to the cemetery. Not big heaving sobs but just a few tears, a single shuddered breath, before he scolds himself to get it together. The mission comes first. Eradicating the Apostles, so that Benji’s sacrifice wasn’t for nothing. That’s what Hunley tells him, too, when Ethan finally reports back to headquarters. The mission has to come first.
He shrugs off Brandt’s careful glances, Luther’s invitation to trivia night, the meetings with Hunley and the President to hammer out the details of the new IMF, all of it. He runs from city to city and then continent to continent in ever-widening circles chasing after ghosts. And he catches them, at least some of them, and that makes him feel momentarily better before the ache creeps back in and he remembers.
He does part of it to himself. Self-inflicted torture. He opens his computer, plugs in the thumb drive with the only copy of the security footage from that night, pulls up the file. Watches the video play out before his eyes again and again, stopping it just before the blast because he’s weak, because he couldn’t stop Benji’s death and now he won’t even give him the dignity of watching him die. Watching the consequences of his own fucking actions.
He’s lost people before. Of course he has. His entire first team, Lindsey, Julia— not in the same sense as the rest, but lost all the same— and yet the pain never dulls, the shock of that missing place never gone. And now that missing place is Benji’s place, and he wakes up every morning and thinks for a second about reaching out to him, checking in on how the IMF’s going, before he remembers that Benji’s gone, and his breath catches in that sort of awful way in his chest.
He dreams about him, of course, in the way he dreams about all of the people that have died because of him. He dreams in half-remembered fragments, snatches of faces and outreached hands and them all calling out for him. But with Benji there’s more, too, more than just the lurching dark nightmares, and it’s worse because it’s nice, at least at first.
The cafe. The candle flickers on the table, glints off of Ilsa’s eyes, the plastic parts of the bomb vest. People bustle around them, but they don’t matter— all that matters is Benji. Benji, sitting still, clearly nervous but holding it together, and dream-Ethan is better, stronger, faster, able to secure the deal before Benji can slash the vest open and jump. He secures the deal, and the timer stops, and the vest drops off and Benji breathes, alive alive alive, and Ethan sends him off to wait with Brandt and Luther while they catch Lane. And he runs, he runs and he fights and he wins, scrambling down to the sewers where the glass box is waiting, and they’re all there, Benji’s there, and Lane comes through and there’s a hole in the plexiglass, they’d forgotten to add the side of the box right in front of Benji, and the gun fires and the the bullet whistles as it glides, and Benji collapses like the girl in the record store with a hole through his head, and Ethan can’t fix it, Ethan can’t bring him back, and he reaches for his body but it always dissolves into ash before he can check for a pulse, Benji’s dead eyes staring into his as he rasps out “it’s alright, Ethan—“
The water from the sink is cold when he splashes it on his face, clumps his eyelashes together in front of the mirror. The porcelain is chilled under his hands and he stands there, hunched over, panting. Just a bad dream. It’s not real, he reminds himself. Benji’s gone, and he can’t fix it, not anymore. The faucet creaks and whines. Old air in the rusty pipes.
The water is cold, like the river, like when it splashed up and out after the blast. He shivers, and only then does he back away, does he straighten and dry his face with one of the threadbare towels in the safe house he’s holed up in. Belarus. The mirror is cloudy and tarnished and he’s grateful for it because it means he doesn’t have to look his reflection in the eyes.
The guilt is something he has to constantly push away, constantly fight against, the knowledge that he could have saved him but didn’t. Too slow, not enough. Benji’s hand slips through his again and again.
Finally, he turns the tap off, braces himself on the edge of the sink and hangs his head. Just a dream. He tries to take slow and even breaths and his heart eventually stops hammering in his chest. The room is cold, and he towels his face off again, rubbing the skin raw, so that he doesn’t die of hypothermia before he can complete the next mission. Because that’s all he’s there for, isn’t he? The mission. He has to stop the Apostles, the last remnants of the Syndicate. Finish what Benji started, exact his vengeance, make sure they can never hurt anyone again.
He gets dressed, alone in the little corner of the warehouse that the IMF’s converted. Shrugs on a jacket because there’s no heating and his damp hair is sapping the life from him. Someone comes by with a book, a USB drive hidden inside its carved-out pages, and he watches it play and tries to summon up the determination to care. Your mission. No illusion of choice, anymore. It’s just wasted space. Wasted time. They know he’ll accept, because he always does, because there’s no other way.
CIA Director Sloane’s voice is harsh, unforgiving, and he thinks about another disavowal, another dissolution of the IMF— but this time, with no Benji on the inside to help him.
But they won’t. He knows that. They want to keep him on a short leash, Ethan Hunt tamed, a tool for the US to point at whatever targets they need dealt with. In this case, three plutonium cores.
The video continues to play, laying out the plan. Get in. Get the cores so that the Apostles can’t blow up the entire world. Get out.
And then, the last screen, and his breath catches. It’s a low blow. But nothing's too low for the CIA, is it?
“Do it for him, Ethan.” And then a picture he didn’t even know existed, a blurry selfie he assumes has been salvaged off a digital camera, although how Benji managed to smuggle one of those with him, he has no clue. It has that sort of bad-picture charm, Benji grinning at the camera, bulky jacket and bleached buzz cut with Jane and Brandt at his side, Ethan talking to Luther at the edges of the picture, all of them smiling. He recognizes the blur, the city lights. San Francisco. Everything was easier then, wasn’t it? Before this whole mess.
“Finish what he started. Good luck, Agent Hunt.” There’s a lump in his throat, and he swallows hard and blinks as if that’ll dissuade the tears in his eyes. A puff of smoke, and the message is gone, but when he opens the book again and flips through the pages the photo falls out. It’s small, meant to be easily transportable, printed at a resolution that makes every face except for Benji’s just a blur of shapes and colors. He turns it over and over in his hands, feeling the crisp edges of it, the yellowing at the corners. Shiny polaroid paper, bad lighting, Benji’s scribbled handwriting on the back. 2011– with the crew.
He knows what the CIA is doing with this stunt. He hates that they’ve succeeded. Because he was determined before, but now it’s different, even more personal. The cafe. “It’s alright, Ethan.” His breath is shaky and he inhales and exhales slowly until it evens out, looks up at the ceiling so none of his tears will fall on the photograph. Benji’s like an old wound, something you had thought healed but then rears its head when you least expect it. Vicious ache that cuts him cleanly in half.
He curses under his breath, glances at the photograph, considers putting it in his jean pocket but decides that’s not safe enough. Settles for the little pocket in front of his heart on the leather jacket, fastens the snap. There.
If he were stronger, maybe, he’d throw it out. Crumple it in his fist and try to forget. Refuse to let the CIA control him like this. But blame the dream he had, blame the lingering thoughts of Benji’s hand slipping through his, because he allows himself the sentimentality.
His hand lingers over the pocket for a moment before he picks up his phone and dials. He’ll do it. He’ll finish the mission. For him. I’m sorry, Benji.
–
They intercept the arms deal, and Ethan keeps his shoulders back, voice smooth, casual. His hand lingers near the gun at his hip. It’s dark, and damp, and cold, but he’s faced worse. He has to do this. For him. For Benji.
Brandt is waiting in the getaway car, and Luther’s in the van, and he’s out here alone— no. No, he’s not thinking about that.
“I have the money,” he says. “Now give me the plutonium.” Easy smile. One of them hands him the briefcase, and he opens it carefully, presses the Geiger counter to each sphere. Authentic. He nods sharply, snaps the case closed.
“Transferring the funds now. Pleasure doing business with you.”
Of course it’s not that easy. When is it ever?
They fight, gunshots and the thrill of combat so that for a second he can forget everything else, focus just on the pounding of his heart and trying to not get shot. The briefcase skids across the floor and he recovers it, loses it, recovers it again. He ducks behind the car and his breath comes in fast little gasps and he shoots two of the men, reaches for the case, grabs the handle—
Luther. Luther, gun to his head, telling him not to do it. Luther, telling him he’s not worth it. Luther, who he can’t lose.
Ethan’s hand tremors, his gun shaking, and he slides the case across the ground in surrender.
Luther, who’s been with him from the start, Luther, one of the two people who still knows him, Luther, who he can’t let die just like Benji. He can save him. He will save him.
It’s alright, Ethan.
They don’t get the plutonium.
He can’t bring himself to care. Brandt drives, Luther in the front seat beside him, and Ethan stares out the window and takes the photo from his pocket and feels that wicked twist in his chest every time the streetlights illuminate Benji’s face. Eventually, though, Luther glances back at him, and he slides the photo up his sleeve in one smooth motion. He’s not ready to talk about it. Not yet. Not ever.
“You alright?” Luther’s voice is soft, and Ethan shrugs, but he half-smiles. Alright. No, he’s not alright. He’ll never be alright again. But he can’t tell them that, can’t worry them, can’t reveal just how much he’s still hurting. He just needs to play his cards right. Same old post-mission nerves. “Alright enough.”
“We’ll get ‘em next time.” Thankfully, Luther hasn’t done any of the ‘you shouldn’t have saved me’ song-and-dance. Which is good, because Benji is still fresh in his mind, another exchange— helping terrorists in exchange for his friends’ lives. But he’d do it, he would, every single time.
“The CIA won’t be happy,” Brandt says. He’s white-knuckling the wheel and takes his turns a little too sharply. “The CIA’s never happy. Especially not with us.” Ethan chuckles at Luther’s words, even though the reminder of it sends a shock through him. Finish what he started.
He lets the polaroid fall back into his palm, turns it over and rubs his thumb over the words. That’s what he does this all for, doesn’t he? To save people. He won’t fail again.
—
True to Brandt’s word, the CIA isn’t exactly pleased. Still, Ethan didn’t think they’d give him a bodyguard. Especially not one so utterly useless as Walker.
He knows what this is, the rage, the sort of empty void that seems ever-present. The polaroid burning a hole in his pocket. He knows what this is because he felt the same thing when Davian shot not-Julia in Shanghai twenty years ago, and he knows what this is because he then pushed Davian in front of an eighteen-wheeler.
Except Lane’s in prison. Lane’s in prison, and Ethan can’t kill him because then all the governments of the world will be at his throat for robbing them of their chance at ‘justice,’ so he’ll just have to bottle up his anger and try his best not to lash out at the CIA watchdog that’s following his every move as if he’ll do a backflip off a building at any moment.
They don’t talk on the plane. The roar of the engines drown out any words he would want to say, anyway. Like just shut up and let me do my job and don't mess this up and don’t say you’re sorry for my loss, because I know you’re not. So it’s quiet, and he gets his helmet on, hooks up the oxygen. Stares out into the storm and jumps because he’s a man with nothing to lose.
For him. He’s doing this for him. Everything he does is for him.
He knows it’s dangerous, tying his motivations to a dead man. To a man that he wanted– well. None of it matters, now that he’s gone, now that Ethan’s left alone again. No use hoping.
The storm batters him, and he spins, tossed like a leaf in the wind. Lightning cracks right next to his face. He catches glimpses of Walker on the edge of his vision as they wheel through the sky together, dropping further and further towards Paris, towards the gala. Towards catching John Lark.
Walker, like the dead weight he is, gets his oxygen tank blown off. Ethan should let him die. Retribution, karma. But the photo is heavy in his pocket and so instead he dives, reaches out, grasps. Slips off his own oxygen, lets his lungs constrict. The clouds are wet and thin and they’re still plummeting. The air whistles right past his lungs, means he gets no breath in, and he watches as the city lights come up to meet him watches as his parachute doesn’t activate—
No. Finish what he started.
They make it to the party, landing hard on the glass roof but landing nonetheless, and the pain of the blow ricochets through him before he pushes past it. Shrugs off the gear, all the tubes and wire and fabric. Walker makes some snide comment about how Ethan lost his oxygen tank and Ethan wants to punch him, but he won’t. Because they both know that he won’t hurt someone like that. Won’t hurt someone that’s a part of the team, even if he doesn’t like it.
He fixes his tie in the mirror of the bathroom where they’ve disposed of the presumably-John-Lark and brushes dust off his lapels, feels the barely-there bump of the photo tucked into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He spits blood into the sink.
“Good to go?” Walker says, irritatingly put-together. Ethan straightens, avoids his own gaze in the mirror. “Never been better.”
The party is one of those affairs he’s come to despise, slick silk dresses and stiff suits and pretending. The music pounds like a second heartbeat in his head and he takes a single sip of champagne before deciding it’s too much and discarding the rest.
He and Walker make their way to the inner sanctum, to the faux-speakeasy with its brass fixtures and old-timey microphone and Alanna Mitsopolis in her white dress. He puts on the mask again, suave secret agent. Lone wolf but in that sort of movie-star way rather than the truth, lonely in a way that makes him mysterious instead of broken. Flashes just the right amount of teeth. Alanna winks and whispers an address in his ear.
The deal. Plutonium for Lane.
He’s sure Walker can tell the way his shoulders stiffen, and maybe this was the real point of this mission, of sending some CIA soldier here with him. So Walker could point a gun to the back of his head and tell him to do it. So Walker could make sure Ethan didn’t strangle Lane before they could get what they came for.
There’s no other choice. He says yes, he’ll do it, and Alanna smiles.
–
He sees his face, harsh lines and hateful eyes, the same even underneath that godawful beard, and maybe it’s for the best that Walker’s here because he very nearly just bashes his head against the side of the prison bus again and again until he’s gone for good. Until he’s tasted what it’s like, felt a fraction of what Benji felt. Until Ethan’s absolutely certain that Lane’s well and truly dead. That Lane can’t hurt anyone else.
But he can’t, because they need him, so he funnels all of his energy into the chase, into slamming on the gas of the stolen truck, making their way through narrow Parisian streets to where Luther and Brandt wait with the boat. With Lane, dragged out of the river.
The river. The river, that Lane gets to exit alive but Benji didn’t. The river, splashing his face as the blast goes off, the bomb vest, Benji, gone–
He’s white-knuckling the wheel, and Walker has to tell him sharply that they need to turn here to make it to the motorcycle pick-up point or else they’ll be arrested by the French police and sent to international prison. “You think I don’t know that?” Ethan mutters under his breath, and he hits the accelerator and tries to let the roar of the engine drown out all of his thoughts. They kick out the windshield, and his motorcycle doesn’t start and for a second he thinks that he’d be okay, maybe, if he got caught here, if they shot him down– no. No, he needs to deal with Lane. Needs to ensure that he can’t pull off whatever he’s scheming.
The engine roars to life under him, purring steadily, and he kicks up and off the cobblestones and into the daylight.
They finally make it into the boat, after a series of vehicle changes and high-speed chases and reckless moments, bullets whizzing inches away from him, Ilsa and her dark shadow, Alanna’s men. Lane’s head stays in the bag which is good because if Ethan could see his face he would’ve killed him by now.
I’ll fucking kill you, I swear to god, don’t you dare touch her. Ten years ago, Shanghai and the bomb in his head, except now it’s too late, now Benji’s already dead. He grits his teeth and can feel the way a vein jumps in his neck but the pain feels right, feels necessary as they advance through the sewers. Lane is perfectly still at the bottom of the boat and Brandt keeps his hands steady on the wheel and their wake is thankfully small enough so that Ethan doesn’t have to feel the water on his face, doesn’t have to be reminded of it all, the way the river had burst out of its confines with the force of the blast, the way that– no. No, he can’t think about that right now.
He’ll finish the mission. No matter what, he’ll finish the mission. He can’t let this stop him. He won’t let this stop him.
They get in the car, and he’s right next to Lane, and Ilsa is shooting at them and he could let her. He could let her finish it. Let her avenge Benji, let her break free of MI6. But he still swerves when she fires. He tries to think of it as selflessness, the fact that they need Lane alive to get the plutonium and stop nuclear war, but deep down he knows the reason: he wants to kill him himself.
“That was Ilsa,” Lane finally says when they’re alone, Brandt and Luther and Walker having piled out of the car while Ethan tries to distract the trained secret agent currently attempting to kill them. He can’t lose any more of his friends in this job.
His hands tighten on the wheel. “Shut up.” The words are cutting, biting, no eye-roll or banter. He tries to distract himself from the thoughts of putting a bullet through Lane’s head.
“Good to see you again, Ethan.” There’s a lightness to it that’s entirely unbecoming of the situation. He tries to take slow, deep breaths, murderous intent only stopped by the fact that he needs both hands to drive and can’t pull out his handgun and shoot him without ending up bent around a lightpole.
“Shut up,” he hisses through his teeth again, and thankfully Lane does as if he can tell that Ethan is dangerously close to putting them both at the bottom of the river.
Finally, after another altercation with the French police, after another chase and another close call, they reach their destination. The car pulls into the warehouse and Ethan slams the car door with too much force as he exits. Brandt drags Lane out, which is a relief because if Ethan did it he might just end up throwing him onto the floor and they need Lane at least mostly alive for this whole thing to work.
Alive. They need to keep him alive. And he needs to keep it together. For the team. For him. He stands there for a moment beside the car, watching from the shadows, trying to focus on the swaying of the trees through the thin sliver of window at the top of the wall.
Breathe in, breathe out. Try to ignore the racing of his heart, the way all of it is flashing through his mind, Benji’s hand in his. The blast. Lane, the man that killed him, right here so close and he could do it couldn’t he, so easy, he’s killed so many other men why not this one– no. No, no. He won’t. He can’t.
Only when Lane’s tied to the chair and they have to put the new tracker in his neck does Ethan stop his self-isolation. Luther shoots him a questioning glance, and he brushes it off, mouths an ‘I’m fine,’ when Brandt looks his way too. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. He’ll complete the mission. He has to.
Brandt jabs Lane with the tracker, muttering something about how it won’t hurt– enough. Ethan’s mind is red. Red, Lane’s blood splattering on the walls, the color of his heart if he sliced him open, the color of the timer on the bomb vest.
Keep it together, Ethan.
“You and your apostles think that we’re going to trade you for the plutonium. I’m here to tell you that’s never going to happen.” He sits down opposite Lane, looking him dead in the eyes, not afraid, in control. His voice is perfectly steady. Finish what he started.
“Your mission, should you choose to accept it.” Lane’s voice rasps and echoes through the emptiness, and Ethan goes still. Luther’s poised at his neck, waiting for the timer to run out, to finish the tracker implanting process. Ninety seconds, before Luther can pull the old one out of Lane’s throat and get it far far away from them. Ninety seconds. It feels like ten years.
“I wonder, Ethan, did you ever choose not to? Ever wonder, just for a second, who was giving the orders or why?” The words are too much, too loud, and they worm their way under his skin. Ethan glances at the timer. A minute left. A minute left of this, of staying quiet, giving no reaction because if he does that means that Lane has won.
“While every day, the master you serve moves one step closer towards ending the world.” The chill nips at his fingers. His jacket is not enough. Goosebumps rise on the back of his neck.
“Strange accusation coming from a terrorist.” Luther’s voice is strained but his hands don’t shake as he holds the needle. Lane’s eyes stay on Ethan, the contact now grating, as if his gaze is drilling into his skull.
“Terrorists are schoolboys, desperate for attention, hoping to shape public opinion through fear.” The weight of the eye contact itches, and his gun is a comforting presence at his hip, and Lane is still looking at him and the clock is ticking down but not fast enough–
“I don’t care in the least what people think or feel. In my experience, they don’t do either for very long.” Lane’s face moves with the words, impassioned, twitches of his brow and flashes of his teeth. His eyes snap back to Ethan from wherever they’d focused on, whatever fantasy he’d envisioned of a world razed down to the roots, just ash and dust.
“I am sorry for your friend, though.”
The words are like a bomb going off. He knows what Lane’s doing. He knows what he’s doing, what he’s trying, and he hates that he’s successful in it but all he sees is red.
The chair Ethan’s sitting in falls with a clatter. He’s standing, and then he’s moving, and then he’s on him before he fully realizes it, pushing him to the floor, hands on his neck, squeezing, tighter and tighter and Lane chokes under his grasp and it’s not enough, he needs to end it, he needs to kill him just like how he killed Benji, needs to make it hurt.
Lane’s looking up at him with genuine fear in his eyes and for a moment he revels in it. Let him be afraid. Let him feel exactly what Benji felt, let him feel exactly what every single one of those people he killed felt in their last moments. Something cracks in Lane’s neck and it’s not enough.
Lane smiles. He’s choking to death, Ethan’s hands coming closer and closer around his neck, and he smiles.
For just a moment, his grip loosens and Lane sucks in a heaving breath and Ethan knows that he’ll regret it forever.
Someone’s hands are on his shoulders, dragging him away before throwing him onto the floor and the pain ricochets through his head and he doesn’t even care, struggles to his feet before falling again, blood rushing heart pumping just let him at him, let him finish it–
The click of a gun. Walker. His shadow falls over him, concrete cold under his back, radiating chill up his spine. There’s a sort of distant ringing in his ears. Sound returns to him slowly, like he’s underwater, Brandt telling Walker to stand down and Luther just saying his name over and over like in that plane, Davian dangling out into the storm, “Ethan, Ethan.”
Right. He can’t kill him. He can’t, because they need to trade him for the plutonium, and he’s shown his hand now in regards to his weak spot and the adrenalin is wearing off and leaving him hollow.
He gets up slowly, carefully, and finally Walker lowers his gun and Ethan stands shakily only now just realizing what he’s done, and Lane laughs from where he’s sprawled on the floor, still tied to the remnants of his chair, reduced wooden splinters on the concrete. There is blood in Ethan’s mouth. It tastes like pennies and dead things and he swallows but it doesn’t go away.
“You should have killed me, Ethan.” Lane’s voice is even worse than before, words tripping over each other, vocal chords crushed and mangled. “The end you’ve always feared is coming.” His breathing whistles through his mouth and struggles through his lungs, labored, whether with the force of his fanaticism or the damage to his windpipe. “It’s coming. And their blood will be on your hands. Just like his.”
Luther gets the tracker out, kneeled over Lane’s body on the floor. Helicopter blades chop up the sky overhead and Ethan’s chest heaves and something in his ribs is broken and he thinks he bit his tongue when he hit the floor, but he stays still. He won’t give Lane the satisfaction. His vision blurs and his hands shake but he won’t give him this much, won’t let Lane use him, too, won’t let Lane take control of Benji’s loss to puppet him.
He watches as Brandt pulls Lane to his feet, escorts him to the other side of the warehouse, away from the circle of sunlight. Watches as Walker finally tucks his gun back into his belt. Watches as Luther pilots the drone so that the police will get off their backs. Watches, but can’t erase the memory of it, Lane’s words, his laugh. Their blood will be on your hands.
He goes to see Alanna, and he tells himself that it’s for the deal and not just because if he spends one more second in that warehouse he might just snap for good. Not just because he’s starting to think that Lane might be right. Benji’s blood is on his hands. Not fast enough, not quick enough, not strong or smart or resourceful enough. It’s alright, Ethan.
The taste of his own blood lingers like a stain. He rinses his mouth out in the sink, water splashing onto his face, but iron still clots the back of his palate and when he sees his reflection in the mirror, he punches the glass until his knuckles bleed. It’s not enough.
It’s not enough, and so he watches the video again that night, the footage of the river, the cafe. Grainy little jerky movements. The three of them, sitting at that table.
The explosion. The blast. He shuts the screen off and the blood from his hand smears across the metal. It’s not enough, just like it wasn’t enough back then, but he’ll be better. He has to be. He tries to sleep on the plane and it replays across his mind again and again, seared on the backs of his eyelids, a reminder. A promise.
He can’t mess this up. He’s doing all of this for him, for Benji, and he can’t afford to mess this up. Finish what he started.
Whatever it takes. Even if he has to leave Lane alive. He’ll be enough. There’s no other option.
–
He sits in the back of the van, leaning up against the doors, trying to ignore the way Lane’s looking at him, the way Walker’s got a grip on his gun. The bruises have already blossomed across Lane’s throat and Ethan can see them black and blue on pale, paper-thin skin. Their blood will be on your hands.
His mouth is dry, and he swallows, tastes metal. The van bumps over the London streets— potholes and sewer grates and cobblestones. They jolt as they go over a particularly rough bump and Luther yells a “sorry!” that’s muffled through the plexiglass screen. Brandt had offered his seat in the front to him, but Ethan didn’t want to leave any of them alone with Lane, not when this is his cross to bear. The end you’ve always feared is coming. Lane’s words have wormed into his head, and now his mind reels in a sort of delirium. Paranoia distilled and poured right into his ear. There’s something wrong, a plan, a plot, but he doesn’t know what and it’s driving him just a little insane. Maybe more than a little.
Alanna calls, says it’s time to meet the dealer, and he should be relieved but danger prickles on the back of his neck.
Another warehouse. Another set of catacombs, arches and more mildewed brick and chickenwire fencing. Hunley, waiting for them, Ethan’s file in hand.
“What the hell happened?”
Brandt tries to defend him, and Ethan appreciates it. Really, he does. But they all know it’s a lost cause, with how he is now, agent on the loose, half-mad with his grief and on a hairpin trigger. “It’s my fault,” he says, and Hunley shakes his head. Not enough.
The buzz of the lights now grates on his ears and the photograph is stiff in his pocket and rubs up against his skin through the thin fabric barrier. It’s worn with age but it feels like a knife, like any one of the corners will cut him right open. He aches from being thrown onto the concrete and he can feel the dull pain settling in his shoulders from Walker’s grip. “We were told to come to London and await further instruction. The courier will give us our missing plutonium in exchange for Lane– or, in this case, Brandt.”
Brandt glances at him but says nothing. Small mercies. Everyone’s been walking on eggshells around him, and he knows why but he’s still wholly unused to it, would almost wish everything were just the same as it was before. Snarky comments and jabs about how Ethan’s the stuntman, why can’t he do it?
“Absolutely not.” Walker’s voice is low, dangerous. Ethan doesn’t stiffen. The IMF beat that out of him a long time ago. But he does recognize what this is, what this means, the rift it’ll tear through the team.
“Our mission, my mission, is to recover that plutonium, and I will do so at any cost.” Walker’s close, too close, boxing him in, and Ethan bites his tongue to stop the memories reeling through his mind of his hands on Lane’s neck, Walker tossing him to the ground. “Even if I have to trade Lane. The real Lane.” He’s braced himself on the table, looking ever-so-slightly up at Ethan with darkness in his eyes, a sort of cold determination in the set of his brow.
“And I will never let him go.” Ethan can’t. Can’t let Lane out, because then there will just be more blood on his hands, more of his friends’ blood on his hands, and he can’t do that again. Can’t let that happen again.
“Once the Apostles realize you’re playing games–”
“Let us worry about the Apostles.” He won’t back down. Not on this. He’ll die on this hill if he has to, bleed out in dizzying Technicolor, if it means that Brandt and Luther live. “We have a bigger problem.” He has to change the conversation. Dispel some of the tension before it becomes too late.
A bigger problem. He grimaces at the thought of Ilsa. Ilsa, trapped, on the same track he’d been in all those years ago, victim of the system. Distrusted. Needing to prove herself through a trial by fire.
Isn’t he in the same situation, now? Ethan Hunt, a broken man, on a mission that seems to just spiral farther and farther down. “Ilsa’s been sent by MI6 to kill Lane.”
“If she’s sent to kill Lane, and I’m Lane…” Brandt starts, tone picking up speed as he continues, that familiar worry bleeding into his voice— “she’ll kill me!” He pushes back from the table and starts to pace, and Ethan watches him, feels helpless and hates it.
“I won’t let that happen,” Ethan replies, and it’s not enough. “And how do you plan on doing that, exactly?” Brandt rubs at his brow, finally having put the pacing on hold, and Ethan stops dead in his metaphorical tracks.
He– he can’t. Not really. He can’t stop her. He can’t control anything, can he? Lane’s gotten right where he wants to be, and something in Walker’s gaze is setting off all his alarms, and the room is too dark and too cramped and yet too big at the same time. Too much room for gunmen in the shadows.
“Just trust me,” he says. It’s a flimsy excuse and he knows it. Brandt sighs, looks up at him with sad eyes, shakes his head. “Fine. Okay.” It’s quiet again, save for the distant rumble of car engines, the blaring of horns. Pedestrian life. So close, and yet so far removed from their current situation that it might as well be on another planet.
“The meeting’s coming up. We should get Brandt ready. Luther, are you—“
“The meeting is a set-up,” Hunley says, and Ethan stops because he thinks he knows where this is going. Ethan thinks he knows where this is going because he’s been here before, twice, ten and twenty years ago. The words ring through his head over and over, set-up.
He only catches snippets of the conversation. Snippets, but enough to put the pieces together. Long and incriminating history of rogue behavior… corroborate a CIA narrative that Hunt has snapped.
The files are spread out on the table and he tries to look at them but they all blur in his vision, sharp edges and fragments of letters and ink bleeding through the paper. “I’m not Lark.” He doesn’t have time to be Lark, not in between the missions and the grief threatening to swallow him whole. “Listen to me, I’m not Lark.” Julia, the agents bringing him down in the parking lot, the muzzle–
“I’m here to bring you in, Hunt. My orders are to terminate this mission and hand over Solomon Lane personally.” Hunley adjusts his cufflinks, and Ethan lets the papers scatter across the floor, because he can’t. He knows where this is going and he can’t stop it, he never stops it. Not enough. Benji’s fingers, slipping through his. The crack of the plastic as the knife sunk into the timer.
“Sir, you can’t do that.” Desperate, paranoid. He knows how this looks. Brandt shoots him another pointed glance but he just steamrolls right over it because he has to warn him, he has to tell him, Lane has a plan he can sense it but what–
“No, I know Lane. He has no intentions of going back. Which means you taking him back is exactly what he wants us to do. Ilsa, the Widow… Don’t you see? We’re being directed. This, sir, is the trap.”
Hunley is still. Hunley is terribly, terribly still. Ethan knows how this ends.
“I was given the choice between protecting the IMF and protecting you, Hunt, which is why I’m bringing you in.”
“And if I don’t?” He’s sure they’re thinking the same thing, all those layers in that don't, the very real threat that Ethan won’t be cooperative. Don’t follow orders, don’t come when called, don’t let you do this.
Hunley’s gaze skips over to Walker. Walker, with the gun. Walker, who threw him onto the concrete, Walker, who was sent on this mission to make sure he didn’t fuck it up again.
“The CIA wanted insurance. If you go rogue, he’s authorized to hunt you down–” a pause, as if Hunley doesn’t want to say the words, but Ethan just looks up at him, refusing to let him get away with silence– “and kill you.” Hunley finishes, and his throat bobs but he makes no other indicator of emotion. Trained agent, feelings repressed, the mission comes first. Just the job. Nothing personal.
“Accept it, Ethan. What’s done is done.” They both know they’re not talking about the plutonium cores. It’s alright, Ethan.
The extra sedative dart is in his hand before he even knows what he’s doing, leftover from securing Lane, and he jabs it into Hunley’s neck and presses down on the plunger. Hunley sucks in a strangled breath and tries to reach up to pull it out but his muscles fail and his eyes roll back before he can reach it. Luther lowers him to the floor and Ethan stands, like a wild animal, turns to Walker. Walker, who he knows, Walker, who he knows is Lark, he just has to prove it.
“We’re the only ones who can get you that plutonium. Are you in or out?”
“In.”
Hook, line, and sinker. It doesn’t feel like much of a victory.
–
It’s odd, seeing two Lanes, seeing Brandt dressed as his worst enemy. Ethan loads his handgun with practiced movements and listens to the magazine click. “If you don’t hear from us…” playing the part of concern, needing to make just-in-cases. Weak. Putting that theatre degree to good use, he guesses.
Walker glances up at him, confident, arrogance radiating from him. Too easy. “I’ll do it my way,” he says, almost-smiling, and Ethan cocks his gun and keeps the safety on because if he doesn’t he’ll do something he regrets.
They catch Walker, and it’s nowhere near as satisfying as it should be. The camera blinking, Brandt doing a scarily good impression, I’m not done with Hunt yet. Walker seems exasperated, and Ethan would bet that there’s a division in the remnants of the Syndicate, those with Lane and those against. He’s not entirely sure where Walker fits, yet, but the information is useful nonetheless.
Hunley and Brandt are good at their jobs, good at their roles, and he knows he should be glad because he’s been cleared, he’s home free, but there’s still the problem that he knows Lane wouldn’t arrange this unless there was a failsafe, some other way. They’re not out of the woods yet.
Walker stands in front of him, careful, poised, two guns pointing at him but still with his chin high. He calls Ethan paranoid, delusional, and he wishes he could disagree but he can’t, can he? Look at him, unwilling to leave Lane alone even for a moment, convinced that a SWAT team will melt out of the shadows. Maybe it will. The CIA does what it wants, and they’re certainly not thrilled at this development.
Sloane says over the phone that she’s bringing them all in. He wishes he didn’t predict it. Being right doesn’t feel good when it means that they’re undoubtedly going to be brought back to Washington or have to fight their way out. Sloane hangs up, Hunley staring at the black screen, muttering something about how she can’t do this.
But she can, and she has, because someone’s here. Multiple someones. Soldiers, maybe, or policemen, sent to facilitate their arrest.
The lights turn off.
He pulls his gun on instinct, hands steady even though his heart is racing. He knows he’s out in the open, exposed between the arches, and he hates it but at this point it’s too late to move or they’ll shoot. And he can’t be incapacitated, because he has to finish the mission, he has to bring Lane to justice, he’s not done yet.
The men come thundering in with their American accents and he knows. Lane’s face twitches into something like a smile, just like when Ethan had his hands around his neck, the cold chill of victory. His heart races, but there are too many of them, too many variables to track. Brandt and Hunley drop their weapons, and he doesn’t, he can’t–
“Go.”
The word is clear, carefully enunciated in Walker’s voice, smug. Gunfire fills the air and it’s too dark, too cramped, too many walls and corridors, but he’s painfully exposed, caught in the crossfire. For a minute he’s frozen, deer in headlights, before he has the good sense to act.
Lane’s still standing, clumsy with his hands cuffed in front of him, not having sprung into action yet– maybe the prison life has made him weak– and Ethan grabs for him immediately. As loathe as he is to admit it, it’s his one bit of leverage.
He pulls him in front of him, so that Lane’s too close for any sniper’s comfort, and presses the muzzle of his gun to his temple. Their collective breathing is ragged and their hearts are both racing and he hates it, hates that he’s been reduced to this, using him as a human shield, but everyone here needs Lane alive and this seems like the only way to keep Brandt and Luther safe, too.
“Call them off, Walker.” The metal is cold in his hand. His finger is resting on the trigger, but he doesn’t pull it, not yet. “Call them off or Lane dies.”
He squints against the searchlights, arm cutting across Lane’s throat in a headlock. It would be so easy to break his neck. Just one motion, one little twist, and it would be all over. Or maybe it would be more satisfying to shoot him, to send the bullet through his skull— but no. Both of those methods are too quick. Too merciful for a man like him.
He knows that Ilsa’s here, somewhere. Hopefully she can cover Brandt and Luther for him while he does this. Hopefully, if there’s still any goodwill between them, she’ll let him do this.
He can’t see anything in the alternating darkness and glare, so he just hopes that someone can hear him, that he’s not calling out into empty air. There is the sound of metal on metal– but that of a smooth machine, carefully calibrated, and he wonders for a second if this is another one of Lane’s devices. Some sort of elaborate contraption to get back at him for the glass box.
There’s a noise. Voices echoing off the walls. Trying to keep quiet, but nothing’s quiet, not here with the arched ceilings and the dense brick and the tunnels and side corridors. Walker— and another man, something familiar, slightly accented. “—weren’t supposed to bring it,” Walker grits out, Ethan filling in the blanks of the syllables too garbled to understand. It? A bomb, maybe. Completed with the missing plutonium. Wouldn’t that be ironic.
But they wouldn’t do that, not with Lane here. Not when there’s too much at stake. No, there’s something else at play here. Some other trick.
More muffled conversation, words pinging off the walls like bullets. “You wanted backup. Well, here it is.” Finally it clicks, and he’s able to put a face to a name. Janik Vinter. He wishes he could say that he’s surprised he’s still alive, but with his current circumstances, it’s just unpleasant. “I was supposed to–”
“You’re no longer in charge, Walker. Step aside.”
An interesting development, but it doesn’t change anything. Vinter still wants Lane alive, which means Ethan still has a chance.
“Call them off,” he says again, feeling like he’s talking to ghosts. “Call them off or he dies. Your choice, Vinter.” The gun is cold, so cold, freezing in his hand.
He remembers the cafe, Lane’s words, feels the rage reignite from its low summer behind his heart. Benji’s hand slipping through his. The blast. The river.
“And if you think I won’t do it, here’s your proof.” He aims the gun lower, squeezes the trigger, listens to Lane’s strangled gasp and the bang of the gun and feels the warmth of the blood seeping from his shoulder. The relative silence is so loud. Walker must’ve signaled, or maybe Ethan really has snapped, senses entirely untethered from reality. He sees flashes of red in his vision, hallucinations, echoes of the timer counting down. But he’s not there. He’s not there, this is what matters, the present is what matters, he has to fix this or else Benji’s death will have been for nothing.
Lane’s breathing is ragged, and Ethan shifts his grip to press on the bullet wound, both to make sure he doesn’t bleed out and to make it hurt, to not let him dissociate and forget. Lane’s blood is on his hands, tacky and red in the occasional glint of the fading searchlights. He can’t bring himself to care.
A moment later, and the gunfire has started up again, albeit duller. Farther away. Maybe the battle is moving deeper into the tunnels. The CIA trying, and failing, to root out the rot within itself.
But he doesn’t have time to worry about the CIA. He needs to take care of this, first, make sure that his friends are alright, that they can walk out of here even if it means they lose the plutonium. Nothing matters, as long as they all live. As long as he doesn’t lose anyone else.
He makes a show of aiming even lower, towards Lane’s side, towards the important organs and things you really do not want pieces of metal in, squeezes the trigger down just enough to make it seem like there’s a real threat to it–
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Walker tries to play it easy, but Ethan can tell from the momentary waver in his voice that he’s thinking back to Paris, to the way he’d needed to rip Ethan off of him. How Ethan could, and would, kill Lane without a moment’s hesitation. “Not when your whole team is here.”
The searchlight sweeps over them. Ethan’s breath catches. Bombs. All over the corridor, those little blinking red lights, not hallucinations but rather his worst nightmares come to life. Vinter stands beside Walker, holding a little stick in his hand, carefully running his thumb over the button. There’s another figure at his side. Someone that Ethan doesn’t recognize, what with the SWAT gear and all, but holding a gun and standing with them, and that tells him all he needs to know.
“Hand Lane over, and they live.”
It’s alright, Ethan.
He won’t lose anyone else.
He can hear them, behind him, around him. Echoes of voices he can’t tell are real or fake. Shadows darting across the brick. “I got them out, Ethan. They’re safe.” Hunley’s voice. He doesn’t glance towards him, because he can’t be distracted, that’s what they want, what Lane wants. His blood is seeping into Ethan’s shirt and he can feel it against his skin and he hates it.
Brandt and Luther are safe. They’re safe. The relief fills him completely, they’re safe, it doesn’t matter they’re safe— but Hunley’s still here, and Ethan still has a mission to complete, and they’re not done yet.
“Put the detonator down and we’ll talk,” he says, unflinching, hands steady, nothing betraying the turmoil he feels on the inside. This time, he can save him. This time, he can fix it. He can feel Hunley walking up to him, can feel his presence settle just behind his left side. Comforting. At least now it’s a two-against-three.
“Put the detonator down, Vinter. I’ll hand over Lane, and you hand over the detonator, and nobody gets hurt.”
He hates that he’s doing this. There’s no other choice.
“Exchange on three,” Vinter finally says. Good. Good. His hand strays from the button, and Ethan finally can take a full breath again.
“One, two…”
He shoves Lane forward, at the same time that the detonator drops to the ground, right before the gunshot rings out.
Ethan stills, expecting pain, expecting for it to be finally over. Dying in a dank tunnel underground, disavowed again, unable to bring the man who killed— who killed Benji to justice. But the pain doesn’t come, and he turns, and even before he sees it he knows what’s happened. What they’ve done. What Ethan’s failed to do.
Hunley’s mouth opens, a sort of quiet surprise. Ethan can see the bullet hole– small, clean, precise– right through his heart, and his lungs make a sort of wet gasping noise, and he knows that this is the plan, that Lane and his apostles are getting away, but he can’t muster enough rage to override the black hole yawning open inside him. The hate will come later, he knows, but for now he just feels empty, empty because he couldn’t save him, empty because he did everything he could and it still wasn’t enough.
Walker grabs Lane, handling him roughly in a way that makes Vinter glare at him. “Let’s go,” Walker says, voice strained, but the masked man stays. The unknown variable.
His gun is still raised, smoke wafting from the barrel, ready to take the shot. To kill Ethan right here, let him bleed out next to Hunley, and for a long moment he just waits for the end. It wouldn’t be so bad, would it? He knew that this was how he was going to die, alone, from the moment he joined the IMF. Because Ethan wasn’t good enough. Because Ethan wasn’t fast enough, smart enough, strong enough to save him– because he can’t save anyone, can he?
The pain doesn’t come. He waits, and for the second time, the pain still doesn’t come. The gun lowers, the light reflecting oddly off of his right hand, glinting like metal. A prosthetic, maybe. He’s too lost in the details, trying to focus on anything but the body next to him, the bombs lining the walls. He can taste his heartbeat in his throat.
“Run,” the man says in Russian, and Ethan opens his mouth stupidly to say something— why, why didn’t you do it, why not me, why did you kill him and not me— but then the blasts start and the words die on his tongue.
Light. Heat. The bricks crack and the air is too hot, scorching his lungs, the masked man now just a dark blur against the flames. The explosion knocks some sense into him, enough to know that he shouldn’t reach out again.
He does as he says. He runs. He’ll hate himself for it, but he runs.
The air is cool on his face and he staggers back to the safehouse where Brandt and Luther are waiting and Lane’s blood is still hot and Hunley’s death is playing through his mind on loop and nothing is right, nothing is right because he couldn’t save Hunley, couldn’t save Benji, can’t seem to do anything to stop Lane from continuing to just take and take.
He’ll find them. He’ll find them all, Walker and Lane and Hunley’s killer. He knows that revenge isn’t the answer. But it seems like the only way, now. The only way to end this once and for all. He won’t let Lane hurt anyone else. He can’t.
I’m sorry, Benji.