Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ethan isn’t surprised when Ilsa disappears after Kashmir. 

She stands beside him as he lays in the hospital tent. Running her fingers through his hair and looking at him as if he might disappear at any second as she laughs along with Benji’s ridiculous line. It’s soft and warm and tender. The rest of the world melts away. It’s her hands working to counteract the excruciating pain lancing through him every time he breathes. 

And then she’s gone. 

He’s stuck in the hospital tent, waiting for his ribs to stitch themselves back together. Benji and Luther leave sometime in the first week. Before they jet off to Istanbul on a new assignment, Benji comes in to say goodbye.

”Catch up with us when you’re better, yeah?” Benji’s right hand rests on Ethan’s shoulder as he adjusts his duffle bag on his left side. 

Ethan covers Benji’s hand with his own. “Don’t do anything stupid until I get there.” His voice is still gentle. Any increase in his breathing sends jolts of pain across his shattered ribs. 

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Benji steps back and steps back, smiling softly. “Rest, Ethan. Please, actually rest this time.” He huffs a small laugh shaking his head before he turns and walks back into the daylight outside the tent. 

With that, Ethan is left alone. He thinks this is the cruelest part, despises being alone and at rest. On a mission, his body is in motion, momentum carrying him forward. He can use his mind to calculate the next move, outthink the enemy. But at rest? At rest is when his mind and body are no longer working in unison. His mind is restless, always working, positioning, calculating - worrying. Always worrying. Especially once he’s seen off the rest of the team to jobs he can’t currently follow them on. He can’t step in the line of fire if he isn’t there, forced to lay there immobilized in his mind as he imagines every scenario going wrong. His mind is always running the probabilities.

But his body has come to a crashing halt, quite literally this time. The momentum of a job allows him to keep pushing his body forward, disregard what he’s doing to it. There are greater things at stake. It’s only in the quiet moments like these, when the threat is eliminated and the mission is fulfilled, that he’s forced to come to terms with the turmoil he’s inflicted on himself. Sometimes, prone in the aftermath like this, he thinks he can feel the phantom pain of every injury and stupid action he’s taken over the years. Like his body is trying to make him come to terms with what his mind is avoiding - he’s getting older. 

Twenty years ago when he was fresher, more naive, slamming his body around a moving train had been easy to bounce back from. But he’s older now and he’s pretty sure those aches have come back, at least whenever he’s stuck like this. Forced to confront his own age and his inability to stop unless his body is blown out from under him. 

And seeing Julia again? That reminder had sunk deep into his bones, outlining aches he thought he had forgotten, physical and mental. Because there was a time, a time with her, where he had hoped for his future. Maybe he would get to leave this behind. Back when he had fewer aches and pains. He would get to retire and let himself rest. 

He’s not that naive now. Seeing Julia happily married and fulfilled in the work she was always meant to do closed that chapter of his life. There is no happily retired for him. He is going to keep pushing his body for the greater good and it is going to kill him one day. 

—

Ethan probably, definitely, gets out of that hospital bed too early. Standing up feels like lifting a car as his still tender ribs crunch in as he bends. But he’s going to go stir crazy if he keeps lying here, and someone needs this bed far more than he does, so he wipes the pain off of his face and assures the Doctor attending him that he’s fine to leave. 

The IMF, likely by way of the CIA Director, left him a car. He gingerly walks towards it, trying to keep the limp out of his step even as every impact sends waves of lingering pain through him. He has his bag thrown in the backseat and is reaching for the front door handle when the voice stops him. 

“Ethan.” Julia’s voice cuts through the general hum of the hospital camp. Ethan shuts his eyes, squeezing the door handle before turning to face her. 

Ethan reads people well, it’s part of the job, and there’s so much she’s offering him that he’ll likely spend the rest of his life cataloging everything in his mind. 

“I - “

”Julia-“

They both start at the same time. It’s a lot. It’s familiar. It’s foreign. All at once. Honestly it’s a little bit awkward. Ethan’s thought of hundreds of things he might tell Julia if their circumstances were different. But their hands were dealt long ago and none of those matter now. They’re both looking at ghosts. At faces that are familiar but people that are strangers. 

Perhaps if he were younger, if more time hadn’t passed, if he hadn’t met - , maybe he would feel worse, having to face her again. As it stands Ethan looks at her and sees what Julia always should have been. Happy, alive, and decidedly not part of his world. It tasted more like heartache when he was younger, but age has morphed heartache into acceptance so slowly he didn’t notice until he met her eyes again a few weeks prior. 

“Please,” he gestures for her to continue. 

She smiles at him, “I wasn’t going to let you leave without saying goodbye, no matter how hard you tried.”

“Wanted to get out of your hair as soon as possible; open up a bed to someone who needs it more.” He offers her a half hearted shrug. 

Julia looks weary at his words before she walks over and carefully wraps her arms around his shoulders. “Do something for me, Ethan, no … for yourself for once.” She says into his ear. “Go find her.”

Ethan shuts his eyes and circles his arms around her back. They hold each other for a few seconds that feel like hours to him before she pulls back. “You deserve that much, even if you don’t believe it.” She holds his gaze for long enough that he starts to feel the cracks in himself fissures down his spine splitting him open raw. “Goodbye, Ethan.” The door is closing and they both know it. 

She takes one more step backward, still looking at him as he says in a voice he’s hoping doesn’t crack, “Goodbye Julia, be happy for me.”

She looks at him for a moment longer before turning and heading back towards the hospital tent. He pulls the door open and drives off, hoping the hours in the car will get rid of the thick feeling at the back of his throat. 

—

Ethan is in Budapest when Ilsa reappears.

He barely makes it to Istanbul before Luther and Benji leave for Budapest. They’ve tracked down the buyer of Taiwanese weapons blueprints across the black market circuit, leading them up from Istanbul into Eastern Europe. The buyer, graciously but unknowingly, led them straight to the seller. Who they easily apprehended and sent back to the Taiwanese intelligence network. 

Sometimes, Ethan thinks, as he watches the armored vehicle drive away, it’s nice when the job is simple. Perhaps his view of simple is a bit skewed, given the nature of their employment. But simple to him and his team and simple to the agencies that be are two different things. He wonders, more often than he cares to admit out loud, when he became so good at this. Why it’s become so easy to maneuver like these monsters do. The thin line that separates him from them. Accidentally killing millions because he wasn’t fast enough, smart enough, is still killing them. 

But then he looks across the table of the cafe, and sees Benji and Luther laughing about something, and warmth floods back into him. It’s such an easy reminder that the line isn’t as thin as his mind likes to pretend when he’s alone. 

“And do y’know the best part?” Benji is folding his arms behind his head in a faux stretch as Ethan tunes back into the conversation. “I’ve got tickets to an art gallery in Paris,a flight that leaves in an hour, and we,” he circles his finger around the three of them, “have a week off.”

”Guaranteed by the head of the CIA is a nice perk of a departmental partnership.” Luther says with a smile, as Benji stands with his bag. “Think I’ll go relax somewhere neither of you are gonna know.”

Benji looks like he’s about to argue before Ethan butts in, “You deserve it, both of you.” 

Again Benji moves as if to say something, but it’s Luther who cuts him off with a look, “You’re going to miss that flight, Benji.” 

Benji and Luther share a look before Benji trains his gaze back on Ethan with soft fondness in his eyes. “Do something for yourself, yeah?” He salutes Luther and walks out, not before squeezing Ethan’s shoulder gently. 

“You are going to do something for yourself?” Luther asks once Benji has walked off with his bag. “Because you deserve it too.”

He’s schooling Ethan with that look he has when Ethan is about to do something stupid. Ethan wagers he probably deserves that look most of the time. “Yes, I‘ll,” He pauses before he forces the word out of his mouth. “Rest. I’ll rest.” If Luther notices that Ethan isn’t meeting his eyes when he says it, which he likely does, he doesn’t say anything about it. Merely lets out a beleaguered sigh as he stands up. 

“You do deserve it, Ethan Hunt.” He says, leaving enough Euros on the table to cover both his and Ethan’s meals. “Now don’t call me for a week.”

Luther nods his head once before walking out of the restaurant, purposefully walking the opposite direction Benji took despite the airport being that direction. 

Ethan stares despondently at his empty cup for several minutes before he gets up to trudge back to the safe house nearby. He’s not in the habit of considering what he deserves. It’s another reason he hates being alone. When what he deserves haunts him in the middle of the night, wrenching him out of his sleep as the faces of everyone who’s died around him slides through his subconscious like a slideshow. It’s his team in Prague, it’s Lindsey, the agent Lane killed in London. It’s Julia, as well, more often than he’d ever admit. Despite her being out there, living, breathing, his mind has more ways to kill her than reality ever could. And to that effect it’s his team too, it’s Benji strapped with a bomb, it’s Luther shot behind a computer, it’s -. 

It’s Ilsa, most often. But admitting that feels like tearing his heart apart with his bare hands. He spent months, years, watching her limp back to Lane, fearing every single time would be the last time he saw her alive. He dares not put into conscious thought all of the ways his subconscious has watched her die. 

He’d give up everything to ensure they were all safe. Put himself in the body bag six feet under if he could guarantee it. What he wants and what he deserves start to sound a whole lot similar in his head the more he’s allowed to think about it.

Ethan is fully aware someone is following him about a half mile away from the safe house. Because it’s obvious, not someone trying to track him without a trace. There’s no malice in the presence; the gaze is guarding, not prying. It’s the first moment he knows she’s back. 

—

Sometimes reality has a way of undercutting expectations. While he had expected her to show up eventually, it wasn’t that night. As he opens the door of the apartment with a small bag of groceries in his hand from the downstairs store, he stops when he sees her.

She’s sitting ramrod straight, and while he knows no safe house is equipped with comfortable furniture, she’s doing an incredible job of making this one look like the worst. 

He stands there for quite a long time, as the both linger in the uncomfortable silence. There’s an annoying ticking clock on the wall and the soft sounds of people on the street below to serve as a light background noise. 

“Coffee?” He finally says. It’s more soft than he expected it to come out, like if he breaks the silence one of them will turn and run, “I bought coffee. Do you want coffee? I-I have some now.“ He finishes lamely as he holds the bag up, arm twinging as he does. 

”That would be nice, yes.” Ilsa responds, staring at the stains on the old table in front of her. 

Ethan putters around the kitchen as the coffee brews. He’s watching her through the doorway as he rinses already cleaned dishes a second time. Just like her following him back, he knows she senses his gaze. She doesn’t, however, make any move to address it. But neither does he, so he can’t hold that against her. 

When the machine is finally finished filtering all the coffee, Ethan grabs the two worn out mugs and pours them full before taking them back into the main room. He offers Ilsa one of the mugs; it’s not quite liquid courage but it’s warm and something to occupy their hands. Neither of them are going to drink any of it anyway.

Sliding onto the couch next to her, he holds his own mug between his knees, watching the swirls in the dark coffee. Normally, he walks through life with easy confidence, even if some of it is false bravado and sheer force of optimism. But now he feels hyper conscious of every shift of his body. Did he sit too close? Too far? Is he breathing too heavily into the quiet room? Hundreds of questions swirl through his head, micro analyses stacked on each other without clear answers.

However, he won’t break the silence first, especially when it’s not his to break. In this case, she left first. He supposes, though, that they’ve been on this collision course for a long time now, and cumulative blame is spread equally. He remembers so vividly seeing her for the first time, handcuffed in front of her, forced into her orbit. He was always going to crash into her eventually. 

But for all the running she does, slipping in and out of his life, he’s not without fault for where they are now. Because he’s been doing everything he can to resist the gravity pulling him in, the whole time. He refuses to put a name to his true feelings about her even in his mind. Because that makes it real. And when the feelings are real, so is the possibility for hurt. Because everyone close to him gets hurt.

Perhaps it’s unfair - for his mind's eye to conjure those he’s lost when he looks at Ilsa. Perhaps it’s unfair that it’s most often Julia. It’s all become so muddled in his brain. Julia, tied up in a back alley house in Shanghai, becomes Ilsa. And then it spirals. It’s Ilsa’s panicked voice over the comms in Prague. It’s Ilsa injected with a virus they don’t have a cure for. It’s Ilsa sitting in front of him with a bomb strapped to her chest. And worse it’s the things he didn’t know. All the times he watched her go back to Lane. His brain conjured so much in that time, most of which involved seeing her next time in a body bag. 

But that’s the deal isn’t it. 

Should you choose to accept it, isn’t really a choice at all. Not for him. He’s going to choose yes the next time too. He’s going to keep choosing yes until it kills him and everyone around him. 

“I made the choice too, Ethan.” Ilsa sets her untouched coffee mug on the table. Maybe it should feel like she read his mind, but that’s the only reason they’re here. Isn’t it. Both pulling each other closer and keeping each other at arm‘s length. 

“But you didn’t,” Ethan says quietly, “MI6 forced you. Both times.”

”I was going to walk away,” she says. “Back in London. I had everything planned and I was going to leave with or without you.” Almost as an afterthought, she adds softer, “But I was hoping it would be with you.” 

“You should ha—“

”But then Lane took Benji and I couldn’t,” She says, finally turning to look at Ethan. He can see her out of the corner of his eye. “I wasn’t going to let Benji die. That was my choice to stay, Ethan.” 

Reluctantly, Ethan also turns, afraid of what he’s going to find when he looks in her eyes. And of course her eyes carry the same emotions he always sees in them: trust, concern, care, lov-. He flicks his eyes back to his coffee. 

“I could have left after that too. I would have been without a country but I still could have; it wouldn’t have been that hard.” She presses on. “Especially after we met again in Paris. You could’ve gotten Lark without me.” She says even as Ethan is shaking his head in disagreement. “You would have, don’t doubt yourself. But I chose to come back, every time.” 

She reaches for his leg like he’s an easily spooked wild animal before resting it gently on his thigh. His eyes are glued to her hand, maybe because he feels a bit like a wild animal, and maybe because he can’t bear to look into her eyes right now.

“I’m going to keep choosing to come back. Because of you.”  Her hand comes up to his jaw. She’s not forcing or pushing, merely guiding his face to look at her. He could push back against her, keep his eyes trained on his thighs, but he goes willingly, like he always will with her.

”I’m choosing you, Ethan.” Her voice is barely a whisper, maybe again to keep him from spooking, but it cracks him open wholly and completely. 

He grimaces and looks away before forcing himself off of the couch, arms leaning against the windowsill, coffee cup left on the table. Looking out the window makes him feel uneasy, exposed, but it’s infinitely preferable to the feeling growing inside his chest. 

It’s an ugly thing unfurling from his heart and locking him in place. His mind has watched her die so many times and it’s always his fault. And now she’s said it herself: he keeps pulling her back in. She would be completely safe somewhere off grid if it wasn’t for him. His want. His desire. His longing for her is so strong that he’s buried deep under guilt and fear and grief, locked so tightly in his heart that it’s burning him from the inside. 

Because his wants get people hurt and killed. Simply being in his orbit gets people killed. He’s trapped forever in the violent swing of wanting to push everyone he’s ever cared about as far away as he can or pull them so close that he can personally keep them safe forever. Calculate all the variables one step ahead so they never get hurt again. 

His whole body aches. Not even from the partially healed rib or any other sore spot that comes from crashing a helicopter and then practically falling off of a mountain. No. His heart aches so badly that he isn’t really even seeing the street below anymore. 

He certainly doesn’t hear Ilsa move off the couch until she’s right behind him, hands on his shoulders. The gasp he lets out is soft but stuttered. There’s not enough air behind it. Oh, he hasn’t been breathing.

Ilsa’s arms trace slowly down his back before slinking around his waist, thumb rubbing small circles on his stomach. He’s gone still, surrounded in her form. “Breathe with me, come on.” She whispers into the side of his neck, lips brushing against the skin below his ear. He takes slow shuddering breaths and slowly catalogues the feel of every part of her against him. He can have that forever even if he can’t have her.

He slowly eases his hands off of the window, a soft flush returning to his skin after being tense and white against the boards. His arms now hang limply at his sides as his breathing slowly returns to normal. 

Just as he starts to feel present in the room again, Ilsa gently tugs his hand and guides him back to the couch. He drops uselessly back down onto the old upholstery, jostling his body and getting a sharp stab in his ribs. He may not be looking at Ilsa, but his grimace very clearly does not go unnoticed by her. 

“They didn’t actually discharge you from that hospital.” She says. It’s not a question.

Ethan merely shakes his head weakly in response.

“Don’t move.” It’s an order she gives as she gets up and disappears into the bedroom. 

He’s not sure he can move at this point. His body and brain in perfect union to lock him in a prison of his own torment. He merely sits staring at the floor as he battles the ache in his lungs and the stabbing pressure in his heart. 

When she wanders back into the room a few minutes later, she doesn’t say anything. Simply grabs his hand and pulls him up from the couch. He goes willingly as she tugs him into the bedroom and eases him down onto the makeshift raised mattress she’s made. Every pillow in the house, plus one blanket, is stacked to allow him to lay down with his upper body elevated slightly. 

Before he even hits the mattress his eyes are closed. The bed somehow feels softer than any other safe house he’s ever stayed in. Maybe it’s just her. It’s probably earlier than he usually sleeps but his body is still screaming for rest to heal and his brain has already spun him into a panic once today. 

When he’s on the brink of sleep, he realizes this might be one of the few houses stocked with a full sized bed as he feels Ilsa’s warm body lay softly next to his. 

She curls around him gently as he finally falls asleep. 

-

Ethan wakes up disoriented in the middle of the night. Another nightmare wrenching him from sleep, holding another bloody corpse in his arms. Awake, his mind doesn’t remember who exactly it was, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that he still feels the warm slippery blood on his hands, the weight of the lifeless body of someone he cares about in his arms. His half conscious brain expects to see the semi transparent white tarp above his head. The dark ceiling is a jarring contrast. 

Then he registers the arms wrapped around him. He won’t be proud of this later, but he panics, body seizing before he attempts to pull himself up. It’s not until Ilsa enters his field of view that he remembers where he is, what happened. 

As he crushes her to his chest, he knows it’s going to hurt but he can deal with the physical pain. She goes willingly, nosing against his jawline as she rests her head on his shoulder, sinking into his arms. It’s almost worse, the ache in his chest, at how right this feels, at how easy it was to pull her close. Like this is exactly where the two of them should always be: in each other‘s arms. 

Maybe it’s because of how right she feels in his arms or maybe because it’s dark and the middle of the night and he hasn’t really slept in weeks that he starts talking.

“I didn’t know…. I thought maybe… I couldn’t confirm,” Ethan keeps restarting his sentence because he can’t. He can’t say it out loud. 

She doesn’t say anything in response. She’s waiting for him, giving him the time to get it out of his head. Simply shifts slightly to hold some of her weight off of his ribs now that he’s not crushing her to him.

“I was convinced I was too late.” He breathes out finally. “I…  I got the pin and realized I had no way of knowing if it was too late. I think I just assumed I was when I finally made it up on that rock. But then I would’ve died out there anyway with no one to come look for me. And I would’ve deserved it too. All those deaths because I wasn’t fast enough. Julia, Benji, Luther,” He can’t say her name out loud, not in front of her. He’s really trying to get this all out without his voice cracking but the weeks of tension are crashing down on him swiftly. “You all would’ve been dead.” When his voice finally breaks on the last word, he clamps his mouth shut before it can get worse. 

“Ethan,” She says his name with such reverence. He simply re-tightens his arms around her, burying his face in her neck. He knows his whole body is shaking at this point but he can’t stop it anymore; he simply has to let it happen. 

Gently, she rolls them onto their sides. Runs her fingers through the short hairs at the nape of his neck. “Look at me, Ethan.” She doesn’t tug his head back or force him out of his position. She’s asking him, guiding him, walking with him. 

Ethan reluctantly pulls his face back and leans against the pillows. She doesn’t make a comment about how wet his eyes are. “We all made the choice to be there. We knew the risks. We put ourselves on the line so the world can sleep easier.”

”I can’t protect you.” 

“I’m not asking you to,” She replies instantly. “I don’t want you in front of me taking the bullet. I want you beside me, standing with me.”

”I - “ He huffs out a breath, a bad imitation of a laugh. “I don’t know if I know how to do that.” He feels the moment the tear finally leaks out of his eye.

Ilsa cups his face, softly thumbing over his cheekbone and swiping away the wetness before it has time to drag down his face. 

“I’ll be beside you too. It’s not one sided.” She’s rubbing his cheek in a comforting and hypnotic motion. He leans into it. So hard that he eventually drops his head onto her sternum as she slides her hand back into his hair. She never stops touching him and it feels like a lifeline, a tether to reality. He’s allowed to believe that they actually survived it because her warm hands never leave him.

“I wasn’t lying when I said I was choosing you last night. Because you won’t say it first. You won’t say it at all. But you think I don’t see how you look at me? Your eyes give so much away.” Despite the fact that his face is buried in her sternum, he squeezes his eyes shut. Like the action can take back all of the times he’s looked at her with every emotion he feels for her written in them like a billboard for her to read. “Perhaps I’m also being selfish. Maybe it’s being selfish for both of us. How many years have we been chasing Lane? Abandoned by both of our governments. And maybe you’re right. Maybe there is no permanent walking away for both of us anymore. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be an us. Together.” 

She finally stops, like that wasn’t already enough to shatter him. He stays there holding her for a long time in the quiet. He wants . He wants everything he rarely allows himself to want, and here she is, offering it to him willingly. But he’s so scared. Scared that if he reaches out for her, it’ll slip through his fingers again. 

Eventually, he rolls onto his back; isn’t sure he’s ready to look her in the eyes yet. He might fracture if he does. “I want to be selfish, Ilsa. I want to so fucking bad. But life has a funny way of taking what I want from me. I can't stop. It’s going to kill me one day. And because of that, being near me, it gets people killed. I don’t.. I can’t… I can’t watch that happen to you.” He feels the tears leaking out, wetness dripping down to his hairline. He has watched her die so many times in his mind, that putting it into words makes it feel real. Like he’s just spoken it into being with some cosmic force ready to strike. 

”Ethan, love,” she breathes out into the space between us. “You can’t wall me off forever and pretend that’s going to protect me. Not in this job. You have to let go of the things you can’t control. I know what I’m getting into. And this is me, willingly saying yes.”

Finally, he tilts his head to look at her. She’s always been so easy for him to read and it’s not different this time. He just isn't quite sure he was prepared for everything to be so strong. They’re so close to each other and he likes to think that it’s the fact that he feels raw and his body is still working its way off of the adrenaline high of a mission and almost dying when he thinks ’just this once’. But then his lips touch hers and it feels like forever. 

There’s no heat behind the kiss, only their lips touching, but Ethan feels like he’s been set on fire. He pulls back, his eyes still closed, and when he opens them she’s staring down at him like he’s everything. 

“I don’t think I know how to do this anymore.” He admits, reaching up to cup her cheek. 

“You think it doesn’t kill me too? Every time you get beat to hell and back? I realized we hadn’t died and the next thing I thought about was the fact that you were out there somewhere and I had no way of knowing where.” She closes her eyes and leans into his hand. “None of this is a one way street. All you have to do is let me in. We’ll work out everything else together.”

He feels the corner of his mouth tilt up against his will before he’s pulling her down towards him again. He whispers his response against her lips because he’s not ready to speak more loudly than that, an ‘okay’, which he knows she registers when she smiles against him. Because what more can he say to the woman giving him everything he’s ever wanted, only asking for him in return. 

And he doesn’t know how to give less than everything. 

She’s warm and real against him. Every woman he’s kissed in at least the last ten years has been cold, either out of necessity for the situation or something he didn’t really want. But she burns against him like he feels on the inside. 

He shifts an arm around her waist to pull her closer as he moves his other hand to tangle in her hair. She moves so easily for him, willingly giving him everything he wants to take. But it’s her who moves to deepen the kiss, running her tongue along the seam of his mouth. And he’s willing to give her everything too. As he opens his mouth with a gasp, he thinks he always has been. 

She runs her tongue along his, taking control from him as she grips the nape of his neck to angle him where she wants. 

It’s liberating in a way. To be below her, letting her take control. 

When she leans into him slightly more, he feels the air leave his lungs as his tender, still healing ribs seize under the weight. He doesn’t mean to flinch, nor for the gasp to leave his mouth but he doesn’t have as much control over his reactions as he normally does. 

Ilsa instantly realizes why, and mumbles a ‘shit’ as she slides off of him to the side. “I’m sorry,” She offers a kiss to he cheek. “I should have remembered you discharged yourself from a hospital, multiple weeks early.”

”It wasn’t weeks,” He protests weakly, as if he has any ability to lie to her. 

“Ethan,” She stares at him, not humored. “You crashed a helicopter that you climbed into mid flight and then fist fought an assassin on the edge of a cliff, forgive me for thinking you should’ve stayed in that bed for months. I’d prefer you didn’t make a habit of deciding when to discharge yourself.”

He huffs a laugh. “Too late for that.” He means to mumble it under his breath but even then the room is too quiet for her not to hear it. 

“This isn’t the first time you’ve done this.” 

He’s smart enough to look remorseful about it when he glances at her and says, “No.”

”Idiot.” She drops her head onto his shoulder and wraps an arm around his waist, avoiding all his bruised areas. “Well, good thing I’m not letting you leave for at least a month. And if an IMF courier deigns to show their face sooner than that, I’ll kill them myself.”

He smirks as he rests his arm over hers, pulling her as close as his aching body will allow. 

Chapter Text

Ethan wakes up more rested than he has in years with Ilsa in his arms. 

It’s late morning, probably approaching noon, when Ethan finally opens his eyes, though it’s hard to tell with the curtains blacking out most of the light. Ilsa is still curled into his right side but she’s awake, tracing gentle patterns on his stomach. 

“Morning,” she says softly, reaching up to kiss the corner of his mouth. 

His hand follows her face as it retreats, gently caressing her jaw. Softly, because he still can’t believe he gets to have this, he runs his thumb over her bottom lip. She smiles into his finger, pressing a kiss to the tip of it before he drops his hand away. A warm feeling blooms in his chest, spreading out through his limbs. 

“Are you sure?” He asks again. Maybe he’s going to be asking forever, always giving her an out from him. Despite the selfishly soft feelings he’s experiencing right now, he’s fully aware that these moments, soft and quiet, are an abnormality in his life.

“I’ll promise you every day if I have to.” Her stare bores into his and she offers up everything to him in her eyes, everything that he probably doesn't deserve.

He feels his hand flex involuntarily against the mattress. “Yeah, you may have to keep telling me.” 

“And you thought you were going to ask me difficult things.” She fully sits up, stretching. She’s so gorgeous and he’s so lucky. Unbelievably so actually. Maybe he’ll wake up one day in the correct reality where this was all a dream. 

Until then though, “Breakfast?” He asks and she smiles at him like it’s the easiest thing in the world before gently easing him out of bed. If he had fully rested, he still would’ve been weeks out from his ribs being fully healed. As it stands, he hurled himself out of a moving car last week in Budapest and that’s probably set him back a bit. A lot. But he’s not ready to admit that. Usually he doesn’t have to admit that to anyone. Merely parks himself in a remote safe house, alone until some courier comes to find him, and collapses until his body is mostly healed. But now she’s here and he’s attempting to hold back the uglier parts of this process. The nightmares may not have scared her off, but the wear and tear on his body is a much more real and tangible thing with which to contend. And he knows that she knows it’s bad, but she hasn’t seen it yet and maybe he can prevent her from seeing it until it’s a little less … hideous. 

And breakfast is so simple. It’s, well, domestic. Reminds him so vividly of a time so long ago where he had a little more hope for his own future, felt a little less hollow on the inside. It’s her arms curled around him, front pressed against his back, as he pushes sausages around a pan. It’s him smiling when she steals one off the plate and a kiss on his check before spinning away to grab glasses. It’s the soft intertwining of their hands when they finish eating. It’s giggling as he flicks a fluff of bubbles at her as she runs a towel over the now clean dishes. 

It’s all of that until reality comes cruelty knocking back at his door.

Until she says, “Shower?” And offers him her hand.

He’s hesitating. When he looks at her, he’s fully aware that she knows the toll these last few months took on his body. But knowing and seeing are two different things. He’s suddenly all too aware of every purpling bruise and healing gash on his body. He’s very aware of how his age is catching up with him and his bruises aren’t healing like they used to. Reluctantly, he reaches his hand out to meet hers. She’s stubborn and there’s no getting out of this. The reality of who he is will catch up with them eventually. 

Once he reaches out, she interlaces their fingers and pulls him into the bathroom. She offers a kiss to his temple before she murmurs, “Take your time.” She spins, putting her back towards him before she strips off her top and bra. When he first saw her step out of that pool in Casablanca, he knew how beautiful she was. A few years have done very little to change that fact. It makes him even more aware of every scar he’s carrying, every extra year he has on her that’s carved itself into his body.

She strips fully and steps into the shower; she still hasn’t turned to look at him. A part of him wonders what he did to deserve this. The patience and space that she’s giving him to work through whatever all this is in his head. Wonders what he’s going to owe to the universe for these moments of peace. 

When he finally steels himself enough mentally, he lifts his arms to pull his shirt off. The strain on his ribs manages to force a gasp out of him. He has enough control to tamp down any of the louder, more pained sounds that threaten to come out of him. He hurriedly pulls the shirt off so he doesn’t have to remain in that position for long. He strips his pants off quickly and as he stands again, catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror. The bruising is bad. He’s colored like a used paint pallette, old colors mixing together with no thought for how they were placed together. It yields an awful combination, bright reds and sickly yellows mix with deep purples and dull blues covering most of his torso. 

And all of that without mentioning all the healing cuts and scrapes that lay over top of the bruise, including a few fresh ones from Istanbul and Budapest that he barely even remembers getting. 

He whips his eyes away from the mirror before he can dwell on it further or chicken out of this whole affair and forces himself into the shower behind Ilsa. The stall is a glorified locker, and before he’s even really ready to face her, his hand falls on her hip as he closes the door behind him. 

Sliding a hand up his arm, she spins in his hold. She keeps her eyes firmly on his when she finally looks at him; she’s still giving him an out. His gaze slides to a point slightly to the right of her head. Looking her directly in the eye is a lot. 

“It’s just me,” she says, squeezing his shoulder. 

He turns his gaze back and it feels laborious. “It’s - I - You won’t - It’s a lot.” He settles on finally as he steps back into the wall to give her the room to look. 

“Let me in, let me help you.” Her gaze tracks down him slowly, sliding off his face and dragging down his collarbone before she finally meets the worst of it. He knows the moment she sees it because he sees her mouth move in a ‘holy shit, Ethan’. She may have said it out loud but due to the rush of the water, the sound of it doesn’t project. 

Now that she’s not looking him in the eye, his gaze doesn’t leave her face. Maybe if he wasn’t feeling so exposed, he’d be cataloging her expressions more. But right now he’s merely frozen in a state of catatonic dread. Part of him knows that all this, the torture he puts his body through, is, well, a lot. But having someone else see it makes it real again. 

Ilsa stares at him for what feels like hours. In reality, it’s probably more like thirty seconds that her eyes spend flicking up and down his torso. The shower doesn’t allow for a large distance between them anyway, but she closes the remaining gap as she pulls him in and gently winds her arms around his shoulders. The water pounds down on both of them now. It’s just on the edge of scalding. Good, Ethan thinks, maybe it can help scrape him clean of everything. 

His arms remain at his side but eventually he tips his head forward against her shoulder. She squeezes the back of his neck and he nods into the curve of her shoulder. He’s not even sure what he’s answering anymore. Maybe it’s just acceptance. Since he can’t voice it out loud, his body answers for him. Verbalizing his wants, his desire to let her in, simply feels too much like tempting fate.

As she grabs the shampoo, he stands there, unmoving, simply lets her scrub her hands through his hair. She’s achingly gently with her movements. It’s soft, tender and reverent. His heart feels raw, overexposed, and he almost wishes she would be rougher - make him actually feel something that isn’t this. 

When she’s done, she tugs his face to look at her. There’s a soft smile on her lips and she moves forward quickly to place a kiss on his cheek, before she tilts his head back to let water wash the suds out of his hair. 

It’s not until she’s running a soapy rag over his body that he finally reacts. His ribs are fine; she’s so careful he didn’t even feel it. No, he reacts when she drops to his crotch, flinching so violently he startles both of them. The box of a shower is so small that his back ends up pressed against the wall as he stares at her, breathing elevated. 

“Ethan?” She asks. He barely hears it over the sound of the water and the roaring of his heartbeat in his ear. Mostly knows she’s asking because he sees her mouth move. He doesn’t know how to answer her. He didn’t expect to react like that either. His body was working for him. So he just stands there, palms flat against the cool tile of the shower wall. 

Moving like she’s approaching a feral dog, Ilsa shifts towards him. When he doesn’t move, she cups his jawline with a wet maybe slightly soapy hand. He closes his eyes and pushes into her hand ever so slightly, reminding his body that it’s just her. He feels her forehead against his. “Just me. It’s just me.” She says into the space between them. He nods and after a minute she backs up again and turns to run shampoo through her own hair. 

When she finishes and turns back to him, he still hasn’t really moved. His body isn’t working with him anymore so he’s forcing it in place. He’s not used to sharing this with someone. The adrenaline crash after a job. The brief time he has where his mind is so exhausted that his body moves on its own, acting on all of the impulses he works very hard to stamp down normally in his brain. 

Ethan stumbles out of the shower after her, watches as she pulls two ratty towels out of the cupboard. She tucks one around her body so she can move freely, before she drapes the second around his shoulders. Fitting herself against him, she nuzzles her face into his neck, disregarding the water dripping off the ends of his hair. ”Talk to me eventually, please. You won’t scare me away.”

He can tell she’s not expecting an answer, simply helps him dry off and rubs some antiseptic cream over the new cuts on his face he got this week. She pulls a worn, wash softened button down over his shoulders so he doesn't have to agitate his torso even more and throws him a pair of boxers.

When she walks out of the bathroom in an old t-shirt, he belatedly realizes that it’s probably one of his that she dug from his duffel bag. A feeling far softer than any others he has right now settles in his chest as he watches her.

They’re settled on the couch again when she finally breaks the silence, “Will you tell me about it?”

She’s curled into his side; his nose is pressed into her hair. He lets out a breath, a bit of a sigh, a bit not, before he says, “I don’t know if I can.” How can he explain to her when he barely understands himself? His brain is all work and compartmentalized feelings that get in the way. “Not yet. I trust you, I promise it’s just…” 

He trails off but she picks the thought back up for him anyway, “I know you do. I won’t leave. You know whatever it is I won’t leave you. Whenever you’re ready, I’m here.”

As he tightens his arms around her a little bit more, maybe that’s enough for now: her in his arms and a promise to stay. It's more concrete than anything he's had in years. So much time over those years spent alone, in a damp Russian prison, in musty safe houses all over the world evading the CIA, all of it alone without the warmth of anyone caring about him, part of his brain always convincing him that no one cared anymore. Benji showing up in that opera house in Vienna really had meant everything to him.

They sit in comfortable silence for a long time, warm in each other's arms, as the flush of the shower fades from their skin. “I am sorry for hitting you with my car, by the way,” Ethan says into the quiet of the room, rubbing his hand over her bicep.

Ilsa barks out a sudden laugh, her whole body moves with it like she wasn't expecting it, before settling into a sustained, softer giggle, leaning back into him and curling a leg over his lap. It’s so endearing in a way that makes him hide his smile in the crown of her head. “What? I’m serious. That was probably an over-dramatic move.” He continues, the seriousness of his statement undermined by the fact that the smile is evident in his tone.

“Probably…” She says, tone betraying her matching smile despite him not being able to see her face. “I felt like shit for a week. But I was trying to kill Lane, missing him was not intentional. Missing you was. You were just doing what you had to do. We both were.”

There’s something about her in his arms, healed, at least from the damage he inflicted on her body, that assuages some of the guilt stirring in him. In the end, she came back to him. Despite it all, maybe because of it all, she’s still here.

“Still, I’m sorry. I’m glad you came back.”

“I think you’re stuck with me now.” Her lips press softly against his neck between her words. “You’re the only one who cared about me when everyone else had abandoned me. That means a lot, Ethan, regardless of whatever your brain tells you.” And yeah, Ethan knows what that feels like. Maybe that’s why he clings so hard to the people around him, his team. Because he knows his team will be there for him when everyone else in the world isn’t. 

“Like I said, you’re going to have to remind me sometimes. It’s been years since I’ve done anything even close to this.” 

She stays silent for a bit; he knows she’s debating something in her head, so he waits. Eventually she says tentatively, “Was it Julia? Last time you had something like this?”

He supposes he knew it was coming eventually, that doesn't stop his body from locking up as she asks. If Julia hadn’t so recently been placed back in his life, once again in the line of fire, maybe he wouldn’t be having the visceral of a reaction. He spent many years mourning her loss, but knowing it was for the best because she was safe. Lark and the apostles called all of that into question and it rocked his foundations. Forcing himself to breathe as steadily as he can, he answers, “yes, the last time I cared this much was Julia.” Admitting it out loud almost kills him, he thinks. His pulse is out of control, and she probably feels it, pressed against him. He feels wildly off kilter, like the ground from under him has been ripped up. For the last ten years, he’s lived on the belief that those he cared about were safe as long as they weren’t actively close to him. But now that’s not true. It’s the crux of all his problems. People close to him get hurt. People he cares about. Being close to him puts a target directly on their backs, his greatest weak spot. And now being an active part of his life isn’t even a prerequisite, simply knowing him in the past puts them in the line of fire.

Ilsa eases back out of his hold to look at him and he almost grabs her in a panic before she stops. She looks him directly in the eye when she says, “I figured. Luther told me, before Kashmir. He also told me to walk away. For your sake.” Even without a mirror, Ethan knows the look on his face is pained, feels it deep within himself. “Ethan, you need to acknowledge this now. I’m not going to do that. Not in the future. I was trained to do this job, just like you. And you are not responsible for me or my choices. You can't carry that weight on your shoulders. It’ll kill you before any bullet can.”

He closes his eyes as he looks away from her. Deep down, he knows it’s not his choice to make. If he had been given the choice, he would've prevented her from going back to Lane the first time they met. “I don't want you to get hurt because of me.” He lands on finally, one of a thousand things he wants to say to her. Finally, he turns back to look at her. “People around me get hurt because of me, because of who I am and what I do.”

“You and I both know this job is going to kill us one day. And that would have been true regardless of whether or not we had met. I wasn't lying several years ago. There will be another Lane, another Lark. And one day one of us, maybe both of us, will be outmaneuvered. Don't let the fear of that future take what we have now. Because we did meet, and now there’s a little more light in my life. You and Benji and Luther and Brandt are the first people to care about me in years.” 

“I don't know what I did to deserve you.” He says, brushing his hand along her cheek.

“Love isn't something you get because you deserve it, Ethan. It’s something offered to you, in spite of everything else.” She says as she leans into his hand.

His eyes widen and his breath catches in his throat, and by the time he mutters out the word, “Love?”, it's thick and wet.

“You must know,” she responds softly, thumbing away wetness along his cheek even as she sports the beginning of her own tears. 

“I stopped hoping for that a long time ago.” He stumbles through it, voice breaking halfway through the sentence. When he’d given up Julia, he’d given up his hope that he would ever get to have that again. “Love doesn't even come close to describing what you mean to me, Ilsa, you’re everything.”

He knows, achingly so, that it won't be easy. He’s going to watch her get hurt. He’s going to stumble over his own thoughts and shortcomings. But as she sinks into him on that uncomfortable old couch in some old safe house, lips pressed against his, offering him so much, he feels a little lighter and a little more hopeful than he has in years. 

So he chases that feeling and kisses her back, pulls her in as close as he can and doesn't let go.