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One: Degas
Ethan dies.
And then he's alive again.
Even he was aware this was the sort of thing that needed to stop happening to him. Tempting fate was one matter but spitting in fate's face was another. There was something about the rule of threes that made it clear to him a fourth time would not work. It shivered in his brain, emanating from the same place that dictated to him he'd never lift two cars of the same model year in a row. It just wasn't done.
It was the sort of thing no person should have gotten accustomed to, the specific feeling of their body coming back to life. Awareness came in weary snapshots that were difficult to hold onto, polaroids that turned to ash as he tried to turn them over in his mind. He was aware of the filtered light over him first, the softness of it stark against the harshness of the world around him.
Then, he was aware of a steady rhythm, four-fourths time. He tried to follow it, identify the song as it pounded into his body.
Oh, Ethan recognized as he slipped out again, those are chest compressions.
When he was able to press two sensations together, Ethan knew he was on the way back to the living. A firm pressure was spread over his back, warmth trying to force its way into the frozen core that Ethan's body seemed carved from.
As soon as he became aware of the massive difference in temperature, he jerked away from it like fighting to escape the touch of hot metal. He fought, but metal bars closed around him, enfolding him in the heat.
"Hey, it's okay, you're okay. Hunt. Uh, Ethan, hey." The bars around him tightened, until Ethan's struggle dissolved into sporadic jerks of movement. "Shhh, shh, you're good, you're okay, don't-- ow." The firm pressure at his back momentarily eased. "Ow, you got sharp elbows."
Ethan got one arm free from captivity, but when he attempted to lift it, the meager awareness he'd managed to thread together fell apart, brittle as ice.
Ice.
It was so cold. He'd been in the dark and the cold, he'd looked up and the world was walled off in a layer of ice that may as well been concrete.
Ethan opened his eyes, and the world above him wasn't electric blue and soulless and cruel. It was golden-yellow like antique lamps, like sunlight through dusty windows.
"No, hey, Hunt? Are you actually-- no. Okay, just listen. Not to the words, just the sounds, just relax. I got you. You're out. You're safe. Everyone's safe. It's okay."
A rich, melted bronze shape moved into Ethan's vision and the instinct to grab it, to prevent anything from reaching him was strong.
But the shape landed on his face and stroked back over his skin, into his hair.
Someone was here and they were stroking his hair back. Over and over, like petting a cat. Like Julia had when Ethan laid across her lap and they'd watch old movies on TCM.
He kept blinking, like cleaning the lens of a camera, trying to bring himself into focus. The firm pressure against his back was a body, chest moving with each breath. The touch in his hair was a broad hand. The heated bar of metal was an arm holding him in place, keeping him pinned back against the warmth until he relented and fell back into it.
The plan worked. They'd revived him.
With an exhausted huff of incredulity, Ethan dozed.
The next time he was awake, it was from sleep, not thrice-cheated. It wasn't dramatically better than before, but sometimes recovery came by inches.
Now, Ethan knew the plan. He and Benji had figured it out and discussed it miserably before bringing it to the team. He did not recall any part about someone staying in the decompression pod with him. But his chest had the telltale pain that was a remnant of CPR, so...
He started to turn his head, trying to get up to speed on the situation.
His body was still curled tight against another person's. Two arms were around him, and a pair of hands were rolling his left wrist carefully, rolling the pivot and joint slowly, going through the whole range of motion.
The hands stilled as Ethan glanced behind him.
Degas' mouth was open in faint shock, meeting his gaze. "You're awake. How are you awake?"
Ethan tried to respond but... shut his eyes in a slow blink instead.
"Okay. That's okay. You should probably rest more. You had to be resuscitated after we got you out of the ice." He gently squeezed Ethan's wrist. "Sorry for the close quarters but Dunn said we needed to warm you up and the," he waved vaguely at the pod over them, "wasn't really doing enough, I felt like? Sorry, I'm kind of playing this by ear."
"Good play," Ethan managed. "Benji? Grace? Paris?"
"On their way out here. Everyone's alive but things got... complicated."
"Alive," Ethan echoed, meeting Degas' dark eyes. He had that specific set to his brow and face that always seemed just vaguely concerned about everything.
"Russian wetworks beat us to the SOSUS point." Degas gripped Ethan, arm across the chest to hold Ethan's shoulder. "Everyone's alive. Don't get too worked up, you can't handle that yet."
He attempted to move, just to feel how Degas's grip closed quick around him. "Been tied to chairs more forgiving." And by the simple tactile fact that he could feel most of Degas' body, Ethan knew he'd tensed, unsure. "Not a complaint," he added quickly, and then because keeping his eyes open was a lot of effort, he lowered his head, shutting them again.
"Yeah, uh. I was given pretty explicit orders not to let you run off," Degas admitted. "Dunn was talking about how you'd vanish if someone didn't keep an eye on you. He mentioned one time they had to put a microwave transponder in you because you ran off after some guy named Lark?"
A grin curved Ethan's mouth at the recollection of Luther grabbing him and jamming the tracker into him. At the time, Ethan had been thinking of nothing else but following Walker, but when he'd been laying in a hospital bed recuperating, he'd looked back on the moment, saturated in fondness. "That one's true. Don't worry. Too tired to run."
"Dunn also mentioned you might say something like that and I'm supposed to treat you as an uncooperative asset. Look, just... do me a solid and go back to sleep until the others get here? If I lose track of you, I don't know what Dunn's going to do with me, but he and Paris are getting on way too well, and she'd probably help him."
Another agent might bristle at resting in the arms of an earnest young man like Degas.
Ethan remembered the way Degas always moved to protect the civilian bystanders, remembered his relentless trigger discipline, remembered how he'd watch his partner knocked out and still kept his head, deciding to come with Ethan and Benji.
After the watery metal mausoleum that had tried to swallow him, he'd sleep better with dark, kind eyes watching over him.
Humming vaguely, Ethan let his body go lax.
On the edge of consciousness, he felt a hand begin stroking through his hair again, lulling him to sleep.
Two: Paris
Ethan dies.
And then he's alive again.
Even he was aware this was the sort of thing that needed to stop happening to him. Tempting fate was one matter but spitting in fate's face was another. There was something about the rule of threes that made it clear to him a fourth time would not work. It shivered in his brain, emanating from the same place that dictated to Luther that he'd always use the same ten surnames for his entire career, the most common in the world, deliberately avoiding anything remotely memorable or unique. It just wasn't done.
Everything that had come before was disjointed, memory fractured by panic and resignation and the pain that had warped his perception as he'd floated into the cruel electric blue of the ice.
Everything came back just as disjointed. Pain replacing the horrible calm numbness. That, he could work with, following that sensation to the understanding that someone had done CPR to him. He was familiar with the specific feeling.
There was also a weight on top of him. That was wildly preferable to before, when the weight compressing his chest had been a part of him, inescapable as he swam to the surface. Now, he could feel the separation.
Then, there was... tapping. His brain tried to translate it from Morse Code before he even scrounged together enough awareness to process the taps were... against his nose, then the skin under his eyes, then the spot between his brows.
It wasn't Morse code. It was a song.
"Ne me quitte pas, ne me quitte pas," whispered against his jaw, more vibration and tone than words at first. "Moi, je t'offrirai des perles de pluie venues de pays où il ne pleut pas..."
He knew that song. Luther had been an ardent Nina Simone fan. Unlike Simone's low ocean tide of a voice, this one was light as the fleeting touches against his face, playful with the lovely desperation of the lyrics.
"Ah, tu es réveillé? Votre mignon m'a dit que vous pourriez vous réveiller plus tôt que prévu." A finger pressed firmly on Ethan's nose.
That was Paris. That was French. Ethan could normally translate romance languages without having to spare any brainpower on it. Now, it was all irritatingly familiar but just out of his grasp. "Anglais, s'il vous plaît, ayez pitié," Ethan pleaded.
She made a noise of disdain. It was so close, Ethan forced his eyes open.
He was under a canopy that suffused the merciless light of the arctic beyond, kinder than the ice ceiling he'd fallen up into. He was warm, but in the way that made him feel like the cold was being held back, near and waiting to dig into him.
It was held back by the slight woman who was laying across his body. Her arm folded across Ethan's chest, her fingers lightly drumming against his shoulder, as pale as the arctic snow. Luckily not as chilly.
When he managed to focus on her, she lifted an eyebrow at him and ran one fingertip over an eyebrow, tracing the curve of his orbital socket. Her touch lingered on a few points. Perhaps she could feel the places where the bone had bruised or cracked, reading his old wounds with clinical interest.
He nodded vaguely down at her and met her eyes.
"Body warmth. Where is your dive suit?"
It took a moment to remember and Paris must've felt the way Ethan's muscled bunched, an aftershock of fear hitting him as he remembered the sequence of events leading to him losing his air tank and his suit. "Sevastapol rolled off a deep sea cliff. Caught the harness. Had to let it go."
Her eyes widened at him. "Pourquoi avoir de la chance quand on ne peut pas contrôler si elle est bonne ou mauvaise?"
With her laying casually on top of him, Ethan was able to feel the scar along her abdomen, a faint chafe against his own bare skin as she breathed. "Dites-moi," he said, turning it around on her. She was just as capable of answering the question as he was. "Did your luck hold?"
"You don't know?" she said in the same light tone she sang depressing songs. "All dead. Very sad. You will be ready to move soon? I need help with the shovels."
"That," Ethan told her firmly, "is not funny. Was anyone hurt?"
"Hurt? Yes. Alive? Oui, bien sûr. Don't insult me." Her pointy chin dug into his chest as her gaze narrowed on him. "This is why you freed me."
He wasn't surprised she knew. He couldn't be there to protect anyone, keep them safe. They'd needed information from Paris, and maybe could have gotten that information before letting her be carted off to whatever facility thought it could hold her. But with Luther stationary, Ethan had Benji and no one else he could trust. It was inevitable they'd have to split up.
Arranging for Degas and Paris (particularly Paris) to protect Benji and Grace had alleviated Ethan's constant, unceasing worry enough for him to focus on not getting killed for the podkova. He wouldn't have made it out of the submarine alive without Paris standing watch in Ethan's stead.
He was grateful.
Lifting a hand, Ethan tapped Paris' nose with a finger. "D'accord."
Three: Benji
Ethan dies.
And then he's alive again.
Even he was aware this was the sort of thing that needed to stop happening to him. Tempting fate was one matter but spitting in fate's face was another. There was something about the rule of threes that made it clear to him a fourth time would not work. It shivered in his brain, the sort of rule that was hard-coded into the universe, as Benji had explained when he told Ethan the computer engineer's wisdom to never close up a tower before you successfully booted the system and got past the BIOS menu. It just wasn't done.
He was lucky.
His entire world was pain and electric blue, the agony in his chest scraping against arctic numbness enclosing him, like daggers dragging against the hull of a lost, dead ship.
Then, he was alive, and he was asleep. They were states of being completely unlike each other, impossible to mistake. He was aching like a cigarette ground under the heel of the Colossus of Rhodes, but it was still a relief when slumber seduced him away from the stasis he'd been in before.
The first time he was actually awake, he briefly took inventory of his location. His cheek was pressed against something warm that moved with steady breaths and a hand was curled loosely against his neck, as if someone had drifted off while monitoring Ethan's pulse.
Without even opening his eyes, he turned his head into the body next to him. There was the lingering smell of woodsmoke, almost harsh enough to mask the tart orange and sandalwood he knew so well. Beard oil and the remnants of a fire.
He got his hand around Benji's wrist, feeling his pulse in return. It beat steady and firm under Ethan's fingertips.
So he fell back asleep for a while.
When he was finally conscious instead of barely-not-dead, he dragged himself out of a simplistic dream of fruit sorbet on his tongue, shifting wearily to get comfortable again.
Before he could drift off again, there was a sharp intake of breath, pained. It was the sort of noise that usually would have him casting off sleep, springing to react, to do something. He couldn't quite manage that yet, but his eyes did slam open--
Ow. Light. He winced, the filtered golden light streaming in from outside had been easy to ignore until this exact moment. As soon as he was aware of it, it seemed to become capable of invading his eyelids, bright even when he tucked his head down defensively.
"Oh, good, you're alive. I would never have lived it down, crawling in here to nap with dead body. Bit grim, even for me," Benji said, his jaw brushing against the top of Ethan's head with each sardonic word. "My arm's all pins and needles, can you go lower or higher? Either's fine."
As soon as Ethan tried to get an arm under himself, Benji was bracing him, additional support as he dragged himself mere inches higher in the capsule before exhaustedly slumping back down, winded.
He was contemplating if he had the residual strength to get his hair out of his face when Benji carded it back for him with all the pomp and circumstance of a stagehand opening a curtain at the start of a play. "Podkova's intact. Team's intact. Well, if anything, we've increased our headcount by two. Or twelve."
"Specific," Ethan pointed out, adjusting minutely against the pillow to better see Benji. There were new cuts on his face with delicate butterfly bandages. None seemed to be actively bleeding but they were still fresh, red as ripe strawberry.
"Picked up two strays," Benji informed him. "One of whom I demand to be present when you meet. Said strays came with ten dogs. I learned to mush from this lovely woman, Tapeesa."
His fingers were still in Ethan's hair, loose amid the strands.
Missing his line, some easy rejoinder to the set-up of Benji mushing, Ethan tripped them both into a moment that lingered long between them.
These moments had happened before, sporadic and vivid as lightning. Usually, there was something to interrupt, the thunder after the flash breaking the moment.
Once, their rendezvous was on the train to Berlin. Each of them had arrived on opposite sides of the same platform, and when Ethan had spotted Benji across the gap, Benji had already been looking at him with the faintest curl of a smile. It'd caught Ethan for some reason, and the electricity stretched between them had finally broke when the train had arrived, blocking the view.
Many times, it had happened in boltholes and safehouses, Benji's hands smeared in blood as he repaired Ethan, sutures and dermal glue closing wounds. But those moments were often broken by the haze of medication or carefully-scheduled hours of desperately needed sleep.
The few occasions when the lightning hit and there wasn't the usual interruption, there was always Luther.
Luther.
Inhaling sharply, Ethan realized. "Benji. I... since London, since we split up, there was... Luther."
Eyes sliding shut, Benji seemed to brace himself. "I know. Ethan, I know."
He knew? That should have been a relief, having the burden of telling Benji lifted from his shoulders. Instead, an unusual bereft feeling cut into him. "How?"
And more importantly: had anyone been there with him when he'd found out? Ethan couldn't help running hypotheticals in his head. Grace was capable of incredible kindness but never casually. Degas had struck Ethan as extremely empathetic, maybe too much so for Benji, who bristled at a light touch.
Paris... perhaps. Likely the best option out of the team.
As Ethan extrapolated Paris' most probably reaction to a compatriot in mourning, Benji went on: "Digital dead drop had a new message." He turned slightly, getting his hand into a bundle of cloth behind him, against the wall of the chamber. All of his clothes and his travel pack, discarded and shoved off to the side. From it, Benji retrieved the it's-not-a-mobile-Ethan device he'd been using since the start of the mission. Thumbing in a very long passcode, the screen unlocked.
Holding it over their heads, Benji read aloud. "Short on time, high on risk, so all I'm going to tell you is: he's all yours." Pausing, his throat clicked loudly as he swallowed. "Take care of him as much as he lets you and forgive yourself when he's too stubborn to. Been an honor. I'm sure you'd say the same." Thumbing the screen off, Benji dropped it back onto his clothes. "Prick. Always had to get the last dig in."
"Only 'cause you let him." He stared at Benji until he finally gave in and met Ethan's eyes. "You may have got him this time."
"How do you figure?"
"Here you are," Ethan pointed out quietly. "Taking care of me despite the stubbornness."
A complicated set of emotions collided on Benji's face: softening brows of tenderness, mouth twisting with sorrow and amusement, pride and the urge to say something self-effacing obvious. Like it was all too much for him, Benji turned his face into the pillow.
Palming Benji's jaw, Ethan brought them together. Without hesitation, Benji put his arm around Ethan, giving in eagerly.
It wouldn't last long, but they could hide within each other, at least for a little while.