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So far, field work has turned out to be equal parts exhilarating adrenaline high and gut-wrenching terror. Benji wouldn’t say he’s enjoying every second of it, but he can say for sure that he won’t ever be able to go back to his desk at headquarters.
As the rookie and the computer guy, his role is mostly support and he’s fine with that, really, even if he’d like to get the chance to wear a mask at least once in his life. Still. He knows where his strengths lie and he knows that even though the things his team rely on him for aren’t all that flashy and heroic, they’re important.
The tech parts are easy. He’s still learning the rest, the things seasoned agents know by heart, the things that were hammered into him in field training.
It’s that training that has Benji out of his seat and packing up his equipment the moment he hears Will’s voice in his ear, “He made me. Abort mission and get out, now.” The rest gets lost in the sounds of gunshots and violence.
Benji drags out all the curses his mother would be horrified to hear from his lips. They knew it was a gamble going in, but they all agreed it was worth the risk. Liam Meaney is one of the most prominent arms dealers in the world. Until now, he’s been a complete ghost and it was only pure luck that IMF got word of this meeting. Two agents paid for the information with their lives and Ethan is not willing to let their sacrifice be in vain.
With IMF still under reconstruction after Ghost Protocol, it’s hard to get reliable intelligence and a lot of the support structure they used to count on before is still only getting off the ground. No one likes it, but it’s the way things are now. They went in more or less blind, with Will posing as a buyer while Jane gets rid of the real buyer and Ethan breaks into Meaney’s hotel room to find something, anything that might help them topple his organisation.
Now, it seems like the meagre information they had on Meaney’s buyer was all wrong, and from the sound of the gunshots, Will is paying the price.
“Status?” Ethan asks over the comm. He’s breathing a little fast, like he’s running. “Athena, Hermes, report.”
Jane’s voice comes through almost immediately. “I’m good. Heading for my exit.”
There’s only silence from Will. Benji holds his breath while he powers down his laptop and shoves it into the case, goes through the rest of the stuff. Take what’s necessary, destroy the rest, leave nothing of use behind.
“Hermes, report,” Ethan repeats, more tension in his voice now.
The comm crackles. “I’m... mobile, more or less,” Will says. There’s something strained in his voice and Benji has enough experience by now to correctly identify it as pain. The slight hesitation speaks volumes. “Pigeon’s out of the cage.”
Benji can almost hear Ethan think from here. If Meaney gets away now, odds are they’ll never find him again. On the other hand, they have an injured agent in hostile territory. For Ethan, that has to be a nearly impossible choice, but there’s no real doubt about what he’ll do. “Stand by, Hermes, I’m coming back for you.”
“Negative, Apollo. I’ll make my own way back.”
Knowing those two, they’ll argue about it for the rest of the day. Benji decides to take the decision out of their hands. He gathers up the things he’ll take with him and activates the self-destruct on the things he’s leaving behind. Then he taps his comm.
“Apollo, I’m closer. Go get the pigeon.”
There’s a split moment of silence as Ethan thinks it over. “Copy that. We’ll meet at rendezvous point C.”
Rendezvous point C is Amsterdam. So, out of the hotel, then the airport, hopefully without getting perforated in the process. Benji gets his stuff, everything he can comfortably carry, checks his weapon, and heads out of the room, towards Will’s last known position.
He moves as quickly as he can, does his best to look like he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be as he heads for the conference room where the meeting was meant to take place. He gets more nervous the closer he comes. Someone has to have heard all those gunshots. The police is probably on their way already, not to mention hotel security. Benji doubts Hilton Prague looks kindly upon guests shooting up the place.
When he gets to the right floor, it’s more or less empty. People must have fled. Benji draws his gun and peers around the corner by the lift.
Turns out Will didn’t lie. He is mobile, at least for a given value of ‘mobile’. It looks like he’s using the wall as a crutch to stay upright. He’s hunched over, one arm wrapped protectively around his middle and there’s an enormous bloodstain on his shirt.
Benji only takes the time to make sure that the corridor is clear before he ducks around the corner, hurrying up to Will to try to find out where all that blood is coming from.
“Not mine, it’s not mine.” Will waves him away and leans back against the wall, lips pulled back in an agonised grimace. “Left arm’s broken, ribs too, I think. I can walk.”
“What happened?” Benji asks as he slings Will’s good arm around his neck to take some of his weight.
Will winces. “They had met before. Damn it, we should have known that.”
“We had bad intel, there was no way we could have known.”
“It’s my job to know,” Will growls and Benji has to bite his tongue around the, not anymore, that threatens to spill out. Leaving his job as chief analyst to get back into the field has been more difficult for Will than he wants to admit. His successor is competent enough, but she’s no William Brandt, and Will still holds himself personally responsible for every mistake the analysts make.
“Not your fault.” Benji drags Will into the lift and pushes the button for the parking garage.
“If I hadn’t left...”
“Not your fault,” Benji repeats, with a little more force behind the words this time.
He wonders if Will will ever stop second-guessing his own second-guesses. Probably not. That would be like asking Benji to stop babbling when he’s nervous, asking Ethan to stop jumping off buildings in the name of the greater good, asking Jane to stop resorting to dutch courage to loosen up in uncomfortable situations.
Will shuts up, seems to be concentrating on keeping his breathing even. He’s pale as a sheet and Benji knows that every step has to be jarring his broken arm and ribs. The bloodstained shirt is far too noticeable, but there’s no time to change now and nothing to change into. Benji shrugs out of his coat and helps Will out of his suit jacket, gently easing the injured arm out of its sleeve. Will looks even worse after they’ve gotten him into Benji’s coat and zipped it up over the bloodstain. He’s breathing hard through clenched teeth, and his knees are threatening to buckle under him.
“I’ve got you,” Benji says, steadying him with an arm around his waist as the lift reaches it’s destination and the doors open with a ding. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”
“Stronger ‘n you look,” Will murmurs.
“Yes. Yes I am.” People keep getting surprised about that. What they don’t seem to consider is that, on top of the basic physical requirements for all IMF personnel, it takes a rigorous work-out regimen to be able to handle a desk job without permanently ruining your spine. Core strength, that’s what counts, and Benji had that even before he started training for the field exam.
He’ll never be able to free-climb tall buildings the way Ethan does, but lugging around his equipment plus one injured teammate? Yes, Benji can do that.
Besides, Ethan Hunt is his very own special brand of crazy.
“He is that,” Will chuckles in agreement. Benji realises he’s been letting his mouth run away from him again and makes an effort to put some filters in place between his brain and his tongue. He’s the one on point now and he can’t afford to get distracted.
They steal a car. Well, Benji steals a car. Will collapses into the passenger seat as soon as Benji has the lock open and goes worryingly quiet, the kind of quiet that makes Benji want to talk twice as much as usual just to fill the silence with something else than looming disaster.
He doesn’t. Instead, he drives, and keeps an eye out to make sure they’re not being followed. He checks in with Ethan and Jane, finds out that they’re still in pursuit of Meaney, but catching up. Somewhere in the middle of it all, he’s hit by that feeling of unreality that he gets now and then, where he just can’t believe that he’s actually doing all this. He quickly shakes it off and takes a detour to the airport to shake off any tails they might have caught.
They reach Ruzyně Airport without incident. Benji dumps the car and they head for the luggage locker IMF has set up beforehand, finding passports, tickets, and cash. They stop by a gift shop to buy a ridiculously overpriced shirt and jacket to replace Will’s bloodstained clothes. Will is making an effort to walk straight and appear uninjured and Benji is impressed, really, he is. He doesn’t even want to think about what he would’ve done in Will’s place. Curled up somewhere and whimpered, probably.
They have just enough time before their flight leaves to squeeze into a bathroom stall to check on Will’s injuries and get him into the new clothes.
It’s a bad break. The bone hasn’t broken skin, but Benji can see it move when he turns Will’s arm over to get a better look. Will lets out a strangled sound and what little colour he’s got left in his face drains away so quickly that Benji’s positive that he’ll pass out for good. He holds on though, clenching his jaw so tightly that he might chip a tooth.
While it has to be excruciating, the injury isn’t life threatening. Not that it would have mattered much if it had been. All they can do for now is stabilise the arm the best they can and hope for a smooth flight. Benji digs around in his bag for the paracetamol he keeps for the tension headaches he invariably gets after twenty hours in front of the computer, and makes Will swallow the max dose. It won’t do much for this kind of pain, but it might at least take the edge off.
Will’s legs almost give out from under him when he moves to stand. Benji catches him, repeats, “I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” until they’re more or less steady and Will’s eyes are focusing again.
It’s a long walk to the gate. Will is flagging before they’re even halfway there and Benji is beginning to think he’ll have to carry his teammate the rest of the way. He’s underestimated how very stubborn Will is though, and they manage to board the plane, even though Benji has to keep his arm wrapped around Will’s back for the last stretch to keep him from toppling over.
“Good, good, you’re doing great. Just a few more steps.” He can feel every muscle in Will’s body tremble under his hand “Here we are. It won’t be much longer now, you can get some rest.”
Will more or less falls into his seat and slumps over, eyes closed, gasping for breath. Benji grabs his wrist and feels for a pulse, finds it frighteningly fast and shallow, like butterfly wings.
“Sir, is everything all right?”
Benji looks up to see a flight attendant leaning over them. He quickly plasters a smile on his face, hopes it looks natural, and pats Will’s knee. “Yes, yes, we’re fine. He gets a little nervous about flying is all. He just took a sleeping pill so he’ll probably be out for the rest of the flight. No need to worry.”
The flight attendant’s look grows soft and compassionate. “I understand. You boys let me know if you need anything, all right?”
Benji assures her that yes, they will, absolutely, and then she’s tripping along down the aisle, finally leaving them alone.
“She thinks we’re together,” Will mutters, observant as ever, even while clinging to consciousness by a thread.
“Does she? Oh, she does. All right.” Benji turns that fact over in his head a few times and comes to the conclusion that it’s not worth freaking out over. He shrugs instead. “It’s a cover as good as any, I guess.”
The corner of Will’s mouth twitches upwards in a ghost of a smile before his eyes slide shut again and his head tilts to the side, not falling asleep as much as passing out. Benji tries to arrange him as comfortably as possible in the cramped seat. He ends up with Will’s head on his shoulder, holding him up to support his broken ribs. Right now, he’s glad for the unplanned cover as concerned boyfriend, because it lets him rest a hand against Will’s neck, to monitor his vitals. Pulse is still too fast, but at least it’s steady. The stewardess comes by again and Benji asks her for a blanket. Will slipping into shock in the middle of the flight would be a bad thing.
The plane takes off. Benji looks out of the window over Will’s head, stares at the clouds and wonders where Ethan and Jane are right now.
He held little crushes for all of them in the beginning. Maybe most of all for Ethan, because Benji would never even have considered going for that field test if it hadn’t been for Ethan Hunt. He’s come to recognise that it’s probably more hero worship than anything and even that is beginning to fade a little bit. After having worked close together with the man for some time, he knows that Ethan screws up and makes mistakes as much as anyone else. He’s just uncommonly good at fixing said mistakes again.
As for Jane, Benji was head over heels in love with her for about ten minutes, convinced that she was the perfect woman and also so far out of his league that it wasn’t even funny. Since then, he’s seen her wake up crying from nightmares about Moreau and Hanaway, seen her with food poisoning, throwing up for twenty four hours straight, seen her cut her toenails in front of the TV, seen her binge on ice-cream after bad dates. These days, he counts Jane as one of his best friends. They share a love of comic books, good scotch, and sci-fi and they’ve survived many post-mission hangovers together, watching old episodes of Battlestar Galactica.
And Will... well. Despite everything, despite how Benji cocked everything up with Moreau, Will jumped down that shaft in Mumbai and trusted Benji to catch him. The first person Benji ever killed, he killed for William Brandt. That’s the kind of thing that tends to stay with a bloke.
As they approach Schiphol, Benji manages to get Will to wake up enough to force a glass of juice down his gullet. He’s still deathly pale, even with the rest, and Benji is beginning to suspect that he might be hurt worse than they initially thought.
They get off the plane and through customs. Will is walking on his own, but only barely. His skin is clammy and colourless and the collar of his shirt is damp with cold sweat.
“I think it’s time to get you to a hospital, my friend,” Benji decides once they’ve made it out of the airport.
Will protests weakly where he’s slumped against the cab window. “No hospital, it’s not safe. We don’t know if we were followed here.” He probably has a dozen scenarios running through his head, trying to figure out every possible way all this could play out.
“All right. Tell me you’re a hundred percent certain that you’re not bleeding internally.”
Will opens his mouth to speak, and then closes it again. The unhappy, resigned expression on his face says more than any words possibly could. He might be stubborn but he’s not stupid. Benji leans forward between the front seats and asks the driver to head for the nearest A&E or whatever it’s called in the Netherlands.
When they arrive at the hospital, Benji spins a tale about a vacation and a mugging and no, they do not want the police involved, they just want to go home to Gloucester, thank you very much. Will raises an eyebrow when Benji slips right back into the role of worried boyfriend, but he plays along without protest, even putting on a surprisingly good English accent to help sell the cover.
Benji tried to get hold of Ethan and Jane the moment the plane landed, without success. He tries again, in between all the poking and prodding and the tests and the x-rays, but it goes straight to voicemail again.
“We should get out of here,” Will says for the hundredth time while they wait for the x-rays to come back. He’s been given something for the pain that has him struggling to stay awake and only half-coherent. Benji tries to shake off his growing sense of unease, tells himself that it’s just Will’s medicated paranoia that’s rubbing off on him, but he’d feel a lot better if he knew for certain that Ethan and Jane managed to get Meaney.
Will repeats, “We should get out of here, we should leave,” and Benji grabs his hand, raises his voice a little bit for the benefit of the watching nurses and says, “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got you, love.” The endearment slips out almost naturally and it’s all good. Later, the hospital staff will remember the cute gay couple and not the nervous, beaten up guy.
For all Benji’s been sticking to Will like glue since Prague, there’s no possible way he’s going to be allowed to stay with him for the surgery needed to set his arm. He paces the hallways instead, too keyed up to sit still, gets a protein bar from a vending machine when he realises how long it is since he last ate anything, drives the nurses crazy with his constant demands of updates. There’s something niggling in the back of his mind, something undefined and vague that Benji has learned to recognise as gut instinct. He can’t afford to relax yet.
The nurses all look like they want to strangle him and Benji decides to take the opportunity to try to reach Ethan and Jane again. This time, Jane picks up almost immediately. She sounds tense and stressed out when she answers and Benji can hear the sounds of traffic and Ethan’s swearing in the background.
“Where are you?” Jane asks before Benji even has time to say hello.
“VU Medical Center,” he answers. “Where are you? Did you get Meaney?”
“We lost him, he boarded a private jet from Ruzyně forty five minutes after your plane took off. He’s in Amsterdam, Benji. He must’ve followed you here.”
“Shit.” Benji heads back into the hospital, ignoring the signs prohibiting mobile phone use inside. “Will’s in surgery. Or well, probably out of it now, it’s been a while.”
“You need to get to him as soon as you can. We’re on our way but we might not get there in time.” Jane pauses to listen to something Ethan’s saying in the background, and when she continues, she sounds even more strained than before. “Benj, he saw Meaney’s face.”
That is what Will was so worried about earlier, why he hadn’t wanted to go to the hospital. Lots of people, easy access, the perfect opportunity for an assassination. And Benji let him out of his sight for... he checks his watch. Far too long. He was supposed to have Will’s back.
“We’re maybe twenty minutes out,” Jane says. The sound of an angrily blaring car horn slices through the conversation. “Make that fifteen minutes. Unless Ethan gets us into a car wreck first.”
“I’m on it, I’m on it. Hurry!”
Benji’s already running towards the waiting area as he hangs up on Jane and shoves the phone into his pocket. He gets hold of one of the nurses he’s been hounding repeatedly and frantically asks for news about Will. She sighs and directs him to a chair.
“Your partner is in recovery, Mr Smith. If you just sit down and wait, you can see him soon.”
Not nearly good enough. If Meaney is going to make an attempt on Will’s life, now would be the perfect time. Benji is going to have to try to get to him. But how?
All right. First rule of infiltration is to look like you belong. That’s easy enough. Benji breaks into a changing room and gets hold of a set of scrubs. Once he looks like a member of the hospital staff, no one stops him when he makes his way towards the recovery ward.
It dawns on him that if Meaney is here, he’s probably using the same tactic. Will saw his face but Benji didn’t, and has no idea what the arms dealer looks like. He could be any one of the doctors and nurses Benji passes in the corridor. He keeps scanning their faces, searching for any signs of subterfuge, but nothing stands out and he catches himself wishing he had Will’s eye for detail.
Jane said fifteen minutes. She and Ethan should be here any time now, but even if they were, they’d be facing the same problems.
Then something catches his eye and Benji wants to curse himself. Damn it. He’s been watching faces when he should have been watching feet. Nurses spend all day on their feet and they always, always wear comfortable shoes, trainers or birkenstocks. They certainly don’t walk around in fancy Italian footwear like the tall, dark haired male nurse Benji can see heading towards one of the recovery rooms.
Benji doesn’t have his gun; they had to ditch everything to get through airport security. He’s not likely to get hold of any weapons in here. What would Ethan do? Something insanely athletic, no doubt, and it’s not like Benji has that option. He’s a decent marksman, but he only barely passed his hand-to-hand exam. He’ll have to improvise.
Meaney throws a glance over his shoulder and then heads into a room. Benji takes a deep breath and follows.
This is what registers when he steps through the door: Will, lying in the bed, eyes closed and breathing steady. Meaney, leaning over him, doing something with the IV-bag hanging beside the bed. A bright red fire extinguisher on the wall.
Everything happens at once. Meaney turns his head, a syringe in his hand. Benji tears the fire extinguisher off the wall and swings it into Meaney’s head as hard as he can. The man goes down without a word and Benji doesn’t even take the time to check if he’s out. He lunges for the bed, tugging the IV-line out of Will’s arm before whatever Meaney injected in it can make it into his bloodstream. The door crashes open and Ethan and Jane barge into the room, weapons drawn.
Benji finds himself sprawled over Will’s prone form, his own heartbeat impossibly loud in his ears. He turns his head to the side, slowly laying it down on the pillow next to Will’s, closes his eyes for a moment while he tries to get his breathing under control.
When he opens them again, Will is watching him, blinking groggily with a little wrinkle of confusion between his eyebrows.
“Wha’?” he rasps, voice almost inaudible.
“It’s all good,” Benji hears himself say. It’s been over two days since he last slept and he feels a bit like giggling. “I’ve got you. You’re safe, I’ve got you.” He’s said it so many times since the Hilton that he’s beginning to feel like a broken record, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Will trusted Benji in Mumbai, trusted him today, and Benji will be there the next time Will needs someone to catch him, will be there the time after that.
Will blinks again, takes in the room while he struggles to shake off the remnants of the anesthesia. Then his eyes meet Benji’s again and he mouths, “Okay. Good. Thanks.”
“Any time,” Benji answers.
- fin-