Chapter Text
Ethan Hunt is a collector.
As a child, his mother had collected little china figurines. The two of them had wandered from yard sales to thrift shops, searching them out. She always bought the ones no one else wanted, the dirty, broken ones, forgotten at the back of the shelf. Then she would take them home and mend them, her hands delicate and gentle, fixing the cracks not just with glue, but with gold paint.
‘It’s a Japanese skill,’ she explained to Ethan, as he watched her closely. ‘The cracks don’t have to be hidden or be invisible. The cracks are there, but they add to the beauty of the piece.’
‘But then everyone knows the little china shepherdess is damaged,’ Ethan objected.
‘Damaged doesn’t mean worthless,’ she said softly, stroking the cheek of her intense little boy. He felt so much for all the broken things. She wasn’t sure how he would survive the world out there, once he was grown. ‘The damage shows she was hurt, but she got better, she’s still with us, and we can look after her and love her. The cracks are still there, they will always be there, but the gold makes her whole again.’
Evey Sunday, he had helped her get the figurines down and clean them gently, while she told him stories about their adventures. His mother had been a storyteller as well as a collector.
But that was a very long time ago, when Ethan Hunt had a home.
When he had lived with Julia, he had collected vinyl jazz records, and old postcards of far off lands, sent in the days before phone calls were common, and maps of transit systems from all over the world (there was a reason he’d chosen the cover he had.) He had a garage full of broken knick-knacks, boxes rammed with gadgets that had just stopped working, toys that wouldn’t play any more. On Sundays he sat in the garage and fixed them all and sent them back out into the world.
All that was gone now, he supposed. He’d paid a company to clear the entire house out, not being able to bear to go back there.
Now his home – no, any place he lived - was bare.
He still collected though. He perfectly recognised in himself that his mother’s urge to collect and mend came out, in him, with people. He wanted to collect them, and mend them, and look after them, and send them, shiny and painted with gold to face the world. And of all the people he collected, the most precious and the most broken was Benji.
Oh, he put on a good show, especially in the beginning. A constant laugh on his face. An intense competence. That soothing babble. But Ethan had recognised something in him right from the start. He had looked across the crowded tech room and then walked unerringly to Benji to ask for help. He had looked at him and thought ‘I can look after him. He needs me to look after him.’
What had he not expected was that Benji had looked up at him and thought exactly the same.
No-one had thought that about Ethan since he was a child. They had thought to use him, love him, help him, betray him, deny him, use him again and again. There had been passion, and there had been betrayal. But Ethan’s fierce independence had driven away (gently, kindly, but firmly) all attempts to look after him.
Until Benji.
But as Benji looked after him, Ethan forgot that he had known Benji needed looking after too.
After every mission, Ethan would check his team was ok, they’d got treated, the mission was done, and then they would split up and go their separate ways, no contact. It was safer that way and anyway, the IMF did not encourage friendships outside of missions. Agents should be free to float from team to team.
And then Ethan would find a warehouse somewhere and wait for the next mission. He could have had a home. He had one, once. But home came with memories of Julia, and then came the guilt, so he avoided them. So he camped out in bare warehouses, and read mission reports, and exercised hard in the bare space, and practiced climbing up buildings (not his beloved Rockies) and ran around the industrial district (nowhere pretty) and slept uneasily, strange, eerie dreams haunting him, and waited to be called again.
He had tried once, to recreate the home he’d had with Julia. But it had seemed false somehow, like he was playing the game and not meaning it. He had realised that home, for him, was not a place, but a person, and he had lost that person. So it was better to be here, to be in a place he cared nothing for, that was purely functional, until he was needed again.
The cracks ran deep, but he hid them behind that functional black t-shirt, the stoic smile.
He kept the warehouses bare for a reason - easier to leave, easier to stock, easier to run away if he had to. And with that, underneath, he was uneasily aware that he felt he didn’t deserve more. Not that he didn’t need more – but he didn’t deserve the comfort of a soft bed, or warm cup of coffee. Not when he wasn’t on a mission. Only then could he justify looking after himself.
But as he walked into the warehouse this time, he found a difference. A heater cast a warm orange glow across the room. A thick wool blanket was on the bed, with a pillow. It felt – it felt almost welcoming. If not home, at least more comfortable.
He hadn’t asked for any of this. Only the camp bed. And yet here it was.
He examined the blanket and the heater carefully, looking for traps, but they seemed clean. He went for a run, and then a climb around the building, warily glancing back at the warm bed from time to time, trying to puzzle it out.
Eventually he had to sleep. He curled up in front of the heater, wrapped the blanket around himself, and allowed himself a moment of luxury in the warmth.
When he slept he dreamed peaceful dreams. And for some reason, Benji was in all of them.
When he came back for the next mission, he found everyone seemed a lot less tense than they usually were. And the mission itself felt different. It was Benji, Luther and Brandt again (all requested by Ethan) and they felt like they worked as a unit – not a disparate group of agents gathered together for a one mission, but an actual team. And this kept happening – this new feeling. There was still a constantly cycling group of agents – not the same people every time (except Benji. As soon as he got his orders, Ethan’s first task was to request Benji. And somehow, Benji never seemed to be already assigned to another team.) but they began to work together smoothly, to anticipate each other’s needs, to know instinctively when they needed help. There even began to be shared jokes, and a touch of comfort. Not family, perhaps, but friends. They were becoming friends.
As the missions went on, Ethan picked up a few details that explained this new bonding of theirs.
How Benji had been taking Jane to her medical appointments. How he dragged Brandt away from his desk for lunch. How he constantly texted Luther with updates on the work he was doing. How he made a point of going down to the tech division and lending a hand on whatever they were working on. How every agent that Ethan had ever met or worked with seemed somehow to know Benji, and like Benji.
At first Ethan had thought this was a well-planned tactic by Benji to make sure everyone around Ethan was loyal, and ready and helpful. And perhaps to a certain extent it was. But – but it also seemed to be just how Benji was. He truly wanted to look after people.
It was useful.
It was very useful.
It was – oddly moving.
It was like no one else Ethan had ever known. (It was true, Luther had appointed himself Ethan’s guardian almost immediately. But Luther had never extended that to anyone else, being wary and mistrustful of anyone new. Except for Benji. Luther had taken to Benji straight away.)
After his next mission, when Ethan turned up at his warehouse to find not only a heater and blankets, but a box of protein bars, lots of water, and a note from Benji with his number and telling Ethan to look after himself and call if he needed anything, Ethan realised something.
He collected people. He always had. He made friends and gathered those friends around him (for a certain definition of friend). But Benji – he collected those people too. And once Ethan had them, Benji took care of them. They gravitated towards Ethan at first like drowning people reaching for a lifeboat, but once Ethan pulled them in, it was Benji who saved them and helped them and fixed them. Painted gold in the cracks.
And now Benji had collected Ethan too. He was taking care of Ethan.
Ethan sat on his bed and almost cried. He didn’t know what to do with this. How to be cared for, how to allow himself to be looked after. How to know that his well-being was just as important to Benji as everyone else. How to know that Benji didn’t see him as the mysterious figure that slipped away at the end of the adventure until needed again, but a friend who needed – who deserved – warmth and food and comfort.
Ethan sat staring at the note for a while.
‘Hope you’ve got everything you need. If not I can get more. I can also get you a nice warm bed in a nice warm apartment if you ever wanted. Call me. Not just for a mission, but if you fancy a chat. Benji.’
Ethan stared at the note for a while. Then he picked up his phone and rang the number.
‘Hey, Benji? Fancy – I mean – I could do with lunch – fancy joining me?’
Ethan got used to Benji taking care of him. He didn’t take it for granted – he practically wept with relief when he got to the warehouse after London and found the usual supplies (how did Benji even find him?). He treasured every little gift Benji left for him. He didn’t allow himself to have personal possessions but he found a locker where he could keep the little snowglobe Benji had left for him one Christmas, the occasional notes, the warm sweater embroidered with reindeer. But – this was the way his life was. He hid, and Benji reached out and looked after him.
So after Kashmir, when Benji wasn’t doing that, he felt his absence sorely. Not just the absence of Benji’s care, but Benji himself.
He hadn’t seen Benji much in Kashmir. He’d been there, Ethan knew, while he was asleep. He would stir awake just long enough to see Benji’s shape in the darkness, sitting by his bed, just watching him. Once Ethan managed to wake up enough to reach out and Benji had taken his hand.
‘We almost lost you there, Ethan. Don’t do that again, will you?’
‘No promises,’ Ethan slurred. ‘But I will try.’
But the drugs were heavy and Ethan was so tired and he slept a lot. When he was awake, he asked Julia and Ilsa and Luther about Benji and they said he was fine – but they were keeping something from him, he knew.
‘Not my story to tell,’ Ilsa had said. ‘I can’t betray Benji’s confidence.’
‘Come on, it’s me,’ Ethan said, trying to be charming. But to be fair, Ilsa had never really been fooled by Ethan’s charm. ‘No. I owe him far too much to risk his friendship now,’ Ilsa had said. And Ethan had fallen asleep, touched to know Benji had added Ilsa to his collection of friends.
But Erika Stone had, surprisingly, turned out to be incredibly perceptive when it came to Benji. She seemed to be making up for her blindness over Walker by paying especially close attention to the people around her, by displaying some of that laser sharp perception that had got her to the head of the CIA, before she became too reliant on Walker. And that perception had been switched onto Benji. She appropriated him almost immediately, and had him doing all kinds of tasks for her, going through Lane’s records, and the gear he had left behind and dismantling the last of the Syndicate. All of which meant Ethan barely got to see Benji when he was properly awake.
He complained to Erika about it (god knows when he’d taken her to calling her Erika, but the only person he ever called by surname these days was Brandt. But to be fair, the only person who ever called him Will was Benji) and she replied.
‘You’re not using him right now, and he’s too valuable to keep doing nothing. He really is quite brilliant.’
‘He really is,’ Ethan said. ‘Most people don’t see it.’
‘I see it,’ Erika said softly. ‘I’m not stealing him from you. I’m borrowing him from you.’
‘Be sure you give him back.’
‘I will. I have work in mind for you, Mr Hunt, and you need Benji Dunn for that. But for now – I need him.’
‘I need him,’ Ethan said, before he could think about it.
‘He’s free to come and go as he wishes. I’m not keeping him from you.’
But Ethan held onto the excuse that Benji was busy working for Erika and had no time to come to see Ethan. Surely there’d be no other reason for Benji to avoid Ethan.
So all in all, somehow Ethan managed to not really see Benji until everyone had left Kashmir, and it was time to find a warehouse again. Benji had left days earlier, hurried back to Washington by Erika, and that was where Ethan had chosen his hiding place this time. He rushed in, wondering what Benji had left this time, if there’d be a note with his number on, or just an open invitation to come and stay. He’d taken to leaving that lately and this time Ethan would take him up on it. He had missed Benji so much. He wanted to see him, for things to go back to how they had been.
But the warehouse was bare. It was cold, and the dust was still and untouched and nothing but rats and spiders had ever been there.
And then Ethan was afraid.
He called Luther who said he’d been trying to find Benji too.
‘He avoided me in the camp, once you were back, and you know I had to leave early – he sent a few emails but – they sort of seemed forced, you know? But I thought – he’s with Ethan, he’ll look after him.’
Guilt cramped Ethan’s stomach.
‘I – no. No, I didn’t. Do me a favour and see if you can find him, will you?’
‘I’ll try, but Ethan – finding people is Benji’s skill. And I’m pretty sure if he wants to be hidden, he knows how to stay hidden.’
‘Why would he want to stay hidden?’
Luther was silent on the other end. Then he said…
‘Benji makes sure you only see the Benji you need to see. Not just you, he does that to all of us. There’s a lot he hides from us – and maybe this time – maybe this time he just needs to be alone – just – not carry on that game for a while.’
Something twisted hard in Ethan’s gut and he felt his eyes prick with tears. He had known that once, back when he had seen Benji clearly. But for the past few years, he had wanted Benji to be ok so much, so fervently, that perhaps he had had fooled himself. He had seen the Benji everyone saw – happy and joking and carefree, and told himself Benji wouldn’t hide anything from him. He had never hidden anything from Benji.
Except perhaps he had. That soul-deep need for Benji, that he’d felt since long before Lane had parted them. He’d never let that slip. Did Benji even know how much he mattered to Ethan? To all of them?
‘Find him, please, Luther,’ Ethan said softly, and his oldest friend recognised the pleading when he heard it.
He called Erika Sloane.
‘I released Mr Dunn from my employ days ago,’ she said to him. ‘And he hasn’t kept me apprised of his whereabouts and is under no obligation to do so.’
‘He’s – I’m worried he may be in danger. One of the remnants of the Syndicate perhaps...’
‘I could try to track him down,’ she said. ‘But he’s not an employee or an asset or a target. It would be a gross invasion of his privacy and quite frankly, knowing his skills, I’d rather keep on the right side of him.’
‘I would owe you, Erika,’ Ethan said, ‘Any favour, anything.’
Erika Sloane recognised desperation when she heard it. Perhaps she even understood it.
‘I suspect, Mr Hunt – Ethan – that in years to come we will own each other a large number of favours. We may as well start with this one. I’ll see what I can do.’
He called Brandt.
‘What do you mean, you’ve lost Benji?’ he demanded, as soon as Ethan spoke.
‘I haven’t – I haven’t lost him,’ Ethan replied. There was a sudden swooping feeling inside at the idea of losing Benji. ‘I just – I need to find him and I can’t right now.’
‘He always finds you,’ Brandt said. In the background someone was calling him into a meeting and he turned to tell them to wait. ‘That’s how it works. You go missing, Benji finds you and covers for you.’
‘This time he isn’t doing that,’ Ethan admitted. ‘I don’t – please, Will, I don’t know where is.’
Brandt knew that tone. He’d heard it once before, in London. He remembered Ethan’s face then, pleading, not for himself, but Benji.
‘If I direct IMF resources to find him, it'll put him on all kinds of lists you don’t want him on,’ Brandt warned.
‘I know – but…’
‘I’ll see what I can do. Oh – and Ethan – you are a fucking idiot and if anything has happened to Benji I will personally track you down and hurt you.’
‘If anything has happened to Benji I’d want you to,’ Ethan said. ‘Thanks, Will.’
He called Ilsa, hiding out in Switzerland.
‘No, I haven’t seen Benji at all,’ Ilsa said. ‘What do you mean, he’s missing? He’d never leave you.’
‘I know. I know that. I think I know that…’
‘Did you ever tell him you know that?’
Ethan was silent. The hours were passing. Still no word. The warehouse echoed with Benji’s absence. What would he do if this were permanent? If that brief glimpse of Benji by his bed was the last he saw of him?
No. No. He couldn’t allow that to happen.
‘Ilsa,’ Ethan said softly. ‘What happened with Lane?’
‘Benji saved my life at considerable risk to his own,’ she told him. ‘I can’t tell you more. And that’s not the only time he’s saved me. After London, he was the one who – he helped me. I expected you to reach out, you know?’
‘I didn’t want to put you in danger.’
‘Really? Is that the reason, Ethan? Or is that just the ordinary every day lie you tell yourself to stop anyone from getting too close to you?’
Ethan took a sharp breath. Ilsa had that skilled undercover agent’s gift of reading people, and she had hit very close to the mark.
‘It’s not the worse lie I’ve heard, Ethan,’ she said, gently. ‘In a way, it’s remarkably touching. But Benji – he did reach out, soon after I left. I have to say I was surprised. In his place – if I were him – I think I would have avoided me. But he sent me information and equipment and – and – things were bad, afterwards. I felt very alone. But he was out there, caring about me. I’m not – I’m not used to that. I’m not ashamed to admit that sometimes the thought of that – of Benji helping me – was enough to keep me alive.’
‘Yeah, that sounds like him,’ Ethan said. ‘I know exactly what you mean. So I have to find him now, do you understand? No matter what.’
She took a breath.
‘I can’t tell you what happened – I made a promise, and I am trying very hard to keep my promises these days. But I’ll reach out to my contacts in Washington.’
‘Thanks, Ilsa.’
He called Julia. He didn’t know why, or how she could help, but he’d run out of people to call. And he still remembered fondly how often, after Shanghai, he had found Julia and Benji together at his desk, laughing, Benji keeping Julia amused while she waited for Ethan. They’d been genuine friends, he knew. She’d insisted on telling Benji goodbye before they left for Croatia and asked Ethan not to tell Benji she’d died.
Which meant as far as Benji knew, back then, before Russia, both Ethan and Julia had disappeared from his life without warning. That was cruel, Ethan knew. But he hadn’t known Benji really, then, hadn’t known how much he cared, how deeply he felt things.
The fact that even after all that, Benji still trusted him so completely left him awestruck. And yet Benji was out there, alone, god knows why, and Ethan couldn’t find him, couldn’t find his closest friend, his – his – love.
Now he could admit it. His cracked and broken soul, patched with gold where Benji had mended him, needed Benji. Loved Benji, an all-consuming love that both warmed and terrified Ethan.
He’d burn the world for Benji. He knew that now. Sitting in an empty warehouse, not knowing where to turn or what to do, getting more desperate by the minute, needing to find Benji, he could admit it himself.
Julia had let him go.
He could love Benji now.
And yet now was the exact moment he had lost Benji.
He’d wanted to confide his worry to Julia. What she said only made him worry more.
‘What do you mean, Benji is missing?’ she said sharply. ‘You need to find him now, I mean right now, Ethan.’
‘We’re trying, Julia…’
‘Try harder! I can’t break medical confidentiality, but I can tell you his life is at stake, so you find him right now, Ethan Hunt, and when you do, don’t let him out of your sight, do you get that?’
‘I – life – I don’t understand.’
‘Ethan. You are the sweetest, kindest man I’ve ever met, but so is Benji and he has been taking care of you all this time – it’s his nature, he needs someone to take care of. But now you have to look after him, so you find him.’
‘I’ve been trying to look after him,’ Ethan said, running out of the warehouse to his car. ‘But I got it wrong – I failed…’
‘So you try again and again and again. Benji needs you, just as much as you need him, and you find him right now.’
‘He’s gone off grid – I’ve got everyone looking, but Julia..’
He got in his car.
‘How do you think Benji finds you, every time? It’s one of the things you told me, do you remember? While you were on all that painkillers. Benji always finds you.’
‘He’s got a lot of skills…’
‘Instinct. It’s like a compass needle finding North. You are his true North. And he is yours. Follow your instinct, Ethan. And call me as soon as you find him.’
Julia ended the call. Ethan sat in his car, desperate to move, but not sure where to go or what to do. He’d run out of options, and he had to find Benji, he had to. It was a burning need, as necessary as breathing. Find Benji, fix whatever had gone wrong. Now, right now, before it was too late. Oh please god, not too late. He was Ethan Hunt, he was never too late and yet he had been before and he would again and he would lose someone he cared about. Not this time, please, not Benji.
Luther called, and Ethan answered. For a moment he felt cold. What if it was a body? What if that was Luther was calling to tell him he’d found Benji dead? It would only be Luther who would do that – the rest would know that it would have to be Luther. Ethan braced himself as he waited for Luther to tell him.
‘All I can tell you right now is he’s in Washington,’ Luther said. ‘We’re trying to narrow it down but – he’s good at this, Ethan.’
‘Thank you,’ Ethan said, and ended the call.
Washington. So the same city, at least.
What would he do, where would he hide? Benji didn’t tend to hide in darkened cellars and dirty rooms like Ethan did. Benji always hid in plain sight, like the six months in the CIA, to all intents and purposes undercover, and he’d hadn’t been outed until Ethan had dragged him back into the field. It was an incredible skill, and one Ethan really admired. He couldn’t have done it, not for that long.
But where would Benji hide if he was hurting, and scared and wanted not to be found? When he needed to be alone? When he needed to be away from everyone, to lick his wounds (what wounds?) and heal (heal from what? What had Julia meant?) and not be a bother to anyone?
Oh.
What would Benji do if he needed to do what Ethan did at the end of every mission…Ethan glanced up at the warehouse and then called Luther.
‘Any abandoned warehouses in the local area that show an increase in electrical activity,’ Ethan said, without any preamble, still talking as he started the car. ‘Start with warehouses I’ve used. Benji will have a list.’
‘Got it.’
‘And Luther – get medical help ready.’
‘Already done.’
Ethan was already breaking the speed limit as he ended the call. He was going to personally check every industrial estate, warehouse and abandoned building where he had hidden, and Benji had sent him gifts.
Luther had pinged Benji’s phone in a certain area. Erika had sent a surveillance video of Benji in a pharmacy – he had hidden his face, but his arms were full of packages and when he dropped one, the camera caught his face. Brandt had managed to find requisition slips for supplies to be delivered to at least five different addresses.
That was enough. Ethan knew where Benji was hidden. It was a huge concrete shed behind an abandoned factory. Benji had actually visited him there once, arms full of Chinese food and warm clothes, and sat there until Ethan had eaten all the food.
‘You don’t need to do this, Ethan,’ he had sighed, looking around at the warehouse.
‘I do,’ Ethan replied. ‘I know you don’t understand – I’m not sure I do – but this is what I have to do.’
‘Ok. Ok, well, I won’t stop asking you to come out of the shadows every once in a while. It’s warmer in the sunlight, and you know how you hate the cold.’
Now it was Benji in the shadows.