Hello! This is my first fic, so please be nice. This takes place after the Cobalt mission, so spoilers up through Ghost Protocol. You have been warned!

Disclaimer: All of this belongs to the M:I franchise. If these characters and stories belonged to me, I could have a horse. I do not have a horse.

Enjoy!

After surviving the Cobalt mission and preventing the world from going up in a puff of nuclear smoke, this should've been a breeze. Get in, retrieve the stolen passcodes, apprehend the target, get out. Cake.

So why, Brandt wondered irritably, had he and his team leader ended up injured and freezing in a mountain cave somewhere in northern Europe? Either Austria or Germany; honestly he couldn't even remember. And by this point he couldn't care less.

Brandt leaned his head back against the rough stone of the wall behind him, feeling his muscles relax minutely as the surface supported his tired weight. Christ, what a long day. The bruises from where that Austrian–German?–guard had kicked him ached in time with his heartbeat, and a persistent headache was gathering at the base of his skull, promising a long next day when they got out of here.

If we get out of here. Brandt pushed down the well of worry murmuring in the pit of his stomach. They'll come. Benji and Jane are on their way. They'll be safe even in this blizzard, and Ethan will be fine.

He rubbed a hand over his face. How did this mission get so screwed up?

It had been a few months since the Hendricks fiasco, and after several well-earned weeks of R and R and time to heal, the team had been reappointed to active field service. Ethan's limp had disappeared fully. Jane no longer held her side in discomfort when she moved a certain way. Benji and Brandt had kept their skills sharp and helped with their fellow agents' physical therapy, and the experience, the pain and fear and desperation the four of them had endured in their first ever mission together, somehow bonded them. Even Brandt, who had attended enough funerals to be more than cynical about keeping friends in their line of work, knew there were no other three people on earth he would rather have watching his back. There was something different about when the four of them came together, some kind of subconscious understanding. They operated as a unit. As a team.

The new Secretary had recognized this, and proceeded to place Agents Hunt, Carter, Brandt and Dunn together on missions at any chance she got. They had executed several since the end of their R and R period, all successful, and all significantly more dangerous and challenging than the one that currently had Brandt freezing his ass off in a mountain cave.

The mission had started out smoothly enough. The team had been sent to a remote mountain village, where a freelance hacker had retreated after stealing several delicate government passcodes. The IMF was worried he would soon auction them off to the highest bidder, regardless of whether they were terrorists or even old friends of Hendricks. The Secretary deployed Ethan's team to retrieve the codes and attempt to bring the hacker in alive. Someone with this amount of skill may be useful if turned. If he resisted or attempted to flee, neutralize him. Just like other retrieval missions all of them, even Benji, had run at some point in their IMF careers.

They went undercover, blending into the village as if they belonged there. The hacker had set up his operation in a partially collapsed warehouse at the edge of town. The team tracked him there and prepared to infiltrate.

Intel had suggested the hacker was working alone. There may have been a handful of mercenaries guarding the codes, but nothing that would give four experienced, highly trained agents any trouble.

The team crept in, sticking to the shadows. The hyperawareness of battle settled over Brandt like a sensitive second skin. His eyes flicked around the ruinous interior of the warehouse, over the pile of rubble in the center obscuring one side of the building, the shadows crouching over the corners, the holes in the walls letting in the chilling winter breeze. The warehouse was silent as the four of them crept forward.

Ethan held up a fist. They stopped, and he signaled. Brandt and Jane nodded and crouched low before darting over to the rubble pile and hiding behind it. The four of them still could not see the other side of the building, but Brandt's instinct told him that whoever they were hunting was there. Along with that conviction came the uneasy feeling that something was about to go wrong. Brandt pushed it away. He was an analyst. He didn't listen to formless gut feelings.

Ethan and Benji pressed against the far wall, and the agents kept moving silently forward. Their breath steamed in the frigid air.

There was a narrow gap between the pile of rubble and the far wall. Brandt signaled to Ethan, who nodded and crossed over with Benji. They could hear voices now, a low murmur of indistinguishable sound. Brandt could only catch muffled snatches, but he was pretty sure it was Russian and English. His eyes narrowed, ears straining.

The pressed toward the opening. Adrenaline charged Brandt's bloodstream as Ethan peered around the edge of the gap.

Ethan froze entirely, his shoulders stiffening. He pulled back and whispered one word onto the comm. line. "Abort."

They knew better than to ask why, but fear slipped an ice cube down the back of Brandt's shirt. Something was wrong. There were only a few things that could cause Ethan to terminate a mission entirely. Some new unseen variable that had put the four of them in imminent danger. Ethan led them faster away from the rubble piled, toward the closest hole in the wall.

Metal scraped on metal, and voices spilled into the space. The agents whirled to see a dozen black-clad men, all armed, spill into the warehouse. It was way too late to hide. The team was in plain sight.

The leader of the men shouted something in Russian, pointing to them. The soldiers raised their guns.

"Run!" yelled Ethan, pushing Jane forward out the hole. "Scatter and regroup at the rendezvous at 1600!"

Jane leapt forward out the wall, Benji right behind her. The first shots went off, and then the warehouse became nothing but bullets and noise and adrenaline, lighting up Brandt's body. Ethan grabbed his arm and yanked his out the hole before jumping himself. The two men landed in the snow and started running for the trees.

Gunshots cracked the cold air and bullets piffed into the snow around their feet. The knee-deep snow made it difficult to run, but motivation like having his life on the line tended to help Brandt overcome such inconveniences.

Just as they reached the treeline, one of the soldiers' bullets met its mark.

One moment Ethan was running next to Brandt, the next he was sprawling into the snow, a grunt of pain and surprise escaping his lips. Brandt couldn't see where he was hit, but he hauled Ethan onto his feet as bullets continued to hail around them. They couldn't stop here, or even within a mile of here. As he yanked his team leader upright, he saw why Ethan went down so hard. An abdominal shot, which would incapacitate most people, wouldn't bring Ethan down unless it hit an organ and even then it wouldn't make him collapse like this one did.

No, Ethan had been shot in the leg, a wide hole just above his right knee already spilling blood onto his pants leg. Brandt threw Ethan's left arm over his shoulder and started running as fast as he was able while almost carrying the other agent.

They reached the trees. "Brandt, stop," Ethan gasped. "You need to run. We have better chance of shaking them if we split up."

Brandt didn't slow down. "You have no chance of shaking them if you can't even walk, Ethan," he replied, letting his no-bullshit tone creep into his voice. He knew how stubborn Ethan could be, especially when the lives of his team members were on the line. "Forget it."

Ethan tried to pull free of Brandt, but the second he put his shot leg on the ground his face went white as the snow around them. Brandt yanked him up again and kept moving. "Ethan, I understand you're my leader, but just this once I'm completely ignoring you. Don't be stupid."

"You mean like you're being right now?" Ethan protested, but he did not try to escape again. Instead he started running on his other leg, and together the two men started an awkward three-legged race through the snow-cloaked trees.

They didn't get far before bullets started splintering the trunks. Running was no longer an option.

Ethan and Brandt were both field agents, and that was bred into their very bodies, their muscles and their reflexes, their battle responses. No communication was needed. Each knew what the other was going to do.

Brandt let go of Ethan and pushed him hard toward a tree before diving for the nearest trunk himself. He clambered upright and pinned his back against the thick wood, forcing his breathing to slow down. He needed to be calm. If his hands shook he was a dead man, and Ethan along with him. He glanced over to make sure Ethan had taken cover. His team leader was sitting with his back to the tree, his knees pulled up. He finished tying a piece of cloth around the gunshot in wound in his leg, drew his Beretta and held it next to his right ear, ready for firing. Brandt did the same.

Ethan's green-grey eyes met Brandt's. There was no fear there, no pain. Just focus on what he had to do.

A phrase suddenly flashed through Brandt's mind, one Ethan had said to him when helping him retrain for active field service after the Cobalt mission. Brandt had asked, offhand, how Ethan dealt with killing people in the line of duty. He knew that even seasoned agents like Ethan sometimes had trouble dealing with the cold reality of what their job required them to do. When Ethan looked up, Brandt saw for a fleeting moment an insurmountable agony surface in his eyes, so much that Brandt almost took a step back. Then it was gone, replaced by Ethan's ever-present calm. Ethan shrugged casually, but when he spoke his voice was heavy with seriousness. "This is my way of looking at it, Brandt. Spare as many lives as possible, whenever possible, but remember this: do onto your enemy what they will try to do onto you first." Then he raised his sparring sword, forcing Brandt to drop it. But he'd gotten the message.

There was that same calm in Ethan's eyes now. Spare as many lives as possible. Do onto your enemy what they will do unto you.

Brandt nodded slightly. These men would kill him and his team members if he didn't kill them first. He hated himself for it, but he knew it was necessary.

Brandt wrapped his fingers tighter around the cold metal of his gun. He could hear the voices of the guards now, orders barked in a language Brandt recognized but didn't have time to translate. The fact that they were speaking at all–and making as much noise in the snow as a herd of bell-bearing sleigh horses–was a good sign. They had the advantage in number, but not experience. These people didn't know the rules.

They drew closer, following the bloody, smeared tracks Ethan and Brandt had left in their wake. Brandt slowed his breathing even more, making sure his breaths went out through his nose so it wouldn't steam as much. Closer….a little closer…

Now.

As one, Ethan and Brandt broke cover. Brandt leapt around the other side of his tree, shooting before he even had targets. In a flash he took in ten men, all armed, yelling in panic and struggling to bring their weapons to bear. Ethan and Brandt were upon them before they even knew what was happening.

Five were dead before hitting the snow with neat bullet wounds through their heads. After that it was down to handfighting.

Brandt holstered his gun and kicked away an AK-47 barrel pointed at his gut before kicking its owner in the stomach with his other leg. The man went down, groaning, and Brandt landed another kick on his temple. If that hadn't killed him outright it would certainly incapacitate him for a while. He glanced over to see that Ethan was somehow on his feet and taking down men with the grace and ferocity of a fighting tiger. Christ, thought Brandt despite their situation. The man really is crazy. Then a fist was swinging for his eye, drawing him back into the fight.

It felt like hours but was probably closer to a minute by the time it was over. Brandt and Ethan covered one another's backs without even thinking about it. They kicked and dodged and punched and rotated around each other so they were back-to-back, defending the other's blindside.

At one point Brandt lost his guard and got dropkicked in the chest, making him double over in pain and breathlessness. Ethan drove back the kicker Brandt heard a snarl of pain and looked up to see a knife slice away an inch from Ethan's face. Brandt ducked below Ethan and punched upward, breaking the man's knife-arm at the elbow. The knifeman shrieked, the blade falling from his grip. Brandt caught it and flipped it in his hand before punching the man in the temple, the force magnified tenfold by the metal in his fist. The knifeman dropped like a bag of stones.

By the time the last man was on the ground, Ethan and Brandt were breathing hard. The snow under their feet was trampled and bloody.

"You okay, Brandt?" asked Ethan. He had wrapped his hands tightly around the wound in his leg, but blood still leaked around his fingers.

"Yeah, but you're not." Brandt came around to face Ethan before pulling off his scarf and tied it tightly around the bullet wounds. He peered critically into Ethan's face, which was pale and sweaty despite the negative temperatures. "We've got to get you off your feet, Ethan."

For once his stubborn team leader didn't argue. He let Brandt sling Ethan's arm over his shoulder again and placed place the other around Brandt's midriff. The movement made Brandt's ribs shriek, but he ignored it.

"We can't go back to the town," said Ethan. "The rendezvous point is at the edge, but we still can't risk going back until nightfall. There are caves a little way from here. Easy to defend and not too deep. Should be fine." Ethan was still breathing hard. Brandt knew he would go into shock from blood loss soon if he didn't get him sheltered and his wound dressed. Plus the snow was coming down harder, threatening to white out any chance of finding their way back to the town. Brandt scanned their surroundings. He could see a great crag of rock not far up ahead, and hopefully a cleft they could hide in.

"I think I see one. Let's get up there and find a little eyre, eh?"

"Whatever you say, Brandt."

By the time Brandt got Ethan inside the snow was whiting out the trees. Visibility crumbled. On the upside, anyone pursuing them would lose their tracks in the growing inches, but there was no way Brandt was getting an injured Ethan down the mountain in these conditions. He would have to try and call for backup. But first he had to get Ethan patched up.

Brandt stumbled into the dim space. The cave was blessedly high-ceilinged once you got past the entryway, but it only went into the rock about fifteen feet. And best of all, it was empty.

Brandt took Ethan about halfway back, beyond reach of the flurries of snow blowing inside, and laid him gently against a wall. Ethan sighed as he slumped against the stone. His face was pale despite the chill and gleamed faintly with sweat. "Easy, Ethan," murmured Brandt.

His team leader glanced up at him, still stubborn despite it all. "I'm not five, Brandt," he replied, but his voice was faint and ragged with pain.

"If you clench you'll just lose blood more quickly," Brandt shot back. He started emptying his pockets, looking for a roll of gauze or anything more substantial than a handkerchief to bind Ethan's wounds. He didn't have a med kit.

"There's field dressings in the inside pocket of your jacket," Ethan said, already starting to inspect his leg.

"Don't play with that," said Brandt. "That bandage is the only thing keeping you from bleeding all over the floor." He reached into his inside pocket, and sure enough, he felt the roll of bandages. He pulled them out and started unrolling a long strip. "How the hell did you know these were in there?"

"I put them there," Ethan answered tiredly. "All of us have small med kits in those pockets."

"You thought something like this would happen?"

"I had my suspicions. Semper Paratus, eh?" Ethan stayed obediently still as Brandt unwrapped the hasty field bandage on his thigh and applied pressure with the gauze as he fished around in his inside pocket.

"What did happen back there, Ethan?" asked Brandt quietly. He peeled away the gauze to get a closer look at the wound.

Ethan shifted, his eyes on the far wall. The only outward sign of his pain was the bunched muscle in his jaw, and in his voice when he spoke. "The intel was wrong. We came in here expecting a half-dozen guards and a skinny nerd, not fifty and a skinny nerd with another shift coming in as we were trying to leave." Brandt felt his stomach drop. Fifty? "So I called it, but like I said, there was a fresh group beating us to the door."

Brandt was silent. He pulled out a tube of antibiotic cream and started gently smearing it over the entry wound. "There's a local in this. It should ease some of the pain soon. It looks like the bullet didn't hit your femur, but it's still stuck in there, and I don't have the tools to remove it."

"I know," said Ethan. "Just do what you can." Brandt finished with the cream and started binding the wound.

"What do we do now?" asked he quietly. "I don't think we'll make it back by the rendezvous time, not in this snow."

"We'll try radioing Benji," Ethan answered. "If we can't get through to them we're just going to have to wait this out." Brandt didn't address the elephant in the room: they had no way of making fire, and the sun, wherever it was, was going down. It was going to be a cold wait.

Ethan looked critically at Brandt. "What about you? That was a good kick back there."

"I don't think it broke anything," Brandt answered. "It's not that bad." Actually his chest throbbed, but not with the broken-glass sharpness of broken ribs. Cracked maybe, but since there was nothing Ethan could do about it Brandt kept his mouth shut. There were probably painkillers in the field med kid Ethan had packed for them, but Brandt didn't want to take any in case they made him sleepy. They would be fighting to stay awake soon, and if pain gave him an edge, so be it.

Brandt tied the end of the bandage tightly enough to keep blood in but loosely enough to keep it moving. Finished. "Thanks Brandt," Ethan sighed, and propped his leg on a nearby rock to elevate it.

"Anytime." Brandt pocketed his medical supplies and settled next to Ethan against the wall.

The comms were down as a result of the abort, but the agents still each had a small, long-range handheld radio on a secured frequency used only by the IMF and its agents. Brandt activated his and moved closer to the mouth of the cavern, hoping to get a better connection. "Daedalus, Daedalus," he called. "This is Jason. Do you copy?"

Static. Brandt tried again. "Daedalus, Daedalus, this is Jason. Do you copy? Are you there?" Please be there. Please tell me they got out. Please.

More static. Then, over the white noise, a voice. "Jason, Jason, this is Ariadne. How copy?"

Brandt nearly sagged with relief. Jane. "Good copy, Ariadne. What is your condition?"

"We are holed up a few miles from the rendezvous point. Our conditions are fair, both of us are unhurt. We're not going anywhere in this snow though."

"Roger. Daedalus is with you, I assume?"

"Indeed. He's currently trying to hail home, but the snow is really screwing with the connection out here. Is Perseus with you, Jason? Are you two all right?"

Brandt bit his lip, and he was sure Jane could hear it even over a silenced radio. She had that creepy mama-bear sense when it came to her team. "Oh shit. Please don't tell me–"

"We're both here, and we're both alive," Brandt cut in before she could get too freaked out. "My ribs are probably cracked, and Perseus has sustained a gunshot wound to his thigh. We've dressedit, and he's resting." He left out the fact that Ethan had lost so much blood between getting shot, the fight, and the slow struggle up the mountain and into the caves.

He could almost feel Jane's worry. "Roger that." Something had changed in her tone, and Brandt cringed. "How are you two really, Jason?"

Damn Jane and her freaky perception to the gravity of a situation–and her ability to convey a clear threat of bullshit-me-and-die through just a few words. Brandt knew his own condition, but Ethan often hid his pain. The analyst bit his lip again and furtively glanced back to his team leader. The other agent was leaning his head against the rock, face pale but eyes sharp and alertness showing in the lines of his posture. Brandt had a growing conviction the man never fully came off guard. He had been fighting for his life far too long.

Brandt grimaced. "I think we'll be all right for a while, Aridane, if the cold doesn't kill us first. What's the ETA on the end of this blizzard?"

A pause, and then a familiar British accent lilted over the radio, and Brandt couldn't help but grin. Benji. "Yeah, hey there, Jason, I've managed to pull up a radar here, and it looks like this storm may nasty but hopefully short-lived. We'll come and find you though. Just sit tight, don't try to move from where you are." Another pause. "Do you have any idea where you are, actually?"

Brandt peered out the narrow slash of entrance, looking for any distinguishing landmarks on the outside. Any features of the place were completely wiped away by the thick snow. "We moved east out of the warehouse and were pursued through a pine forest. I'm not sure how far we went, but we ended up against some kind of rock formation. We found a cave and that's where we are now, over. But I got nothing out here in terms of trail markers. I can't see shit."

Benji huffed a laugh. "Neither can we. I'll work on getting the tracer network set up. It's a bit wonky because of the snow. Then we'll and get you, over."

"Brandt." The agent turned to see Ethan leaning off the wall, an arm outstretched. "Let me talk to Benji, please." Brandt knew better than to question– or argue. He crouched next to his team leader and hoped the radio connection would hold. Ethan leaned back again and hailed. "Hey Daedalus, before you try and find us, have you managed to get a foot in the door back home yet?" Brandt noticed how haggard Ethan sounded, and tried not to let his worry show on his face, as it would probably just piss Ethan off. Benji had no such restraint.

"E– Perseus, Jesus! What are you doing on the radio? You sound like hell!"

"Thanks a lot," Ethan said dryly. He caught Brandt's eye and flashed a grin. "Make contacting home your top priority, Daedalus. This mission has gotten messy quickly, and we need to know how the bigwigs want us to proceed before we make any more moves, recovery or otherwise."

"Are you serious?" Jane's outraged voice came over the radio. "Forgive me, Perseus, but I don't think that's wise. We should be more worried about getting you and Jason somewhere safe." Brandt couldn't help but agree, even though he knew Ethan was right. Still, it would be a Phyrric victory in the worst sense if they managed somehow to capture the hacker but lost Ethan in the process, though the IMF may not see it that way. Brandt stared at the ground.

"You're not going to be doing anything in these conditions anyway, Ariadne," Ethan replied. "Benji, make contact with home as soon as you can, and when you reach them, let me talk. We'll make a plan from there."

"Roger that, Perseus," Jane said, though Brandt could tell she wasn't happy about it. "We'll get back to you. Hang in there." The line went silent. Brandt sighed and settled against the wall again. Ethan switched off the radio and placed it on the ground next to him.

The snow was still coming down, and without the warmth from adrenaline and exertion Brandt could start to feel the cold creep into his bones. He hugged his knees to his chest, trying to conserve as much body heat as possible.

He glanced over at Ethan. He had leaned his head against the rock again, eyes closed in fatigue. His face was still worryingly pale. Without opening his eyes he said, "You know something's not right about this mission."

Brandt nodded before mimicking Ethan's leaned-back pose. "Yeah. Intel wouldn't be that far off unless someone knew we were coming."

Ethan made a noise of assent. "A mole, d'you think?"

Brandt sighed. "With our luck? Probably." He paused. "Do you think Benji will be able to reach them?" "Them" being the organization that had so recently tossed them into this Austrian–German?– meat grinder.

"I don't know," said Ethan. "It depends on why exactly this went so wrong. If the hacker just stocked up on guards without our knowing because he had reason to believe we were coming after him–and that's a legitimate fear– there might not be anything internal. If not…" Ethan opened his eyes. "We're probably on our own."

"Speaking of which," Brandt said, "why are you even trying to reach them? Every mission I've ever been on with you, and most of the ones I haven't, usually resulted in you going rogue anyway."

Ethan scoffed slightly, showing a flash of white teeth. "Guilty. You're right, I'm calling for orders, but who says we'll follow them?" He closed his eyes again, still half-grinning. "Just because you get orders from on high doesn't mean you should let them talk over your own judgment, Brandt." His grin faded. "I want to see what they say. If they tell us to retrieve the hacker at all costs, even after we explain the situation, something's up."

Brandt frowned. "Why do you say that? Walking into no-win scenarios is kind of our job, last I checked." It was sad, but true. Brandt had long since given up on hoping the IMF would show any humanity when it came to the lives of its agents. As soon as they were in the field on a mission, operatives were fully responsible for their own fates. Though they had the support network of the agency, if they were caught or wounded and on their own, no rescue would come for them. Even if they escaped, they would most likely be disavowed permanently.

Ethan half-shrugged. "True. They would expect us to complete the mission no matter what, regardless. But if the target was not even in sight of the specified location?"

"What?" Brandt pushed his shoulders off the wall to look at Ethan. "What do you mean, not in sight?" The hacker, according to intel, (intel that, granted, had totally dicked them over on this mission) had set up his server network inside that warehouse.

"He wasn't there," said Ethan. "I could see all of the rest of the warehouse once I looked around the edge of the rubble pile. There were a ton of guards, but they were in formation, like they were waiting for us. And no hacker. We were set up, Brandt."

Brandt closed his eyes. "And you want to see what the Secretary does about it."

"Yep."

All the breath went out of Brandt in a long whoosh. So that would help account for all the random bad luck on this mission. He went back to leaning against the wall, muttering about why he had decided to go back to being a weapon for an agency of backstabbing assholes.

Ethan nudged him with his shoulder. "You get used to it after a while, Brandt."

Brandt raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Being set up by the people you work for. You get used to it. I don't know what it's like in analysis, but as a field agent, I've gotten screwed over by the IMF so many times it's a miracle I haven't gone rogue for good." He grinned devilishly, and despite the fact Ethan was his friend, Brandt felt a flicker of unease pass through him.

Sometimes Brandt forgot just how long Ethan had been with the agency. He knew he was probably the most affective agent they currently, if not ever, had in their arsenal. Handsome, charming, focused, a leader in any situation and deadly in a fight, yet able to meld seamlessly into the civilian crowd. He was the perfect agent. And yet those who had worked with him closely knew the weight he carried.

It was impossible for an analyst not to look for data. After the failed Croatia mission, when he thought he had gotten Ethan's wife killed and Ethan himself dropped off the map, Brandt dug feverishly into the IMF archives, looking for the history behind the man he had just potentially driven into madness. What he found was a barricade of redacted files, secure firewalls and curt statements of "Above your pay grade, sir." By the time he was directly ordered to stop his search by the Secretary himself, Brandt hadn't discovered much. But he had learned that this Agent Hunt, whoever he really was, knew what he was doing.

And Brandt got this man's wife killed, and if his skill set was anything to go by, he'd know. That was about when Brandt started sleeping with a knife under his pillow and a Beretta on his nightstand.

But when he finally met the mysterious Ethan Hunt, he met a man with a graceful leadership, a core of bright-eyed, bordering-on-crazy intensity, and hidden beneath it all an indeterminable, exhausted sadness. And when he finally told Brandt the truth about Julia's faked death, the analyst felt a leaden guilt that had rested in the bottom of his chest for the last several years break up and fall away. He had wanted to run with Ethan, Jane and Benji since. Because in doing so, he found something he had not had in years and not even realized he'd missed: a family.

And yet the analyst in him still wondered about his team leader's past at times, and what had driven him to become such a dangerous agent in the first place.

He was startled out of his reverie by a groan. Brandt whipped his head to look worriedly at Ethan, but the other agent was smirking. "I can practically hear the cranks turning, Brandt. What's on your mind?"

Shit. Leave it to Ethan and his damn perception for which he was famous. Brandt leaned back again and decided to play dodge. "What do you mean, what's on my mind?"

Ethan nudged him again. "Come on. Normally you'd be cracking up a sarcasm storm right about now. I thought you were Mr. Helper, man."

May as well go with grace, William. "Oh, just my brilliant analytical mind running through thousands of potential scenarios at once, of course."

"Scenarios of what?" Ethan asked casually.

"Why are you talking? You should be saving your strength, as bad-comic-book-cave-kissing-scene as that sounds."

Ethan raised a dark brow. "What kind of comics did you read, Brandt? I knew you were a messed-up child, but dude."

Brandt resisted the urge to swat him. "Shut up." Ethan chuckled, Brandt soon following, and somehow, just their laughter seemed to leaven the shitty situation.

Brandt decided to strike while the iron was hot. "I was actually wondering…how you got your start."

Ethan's smile faded, and Brandt wondered if he'd crossed a line.

Ethan wrapped his arms tighter around his torso. "Don't you know that already? You and your analyst friends back under the wings?" There was no bitterness in his voice, just a resigned indifference. Brandt took it as a green light.

"No, actually. After Croatia I tried learning about you, but your files have got more blacktape in them than the dead Secretaries'."

Ethan scoffed. "Hmm. I thought after I got disavowed the first time they burned them all."

"The first time?"

The agent sighed resignedly, like he realized he wasn't getting out of this one easy. "You realize anything I tell you is top secret?"

"With you, I'm pretty sure anything you tell me will make top secret sound like high school gossip," Brandt answered wryly.

"And that if you breathe a word of this to anyone outside the IMF, or even our team, the Secretary will either have us both executed or shipped to a remote observation facility in some obscure corner of the world?"

"I wouldn't take anything less."

"Good." Ethan rubbed the bandages on his leg thoughtfully. "In that case…" he shifted so he was facing Brandt slightly more directly. "What do you want to know, Brandt?"

Actually, everything. Analysts as good as Brandt–and he was good–only reached chief status with skill and an innate curiosity. It was in Brandt's genes to dig deeper than the next guy, amass as much information, however inane, as possible. Obstacles like redacted histories were meat to starving dogs with people like him.

He wanted to ask about a dozen questions in as many seconds–What really happened with those Serbians, how did you come to work for the IMF, why are you so protective of the people under your charge to the point of obsession– but that would make him look childish. Instead he decided to start with the bone Ethan had tossed to him.

"Actually, I think you already started a story," he said casually. "'The first time you got disavowed?"

Ethan's smirk stayed, but there was a darkness in his eyes now, like bad memories were paying a visit. "You know you don't have to tell me this," Brandt countered. "I'm curious, but people like us don't always want to be handing out life stories."

"No, it's fine Brandt," Ethan said, swiping a hand over his face. "Better you hear it from me than some greenhorn punk who just gets it through the grapevine over too many beers, eh?" He lowered his hand. "Did you ever read about the Job mission, back in '96?"

Brandt stared. "Of course. Everyone knows that mission." Had he heard of it? Christ, if you were an analyst you knew that file verbatim. It had been a particularly convoluted case, involving a turncoat agent who had allegedly been killed in a mole hunt in Prague, along with the entire rest of his team except his point man. The point man, whose name was always redacted, fled from Prague after nearly blowing up the Secretary at the time and set off a manhunt of epic proportions. He then somehow infiltrated Langley, stole the NOC list and used it as barter with an under-the-table character named Max. The mission ended when the turncoat agent reappeared on the train between Paris and London with the point man in league, but the point man turned on him and exposed his betrayal to the Secretary. One helicopter crash later, and the turncoat is dead, the NOC list recovered, and the point man sworn back into active service. It was an infamous case, and Brandt had always wondered how that point man managed to keep it together. Little was given in the file, other than that he was a young, fairly new agent with great skill.

'96. Almost two decades ago. Which meant, feasibly…

Brandt raised his eyebrows. "Are you telling me you had something to do with that?"

Ethan didn't answer, just leaned his head against the wall and showed him a profile of shit-eating glee.

Brandt barely managed to contain his surprise. "You were the point man," he said, and Ethan nodded. Brandt shook his head in amazement. "Jesus. After all these years, and I never even thought it could be you." He raised his eyebrows again. "Though knowing you now, I probably would've figured it out sooner or later."

"I'm sure." Ethan's grin faded. "There were a lot of firsts on that mission. First time disavowed."

"Not the last," Brandt said, thinking about Ghost Protocol.

"Not by far," Ethan continued. "Fortunately or unfortunately. First time I used explosive gum. Never let Benji get ahold of that stuff. Ever."

"What does it…actually nevermind."

Ethan chuckled. "Yeah. That was one of those graduation missions. After that, I wasn't the cocky little kid just following orders anymore. I was making my own." He looked down at his bloodstained shoes. "It was one of those things in your life that bitchslap you with reality, and make you realize you can't be the person you were before. You have to be better. Stronger." The agent rested his head on his pulled-up knees, gazing intently at nothing.

Brandt looked curiously at Ethan. It was rare for their team leader to talk about his feelings. It only happened when failing to do so actively inconvenienced the other members of the team, or when, on one of the occasional late-nighters spent over a ever-full glass after a particularly draining mission, Ethan let a little gut show. But this was new to Brandt, this pensive, reflective Ethan Hunt, his usual bravado hidden away.

Hmm. Maybe it was the blood loss.

The cold was getting worse. Brandt wrapped into an even tighter ball, thinking longingly of fire and warm blankets. He had to keep Ethan talking, keep him awake. If he was already being affected, he didn't want to think about the adverse effects hypothermia would have on a guy who's already a few pints low.

Brandt was not normally a touchy-feely person, but he was willing to bite. Besides, there was always something new to learn from his team leader under normal circumstances, some obscure fact or maneuver that would somehow come in handy later on. Why should emotional shit be any different?

Ah, who was he kidding. Brandt carried crosses too. If Ethan had some way of dealing with his skeletons other than just shoving them into a slowly filling closet that would one day burst for good, Brandt wanted to hear it.

"How do you?" he asked. "Become stronger."

Ethan was silent for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. "I lost my entire team that mission, Brandt. Seeing that kind of thing, surviving it…" he shuddered almost imperceptibly, and Brandt didn't think it was from the cold. "Your skin has to get thick after a while. Otherwise you just fly apart." He took a deep breath. "The guilt does it too. Toughens you up."

Brandt frowned. "Guilt?"

Ethan nodded. "Like I said. My entire team was killed. I was disavowed. I had screwed up, bigtime, and somehow I was still alive. Why?" He took his head off his knees and leaned back again. "It stuck with me. If someone on my watch got hurt or killed, I would run through the missions over and over again, trying to figure out what I had done wrong. As a leader you have to be responsible for everyone's actions, not just your own. I held myself accountable for every bad thing that happened, every piece of pain that may have been avoided if I'd done something differently." He closed his eyes. "Guilt was my weakness. It always has been."

Brandt was silent, but inside he was reeling. Jesus. It was one thing to lose a friend, but an entire team? When you had practically just graduated to field service? No wonder Ethan was so protective of the people he cared about–and why he wasn't afraid to break regulations in order to keep them safe. It was a regulation procedure–the mole hunt in Prague–that got them killed in the first place. And no wonder he felt guilty, being the only survivor of something like that.

"That was why you helped out that Russian in the prison," he realized, recounting what Jane had later told him about the extraction during the Cobalt mission. "Your contact. You didn't want to walk out on him."

"I always try to settle my debts, Brandt," Ethan replied. "I owed Bogdan." His voice was getting weaker, Brandt noticed, but he refused to let him stop talking. If they both went to sleep now, they wouldn't wake up. The cold would steal their breath before Benji and Jane ever reached them.

"Did you feel guilty after Croatia?" Brandt asked quietly. Ethan cracked an eye to look at him, the slit of gray-green piercing Brandt through, and the analyst got the distinct feeling that he had just poked a panther in the eye with a stick. But Ethan just pursed his lips.

"No. I did what I had to do in Croatia. Julia would never have been safe if she stayed with me, and those Serbians were killers. It was the only way." The fierceness in his face faded, replaced with a sad, distant wistfulness. "I do miss her, though. God, I miss her." He rubbed a hand over his eyes, and Brandt looked away.

"Sorry, I shouldn't have brought it up."

"It's all right," said Ethan. "Besides, guilt doesn't bother me much anymore."

"What do you mean?"

Ethan looked at Brandt again. "How did you deal after Croatia? You were the leader of that team. How'd you live with yourself after failing, and thinking you'd gotten my wife killed?"

Brandt winced. Despite knowing now that Julia was alive and well, the memory of the misery he felt after that bombed mission was enough to make his stomach drop and add teeth to his words. "You know what I did?" he replied bitingly. "I quit. I resigned my position as a field agent leader, one that I had proudly served for four years, and transferred to the analyst branch. And that was my job the whole time up until we crashed that car into the river in Moscow."

A grin appeared on Ethan's pale face. "I seem to recall the angry Russians crashing the car into the river, and then shooting it repeatedly."

Brandt scowled. "You know what I mean." Ethan chuckled.

"So yeah. I felt damned after Croatia."

"So you quit?"

Brandt narrowed his eyes. "It seemed to be the best option at the time."

"Do you regret it?"

"Why the hell are you asking me this, Ethan?"

"Because I want to see what you learned," said Ethan with sudden vehemence. He shifted onto his side so he was facing Brandt. "Look, Brandt, this is what I know. You can do one of three things when you screw up. You can pretend it didn't happen, and put it out of your mind, but believe me when I say it won't stay there long. You can quit, like you did, and give in to the fear that you'll screw up again and someone else will get hurt. And that's a good fear," Ethan said quickly as anger shot through Brandt and he opened his mouth to protest, "but it's our jobs to be brave, Brandt. To take on the missions everyone else is too afraid to deem possible."

"I know that," snapped Brandt, still angry. "But when you're directly responsible for the death of another person you were supposed to protect, a freaking civilian no less– how the hell are you supposed to deal with that?"

Ethan's eyes were intense. "Learn from it, instead of giving up. Learn from what you've done wrong instead of just feeling bad about it. It's good to feel guilt to some extent, just to remind yourself you're a human being. But when it starts to interfere with your judgment, your ability to function? That's illogical. What's more, dangerous."

"So you're saying I should just forget about it?" Brandt asked bitterly. "Say, 'Wow, that was a screw-up, I won't do it again,' and move on with my life?"

"Don't be stupid," said Ethan. "I thought analysts were supposed to be the clever ones. What I'm saying, Brandt, is to hold yourself accountable. Feel guilty. But don't let the guilt destroy you, because it will if you let it. Carry that guilt in recompense, but do your damn job. Take what you can from what you did wrong, and let it go." He settled back against the wall. "Sometime, you'll have to figure out how to learn and let die."

The radio crackled. Brandt lunged for it as Benji's garbled voice came from the speakers. "Hello, Perseus, Jason, this is Daedalus. You two still alive?"

Brandt exhaled in relief. "Yeah, we're here, Daedalus."

"Yes! We were afraid you two were snowed over by now. Anyway, we've got headquarters on the line."

Just like that, the bare, emotional side of Ethan Hunt was hidden again. "Give me the radio," he said, his face closed but eyes sharp with anticipation. Brandt handed it over. "Put them on, Daedalus."

There was a moment of silence as Benji patched in the call. Then a voice from the dark: "Last I heard, you were resting up after saving the world, my man. What the hell you doing freezing your ass off in Romania?" The speaker's voice was deep and velvety and vaguely familiar, but even Brandt, with his arsenal of identities, couldn't place him.

Ethan could, however. Brandt saw it in his eyes, saw the hope and relief he wanted to let out, but his voice was stony when he spoke. "Australia, 2000. You and Billy flew in to meet me, you stepped in something as soon as you got off the chopper. What was it?"

There was no hesitation on the other end of the line. "I stepped in shit. And I said it, I said 'Shit,' and you said, 'Yes it is.' Cause you're a punk, Ethan." There was a laugh in the speaker's voice.

Ethan sighed quietly in relief. "Luther. Jesus it's good to hear from you."

That was why he sounded familiar. Brandt had met Ethan's old friend in passing, when the four of them were convening at that dockside a few weeks after the Cobalt mission, the night Brandt found out Julia's death had been faked.

"Romania," Brandt muttered to himself. "So that's where we are." Ethan gave him a curious look, but Brandt waved him off.

"When Benji called I hardly believed it," Luther continued. "I thought you and your team were still on leave. Why'd they send you chasing a hacker into the mountains?"

"That's one of the reasons we're talking," Ethan replied. "Good thing it's you. It would be a real pain if we had to get out of this ourselves."

"What have you gotten yourself into this time, my friend?"

Ethan made sure the radio frequency was secure and encrypted before explaining what had happened in the warehouse, and his and Brandt's flight to the caves. "You boys okay?" asked Luther when Ethan was done.

"Brandt's ribs are screwed up, I got shot, but we'll be okay. My bigger concern is what command wants us to do from here." Ethan raised an eyebrow. "And what are you doing on the other end of a radio? I didn't know you had been promoted to communications."

"Eh, I'm just filling in for a friend while he's on leave. Kinda nice to work a desk job for a change, actually. After you guys didn't call in at the check time, they set me on it. They knew I'd know things about you only a friend would know. Though since you asked about kangaroo shit I believe grilling you with verification questions is pretty unnecessary." Brandt couldn't suppress a chuckle.

"It's us," Ethan said, smiling. "Luther, what's going on over there?"

"Well, first of all, there's no hacker," Luther said. "It was a trap set for you and your team. As usual someone's wanting to off you, man. I'd recommend ditchin' wherever the hell you are as soon as you can."

"A trap?" repeated Ethan. "Using intel?"

"There was a mole," Luther explained. Of course. "Apparently has been feeding out false info for over a month. A lead came in from another team in the field; they'd gotten a name from one of their targets. The Secretary's lackies ran the name, and guess who turned up?"

"Your mole," Ethan finished. "I assume they got him?"

"Yep. Confessed everything in the first five minutes of interrogation, along with the locations and names of his associates. One of them was right where you guys are now. Another two minutes, and he told all about what he had in store for ya'll." Luther paused; when he spoke he sounded a little rattled. "You need to get out of there, Ethan. This punk may be a coward, but he has friends in high places, and he was being very well paid for your live capture. All of you, but apparently his employers were looking forward to settling an old score with you. Get my drift?"

Ethan's eyes went flat. "I do." Right. If someone wanted to make Ethan hurt, and the rest of his team was captured with him, they would have no trouble.

"The Secretary is calling your team back immediately," Luther said. "We'll have a chopper pick ya'll up at these coordinates in one hour." Luther relayed the coordinates, Brandt memorizing and repeating them as they came. "They know it's snowing, but there's no telling when it'll stop, and ya'll will freeze overnight. Get to those coordinates and hunker down, boys. It's your best bet at this point."

"Roger that," said Ethan. "Thanks Luther. Be good."

"You too. Stay safe, boys," said Luther. "Communications out." Luther's line went silent.

A pause, then: "Benji?"

"We're on our way, Ethan. One of you turn on your phone so I can try to track it."

Brandt pulled out his IMF-issued phone, one, like all of theirs, equipped with a tracer, and switched it on. "Good to go, Benji."

"Okay, bear with me….yeah, gotcha Brandt! You're about a half a mile from the pickup point, and not far from us. We'll come and meet you; stay where you are."

"Roger," said Ethan. "Benji, Jane, be careful. These conditions can kill you ten feet from the door."

"We will be," said Jane. "Sit tight, boys. See you soon." The feed went silent.

Ethan handed the radio back to Brandt, who clipped it onto his belt. "And now we wait. Joy," Brandt muttered. The cold had gotten worse. He scrunched into a tighter ball and pressed closer to Ethan, the two men sharing in each others' warmth.

Brandt's chest hurt more now, the cold aching in his bruises. Okay, broken ribs, no. Cracked? Certainly felt that way right now. When this stupid mission was over, Brandt was going to take a long bath and a day off. He groaned in frustration and rapped his head gently against the wall.

"What?" asked Ethan quietly, eyes still closed.

Brandt sighed. "We're stuck in a cave in a snowstorm in some obscure European country. You're bleeding, my ribs feel like someone dropped half the mountain on them, and all we can do is sit and do nothing until Benji and Jane get here. "

"Are you just saying this to bitch? Granted, you do that a lot," Ethan joked back. If they hadn't been injured, Brandt would've smacked him.

"Hey, someone's gotta be the voice of cold, annoying reality. You're too stubborn to do it, and Jane and Benji are too damn optimistic." The banter lit the darkness of the cave, driving away some of the pain in Brandt's body and the heaviness in his heart from their earlier conversation.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, grimacing with the pain it brought to his chest. "Why is this our job, Ethan? For what insane reason do we keep coming back?"

Ethan opened his eyes. "Besides the fact that if we quit we would be subject to surveillance for the rest of our lives and would end up wanting to shoot people within the year so badly we'd probably turn to freelance assassination?" He quirked an eyebrow. "Actually, with our files you and I would more likely end up manning the McMurdo Station in Antarctica."

"Besides that," said Brandt with a go on gesture.

Ethan paused. "Is this rhetorical?"

"Not really." Brandt turned to look at him. "Seriously. Give me one reason why we keep doing this crazy shit day after day."

A strange look came over Ethan's face. When he spoke his voice was softer than normal. "Redemption."

Okay, wasn't expecting that. "Redemption?" Brandt repeated. "Where do you find redemption in this job?" A noise came from outside, but it was probably just wind, and he paid it no mind.

Ethan looked over Brandt's shoulder, then closed his eyes again, a relieved smile breaking over his face. "In the two people coming through the door to save us."

A shout came from the mouth of the cave. Brandt whirled around to see a snow-covered Benji and Jane blow in, their faces awash with relief. "Brandt! Ethan!"

And as Brandt ran to meet them, his heart leaping, he knew they would make it.

()()()

Forty-five minutes later they were airborne. After a cold, slow half-mile through the snowstorm, Benji and Jane almost carrying Ethan and Brandt, they reached the extraction point. It was barely a minute before the familiar whup-whup of chopper blades cut through the blizzard, and one by one the agents were hoisted aboard. They had gotten through the worst of the snow, and the skies were fairly clear as they flew toward the nearest IMF headquarters.

Once they reached the base, the commander on duty took one look at the frozen, bedraggled agents and ordered all of them to the hospital wing. Benji and Jane were treated for mild frostbite, Brandt given painkillers for his four cracked ribs, and the bullet in Ethan's leg removed and his wounds properly stitched and dressed. While they were being treated, a message came in from the Secretary. They were to sleep that night at the base and take a private jet issued by the IMF back to America the next day, where they would report personally to the Secretary upon their return. In other words, they had the night off.

Brandt could not have been more grateful. The painkillers were numbing his ribs and making his mind fuzzy around the edges, and he was ready for a long, deep sleep.

When they were finished in the hospital, the CO showed them to their room. The base was so small, the commander explained sheepishly, they could not afford to provide Jane with a room of her own. It was hardly the first time she had shared a room with her teammates, Jane replied dryly. The CO flushed deeper and quietly excused himself, and the agents moved in.

They were resting now, several hours of well-earned sleep stretching gloriously ahead. Brandt sighed as he felt the tension of the mission drain into the bed beneath him. He could feel sleep tugging him under, but on instinct more than anything else he raised himself up on one elbow and scanned for his team in the dim light shining through the door's window.

There were two narrow twin beds in the small spare room of the base, and a helpful soldier brought in a pair of cots after they arrived. They had unanimously given Ethan one of the beds on account of his injuries. The usually stubborn idiot was too exhausted to protest, crashing as soon as he was sure the rest of them were settled in. Brandt and Benji had wanted to give Jane the other bed, but she cited Brandt's cracked ribs and insisted he have it. When he tried to object, Jane gave him the coddle-me-because-of-my-sex-and-gender-and-I-will-kick-your-ass-onto-the-next-continent look, and he surrendered. He had to admit, as soon as he lay down the sharp pain in his chest faded slightly and the knots of his back unclenched. He sent a mental thank-you to Jane, even though she would never let him live it down in real life. Benji meanwhile happily sacked out on the remaining cot and instantly started snoring. Jane was asleep now too, her long dark hair falling over her face.

Seeing them, Brandt felt a deep, tired peace come over him. He glanced back at Ethan to make sure he was still breathing normally and was surprised to see that Ethan was also checking the room, taking stock of where his people were. When he saw Brandt, he half-grinned and gave him a look that said, See?

Brandt didn't understand. What? he mouthed, but Ethan had already turned over, his breathing evening out as sleep overtook him.

Ethan. Jane. Benji. His team. His family.

And then Brandt got what Ethan had meant. About redemption, about learning from and letting go of the guilt. There were three people in the world that made it possible for Ethan to forgive himself, and they were all in this room with him.

Ethan's teammates were his saving grace. They were how he coped. They were there to carry him when he could not walk, to stand near when the whole world had disavowed him. And Brandt realized he was the same way. That was why he kept coming back. For his team. Come what may, no matter the pain, physical or emotional he would have to endure, as long as he was with them, Brandt knew he'd be all right. When he was with his team, his demons would never defeat him.

The mission over, the four of them together again, Brandt let the sense and safety of his family around him carry him into sleep.

The End