A/N: Sorry guys! This got removed from the site; I must've missed my mark on the guildeline warnings, because they flat-out deleted the sucker. Sorry for everyone who reviewed/favorited/alerted. ;;

CHAPTER TWO.

There was once a time where Agent Robert Ellis took Ethan by the shoulders in a firm grip, looked at him with wise green eyes, and promised he would help in any way to ensure Julia would be protected—and that he was always going to be around when shit hit the fan. He was a decade older than Hunt but always seemed younger, not in the lines of his face but in vibrancy and power. When he spoke, people listened. When he fought, faces hit the floor. He was strong and his personalitywas strong.

So how has it come to this?

The room is eerily silent, and once the hospital door shuts, all of the uncertainty and confusion vacuum-seals into the room; there's Benji, on his laptop in the corner, where the light trickles in; Jane's sitting next to Brandt's bedside, rubbing the back of his unresponsive hand with a manicured thumb (hoping, hoping that a touch would bring him back to reality); Ethan's on the phone, and shuts out any noise to listen to a message that had been left for him—and only him.

It plays.

"I'm sorry about your agent, my friend, but it was a necessary evil. Working with the IMF, I've come to realize how meaningless this all this. Your bones are all achy right now, aren't they? Rest 'em, because once I demolish D.C. and clean out for a fresh new slate, you'll be thanking me. But not before I thank you for assisting me and my colleagues in recapturing these warheads.

"So...

thank you. Stay out of D.C., Ethan. Wouldn't want you suffering the same fate as your analyst."

When the message ends and the voice mail discontinues, he grips the phone in one hand like its a neck that he intends to break. The tendons in his knuckles reflex and pale while Jane sees waves of silent anger rolling off of his rigid shoulders. She releases Will's hand and places it softly at his side as she studies him next; the color is drained from his face, and it's jarring to see him such an unhealthy shade under the fluorescent lights. There's no hesitancy in the way her hand travels from the side of the bed to his cheek, brushing across the faint creases of his face.

By the time—no, before the time that they'd reached the hospital, he was lost in the throes of shock from blood loss. She feels a pang of guilt now in retrospect, thinking back there that he was definitely going to die. She's not sure when she started assuming the worst; perhaps the deaths of people long since passed have hurt her optimism. Perhaps she was right to assume: they'd lost him twice in surgery, and for moments that stretched out far too long. His body was alive, but his mind was trapped behind some veil of unconsciousness they couldn't reach. Perhaps never would. Right now, there's a length of tube forcing air into his lungs and a catheter in the crease of his arm giving him back precious blood he'd lost, but would it all be in vain... should it be the case that he never open his eyes again?

At least, she considers, the IMF had stationed skilled surgeons and doctors here under their command. Though, she has to wonder if the only reason they tried so defiantly against Death to bring him back was for all the information he'd had stored away in his head. As her fingers comb through his hair (such a poor state of disorder, his bangs), she bitterly remembers that he had been HQ's Chief Analyst for a reason. They couldn't let such an asset go without a fight... and to be perfectly fair, neither could they.

She remembers the huffed words he'd said to her before they'd split up for their mission.

"Don't break your heel out there, and I won't break mine."

She'd slapped him upside the back of the head for that, and he had laughed under his breath before taking a large step, out of the van and into the dark. When she recollects that image of his broad back escaping around the corner, she thinks maybe it will be filed as another unwanted goodbye in her life... The hiss of forced breathing can't compare to his lucid eyes gleaming, humorous, smart.

She speaks softly. "What is our mission, Ethan?"

Benji looks up from his laptop with his fingers pressed to one temple, tired but prepared for an answer. All the while, Ethan is quiet where he sits. The hand clenching the phone relaxes and he's nodding to a plan he's already forming in his head. There's somethingparticularly desperate about the way his blue eyes scan the floors, like something's trapped down below him, but Jane and Benji would never comment on that, not when something determined is resting alongside that edged desperation.

"The mission..." It's a low, unfinished murmur at first. He rises from his chair and walks a slow deliberate circle around it. And then he slams the side of a fist against the wall; Benji startles, Jane makes no movement... and of course neither does Brandt. The mission is obvious enough, he knows—they can read him like a book. "We're going after Ellis. But first we're going to find where Zimmerran off."

Zimmer, the man who's rather extravagant home they'd attempted to sneak into: a radical billionaire, someone of interest, someone who did dirty deals with middle-eastern extremists for lump sums of cash. He was good at covering his tracks, and even better at putting on a show. The reason we were all sent to Zimmer's mansion in the first place was to devalue, disarm, and detoxify him in the arms trade. Everything in that place needed to be either destroyed or repossessed. Unfortunately, Ellis had spoiled that, and now—thanks to their unwillinghelp—he had fled with top-of-the-line missiles. Ethan had no desire to remember the day 'Wistrom' had escaped his hands with nuclear launch codes. But the similarities begged him to compare.

"At 0400 hours, Ellis and his crew of lackeys used us and created a diversion so that they could get their hands on the Davy Crockett Juniors that Zimmer had showcasedinside the underground vault in his home. We have nothing right now that points to where Ellis' next stop is... thanks to a more-than-likely predetermined route he'd set up that's hard to trace."

"So... we get the go-ahead from base and start a search for the Crocketts?" Benji asks.

"No. That would take too much time. We find Zimmer. We get what we need out of him, and then we go after the last possible location of Ellis' fancy new armament." Ethan's quiet, looks from Jane to the motionless body crumpled under sheets and IV drips. "Zimmer has a track on those warheads. I want that tracker in our hands within the next few hours, before Ellis has time to make his next move."

Find Zimmer, find the tracking device. Find the tracking device, find the warheads. Find the warheads, find Ellis.

"I've already patched a line to director Brassel," Benji says. "He's got a secure line for you to call into. Says something about not doing anything out of your jurisdiction."

"He says that every time he talks to or about me. Let me see the number."

Ethan leaves the room for 'a breath of fresh air', but they both know that he's as paranoid as a man can get (if only they knew his past grievances) and it's simply his way of excusing himself for a (top) secret connection with IMF headquarters. That leaves Benji, Jane, and Brandt. Benji is used to awkward lengths of silence, but he comes to the conclusion that even with the situation as it is now, there's nothing—absolutely nothing—awkward about it. Disheartening and achy, yes, but natural, as though this team was created specifically to brave it together.

Three years of working together, three. This silence wasn't the sign of a disjointed team as it had been back when they were all ghosts, disavowed. Now, it was a sign of unity... or something like that. The way Jane smooths the blanket on Brandt's torso is like... like walking into a home and seeing what you expect most. This small space of time, feeling as small as a pinprick, has impacted him too much. In a way, they're all marred as agents. They all know it, and they're all fine with it.

Jane pulls her hair back and rises to her feet, and for some reason Benji immediately rises to his own as well like he'd been tethered to her waist. She doesn't seem to mind or take notice, and he slips over to stand beside her. Benji imagines it wouldn't be much longer until they would pack into their van and speed off. They'd be leaving their analyst in the hands of the IMF-appointed doctors pacing in from time to time, of course.

He drums his fingers against the top of the chair, bites his lip, and then immediately realizes how much he hates this.

"They said he might not wake up." He swallows thickly. "He's already died, what... three times today? That's got to be a record for him."

"He'll be surprised to hear it when he wakes up."

"Maybe even want a medal, if he doesn't have a heart-attack hearing about it." And then Benji bows his head, scratching across his short-haired scalp and sighing. "It's a good thing we're all made of tough stuff... O-or you three are, anyway. I dunno'... I couldn't even help him when he needed me to back there-"

Jane interrupts. "Benji. Things happened... We all did our best."

"... Yeah..."

"Now all we can do is hope we can set it all right. And believe that he'll pull through, like we will on this mission."

"... Yeah. He—he never much liked compromising any missions, right?" He's talking about Brandt, regretting the past tense that slips from his mouth. A cough. "So he can't compromise his own... life... mission... thing."

He dips his face again. She speaks softly in return, "... In order for us to succeed, you can't dive into guilt-mode. We need you with a clear head. Ethan and myself... and Brandt."

Benji's shoulders sag, and he looks tired all over again. Neither of them want another Hanaway. He still remembers how Jane's fingers trembled when she looped them around Hanaway's neck and held him close. As far as he's concerned, Brandt better not have any funny ideas about never waking up. He wants to be confident about something for once in his life. God, does he want to be, so let it at least be that everything'll turn out alright. He leans over the rail of the bed, red tie swaying on the still air like a weak-willed pendulum. There's a fire behind his eyes ill-befitting of a 'bona fide' field agent, but he was never really quite bona fide to begin with. He'd prefer to keep it that way, he thinks.

"We're gonna get that sonovabitch, Will, just you wait."

And he says it in a way that's hardly intimidating because his throat is tight and he's all wobbly—it's spoken in a way that Brandt would probably just furrow his brow at; 'you're about as bad-ass as a poodle', he'd say—but he's dead fucking serious, mate. Standing in the familial, disheartening silence, he reaches down and gives Will's limp hand one firm squeeze. He'll live, Benji forces himself to think, because he's a sturdy person. They need him, he's too smart to die, all sorts of hogwash that he makes his heart believe in. He'll give Brandt a medal when he wakes up, for dying three times and living for the rest of it.

Agents assigned by Brassel to safeguard Brandt take their seats beside the bed. The shortened team is allowed precisely sixty seconds to load up and leave once Ethan re-enters the room. They're gone in 40. Benji watches Ethan offer the window of Will's room one lingering glance before the van speeds through the parking lot. They disappear down the block.