Author's Notes: I started this story on a kink meme as a puny first draft, but it's been slowly growing bigger and bigger, so I've sharpened it up! The other chapters currently rough-drafted are getting smoothed out, so give me some time to get those bad boys posted; if you're reading this and saw it on the kink meme, you may just like it a little more this read-though; I've incorporated a lot of new dialogue and fixed a lot of errors, as well as included new/altered scenes.

CHAPTER ONE.

It should had been an easy in-and-out operation, one that snaked through eye-roll-inducing amounts of dark, damp spaces. Fortunately for Brandt, he'd managed to sap a little of Ethan's drive from some magical and infinite well; it's how he ended up moving through a never-ending line of aqueducts, flashlight half-gnawed between his teeth. The lukewarm water lapped around his calves, inky black and opaque even with the light beaming from his mouth as he thought, 'Mission accomplished in no time, sure. If you say so, Benji'. He would have preferred to accomplish their goals without getting a face-full of spiders or an earful of roaches. Whatever horrors from the deep he ran into, he made sure to bitch about it in full to every agent on his comm.

Above his head there was the Zimmer Mansion, a lavish place full of material as illegal as you can get. The plan, basically, was to get into hard-to-reach places via the 'ducts; once he's there, it would be as easy as pulling information from Mr. Zimmer's office computer and then blowing it sky-high. Every so often, Brandt had patted his breast pocket to sure he has the USB appropriate for the situation; by the end of the night, he needed very particular data: who had done business with Zimmer. While it was Ethan and Jane's job apprehending Zimmer and his... explosively illegal materials, Will's job was key. Couldn't let those activities continue without a watchful eye, after all.

They had gotten all of this Intel from Agent Robert Ellis, someone Ethan said they could put their full trust in. Someone he'd worked with manytimes before. They had all met for lunch, laughing over this and that as they prepped, and hell, Brandt liked the guy. Seemed like a real straight-shooter, someone on level with Ethan, someone he was fully capable of putting his support behind. It should have been easy.

But it was fucked. Totally fucked. Which was made clear swiftly and suddenly through the sound of Ethan Hunt struggling for his life at the other end of the radio. Brandt stops everything he's doing to press himself up against the wet walls of the tunnel, listening to Ethan rasp at the other end. That wasn't good. That wasn't good. A flood of panic catches Brandt at the thought that somewhere too far away, their team leader might be dying or getting close to it. Which sounds so fucking impossible, when he considers who he's talking about—

"E-" he starts, but freezes up before he commits IMF hara-kiri over code names. "Halley, what the hell's going on over there? Forbes, can you see him?"

Benji's already moving, Brandt could tell, static rumbling on the tech's side of things as he jostled around. There's a brief sound of keyboard strokes before he's humming nervously under his breath. Clearly, whatever he sees his surprising, because Brandt hears the distinct sound of a palm slapping the table in the van.

"No way—"

"Halley, respond!" Jane calls.

"It's Finlay," Benji continues—Ellis' code name.

They're relieved to hear Ethan cough out (clearly in the middle of a sprint): "Finlay's defected. I repeat, Finlay's defected. Everyone abort the mission; everything's been compromised."

Brandt's frozen still for a moment. Agent Ellis has been compromised. That meant that a.) Ethan was no doubt rushing to catch his so-called 'friend', and b.) that this was all a big trap. An explosion shakes something above Brandt and he stays pressed against the wall.

"What was that, now?" he barks, hazel eyes wide and scanning in the dark.

"Charges that weren't supposed to go off yet," Jane tells Brandt, while she's escaping the guards' sights somewhere within the mansion. "Get out of there, Borrelly."

Borrelly. That'd be him, alright.

"Shit—don't have to tell me twice", he grumbles into his earpiece before stepping backward with a soft splish. When something under his heel shifts he expects it to be a loose brick, old and abused from years of service... but bricks aren't supposed to make the entire tunnel click loudly, are they? A loud curse later, the tunnel screams steam from the cracks above and hisses mechanical noises, noises that nearly deafen his team's right-hand eardrums.

"Borrelly, what's that noise?" Ethan all but yells, out of breath and voice edged like a sword.

Brandt's already running as fast as the water'll let him, looking over his shoulder at something he didn't expect to see tonight: metal spikes, pumped out of the walls like pistols. Traps, made for the sole purpose of keeping snooping eyes out.

Ellis had had the specific job of shutting them all down.

So much for that.

"Forbes, I got some traps going off down here; can you get them shut down?" Brandt only hopes Benji can reach them because they are closing in fast, and god does he have his doubts, which are only confirmed by the panicked stutter that the tech pulls off. The stutter lost behind incredible noises filling Brandt's ears.

Benji tries to speak over the rush of noise from his spot in the van, regardless of how much good it does. Brandt's down there in need of help, after all.

"I-I can't—I can't reach them; they're all antiquated pieces of junk—mainlined to the mansion."

Silence, from deep down in the tunnels. Benji swallows dryly.

"Borrelly? Hey... Brandt!" He regrets abandoning the code name almost immediately, but it's hardly his main concern now as slides his chair across the room to the security cams and sees their team leader make a hellfire run for an exit. "You guys, I'm not getting anything from B—"

"I know,"Ethan breathes, doing nothing to quell any of their worries (not that he was trying to, he never tries such tactics). Somewhere in the mansion, he's hauling ass. Ellis is long since gone. "The two of you need to regroup together—and create your own extraction point if we can't get to you in time; don't tell us where you are over the frequency unless I give the word."

... He adds, a sense of betrayal hidden behind a dark tone, "Ellis might be tapping us, since he has the frequency."

"But what about—" Jane cuts in (the clack of her heels echoing in the background), but Ethan's already ahead of her.

"Don't worry, I'm going to get him out of there."

The determination in his voice makes him sound invincible. But the fact of the matter is, when a soot and dirt-spotted Ethan finally does slide down to a stop in the belly of the aqueducts, he's not so sure if his teammate is as durable as he is right now. Three minutes into the damp, murky blackness shows no sign of their chief analyst. Sometimes crumbly rock pelts down onto his shoulders, already damp from sweat, and he holds his breath. Nothing happens, but there are traps down here, he considers. It's possible they are still set in some places, and he couldn't risk trapping Brandt and himself in the belly of the mansion. worst-case scenario they'd die instantly, worser-than-worst-case, they'd be left to die slowly, trapped, instantly disavowed.

"Brandt?" His voice bites through the air, rough, but hopeful. "Brandt, respond!"

Silence. It's unnerving.

"Will!"

Just when he thinks he'll be met with another long string of silence, a familiar voice bounces on the walls... It's gnarled by pain, but it's a familiar one all the same.

"Ethan, you... out there?"

Thank god. Ethan lingers in place long enough to close his eyes and nod, breathing a sigh, before he quickly trudges through the dank area. His compact flashlight catches a black island in the water that he suddenly realizes is a knee; when he pans the light upward he finds Will nearly submerged in the low canal, one hand groping at the walls in an attempt to stay afloat.

Which means he's unable to stand on his own. Ethan's stomach sinks at the thought, and once again sinks further when he catalogs the red fog beneath the surface of the water and the cause of it: a short, glinting spear poking through under Brandt's ribcage, shivering with each breath the analyst takes.

"Fuck." Ethan squeezes his eyes shut before he hesitates, dipping down and grabbing his operative's shoulder. Brandt's pale, and his eyes reflect panic under the scrutiny of the tiny flashlight. When he reaches down and runs his fingertips along the tender flesh, Brandt arches with a raw gasp of pain. "Sorry."

What should he do...? Well, first thing's first: do not pull that sonovabitch out. The other problem, though, is that it's too heavy to let sit in the wound. It'd slide out or jostle the guy's spleen around before it'd ever behave. And he couldn't shave it down, with it made out of what it's made out of.

He adds quietly, "It's bad."

"Thanks for the spoiler alert," Will gasps sarcastically under Ethan's hold. "Hard to run from traps when you're in water. Ever try to run in ocean water...? While running from bullets or something?"

Ethan isn't even necessarily listening to him, head bobbing around to survey the damage more closely. Shit. Shit.

Brand rolls his eyes. "Of course you have, what am I even saying..."

"I'm getting you out of here; the mission's aborted. Ellis is gone."

"We'll get that guy back... We'll get 'em. For bein' such an ass." Brandt must have seen the shadowy outlines of his friend's face, and to that, Ethan shakes his head. None of that's important right now.

"Let's get you out of here first." He just... has to figure out how to move him, without breaking him. You can't replace your friends at the thirft store. "Can you hold it while we move?"

"You have to ask?" he slurs back, "I'd like to keep most of my blood. A-and organs, maybe."

Precisely ten seconds later he's pulling Brandt toward the entrance, counting down the three minutes it would take running alone. They don't have any choice but to haul ass, and he'll be sure to apologize to Brandt when this is all over, because he can feel the body in his hands shaking and jerking from the motions. Soft sobs of pain remind him why he has to get him out of here quickly—his men are his responsibility, and he refuses to let Will die in a place like this.

"Calm down there, tiger," Brandt gasps.

"They're coming."

"Wha'?" is all Brandt manages before Ethan crouches down and takes the analyst with him. In-between the vice-like pain tormenting his spine and the splash of dirty water, he must not have noticed the guards that Ethan had. So close, Ethan thinks, so close to the goddamn exit. The night sky twinkles a little light behind the shadowy figures firing at them. He pulls his handgun and shoots one man dead. As he floats there in the moonlight Ethan tries vainly to reload his gun.

"Shit—!"

Ethan expects to be shot at again, killed, but the guard isn't the one doing the shooting now; in fact, the guard is the one gurgling, falling face-first with a splash. Jane's familiar figure appears at the mouth of the aqueducts to tower over the fallen man.

"Ethan...!"

Brandt is deadweight in Ethan's hands, his hands drooping lifelessly into the water. Ethan tries to speak to him, tries to shift him, but he gets no answer; all he can see is the spear un-lodged and missing while a line of blood licks its way down Brandt's pants. He drags him, exhausted, for Jane to reach out and help with.

"... You found us in the nick of time."

"Always," she replies sternly. But she's worried, pressing her palm into the unconscious man's wound. The van's already pulling around, engine rumbling while the mansion falls victim to more explosions they hadn't planted. The IMF will no doubt be scrambling to figure out what went wrong. Who went wrong. Right now, debriefings would have to wait, because the life of one of their agents was seeping out between Jane's thin fingers.

He would bleed out quickly.

Ethan wastes no time. "Hospital. Now."