Work Text:
1996
Back in those days they had no money to spend on fancy animations or convoluted technology, and could only employ one person.
They had been doing the same for years.
Record a mission briefing onto a tape, set a five second trigger that went off when the recording finished and destroyed the tape. Simple. Easy. Fine.
It truly was unfortunate that the solo technician met his end in an tragic technical malfunction.
However, it opened up a new job position at the IMF.
She was 22, only just graduated college with a film degree. She stumbled upon the listing on an internet message board. WANTED: Audio and video editor required. 40k a year. Must be qualified. Call the number below to inquire. Employee will be subject to several police checks.
Josie didn’t know how she got the job in the end. Perhaps it was because her uncle was in the Special Forces, or perhaps it was just because they liked the cut of her jib. Whatever the reason, a few weeks later she was stuck in a cubicle, with seven or eight scripts coming over her desk every day.
It was a fast-paced job, but someone had to do it.
Don’t ask questions. Don’t pry into things you don’t understand. Don’t talk to the people with higher security clearance than you unless they talk to you first.
Which lasted about four days.
“Hello!” A man pushed his chair out from the cubicle next to hers. He was smiley, short-haired, ostentatiously British and probably only a couple of years older than her.
She had kept her head down for the first four days. Edited tapes down when she’d received them, sent them off within an hour or so, and had asked no questions. None whatsoever.
However, he’d managed to catch her notice. Something about the panicked muttering under his breath, or the occasional curse word. He wasn’t exactly quiet about it.
“Hi!” She replied, glad to finally talk to someone. It had be a quiet couple of days and she wasn’t loving it. “You are a lifesaver, honestly. I was beginning to think that no-one would talk to me for my entire time here.”
“Oh, it’s like that all the time for the newbies, don’t worry. They’re just trying to feel you out - see if you’re a mole, things like that.” He narrowed his eyes at her for a moment. “You’re not, are you?”
She wasn’t entirely sure what company she was employed by, but she knew it was something in the government. She also couldn’t tell if he was joking. “My life would be far more interesting if I was.”
“I’m just fooling around.” He said, and held out a hand. “Benji. You do the briefings, yeah?”
“Josie.” She said, and shook it. “And yes. Does everyone know who I am?”
“If they’re higher clearance than you, yeah. It’s just how this place is. For a secret division everyone knows everyone else’s gossip. Have you met Ethan yet?”
“Who’s Ethan?” She asks.
Little did she know that that name would become synonymous with trouble for the rest of her career.
“Point man. Good friend of mine, actually.” Benji seemed abnormally proud of that fact. “You’ll… notice him when he comes in.”
She certainly did.
2001
New Year’s Day.
Josie flicked a wedge of confetti off her desk with a disparaging look. The boys from the other side off the office had let off a party popper just before she’d left the night before and she’d not managed to clean up all the confetti yet.
It had gone.
Everywhere.
She slumped down at her desk, head pounding, and shut her eyes. Why had she decided to go out to celebrate the New Year?
Why had she not stopped at one or two drinks?
“Morning!” Ethan said, cheerily. She opened her eyes just in time to see him plonk a takeout cup of coffee down on her desk in front of her. He slid another cup onto the edge of Benji’s desk. “Rough night?”
“Something like that.” She replied, to his retreating back.
He headed off down the corridor, depositing cups of coffee to all the tech interns in need all the way down the row. He looked very cheery.
“Ethan’s got a girlfriend.” Benji huffed, poking his nose around the edge of the cubicle. He didn’t sound happy.
Josie presumed at least some of that was the hangover.
“You sure sound happy about it.”
“I’m happy for him. Really.”
But Benji didn’t sound convinced. She decided to leave it. “Since when?”
“Do you remember when that whole disease thing went down? Last year? When you had to program his mission briefing into those glasses and you complained about it for three days straight?” Benji sipped his coffee, still looking disgruntled.
Or, more accurately, the worst editing week of her life. “It would be hard to forget it.”
“It was around then some time. I don’t know. I was too busy dealing with a bunch of his intel to really pay attention.”
“Mmmm.” He seemed evasive. She decided to leave it.
“On a scale of one to ten, how much does your head hurt right now?”
2006
She got into the office at 5 that morning, having received a coded text message that was phrased along the lines of, ‘ Something serious has gone down, get here immediately.’ For once, it was nice to beat the traffic.
What was worrying was Benji’s empty desk. Completely cleared out. Everything gone. It was like he’d never been there in the first place. Even his Star Trek figurines were missing.
The fact that he had just disappeared, without even letting her know, was worrying. People just didn’t do that at the IMF without cause.
She just hoped he wasn’t dead.
But even so, she got on with her work, just managing to hold back the nausea rising in her stomach. The job of the day was some editing work - taking a mission briefing and putting it into a modified Kodak camera. She presumed it was for Hunt’s mission of the day. It always seemed to be.
The man got around.
What startled her was when a new person sat down at the cubicle next to her. Benji’s old desk. The new women was short. Stocky. Violently red-haired, and the same security level as her.
Josie blinked.
She put the camera down and blinked again. “Hi??”
“Hey.” The women replied. “You’re Josie, aren’t you?”
“...Yes?”
“Great. I’m Benji’s replacement. Sara. Reassigned from downstairs.” The woman held out a hand for her to shake.
Josie took it, still confused. And worried. “...He’s not… dead - is he?” They’d been working together for nearly ten years, and she considered him a friend. He was far too into his online gaming, and quite fidgety, but she really did like him.
Sara snorted. It seemed oddly mistimed. “No. He’s not. He’s fine. Far as I know he got sent out into the field. A bit of an upgrade. Hunt wanted him around.”
“Ah.” That explained everything.
2011
“I have never been so scared in my entire life. I mean, I was panicking. You’d have had no idea though, I have a fantastic poker face.” Benji leaned back on her couch, demonstrating a thoroughly terrible poker face. He was a little bit drunk.
They all were.
There was probably some obscure IMF rule that they were flouting, but the details of Benji’s Kremlin and subsequent saving-of-the-world mission was all the IMF were talking about. For a secure spy agency, sometimes the office talk wasn’t very secure at all. It was pouring down outside, they were all a little bit tipsy, and sometimes gossip was just a little hard to rein in. It was fine. Really.
“Do you want dessert, Benji?” Sara yelled, from the kitchen. “It’s tiramisu.”
“I could definitely go for some of that.” He said, contentedly, then leaned forward to speak quietly. “Did she make it?”
“She sure did.” Josie replied, and shifted about so she could sit cross-legged. “I have no idea how I’d feed myself without her around.”
Sara came back into the living room, carrying two tiramisu bowls, a third balanced precariously in the crook of her arm. “You wouldn’t.”
“That’s probably true.”
“You are the light of my life.” Benji said, only slightly slurring, as he took one of the bowls. He pinpointed Josie with his gaze for a moment. “Your girlfriend is the light of my life.”
“She’s mine too.” Josie said, and kissed her.
Blushing furiously, Sara settled down on the couch next to her and handed her a bowl.
“Cute.” Benji reclined again, almost lavishly, like a king. “Do you always cook at home? I promised the nutritionist at work that I’d stop getting takeaways every time I get back from a mission but that’s not been going so well-”
He bit off the end of his sentence as someone knocked - loudly at first and then quickly trailing off - from the direction of her front door. “Expecting someone else?”
“I… wasn’t?” Josie set her bowl down and opened up the security camera feed on her phone from the camera above her front door. “Hardly anyone knows where we live- Oh my God. Ethan?”
Slumped down outside the front door of her apartment was Ethan Hunt, bloodied, sopping wet, and hardly moving. He didn’t look well.
“Ethan’s outside.” Josie gasped. “He needs our help.” She tilted the screen of her phone towards Benji for a moment.
Benji put his bowl aside, and gets to his feet. “What’s he doing here? He doesn’t look right -” The news had to have come as a surprise to him, but any trace of alcohol in his system seemed to go as soon as it had arrived by the time he pulled his coat on.
“Are you sure it’s him?” Sara stopped him from moving past the threshold of the living room with one hand. “The work you’ve done with masks lately - it’s very possible that -”
“You’re not going to check. I am.” Benji pushed past her, and strode grimly towards the front door. He checked through the peephole for a moment and then pulled it open, dragging a prone and very loose-limbed Ethan inside. He knelt over his body, checked around his face and neck, and pinched the skin below his jawline.
No movement. Nothing.
“It’s him.” Benji said, and sat back against the wall after firmly closing the door. “Unless it’s a very, very, very realistic mask - and if our enemies have managed to make those then we’re buggered regardless -”
“Benji.” Josie interrupted, and knelt down beside the older man’s prone form. “Is he still alive?”
“Yeah, I got a pulse and he’s breathing. Barely. Why’s he here though? He’s been here - once? Maybe twice? And not for months. Why didn’t he call into HQ?”
“Not enough time to think about that.” Sara dropped to her knees beside Ethan and started patching up the worst of the cuts scattered all over his arms and torso. She pulled a torn piece of paper from the remains of his shirt pocket. “That? Maybe?”
As Josie helped her girlfriend stabilise Ethan’s condition, Benji unfurled the paper and squinted at it.
“Mole… in…. HQ… Details here - then there’s… I mean, I think it’s a hyperlink - don’t call for help… only you, B- Damn. I can’t read any more.” Benji scrubbed a damp hand over his forehead. “Why here?”
“Benji.” Josie interrupted his thinking, because really, it wasn’t very helpful. “He was looking for you.”
“You were the only one he could trust.” Sara added, and pulled a thread tight on one of the stitches she was sewing. “Now. Go on. Deal with the mole. We’ll keep him alive.”
The sun was just beginning to rise over a grey Washington sky when the whole matter was finally wrapped up.
Ethan, groggy but alive - it turned out he’d been hit by some kind of knock-out drug, and the majority of his cuts had been surface only - was reclining on their couch, only staying put by the sheer force of Benji’s gaze. They were talking, quietly. Benji didn’t seem very happy.
On the other side of the room, Sara and Josie were trying their best to get the blood out of the carpet.
“Do you think I could claim back for this?” Josie said, scrubbing violently. It didn’t seem to help.
“You could siphon the drops of blood out of the carpet and sell it on eBay for quite some profit.” Sara replied, and sat back on her heels. She eyed the floor, with some dismay. “I reckon some megalomaniac in the wilds of Europe would pay loads for the chance to clone Ethan Hunt. And yes, I hope you can claim back, because this blood is not coming out. ”
Defeated, they both sat back against the wall and watched the older agents talk.
“...I knew I could rely on you.” Ethan said, and clasped Benji’s outstretched hands in his, just for a moment.
What happened next was the surprise, however. Benji pulled back, and it was like the sun lit up his face for a moment. He looked very chuffed, and more than a little bit sheepish.
Josie knew that look.
It was like everything had suddenly clicked into place. “Dear.” She said, under her breath, and nudged Sara in the ribs. “I do believe that young man is in love.”
“...Mmmmm.” Sara said, with a considering sigh. “My dear, I do believe you’re right.”
There was no time to consider the ramifications of that realisation as Ethan spotted Josie and beckoned her over. “The last mission briefing of yours that I got - it didn’t self-destruct after I finished watching. I had to deface a perfectly usable Russian phone box.”
Well, it would be that very exact moment that he’d bring a complaint like that up. After all they’d done for him… “I don’t make things explode, Ethan. I just make the intel look pretty. Complain to R&D about it.”
2015
Josie was spending her lunch break out in the sun outside the IMF building when she spotted Benji striding towards her at a rate of knots. The IMF was on the verge of going under and she was about to be reassigned to the CIA with its hellish, cramped offices and tiny windows, so she was going to enjoy the sun while she could.
Benji, however, was a surprise. She’d not seen him in a while. He’d been spending a lot of his time on missions, or so she’d heard.
It didn’t look like a social call.
“Benji?” She sat up. “What’s going on?”
“Did you edit a record drop for Ethan in the last few days?”
The IMF had recently started using a record store in London to get mission intel to active agents. The records were a pain in the ass to edit, and she kinda loathed them. “You know I can’t talk about active missions, Benji. It’s classified.”
“He’s missing.” Benji said, and the look in his eyes made her pause, just for a moment. “Last recorded hit on him was when he went into the store in London. Please, Jo. Just give me something.”
Fuck’s sake. With the Senate committee thing and the loss of the Secretary and now this… “Hunley finds out I said anything to you, I’m out on my ass. But no. I didn’t. I’ve not done anything for him in… weeks?”
“Then why’d he go into the store if he wasn’t getting a briefing?”
“Maybe he just wanted to buy some records.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Benji dismissed her suggestion, completely out of hand. “He doesn’t like vinyl. Thanks. I’ll keep you posted.”
“What if he just doesn’t want to be found?” She called, at his retreating back, though she was sure he didn’t hear her.
Great. Ethan Hunt disappearing. Always a good sign.
She hoped that his disappearance wouldn’t nearly cause the end of the world this time around.
2018
Kashmir.
Post, post, post the near-end of the world.
It wasn’t a surprise that she’d been sent out to meet the team stationed in Kashmir. The last few years had elicited some promotions. She wasn’t just the ‘woman who edited deep-voiced men over mission intel’ any more - she was an Media Analyst, well-acquainted with the intimate runnings of the IMF, and far too used to faking up a bunch of news reports to make IMF-related situations seem much more mundane.
It was a surprise, however, that she was able to see Benji when she got there. She knew they were there of course, knew of everything that had transpired since the uranium cores were stolen. She would have known even if she hadn’t had to cover it up.
Despite the ‘top secret spy agency’ moniker, gossip spread like wildfire.
She ran into Benji, quite literally, outside one of the WHO tents. They were packing up, getting ready to move on and do good somewhere else in the world.
He, however, looked pensive. And bruised. And narrowly just managed to avoid spilling a keep cup full of coffee over her.
“Oh my God.” Benji said, and pulled her into a hug. “How’ve you been?”
She’d been well. Married to Sara, getting promotions - everything was going as well as it could be. “And yourself?”
“Stopped the end of the world.” He said, and looked quite chuffed. “Also, nearly died - but that’s a pretty regular scenario at this point so I’m beginning to deal with it.”
He didn’t seem certain. “Really?”
“Not at all. What are you doing here?”
“Faking up some news broadcasts. Going to shoot some B-roll, dress up a couple of our actors in WHO gear - the usual. I hear Ethan nearly fell off a mountain?”
He paled, but only slightly. “That is… what I heard as well. I wasn’t there. We were… defusing the bombs. He’s… pretty beaten up.”
“Mmmm.” Josie put down the tripod she’d been carrying and leaned against it. It seemed like she wouldn’t be going anywhere soon. “Does he know that you’re in love with him yet?”
Benji spluttered through a mouthful of coffee. “What?”
“You. Terrible crush. 20 years in the making. I’m not blind, Benji. And no-one else is either.”
“I’m not in love with Ethan.” Benji was still sputtering, despite the fact there was coffee all over the ground already.
“You got weirdly techy when he last had a girlfriend. Which, for the record, was over ten years ago and he’s a top agent, he could have anyone he wished if he wanted to. You’ve risked your life for him over and over. Your hero worship could be seen from space, Benji. Just tell him.”
“But I-”
“ Tell him, Benji. Before the next mission, before something goes wrong. You don’t want to miss this chance.”
He sighed, and scratched up the gravel on the roadway below with one foot for a moment. “...Am I really that obvious?”
“Transparently.”
“...his ex-wife is here.”
“Well, surely they’re exes for a reason.” She said, and then nudged him in the arm. “Go on. Tell him. If anything, you might be able to join a really hot thruple. It’s worth a go.”
He rolled his eyes, and headed off in the direction of another WHO tent without another look back. He didn’t even say goodbye.
“You’ve lost all your manners now that you work in the field!” She yelled, at his retreating back, but she was pretty sure he didn’t hear her.
Oh well. His loss.
Now
There’s a news clip that’s fairly famous in the IMF these days.
Taken from a broadcast out of Kashmir, post what was widely known as ‘the time agency-renowned spy Ethan Hunt nearly fell off a mountain’, there’s about ten seconds worth of footage.
It’s the background of a shot, hardly visible, a badly zoomed in and cropped image over the shoulder of someone dressed in WHO gear, who’s speaking to the camera.
The words don’t matter, because the image is obvious. Though the background is grainy, and badly lit - as opposed to the doctor speaking to the camera in front, of course - the image is clear.
Two men walking towards a helicopter landing pad, one blonde-ish, one brunette. The shorter is struggling a little, which is rare, for him, and the other helps him along as they walk. They’re close - closer than friends, perhaps. They’re talking, too, though it’s a little hard to see in the grainy, pixelated background of the scene.
There’s a moment, really, when they stop. It’s like something is hanging in the air between them.
Then, without warning, the shorter man stops for a second, grasps the other by his lapels, and pulls him in for a kiss.
You know, it’d be super romantic. It’d be something over twenty years in the making.
It would be all of those things.
Except the shorter man, who’s been stumbling along for a moment or so now, takes the opportunity to pass out.
Which is fine. There’s time for more firsts, more moments, more things many years in the making, but now, they’re on the side of a glacier in Kashmir and it’s time to go home.