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“Remind me why we’re here again?”
Ilsa nocked her bow, drew the string quivering-taught with an impenetrable gaze, and let an arrow fly. It sounded as if it had cut a pin-straight channel through the air. Before it pierced, with a satisfying whump, through the mugshot of Solomon Lane.
“Stress relief.”
From where Benji leaned casually against one of MI6’s spare training dummies, he scratched awkwardly at his unshaven chin. He and Ilsa had fallen into a comfortable rhythm ever since they became vaguely friendly years ago. Whenever they happened to be in the same city, most often their home base of London, Ilsa accidentally/on purpose “ran into” Benji near MI6 HQ. They were target practice buddies, since they were both too emotionally constipated to manage to shoot off a text asking about spending time together point blank. Normal people, they definitely were not. Wasn’t Ilsa’s style anyways. Benji was almost certain the woman wasn’t physically capable of not being an enigmatic bastard. Seemed like that particular trait was something he attracted in friends.
Archery, of all things, was a new experience. They practiced with all manner of sidearms, sniper rifles, knives, plus the odd harpoon gun here and there. It was a strange sort of bonding experience. However, he never imagined watching Ilsa stare steely-eyed down the sights of a compound bow. In comparison, he looked about as fierce as his housecat currently sunning herself in a bay window back in his flat. A housecat that kept accidentally dropping the arrow out of the nock because he couldn’t keep a tight enough grip.
Using the most recently updated mugshot available in MI6’s databases for Lane, though, was always a given. The still-healing gash above the man’s right eyebrow from Benji’s attempt to strike at him with that glass bottle in Kashmir served as a lovely spot to aim for.
“Obviously,” he replied as he lazily pushed himself off the dummy. “I was just wondering what the exact purpose is of training with a weapon that’s now only used by rich toffs on hunting holidays, or in period dramas. Not exactly practical.”
Ilsa tried her hand at loading and shooting as fast as she possibly could. A blur of blonde-brown hair and lean muscle accompanied yet another hole in the photocopy pinned to the target. She even added in a fancy spin on the balls of her feet as she turned to shoot. Because of course she did. Benji fought the sudden urge to applaud, but managed to keep his arms firmly crossed.
“Always best to brush up on every form of combat you can. And is anything we ever do even remotely ‘practical’?” she replied with a sardonic sort of syrup in her voice. Her shoulders rolled as she shook out tension as best should could.
Like Benji since Kashmir, it seemed like she was having a bit of a hard time with that. She just concealed it better than he ever could. He paused for a moment while moving to replace the now-shredded photo with a fresh one. They’d already gone through six of them.
“No, there was that time in Istanbul! With us all having to conserve ammo because Brandt accidentally dropped our supply cache down an open storm drain,” Benji supplied helpfully. “That was practical.”
Ilsa replied almost automatically: “Ethan ended up spearing the mark with a javelin from 50 meters up. After scaling the Hagia Sophia with a hand tied behind his back.”
Why did she always have to be right? About everything? A groan of begrudging acknowledgement accompanied Benji making his way across the training range.
“Fine, I’ll give you that we’re not the most generally practical team of spies in the world, but why does this—“ he gestured generally around the room, the photocopy flapping with his movement. “Always involve me? Not anyone else? Hell, I’d like to see Luther give this a go for once. Probably end up stabbing me and call it an ‘accident.’”
Meanwhile, Ilsa balanced her bow on the floor from where she stood, continuing in her idle attempts to stretch out, but now with a vaguely bemused smile.
“I’d like to see that too, actually,” she replied while bouncing from foot to foot. “He’s pretty handy with a rifle in a pinch. Archery might be right up his alley. Well, it would be, if he decided to not complain the whole time.”
“Something like that,” Benji huffed out a warm laugh, thumbtack between his teeth as the shredded paper fell to the floor. “At least he’s more bloody competent than I am. That why you bother with me?”
“Something like that."
A pang of… something hit him hard in the chest. His brows knit together. It probably wasn’t a wise idea to have asked about why Ilsa apparently seemed so concerned with his in-field skills. She didn’t need someone slowing her down. The chillingly calm eyes of Solomon Lane bored spiraling holes into him from the page as Benji tacked him back up once again. The circle of fading bruises about his neck twinged.
In the time between breaths, the familiar sound of rocketing metal stuck to a carbon rod met his ears as his body instantly reacted. His hand flicked up to catch it with the sort of primal instinct he’d only read about in books, or enacted when his life was on the line. The arrow’s point came to rest about a millimeter from his chin— his face wide-eyed in Ilsa’s general direction. Benji heard his heartbeat pounding in his ears.
“That’s why I bother with you,” Ilsa said matter-of-factly, like she hadn’t just nearly ran Benji through with the business end of a broadhead arrow.
A beat. Then, the human target loudly exhaled the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and let the arrow clatter to the floor. His chest heaved as he doubled over.
“Jesus Christ. Holy shit,” he panted as Ilsa let loose one of her rare, pleased cackles, in which she sounded like she was plotting some sort of hostile world takeover. “Starting to think you have some sort of thing for attempting to kill me in increasingly creative ways. Sniper rifles, bomb vests, defibrillators, now arrows. A weird kink. Obsession. Whatever.” He wheezed audibly. “Would love to have been, I dunno, informed before having a near death experience on a perfectly lovely Thursday afternoon in an empty training room.”
“I’ll think about giving you a courtesy call next time,” Ilsa supplied with the last peals of laughter ringing in her usually even voice.
She moved across the padded floor of the room in order to let him clasp her hand and get to his full height once again. Benji, with a soft “thanks,” registered something new in her eyes while they stood in opposition. They were seemingly stuck on the newly restored mugshot pinned to the head of the battered training dummy. She studied it as if she was afraid it would self-destruct at any moment, and she’d lose the memory of the face that owned her for so long.
“Is this about...?” he nodded his head in the direction they both now looked.
Ilsa snorted derisively. “Isn’t everything?”
They paused together for a moment. Skin brushed where they stood shoulder-to-shoulder; Ilsa, as usual, ran hot as a furnace beneath her many freckles. It was the sort of quiet affection that they rarely expressed. But, when they did, it meant something that Benji felt he could almost reach out and touch.
“I don’t say it enough, because I don’t want to make you feel…” He searched for the right word with a vague noise. “Weird about it. But thank you. For all you did back there. And for the flowers, and the nice note. Who doesn’t love some good old fashioned hanging-based humor?”
Frustratingly obtuse as she usually was, the only response Benji got was a soft nudge of his shoulder with her own.
“Going deep cover to work directly under him does something to you,” Ilsa murmured after yet another long beat. “I was his right hand for years, at the behest of—“ she shifted her gaze to light across the bold MI6 logo plastered to a nearby wall. Her tone was unmistakably resentful. “Makes you re-evaluate… everything really.”
“I was only kidnapped by him once. Nearly offed twice, and I still can’t stop seeing his face in my head,” Benji replied lamely. “Can only imagine what it was like doing his bidding as long as you did.”
She countered while toying with her bow’s stabilizer, “Actually, you’re probably one of the only people that can imagine. What it’s like for him to have an obsession with the very concept of you. Not as a person, as a fucking… tool. Holding your life between his fingers, breathing in your ear, for him to snip at any moment.”
Feeling his hands at his sides ball into fists, Benji fought back memories of how powerless he felt. When Lane’s guys had to lift his shirt to place delicate electrical wiring for the vest bomb, they puzzled over the fabric of Benji’s binder before the realization hit. It left them howling with laughter, and was enough to call over their boss himself. He merely smiled. How Lane’s mocking tone in the canals beneath Paris, calling him a “funny little man,” made the places where he’d barely touched his neck in order to implant the tracking device feel infested. He chewed the inside of his cheek hard enough to hurt.
Ilsa broke through his spiraling train of thought with her usual no-nonsense pragmatism: “He engineered Ethan breaking him out partially just to kill you, you know.”
“I know.”
“You can’t let him get that close again, unless you have the tools to end it. Yourself or Lane. Before he blunt forces past Ethan’s lucky streak.”
Benji’s gaze grew almost as razor sharp as Ilsa’s.
“I know.”
The unspoken between them, not telling Ethan any of this, didn’t need to be said aloud. They were fully leaning against one another now; it was a vague facsimile of comfort. All while being stared down by their common enemy, even as he sat in a high security jail cell miles away.
“You gonna teach me how to do that fancy thigh takedown trick of yours next time?” he smiled faintly. “The spinny, flippy one? Definitely wouldn’t be opposed to that. And could you go all Jedi Master on me without almost turning me into a shish kebab?”
“If you don’t inflict your awful pop culture references on me ever again.”
A guilty grimace flashed across his face and Ilsa tiredly threw a punishing elbow into his ribs, before Benji could really take her up on that dare.