Chapter Text
2007
The IMF’s field tests are a choice. If you’d rather stay behind the desk and the monitor, or in the server rooms, linked up to the top-cut agents only by a communication earpiece, then that’s your choice. You needed mettle to join the IMF in the first place, but you need something more to really be the soldier on the battlefield.
When the list of applicants for the field test comes onto the secretary’s desk, it’s a surprise for everybody that Benjamin Dunn’s name is on it.
“Not Benji Dunn ? ” They all say amongst each other, wondering if they’d mixed up the list with the petition to upgrade the coffee machine. “The nerd from tech? That Benji Dunn?”
Really, it’s all understandable remarks to make. Because yes, it's more than a little odd that Benji Dunn – the nerd from tech who works on laptops and servers and drinks copious amounts of coffee and nobody understands how the caffeine hasn’t launched him into cardiac arrest yet – is applying to be a field agent. Benji Dunn, the one who rambles about anything that comes out of his mouth before its processed through his brain, who apologizes for the slightest of errors as though he’d instead given away nuclear codes to Russia by accident, who once got caught in the break room playing Half-Life 2 when he was supposed to be decrypting a bulk of harddrives.
It turns out, they haven’t mixed up the list. It wasn’t a misprint, either. And when they ask him, he’s actually pretty confident about the whole affair. Benji Dunn wants a promotion. He wants to be out there, on the field, with the big boys.
Benji can’t blame them when they doubt him. He asked himself the same questions, too, but they also included phrases like: What the actual fuck are you thinking? and You’re not going to be cut out for this, you know that, and You should get your flat tested for carbon monoxide poisoning, because you’ve clearly lost your stupid mind.
The questions after that end up being all the same, but they’re just from different people instead. He thought, at first, that they skipped over the part where they tell him he’s crazy to his face – but then he realized they’re fucking agents, so yeah, of course they lace it into subtlety instead; a type of subtlety that he would have fallen for before a rogue Ethan Hunt roped him into helping out at Shanghai. Are you sure you want to do this? I think I’d give anything to be back safe behind a monitor. You think it’s fun and games until your life's on the line. You don’t win every single mission, Dunn.
Benji isn’t doing this for the action, or the fun. Maybe not even something noble like wanting to protect the world from evil and serving your country, yada yada. Benji wants to be something more than himself. He doesn’t just want to prove that to the IMF, or the doubters, or Ethan Hunt – he needs to prove it to himself that he can do more than just prove his mettle. He needs to justify his existence here.
The field tests take place in increments over six months, with training all inbetween, to make sure the IMF aren’t making a mistake; they can’t afford to send an incompetent agent out into the field, after all. There’s competency interviews, roleplay exercises covering different scenarios, group exercises to test your capacity as both a leader and a follower. There’s observation and memory tests, information and analytical exams, analysis of your insight – if you can read body language and, if you can discern the truth from a lie… and be able to tell one yourself.
And there’s practical exams, too. Running, jumping, fighting. Can you block a punch from a guy twice your size? Can you out-drive a pack of motorcyclists in a four-by-four? Can you dive from 20,000 feet in the air without losing your shit?
(Obviously, they test you on if you can shoot a gun. You have to be able to shoot anything you can get your hands on in the field, whether it’s the classic glock or an assault rifle you’d pick up from Unidentifiable Goon #3. But there’s no easy way to check if you’re going to be able to put that bullet into flesh rather than wooden targets. Not that it matters too much for Benji; he’s the only one in the group sessions who’s put a bullet in someone before.)
Benji passes the tests, and he keeps passing them. In fact, if he’s being humble with himself, he on a fucking roll. He even passes through the shooting range tests with flying colors – turns out he’s not just good at technology and engineering, but he’s a competent killer too. He can shoot a moving target from sixty yards away with a single, clean shot through the head.
(It was a better shot than the first time.)
There’s only a few exams left. And somehow, the easiest one might prove to be the hardest for him.
“Mr. Dunn. Please take a seat and we’ll get started.”
The psychiatric exam. One last chance for the IMF to check if you’ve got the nerve for this after all.
Benji takes a breath – imperceptible to his examiner, because he’s probably being tested right now at everything from the way he walks to the way his breath exits his lungs – and walks towards the table. It takes place in a standard office, with the blinds drawn and the glass door muting all noises from beyond the threshold, but there’s still something foreboding about the classic interview set-up – single table, two chairs facing each other, one light to fill the room. There’s even a recorder and a clipboard on the table for the examiner’s use. The only thing Benji has to be grateful for is that they haven’t tied him down and shone a white light into his face.
“How’re you feeling?” The examiner asks cordially, shifting around the clipboard and pencil as if he hasn’t been ready for the last fifteen minutes. “I’ve heard you’ve been doing well in all of the tests.”
“Could you say my reputation precedes me? I’ve always wanted someone to say that about me.”
The examiner’s mouth twitches. Benji hopes the joke might snag him an extra point.
“Well, from what I’ve heard, this should be a cakewalk for you,” the examiner says. “We’ll be going through the standard psychiatric test – nothing that you’re not used to. But we just might be a little, ah, shall we say… pickier, with the responses.”
Benji frowns slightly. “Pickier how?”
“I can’t tell you much more beyond this: every word counts either with or against you.”
The examiner’s right about one thing – the psychiatric tests aren’t nothing new. They put you through them when you first join, and before every promotion (or demotion) you get, and then once every six months just for good measure. Sometimes they do one after a particularly nasty field mission, too. Something Benji’s learnt is that all it takes is one mission to knock a screw loose. Your loyalty could break, or your composure. But it doesn’t matter how well you can shoot a gun, or drive a car, or pretend to be somebody else – if the agency has even the shadow of a doubt that you might absolutely lose your shit during it, then you’re a liability. And liabilities don’t go out in the field, period.
(Rumour has it that Ethan Hunt hasn’t taken a psych test since ‘05. Although the rest of the tech department thinks it’s a bunch of shit that the frequent rogue agent gets to get out of the twice a year exam to make sure you’re not about to crack, Benji feels differently. Being launched out of exploding fish tanks, climbing cliffs without a single bit of safety equipment asides a decent pair of shoes and climbing on top of a high-speed train is Ethan Hunt’s fucking psych exam.)
Even though Benji gives a short smile and nods, his heart is hammering in his chest now; hopefully the examiner doesn’t have super-hearing or something, because the rate his pulse is going, it would count as an instant fail. He’s managed to scrape through the psych exams because they were routine before, and he was just the tech guy. It’s different this time. It’s so, so fucking different.
“I’ll be recording this exam just for the sake of the panel, I hope that’s alright with you,” the examiner says, but doesn’t bother waiting for Benji’s response (not that he has a choice here), because the examiner starts. “Examiner Edward Hamiltion, conducting test A17 points one through three, on behalf of Benjamin Dunn for his psychiatric test, as part of his ongoing field agent examinations. Mr. Dunn, how are you today? Do you feel you are mentally prepared to take this examination?”
“Yes,” Benji says, tearing his gaze away from the recorder to look his examiner in the eye. “Yes, I’m ready.”
“Very good, Mr. Dunn. We’ll start with the basic SAC test – or the record, the standardized assessment of concussion – to evidence that you are in full mental capacity. Can we start by reciting your full name, age and date of birth for the record?”
“Uh, yes. Benjamin Dunn. No - No middle name. I’m 37. Born February 14th, 1970.”
The basics are easy, obviously, because they’re there to prove that the examinee hasn’t turned up to their psych exam drunk, concussed, severely injured, debilitated, insane, or otherwise fucked. Benji is at least able to prove he’s none of those things at the current moment as he describes where he is, spells ‘world’ backwards, and follows the motion of a finger left and right. If only that’s where they could leave it off.
“SAC completed. We’ll now be going into the full psychiatric test. Just for your awareness, Dunn, our test will operate a little differently than the ones you’re familiar with. We cannot accept ‘pass’ or ‘no comment’ as a form of response – as far as the panel is aware, your discomfort in the questions is a problem. If you want to end the exam at any time, you may, and you’ll be taken to the psychiatry care unit as standard protocol. However, as you can probably guess–”
“Doing so will fail the test,” Benji finishes. “And the exam overall.”
The examiner grimaces and gives a slight nod. “I would also implore you to tell the truth. You’ve been trained in deception, but this is not the exam to practice that in. Passing your psychiatric test is imperative for not just the sake of the IMF, but your own.”
Benji nods. “Okay. Understood.”
He almost stutters on those two words, because for the first time since he first considered taking the test, he’s suddenly doubting himself. He’d undertaken this all for his own sake, but he’d completely forgotten the most important thing in the process: nothing matters more than the mission. If he was going to lie his way through a psych test and join the field agents when he didn’t truly have the mettle for it, wasn’t he just actively and purposefully harming the agency?
It’s too late to back out now, because the examiner begins. “When I ask these questions, we usually evaluate whether they’ve been relevant to you within the last six months. But I would instead want you to consider if these have been relevant to you at any point since your employment in the IMF started. So – have you had any difficulty sleeping, exhibiting symptoms such as tossing and turning, frequent waking and nightmares?”
No more than usual, he wants to say, but he figures that result might end this exam pretty early. Benji had maybe more than his fair share of all-nighters, whether it’s because he’s fixing some busted software or in online Halo matches… but they were different from the nightmares. They’d been getting better, at least…
“I’ve had some sleeping issues for a few years – just have a hard time actually getting to sleep – but I believe it’s irrelevant with my mental health. Certainly nothing concerning.”
The first rule about lying is that you don’t lie at all. You just don’t tell them the truth.
“Have you exhibited any frequent symptoms of depressive disorders? Frequently low moods, feeling hopeless and tearful, finding no enjoyment out of things that you previously enjoyed, low self-esteem?”
What, has this examiner never lived before? Who the hell hasn’t had any of these things? Sure, Benji’s not particularly depressed, but then Benji makes a point of not really regarding how he feels most of the time. If you don’t look at it, it’s not there, right?
And the self-esteem thing is a whole other thing to unpack. It’s got its whole suitcase for it.
“I haven’t, no.”
“Have you exhibited any frequent symptoms of anxiety disorders? Feeling tense and nervous, unable to relax, physical tremors, unnaturally elevated heartbeat? Remember, nervousness is common but anxiety is a problem.”
His heart’s currently fighting to fling itself out between his ribcage and across the other side of the room right now. In fact, it’s taking everything in him to not double over and deposit lunchtime’s chicken Pot Noodle and black coffee onto the table right now. At least he’s not sweating.
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Have you exhibited any frequent symptoms of attention-deficit disorders? Being unable to sit still, fidgeting, problems concentrating and prioritizing tasks, excessive talking, trouble coping with stress? And just to remind you, Mr. Dunn–”
Uh oh, spaghetti-o.
“-- the IMF is still aware of your previous diagnosis, although you’ve repeatedly expressed and shown us proof that is under control and no longer a problem – if it is going to be–”
“It’s not,” Benji says a little too quickly, and has to restrain from kicking himself in the shin, because one of the fucking symptoms of ADHD is interrupting people and that’s exactly what he’s just done. He takes a breath – a metaphorical one, because taking a breath might knock at least five points off his marks – and instead adds: “My doctor took me off medication for it in 2001, and the reports will attest to that. It’s not going to be a problem.”
It might, it might be a problem; it slips through the cracks occasionally when he rambles, or fixates, or cuts people off, but not enough where someone from the health department might point and yell: “ADHD! He’s got ADHD! Get his ass!”
But Benji sounds confident about it, so the examiner nods, writes down on his stupid little clipboard and keeps going. “Have you ever engaged in reckless or impulsive behavior that has been seriously detrimental to you or your loved ones? Such as unprotected sex, spent excessive amounts of money, engaged in excessive gambling, or abused drugs and alcohol?”
As far as Benji was aware, reckless and impulsive behavior was meant to be encouraged in the field – that’s how Ethan Hunt got so far, right? Maybe he ought to lie and tell the examiner: No, I haven’t done any drugs lately, but I totally hijacked a plane and crashed it into an enemy spy then freefalled out without a parachute. You should’ve been there.
“I haven’t,” Benji says, instead. Some daydreams remain daydreams.
The examiner moves to write, and even though it’s innocuous, Benji feels something shift in the room. Or maybe just in him, really, because he knows what’s coming next. If Ethan Hunt’s test of mettle was jumping off trains and high-speed chases, then this was Benji’s – hiding the worst truths.
“Have you ever thought about hurting yourself or others?”
They’re years old now, but he feels the old scars on his bicep pulse, as if that sentence was the activation phrase to wake up sleeper agents. Benji kicks into gear everything he’d learnt from his deception and espionage training. How do you tell a lie? You look them in the eye and you stay consistent. The true art of lying is to misdirect, and to know the difference between lying and not telling the truth…
And to lie only when it matters. Lie until you believe it.
“No, I haven’t.”
His palms are sweating. Traitorously.
“Have you ever had any suicidal ideations, or made plans for or attempted suicide?”
(1986. Sixteen year old Benjamin ‘Ben’ Dunn plans to piss off the 9am weekday commuters by jumping on the tracks of the Metropolitan line. He avoids the psych ward because he doesn’t tell anybody about it, ever ; he avoids dying because he changes his mind before he even gets to the station.)
“No. I haven’t.”
This is the point where Benji Dunn is usually meant to stutter, to go red, to sweat and look away. Avoid eye-contact.
He doesn’t. What can he say? The IMF is good at training courses. He’s knocked off some old habits.
The worst of it is over, at least; they push through the rest together. Family? He hasn’t got any left – gone, or at least he doesn’t care enough about them that they’ll ever be a concern. Friends? Sure, the Xbox party he plays Halo with is totally going to be an international security threat. No, the only friends he has are in the tech room right now putting bets on whether Benji’s going to be a technical field operative in a month’s time. Romantic interests? Ha! You wish, examiner Edward Hamilton.
By the time they come towards the end, he feels significantly less nervous – although he’s considering picking up his nicotine habit again just to calm the rest of his nerves, for reassurance. But it probably wouldn’t pair well against his new fitness regime.
“That concludes the psychiatric test,” the examiner states, making the last few adjustments on his clipboard – wait.
Something was off about the way he said that. As if they weren’t done.
“We’ll be moving onto something a bit different now,” the examiner says, and his gaze focused onto Benji’s now, really pressing into him. This is the part where they read his body language, really dig in to see his reaction. The psych test isn’t over, they’re testing something new – how does he react to something unexpected? Something he didn’t plan on happening?
He keeps his fucking grip, that’s what. “I’m sorry – I thought you said the psychiatric test was the only part?”
“This is new material,” the examiner says, and that’s all Benji’s going to get out of that. “We’re just going to play a sort of game of word association, I’m sure you’re familiar with it. You just say the first word that pops into your head.”
“Okay.” He shifts in his chair, hoping that the examiner might take the movement as a ‘okay, challenge accepted’ and less ‘I’m so nervous I think my butt is sweating’. Word associations sound simple on paper, but it’s a test of two key factors: instinct, and response. How fast can Benji respond, and is it an answer they’re happy with?
The examiner clasps his hands gently together and watches Benji’s face. The first word comes. “Computer.”
Because of course that’s the first one they picked. “Career.”
“Weapon.”
“Tool.”
“Commander.”
“ Tool.”
It slips out. His nerves are shot and he hasn’t made a joke in at least fifteen minutes. He feels his body recoil in on itself slightly in regret, but he’s surprised to see that the examiner’s only reaction is a quirk eyebrow and a smug smile tug in the corner of his mouth.
“Trap.”
Okay. Game’s still on. “Honeypot.”
“Poison.”
“System.”
“Bird.”
“Flip.”
The examiner’s eyebrow twitches again. It’s funny, but there’s a subtle look in his gaze that says: No more playing, now. Okay, fine. Serious. Benji can do that.
“Courage.”
Benji’s eyes flicker, just a fraction. “Necessary.”
“Hunt.”
Benji’s jaw shivers, the word about to tumble out, and he bites it back barely in time – but it’s not helping, because now it’s the only word rattling in his brain. Nothing else is coming to mind. It’s all there is, soaking up in his mind, and the examiner is opening his mouth to repeat it, but Benji jumps in first —
“Ethan.”
… Fuck. Fuck.
The examiner pauses to write something down. Benji could crack, right fucking now – god, how is he so stupid? Why the hell didn’t he say something else, like predator ? Or even fucking Kraven or something more sane than Ethan ? His palms sweat, his heart pulsing between his ribs, blood thumping all through his body—
But despite the insides of his body bellowing at him to leave the room right now and deposit his inside into the nearest lavatory, he keeps his shit together. His grip on the chair has become a little tighter, but he keeps his jaw clenched and eyes narrowed. Resolute, as if he’d given the right answer and the examiner is the one in the wrong.
The examiner’s pen clicks and lowers, then looks up into Benji’s eyes. “Mission.”
There’s only one right answer here.
“Accept.”