Work Text:
Grace’s always known that life isn't fair. If it was, she wouldn’t have been left an orphan at six and forced to fight for every single moment. Ethan and his rag-tag team can say what they like, but all she’s ever done - steal, lie, fight - was just to make things a little bit fairer for her.
If life was fair, they wouldn’t need to fight so hard against Gabriel, and Alanna wouldn’t be living in the lap of luxury on the back of blood money. If life was fair, the knife through Ilsa’s heart wouldn’t have killed her, and maybe the knife through Paris’ would.
That’s a lie. Grace doesn’t wish Paris was dead; it’d be stupid, if nothing else, since that would’ve meant she and Ethan would be corpses in a river right now. She wonders if Ethan could’ve lived - well, died - with that. Just so he could be with Ilsa again.
She pretends the guilt isn’t eating her alive all through the flight to IMF headquarters in who-knows-where. Keeps her head up and a brave face on, wondering what’s going to happen to her now. She hopes Ethan was right, that she can trust Kittridge. She’s survived a lot in the past week - it would be nice not to be summarily executed for trusting the wrong person, like an idiot.
Grace’s dozing in the cell-like room she was given when the door opens. Muscle memory has her reaching for her knife before she remembers all her weaponry was confiscated. By the looks of the woman in the doorway, she’d probably be trounced in a fight anyway. Grace studies her, and waits for her to speak.
“So you're Grace,” she says, rolling out the syllables, sounding unimpressed. “Another stray Hunt picked up on a mission?”
Grace knows how not to bristle when she’s clearly being goaded, through she is intrigued at the implication that Ethan’s pulled this sort of stunt before. “Who are you?”
The woman smirks. “That knowledge won’t be relevant to you until I actually make you part of the IMF. You can start by telling me about yourself. Your last name, for example. The real one, please.”
Oh, two can play at this game. Grace smirks back. “Ethan trusted me. If that isn’t good enough for you, then take it up with him.”
The woman scoffs in response and clicks her tongue. “You say that like I trust Hunt either.” She tosses a file over to Grace and it lands open on the first page, her mugshot clipped to the top left corner. “Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? Our first records have you up for burglary and carjacking, age ten. Why don’t you tell me all about that?”
“I was just chased around the world and nearly killed multiple times by someone who thinks a genocidal AI is his God,” Grace drawls. “If you think I’m going to trust you just because you know Ethan’s name, think again.”
This time, the woman laughs. Her eyes are still cold, but there’s something in them that tells Grace she can start to relax. “You can call me Sloane - or don’t. You’re not there yet. Just call me the director of the Impossible Mission Force.”
It turns out that the whole ‘tell-me-about-yourself’ intimidation tactic is just that, intimidation. Sloane doesn’t like Ethan - that much Grace can tell is completely true - but if she had to trust anyone with destroying aforementioned genocidal AI or bringing new blood into the team, it would be him. Within forty-eight hours of being heli-lifted out from the Orient Express, Sloane brusquely throws another file at her and says, “welcome to the IMF."
This file has a headshot too - not Grace’s own, but still familiar. She flips through the pages, reading what isn’t blacked out, and raises her eyebrows at the instructions written on the back. “You’re putting me on bodyguard duty? While the Entity is hellbent on destroying the world?”
Sloane fixes a stare on her, and she’s almost - almost - cowed by it. “What? You wanted me to send you back out after Hunt and his friends with a gun and a cheerful wave? You’re a thief and a liar,” she replies, clipped. “Your actions got a woman killed less than a week ago. I’m not Hunt. I’m not going to put the greater good at risk to protect one person, and I’m certainly not going to risk anything to protect you. Faust’s death is on your conscience. She was useful, and right now, so is the only person alive who can tell us anything more about the Entity. You’re not. So live with it, do your job, and start being useful to me.”
Grace stares down at Paris’ headshot in the file, thinks about Ilsa’s unmoving body at the base of a Venetian bridge, and says “yes, ma’am”.
Paris is still unconscious. Her file states that Gabriel got her in the lung, and that it was bad, but she was rescued and given medical attention quickly enough that she definitely isn’t going to die. She’s cuffed to the bed as a precaution, but no one really thinks she’ll be a flight risk when she wakes up. Gabriel wants her dead, now. There’s nowhere else she can go. Grace isn’t here to protect others from her, but to protect her from the Entity. She’s not sure if she can do that, or how. But she’ll try.
Grace settles down in the chair next to Paris’ bed, pulls out the knives that Sloane returned to her, and starts cleaning the blood off. She’ll be ready for a fight, at least.
Sloane and the IMF aren’t fucking around with bodyguard duty. Grace eats, sleeps, and breathes in Paris’ room, never letting her out of her sight. She starts learning how to handle firearms in that fucking easy chair, assembling and dissembling the same pistol two hundred times so that becomes muscle memory too. Her whole world has narrowed to one infirmary room, and will stay that way until Sloane says so.
Which... makes things a little awkward when Paris wakes up, eventually. Medical personnel start checking in on her more regularly, crowding the room to discuss things among themselves, and Grace feels out of place - even more so when Paris keeps glancing over to her and not looking away, expression completely blank. It unnerves her. She’s a thief; she hates not being able to read someone. Especially someone as dangerous and unknown as Paris.
Grace isn’t taken off bodyguard duty. Presumably the Entity is still out there, and Ethan’s still on the hunt to find the source code and figure out how to destroy it. Until then, there’s no guarantee Paris won’t be found and someone won’t be sent in to finish Gabriel’s job. And they definitely won’t botch it this time.
Paris doesn’t say one word to her until the first evening the room isn’t flooded with medical personnel making sure one wrong move won’t have her dropping dead. “Your friend,” she rasps, looking up at the ceiling rather than at Grace. “He’s going to find the Sevastopol?”
“Yes,” Grace replies. She’s not worried about revealing that. Paris’ God betrayed her. Who’s she going to tell?
Another stretch of silence. Grace doesn’t push, continues going through the soothing repetition of dissembling a pistol and putting it back together, until Paris draws a ragged breath and Grace looks up to see a tear running down her cheek. “He can’t save the world,” she whispers. “No one can.”
Grace thinks that one week ago she would’ve thought Paris was probably right. One week ago, before she stole a single, small key. She shrugs and loads the gun, listening for the satisfying click. “Well. He saved you.”
Sloane eventually comes in to talk to Paris. Well, if ‘talk’ actually means interrogate and subtly threaten. She makes it perfectly clear that the agency won’t hesitate to put a bullet through her brain if she takes a single step out of line. The Entity betrayed her. Going back to it will be interpreted as nothing less than betraying them.
Paris’ willingness to give Sloane everything she knows about Gabriel, the Sevastopol, and the Entity surprises Grace, but then, she’s always been a lone wolf. Grace holds a grudge against the world, but she knows injustice isn’t the same thing as betrayal. The bitterness bleeds through every word she speaks, and Grace realises that Paris, more than anyone else, has truly lost everything, even herself. She wonders what that’s like. She hopes she’ll never have to know.
Paris turns out to be big on conversation, and not just when she’s being grilled for information. Grace supposes she shouldn’t be surprised, because entertainment is pretty limited when you’re confined to an infirmary bed with a damaged lung and an all-knowing genocidal AI wanting you dead.
They end up trading stories, for lack of much else to talk about. Grace learns that Paris’ story is a lot like hers, substituting dead parents for neglectful ones who were driven by greed and selfishness and taught her to be the same. Her parents had no loyalty to anyone, and all Paris ever wanted was to be different.
“I had nothing before Gabriel,” she says, and Grace knows how that feels. Paris glances away and Grace can tell she’s struggling not to cry. “He gave me everything I had. I forgot it meant he could take it away from me too.”
“You don’t need him,” Grace replies. “You don’t need anyone but yourself.”
Paris says, quietly, “I wish I could believe that.”
“Why do you call yourself Grace?”
Grace jumps at the unexpected question. She’d thought Paris was resting; the doctors have declared her fit enough to start PT so her physical condition doesn’t deteriorate, and the sessions have been tiring her out. Her eyes are still closed, but she’s clearly alert. Grace shrugs even though she can’t see it, and injects some humour into her tone. “What, you don’t think it’s my real name?”
Paris laughs, and that takes Grace by surprise - how gentle it sounds, how real, and almost infectious, making Grace smile too. “Liars know liars.”
Grace didn’t think of Paris as a liar, but fair enough. “It’s the name I use most frequently. Reminds me of the woman who took me in and made me who I am.”
“Her name was Grace?”
If it was anyone else asking, she’d just say yes. The easy answer. But something about Paris makes Grace feel like she can be honest, even if she’s not completely sure why. Kindred spirits, but it’s also more than that. Not that she needs, or wants, to think too hard on that right now. “No. But that’s what she showed me, when I was lost and scared and angry at the world. Grace.”
“A name you chose,” Paris murmurs. “Good for you. It’s a power that few people appreciate.”
“Did you choose yours?” Grace asks.
Paris shakes her head. “Gabriel gave it to me. It’s where he found me, and he told me it would always remind me of where I came from.” The bitterness creeps back into her tone, and it’s sad how familiar it's becoming. “I know what he really means by that, now.”
“I won’t use that name for you if you don’t want me to,” Grace offers, but Paris just laughs again, quieter, tiny smile flickering across her face. “No. I won’t let him take that away from me too.”
“Good for you,” says Grace. “That’s power, too.”
Paris opens her eyes and looks over to her, smile wider now. “Yes. That’s power.”
Grace wonders about Ethan when she has the time to do so. It’s not often - Sloane has added administrative work to her responsibilities, so she spends a lot of her time in Paris’ room compiling data in analogue form; she supposes that answers the question of whether the Entity has been destroyed yet. The weeks have been passing, though. She’d known beating an all-knowing power-hungry AI to a lost Russian submarine wouldn’t be a one-and-done task, but it’s hard not to worry as the days go by.
She doesn’t realise Paris has been watching, and observing, until one unexceptional afternoon when she asks, out of nowhere, if Grace is all right. “You’re worried about the Entity.”
That’s not a question, because what else could it be? Grace nods and keeps helping Paris change her bandages. “I just wish I could be out there with them, you know? Ethan and the team. Actually doing something.”
A few moments pass in silence before Grace comes back to herself and realises what she said, and how it might sound to someone who’s only had her as company for weeks on end and has no choice whatsoever but to remain where she is. “I mean - sorry. I don’t - I’m not unhappy to be here. With you.” She feels flushed, and foolish in a way she hasn’t in a very long time. Paris is smiling, though, so maybe she hasn’t completely deepthroated her foot. “I understand. I’d rather be out there. Just like you.” The smile tightens, more teeth than anything. “I have something I’d like to pay back too.”
“I can’t wait to see it,” Grace says, and she means it. She can imagine it, Paris pinning Gabriel down and taking her deserved revenge, seeing his life fade under her hands. Like he did with Ilsa, like he would’ve done with her, if he could. Sloane said that she wasn’t Hunt, and Grace knows she isn’t either. Ethan would give up all and any chances for vengeance for the mere possibility of destroying the Entity and saving the world. Here and now, all Grace wants to do is give Paris a weapon, and set her free.
Maybe, Grace thinks, just maybe, she can do that.
It’s three months later, the Entity still growing, infecting the planet, and Gabriel on the loose. Paris has recovered so much of her strength she’s really beginning to remind Grace of the terrifying woman who pursued her and Ethan through the streets of Rome. Grace has no idea what’s going on beyond the confines of the infirmary, and it’s about fucking time to change that.
Sloane comes in for an interview with Paris, to scrape for more information, and Grace stops her outside the doorway and doesn’t let her get the first word in. “I want to go out on the field.”
“No,” Sloane says flatly.
“Tough shit,” Grace shoots back, because she’s not ending this conversation until she gets exactly what she wants. “It’s been three months. Ethan and his team clearly need the help.”
Sloane scoffs. “And you think you can be the one to provide that?”
“No. We can.”
“I already know I’m not going to like the answer,” says Sloane, “but who the fuck is ‘we’?”
Grace doesn’t answer so much as say, “Sloane. Give her the choice. Same as Ethan gave me.”
Sloane stares her down. “He’s Ethan Hunt. What authority do you presume you have to tell me what I should do?”
Sloane still has authority, but she doesn’t cow Grace any more, and if she didn’t want Grace pulling aces from her sleeves, she shouldn’t have been feeding her classified information and telling her to make sense of it for them. “This conversation is the last box you need to check before you make her the offer that you’ve been waiting to make for the last five weeks. You were going to wait one more. Just saving you the time.”
There’s a beat there, a pause, and Grace already knows she’s won. Sloane snorts, and strides away, but Grace has learned to read that too.
Twelve hours later, Paris has a file in her hands and a change of clothes on her infirmary bed. “Welcome to the IMF,” Sloane says crisply, and points at Grace. “And you? Don’t think you’re off the bodyguard duty hook.”
Grace has had zero intention of leaving Paris’ side while they’re out on the field, but Sloane doesn't need to be told that.
Grace is leaving with a commandeered vehicle, Luther’s current location, and a reformed murderer by her side, and before they get into the car, she stops Paris and makes her answer just one question, just so she knows, so she can go into this with eyes wide open. “Tell me why you’re here. Tell me that one truth - for vengeance, or for justice? - and then after that, it will be nothing except the mission.”
Paris tilts her head, eyes narrowed, mouth curled up just the slightest. “I’m here because of you.”
It’s not an answer Grace was expecting. Considering the enemy they’re going up against? She figures that’s a pretty good thing.
They find Luther in a safe house that’s basically a Faraday cage. Apparently, he’s been expecting them. “Sloane gave me the heads-up,” he says, and Grace squints. “How? Messenger pigeon?”
Paris laughs, and Luther raises his eyebrows, glancing warily at her from the corner of his eye. "I got warned about her too. But it would be nice to hear straight from you that she’s not going to kill us in our sleep.”
“I like a fight, so,” Paris comments. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Grace shoots her a look, and is surprised, again, when Paris mouths ‘sorry’ and grins. Luther smirks too. “Good to hear. Let's put you to work, then. You know your way around computers, or were you just the muscle?”
“I know Gabriel,” Paris says, spitting the name like poison. “Will that help?”
Luther nods, slow, meeting her gaze. “I think that’s going to help a lot.”
Irony, Grace supposes, is the fact that she spent three months confined in one single room, and got herself out of it, and immediately found herself back in another. Leaving the safe house isn’t an option, after all, and if anyone actually is the muscle at the moment, it’s her. She asked for this, though. She won’t complain.
She’s on alert all the time now. Luther has security systems in place, but he also knows they’re not safe. They won’t be until the Entity is destroyed. He can’t give Grace much of an update on Ethan and Benji’s progress. He thinks he knows where they are, but truth is a slippery thing to get ahold of at the moment. “It’s only true if you can see it, and hear it, and touch it. All three, right in front of you. Don’t you trust anything else.”
“I already knew that,” Paris says, later, when it’s just her and Grace sitting in the basement in the dead of night, sharing a bottle of wine Luther offered from his stores. “No, not knew. Was told to believe that, to trust no one except Gabriel and the Entity. It knew everything, saw everything. Everyone could lie, but it didn’t.”
“Do you still believe that?”
Paris hums, thoughtful. “The Entity doesn’t lie. I still believe that. But Gabriel’s human. I remember that now. And humans always lie. That’s why it felt easy to listen, to trust no one. And I didn’t.”
It’s quiet around them but for the soft creaks of the house settling. Luther is asleep in his room upstairs, and for the moment it’s almost possible to believe that there is nothing wrong in the world, that they’re just two women enjoying good wine together, feeling like tomorrow is promised, and everything will be all right. Grace turns to look at Paris, seated next to her, shoulders brushing, and sees the glow of her dark eyes, looking right back. “I didn’t,” she repeats, soft, and sweet, and for Grace alone. “Until you.”
Grace kisses her, and knows that tomorrow isn’t promised, but this - this definitely is.
Nothing really changes after that, and naturally so - even if they weren’t in pursuit of a deadly enemy and living in constant quiet fear that it’d finally found them, they were never, ever going to be a disgustingly typical couple holding hands at the Spanish Steps. Even thinking that makes Grace want to throw up, and she’s pretty sure Paris would just laugh. Paris is focused on working with Luther to outwit the Entity and create a game plan so many steps ahead they can beat it, and Grace in turn is focused on keeping them safe while they work it out. The greatest demonstration of their mutual affection is honestly just staying the fuck alive.
It doesn’t mean they don’t find their moments - Paris catching her hand as Grace passes her by to get a drink and holding on just for a second; Grace still helping with PT exercises even if she doesn’t really need to. They sleep side by side, not touching, but Grace falls asleep every night to the sound of Paris’ breathing, and it’s enough.
Paris says, I trust you, and her every word, every movement, shows Grace how true that is. Paris says after we finish the mission, and when this is over, and one day, and it’s a promise. It’s the greatest, sincerest declaration she could make, and Grace doesn’t think she’s ever been loved like this.
It takes two months, but one afternoon Luther abruptly says they’re ready.
“Now what?” Grace asks, after they strip the safe house of anything that could lead Gabriel and his cronies to them and get in the car to drive where they need to be. Luther shoves the last bag of things in the boot and looks at her, grim. “Now? We go to war, and we win.”
When Grace slips into the back seat, Paris glances away from the window to smile at her, reaching for her hand. Eyes wild, and jaw set. Grace knows she’s thinking of Gabriel, of vengeance, of freedom, and of a future. Their future. That’s what they’re fighting for.
It turns out that the work Ethan and Benji have done in the past five months has involved getting the Sevastopol’s computer out of the submarine and into a safe place without the Entity picking up on this, which has naturally been more challenging than even tossing yourself off a mountain onto the roof of a moving train. Luther reaches Ethan and Benji’s safe house an hour before the computer is transported on the last legs of a very convoluted, unpredictable, dangerous journey to the basement deep underground, where they’ll work on the source code and destroy the Entity once and for all.
It turns out that unlike Luther with his messenger pigeon, Ethan and Benji were not warned, and the sight of Luther's car pulling up in front of their shocked selves is, despite the circumstances, extremely amusing. Grace is pretty sure Benji IMF Agent Dunn almost faints when he sees them. Ethan, once he gets over his surprise, just looks terribly relieved. He steps in to give Grace a hug and Paris a respectful nod, and once pleasantries are done, it's straight back to business. “We’ll be in danger from the moment the computer arrives. But you all know that. And I know this time we have to face it together.”
“Gabriel will be coming. You can’t hide from the Entity, not even here,” Paris says, and Ethan nods. “But the fight will be here. On our terms, as much as humanly possible. And as much of the work we can do before he comes to make sure the Entity can never be used again, we’ll do. Are you with us?”
There’s no hesitation when Paris says yes. “Gabriel dies today,” she says, soft and sure. “And so does his God. Whatever it takes.”
What it takes is everything.
The Sevastopol computer doesn’t make it into the shielded basement; it’s a miracle it makes it to the safe house at all. The computer’s courier is shot not far away and Ethan, Grace, and Paris join forces to fire on the pursuers while Benji and Luther get it into the house. They all know there’ll be more, can already see them coming on the horizon; the Entity has acolytes, after all. It was never just Gabriel, and why would it be? What’s a God without its followers?
“Ethan, go help Benji and Luther,” Grace says as they barricade themselves into the house, anything to buy a little more time. Ethan opens his mouth to respond, or protest, and Grace cuts him off. “The Entity needs to be destroyed, now. Paris and I will hold them back. And if we don’t, you can’t die out here with us. You have to protect them and finish the mission.”
“Grace - “
“Do it for her,” Grace says, before she can think better of it. Ethan goes still, like she's landed a physical blow, but the expression on his face tells her he knows she’s right. “Okay,” he says, and his voice doesn’t even shake. “Okay.”
“We’ll finish the job,” Paris adds, and in it Grace hears every apology Paris has ever wanted to make to him. She hopes Ethan hears them too.
Months ago, huddled in another safe house with a blanket round her shoulders and the guilt eating her alive, Grace had truly, genuinely not understood how Benji could’ve said we’re here because we want to be, and meant it.
She’s got her guns now, back straight, just waiting, knowing she might die today, and Grace finally thinks she gets it.
She knows even before Gabriel and the rest of the Entity's little cult surround them for a fight that she's buying time. She knows her place, her job - keep Ethan, Benji, and Luther alive long enough for the Entity to be destroyed, and save the rest of the world. And she can. It’s a dance, almost, blurring before her eyes. Her guns feel like an extension of her body, reminders of those hours she spent in the infirmary assembling, dissembling, and knowing one day it would save her life. She can barely hear the shooting, the shouting - this is the war, and Luther said they would win. Grace remembers a world narrowed down to one room, to one duty, and this isn’t so much different. Fight. Defend. Fight. Survive. Just survive. For a good soldier, the mission has never been so impossible, after all.
Good soldiers don’t count minutes - it could be sixty seconds or three hours; it feels like both, and Grace doesn’t know, doesn’t care. Good soldiers don’t lose focus until the fight is won. Until they finish what they signed up to do, because they know exactly how this is supposed to go. Until they’re surrounded by the fallen and the only sound they can hear is their own breathing.
And the ragged gasps of another -
Grace stumbles out of a fight she’s won, to the sight of Gabriel’s dead body, and the realisation that the girl she loves is dying.
It wasn’t so long ago. Grace remembers kneeling in front of Paris in the wrecked carriage of the Orient Express, eyes closed and breathing shallow, and all her words being caught in her throat.
She’d just managed to call for Ethan, then. She could, now, still, and see him rush in from the next room, away from the Entity’s source code, from the surviving members of his team. She could at least not be alone to watch Paris die.
“Grace?”
There’s blood all down her front where Gabriel stabbed her with a jagged shard of glass; Grace forces herself not to look at it or she knows she’ll be sick. Paris is pale, limp, but smiling. “He’s dead,” she whispers, so faint Grace can barely hear her. “I finished the job. Like I promised.”
Dead. The man who killed Ilsa, who hurt Ethan, who took everything from Paris, is dead. Grace doesn’t even remember seeing him, fighting him, can’t figure out when he went up against Paris and lost. Her first duty. Protect Paris. Paris did what she’d sworn to do, and all Grace can taste is failure.
“I can’t save you.” Her words are coming in gasps as she eases Paris into her arms as gently as she can. “I don’t know how - I can’t. Paris, I can’t.”
“I was supposed to die,” Paris continues, like she hasn’t even heard. “On that train. That was what the Entity ordered. That was the truth that was supposed to pass. But I didn’t. And you told me Ethan saved me. But that wasn’t true. He was just borrowing time. All these months, I was just running on borrowed time. Always running, Grace. All my life.” Her eyes are open, looking right into Grace’s own. “I was supposed to die in that cabin on the Orient Express, my loyalty betrayed. Instead I get to die doing the right thing. Here, with you.” Her smile is so wide, so bright, brighter than Grace has ever seen. “Isn’t that the most wonderful thing in the world?”
“Yes,” Grace whispers, because she loves Paris, loves her more than she ever believed possible, and loves her enough to lie. She leans down to kiss her, one last time. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Tu es tout pour moi,” she hears. She knows Paris’ eyes are closed now, knows she’s letting go. She can’t look. She can’t look. She can’t. “Pour toujours.”
“Ma vie,” says Grace, and watches her die.
“Grace?”
Ethan’s voice. Rough and tired but with an unfamiliar note that takes Grace a moment to place; triumphant. No wonder. It’s the first time she’s heard him sound that way.
“We won,” he says. His hand rests against Paris’ forehead, fingers gently brushing her eyes closed. “We destroyed the Entity.”
Grace lets him carefully take Paris into his arms, lets Benji and Luther help her up so they can leave the building and return to a world that hasn’t realised it’s been saved. Her voice is dull, but it doesn’t shake. It’s funny. It feels like she’s learned to lie again. “We won.”
What is always coming but never arrives?
Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.
“How did you do it?”
Ethan pauses where he's kneeling in the grass and glances at her. “Do what?”
Grace pauses too, to choose her words, to breathe through the ache, the endless agony of the open wound that feels carved into her side even one month later - like she’s still bleeding, like she’ll never stop. “How did you survive beyond her?”
Ethan doesn’t respond for some time, and Grace doesn’t push. She sits on the grass and watches his movements, graceful and precise as he keeps arranging the flowers around Ilsa’s headstone, a pastel shower of colour. He leans back when he’s done and dusts off his hands, then runs his fingers against the words carved into the stone. “I just did,” he says. He meets Grace’s eyes and smiles, and it almost looks like he means it. “It’s the job, isn’t it? The choice we made. Our calling.” He stands, and he seems haloed by the sun, looking down on her, grave and sympathetic, both of them bound together by tragedy, and duty, and love. “You said it back then, you know. That Ilsa died to save your life. And Luther said that wasn’t true, but it is. She died to save a life. And it’s all I need to do, Grace. Keep fighting the same fight she did, until one day I do the same.”
Grace tips her head to gaze at the sky, to feel the breeze against her skin, and hear Paris’ voice echo, loud enough to hear, for the rest of her life. “That’s all,” she says, and this time, it’s not a question.
TEN YEARS LATER.
It’s one of the first things you learn when you join the IMF. You get the speech from Sloane, you hear about the Ethan Hunt, and then, you learn about her. Rookie agents pass it on in low voices, the little that’s known about this woman who lives only in the shadows. It’s said that she can blend in absolutely anywhere she chooses to go. She’ll smile and speak to you and make you feel like you’re the only person in the world, and then disappear, carrying with her your valuables, your secrets, every single one. You won’t know when she’s coming, and you won’t know when she’s gone. She’s saved hundreds of lives - one day, she might even save your own. In your worst moment on the field, when you know your time has come - if you’re lucky, you’ll close your eyes, and when you open them again, you’ll be safe. But you’ll never know who she is, even if you’re looking straight at her. You might catch a glimpse of brown hair, a flash of dark eyes, a tall build disappearing around a corner - but she'll always be unrecognisable, despite. A ghost hiding in plain sight.
Her real name is unknown, and probably always will be. But sometimes, just sometimes, a code name is whispered on the wind. Just one word.
Paris.