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The food in the mess hall was watery and flavourless. Ilsa supposed the medical camp had more important priorities than the food.
She stabbed a chunk of chicken with her spork. It was chewy and dry but it was food and it was warm and that was something. Saving the world did tend to give you an appetite, but Ilsa wasn’t quite hungry enough to eat the biryani without complaint.
The tent was quiet, a few women and children treated there milled about with their own food, proceeding on with their own lives. They wouldn’t know how close they had come to destruction. Ilsa kept herself to herself, quietly focused on loading rice onto her spork, and she was left alone, sitting at her own table.
She noticed Julia Meade the moment she walked in. She glanced up at her in acknowledgment of the other woman. Julia seemed to take this as an invitation to make a bee-line for where she sat and drop herself down in front of her. Ilsa tried to look down at her meal, intently staring at it in the hope that Julia would get the message and leave her alone.
Julia didn’t, and instead settled in, placing her elbows against the plastic of the table.
Ilsa decided if Julia was present she might as well talk to her. “How’s Ethan doing?” Ilsa asked. Small talk had never been one of her strong suits but she might as well attempt it.
Julia nodded. “He’s good, he should make a full recovery.”
“Is he ready to travel yet?”
“No. He really needs another few days of bedrest, but knowing Ethan he’ll probably be cartwheeling out of here in at least twenty-four hours.”
Ilsa nodded along to her words. They both knew Ethan Hunt was never the type to stay down for long. This would’ve been his worst nightmare, not anything he’d faced before, not madmen or nuclear annihilation, but being stuck on bedrest in a medical tent. It was odd to consider that this other woman knew Ethan as well as she did, maybe more, she’d known him longer after all..
“How’d you and Ethan meet?” Julia asked, dropping the question lightly into the space between them, watching Ilsa’s gaze rise up to her eyelevel.
Ilsa hesitated, considering carefully the words she could say, that she should say. “Work.” She settled on. It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t too far from the truth either.
“That’s nice.” Julia looked disappointed at that answer. “I was on holiday in New Zealand when we met. We went to Lake Wānaka, it’s beautiful, have you ever been out there?”
Ilsa hadn’t.
“Look, I get it if you can’t tell me. I know what that life’s like, I remember it with Ethan, how important it was to keep secrets. I get it,” Julia told her.
“It’s not that I can’t tell you, Julia, it’s that I don’t want to.” Ilsa said, suddenly realising how harsh her words said as they began to tumble out of her mouth. “I’ll tell you if you really feel it’s important but I don’t think you’d look at me the same way if I did. You wouldn't like me if you knew.”
Julia picked up a discarded plastic fork from the side and dug it into Ilsa’s plate, consuming a mouthful of it then proceeding to wipe the edges of her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Ethan likes you,” she pointed out, swallowing down Ilsa’s food as she just watched, perplexed by the audacity of the act. “I’ve found he’s a good judge of character.”
Ilsa wasn’t sure about that logic but she wasn’t sure she wanted to argue with it either. Loyalty was a hard thing to come by in her line of work, she wasn’t just going to reject it.
“Does Ethan ever talk about me?”
Ethan was preparing to leave medical. The camp’s doctor had advised him to rest for at least another day before attempting to travel but Ethan took that advice with a grain of salt, and not just because the camp’s doctor was Julia’s new husband.
Benji and Luther were already back in the States, by now they might have even been drafted into a new mission by the IMF. He was desperate to return, to be useful. He couldn’t help anyone lying in a hospital bed.
Ilsa was still here. Some nights she slept in the chair next to his bed, waiting patiently by his bedside like a loyal dog. He wasn’t sure what to make of it, it wasn’t a side of her he’d seen before. She was free from MI6 now, the whole world was open in front of her and Ilsa wasn’t sure what to make of this new freedom.
As much as she stayed in Kashmir for him, waiting and watching to make sure he was ok, he was doing the same for her, watching as she curled up under her coat in the seat next to his bed, her knees to her chest, rising and falling with each breath.
He’d almost finished packing when Ilsa came in, her hands were in her hair, tying it off into a braid. She looked like she’d only recently woken up, it was likely she had, it was only six in the morning local time.
“Were you planning to skip town without me?” she asked, looking accusingly between Ethan and the kit bag filled with his belongings.
“No,” Ethan shrugged as he zipped the bag. “I would’ve woken you up. I was just trying to get out of here without drawing the attention of the doctor.”
“Ah, Julia’s new beau,” Ilsa nodded.
Ethan disagreed. “It’s not like that. I’m not jealous, I just want to get out of here.”
As Ethan grabbed his kit and tried to walk through the entrance of the tent past here, Ilsa held a hand out to grab the fabric of his jacket, forcing him to stop for a second and to face her. She was strong, but strong enough to stop him if he fought it, he didn’t want to fight it as Ilsa closed the distance between them and kissed him.
That was one thing she knew that could stop quicker than a bullet ever could.
She pulled away and Ethan almost tried to cling on before it occurred to him quite how desperate that would look.
“I like Julia,” she told him plainly as she pulled away. “She’s got spirit to her.”
Ethan narrowed his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean? Should I be jealous of you two?”
“Nothing,” Ilsa shrugged the comment off, waltzing past Ethan, taking his bag from his hands and heading out of the medical tent. “I presume the Land Rover outside is yours?’
Julia knew she was going to have to have this conversation. It had been coming for months now. Weeks of empty conversations and lulls in emotion. She had been waiting for him to initiate it, to bring it up to her breakfast or lunch or dinner, yet there was never any time, just work and excuses to fill the emptiness. And then Ethan had arrived and the puzzle pieces fell into place.
Despite whatever she felt for her husband, for Erik, she didn’t love him and he wasn’t Ethan.
“I still love him,” she admitted to her husband in the early hours of the morning. They’d been talking the whole night through, they used to do that when they first met, passionate about fixing the world, this was the first real conversation they’d had in months. “The adrenaline, the excitement, the adventure I used to have with him. I knew you couldn’t give that to me, I thought I could still love you despite that, that I could settle for you.”
Erik had just sat there quietly. She thought he might cry, that he might shout, that he’d do something, anything, to prove that she was wrong and there was still a marriage there. Instead she just sat there, accepting this was the inevitable end to what they had shared.
“But Ethan’s moved on. He’s with the British one, isn’t he? It’s not like you can get back together with him,” her husband said.
Julia just shook her head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. All I know, Erik, is that this isn’t working and we’ve got to stop pretending it is.”
He didn’t have anything to say to that, just staring up at the fabric roof of the tent they’d shared.
“I need some air,” she announced, standing up. She reached a hand up to her eye, she didn’t think she’d been crying but she supposed she must’ve been at some point. She pushed the tent-flap aside to walk out into the mountain air.
It was there she saw the Land Rover, shiny and new, looking like it had hardly been driven before, parked in the middle of the camp. She knew it must’ve been Ethan before she’d even made him out.
Julia began to jog as she made her way over to him. “Ethan!” she called out to him to get his attention. “Are you leaving?” she asked, slowing on her approach to him.
It was clear enough that he was. Ilsa emerged from the tent she’d been put up in with her own lightly packed bag of belongings and flung it in the back of the car.
“Were you even going to say goodbye?” Julia asked him, frowning as she stood across from him.
Ethan couldn’t quite look her in the eye. He didn’t want to disappoint her. Not after everything he’d put her through. “You know I’m not good at saying goodbye, Jules.”
“Then let me say it,” Julia told him. She stood up straight and leant up in order to press a kiss against his cheek, his stubble rough against her lips. She thought he might pull away, he might turn his head, but he let her. She wondered if he could tell this close that she had been crying.
She felt his hands brush against hers and everything they had shared came rushing back to her. Julia wondered if he could feel it too. Despite what she said, she didn’t want to say goodbye, she didn’t feel she could even dare to utter those little words as she breathed against his cheek.
Almost without realising it, her hands were up against his face, turning it towards her in order for her to kiss him on the lips. Her face pressed against his in desperation, hungry to have back the life they had shared before.
Ilsa watched as the two embraced, her lover and his ex-wife. She paid it little mind and got into the front seat of the car.
Ethan pulled away from Julia, neither of them willing to say a word, to try and explain or two apologise for what had felt so natural, so inevitable.
It was Ilsa who broke the silence, her palm hitting flat against the car’s horn, the vulgar noise carrying across the quiet camp.
“Are you coming?” she called out to Ethan, leaning out the window of the car to look over at him.
Ethan hesitated. He had been so desperate to leave, to go back to the life he had waiting for him, he didn’t stop to consider what he could be leaving behind.
Julia had no such hesitations. “I’m coming with you.”
It was a three hour drive down winding mountain roads between the medical camp in Kashmir and the airport in Lahore. The three of them hardly exchanged a word the whole journey
Ilsa was focused on the road ahead, deciphering road signs in Urdu. Ethan was in the back, he was on a satellite phone, haggling with the airline to get the flight changed to three seats rather than two. Julia was in the passenger seat, eyes fixed out the window, watching the country pass by and wondering if she’d made the right call.
The man at the front desk of the hotel was reticent about handing over the keys to the three of them.
“There’s only a double bed in the room. I’m sure you’d be more comfortable with a second room.”
“No. No, we wouldn’t just give us the key.” Ilsa checked in with a name and a credit card Julia didn’t recognise. She supposed that was part of the life too.
As Ilsa continued to quarrel with the hotel employee, Julia hung back to talk to Ethan quietly. “Where are we going?” she asked him, as though the technicalities of her impulsive exit were only beginning to dawn on her.
Ethan looked at her and it seemed like it might have only been dawning on him too how unplanned this whole trip had been. “There’s a flight out of here to Heathrow in the morning.”
"Heathrow? London?" Julia put the two together. "And then what?"
Ethan didn't have an answer to that, certainly not one that Julia needed. A concrete plan, a concrete idea of what this was, a rekindle of their marriage or just a confused fling.
Ilsa turned, keys on show in the palm of her hand. "I have the keys," she announced to the other two. "And for your information, Julia, I have a place in the city. Ethan and I were going to spend a few nights there, consider our next moves. You're welcome to come as well."
Julia wasn't sure what to make of Ilsa. This certainly wouldn't have been how she behaved if she'd discovered Ethan had had a wife before her who still wanted him. She wasn't sure if this apparent kindness was an act or even just dry humour. Julia wanted a chance to talk to her that night, to clear the atmosphere she felt between them but almost as soon as Ilsa had dumped her bag down in the hotel room she was preparing to leave again.
Ethan caught her wrist as she tried to leave. "Where are you going?" he asked her.
She smiled at him. "I thought you lovebirds would appreciate some time alone," she shrugged before kissing Ethan's cheek and pulling her wrist out from his grip. "I'll be back in a few hours."
Julia supposed that meant she approved of it at least. She wasn't sure what to make of that either. Did she even want the other woman's approval of this? The whole situation was new to her, all she knew for sure was that she wanted Ethan and if this was how she could have him, well who was she to complain?
Ethan kicked off his trainers and sat down on the double bed, hands to his side as if clutching on for dear life. If she didn't know better she would've said he was nervous. She sat down next to him. They'd done this all before, they knew each other's bodies, their scars and freckles as if they were their own. They knew the mistakes they'd made too, the obstacles they'd face.
Her face was close to his, breathing warm against his skin. She didn't want to touch him, to kiss him, she just wanted to stay like this, bodies close together, the years that had passed between them, slipped away, meaningless, leaves in an autumn gust of wind.
Julia’s palm was against his thigh, slowly moving higher up, giving him time to pull away, to say no, to tell her to go back, that this was a mistake. He didn’t say anything of the sort, just curling against her, close but not quite close enough, his breath against her neck as she palmed against his crotch, feeling what she knew was there, the curve of his flesh familiar to her touch.
He gasped against her hands, finally crossing the boundary between them, any semblance of propriety lost as he pressed his lips against her neck. She was married. He wasn’t, not to her at least, not anymore. The labels didn’t matter anymore, all that mattered was his hands shifting the belt from his hips, her hands, eager and willing, stroking against his length as he grew against her touch.
She knew how to do this, she knew what he liked, the way to touch him, to tease him, to make him shudder, wet lips groaning against the nape of her neck. It came back to her just like riding a bike, the turn of the wrist, fingers gentle against soft skin.
He came, spurting against the duvet cover of the hotel bed, and reality was suddenly back in sight.
It wasn’t until the early hours of the morning that Ilsa returned, a new scratch on her forehead but otherwise no sign of where she’d been. She snuck in quietly, tiptoeing soft against the carpet of the room. Ethan had always been a light sleeper and sat bolt upright at the entry.
Ilsa was surprised to see Ethan on the couch. She glanced over at the bed, Julia curled on the mattress, snoring lightly, the duvet folded and discarded in the corner.
“I thought I’d be the one on the couch tonight,” Ilsa said quietly, sitting on the edge of the couch, leaving Ethan to shuffle a little to give her space.
“I figured it was the gentlemanly thing to do given the situation,” Ethan explained.
“The situation meaning me? Or meaning her?” Ilsa mused. She didn’t wait for Ethan to struggle with an unanswerable question. “It doesn’t matter.” She told him, standing up to take her shoes off and shed her jacket to the floor before crawling into bed next to the other woman.
Ethan couldn’t get back to sleep. Instead he sat there, instinctively keeping watch as he watched Ilsa fall asleep, her breathing steadying, matching in-and-out with Julia’s pace. Julia turned over in her sleep, lost in some unknowable dream. She draped an arm against Ilsa, comforted by the warmth of the other body, cradling her in her slumber, bodies intertwining together.
The seats on the plane were apart from each other. Ethan had booked the tickets late and had had to pull enough strings just to get the three of them on the same flight.
Some part of Ethan was glad of this separation. He didn’t know what to say to Julia. He didn’t know what to say to Ilsa either. He wasn’t sure what they had to say to each other but he felt it likely they were just as stuck for words as he was. There were thirteen hours between take-off and landing, surely that would be time enough to collect his thoughts, but even as the map on the screen showed their plane crossing over the Mediterranean into Eastern Europe, Ethan was still as lost as before.
Julia didn’t like the quiet, she wasn’t used to it, it unnerved her. She was sitting up in business class, Ethan decided it was the chivalrous thing to do to offer her the better ticket. She would’ve much preferred economy, the screaming babies and rowing couples on their way back from disastrous honeymoons. That she could deal with. Silence not so much. Silence meant she was left to her own thoughts.
She didn’t know what her future had in store for her. She couldn’t see anything further ahead than the plane landing and the baggage claim in Heathrow, everything further than that was blurred and murky. She tried to picture the life she had with Ethan before, married life, the honeymoon in Canada, fall nights in a cabin up in Yukon Territory, fragile bodies clinging to each other for warmth, unwilling to let go. She tries to picture it again, but she keeps seeing them as they were, not as they are, the Ethan of a decade before in her arms and Ilsa nowhere to be seen.
Ilsa. She had to talk to her.
As the commercial jet crossed into Bulgarian airspace, Julia got up from her seat and made her way down the plane. M14, she remembered Ilsa’s seat number being, looking down at the lights on the floor for row numbers. She made it to M but glancing down at the seats she couldn’t spot Ilsa, just an empty seat where 14 should’ve been.
Perhaps she’d needed to stretch her legs too. Julia carried on, further on into the belly of the plane. She spotted Ilsa near the black of the plane, talking to an air stewardess about the available choices of wine. Upon hearing Julia’s footsteps approaching she smiled and then glanced over her shoulder to confirm her suspicion. Had she been able to identify her just from the sound of her shoes?
“Julia, were you looking for me?” she asked.
Julia stood to the side to let the air stewardess pass with her trolley before carrying on to Ilsa. “I thought we should talk about Ethan.”
“Well, I’m not responsible for him. You should hand him back to the shop if he’s faulty.” Julia wasn’t entirely sure if she was joking or not, but she had more pressing things on her mind.
“I wanted to ask if you were alright with this, me and Ethan. The last thing I want is for you to be jealous or upset, or for us to end up competing over him.”
Even if she had been building them up as rivals for Ethan’s affection subconsciously, thinking logically, from the time she had spent with the other woman, Julia felt there were very few competitions she was likely to beat Ilsa Faust in.
Ilsa chuckled at that. Julia hadn’t been intending it as a joke.
“Is that what you came over here to talk to me about?” she said, a smile still playing on her lips. “I’m not upset in the slightest. I can play nice, I can share.”
Julia felt Ilsa reaching out, her fingers trailing against the soft bare skin of her arm. Her fingers were gentle, not as calloused as Ethan’s but with the same strength and intensity of every action. She’d never had another woman touch her, look at her, with such open want in her eyes. It was a change, but she didn’t think she minded it.
She tried to lean up to kiss Ilsa but Ilsa just tilted her head to the side and chuckled again. She gripped onto her wrist and led her into the airplane bathroom, locking the door firmly behind the two of them.
It was rougher than Julia expected, skirt rucked up at her hips, close-cropped fingers pulsing against her, Ilsa lifting her against the door, her back arching against the touch. She squirmed and moaned, careful to keep quiet to avoid drawing attention to what they were doing. The last thing she wanted was to be interrupted.
Ilsa wasn’t taking the chance either. She shoved her free hand against Julia’s mouth, muffling her as her fingers thrust in and out of her, body weight pressed against Julia’s holding her in place.
Julia came against her touch, shivering and falling as Ilsa pulled away. It was all she could do to retain the little dignity she had and stay on her feet. It seemed Ethan and Ilsa were more used to sharing than she first presumed.
Ilsa’s place in London was an apartment in an old townhouse south of the Thames in Bermondsey. Neither of the women told Ethan what had happened between them in the airplane bathroom. From the flush in Julia’s cheeks and the swagger in Ilsa’s walk as she left the plane, Ethan could put two and two together.
With that same strut, Ilsa let them into the building and then up the stairs to the apartment. The door of the flat is hardly shut behind them before clothes begin to drop to the floor, shirts and socks dropped against the pairs of combat boots in Ilsa’s hall.
Ethan pulled Ilsa’s face towards him to kiss her, barely gasping for air before doing the same to Julia. She could taste Ilsa on his tongue, anger and sweat and something citric that was almost bitter. She wanted more of it and pressed her face close to Ethan’s.
When he pulled away from Julia, he sought out Ilsa but she had already meandered away. Ethan looked to her, blue eyes wide and confused, tugged between two magnetic poles.
Ilsa waltzed closer, she took Ethan’s hands in hers. “I thought you two would appreciate some time to catch up.” Ilsa’s hands guided Ethan’s to Julia’s hips, guiding him to touch her. “You haven’t had a proper chance yet.”
The bedroom was down the corridor. The mattress was easily big enough for three. Julia briefly wondered if Ilsa had done this before, if her and Ethan had done this before, but then Ethan’s hands are back on her hips and thoughts of whatever had come before melted away.
Ilsa’s hands were at her shoulders, gently tugging her shirt over her head as Ethan found the zip of her skirt, the two working together as a cohesive team, Ilsa’s fingers n the back of her bra, Ethan’s against her tights, her underwear until Julia was bare except a single white sock.
It was Ilsa who pressed her down onto the bed, strong and firm as she pushed her down. Julia couldn’t get up without a fight, she didn’t want to, she could never want to. Ethan’s fingers strummed against her, cunt still wet from the airplane before. He pulled his own belt down, his trousers, his boxers, his cock springing to attention at the sight of her pinned down against Ilsa’s bedsheets.
He lined himself up against her and began to enter her, slowly at first, gently pressing against her, building up a steady rhythm as he began to thrust. Everything that had come between them was nothing now. All there was was the moment, the feeling of him on top of her, thrusting deep inside her.
Ilsa’s knelt by her side, her thighs near her head, fingers entwined with her hair, playing with it, tugging at it, chuckling at each moan that escapes Julia’s mouth, loud and invigorated, the feeling she’d been missing this whole time now overwhelming her as her ex-husband hilted himself deep inside of her.
Julia doesn’t care who hears as she squeals with pleasure, each thrust hitting deep inside of her. Ilsa leans against her ear, murmurs something she can’t make out, voice soft against her ear. Her hands are against Julia’s bare flesh, groping against her breast, kneading and caressing her soft flesh, palming against them almost in time to each thrust.
Ethan came with a shudder, his whine low and desperate, almost animalistic as he let out inside of her. Ilsa’s fingers trace from left to right against her chest, flesh left pink against the pressure. Ethan pulls himself off from her. She notices her body, sore and bruised. She’d not sure she’d ever felt quite like this before, adrenaline and ecstasy coursing through her veins. She’s not sure she ever will again.
The night’s only just begun.