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Chris shoves his shoulder under Ethan’s armpit and wraps his arm firmly around Ethan’s crumbling back. He’s dying again, and Chris doesn’t think he’ll be able to handle that happening a second time when he can do something about it, so he lifts with his knees and starts to drag them both away.
Rose is gazing up at both of them with wide eyes as Chris tries to get through to Ethan, force him to keep walking, explaining the explosive to him. Will she remember this moment, years from now? Chris can’t see Ethan’s face, but based on the way the mold has destroyed the skin on his hands Chris imagines her dad can’t look pretty from her point of view. Rose doesn’t seem to mind. Her expression seems open and loving instead of frightened, but maybe Chris is just projecting.
“Dammit, Mia’s waiting for you!” He says, frustrated and scared and hoping Mia’s name will somehow get Ethan to stop literally falling apart. “She’s alive, you hear me? Alive!”
“Mia?” Ethan gasps, “I’m sorry - I love you -” He starts to drop, hard. “Keep Rose safe -”
Years of bottling up his emotions is the only thing that prevents Chris saying I love you back, even though he knows the words weren’t meant for him.
What he ends up saying is “You tell her yourself.”
The trouble is that even when he’s dying, Ethan is smart and fast, so before Chris knows it he’s being shoved back by a bandaged hand as a wall goes up before his eyes.
Chris finds himself stumbling back with his hands wrapped around Rose and Ethan's jacket instead of the detonator. He chokes out Ethan’s name, frozen in place on the other side of the mold wall. While his heart is being torn apart, his brain knows that he has to leave, has to save Rose, and it's the weight of her in his arms that makes his training kick in. He turns and starts running towards the extraction point on pure instinct. He can hear the blades of the chopper spinning long before he sees them and relief washes over him. Mia is rushing down the ramp to take her daughter and the relief quickly sours into guilt. He deposits Rose into her arms and barks the command to take off, ignoring Mia’s alarm.
He can hear her questions from behind him, but he can’t bring himself to look at her. He knows if he does his control will slip and he can’t let that happen. Not until extraction is complete. An explosion - Ethan’s detonation - rocks the chopper. Chris barely wavers. At least he didn’t see it happen this time, he thinks to himself. He then thinks, with a twist of grim humor, that his therapist is going to have a field day with his next session.
Mia understandly keeps asking questions, terrified and miserable, and Chris slams his fist into the doorway to the cockpit when he delivers the news of what Ethan has done. The sting feels right. A kind of punishment, though it’ll never be enough to make up for what he’s done to her and her family.
Rose doesn’t cry the whole flight to the BSAA’s Europe HQ. Unlike the people around her, she has no idea her dad is gone for good, and with her mom holding her close she doesn’t really have anything to cry about. Lucky her.
In comparison, Mia can’t help but sob quietly to herself for a long moment. By the time the crying calms down, Chris finally feels composed enough to shoot her a glance. When he does, he sees the same cold expression on her face that he knows he’s wearing. Her dried up tears leave tracks on her face and when she seems him looking she roughly scrubs them away. Chris is pretty sure he can’t cry anymore, and he wouldn’t be shocked if Mia felt the same after today.
He wonders if she knows he’s in love with her husband. She probably does. She’s smart as hell, and pretty observant besides - she put the pieces together about Ethan’s abilities, after all. He looks away, guilt rising up in his throat like bile.
The rest of the ride is subdued, even after they pick up the rest of the Hound Wolves. There’s a brief moment of celebration when they see their captain is alive, but the team quickly catches sight of Mia and Rose and reign it in. Rolando takes the seat next to them and although she startles briefly at his presence he eventually coaxes Mia into a quiet conversation. Although Chris can’t hear the specifics from where he’s hiding in the cockpit, it seems to put her at ease.
When they land he immediately sets off for the commander’s office to grill her, leaving Mia and Rose in his team’s capable hands. He can feel Mia’s eyes watching him go and refuses to look back.
+++
He feels a little like a mistress at the funeral. Nothing happened between him and Ethan, since Ethan only ever had eyes for Mia and Chris keeps his emotions pretty tight under wraps, but it’s hard to stand next to the wife of the man you were in love with at his funeral and not feel shame. It doesn’t help that Chris is well aware that he probably could have saved Ethan’s life both times at the village and royally fucked up. He feels like Mia should scream at him, or tell him to never speak to her, or do something, but she accepts his presence at her side with grace. It’s impressive considering how cool she’s been to him throughout the process of sorting out a new secure location for her and Rose.
Later, after he’s driven her to her new home and they’re sitting quietly in the dim driveway, she looks away from him and admits that she feels like this is all her fault. If she had just said something about Ethan to Chris earlier, if she had told Ethan himself what was wrong, maybe -
She breaks down crying in front of him, sitting in the passenger seat of his car with Rose sleeping soundly in the backseat. Chris feels like he should say something, struggles for the right words.
“He told me-” Chris’ voice cracks unexpectedly and he has to start again, “- he told me that he was sorry. When we were running. He said he was sorry, and he loves you, and he wanted me to look after Rose.”
She finally looks over at him. He puts his face in his hands to avoid her gaze and realizes he does still know how to cry.
“Fuck you for not telling me sooner.” She says, but the heat of her words is diminished by her shaking voice. “And fuck you if you ever thought I wasn’t going to make you look after her with me. He can’t do that now, so it’s gonna be on you to do it for him.” She sniffs. “If there’s two of us we probably won’t screw her up too bad.”
He chokes out a laugh through his tears. “Ethan was the only one who knew how to communicate. You think that’s going to be an issue?”
She laughs too, squeezing his arm. “God, I hope not. Guess we’ll have to learn.”
He puts a hand over hers and she lets him. They sit in the car for a long time, comfortable silence stretching between them. Rose slumbers on, unaware of the course of her life changing around her.
+++
Between the two of them and the rest of the Hound Wolves, they start to put the pieces of Mia’s life back together. Mia is officially retired from the line of duty - she sometimes acts as a consultant due to her personal experience and previous work with Eveline, but she’s about as hands off as she can get. Chris puts her in touch with his therapist, who’s technically just assigned to the Hound Wolves to assist with the mental strain of their work. Chris bends the rules to get Mia on that list anyway. He also introduces her to Claire, who loves Rose very much and offers babysitting whenever she isn’t doing her own work.
“It felt like a bizzaro meet the parents.” Claire admits on a call with Chris later that week. “But instead of meeting a partner’s parents I met the wife of the guy you had a thing for. She for sure knows, by the way.”
Chris grimaces. “I guessed.”
“She’s nice though. Been through it, but” He can hear her shrug over the phone, “haven’t we all. Are you going to introduce her to Leon?”
“I don’t think he’s doing too great right now. I don’t know if he’s up for meeting a widower and her baby and having to be polite.”
Claire hums in agreement. “She’s a cute baby though. Might cheer him up.”
“She is pretty cute.” Chris agrees. Claire had sent him a photo of Rose earlier, freshly woken up from a nap and gazing up at the camera in bewilderment. Her eyes haven’t settled into their permanent color yet, but at the moment they look just like Mia’s. The blonde hair is all Ethan’s. It still makes him a little sad to look at her.
There’s a lull in the conversation. Chris lets it sit. Sometimes they call while they do other things, just for company and reassurance, so he figures that Claire’s doing something else. He’s proven wrong when she speaks again.
“She showed me some photos of him. I asked.”
Chris swallows so his throat doesn’t get tight and waits for her to continue.
“And then she just kind of...talked. About him. I mean, I asked, so it wasn’t weird, but…” she trails off. “He sounds like he was a good man. She said she still loves him.”
Chris doesn’t know what to say to that. That Ethan was one of the best men he’s ever known? That Mia is probably going to love him for the rest of her life? That Chris is still in love with him too and he can’t think about Ethan too much because the guilt tears him up inside?
“He really went to hell and back for her. It would be hard for her to not love him ” is what he settles on.
Claire seems to accept this. “Are you doing okay?”
He isn’t. He almost lies about it, but he doesn’t like lying to Claire. “No. But there’s nothing I can do about it but wait until it hurts less.”
“Okay.” She pauses again, ready to say something else, but clearly decides to drop the subject. “I love you, Chris.”
He misses her so much sometimes he can barely stand it. “I love you too. Talk soon?”
“Talk soon.”
She hangs up. Chris puts his phone down and takes a deep breath. Nothing to do but wait.
+++
He waits a couple of years and it actually does start to hurt less. He thinks about Ethan every day still, but when he does he doesn’t feel like he’s drowning in grief. He spends a lot of time with Mia and Rose whenever he isn’t needed elsewhere in the world, trying to figure out what the hell the BSAA is up to. Rose is starting to talk. She doesn’t necessarily make a lot of sense, but she looks up at Chris and says a bunch of words very emphatically and he usually can figure out what she’s trying to tell him.
Thankfully, there doesn’t seem to be any ill effects from Miranda’s nasty work on either her or Mia, which everyone is deeply relieved by. Rose seems a little hardier than a normal two and a half year old, her bruises and scrapes vanishing in mere hours, but Chris and Mia keep a close eye on it and she sees an approved doctor once a month for testing. Nothing invasive, just making sure she’s okay.
Some days are harder than others. Chris has a few anniversaries he struggles through every year, and Mia is no different. Her worst day, surprisingly, is her and Ethan’s wedding anniversary. Something about the memory of one of their best days is harder for her than the memory of the day Ethan died. Chris can’t really throw stones – loss is a funny thing.
Chris makes a point to be around on the day if he can swing it, which is why he’s currently sitting on her living room floor putting together Ikea furniture with Rose napping on the couch behind him. He is not struggling with it, thank you very much, he’s a very competent man who has been one of the world’s top SOAs for decades, and it is not his fault the little hex key keeps slipping. He hears Mia coming in and looks up at her, explanation for why this is taking so long on his lips.
“I want to tell you something.” She says. She’s wearing a flannel over her shirt that’s too big for her, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and her arms are crossed. He thinks the flannel is probably Ethan’s. She looks sad. Although that’s not strange considering the day, Chris is still immediately on high alert.
“What’s wrong?” He asks, and his eyes snap to the pistol he has unloaded on the side table just out of Rose’s reach.
“Nothing dangerous.”
He relaxes instantly, and Mia’s lips twitch in a fond smile.
“It’s about Ethan, though. Are you okay with that?”
The question suddenly makes him feel very small. She shouldn’t be trying to protect his feelings about her own husband.
That being said, the knowledge of their shared feelings for Ethan has been sitting untouched between them for a long time. The elephant lurking on the edge of every room. She’s always been very careful about what she says about Ethan to him, just like he's always been with what he says about Ethan to her. Chris stuffs his embarassment down and shrugs.
“Yeah, that’s fine. What’s going on, Mia?”
She glances at Rose to make sure she’s still sleeping, then looks back to Chris, crossed legged on her floor surrounded by pieces of wood and loose screws.
“I think-” She pauses, squeezes her eyes shut, opens them again. “If I ever had to share him with anyone, it would have been you.”
Chris sucks in a hard breath. Mia continues.
“And I think he wanted that. We didn’t discuss it, and I know he loved me very much, but the way he talked about you sometimes…”
If Chris had known this was what Mia was going to say, he wouldn’t have let her say it. All these years later and the mix of love and guilt he felt every time he looked at Ethan is opening up in his chest like the stitches have popped on a wound. He remembers, abruptly, the look on Ethan’s face as he lay on the ground, glaring up at Chris holding his daughter after watching Chris murder what Ethan thought was the love of his life.
“Mia, I wouldn’t-”
“I know. I know you wouldn’t have ever tried anything, or even said anything, but I just-” she blinks rapidly, to chase away tears, “I wish he was here to see this, right now. You, sitting on our floor, putting together a big girl bed for Rose on our anniversary. I think it would have made him so happy. I think he loved you Chris, just as much he loved me.”
Chris drops the hex key on the carpet. No matter how hard he blinks, his tears don’t go away like hers did. Mia walks to him, drops down beside him, and starts to cry too. He wraps his arms around her and she shoves her face into his shoulder. The flannel smells like her laundry detergent, any trace of Ethan long gone, but the feeling of it under his hands still gets to him. He presses his face into her hair.
They sit like that for a long time, until the crying finally slows and they both feel less raw. She sits back and kisses both of his cheeks. She then shakes out one of the flannel shirtsleeves to wipe her eyes, reaches up to wipe his too.
“I miss him so much.” She says. “But I’m glad you’re here, Chris. I’m glad you made it.” She smiles weakly. “I’m glad we made it.”
Chris holds her palm against his face. He’s always been thankful that Mia survived. For the first time in a while, he’s thankful he did too.
“Mama?” Rose stirs, and they both look up at her as she sits up and pushes her hair off her face with chubby hands. “Chris?” His name comes out a little more like ‘kiss’, the r still a difficult sound for her. Sometimes they're not sure if she’s asking for him or for a kiss or both, and when she reaches out to them it seems like this time it might be both. Chris is closer and he shuffles to the couch to scoop her up.
“Hey kid. Good nap?”
She nods seriously, then glances down at the pieces of her bed-to-be scattered on the floor. She shoots him a disappointed look and squirms out of his hands to hug her mom. Mia gives her the requested kiss and while they’re distracted Chris retreats to the kitchen to splash his face with cold water. There’s a photo of Ethan and Mia and baby Rose on the windowsill above the sink, the three of them walking on the beach towards the setting sun. For once, looking at it doesn’t make him feel like an intruder in Mia’s home.
He can hear the clumsy patter of Rose sprinting top speed into the room and turns around just in time for her to barrel into his knees. She strings together a sentence of mostly nonsense that he doesn’t really catch, then lifts her arms to be picked up. He obliges, lifting with his knees like he did with her dad so long ago. She wraps her arms around his neck and gives him a messy kiss on the cheek.
“Do you want help with the bed?” Mia asks, coming into the room. “It seems like it’s taking a while.”
“I can put together a toddler bed, Mia. I’m the captain of the Hound Wolves. I’ve been fighting BOWs since the 90’s.”
“Sure.” She says casually, playing with the ends of her hair. “Well, if we both work on it maybe it’ll actually be done in time for her to use it tonight.”
Chris’ indignant “Hey-” is cut off by Rose deciding she’s bored and trying to clamber onto his shoulders so she can feel tall. He scrambles to catch her before she falls, and Mia laughs at their double act before pulling her hair back in a ponytail.
“I really should just chop all this hair off.” She muses, walking back into the living room. “It’s always in my way and Rose likes to pull on it too much.”
She’s been saying this for weeks. Chris knows nothing he says will convince her to commit one way or another, so he just gives her a non-committal hum and helps Rose up on his shoulders. With his height, she can nearly reach the ceiling. She’s more on the average side then he is, like both of her parents, but give it another year or two and she’ll be able to press her fingers firmly against the popcorn ceiling when he picks her up. She’ll be a little heavier by then, but he figures it’ll be a long time before she’s too heavy for him to carry her around.
The parental train of thought startles Chris out of the moment and he realizes that this must be the way Mia thinks about the future too. He had known when he told Mia he would look after Rose that he would always be around, but the slow progression of his life merging with theirs has taken him by surprise. Rose isn’t ever going to call him Dad - they decided very early on that even calling him Uncle Chris was weird - but he’s going to help Mia raise this child for the rest of their lives.
He wishes Ethan was there with them, flipping through instructions in the other room and talking with Mia about her haircut. He doesn’t dare imagine it any further than that, knowing it will only hurt, but for a second he wants it to be real so badly he can feel an aching in his chest.
Rose grips her hands in his hair, bored with his self reflection, and urges him forward like he’s a horse. He laughs despite himself and walks towards the living room. The bed is closer to complete than it was 10 minutes ago. Mia looks smug.
“I’ll cut your hair for you, if you just want to chop it off. I used to cut Claire’s hair for her when we were younger. I can’t promise anything better than a hack job though.”
She beams up at him and hands him a spare hex key.