Work Text:
Kodiak watched on her heads up display on her dive suit as Hunt’s tracker moved towards her. Since he had taken their only experimental dive suit, she couldn't go very deep without also risking the bends, and stayed near the USS Ohio where it had let her out about fifty feet below the surface. They'd dropped him off much further down, and even with the proprietary gas blend to mitigate decompression sickness, he was going to be in bad shape when he came up. Hence why she was outside the sub to help pull him in.
It was too dark to see very far beneath the sea ice, but as Hunt's tracker approached, she saw no lights. He was also coming up off of target, a hundred or so meters southwest of the exact coordinates they'd been given. Had the tracker slipped out of his pocket and was surfacing without him? Or maybe something had gone wrong with the suit and the lights had gone out. Either way, she saw no choice but to go investigate, and swam over so she would be directly above him.
A cloud of bubbles hit her suddenly. Looking down, in the gloom, she could just make out a pale body, curled in on itself, floating slowly upwards. There were no lights because he had somehow lost the suit! She had teased him to bring it back safely, but the loss of the equipment for its own sake was the furthest thought from his mind as she kicked down to reach him faster. By going deeper, she risked the bends herself, but there wasn't another option if she wanted any hope of saving his life. Those bubbles may very well have been his last gasp.
Her fingers latched onto his wrist as his muscles jerked. She kicked upwards to pull him towards the ship even as she reached for the emergency oxygen can with her other hand. Hopefully he was aware enough to clear the water from his mouth before trying to breathe in as she placed the emergency gear in his face. If not, there would be nothing she could do for him until she got him inside the sub. He must've done enough dives and training for it to be instinct, however, as she saw him clear his own airway before sucking in a desperate breath, clutching the canister close to him. She tugged him into a good position to swim with and made her way quickly towards the airlock of the submarine. Just because he was breathing now was far from meaning he was out of danger.
She entered the airlock and locked a leg around Hunt’s waist to keep him tethered to her while giving her both hands free. Moving in reverse order to when she had left, she closed the levers for the external door. Once it was sealed, she pulled herself further in and turned the wheel to begin draining the compartment of water. Before they lost buoyancy, Kodiak quickly positioned herself under Hunt to cushion him as he inevitably collapsed. The agent ended up curled up half in her lap, shaking like he was having a seizure. With the sudden loss of pressure as the chamber’s water was replaced with air, Kodiak felt a twinge of pain in her own muscles and a sudden feeling of dizziness that she staunchly ignored. Pills and Shirley rushed into the chamber as soon as it was safe.
“He lost the suit?” Pills remarked as he and Shirley lifted the agent up. He looked to be worse than dead weight in their arms, doubled over and moaning in pain.
“Fuck, that’s bad,” Shirley swore.
“Keep that oxygen mask on him,” Kodiak instructed as she hauled herself to her feet using the curved wall. Her teammates were already taking the agent to the decompression chamber as quickly as possible, and she moved to follow on slightly unsteady legs. Entering a submarine at any depth below the surface and decompressing quickly was often risky for dive injuries, and going deeper to retrieve Hunt and then ascending rapidly had not been in the plans. If there had been any question about who would join him in the decompression chamber, it had been answered. Pills and Shirley took him inside and deposited him on the narrow cot that nevertheless took up most of the width of the cylinder.
Kodiak stripped off her SCUBA gear before following him in. Normally, there were all sorts of protocols about removing, checking, cleaning, and storing gear, protocols that she was in charge of as equipment officer, but now she just dropped it on the grated floor. She was left shivering in her underclothes, which at least weren’t wet like Hunt’s as she’d been wearing a drysuit (and had kept it on until now).
Pills nodded. “Warm packs, emergency blanket, and other medical supplies are already inside on the starboard wall. Taggart will be on the intercom to talk you through care if you need.” Like all of them, Kodiak had first aid training, especially around diving injuries, but it would be good to have the sub’s medical officer on hand to help guide her through this severity of decompression injury, especially while she was suffering from a milder case herself.
“Roger,” she said, not wanting to waste a second more on talking. She stepped up into the chamber, and Pills sealed the door after them. Kodiak felt it in her ears as the chamber started to repressurize.
On the cot next to her, Ethan Hunt was in a bad way. He was so curled in on himself with the pain that it seemed to be affecting his breathing, which would already be at risk from the cold, the near drowning, and the decompression sickness, and she knew that had to be her first priority. With her own head swimming and muscles shaky, she sat down hard on the edge of the cot behind him and drew him quickly but carefully onto her chest. Bracketing his body with her knees, she forced him to stretch out as carefully as she could, and was relieved as his breathing eased slightly. His muscles shook and his limbs jerked against hers from the bends, and he was so cold. Even before the dive, she had known he would be relying on her when he came up, but now she could feel viscerally how much his life was in her hands, and it was terrifying. Not to mention that his mission was relying on her as well. They hadn’t been told, exactly, what it was, but it had to be critical if Captain Bledsoe had put the USS Ohio’s own mission on hold and at risk to enable his.
The first think Kodiak did was take the emergency oxygen canister from his mouth and set it on the ground out of the way. The whole chamber would be filling with 100% oxygen at this very moment, and she didn’t need anything getting in the way if he coughed up water or needed mouth to mouth. Next, she grabbed the hot pads from their nook on the wall and tucked them in at his armpits, stomach, and between his legs. If his limbs were allowed to warm up faster than his core, the cold blood from his hands and feet would rocket down into his heart and kill him. This was the second time she’d had to treat him from hypothermia today, but this time, his exposure to the cold had been much, much longer, and he’d need more than a hot shower to cure him.
He had already lost his dive suit and almost all his equipment, but still wore boxers and a belt with the tracker and another device, a white panel about the size of an iPad, tucked into it. The later hadn’t been on him when he left, so it must’ve come from down below. The Sevastopol. Kodiak and the captain alone had been told that he would be diving into a sunken Russian submarine, though even they didn’t have many more details than that, or why it was so critical. Kodiak tucked the device extremely carefully into a cubby in the wall of the chamber before stripping off the belt and tossing it more carelessly down by their feet.
She quickly cut his underclothes away next, as even that amount of wet clothing would seep any remaining heat from his body. Not that it felt like there was much, from where his skin touched hers. He felt like ice against her, and his wet hair dripped against her neck. She quickly leaned down to pull a foil-lined emergency blanket over them, and then wrapped his head in a towel, leaving only his face exposed.
Hunt moaned as every move she made jostled him. She couldn’t stop, though. Hurting him was better than letting him die. She had slammed an oxygen tank into her own colleague’s head to save him earlier; she was not going to let that go to waste now. Having reached the end of the common sense first aid, she hit the button for the intercom to ask their medical officer what to do next.
“Are you able to start an IV?” the other woman asked after she had relayed what she had already done, and noted that the chamber was steadily coming up to pressure.
“Not well, and not with how much he’s moving,” Kodiak said. Even braced against her, his body shook with shivering (at least he was shivering, that was a good sign that he wasn’t in hypothermic shock) and jerked with the pain of nitrogen gas bubbles forming in his muscles and blood. He was barely conscious, and didn’t respond to her talking about him. His breathing was still labored but deep and regular, his back expanding against her chest.
“Don’t risk it, then,” Taggart said. “As long as he’s breathing and moving, getting him warm in a pressured, high oxygen environment is the most helpful thing we can do for him anyways. There’s oral painkillers if you think he’s conscious enough to swallow them safely, but that could also mask his symptoms for evaluation.”
“No, not right now,” Kodiak said, shaking her head even as she realized the medical officer couldn’t see it. “And his breathing is strong and steady, at least.”
“Good. And you?” Taggart asked. “Pills said you were looking a little shaky as well.”
“I’m okay.” Kodiak answered before she really thought about it, and then took a moment to run an inventory of her own body to make sure that was the truth. She felt a little bit of achiness in her joints and head, and itchiness was starting to break out on her skin, but she was already feeling less shaky than she had been immediately after ascending. “I had to dive further than expected, but it was less than 10 additional meters down. My head hurts some but it’s manageable. Barely a touch of the bends, and I’m already in the decompression chamber.”
“Let me know immediately if you feel any worsening symptoms, especially lightheadedness or confusion,” the medical officer warned.
“Roger.” Kodiak thought that would be the end of it, but then she heard Captain Bledsoe take the intercom.
“Officer O’Brian, any sense of whether our man accomplished his mission?”
She glanced at the device in the cubby to her left. “I believe he did, sir.” She instantly wondered if she should have said that over the intercom. Hagar had attacked Hunt to prevent him accomplishing his mission. If there were any other traitors on the ship, what might they do if they overheard?
That couldn’t be her problem now, sealed in here. For the next however many hours, her world had shrunk to the size of this decompression chamber, and probably primarily this bed and the two bodies in it. The captain and the rest of the crew would have to handle the rest.
“Understood. Take care of him, officer.”
“Yessir.” The intercom clicked off, and Kodiak focused back in on the injured agent laid against her chest.
He was muttering something, words and names, it sounded like. Some were in English, but others in other languages. Kodiak thought she recognized French, Arabic, and, slightly alarmingly, Russian. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that she really had no idea who this Ethan Hunt was. For all she knew, he could be a double agent. After all, he had been diving to retrieve something from a sunken Russian submarine, and from the aircraft that had flown overhead when they’d surfaced, even just getting him onboard the Ohio had almost set off the brewing conflict between the two powers. But Kodiak’s superiors trusted him, and her own gut said to trust him too. And anyway, it wasn’t like he was much of a threat in his current state.
“Shhh, it’s okay, you’re alright,” she tried to soothe him, even as a jerking of his muscles sent his knee into the soft part of her thigh. Okay, yeah, she was definitely feeling a bit of the bends herself, because that shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did. Nevertheless, she wrapped her arms around him, both to try to hold him steady and provide a little comfort. It had been a long time since she’d held someone like this, and it didn’t come naturally to her. Especially since nothing would probably feel comfortable to him with this level of pain. She settled for holding the warm packs in place against him and trapping the foil blanket over his naked form.
He moaned a name that sounded like “Elsa.” With the temperatures outside and the sea ice forming a sheet above them on the dive, Kodiak wasn’t surprised that Frozen was the first thought to come to her mind. For him, it was more surprising. He didn’t seem like the type to know about princess movies.
Unless he had kids. She couldn’t get a good sense of his age from his appearance, but he was definitely more than old enough to have a daughter the right age to have seen the film. Somehow, she hoped he didn’t. She didn’t like to think about what might cause a man with a family and child to risk his life on such a dangerous mission.
“Luther,” Hunt moaned, with a crack in his voice that Kodiak wished she didn’t recognize. That was grief, new and raw. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay, shhh, it’s okay,” she tried to soothe his guilt, knowing it wouldn’t work but having to try anyway. She kept up a steady stream of meaningless reassurance, not knowing what to say or if Hunt was even in a state to understand her words, but hoping the sound and vibration of her voice where his head laid on her chest was enough. It might’ve helped, or the exhaustion might’ve just dragged him under, as he soon slipped into a shallow sleep still punctuated by whimpers and the occasional kick.
“There you go,” she sighed in relief as he quieted. She thought about calling Taggart back on the intercom, asking her to guide her through setting up an IV now that he was still enough, but decided against it. She didn’t want to risk waking Hunt with the noise or movement, especially since he seemed to be improving. A glance at the gauge on the wall showed that the chamber had come up to full pressure, compressing the bubbles of nitrogen and other gases in their blood and muscles back into solution. From there, the pressure would be allowed to decrease very slowly as they breathed out the gases, until they were safely back at a single atmosphere without pain or other symptoms.
Hunt’s skin was starting to warm, his back no longer feeling like a giant block of ice against her stomach. She wrapped a hand carefully around his wrist, to be able to monitor his pulse. It was quiet in the decompression chamber, and she could hear him inhale and exhale between the occasional groan. His breathing was growing less labored and more clear, a good sign that his lungs hadn’t been badly impacted by the injury. Her own symptoms were starting to abate as well, the joint pain lessening.
Maybe half an hour later, Kodiak had just started to drift off by accident when Hunt woke suddenly, elbows swinging. The naval officer tried not to hold it against him as he caught her in the ribs and she swore she felt one crack. She clamped her arms down harder around his to stop him, and fought her own instinct to roll over and pin him to the cot as much as she fought him. If he hadn’t been near death, she doubted she could have held him; there was far more strength than she’d expected in his limbs for someone his age. Then again, she’d seen his physique in the shower, and he’d just survived a dive that she would have called impossible.
“Hunt!” She barked. “Hey! Hey hey hey, it’s okay, stop thrashing! It’s okay, shh shh shh shh shh.” Her shushing didn’t seem to be helping, as he continued to fight her. Would his first name get through to him? Shit, what was it? “Ethan! It’s okay. It’s Kodiak, on the USS Ohio. You’re safe, you made the dive and are back onboard. Lay still, you’re gonna hurt yourself.”
“Kuh.. Kodiak?” he asked, finally going still. Worried about hurting him, she loosened her grip, only for him to nearly throw himself off the cot with a sudden jerk. He hardly noticed as she grabbed him again, looking around frantically. “Where is it- the podkova, where is it?”
“It’s here, it’s safe,” she reassured him, sitting up and taking a firm grip of both his arms. He had managed to flip around and make it to kneeling, but swayed the instant his head was upright. She gestured with an elbow to the nook beside the bed, where the white-coated metal device was tucked securely. She didn’t recognize the name he had called it, but figured that would be the only thing he was so frantic about. “It’s safe, and so are you. Okay?”
As suddenly as he’d started moving, all the energy seemed to go out of him. He slumped forward until his forehead hit her chest, breathing heavily. The emergency blanket had been thrown off by his movements, and with him straddling her waist, Kodiak was suddenly very aware that he was naked and she was mostly so. It would have been either a very awkward or very sensual position if it hadn’t been a matter of life and death, but since it was, Kodiak was still thinking about his bare skin mostly from the position of it still being very cold. He was definitely still either borderline or fully hypothermic, and that and the bends took precedence over any other thoughts that may have crept into her head.
“Lay back down,” she ordered, carefully pulling him flat against her once again, this time face to face. He went easily with her, all the fight gone out of him. Clearly he wasn’t all there yet, still out of it from the bends and the cold and the near drowning. Her hand on the back of his neck kept him still as she pulled the blanket back over them and repositioned the warm packs, this time between their bodies at his groin and chest. A soft whine caught in his throat, probably in pain, and she instinctively ran her hand lightly down his back. “It’s okay, just breathe. We’re in the decompression chamber, and you’re recovering. I know it hurts, but you’re gonna be okay.”
“I’m- I have to- I’m sorry…”
“Nothing to be sorry for,” Kodiak reassured him. “Go back to sleep.”
“No, no, I have to-” he said, trying again to push himself upright. A wince broke out across his face at the effort, and she barely needed to grab his wrist to stop him leaving. Not that he would get very far if he did; there was only about a foot from the edge of the cot to the far side of the narrow chamber. She didn’t want him to fall and hurt himself, though, or to have to go through the challenge of getting him back into the bed.
“You’re sealed in a pressure chamber,” she reasoned with him, although she wasn’t sure if reason could penetrate right now. “Captain Bledsoe knows you’re on board, and I can feel the engines running, which means we’re headed to wherever you told him to go. There’s nothing else you can or need to do for a few hours at least, and you’re still hypothermic and have the bends. For God’s sake, Ethan, just relax.”
He seemed to see the sense in this and with a deep exhale slumped against her. The towel she’d wrapped around his head had disappeared somewhere, but his hair was mostly dry and she tucked her chin over the top of his head instead of dislodging him to look for it or grab another.
“Sorry,” he mumbled again. She just rubbed his back very lightly, mindful of not abrading his frozen skin, until she felt the tension leave his body as he fell back asleep. His tremors were nearly gone as well, a good sign that he was recovering. With his weight on top of her, she found herself drifting off again.
Kodiak woke when she felt movement on top of her, and the touch of air as the blanket was dislodged. Hunt was awake again, and thankfully seemed less panicked, more aware, and a lot warmer. The foil-lined emergency blanket had done its job of trapping her body heat to warm him well, and it seemed like he was generating heat of his own now too, so even though the warming packs had cooled, it was downright toasty between them. Kodiak didn’t think that was the reason for the blush coloring Hunt’s face when she opened her eyes, though.
“You doing alright?” she asked. He nodded, which was already a more coherent response than she’d gotten from him last time he was awake. With one hand on the cot beside her head, and the other missing the blank space and landing on her shoulder instead, he seemed to be struggling to push himself up on shaking arms. She helped him this time, and pulled her legs in so he could sit up on his own with the blanket wrapped around his waist. That left her in just her underclothes, but the air in the chamber was warm enough that she didn’t mind. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen her in just her sports bra when they first met anyway.
“You pulled me into the sub?” he asked, his voice hoarse. She nodded as she reached to grab him a water bottle. His hand shook as he took it, and she had to resist the urge to reach out and steady it for him. After a few hours, he was no longer as weak and helpless as he’d been when she dragged him in here, and he likely wouldn’t appreciate the coddling. He took just a few sips, apparently not needing a reminder to go slow. His voice was clearer when he spoke again. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
“A little achy still, but a lot better.” He rolled one wrist in his hand as he sat, a good strategy for working away the residual pain and stiffness. “I had something with me when you pulled me in-”
Kodiak passed over the tablet-sized piece of technology before he had even finished asking the question. Remembering how anxious he’d been about the device when he’d been out of it, she’d anticipated his request and already had it in hand. What had he called it? Podkova?
“What does it do?” she asked, and shockingly, he told her. It sounded fantastical; the source code to destroy or control an evil, sentient artificial intelligence that was trying to destroy humanity and was the reason they were on the brink of war? For a minute she didn’t believe him; it seemed a fairy tale, a simple story to tell about the way the world had suddenly gone to shit that waved away all the complex political forces she’d been blaming it all on. What he’d said about the Entity cultists made sense with what had happened with Hagar, though. And then he told her about the poison pill, made by his friend Luther, and she remembered the broken way he’d called out that same name. Not even a spy could lie like that in the midst of the bends. She realized that he had decided to trust her, now that she’d saved his life three times in a day, and that was the only reason he was telling her all this.
“Well, that’s a hell of a good reason to almost kill yourself on an insane dive,” she said when he was finished. “How can I help?”
“You’ve already helped more than I can say,” he said with a gentle and genuine smile. “Is there a way I can talk to the captain before we’re done in here?”
“Here,” Kodiak said, turning on the intercom on the wall behind them. “This is decompression chamber for the Captain,” she announced. There was a click on the other end, noting that the intercom had been picked up.
“What’s your status, Kodiak?”
“Captain, our guest is awake and doing well. We have-” she checked the pressure gauge and table on the wall, “68 minutes before its safe to depressurize fully.”
“Hang on, I’m on my way down,” Bledsoe said. Kodiak had suspected that he wouldn’t want to talk over the ship’s intercom, and had given him the time left in their decompression cycle to let him assess whether he would want to speak to them before it ended.
“Roger.” She went to take her finger off the transmit button, but Hunt pressed it immediately again afterwards.
“If I could borrow another uniform, captain, that would be much appreciated,” he said cheekily. Kodiak rolled her eyes at him before leaning down and pulling two uniforms out of a bin below the cot. “Nevermind.” He took his thumb off the button. “You couldn’t have brought those out earlier?”
“What, did you mind?” she teased, and he hesitated before shaking his head with a smile. “You were severely hypothermic; body heat was necessary,” she explained more seriously, not wanting him to read more into the situation than had been true at the time. “Plus either unconscious, incoherent, or in a lot of pain. Unless you think it would have been better for me to manhandle you into clothes then?”
His smile faded, then, at the explanation of how badly off he had been. “No, sorry.” He soberly pulled a shirt on, as did Kodiak, and they both turned their backs to one another to pull on the sweatpants. A minute later, there was a knock in the door, and the captain’s face appeared in the small round window. Hunt looked back to Kodiak, who gestured to the other intercom on the far side. This one was manual, and only allowed communication with the room directly outside the decompression chamber, so no one would be able to listen in.
“Agent Hunt. You’re looking better than anticipated.”
“All thanks to your Officer O’Brian here,” Hunt gave credit where it was due. The captain gave Kodaik a nod though the window, which she returned. “Are we en route to Saint Matthew’s Island?” Hunt went on.
“Indeed. About an hour out. The Losharik hasn’t not moved from its location at the surface since we last spoke, while the Belgorod was spotted between the Admiral Kuznetsov and the George HW Bush. I’m guessing your people have something to do with that?”
“I would not be surprised.”
“Well, its blocking the clear route onto the southern side of the island. I’m not willing to approach and risk a confrontation, even if it is likely unmanned.”
“Can we surface near the ice and radio to my team? They’ll have a plane, and should be able to come pick me up.”
“Very well,” the captain agreed. “Once your decompression cycle is done, join me on the bridge and we’ll radio to them. I’m unwilling to send exact coordinates with the Russians listening in, so you better have another code you can use like that trick with the opposite side of the world.”
“Yessir,” Hunt agreed, and with a nod, Bledsoe turned to leave.
“Captain,” Kodiak interrupted, standing to attention. “Requesting leave to accompany Agent Hunt,” she asked formally. Both Hunt and the captain gave her an odd look. “Flying so soon after a dive poses a strong risk of the bends relapsing, and he could use another diver on hand for continuing medical care.”
“Didn’t you have your own case of decompression sickness as well, officer?” Bledsoe asked.
“Yes sir, but much more mild. I am willing to take the risk to myself, if you’ll allow it. If I may be frank, I think the risk to everyone on earth is higher if I don’t go.”
“I wouldn’t turn down an another pair of hands,” Ethan said. He gave her an expression like he had expected nothing less, but was still touched by her wanting to join.
“Alright then. Officer Kodiak O’Brian, you’re hereby released from duty to go where you’re most needed,” Captain Bledsoe said. “As former equipment officer, I trust you’ll be able to find the warmest clothes to take with you. And a rifle, for the bears.”
“Yessir.”
“We’ll see you on the bridge,” Ethan said. As the captain left, he pulled his thumb from the the intercom button, so Kodiak knew it was only her hearing him. “Welcome to the team.”