How Illya and Gaby Ensured Napoleon's Continued Job Security
Title: How Illya and Gaby Ensured Napoleon's Continued Job Security: A Story of Friendship and Ineffective Lockpickers
Fandom: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Characters: Napoleon Solo, Illya Kuryakin, Gaby Teller
Word Count: 3752
Rating: T
Summary: Napoleon's worked for the CIA for almost eleven years, and he's managed his illness throughout so that no one's the wiser. When it leaves him indisposed after Istanbul, however, his partners step up.
A.N: 1) The legal drinking and voting age was actually 21 in most of the U.S. until the 1960s
2) [This fic deals with mental illness. If you would like to see more details about the content of this fic, click here.]A character struggles with bipolar disorder while being a spy in the 1960s. Although there's no self-harm, there are plenty of unhealthy coping mechanisms, though the characters do their best within the limitations placed on them. There are also two oblique mentions of suicide. Also, a story is told of an offscreen character with a mental illness who died while in an asylum due to mental illness; the cause of death is not specified.
Napoleon is fine in East Berlin, brilliant in Italy, and flying high as a kite by the time Istanbul wraps up. He doesn’t immediately realize how far he’s gone until he’s over the edge, and by then it’s too late.
He has a moment of pause during the flight to Istanbul, when Gabby and Illya nap and Napoleon realizes he doesn’t need sleep - hasn’t, barely, since the night he slept with Victoria.
That is, once he thinks about it, a warning sign.
Normally he would heed it, find himself a safe spot to hide out for half a day, somewhere he could get himself together and force himself to calm and breathe and take a pill and go to sleep. He’d lie about it on his reports, later, pass it off as an afternoon spent seducing one of the Target-of-the-Month’s wives or maids or secretaries, and no one would ask questions or remark on it beyond adding a notation to that secret psychological profile they think he doesn’t know about.
His first assignment with a newly-formed intelligence agency which may be his ticket out of the CIA, however, is not ‘normally’, so Napoleon takes careful note of his symptoms and files the information as far back in his mind and memory as he can.
Istanbul will be fine. Istanbul will not last for more than a few days, and he has done more than a few days more than a few times even worse than this, so Istanbul will be fine.
He takes special care to still his fingers when they start to tap and to restrict himself from getting up and walking down the aisle more than once every half hour. He’s on a plane full of spies, after all, even if two of them are unconscious and the other is poring over last week’s cricket scores so intently that he doesn’t notice Napoleon surreptitiously pouring his full cup of coffee into the sink.
(He is really not that old when he is captured and sent to prison. He signed up early for the army, of course, so he is barely old enough to drink when he is caught, ratted out by a fence in exchange for a lighter sentence. They find him in a penthouse suite with two women in his bed and a very expensive painting at its foot. Napoleon is young and drunk and invincible in his conviction, and he does not stay in prison for long, thanks to the gift of words that never abandons him even when all else does.
His contract with the CIA contains one stipulation: that, if Napoleon is unable to perform his duties for any reason aside from injury sustained on a mission, he will be sent back to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence.
Napoleon is really quite fond of nice things, and prison does not fit into his plans.)
Istanbul is fine.
Napoleon is not.
Oh, he feels well. More than well-he is all strength and wit and ability, sharp of mouth and fleet of foot, and he performs his duties admirably. He does not need to sleep and spends, instead, his evenings working through the information they gather: he finds the irregularity in Villiers’s finance that leads to the discovery of a triple agent who’s planning to take over Villiers’s operations in a coup. He spends his lunch hour one day in bed with Villiers’s valet and returns to the team’s apartment with the keys to Villiers’s underground bunker tucked in his pocket. He spends his dinner hour in bed with Villiers’s daughter and returns with the layout of Villiers’s entire house, down to the safe hidden behind the painting of a daffodil in Villiers’s study. He doesn’t feel hungry, much, and every minute he’s awake the world grows sharper and all the shapes in it more bright.
There is a great gunfight the last day there, of course, and Napoleon takes down thirteen men in seven minutes. Villiers takes his daughter hostage at the very end, puts a gun to her head and holds her in front of himself so that neither Illya nor Napoleon should be able to get a clear shot.
Napoleon shoots anyway.
He knows he won’t miss; knows the world is a wonderful place and he has a wonderful place in it, understands that he was put on the earth and lived the entirety of this life for just this very moment, so that he could be the one to pull the trigger and end Villiers’s life and criminal empire with one quick shot.
Villiers falls, and his daughter does not. She screams quite a bit, but there is no physical harm from which she will not heal. Illya helps her up and supports her on her way out of the room, tells her to look away so she does not see her father like this and holds her when she vomits.
“It was impossible shot,” Illya says, later, when they’re on the plane again and Napoleon can not keep his foot from tap-tap-tapping at the music in his head.
“Obviously not,” Napoleon replies with a grin. It feels too wide on his face, but he finds it difficult not to smile when everything in the world is perfect as it is in just this moment.
Illya and Gaby share a look, but they say nothing, and Waverly doesn’t look up from the newspaper he’s holding open to his beloved cricket scores.
(The first time Napoleon realizes he might have a problem is the first week after he is caught. One day he’s riding high from his latest heist, the next he can barely muster energy to comb his hair and climb out of his bunk to meet his lawyer.
He is not entirely ignorant of the field of psychiatry, and once he’s out of prison and back to his normal self he reads as much as he can find. There are treatments, he discovers, with a drug called Thorazine, but the side effects would probably make his field work impossible; Napoleon lives by his wits, especially now, and he will be of no use to the CIA if they are dulled.
He will, he quickly realizes, simply have to formulate his own ways to keep this inconvenience under control without ever letting any of his handlers know. He’s done fine so far, and he’s sure he can manage it to everyone’s satisfaction.
He’ll be fine.)
Waverly gives them two weeks to recuperate after Istanbul. Napoleon goes to London to find a flat and does not remember much of the first few days when he tries to recall them later. He drinks a lot of scotch and even more wine and sleeps with several men and many women and ignores the phone whenever it rings. He knows it must Gaby and Illya, settling in themselves, but he understands his actions might concern them, as they would not understand, and even as far gone as he is, there’s a part still of his mind that understands that one morning, soon, this orgasmic haze of beauty and wonder that rings his eyes will fade, and he will wake up sane and not entirely understand himself.
Waverly must call too, as one morning Napoleon wakes up and is holding a telegram in his hand. Report for new mission Monday, it reads. Napoleon checks the calendar, and it is Tuesday of the week before.
He’ll be fine.
That day the fever of his mind breaks, and it leaves exhaustion in its wake.
Napoleon sleeps.
He wakes up, eventually, and drags himself to the kitchenette to cook himself an omelet, which he actually eats. He doesn’t really care to eat, but he realizes, distantly, that he has not been eating enough and it will affect his performance, and if he is not useful to UNCLE he is useful to no one, and if he is useful to no one, then-
He doesn’t remember much after the omelet, but he realizes several hours later that he never made it to his bed, which he was moving towards when he finished eating. He is sitting on the sofa, and the dirty omelet plate is sitting on the tiny bar by his kitchenette, and his mind is grey and dull and blank.
(Two years into his sentence, he realizes that he knows far too much to go back to a normal prison if he fails. There are military prisons, of course, with isolated cells and guards every four steps, where they keep war criminals. There are also accidents, which require far less fuss and paperwork, the sorts of things which only take a man in the dark with a pistol or a length of wire, several of which Napoleon has taken care of under Sanders’ orders.
There are thirteen years left on his sentence, and he fully intends to live them out.)
Some more time passes. Napoleon is unsure precisely, but he keeps track of how many days go by, at least. Regardless of how he feels, he will show up at Waverly’s office on Monday morning and do a passable impression of himself.
Time, he has discovered during his time at the CIA, passes just the same whether you’re in bed or in an office or in someone’s lair awaiting torture. He will pass the time how it suits his future best, when he has to, even if his bones hurt and his muscles ache and his body wants for sleep even after fourteen hours of it.
He has built a failsafe inside himself: his sane mind can be but the tiniest spark among the fireworks or the flickering splash among the empty grey, but he has hammered it into himself that he must perform like the trained monkey he is whenever he is asked. He might not care or think it relevant that he could be murdered or end his days in solitary confinement, but always, always there is a part of him that understands that his sane mind will, whenever it troubles itself to return, and he will not allow himself to betray it.
It is Friday when someone knocks at his door. Napoleon thinks it might be one of the women he had over the week before, so he doesn’t bother to tell them to go away. He’s on the couch again, but now he has a blanket and a pillow, and he doesn’t feel like using the energy to speak.
“I told you,” says a familiar Russian voice from the other side of the door. There’s another voice that answers him, softer and lighter and unintelligible.
Ah, of course. Napoleon wonders how Illya and Gaby found him, and why they bothered to come. If he doesn’t make a noise, he thinks, they will think he is gone and go away themselves, and he’ll be able to go back to sleep, and maybe when he wakes up the next time he won’t feel so tired.
There’s a scuffling sound, a jangling of metal against metal.
“Lock is problem,” Illya says, slightly more clearly now, as if he’s getting irritated.
Napoleon thinks that in a week or two, he’ll find Illya’s ineptitude amusing. Now, he doesn’t feel anything about it, but he hopes that their inability to open his door will make them go away.
There is rapping at the door, then.
“Cowboy! I know you are in there! Let us in now, please!”
The ‘please’ is as sincere as one might expect from a KGB agent. Napoleon, for his part, makes no move save to bury his head under his pillow. He is not over fond of noise at times like these.
It is especially unfortunate, then, that Illya ramming into the door and bursting the lock (and, indeed, much of the wood itself) free makes such a racket.
“Napoleon?”
That’s Gaby, all worried inquisitiveness as her shoes with their broad heels click-clack over splinters from the door and trash from the week before as she makes her way towards him.
“I told you.” Illya’s voice comes from surprisingly near Napoleon’s head, which worries Napoleon because he didn’t even hear the man move. “Is sickness in head. Have seen it before.”
Napoleon thinks he should move, should indignantly protest that his head is perfectly fine, should at least take the pillow off of it and look up at the two ridiculous human beings who have broken into his apartment. The real Napoleon would be chasing them out the door already, asking why they’re here or how Illya found out in three weeks what Napoleon’s been hiding for eleven years.
“Please go away,” is what Napoleon actually says, instead.
He doesn’t have to be looking at them to see the faces that go with Gaby’s huff of irritation or Illya’s earnest, immediate “No.”
“We started watching you when you didn’t answer us or Waverly,” Gaby says. Her voice is drifting away as her heels clack back towards the door, no doubt to try and fix the mess that Illya’s made of it. Just the thought of all the work she’s facing is enough to make Napoleon feel tired.
Napoleon clutches the pillow and his blanket tighter and burrows as far as he can into the sofa. He enjoys little respite, however; he has only a moment to settle in before his blanket and pillow are yanked away, letting light into his eyes from the chandelier above that hasn’t been turned on in days.
“Up you go,” Illya says, quite cheerily, even as he grabs Napoleon by the arms and bodily yanks him off of the couch.
Napoleon knows, again, that next week he will feel something at being set on his feet, lank-haired and smelling of sweat, by Illya-shame, most likely-but at the moment, the best he can muster is mild irritation, and even that’s stretching it.
“Shower,” Illya says. He smiles, but his eyes have settled somewhere around grimness.
“I’m fine,” Napoleon says. He turns and actually starts walking towards his bedroom, which is something of a victory, considering, but he only makes it two steps before the ridiculous Russian at his back grabs hold of his stained and rumpled t-shirt and propels him towards the bathroom instead.
“Shower,” Illya says, again with an excessive amount of cheer. “Then food, then bed, maybe.”
Napoleon considers arguing, but decides against it. Time will pass at the same rate as it does whether he is in the shower or on the couch, and he’s fairly certain he wouldn’t win if he tried. Not now, not when even the real Napoleon can’t take Illya in a fight.
Illya sits Napoleon down on the toilet and turns the water on for him, fiddling intently with the dials for a few minutes until he’s satisfied. He turns and looks at Napoleon, then, and the look on his face is pensive.
“Shower,” he says, giving Napoleon’s shoulder a nudge.
Napoleon stands, because it is expected of him, and he starts to strip. Illya nods, apparently satisfied, and leaves Napoleon in peace, though he leaves the bathroom door cracked. Napoleon, mindful of the front door and the fuss it will cause when his landlord sees it, leaves it be.
Napoleon steps inside the radius of the spray of water once he’s naked. He leaves his clothing on the floor and doesn’t move more than he has to. The water rushes over him; mostly it runs down from his head to his shoulders to his torso to his legs, but in spots the droplets hit his skin and feel like a hundred little sunburns everywhere they touch.
“I said shower, not rinse.”
There’s a bottle of shampoo being held in front of Napoleon’s face when he opens his eyes.
Fuss and bother.
Illya doesn’t leave until Napoleon lathers up.
Napoleon hears movement outside of the bathroom and figures that Gaby must have finished with the door. Her shoes make noise all over the apartment, even in his bedroom, while Illya’s boots thump determinedly around the living room.
Someone’s laid a set of clothing on the sink for him when he finally washes off the soap and shampoo and towels himself dry. His skin, when he rubs it, feels raw, so he dries himself as lightly as he can. There’s just an old undershirt and his softest pair of pajama pants, but he actually feels more human when he pulls them on. The well-worn cotton of his undershirt sticks a bit to his skin with damp, but Napoleon ignores it and heads out.
The apartment’s cleaner than it has been since he moved in.
The trash that was strewn around the kitchen and living room is gone; the plates formerly heaped on the bar are now heaped in the sink, and Illya is scrubbing them, shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a song hummed under his breath. His head snaps up when Napoleon walks in, and he points with a soapy finger at a plate with two sandwiches and a glass of milk on the counter.
Napoleon casts a glance at his bedroom, from whence emanate mysterious sounds, but Illya snaps his fingers (somewhat ineffectively, as his hand drips water) and shakes his head.
“Gaby’s changing sheets, so you couldn’t go to bed if you wanted. Eat first, Cowboy, then we talk.”
The sandwiches taste cold and feel worse, but Napoleon obediently swallows them and chases them down with the milk. It grates, the knowledge that Illya’s right-and that, apparently, Napoleon’s failing in his quest to pass as the real Napoleon-but he feels steadier on his feet when he finishes, and his stomach stops aching. The world has sharpened, just a bit: there is still a fog on everything everywhere he looks, but it is marginally easier to pierce.
He’s not so far gone he doesn’t notice when Gaby comes into the room, all civilian heaviness in her step-he’s never been that far gone; thinks he’d have died on a mission long ago if that were the case-but he doesn’t expect the way she hugs him from behind when she reaches him. She wraps one arm around his chest and cradles his head with the other, her body pressing against his shoulders warmly, and for a brief moment Napoleon feels comforted.
The moment slips away and Gaby does as well, sliding into the chair at his right. Illya turns off the faucet, though Napoleon doesn’t see if all the plates are clean. Illya turns around the chair at his left, easing onto it and slumping forward to rest his chin lazily on its back.
“So, Cowboy,” Illya says. There’s something soft underneath the gruffness of his tone, but Napoleon doesn’t trouble himself to dwell on it. “This happen often?”
Napoleon shrugs.
It’s difficult, when he gets like this, to corral his thoughts; they slide out of his grip like the greased dial of the Murphy 22 his first safe-cracking tutor made him practice on. It takes Napoleon longer than he’d like to come up with an answer, but Illya and Gaby wait.
“It’s not-it’s not usually this bad,” Napoleon says eventually. “I manage it better. Usually.”
Illya nods. Gaby reaches over and puts both her hands around one of Napoleon’s. Her fingers are tiny.
“Was it Istanbul?” she asks. “That kept you from…managing it?”
Napoleon shrugs again, but after a moment he nods his head yes. “I would have taken a weekend off after Italy, but…”
“But you have new organization to keep happy, yes?” Illya and Gaby share some sort of look over the table; Napoleon can see their shoulders shift that much, can hear Illya’s shirt rustling and Gaby’s ponytail rubbing against the stiffly laundered cotton of her dress. “Tell me, Cowboy, if CIA finds out about this-“
“No.” There’s actually dread in the pit of his stomach, which might be exciting if it didn’t feel so awful.
“They send you back to prison?”
Napoleon thinks of handguns with silencers on them and garrotes made of piano wire shining in the dark. “Something like that.”
He thinks they both understand. He doesn’t have the energy to explain right now even if they don’t, though, so it’s of little matter. The food might have made him feel better, but he’s tired, still, and he doesn’t feel like talking.
They both seem to understand that, as well.
Gaby stands up, and she gives Napoleon another hug, this time with a kiss on the head-and Napoleon is glad, now, that he washed his hair-before she heads off towards the living room. Illya stands up as well, but rather than hugging, he grips the front of Napoleon’s undershirt and tugs him lightly to his feet. The fabric wrinkles, but Napoleon doesn’t care.
“All right, time for bed.” There’s a twitch at the corner of Illya’s lips, but his eyes are soft and contemplative.
Napoleon follows Illya to his bedroom and settles in to clean silk sheets and the softest blanket he owns. The room’s remarkably clean, for the short time Illya and Gaby had to work, and Napoleon thinks that when he’s better he will find a way to thank them.
Illya doesn’t leave as soon as Napoleon’s in bed. He sits down on the edge of it, instead, and Napoleon has one wild moment of wondering if Illya’s going to watch him sleep before Illya speaks.
“I have friend in Communist Youth Party, once,” Illya says, soft. “He was seventeen when the illness took him. They sent him away, to hospital, and four months later he was dead.”
Napoleon turns his face away. There’s wetness on his cheeks, though he doesn’t know why. He’s just so tired.
“I will not let them send you away, Cowboy.” There’s a hand on his shoulder, strong and-not warm, it’s actually uncomfortably cool, but it’s nice all the same. “We will help you manage it, when you need to.”
Illya leaves then, though he once more leaves the door cracked, and Napoleon knows that one of them will be just outside his bedroom when he wakes up.
It’s no easy fix, but there are only four and a half years left on his sentence; Napoleon managed the first eleven by himself, but things will be simpler from here on out.
He is by no means well, but when he falls asleep again, his sleep is deep and steady and not at all disturbed by the occasional noises of the two idiots who’ve taken residence on his sofa.
Fandom: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Characters: Napoleon Solo, Illya Kuryakin, Gaby Teller
Word Count: 3752
Rating: T
Summary: Napoleon's worked for the CIA for almost eleven years, and he's managed his illness throughout so that no one's the wiser. When it leaves him indisposed after Istanbul, however, his partners step up.
A.N: 1) The legal drinking and voting age was actually 21 in most of the U.S. until the 1960s
2) [This fic deals with mental illness. If you would like to see more details about the content of this fic, click here.]A character struggles with bipolar disorder while being a spy in the 1960s. Although there's no self-harm, there are plenty of unhealthy coping mechanisms, though the characters do their best within the limitations placed on them. There are also two oblique mentions of suicide. Also, a story is told of an offscreen character with a mental illness who died while in an asylum due to mental illness; the cause of death is not specified.
Napoleon is fine in East Berlin, brilliant in Italy, and flying high as a kite by the time Istanbul wraps up. He doesn’t immediately realize how far he’s gone until he’s over the edge, and by then it’s too late.
He has a moment of pause during the flight to Istanbul, when Gabby and Illya nap and Napoleon realizes he doesn’t need sleep - hasn’t, barely, since the night he slept with Victoria.
That is, once he thinks about it, a warning sign.
Normally he would heed it, find himself a safe spot to hide out for half a day, somewhere he could get himself together and force himself to calm and breathe and take a pill and go to sleep. He’d lie about it on his reports, later, pass it off as an afternoon spent seducing one of the Target-of-the-Month’s wives or maids or secretaries, and no one would ask questions or remark on it beyond adding a notation to that secret psychological profile they think he doesn’t know about.
His first assignment with a newly-formed intelligence agency which may be his ticket out of the CIA, however, is not ‘normally’, so Napoleon takes careful note of his symptoms and files the information as far back in his mind and memory as he can.
Istanbul will be fine. Istanbul will not last for more than a few days, and he has done more than a few days more than a few times even worse than this, so Istanbul will be fine.
He takes special care to still his fingers when they start to tap and to restrict himself from getting up and walking down the aisle more than once every half hour. He’s on a plane full of spies, after all, even if two of them are unconscious and the other is poring over last week’s cricket scores so intently that he doesn’t notice Napoleon surreptitiously pouring his full cup of coffee into the sink.
(He is really not that old when he is captured and sent to prison. He signed up early for the army, of course, so he is barely old enough to drink when he is caught, ratted out by a fence in exchange for a lighter sentence. They find him in a penthouse suite with two women in his bed and a very expensive painting at its foot. Napoleon is young and drunk and invincible in his conviction, and he does not stay in prison for long, thanks to the gift of words that never abandons him even when all else does.
His contract with the CIA contains one stipulation: that, if Napoleon is unable to perform his duties for any reason aside from injury sustained on a mission, he will be sent back to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence.
Napoleon is really quite fond of nice things, and prison does not fit into his plans.)
Istanbul is fine.
Napoleon is not.
Oh, he feels well. More than well-he is all strength and wit and ability, sharp of mouth and fleet of foot, and he performs his duties admirably. He does not need to sleep and spends, instead, his evenings working through the information they gather: he finds the irregularity in Villiers’s finance that leads to the discovery of a triple agent who’s planning to take over Villiers’s operations in a coup. He spends his lunch hour one day in bed with Villiers’s valet and returns to the team’s apartment with the keys to Villiers’s underground bunker tucked in his pocket. He spends his dinner hour in bed with Villiers’s daughter and returns with the layout of Villiers’s entire house, down to the safe hidden behind the painting of a daffodil in Villiers’s study. He doesn’t feel hungry, much, and every minute he’s awake the world grows sharper and all the shapes in it more bright.
There is a great gunfight the last day there, of course, and Napoleon takes down thirteen men in seven minutes. Villiers takes his daughter hostage at the very end, puts a gun to her head and holds her in front of himself so that neither Illya nor Napoleon should be able to get a clear shot.
Napoleon shoots anyway.
He knows he won’t miss; knows the world is a wonderful place and he has a wonderful place in it, understands that he was put on the earth and lived the entirety of this life for just this very moment, so that he could be the one to pull the trigger and end Villiers’s life and criminal empire with one quick shot.
Villiers falls, and his daughter does not. She screams quite a bit, but there is no physical harm from which she will not heal. Illya helps her up and supports her on her way out of the room, tells her to look away so she does not see her father like this and holds her when she vomits.
“It was impossible shot,” Illya says, later, when they’re on the plane again and Napoleon can not keep his foot from tap-tap-tapping at the music in his head.
“Obviously not,” Napoleon replies with a grin. It feels too wide on his face, but he finds it difficult not to smile when everything in the world is perfect as it is in just this moment.
Illya and Gaby share a look, but they say nothing, and Waverly doesn’t look up from the newspaper he’s holding open to his beloved cricket scores.
(The first time Napoleon realizes he might have a problem is the first week after he is caught. One day he’s riding high from his latest heist, the next he can barely muster energy to comb his hair and climb out of his bunk to meet his lawyer.
He is not entirely ignorant of the field of psychiatry, and once he’s out of prison and back to his normal self he reads as much as he can find. There are treatments, he discovers, with a drug called Thorazine, but the side effects would probably make his field work impossible; Napoleon lives by his wits, especially now, and he will be of no use to the CIA if they are dulled.
He will, he quickly realizes, simply have to formulate his own ways to keep this inconvenience under control without ever letting any of his handlers know. He’s done fine so far, and he’s sure he can manage it to everyone’s satisfaction.
He’ll be fine.)
Waverly gives them two weeks to recuperate after Istanbul. Napoleon goes to London to find a flat and does not remember much of the first few days when he tries to recall them later. He drinks a lot of scotch and even more wine and sleeps with several men and many women and ignores the phone whenever it rings. He knows it must Gaby and Illya, settling in themselves, but he understands his actions might concern them, as they would not understand, and even as far gone as he is, there’s a part still of his mind that understands that one morning, soon, this orgasmic haze of beauty and wonder that rings his eyes will fade, and he will wake up sane and not entirely understand himself.
Waverly must call too, as one morning Napoleon wakes up and is holding a telegram in his hand. Report for new mission Monday, it reads. Napoleon checks the calendar, and it is Tuesday of the week before.
He’ll be fine.
That day the fever of his mind breaks, and it leaves exhaustion in its wake.
Napoleon sleeps.
He wakes up, eventually, and drags himself to the kitchenette to cook himself an omelet, which he actually eats. He doesn’t really care to eat, but he realizes, distantly, that he has not been eating enough and it will affect his performance, and if he is not useful to UNCLE he is useful to no one, and if he is useful to no one, then-
He doesn’t remember much after the omelet, but he realizes several hours later that he never made it to his bed, which he was moving towards when he finished eating. He is sitting on the sofa, and the dirty omelet plate is sitting on the tiny bar by his kitchenette, and his mind is grey and dull and blank.
(Two years into his sentence, he realizes that he knows far too much to go back to a normal prison if he fails. There are military prisons, of course, with isolated cells and guards every four steps, where they keep war criminals. There are also accidents, which require far less fuss and paperwork, the sorts of things which only take a man in the dark with a pistol or a length of wire, several of which Napoleon has taken care of under Sanders’ orders.
There are thirteen years left on his sentence, and he fully intends to live them out.)
Some more time passes. Napoleon is unsure precisely, but he keeps track of how many days go by, at least. Regardless of how he feels, he will show up at Waverly’s office on Monday morning and do a passable impression of himself.
Time, he has discovered during his time at the CIA, passes just the same whether you’re in bed or in an office or in someone’s lair awaiting torture. He will pass the time how it suits his future best, when he has to, even if his bones hurt and his muscles ache and his body wants for sleep even after fourteen hours of it.
He has built a failsafe inside himself: his sane mind can be but the tiniest spark among the fireworks or the flickering splash among the empty grey, but he has hammered it into himself that he must perform like the trained monkey he is whenever he is asked. He might not care or think it relevant that he could be murdered or end his days in solitary confinement, but always, always there is a part of him that understands that his sane mind will, whenever it troubles itself to return, and he will not allow himself to betray it.
It is Friday when someone knocks at his door. Napoleon thinks it might be one of the women he had over the week before, so he doesn’t bother to tell them to go away. He’s on the couch again, but now he has a blanket and a pillow, and he doesn’t feel like using the energy to speak.
“I told you,” says a familiar Russian voice from the other side of the door. There’s another voice that answers him, softer and lighter and unintelligible.
Ah, of course. Napoleon wonders how Illya and Gaby found him, and why they bothered to come. If he doesn’t make a noise, he thinks, they will think he is gone and go away themselves, and he’ll be able to go back to sleep, and maybe when he wakes up the next time he won’t feel so tired.
There’s a scuffling sound, a jangling of metal against metal.
“Lock is problem,” Illya says, slightly more clearly now, as if he’s getting irritated.
Napoleon thinks that in a week or two, he’ll find Illya’s ineptitude amusing. Now, he doesn’t feel anything about it, but he hopes that their inability to open his door will make them go away.
There is rapping at the door, then.
“Cowboy! I know you are in there! Let us in now, please!”
The ‘please’ is as sincere as one might expect from a KGB agent. Napoleon, for his part, makes no move save to bury his head under his pillow. He is not over fond of noise at times like these.
It is especially unfortunate, then, that Illya ramming into the door and bursting the lock (and, indeed, much of the wood itself) free makes such a racket.
“Napoleon?”
That’s Gaby, all worried inquisitiveness as her shoes with their broad heels click-clack over splinters from the door and trash from the week before as she makes her way towards him.
“I told you.” Illya’s voice comes from surprisingly near Napoleon’s head, which worries Napoleon because he didn’t even hear the man move. “Is sickness in head. Have seen it before.”
Napoleon thinks he should move, should indignantly protest that his head is perfectly fine, should at least take the pillow off of it and look up at the two ridiculous human beings who have broken into his apartment. The real Napoleon would be chasing them out the door already, asking why they’re here or how Illya found out in three weeks what Napoleon’s been hiding for eleven years.
“Please go away,” is what Napoleon actually says, instead.
He doesn’t have to be looking at them to see the faces that go with Gaby’s huff of irritation or Illya’s earnest, immediate “No.”
“We started watching you when you didn’t answer us or Waverly,” Gaby says. Her voice is drifting away as her heels clack back towards the door, no doubt to try and fix the mess that Illya’s made of it. Just the thought of all the work she’s facing is enough to make Napoleon feel tired.
Napoleon clutches the pillow and his blanket tighter and burrows as far as he can into the sofa. He enjoys little respite, however; he has only a moment to settle in before his blanket and pillow are yanked away, letting light into his eyes from the chandelier above that hasn’t been turned on in days.
“Up you go,” Illya says, quite cheerily, even as he grabs Napoleon by the arms and bodily yanks him off of the couch.
Napoleon knows, again, that next week he will feel something at being set on his feet, lank-haired and smelling of sweat, by Illya-shame, most likely-but at the moment, the best he can muster is mild irritation, and even that’s stretching it.
“Shower,” Illya says. He smiles, but his eyes have settled somewhere around grimness.
“I’m fine,” Napoleon says. He turns and actually starts walking towards his bedroom, which is something of a victory, considering, but he only makes it two steps before the ridiculous Russian at his back grabs hold of his stained and rumpled t-shirt and propels him towards the bathroom instead.
“Shower,” Illya says, again with an excessive amount of cheer. “Then food, then bed, maybe.”
Napoleon considers arguing, but decides against it. Time will pass at the same rate as it does whether he is in the shower or on the couch, and he’s fairly certain he wouldn’t win if he tried. Not now, not when even the real Napoleon can’t take Illya in a fight.
Illya sits Napoleon down on the toilet and turns the water on for him, fiddling intently with the dials for a few minutes until he’s satisfied. He turns and looks at Napoleon, then, and the look on his face is pensive.
“Shower,” he says, giving Napoleon’s shoulder a nudge.
Napoleon stands, because it is expected of him, and he starts to strip. Illya nods, apparently satisfied, and leaves Napoleon in peace, though he leaves the bathroom door cracked. Napoleon, mindful of the front door and the fuss it will cause when his landlord sees it, leaves it be.
Napoleon steps inside the radius of the spray of water once he’s naked. He leaves his clothing on the floor and doesn’t move more than he has to. The water rushes over him; mostly it runs down from his head to his shoulders to his torso to his legs, but in spots the droplets hit his skin and feel like a hundred little sunburns everywhere they touch.
“I said shower, not rinse.”
There’s a bottle of shampoo being held in front of Napoleon’s face when he opens his eyes.
Fuss and bother.
Illya doesn’t leave until Napoleon lathers up.
Napoleon hears movement outside of the bathroom and figures that Gaby must have finished with the door. Her shoes make noise all over the apartment, even in his bedroom, while Illya’s boots thump determinedly around the living room.
Someone’s laid a set of clothing on the sink for him when he finally washes off the soap and shampoo and towels himself dry. His skin, when he rubs it, feels raw, so he dries himself as lightly as he can. There’s just an old undershirt and his softest pair of pajama pants, but he actually feels more human when he pulls them on. The well-worn cotton of his undershirt sticks a bit to his skin with damp, but Napoleon ignores it and heads out.
The apartment’s cleaner than it has been since he moved in.
The trash that was strewn around the kitchen and living room is gone; the plates formerly heaped on the bar are now heaped in the sink, and Illya is scrubbing them, shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a song hummed under his breath. His head snaps up when Napoleon walks in, and he points with a soapy finger at a plate with two sandwiches and a glass of milk on the counter.
Napoleon casts a glance at his bedroom, from whence emanate mysterious sounds, but Illya snaps his fingers (somewhat ineffectively, as his hand drips water) and shakes his head.
“Gaby’s changing sheets, so you couldn’t go to bed if you wanted. Eat first, Cowboy, then we talk.”
The sandwiches taste cold and feel worse, but Napoleon obediently swallows them and chases them down with the milk. It grates, the knowledge that Illya’s right-and that, apparently, Napoleon’s failing in his quest to pass as the real Napoleon-but he feels steadier on his feet when he finishes, and his stomach stops aching. The world has sharpened, just a bit: there is still a fog on everything everywhere he looks, but it is marginally easier to pierce.
He’s not so far gone he doesn’t notice when Gaby comes into the room, all civilian heaviness in her step-he’s never been that far gone; thinks he’d have died on a mission long ago if that were the case-but he doesn’t expect the way she hugs him from behind when she reaches him. She wraps one arm around his chest and cradles his head with the other, her body pressing against his shoulders warmly, and for a brief moment Napoleon feels comforted.
The moment slips away and Gaby does as well, sliding into the chair at his right. Illya turns off the faucet, though Napoleon doesn’t see if all the plates are clean. Illya turns around the chair at his left, easing onto it and slumping forward to rest his chin lazily on its back.
“So, Cowboy,” Illya says. There’s something soft underneath the gruffness of his tone, but Napoleon doesn’t trouble himself to dwell on it. “This happen often?”
Napoleon shrugs.
It’s difficult, when he gets like this, to corral his thoughts; they slide out of his grip like the greased dial of the Murphy 22 his first safe-cracking tutor made him practice on. It takes Napoleon longer than he’d like to come up with an answer, but Illya and Gaby wait.
“It’s not-it’s not usually this bad,” Napoleon says eventually. “I manage it better. Usually.”
Illya nods. Gaby reaches over and puts both her hands around one of Napoleon’s. Her fingers are tiny.
“Was it Istanbul?” she asks. “That kept you from…managing it?”
Napoleon shrugs again, but after a moment he nods his head yes. “I would have taken a weekend off after Italy, but…”
“But you have new organization to keep happy, yes?” Illya and Gaby share some sort of look over the table; Napoleon can see their shoulders shift that much, can hear Illya’s shirt rustling and Gaby’s ponytail rubbing against the stiffly laundered cotton of her dress. “Tell me, Cowboy, if CIA finds out about this-“
“No.” There’s actually dread in the pit of his stomach, which might be exciting if it didn’t feel so awful.
“They send you back to prison?”
Napoleon thinks of handguns with silencers on them and garrotes made of piano wire shining in the dark. “Something like that.”
He thinks they both understand. He doesn’t have the energy to explain right now even if they don’t, though, so it’s of little matter. The food might have made him feel better, but he’s tired, still, and he doesn’t feel like talking.
They both seem to understand that, as well.
Gaby stands up, and she gives Napoleon another hug, this time with a kiss on the head-and Napoleon is glad, now, that he washed his hair-before she heads off towards the living room. Illya stands up as well, but rather than hugging, he grips the front of Napoleon’s undershirt and tugs him lightly to his feet. The fabric wrinkles, but Napoleon doesn’t care.
“All right, time for bed.” There’s a twitch at the corner of Illya’s lips, but his eyes are soft and contemplative.
Napoleon follows Illya to his bedroom and settles in to clean silk sheets and the softest blanket he owns. The room’s remarkably clean, for the short time Illya and Gaby had to work, and Napoleon thinks that when he’s better he will find a way to thank them.
Illya doesn’t leave as soon as Napoleon’s in bed. He sits down on the edge of it, instead, and Napoleon has one wild moment of wondering if Illya’s going to watch him sleep before Illya speaks.
“I have friend in Communist Youth Party, once,” Illya says, soft. “He was seventeen when the illness took him. They sent him away, to hospital, and four months later he was dead.”
Napoleon turns his face away. There’s wetness on his cheeks, though he doesn’t know why. He’s just so tired.
“I will not let them send you away, Cowboy.” There’s a hand on his shoulder, strong and-not warm, it’s actually uncomfortably cool, but it’s nice all the same. “We will help you manage it, when you need to.”
Illya leaves then, though he once more leaves the door cracked, and Napoleon knows that one of them will be just outside his bedroom when he wakes up.
It’s no easy fix, but there are only four and a half years left on his sentence; Napoleon managed the first eleven by himself, but things will be simpler from here on out.
He is by no means well, but when he falls asleep again, his sleep is deep and steady and not at all disturbed by the occasional noises of the two idiots who’ve taken residence on his sofa.