MFU Fanfic: The Rosebay Affair - Part II
I have written a continuation. This may be imprudent, but the idea tickled me a little further and this is what came of that. (Also posted at MFUWSS.)
Part I may be found here.
As ever, utopiantrunks offered kind encouragement. All the faults are mine.
Title: The Rosebay Affair - Part II
Author: saki101
Fandom: Man from UNCLE
Pairing: Illya/Napoleon
Genre: Slash
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: The usual, because MFU is not mine.
Excerpt:
The rain drops were large and cold. The young plant had grown even as the cool sun grew cooler and the chestnut tree’s leaves turned to gold. Up on the roof, the tomato plants still yielded fruit, but now the man came in the evenings to put a cover made of wood and plastic over them and he didn’t fertilise often. Around the young plant many were preparing to sleep.
The Rosebay Affair - Part II
The rain drops were large and cold. The young plant had grown even as the cool sun grew cooler and the chestnut tree’s leaves turned to gold. Up on the roof, the tomato plants still yielded fruit, but now the man came in the evenings to put a cover made of wood and plastic over them and he didn’t fertilise often. Around the young plant many were preparing to sleep.
The sleep was new to the small plant, but then everything it had witnessed since sprouting had been new to it. The echoes from the tap root assured it that these things were not new in the world, only new to its young self, hardly more than a seedling as it was. Cautiously and rather proudly, it allowed the tip of one of its larger leaves to jut out from the cranny. A heavy drop bent it before sliding off. The rain was almost hard. The plant drooped one of its two flowers towards the balcony. The rain seemed to be gathering on the table, in the spaces between the metal vines and leaves. The plant angled its other flower towards the dark grey sky. It had grown accustomed to the different colours of this northern sky. Sometimes it was twilight for the whole day. But then there would be surprises. The grey would develop gaps of blue or blinding white and the plant could see the sunbeams coming down through the air. The clouds were more plentiful than they were in the sky above the warm garden and had so many shapes. Some evenings the sky was like a garden itself with clashing colours splashed across it until it faded to darkness. It was never completely black though, even when there was no moon. Rarely could it see a star, except the mysterious moving ones. Yes, it was very different under this chilly sky.
************
“I will not wear that wig!” Illya declared, ending the exchange by walking out onto the balcony. He stared down into the street. A small group of ghosts and vampires were being chaperoned across the avenue by two tall witches.
“But then you could toss your head and the long hair would fly back dramatically,” Napoleon wheedled.
“Napoleon, in the line of duty, I’ve worn more wigs than most actors, but I will not do it in my supposed leisure time.” He glanced sideways at Napoleon who was leaning his elbows on the balustrade, stroking the blond wig in his hand. “I’ve agreed to wear tails and even to carry this and this,” Illya said, pulling several folded sheets of a musical score from his inside jacket pocket and brandishing a conductor’s baton in Napoleon’s direction.
“Be careful with that,” Napoleon said, holding up one hand to fend off the pointed end of the slim piece of wood. “Besides, you agreed to that because it resembles a weapon.”
“Oh, it doesn’t merely resemble a weapon,” Illya said. “Since you insisted on my having at least some ’props’ tonight, I spent a little time down in the lab making a suitable one.” Illya pressed the base of the baton and five inches of steel sprang silently from its tip.”
Napoleon broke into a big grin. “I knew I could get you to enter into the spirit of things,” he said, slapping his free hand against the top of the balustrade.
Illya retracted the blade and tucked the musical score back in his pocket. He glared at the wig. “Its hair may be long, but it’s coarse,” he said, turning to lean his back against the railing, his eyes wandering over the building’s façade and up to the early evening sky.
Napoleon was silent. He regarded Illya’s silhouette, from polished shoes on up. He brushed his thumb across his finger tips and shut his eyes. All I want to do now is feel your hair against my skin. Napoleon swallowed and opened his eyes. Illya remained in profile, looking upwards.
Good peripheral vision was something they both had. Napoleon knew Illya could see him staring. Finally, he said, “We should have just gotten you a long, black robe to go with your pointed stick. You would have made a very convincing sorcerer.”
“Did you empty the trash today?“ Illya asked.
Napoleon waited to see where the sudden change of subject would lead. “No,” he answered.
“Then the styrofoam cup the wonton soup came in last night should be near the top. Could you rinse it out and bring it to me?” Illya asked.
“All right,” Napoleon answered slowly.
“There’s a hard frost predicted for tonight.” Illya pointed the baton slightly to the right of the top of the balcony doors. “So that is likely to be dead before morning.”
****************
There was a flash of pain. It reminded the plant of lightning, brilliant for an instant and then gone. The distant images of the garden, the voices of the others, had vanished and where the consciousness of the tap root had been, there was darkness and silence.
****************
When Napoleon returned with the cup, Illya was standing on one of the patio chairs, one foot on the edge of the balustrade, prising the plant from between the brownstones with the blade of his baton.
“Look at this root,” Illya exclaimed as he held the mound of moss and roots he’d removed from the niche in one hand and tugged at something Napoleon couldn’t see in the dim light with the other. Illya peered up the wall and continued gently tugging. “I think this might go all the way to the roof.”
“What?” Napoleon asked.
“A root, from this little plant,” Illya replied and his hand jerked. “Look,” he repeated and brought his right foot back to the seat of the metal chair.
In the light from the living room, Napoleon could see five or six feet of root as delicate as thread dangling from Illya’s hand. He glanced up towards the roof. “It is flat. Maybe there are puddles up there when it rains,” he offered, holding up the cup.
Illya lowered the plant into the cup, coiled up the long root, tucked it into the container and hopped down from the chair. “I think that’s the same type of flower I hid beneath during that affair in Trinidad,” Illya said.
“Maybe it followed you home,” Napoleon joked, re-entering the living room a couple steps ahead of Illya. Illya gave Napoleon’s back a long look before continuing into the kitchen, setting the cup on the counter next to the sink and rinsing his hands. “You know, when we got back from Trinidad, before I put your suit in with my dry cleaning, I took it out on the balcony and gave it a good shaking,” Napoleon remembered. “Maybe there were seeds stuck to it.” He smiled as Illya turned from the sink, drying his hands on a tea towel and scowling. “Or maybe a seed drifted over from the park,” he finished.
“We can drop it off at the lab on our way to the masquerade,” Illya said, hanging the tea towel on the doorknob of a cupboard and picking up the plant. “It’s on our way. Tomorrow I can ask Sawada about it.”
“All right,” Napoleon said and with a flourish swept his cape off the back of a kitchen chair. He moved to the mirror by the door in the living room to adjust it so that the velvet draped perfectly from his shoulder to mid-thigh. Then he spent a couple minutes getting the feather in his cap to sit at the ideal angle on his head.
Illya set the plant on the table beneath the mirror and stepped back to observe Napoleon for a moment. His costume was theatre quality and he filled out the tights and the doublet admirably. Illya wondered whether there was any message in Napoleon having chosen to dress as Hamlet. Costumes for many of Shakespeare’s male characters would have been interchangeable, but Hamlet’s sombre hues were unmistakable. Even the plume was black. Illya nodded to himself and opened the closet door.
When Napoleon turned to him, preparations complete, he gaped for an instant before asking, “Where did that come from?”
“I thought I’d rent the whole ensemble,” Illya replied, extracting a pair of white evening gloves from the inside pocket of his knee-length evening cape. “You seemed so keen on my ’entering into the spirit of the occasion,’ as you put it.”
Napoleon kept his tone playful. “Well, it is for UNICEF and Mr Waverly as good as ordered us to attend,” he said, reaching out to glide his fingers down one of the white lapels of Illya‘s black cape. In the process, he lifted the side of the garment slightly, revealing the white lining.
Illya watched Napoleon’s eyes widen and managed to keep his smile from becoming a grin. “We should go. We still have to stop at HQ and drop off our floral friend.”
Napoleon reached for the plant and kept his eyes on it as Illya opened the door. “After you,” Illya said, not quite succeeding in keeping the chuckle out of his voice.
********************
The light was cool with a hint of violet. The plant stirred. It could feel moisture in the loosely-packed soil around its roots. It extended a root ending. The earth offered little resistance and yet the effort was fatiguing. The leaves of the plant remained drooped over the side of the large, rectangular container on the edge of the lab table by the wall.
A twig snapped and darkness fell.
********************
“It’s an oleander and a seed couldn’t have drifted over from the park. They don’t grow outdoors this far north,” Yukio Sawada, Section Eight’s top biologist said, placing a sheet of paper on the lab table next to Illya. “The Department of Agriculture would not be pleased, but the seed probably did come back on your clothing.”
“But what are the odds of it sprouting in a crack in the wall of our building?” Illya asked, picking up the paper and glancing through the basic facts about the plant.
“You say you were taking cover in the bush and then slept beneath it?” Yukio asked. Illya nodded. “Well, the odds are you had quite a few seeds clinging to your clothes and they went flying when you shook the dirt off the suit on your balcony. One of them got lucky.” Yukio gestured towards the plant. “It’s recovering well from being transplanted.”
Illya reached out and touched a leaf, then returned his attention to the paper. “One of the most toxic plants,” Illya read aloud. “Do you think THRUSH was experimenting with the plants in the garden?”
“Not according to the research notes you brought back. They all involved synthetic chemicals including some totally new ones which will be keeping us busy for quite some time, but, of course, there could have been experiments for which you didn’t find logs.”
“True, although I had a chance to do a fairly thorough search before we started the fire,” Illya replied, folding the sheet of paper and slipping it into his shirt pocket. “I’ll continue reading your reports with interest,” he added, before turning to go.
Yukio nodded. “And I’ll be sure to call you if it says, ‘Feed me, Seymour’,” Yukio said, laughing.
Illya turned back, startled. “What?” he asked.
Yukio regarded Illya thoughtfully. “You’ve never seen ‘The Little Shop of Horrors’, I take it?” he asked.
Illya shook his head. “Science fiction, musical comedy about a talking plant that takes over a flower shop. It turns out to be carnivorous, not to mention highly manipulative,” Yukio explained.
“Well, that’s not stranger than some of the THRUSH plots we’ve foiled, so definitely call me if it starts communicating with you.” Illya smiled and headed for the door.
“Will do,” Sawada said. He tested the soil with a finger, went to the sink to fill a beaker and paused. Setting the half-full beaker on the counter, he went to the next laboratory and returned with a small piece of equipment which he set up near the plant. He fetched the beaker and was about to top up the water tray beneath the plant’s container when he paused again. From the cupboard beneath the counter, he extracted a large petri dish. He filled it with water, dissolved a few grains of fertiliser in it and left the dish a couple inches to the left of the water tray. He set the timer for the metal halide light directly above the plant. From a nearby drawer, Sawada pulled a notebook. He flipped it open and noted the date and a few observations, then he straightened up and stretched. It had been a long week. Slipping off his lab coat, he replaced it with his jacket and a long, multicoloured scarf and walked to the door. At the doorway, he stopped to scan the room carefully once more, then flicked off the overhead lights and locked the door behind him.
******************
It was darker after the twig snapped, but the darkness was not complete now. A pool of pale violet light surrounded the plant, making its flowers glow, but just beyond the tips of its leaves the shade was deep. The plant couldn’t understand the light in this new place. The sun seemed to shine through gaps in the canopy, but then the light would disappear, without wind or rain, dawn or dusk. The plant was uneasy. The tap root would have explained, but it couldn’t feel the tap root anymore. The plant recalled petals that had fallen from its flowers and never sent any messages back from where they lay or were whisked by the wind. Perhaps like a fallen petal, it was separate now. The plant felt chilled. Seeds separated and were silent and then they sprouted…perhaps it was like a seed again and needed only to grow stronger to hear the voices once more.
It sensed the fertiliser nearby. A root twitched.
****************
A continuation may be read here.
Part I may be found here.
As ever, utopiantrunks offered kind encouragement. All the faults are mine.
Title: The Rosebay Affair - Part II
Author: saki101
Fandom: Man from UNCLE
Pairing: Illya/Napoleon
Genre: Slash
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: The usual, because MFU is not mine.
Excerpt:
The rain drops were large and cold. The young plant had grown even as the cool sun grew cooler and the chestnut tree’s leaves turned to gold. Up on the roof, the tomato plants still yielded fruit, but now the man came in the evenings to put a cover made of wood and plastic over them and he didn’t fertilise often. Around the young plant many were preparing to sleep.
The Rosebay Affair - Part II
The rain drops were large and cold. The young plant had grown even as the cool sun grew cooler and the chestnut tree’s leaves turned to gold. Up on the roof, the tomato plants still yielded fruit, but now the man came in the evenings to put a cover made of wood and plastic over them and he didn’t fertilise often. Around the young plant many were preparing to sleep.
The sleep was new to the small plant, but then everything it had witnessed since sprouting had been new to it. The echoes from the tap root assured it that these things were not new in the world, only new to its young self, hardly more than a seedling as it was. Cautiously and rather proudly, it allowed the tip of one of its larger leaves to jut out from the cranny. A heavy drop bent it before sliding off. The rain was almost hard. The plant drooped one of its two flowers towards the balcony. The rain seemed to be gathering on the table, in the spaces between the metal vines and leaves. The plant angled its other flower towards the dark grey sky. It had grown accustomed to the different colours of this northern sky. Sometimes it was twilight for the whole day. But then there would be surprises. The grey would develop gaps of blue or blinding white and the plant could see the sunbeams coming down through the air. The clouds were more plentiful than they were in the sky above the warm garden and had so many shapes. Some evenings the sky was like a garden itself with clashing colours splashed across it until it faded to darkness. It was never completely black though, even when there was no moon. Rarely could it see a star, except the mysterious moving ones. Yes, it was very different under this chilly sky.
************
“I will not wear that wig!” Illya declared, ending the exchange by walking out onto the balcony. He stared down into the street. A small group of ghosts and vampires were being chaperoned across the avenue by two tall witches.
“But then you could toss your head and the long hair would fly back dramatically,” Napoleon wheedled.
“Napoleon, in the line of duty, I’ve worn more wigs than most actors, but I will not do it in my supposed leisure time.” He glanced sideways at Napoleon who was leaning his elbows on the balustrade, stroking the blond wig in his hand. “I’ve agreed to wear tails and even to carry this and this,” Illya said, pulling several folded sheets of a musical score from his inside jacket pocket and brandishing a conductor’s baton in Napoleon’s direction.
“Be careful with that,” Napoleon said, holding up one hand to fend off the pointed end of the slim piece of wood. “Besides, you agreed to that because it resembles a weapon.”
“Oh, it doesn’t merely resemble a weapon,” Illya said. “Since you insisted on my having at least some ’props’ tonight, I spent a little time down in the lab making a suitable one.” Illya pressed the base of the baton and five inches of steel sprang silently from its tip.”
Napoleon broke into a big grin. “I knew I could get you to enter into the spirit of things,” he said, slapping his free hand against the top of the balustrade.
Illya retracted the blade and tucked the musical score back in his pocket. He glared at the wig. “Its hair may be long, but it’s coarse,” he said, turning to lean his back against the railing, his eyes wandering over the building’s façade and up to the early evening sky.
Napoleon was silent. He regarded Illya’s silhouette, from polished shoes on up. He brushed his thumb across his finger tips and shut his eyes. All I want to do now is feel your hair against my skin. Napoleon swallowed and opened his eyes. Illya remained in profile, looking upwards.
Good peripheral vision was something they both had. Napoleon knew Illya could see him staring. Finally, he said, “We should have just gotten you a long, black robe to go with your pointed stick. You would have made a very convincing sorcerer.”
“Did you empty the trash today?“ Illya asked.
Napoleon waited to see where the sudden change of subject would lead. “No,” he answered.
“Then the styrofoam cup the wonton soup came in last night should be near the top. Could you rinse it out and bring it to me?” Illya asked.
“All right,” Napoleon answered slowly.
“There’s a hard frost predicted for tonight.” Illya pointed the baton slightly to the right of the top of the balcony doors. “So that is likely to be dead before morning.”
****************
There was a flash of pain. It reminded the plant of lightning, brilliant for an instant and then gone. The distant images of the garden, the voices of the others, had vanished and where the consciousness of the tap root had been, there was darkness and silence.
****************
When Napoleon returned with the cup, Illya was standing on one of the patio chairs, one foot on the edge of the balustrade, prising the plant from between the brownstones with the blade of his baton.
“Look at this root,” Illya exclaimed as he held the mound of moss and roots he’d removed from the niche in one hand and tugged at something Napoleon couldn’t see in the dim light with the other. Illya peered up the wall and continued gently tugging. “I think this might go all the way to the roof.”
“What?” Napoleon asked.
“A root, from this little plant,” Illya replied and his hand jerked. “Look,” he repeated and brought his right foot back to the seat of the metal chair.
In the light from the living room, Napoleon could see five or six feet of root as delicate as thread dangling from Illya’s hand. He glanced up towards the roof. “It is flat. Maybe there are puddles up there when it rains,” he offered, holding up the cup.
Illya lowered the plant into the cup, coiled up the long root, tucked it into the container and hopped down from the chair. “I think that’s the same type of flower I hid beneath during that affair in Trinidad,” Illya said.
“Maybe it followed you home,” Napoleon joked, re-entering the living room a couple steps ahead of Illya. Illya gave Napoleon’s back a long look before continuing into the kitchen, setting the cup on the counter next to the sink and rinsing his hands. “You know, when we got back from Trinidad, before I put your suit in with my dry cleaning, I took it out on the balcony and gave it a good shaking,” Napoleon remembered. “Maybe there were seeds stuck to it.” He smiled as Illya turned from the sink, drying his hands on a tea towel and scowling. “Or maybe a seed drifted over from the park,” he finished.
“We can drop it off at the lab on our way to the masquerade,” Illya said, hanging the tea towel on the doorknob of a cupboard and picking up the plant. “It’s on our way. Tomorrow I can ask Sawada about it.”
“All right,” Napoleon said and with a flourish swept his cape off the back of a kitchen chair. He moved to the mirror by the door in the living room to adjust it so that the velvet draped perfectly from his shoulder to mid-thigh. Then he spent a couple minutes getting the feather in his cap to sit at the ideal angle on his head.
Illya set the plant on the table beneath the mirror and stepped back to observe Napoleon for a moment. His costume was theatre quality and he filled out the tights and the doublet admirably. Illya wondered whether there was any message in Napoleon having chosen to dress as Hamlet. Costumes for many of Shakespeare’s male characters would have been interchangeable, but Hamlet’s sombre hues were unmistakable. Even the plume was black. Illya nodded to himself and opened the closet door.
When Napoleon turned to him, preparations complete, he gaped for an instant before asking, “Where did that come from?”
“I thought I’d rent the whole ensemble,” Illya replied, extracting a pair of white evening gloves from the inside pocket of his knee-length evening cape. “You seemed so keen on my ’entering into the spirit of the occasion,’ as you put it.”
Napoleon kept his tone playful. “Well, it is for UNICEF and Mr Waverly as good as ordered us to attend,” he said, reaching out to glide his fingers down one of the white lapels of Illya‘s black cape. In the process, he lifted the side of the garment slightly, revealing the white lining.
Illya watched Napoleon’s eyes widen and managed to keep his smile from becoming a grin. “We should go. We still have to stop at HQ and drop off our floral friend.”
Napoleon reached for the plant and kept his eyes on it as Illya opened the door. “After you,” Illya said, not quite succeeding in keeping the chuckle out of his voice.
********************
The light was cool with a hint of violet. The plant stirred. It could feel moisture in the loosely-packed soil around its roots. It extended a root ending. The earth offered little resistance and yet the effort was fatiguing. The leaves of the plant remained drooped over the side of the large, rectangular container on the edge of the lab table by the wall.
A twig snapped and darkness fell.
********************
“It’s an oleander and a seed couldn’t have drifted over from the park. They don’t grow outdoors this far north,” Yukio Sawada, Section Eight’s top biologist said, placing a sheet of paper on the lab table next to Illya. “The Department of Agriculture would not be pleased, but the seed probably did come back on your clothing.”
“But what are the odds of it sprouting in a crack in the wall of our building?” Illya asked, picking up the paper and glancing through the basic facts about the plant.
“You say you were taking cover in the bush and then slept beneath it?” Yukio asked. Illya nodded. “Well, the odds are you had quite a few seeds clinging to your clothes and they went flying when you shook the dirt off the suit on your balcony. One of them got lucky.” Yukio gestured towards the plant. “It’s recovering well from being transplanted.”
Illya reached out and touched a leaf, then returned his attention to the paper. “One of the most toxic plants,” Illya read aloud. “Do you think THRUSH was experimenting with the plants in the garden?”
“Not according to the research notes you brought back. They all involved synthetic chemicals including some totally new ones which will be keeping us busy for quite some time, but, of course, there could have been experiments for which you didn’t find logs.”
“True, although I had a chance to do a fairly thorough search before we started the fire,” Illya replied, folding the sheet of paper and slipping it into his shirt pocket. “I’ll continue reading your reports with interest,” he added, before turning to go.
Yukio nodded. “And I’ll be sure to call you if it says, ‘Feed me, Seymour’,” Yukio said, laughing.
Illya turned back, startled. “What?” he asked.
Yukio regarded Illya thoughtfully. “You’ve never seen ‘The Little Shop of Horrors’, I take it?” he asked.
Illya shook his head. “Science fiction, musical comedy about a talking plant that takes over a flower shop. It turns out to be carnivorous, not to mention highly manipulative,” Yukio explained.
“Well, that’s not stranger than some of the THRUSH plots we’ve foiled, so definitely call me if it starts communicating with you.” Illya smiled and headed for the door.
“Will do,” Sawada said. He tested the soil with a finger, went to the sink to fill a beaker and paused. Setting the half-full beaker on the counter, he went to the next laboratory and returned with a small piece of equipment which he set up near the plant. He fetched the beaker and was about to top up the water tray beneath the plant’s container when he paused again. From the cupboard beneath the counter, he extracted a large petri dish. He filled it with water, dissolved a few grains of fertiliser in it and left the dish a couple inches to the left of the water tray. He set the timer for the metal halide light directly above the plant. From a nearby drawer, Sawada pulled a notebook. He flipped it open and noted the date and a few observations, then he straightened up and stretched. It had been a long week. Slipping off his lab coat, he replaced it with his jacket and a long, multicoloured scarf and walked to the door. At the doorway, he stopped to scan the room carefully once more, then flicked off the overhead lights and locked the door behind him.
******************
It was darker after the twig snapped, but the darkness was not complete now. A pool of pale violet light surrounded the plant, making its flowers glow, but just beyond the tips of its leaves the shade was deep. The plant couldn’t understand the light in this new place. The sun seemed to shine through gaps in the canopy, but then the light would disappear, without wind or rain, dawn or dusk. The plant was uneasy. The tap root would have explained, but it couldn’t feel the tap root anymore. The plant recalled petals that had fallen from its flowers and never sent any messages back from where they lay or were whisked by the wind. Perhaps like a fallen petal, it was separate now. The plant felt chilled. Seeds separated and were silent and then they sprouted…perhaps it was like a seed again and needed only to grow stronger to hear the voices once more.
It sensed the fertiliser nearby. A root twitched.
****************
A continuation may be read here.