Fic: Ecclesiastes
New fic!
Since I'm in a wangsty mood for some reason, I shall post my wangsty fic that I've been sitting on for a week. It's inspired by some conversations about early Season 4 of MFU, and how the boys seemed much less...well, much less. Not quite themselves. In one of the eps, there's only one actual joke and it's given to the guest star! It's a major change from the zaniness of Season 3. So naturally, I wonder why...and that's why God gave us fanfiction. Fanfiction with a ridiculous esoteric pun for a title.
Ecclesiastes
~1660 words
Rated: PG for creepiness
Spoilers: blink-and-you-miss-them references to a few Season 3 and 4 episodes.
Warnings: mindfuckery and aaaaaaaaaaaangst.
ETA: This fic has been remixed! Automatons, by edna_blackadder. It's fantastic, so check it out if you enjoy this one!
'Precisely what you asked me to.''>
"What have you done to my two best agents?" Alexander Waverly demanded.
"Precisely what you asked me to. Retraining," I answered calmly.
"Exactly right. Retraining. And yet you and your vile gang of hypnotists and brainwashers have damaged them beyond repair." His hand clenched angrily on his pipestem.
I bit back the harsh retorted that leapt to mind. Thirty years I've worked for Alexander, heading this department, saving his agents' minds every bit as much as Medical saves their lives. No mere psychiatrist could do what my vile gang of hypnotists can accomplish. After rounds of Thrush torture and brainwashing, who do they turn to? Who do they depend on to retrieve information from traumatized witnesses? And with the next breath they curse us.
It will never surprise me, but it will never fail to anger me either.
"Do me the courtesy of remembering that the Department of Retraining and Deprogramming is part of UNCLE, not Thrush. We do not brainwash," I said stiffly. "I know many of the Section Two agents detest us, but I expect better from you, Alexander."
"Yes. Yes, you're quite right. My apologies, Stephen." Alexander sighed, looking older than I'd ever seen him. "I know you do your best; I only wish I had never sent them to you at all."
"Were the results unsatisfactory?" I had read the reports, though I hadn't overseen the procedures myself; everything had seemed to indicate success.
"Satisfactory? It was a disaster, Stephen. A disaster."
My stomach turned over at that. You never want to hear the word disaster when you are dealing with men's minds. "May I ask how?"
Waverly placed a folder on the rotating desk and gave it a halfhearted spin. I picked it up and opened it, but I already knew what it contained. The orders for Retraining of one Solo, Napoleon and one Kuryakin, Illya N.
"Do you remember this file?"
I nodded. "You said they had lost their edge."
"And so they had. Thrush had started developing some fairly outlandish plans; so outlandish that our regular agents had trouble dealing with them. Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin were the only two with the imagination and intuition to deal with some of their more ludicrous schemes."
"Weren't they successful? Their reputations--"
"Oh, they were successful, Stephen. Too successful. They grew too accustomed to dealing with the outer fringes of Thrush, the delusional outcasts. But those days have gone -- Thrush has reconsolidated, the Old Guard have returned. A man like Emory Partridge might balk at shooting a pair of captured agents; a man like Mandor would not. Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin would have been lambs to the slaughter."
I flipped through a few of the pages in the file in front of me. No one but Alexander would dare call the great Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin lambs...but the files bore him out. They were captured constantly, they involved bystanders unnecessarily, they were reluctant to use their weapons. My conclusion was the same as it was three months ago, the same as it was written at the bottom of the file: "Recommended Action: Retraining."
I said as much to Alexander, but he merely grunted and turned away.
So I asked the question I was not sure I wanted the answer to. "Why do you say it was a disaster?"
He placed a second file on the desk, this time giving it an angry jerk to spin it. It was a thinner file, newer. Mission reports for the last month for Solo and Kuryakin. I skimmed the summaries.
"Pardon me, Alexander, but these reports seem to say the retraining was successful. Increased efficiency, decreased dependence on bystander assistance, fewer captures." I brushed through a few more of the details. "No ridiculous disguises or exploding ice cream cones that I can see, either. I would say they have rehoned their edge, as it were."
Alexander laughed at that, a bitter sound. "Did you know Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin well, Stephen? Before their retraining?"
I shook my head. "A passing acquaintance, a few conversations."
"What was your impression of them? Personally?"
"They seemed like two well-adjusted young men," I answered, warily. In fact, I was familiar with Napoleon Solo, mostly against my will; he had dated my secretary for a few weeks and made himself quite a nuisance. And Kuryakin had occasionally accompanied him, or come alone to bring in a new truth serum or mindreading machine acquired on one of their exploits. I couldn't speak to their professional abilities, but I had been struck by their easy confidence. They were at home with themselves and with each other, I would not say relaxed but rather settled. Most Section Two agents are high-strung and humorless; Solo and Kuryakin displayed a casual bantering wit that I had found refreshing at the time.
I did not say any of this to Alexander, of course. When he asks for your opinion, it is frequently best to wait for him to tell you what it is.
"In that case, perhaps you would be so good as to give me your professional opinion on this. It was taken four days ago." He pressed a button on the vast undifferentiated panel of switches, and a screen was revealed at the back of the conference room.
On it was playing a surveillance recording of this very room. Alexander was there, pipe in hand, giving a briefing to Solo and Kuryakin.
There was sound, playing low, but I didn't need to hear the words to feel a creeping horror.
Disaster. Disaster was the only way to put it. Alexander had been too generous: they had not been damaged, they had been *broken*.
They didn't speak. On screen, Alexander left pauses, clearly expecting a sly remark, but none came. When they did speak, it was in a monotone -- no inflection, no dry wit or sarcasm under the appearance of obedience. Solo's rolling tones were now clipped; Kuryakin hardly spoke at all.
Worse, they barely looked at each other. The times I had spoken to them together had been full of significant looks, rolling eyes, slashing sarcasm and underhanded insults passing back and forth under the conversational table. Gone now, all gone. They looked at Waverly, they looked at the files, they looked at the maps. And their expressions never changed.
I wavered and sat down heavily. Disaster. "My God...I didn't...Is it always like that?"
Alexander turned away the screen, a curl in his lip betraying his emotions. "Since the retraining, yes. I can barely stand to give them their briefings; coward that I am, I pass them off to Ms. Rogers now whenever possible."
"In the field?" I grasped for something, some redemption in this gaping pit. "How is their work in the field?"
"Exemplary. By the book, organized, efficient. And completely lacking in imagination." Alexander gestured at the files I held with his pipe. "A year ago I could set them against a madman planning to conquer the world with hiccup gas; now they can barely deal with a single teenaged Thrush agent. Oh yes, they are efficient, but more like clockwork than like men."
Mechanical. Inanimate. Dead. I had killed them. With the techniques I had developed, the personnel I had trained, we took two bright young men and murdered them, and the worst part was they were still walking around, still breathing, still up there on that horrible screen displaying their death to the world. God. I felt sick.
But wait! There--
"Alexander, can you go back, on the film? Just a moment?"
Brow furrowed, he pushed another of his interchangeable buttons. The image reversed, steadied, started to play again.
"There!" A flicker. Kuryakin had glanced at Solo, out of the corner of his eye. A tiny quirk of his eyebrow up. Solo had met his glance, expression unchanged, but I could see in his eyes that something had shifted, just for a moment.
"There. There's something left." I could have cried in relief, in the new agony of wondering if enough of them remained for them to realize what had been done to them. I would have prayed if I had known which to pray for. "There's a piece of something still there."
Alexander frowned at the image, now displaying Solo and Kuryakin's expressionless faces again. "Are you sure?"
No. "Yes. It was a flicker, but it's there. They're still inside, somewhere." I was reaching, I knew, making promises I couldn't keep. But they were still there, they had to be, I couldn't live with the alternative. They had to be.
"Can you fix them, Doctor?"
That was the question, wasn't it. Over the years, Alexander had sent me agents or bystanders with no memories, with false memories, with the minds of children, with no minds at all. I had saved most of them with the same techniques that had destroyed these two agents. If there were any justice in the world, I would save these two as well. "I'll try, Alexander. I can't promise you anything, but I'll try. I'll find the technician who handled their retraining, discover exactly what was done. If there's a way to bring them back, I'll find it. But it could take time."
It could take months. It could take years. It could be impossible. However desperately hopeful I felt, I couldn't hide the doubt. Alexander saw it in my face and I saw the disappointment edge back on to his.
"What can we do in the meantime?" he asked, businesslike now.
"Keep sending them on missions. To ground them now would be to kill them for sure." I watched the image. It had looped back around, and I caught that quirk of the eyebrow again. That was the key. "Keep them together. As much as you can. That's the weak link in the chain."
"And if it doesn't work?" Alexander asked.
I shrugged, helplessly. "Then at least they'll have each other."
Since I'm in a wangsty mood for some reason, I shall post my wangsty fic that I've been sitting on for a week. It's inspired by some conversations about early Season 4 of MFU, and how the boys seemed much less...well, much less. Not quite themselves. In one of the eps, there's only one actual joke and it's given to the guest star! It's a major change from the zaniness of Season 3. So naturally, I wonder why...and that's why God gave us fanfiction. Fanfiction with a ridiculous esoteric pun for a title.
Ecclesiastes
~1660 words
Rated: PG for creepiness
Spoilers: blink-and-you-miss-them references to a few Season 3 and 4 episodes.
Warnings: mindfuckery and aaaaaaaaaaaangst.
ETA: This fic has been remixed! Automatons, by edna_blackadder. It's fantastic, so check it out if you enjoy this one!
'Precisely what you asked me to.''>
"What have you done to my two best agents?" Alexander Waverly demanded.
"Precisely what you asked me to. Retraining," I answered calmly.
"Exactly right. Retraining. And yet you and your vile gang of hypnotists and brainwashers have damaged them beyond repair." His hand clenched angrily on his pipestem.
I bit back the harsh retorted that leapt to mind. Thirty years I've worked for Alexander, heading this department, saving his agents' minds every bit as much as Medical saves their lives. No mere psychiatrist could do what my vile gang of hypnotists can accomplish. After rounds of Thrush torture and brainwashing, who do they turn to? Who do they depend on to retrieve information from traumatized witnesses? And with the next breath they curse us.
It will never surprise me, but it will never fail to anger me either.
"Do me the courtesy of remembering that the Department of Retraining and Deprogramming is part of UNCLE, not Thrush. We do not brainwash," I said stiffly. "I know many of the Section Two agents detest us, but I expect better from you, Alexander."
"Yes. Yes, you're quite right. My apologies, Stephen." Alexander sighed, looking older than I'd ever seen him. "I know you do your best; I only wish I had never sent them to you at all."
"Were the results unsatisfactory?" I had read the reports, though I hadn't overseen the procedures myself; everything had seemed to indicate success.
"Satisfactory? It was a disaster, Stephen. A disaster."
My stomach turned over at that. You never want to hear the word disaster when you are dealing with men's minds. "May I ask how?"
Waverly placed a folder on the rotating desk and gave it a halfhearted spin. I picked it up and opened it, but I already knew what it contained. The orders for Retraining of one Solo, Napoleon and one Kuryakin, Illya N.
"Do you remember this file?"
I nodded. "You said they had lost their edge."
"And so they had. Thrush had started developing some fairly outlandish plans; so outlandish that our regular agents had trouble dealing with them. Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin were the only two with the imagination and intuition to deal with some of their more ludicrous schemes."
"Weren't they successful? Their reputations--"
"Oh, they were successful, Stephen. Too successful. They grew too accustomed to dealing with the outer fringes of Thrush, the delusional outcasts. But those days have gone -- Thrush has reconsolidated, the Old Guard have returned. A man like Emory Partridge might balk at shooting a pair of captured agents; a man like Mandor would not. Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin would have been lambs to the slaughter."
I flipped through a few of the pages in the file in front of me. No one but Alexander would dare call the great Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin lambs...but the files bore him out. They were captured constantly, they involved bystanders unnecessarily, they were reluctant to use their weapons. My conclusion was the same as it was three months ago, the same as it was written at the bottom of the file: "Recommended Action: Retraining."
I said as much to Alexander, but he merely grunted and turned away.
So I asked the question I was not sure I wanted the answer to. "Why do you say it was a disaster?"
He placed a second file on the desk, this time giving it an angry jerk to spin it. It was a thinner file, newer. Mission reports for the last month for Solo and Kuryakin. I skimmed the summaries.
"Pardon me, Alexander, but these reports seem to say the retraining was successful. Increased efficiency, decreased dependence on bystander assistance, fewer captures." I brushed through a few more of the details. "No ridiculous disguises or exploding ice cream cones that I can see, either. I would say they have rehoned their edge, as it were."
Alexander laughed at that, a bitter sound. "Did you know Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin well, Stephen? Before their retraining?"
I shook my head. "A passing acquaintance, a few conversations."
"What was your impression of them? Personally?"
"They seemed like two well-adjusted young men," I answered, warily. In fact, I was familiar with Napoleon Solo, mostly against my will; he had dated my secretary for a few weeks and made himself quite a nuisance. And Kuryakin had occasionally accompanied him, or come alone to bring in a new truth serum or mindreading machine acquired on one of their exploits. I couldn't speak to their professional abilities, but I had been struck by their easy confidence. They were at home with themselves and with each other, I would not say relaxed but rather settled. Most Section Two agents are high-strung and humorless; Solo and Kuryakin displayed a casual bantering wit that I had found refreshing at the time.
I did not say any of this to Alexander, of course. When he asks for your opinion, it is frequently best to wait for him to tell you what it is.
"In that case, perhaps you would be so good as to give me your professional opinion on this. It was taken four days ago." He pressed a button on the vast undifferentiated panel of switches, and a screen was revealed at the back of the conference room.
On it was playing a surveillance recording of this very room. Alexander was there, pipe in hand, giving a briefing to Solo and Kuryakin.
There was sound, playing low, but I didn't need to hear the words to feel a creeping horror.
Disaster. Disaster was the only way to put it. Alexander had been too generous: they had not been damaged, they had been *broken*.
They didn't speak. On screen, Alexander left pauses, clearly expecting a sly remark, but none came. When they did speak, it was in a monotone -- no inflection, no dry wit or sarcasm under the appearance of obedience. Solo's rolling tones were now clipped; Kuryakin hardly spoke at all.
Worse, they barely looked at each other. The times I had spoken to them together had been full of significant looks, rolling eyes, slashing sarcasm and underhanded insults passing back and forth under the conversational table. Gone now, all gone. They looked at Waverly, they looked at the files, they looked at the maps. And their expressions never changed.
I wavered and sat down heavily. Disaster. "My God...I didn't...Is it always like that?"
Alexander turned away the screen, a curl in his lip betraying his emotions. "Since the retraining, yes. I can barely stand to give them their briefings; coward that I am, I pass them off to Ms. Rogers now whenever possible."
"In the field?" I grasped for something, some redemption in this gaping pit. "How is their work in the field?"
"Exemplary. By the book, organized, efficient. And completely lacking in imagination." Alexander gestured at the files I held with his pipe. "A year ago I could set them against a madman planning to conquer the world with hiccup gas; now they can barely deal with a single teenaged Thrush agent. Oh yes, they are efficient, but more like clockwork than like men."
Mechanical. Inanimate. Dead. I had killed them. With the techniques I had developed, the personnel I had trained, we took two bright young men and murdered them, and the worst part was they were still walking around, still breathing, still up there on that horrible screen displaying their death to the world. God. I felt sick.
But wait! There--
"Alexander, can you go back, on the film? Just a moment?"
Brow furrowed, he pushed another of his interchangeable buttons. The image reversed, steadied, started to play again.
"There!" A flicker. Kuryakin had glanced at Solo, out of the corner of his eye. A tiny quirk of his eyebrow up. Solo had met his glance, expression unchanged, but I could see in his eyes that something had shifted, just for a moment.
"There. There's something left." I could have cried in relief, in the new agony of wondering if enough of them remained for them to realize what had been done to them. I would have prayed if I had known which to pray for. "There's a piece of something still there."
Alexander frowned at the image, now displaying Solo and Kuryakin's expressionless faces again. "Are you sure?"
No. "Yes. It was a flicker, but it's there. They're still inside, somewhere." I was reaching, I knew, making promises I couldn't keep. But they were still there, they had to be, I couldn't live with the alternative. They had to be.
"Can you fix them, Doctor?"
That was the question, wasn't it. Over the years, Alexander had sent me agents or bystanders with no memories, with false memories, with the minds of children, with no minds at all. I had saved most of them with the same techniques that had destroyed these two agents. If there were any justice in the world, I would save these two as well. "I'll try, Alexander. I can't promise you anything, but I'll try. I'll find the technician who handled their retraining, discover exactly what was done. If there's a way to bring them back, I'll find it. But it could take time."
It could take months. It could take years. It could be impossible. However desperately hopeful I felt, I couldn't hide the doubt. Alexander saw it in my face and I saw the disappointment edge back on to his.
"What can we do in the meantime?" he asked, businesslike now.
"Keep sending them on missions. To ground them now would be to kill them for sure." I watched the image. It had looped back around, and I caught that quirk of the eyebrow again. That was the key. "Keep them together. As much as you can. That's the weak link in the chain."
"And if it doesn't work?" Alexander asked.
I shrugged, helplessly. "Then at least they'll have each other."