Above him, under him, the sky is so wide he feels like he's falling, so deep he feels like he's swimming. He doesn't know which way up he is. The ground below him is chill and hard but it doesn't feel like the steady rock of earth. It feels like he's lying on a swaying board, the deck of a ship, the spinning floor of an aircraft out of control. The stars above him, below him, are blazing white orbs of light, so bright against a sky spared of suburban glare.
'Illya. Now, Illya – '
Napoleon is dabbing a handkerchief at his mouth and he realises he can taste vomit, smell vomit. Vomit, blood, bat urine. That woman, that insufferable woman, is hovering above him, saying something in her bumpkin accent. Behind the rich visceral scents of bodily fluid he can smell her perfume, something cheap and naive that penetrates his sinuses and makes him itch. Above him, in the depthless sky, he can hear the flutter, the shrill, see the awful frenzied motion of bats in flight.
'Illya, can you sit up a little?'
He tries, but how can he sit up when he doesn't know which way up is? His ears are ringing, there are psychedelic blotches in his eyes, the ground is swinging and swaying against his back. Leathery wings come down close over his face. It's like a nightmare coming back to life. Napoleon's arm sweeps the bat away, and Illya's too weak for the spike of panic to manifest itself in movement. The bats are still reeling from the radar frequency he fed into the transmitter, falling out of the sky like autumn leaves in a twisting wind.
How he hates bats. He's always been made uneasy by bats, but now he has a reason to hate them.
'Illya,' Napoleon is saying, then he says to that woman, 'He must be dehydrated. D'you think the water in the moat is potable?' and she says, 'I don't know what pote-able means but my mama said you should never – '
He lets her voice drift away. There's water then, not being poured between his lips but being dabbed onto his face. He opens his mouth and turns his head like a baby searching for the breast, because he's so thirsty he feels like he's been in a desert, but none of the water goes in.
'No,' Napoleon says. 'I'm sorry, Illya. I don't know if it's safe.'
He doesn't care if it's safe. He's so thirsty. He's hot and cold and the sky is rocking, and then everything is rocking, Napoleon's strong arms are under him, carrying him like a bride over a threshold, and everything is rotating so fast he doesn't think he can hang on…
...The scent of a human body. The scent of woman, intimate and too close. His head is on that woman's lap and the dark night sky has gone and he's looking up at a closer sky, a closer ceiling, the fabric covered curve of a car roof. Where's Napoleon? He's in a car, the engine rumbling, the scent of petrol in the air, so Napoleon must be driving. He tries to lift his head and everything spins and that woman lays her cold hand on his forehead and says, 'Now, you just stay there, Mr Kury-ay-kin. Don't you be movin' about.'
He likes her only just a little more than the bats. He doesn't know what it is, but there's something about her. She makes him uneasy. Maybe it's because she led him into this with her idiot extra sensory perception. Maybe it's because she was stringing Napoleon along the whole time, however unwittingly. But he can't sit up anyway. He's too weak, too dizzy. He doesn't know what happened. He was all right. He was reeling at first when Zark's man took him out of the cave, but he got over it, didn't he? He managed to run, to remember those frequencies, to bring chaos to the bats.
He remembers leaning over that lab bench, the edge hard against his stomach, the room whirling, and Napoleon standing behind him, holding him up. She said something about turkeys... Some kind of distraction. Zark running. Napoleon should have left the girl looking after him and kept the gun himself. What was it that happened? Napoleon warm and firm against him, Zark running. That was when adrenaline had done its job and he had pulled himself together and carried on. So now –
The car rumbles and bumps over the pitted road. Thank god he didn't have to ride that motorcycle back. He couldn't have done it. He would have collapsed on the roadside. The bats would be feasting on him…
For a moment he feels incredibly cold.
Outside the window, upside-down to his eyes, the black silhouettes of trees flicker by and there are still bats, bats and bats, falling from the sky. He hears the thud when they hit the windscreen, hears Napoleon's expression of disgust when he crushes them under the wheels.
'A plague of bats,' Napoleon comments, looking back over his shoulder. 'They'll never believe that in the Ozarks, will they, Clemency?'
She's stroking his hair, unconsciously it seems. He wishes he could move his head from her lap but when he tries to move even a little everything swirls around him again. Her thighs make a little valley for him, warm and soft, and gravity pins his head against her skirt. He can see the overhang of her breasts above him. It's like lying at the bottom of a cliff. He can't do anything to fight gravity.
'How are you doing, Lucy?' Napoleon calls back, looking over his shoulder again, and Illya wrinkles his forehead, trying to work out why Napoleon is calling him Lucy.
'Illya?' Napoleon asks more clearly. 'How are you doing?'
He stops trying to work it out, tries to form words. He tries not to sound pathetic when he says, 'All right.'
He can't think of anything witty or cutting. Just All right. And that's not even true. He is swinging and swaying. His clothes are damp, sweet and sticky with bat urine and his own blood. He feels too terrible to worry about being dirty, but he knows he's very dirty, grimy with soil and grit and bat faeces, bat saliva, and those constant trickles of urine that came from the foul things as they fed.
'He sure is clammy,' Clemency says, her hand on his forehead. But she feels cold too. Everything feels cold. It must be cold outside but he remembers it being warm before – before – what?
'Is he still bleeding, Clem? Can you see any bites that haven't stopped bleeding?'
They're mostly on his hands and face and neck, he thinks. They couldn't get through his clothes, surely. One on his ankle. But is he still bleeding? He doesn't know.
'Cain't see nothing,' Clemency says, and she's moving his head from side to side in her lap to look at his neck. It's too much, everything sinks away, and then he wakes vomiting and being rolled onto his side. Napoleon is shoving fingers into his mouth, making him choke. He tries to lash out and Napoleon catches his hand and says, 'Now, now. What kind of partner would I be if I let you choke on your tongue?'
'I – thought – '
He thought Napoleon was driving, so how is it that the car's moving again but Napoleon is holding him now, his hand very steady and protective over the side of his head, his head in Napoleon's lap now, steady on his strong thighs? His thighs are broader and firmer than Clemency's. They make a better pillow.
Had he been outside the car when he was sick? Hadn't he been in the back of the car with that woman, or on the ground, or –
'Clem's driving for a while,' Napoleon says. 'Girls don't generally like it when you're sick on their skirts.'
'Oh,' he says. 'Was I – ?'
He can see Napoleon's face dimly above him, dipping in a nod. How long have they been driving for? How far are they going?
'You were,' Napoleon says. 'Very.'
'Where am I?' he asks.
Napoleon is smiling. 'You're in the back of a car in Transylvania, on your way to hospital. Hospitals are few and far between out here, so I'd appreciate it if you'd try to hang on to your blood and your consciousness and your stomach contents for a little while longer. Okay?'
'Okay,' he says.
Clemency doesn't drive smoothly, or the road is very bumpy, or – He doesn't know. It doesn't matter. He's happier with his head on Napoleon's lap but he wishes Napoleon were driving too. He couldn't do both, but he wishes...
'Is it – Where are we?' he asks.
'You're in the back of a car in Transylvania, on your way to hospital,' Napoleon says in a tone of great patience.
'Oh,' he says.
For a moment he wondered. He's remembering – What's he remembering? Being in the back of a car, lying on the seats, looking up at the roof above him, perhaps, or – No, was he looking up at sky? A soft top, top down, and the sky moving past above him, street lights and lit up buildings and the dark, dark sky, and a hot summer night. The sound of a mosquito buzzing, coming close and shrill and –
'Are we in Puerto Rico?' he asks. What was it then? A gunshot wound somewhere, something hurting. Puerto Rico, and the hot night. But it's cold. If there are mosquitoes why is it cold?
'No, Illya,' Napoleon says. 'You're in the car, in Transylvania. Romania. Do you remember?'
He remembers lying on the floor in that cave or cage or – whatever it was. A cave with a cage door, a place for animals. Animals. Bats. Men. The light going off. Utter darkness to make the bats come to life. And the sound of them, that odd, twittering chatter. Sitting there with his hands tied behind his back and hearing their fluttering wings, those dragging leather wings pushing against the air. Claws on stone, a scratching noise.
One of them settling on him. Just the feeling of claws clinging to his hair, the warm mammal body, the cool wings. Not even feeling any pain, not knowing he'd been bitten until he shook the thing away and felt the warm trickle of blood on his face. But they kept coming, they kept coming, the blood kept trickling and they sat on him, lapping, seeping his blood away, excreting hot streams of urine down his skin, into his clothes, and he couldn't shake them away, didn't have the energy to shake them away…
Was he sleeping? Dreaming? Fainting? Suddenly he's looking up at the car roof again and at Napoleon's face, trying to jerk away from the remembered feeling of those claws on his face and hands, his hands bleeding, wrists bleeding, face and neck bleeding. He smells of blood, of urine, of vomit. Nausea roils in him and acid is bitter in his mouth and he feels as though he were floating. Is he floating here, head on Napoleon's lap, floating in this floating car, spinning in the Transylvanian dark?
'Illya, stay with me,' Napoleon says, his hand patting on Illya's cheek.
His hand feels so hot, or he feels so cold. Wasn't he running through Zark's castle? Didn't he remember the codes and bring down the bats? Why is he lying here now with everything swimming around him? Did he collapse in that room? Standing up from the chair at the console where he'd been inputting the figures. Suddenly dizzy. His legs going. Cold stone flags.
'Illya,' Napoleon says, a kind of warning in his voice, something that makes him blink and fight to keep his eyes open, because that tone of voice means danger. What danger is it? Where's the threat? Then he thinks vaguely that the threat must be himself, his own body giving in.
'Illya,' Napoleon says again and he tries to smile and says, 'I'm right here, 'Poleon. Where d'you think I am?'
But where is he? In a car? Outside in cold air? There are stars above him again, and then dazzling lights moving above him – or is he moving? What's moving? Is Napoleon carrying him like a bride again, vomit strong in the air, vomit and blood in his hair, fluorescent lights above him and hands touching him, and questions he can't understand? Something hard-soft under his back, a hospital gurney or examination bed or –
His eyes are rolling in his head. Napoleon is talking and Clemency is talking, her voice loud and plaintive as if she thinks loudness will make people understand. Hands and voices. Someone unlacing his tie from his shirt collar. So much light. Hands touching his face, and Napoleon saying, 'You'll be all right now, Illya. They'll get you stabilised. They're going to give you a transfusion.'
They're stripping his clothes off. He wonders if Clemency is in the room, because he really doesn't want her to see this. Napoleon is talking about blood loss and rabies and vampire bats and some of the anonymous faces around him look as if they think Napoleon has gone mad, because who ever heard of vampire bats in Transylvania outside of stories? But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. They're stripping him off, and he's cold, but they're poring over his body as if he's an arcane text, examining every wound. He hadn't realised they'd got through his clothes.
'...little bastards bit right through,' he hears Napoleon say, and he sees him hold up his trousers, a finger poking through a hole the size of a silver ruble.
They bit through my clothes, he thinks, too dazed to be indignant. Vampire bats. They shave away fur, don't they? Why not clothing?
It stings. God, it stings. They're cleaning his wounds prosaically, brutally, scrubbing them hard and for what feels like a long, long time. He makes weak protests and Napoleon says, 'Let them do their job. They have to clean them thoroughly. Those bats might have had rabies.'
They keep cleaning him and it hurts more than the bites. He couldn't even feel the bites at the time. Someone's swabbing the inside of his elbow and inserting a needle, and he looks sideways and sees them hanging up a pendulous bag of blood so dark red it looks like crushed fruit. He has a moment of queasiness. He doesn't mind blood and he doesn't mind needles, but perhaps he's thought too much about blood lately. He lies there and watches the ceiling, and watches the moving waists and hips of men and women as they roll him onto his side to check his back for bites, and watches the ceiling again as they roll him back. The blood is moving steadily down the tube and into his arm.
'Reverse vampirism,' he murmurs.
Napoleon laughs, and Illya catches his eyes, seeing him properly for the first time since they were in that castle. Napoleon is hovering behind the working medical team, watching his partner with eyes like a hawk. Clemency is nowhere to be seen. All the lights are so bright, there are metallic clatters and footsteps. Everyone is very calm.
'I'm going to be all right,' he says, and Napoleon grins and says, 'Of course you are.'
((O))
Clemency is annoyed because Napoleon is not paying attention to her. In this, she reminds Illya of a child. She stands there with her arms folded across her chest and a pout on her face, and she taps her foot, and Napoleon says, 'I'm sorry, Clem, but I just can't leave my partner right now. Not in an unguarded hotel room, not in this condition.'
Illya would protest that as long as he's left with a gun, he would be fine. But he doesn't really want Napoleon to go gadding around the town with Clemency and he doesn't have a gun and he won't take Napoleon's because he needs that. Better Clemency goes out alone than Napoleon goes out and leaves him to tedious hours with Clemency as a nursemaid.
'Well, I declare, when a gentleman takes a lady all the way to another country – ' Clemency begins, but Napoleon isn't responding.
Illya watches in quiet amusement because he can't do much else. He's been discharged from hospital but he's still ridiculously weak and not allowed to fly. He's confined to this hotel bed, covers pulled up to his chin, wearing pale yellow pyjamas hastily bought by Napoleon in some shop or other in the town. It's terribly tedious, but at least Napoleon has managed to get hold of a little stack of books for him to read, although without his reading glasses the letters blur and jump on the page the more tired he gets. Napoleon drives him to the hospital for his rabies injections and by the time he's pulling into the little car park behind the hotel his head is swimming again and he stumbles back to bed like an invalid, the shadows so deep around his eyes he looks bruised.
Napoleon has prescribed a course of steaks, spinach, and iron tablets. When he goes out he brings back chocolate, and alcohol in moderation, and Clemency pouts at every little gift that isn't for her, but refuses to step on a plane on her own and go home. Illya wishes to god she would go home. She tries to read to him and he can't bear hearing good literature read in her outlandish accent.
'Well, I'm just going to go out and have a look at this cute little town on my own,' she declares finally, and Napoleon smiles and says, 'Be sure and have fun. Here, why don't you take a little cash?'
He hands her a little roll of notes, and she's not too proud to take it, but she doesn't look back as she leaves the room.
'It'll be good for her,' Napoleon says after the door closes. 'She's been too sheltered back in – Applesville or whatever that place is called.'
'Applesville?' Illya isn't too tired to laugh, but laughing is tiring.
Napoleon grins and pours him a little glass of cognac and passes it over.
'I'm going to have to make it up to her when we get back,' he says with a look of grim determination.
'Make it up to her?' Illya asks dubiously. He knows what Napoleon is like. The phrase any port in a storm often comes to mind. But still, he doesn't think that Clemency is quite his kind of port.
Napoleon waggles his eyebrows. 'Wine her, dine her, and – return her intact to her hotel. I'm nothing if not a gentleman, my dear little bat blood bank.'
Illya shudders. He can't get rid of the memory of sitting in that cave in pitch darkness, hearing their flapping wings, their cries almost too high pitched for his ears. Feeling them coming down on him, those little claws hooking in his clothes, his skin, his hair. Teeth so sharp he didn't even feel the incisions at first.
'When you fainted in the control room,' Napoleon says, suddenly serious, 'I'm sorry I didn't make it across the room in time to catch you.'
'Well,' Illya says. He doesn't even remember fainting, but he still has the bruise on the side of his head. They wondered in the hospital about concussion. 'You can't be everywhere all at once.'
'No,' Napoleon says, and his voice is still pensive, grave. He's thinking of the whole thing, Illya knows. How he trusted Clemency, and how her information led Illya to this place, to his capture, to that awful time in the dark cage being drained of blood. Zark had seemed camp, but there is nothing camp about severe blood loss no matter how it happens.
'It doesn't matter,' Illya says. 'We needed to be on the ground anyway. I needed to be here.'
'Yes, you did,' Napoleon concedes. 'And so did I.' He reaches out a hand, lays it warm and firm on Illya's shoulder, and says, 'You did well, Lucy.'
'Why do you keep calling me Lucy?' Illya asks then, eyes narrowed.
Napoleon glances at the stack of books on the bedside cabinet, pulls one out from the bottom, and turns the back cover for Illya to look at. It's a copy of Dracula by Bram Stoker, no doubt pulled out of a junk shop or the hotel's little guest library. He squints at the blurb on the back. Lucy Westenra is described as the vampire's victim.
'I've never read it,' he murmurs, tossing the book onto the bedcovers. It's slightly ridiculous that even a flimsy Penguin paperback feels like too much weight. He feels slightly discomfited that Napoleon has cast him in the light of a helpless Victorian lady.
'And I don't want to read it,' he adds.
The last thing he wants to read about is blood sucking monsters. He's still having nightmares about that cage.
'Well, for some reason it's popular with the tourists,' Napoleon says innocently. 'You know, if I let on that we have in this bed a real live victim of vampire bats they'd turn you into a static exhibit.'
'Yeah, well, I was nearly a real dead victim,' Illya mutters darkly. He sits up and inevitably his head swims, and he grits his teeth. 'Give me a hand, will you?'
'Where are you going?' Napoleon asks suspiciously.
'Even exhibits need the bathroom sometimes.' He looks down at the primrose pyjamas with distaste. 'Didn't you manage to get hold of some clothes for me yet?'
'Er, not yet. They're sending something from Brașov. Basic black, as befits one who consorts with the minions of the night. I'm afraid your suit was completely beyond saving.'
'Mr Waverly will be so pleased,' Illya murmurs, but then he's concentrating very hard on his own feet as he stands up holding Napoleon's arm, and everything wavers.
'Sure you can make it?' Napoleon asks.
'Unless you want to bring me a chamber pot, I have very little choice,' Illya says, 'and if you had to order that from Brașov I'd be in trouble. Just take me to the bathroom, please.'
((O))
He dreams of bats. He is in that cave, hands tied behind his back, and he can hear the bats in the dark, hear the cool leather flap of their wings. His head is on the cool, gritty ground, and he tosses it from side to side, trying to throw off the bat which has settled on his face. He can't feel its bite, but he knows it has bitten. He can feel the thing's muzzle against his skin. He can feel the lapping of its tongue. He can feel the hot stream of urine as it processes the blood it imbibes. His hands are tied and he can't move away, can't do anything but let it suck.
It's utterly dark in the cave, but he hears the rusty screech of the hinges as someone opens the gate, and there is sudden light, and there is Zark too, flapping his cloak out like the wings of a bat, grinning, coming towards him and murmuring words he can't quite understand. Illya is naked. Naked, helpless, tied. Zark is crouching down, coming over him, spreading his cloak out over him and whispering in his ear, running a hand over his body from throat to groin. He is violated. He feels violated and he tries to move away but he's too weak, too dizzy. Zark's mouth is so close to him he can feel the heat of his breath. He breathes in the heat of his breath and almost chokes.
He can feel those teeth. Oh, how he can feel them as Zark moves as if to kiss his neck, but his lips move back and the fangs protrude and they sink into his skin and the hands are on his body and his blood is running, running…
Oh god, oh god, oh –
He comes awake with a scream lodged dry in his throat, trying to sit up, too dizzy to sit up, flailing his arms to fight away a man who isn't there. He's making incoherent sounds, and a light snaps on and Napoleon is bending over the bed, catching his wrists and pressing them back down to the covers, saying, 'Illya, Illya, are you all right? You okay?'
'Dream,' he says.
His mouth feels so dry. Napoleon lifts a glass of water and puts it to his lips. Some of it spills down around his neck, a cold shock after the heat of sleep.
'Sorry,' Illya says, ashamed of waking Napoleon like a child in need of a parent. 'Sorry.'
Napoleon's smile is gentle as he pats away the water. 'Nothing to be sorry for.'
Illya's eyes flick to the curtained window. He's sure he can hear the squeal of bats out there in the night, just within his range of hearing. It's so ridiculous to be afraid of bats. They're just flying up and down the street outside. They're taking advantage of the insects that gather in the warmth that rises from the paved surfaces. He knows that bats are harmless in the main. He knows that even vampire bats rarely attack humans, that they live on another continent, that the bats that sucked his blood were deliberately manipulated by Zark to act as they did. But the thought of bats out there makes his blood run cold.
'Window's closed,' Napoleon says. 'Anyway, the reports are that the majority of Zark's bats are dead – either from crashing when you confused their radar or because there's no one to look after them. It took a lot of work to keep South American bats in Transylvania.'
He doesn't feel even a sliver of pity at the thought of those bats' deaths. Death is the best place for them. He lifts a hand to trace his fingers over one of the scabs on his neck. Rabies is looking increasingly unlikely. He just needs to recover enough strength to be able to get on a plane, and he's getting there. He managed dinner in the hotel restaurant last night. It was just a shame Clemency had to be there to comment on every bite of food and ask him constantly how he felt.
'And Zark?' he asks.
'I don't think we'll know about Zark unless he resurfaces, but he's kooky even by Thrush standards. I don't know that they'll want to pour that much money into a scheme like his again.'
'Hmm,' Illya says. He's not sure about that. Thrush seems to attract loons, and to encourage them.
He remembers Zark's teeth in his dream. Zark's hands all over him. That feeling of violation isn't an uncommon one. The psychiatrists at U.N.C.L.E. have told him that before. He's placed, all too often, in situations where he feels helpless, at the mercy of an enemy who has little mercy. It's not unusual for these things to manifest themselves sexually in dreams. He just wishes they wouldn't. It's enough to deal with, these bizarre situations, being drained of blood by vampire bats because of a charlatan psychic, without his dreams making it even worse.
'Go back to sleep,' Napoleon says. 'I hope we'll be able to make the flight in the morning.'
'You didn't tell me we were flying out tomorrow?'
'No,' Napoleon says with a wolfish smile. 'I haven't told anyone. Safest way to travel.'
((O))
He is floating again, but this time his head is where it belongs. The clouds are a thick white sea below him. Above him the sky is an eggshell curve, the sun a white hot blaze. He's looking out over the wing, and his eyes drift over the rivets, over the subtle movement of the flaps. He could be flying this thing. It would be fun to try a Boeing. Sometimes he looks out at the metal angles of the plane and imagines what would happen if the rivets failed one by one, if the engines caught fire, if someone planted a bomb. He's fallen out of the sky enough times in his life, sometimes deliberately, sometimes with very little warning. It's always exciting. It always makes him feel alive.
Clemency is talking relentlessly in the other seat. Briefly he fantasises about shoving her out of the cabin door. He'd give her a parachute, of course. He's not a savage. But he isn't sure she'd know how to use it, and besides, the Atlantic is gently rolling beneath those clouds. The sea is the most unforgiving of places to set down. A body would sink for a long time.
There are no bats at this altitude. Just Clemency, and air stewardesses, and the ongoing rumble of the engines that are carrying them through the air. It would be nice if there were an altitude at which women ceased to exist, or at least ceased to talk, and ceased to look at Napoleon with mooning eyes.
The in-flight movie starts to play, on a screen just a few seats away, too large to ignore. The title scrolls up the screen. The Fearless Vampire Killers. Illya closes his eyes and groans.
'It's a comedy,' Napoleon murmurs, nudging him gently. 'Roman Polanski. Should be good.'
Illya would like to take the person who thought it would be fun to play a vampire film on a flight back from Transylvania, and beat his head against the bulkhead. If this were a coach he'd make the driver stop and he'd get out, even if it were on a dark road in the middle of nowhere. There's no such option on a plane. There aren't even parachutes on these human cattle trucks.
It's ridiculous to feel that little prickling of panic at a film like this; at a spoof, no less. But he's seen enough bats. He's seen enough ridiculous horror movie figures. He fingers the scabs on his neck and wonders if he can fashion tissue into serviceable earplugs.
'Here,' Napoleon says, holding out a hand. There are two white tablets on his palm.
'Huh?' he asks. 'What's that?'
'Sleeping pill. The correct dose is one. Two should see you through.'
'Oh, my, Napoleon, do you really think he should be – ' Clemency begins, noticing the interchange, and Illya takes the tablets and swallows them dry.
The pills dull everything to silence, even the dreams. He wakes with Napoleon poking him in the arm, feeling as if he has been run over by a steamroller. His head is banging and his mouth is dry, and Napoleon is saying something, and he tries to work out if it's urgent.
'JFK,' Napoleon is saying. 'Need to get off the plane now, Rip Van Winkle.'
There are people shuffling past in the aisle. His legs don't feel as if they're his own. His head is on another planet. Clemency is bending in towards him and he forces himself awake before she can start helping him. He stands up and leans against the seat in front, then stumbles off the aircraft into the American air.
The airport passes like a dream. He stares around, letting Napoleon handle the luggage collection and the search for a cab, trying to keep himself at least partly alert just in case, but he can't focus on much because his brain seems to be full of cotton wool. Perhaps he falls asleep again in the cab. He doesn't know. He knows he's sitting there with Napoleon on one side of him and Clemency on the other, and then –
((O))
'Oh, where's Clemency?' he asks, looking around blearily, surprised by her absence. She's been as present as a boil on the face recently. Then he notices the crisp white sheets and the clean blankets and the cream coloured walls, and he realises that he's in Napoleon's spare bedroom, a place he usually associates with recovering from severe injury or drinking far too much. He feels as though he's drunk far too much, but that must be the sleeping pills mixed with the after-effects of blood loss.
'Clemency is nice and safe in a cosy little hotel, chomping mad that I'm not watching over her,' Napoleon says, and Illya blinks and realises that Napoleon is there by the bed. He hadn't even known he was there, who he was talking to, but of course Napoleon is there. Napoleon is always there, at least in the end.
'Oh,' he says. 'You're not watching over her?'
'She doesn't need watching over any more, Illya. Thrush don't have any further need for her. You're the one with the medication hangover.'
'Oh, is that what it is?' he asks. Everything feels so blurred.
Napoleon nods. His head seems very close, his face very pink. His eyes are dark pools. He's the only living thing in the room.
'Sleeping pills,' Napoleon reminds him.
He knows it's the sleeping pills. Of course he does. It's the sleeping pills that are making him forget that he's taken sleeping pills.
'But it's morning, New York time,' Napoleon continues, 'and I thought you might want a cup of coffee and to get back on track.'
'Oh,' Illya says again.
Oh is the most useful word. Only two little letters, and it can be modulated to mean almost anything. He slides himself up in bed and holds out a hand and takes the cup of steaming black coffee. It's rich and bitter and strong. The heat of the cup sinks into his fingers. It's just what he needs.
'Have I been asleep for long?'
'Only about twenty hours,' Napoleon says with a grin. 'Don't worry. The world has stayed intact in all that time, I've checked in at HQ, and you're signed off for another couple of days. Desk duty after that until you can pass the routine fitness test.'
'Oh,' he says.
In practice desk duty means wandering around HQ trying to find things to do, finishing off reports and reading updates that he's left for months, popping into the labs to poke at experiments and annoy the scientists, and spending far too long in the commissary drinking tea and coffee. It's not always a bad thing when a mission has been as – draining – as this one.
He's suddenly aware of the intense pressure in his bladder.
'Twenty hours?' he asks, and Napoleon nods.
He puts the coffee down and gets himself to the bathroom, and the feeling of relief as he pisses in the toilet is a sunrise of euphoria. Nothing feels as good as that, but then coming back to bed and picking up that coffee again is like a gentle dressing on a dull wound. Napoleon is still sitting in the little armchair near the bed, holding his own coffee, and smiling with that look of control and omniscience that Napoleon holds so well. Of course he knows Napoleon better than that. Inside him are more insecurities and uncertainties than any man has a right to own. Napoleon does everything to excess.
'I didn't even dream,' Illya says as he settles his body back down onto the mattress, his head onto the pillow. It's a wonderful thing, not dreaming.
'No little bats fluttering around in your head?' Napoleon asks, glancing at the space above Illya's crown as if imagining the little devils fluttering like cartoon birds.
'None at all,' Illya says. 'If I never see another bat, never dream of another bat, never hear another bat in my life, I'll be happy.'
He will, he knows. He will dream of bats again and again. They will be something to add to his little stock of night time horrors. Slavering dogs. Men in grey uniforms. Bats with razor teeth. If Napoleon is a pristine vessel holding reams of insecurity, Illya is an unearthed Roman urn, and god knows what dark things he contains. His mind will tell him, when he sleeps.