Concrete

by Aconitum-Napellus

Illya suffers the depths of Miss Diketon's abuse during The Concrete Overcoat Affair, and struggles to cope in the aftermath. Not slash. Not this time. Warning: contains rape.

She spent a long time with him strung from the prongs of the forklift truck. The warehouse was utterly empty. Night was falling after a bright, clear day, and it was getting cold, and he was so tired. She had taken him into the warehouse at gunpoint, then she had made him kneel down while she roped his wrists to the prongs. Then very efficiently she had got into the truck and raised the prongs until he was hanging, Christlike, feet off the floor. And then she had whipped him, expertly and efficiently, until his tops were laid open in strips and he was bleeding underneath. She did it slowly, meticulously, lovingly, making sure he felt every single blow. She caressed the whip and crooned to him. It lasted for hours, that whipping interspersed with the standing back and regarding him, the talking to him, the reaching out and touching him, stroking him intimately, pinching him hard enough to bruise, telling him how beautiful he was and how wonderful he was being for her.

He was so tired and he hurt so much. He had been working since dawn on the docks, hard, heavy work, and she had kept him strung up for so long, torturing him. His head was drooping and his eyes kept closing, and he kept thinking that soon she must stop, because how long could this go on? But when the whipping was finished she got out the electric prod, and if he had thought the whipping was interminable, this was a hundred times worse, because electric shocks were so insidious, sparking through your whole body, taking your breath, taking over your nerves. His skin pulsed in dozens of places from the burns it left behind.

And then when the windows outside were inky with darkness she finally let him down, and he was a crumpled heap sobbing in breath, and she was over him, stroking his hair and crooning, 'Shush, shush, pretty boy. Shush. I'll let you rest.'

He kept his eyes closed tight, and he tried so hard to catch his breath, not because she wanted it but because he couldn't stand being so utterly undone before her.

'Hush, pretty boy,' she said, and she was laying him out flat on the concrete floor, stroking a hand down his cheek, stroking a finger along one of the welts through the slash in his shirt. He hissed in pain again, and she spat on her finger and wiped his blood off it onto his shirt. He should be using this moment now to snap into action, to overpower her and get out of here, but his hands were numb from hanging and his arms were a mass of trembling flesh, and he would be no more coordinated than a tumble weed, and she would love that, wouldn't she, catching him and subduing him and punishing him again?

'There you are, Illya,' she said in that soft, penetrating voice. 'That's it. A little rest.'

And then she took hold of the rope that was still around his wrists, and she dragged him. She was strong, this woman, wiry and strong. It was all a myth that women were weak. All those women in U.N.C.L.E. headquarters with their soft waves of hair and the scent of perfume and their rouged lips and curves; those same women bore children and lifted heavy weights, bled every month without saying a word, and could shoot a gun with the same accuracy as any man, and with just as little regret. No, he didn't have an illusion that women were soft things.

The concrete scraped against the lash wounds on his back and his head was heavy and banging on the floor, but he just lay and let her do the work. She was panting a little now, and he could see the muscles in her calves bulging. She was doing all this in high heels. She dragged him into an office and the click of the door lock gave Illya a small feeling of dread. She drew the blind down over the little window in the door, and Illya made as if to move, but her wicked knife was instantly in her hand in a throwing position, and he froze.

'Don't make me do it, Illya,' she begged him. 'Please. You're too pretty to kill before I've had my fun.'

He didn't doubt that the knife would despatch him as quickly as a bullet.

She tied him then, his wrists to the desk legs on the other side of the room, his ankles to water pipes that ran up the wall. With time, unattended, he could probably rip the pipes from the wall and lift up the desk to get free, but not with her eyes on him. She could kill him so easily.

'Oh, Illya,' she crooned, and she knelt down at his waist and put her hands on the buckle of his belt. He closed his eyes and refused to engage. He lay very still as she removed his belt and opened the fly of his corduroy trousers and brushed her fingertips over the flat muscle just beneath as if she were stirring the surface of a deep pool. Her breath came in little abstracted puffs. She was far away, unwrapping a parcel in secret, her eyes aglow with anticipation. Illya swallowed on nausea as she eased his trousers and underpants down a little, just enough to reveal a little dark gold hair, but no further. Her hands slipped beneath him to ease the waistbands over his buttocks, cupping the muscle and squeezing it as if she were testing him at market.

She left him like that, almost revealed, to strip off his boots and socks, then untied one leg at a time to fully remove those sturdy longshoreman's trousers and his underpants. Illya bit the inside of his lip as she drew the garments down and cool air moved over his skin. He kept his eyes closed, trying to pretend she was not there, that she was not looking at him, appraising him. His body was just a body, just flesh, and she couldn't really hurt him unless she touched his mind.

Her hands were quite steady as she re-tied his left ankle to the sturdy pipe. Then tied again, splayed like a sacrificial victim, he lay there, shivering a little on the cold floor, just waiting. The dread was a sick, cold lump in his stomach, because no matter what he told himself, he didn't want her to do this to him.

'You are a cutie,' she told him in a voice laden with eager anticipation. 'Very pretty. And oh, Illya, you're not circumcised. Almost all the boys over here are cut. It's so nice to have a change. It's cute, you know, that little hood. Very soft.'

He grimaced and squirmed under her scrutiny. He couldn't help himself. His entire body was in a heightened state, waiting for her to touch him. And she touched him then, but not there. She laid her palm flat on his abdomen under his ripped t-shirt, her fingers pressing just a little too hard. She roamed up until she touched his peaked nipples, pinched one hard, and he hissed and tried to writhe away.

'Now, Illya,' she told him softly. 'That was such a little bit of pain. Where's your stamina? They must train you better than that.'

Don't engage. Don't give her anything. Yes, they did train them for this. There was a whole course in Survival School about sexual abuse and rape, separate classes for men and women. Of course the men joked loudly beforehand about pretty Thrush villainesses, and about their sexual prowess, and then they came out of that first session curiously quiet and pale and went their separate ways. On Illya's course one man hadn't returned the next morning. The women handled it better. Maybe their mothers had always taught them about the possibility. Anyway, women were stronger, all told.

'Illya, Illya,' she murmured. 'Pretty Illya. They shouldn't make U.N.C.L.E. agents as cute as you. Didn't anyone ever tell them it was a liability?'

She got a chair and set it between his parted legs, and she sat there with her own thighs just as wide, her blue skirt hitched up, no underwear on, a hand draped between her legs. She played with herself, and he saw moisture glisten. He could smell her too, and unbidden his body reacted. Cursed, cursed biology, the male biology that made mating an imperative above almost anything else. He felt himself grow hard, the blood pushing into his cock, the thin skin of his balls crinkling and contracting, and she laughed to see it, that thing he let almost no one see.

'All men are the same,' she said, almost wearily, and she came off the chair and knelt between his thighs and brushed her two wet fingertips across his two lips. He wanted to jerk his head away but he forced himself to lie like a lifeless doll. The scent filled his nostrils and his cock twitched. She parted his lips and dipped her fingers into his mouth. Her taste was sharp and sweet, like sour milk.

I could bite them off, he thought, but then she would exact a terrible revenge. They were trained to survive this, not to commit suicide in an attempt to preserve dignity. So he let her push her fingers in, slipping them across his tongue, until they touched the back of his throat. They pushed deeper, insinuating themselves into his gullet. He gagged and choked, and she had got the reaction she desired.

She sat back, watching him cough and retch. He stopped short of vomiting, thank god. She was skilled at this. She hadn't wanted him to vomit.

'Poor little kitten,' she said.

She was touching herself again, and her eyes were gleaming. But the choking had caused his erection to wilt, and he lay there with tears in his eyes, chest heaving, as she held her other hand just a few inches above his groin. She hadn't touched him there yet, and he didn't know whether to feel relieved or whether he wanted her to just get on with it.

'I've never seen eyes as blue as yours,' she said. 'Your lips are made for kissing. Why did they put you in the field, Illya? Didn't they know what they were doing? You're like a flag. You're like a living doll. You're asking to be touched every time you move.'

He made his eyes unfocussed and he didn't reply. She touched his lips with her wet fingers again, touched the tip of his tongue and her sharp taste filled his mouth. He prayed that she wasn't a kisser. Kissing was such an intimate thing.

'Oh, Illya, you're not hard any more. You've got such a pretty little cock. Now, come on, Illya.'

But she still didn't touch him there. Instead she pressed her hands with practised skill against the carotid arteries on either side of his neck. He thrashed then, because they weren't supposed to acquiesce to the point of dying, but she rested her hand softly over his throat, and she whispered, 'I'm not going to kill you yet, Illya. I want to keep you. Mr Strago doesn't want you dead.'

And what Mr Strago wants... Illya thought, but he stopped moving because she said, 'But accidents can happen, Illya, and I don't want one to happen to you.'

So he lay still again despite the panic that was making his heart race, and he wondered then how she would kill him when it came to that time, and then he wondered if she would ever kill him at all, or just keep him as some kind of exquisite pet, and he wasn't sure which he dreaded most. Then she pressed her hands unrelentingly into those arteries again, and he felt dizziness creeping in, and she murmured softly to him and caressed him between the legs, and he gave a wordless cry and kicked and tried to twist away, but he couldn't. He was floating, drifting far away. And then a little blood flow and clarity came back, but not for long, because she was tying something around his neck, hard, so hard, pressing against his windpipe, something hard under it pressing into his arteries. Her hands were free now, that thing was tied there, and that really scared him because all she had to do was get distracted, and he would be dead. But struggling didn't work because that thing was tied around him, and he was losing strength, floating, so high and so light.

Then at last she was touching him again between the legs and it felt like his entire body were exploding into a peak of dizzying sensitivity there. He tried to pull against the restraints. He couldn't move. He tried to focus just on the ceiling, on the sharp junction of the walls and ceiling, to give himself something to ground himself with. But her touch was hyper real, her hands on his cock, manipulating it to hardness, and he couldn't move and couldn't bring his legs together, and every contact was so sensitised he couldn't stand it. He could hardly see, he couldn't breathe, his heart was racing out of control. All he could feel was her hands on him, drawing him to a hot peak of need. His chest heaved, his hands grasped like starfish where his arms were roped to the desk.

Then she was sinking her body down over him, guiding her hot tightness onto his incredibly hard cock, and riding him. He wanted to cry out no, no, but he could only gape dumbly as the heat of her body sheathed him. He was dizzy, floating, gasping in breath as she plunged over him, her hands on his chest under his t-shirt, her face swimming in and out of focus. The feeling was unbearable, so sharp and strong, and he hated her and he was waiting to die and waiting and wanting to climax so that this would end. He needed air, he needed air, it was the only thing in the world that he needed.

And then he was coming in waves, moaning out choked breath. He was sick and his ears were screaming and he was spinning. He was going to die, he was, right here beneath her. And then there was the hyper-loud snick of the blade of her knife, and suddenly blood rushed into his head, and he just lay there, gasping and moaning, feeling like he needed to throw up. She sat over him, pressed so intimately against him, the sinews of her thighs hard against his hips, hands hard and intimate on his chest beneath his shirt, her head tilted to the ceiling, a look of transcendent joy on her face. She was still in her clothes, and she was smiling, and he felt befouled.

His cock wilted and slipped from her body. Now he could breathe he was riddled with shame. If he had had the strength he would have bucked her off him regardless of the consequences, but his head was spinning and he couldn't move. He felt sick with the near strangulation and sick with disgust too, but he lay there gaping like a fish, just trying to get control of his breathing. He had nearly died. He had been so close to death. His heart pounded so loud in his ears he could hardly hear anything else.

'Oh, gosh, Illya,' she said after a while, and she moved, leaving the remnants of his come sticky and smeared over his lax cock and pooled in his pubic hair. The smell of it was thick in his nostrils. 'You are so good,' she said. 'I knew the moment I saw you, you'd be such a good boy.'

He closed his eyes, wondering if his neck were purpling up nicely with the bruises. His lungs were still heaving air in. Oxygen seemed like the most beautiful thing in the world right now, but his own body felt filthy. He had failed himself. She had made him come.

There are some methods of stimulation which are impossible to resist, he remembered the instructor intoning gravely. A ridiculous looking man for a course like this, in his fifties, grey-haired, with a small grey moustache. So odd to hear those things come from his mouth as they all sat at desks like ordinary students. Erotic asphyxiation is one of them. There is nothing you can do about that but sit back and enjoy the ride.

Enjoy the ride. What bitter words. Had that man ever enjoyed that particular ride? Had he ever been touched sexually against his will? He felt revolted.

She was sitting beside him on the floor, her legs tucked under her body like a college girl at a picnic, her face flushed with delight. She reached out and stroked her fingertips along his jawline, then dipped into the sticky mess at his groin and stroked some of it broadly across his cheeks and lips. He licked it from his lips. He couldn't help himself. It was a reflex action like licking the sugar from a doughnut, but then the taste of his come mixed with her juices was filling his mouth, and he felt so sick that for a moment he fought not to bring everything up.

She smiled and brushed his hair tenderly from his face. He wanted to spit at her, but he stared at the ceiling and remembered that grey-haired instructor.

What they will want most is a reaction from you. Do everything you can not to give it, unless you feel it will save your life.

'Oh, Illya, I do hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.' She shivered with her remembered orgasm. 'I think you enjoyed it, didn't you? You came so nicely. Did I hurt you, Illya? Did I make you feel weak? Are you small now?'

He wanted to press his lips together but he also wanted to keep pulling in air. Beautiful air. He was glad, ridiculously, that his upper half was still clothed. That gave him some measure of shield against her, despite the rips in his shirt and t-shirt and the throbbing wounds beneath.

'Illya, you're like a doll. How do I make you react? Do you want me to do more? You did so well. You do want more, don't you? I can see how you want it. You're so pretty.'

And then he looked at her, just a fleeting glance, but she saw it. For a moment their eyes met, and Illya felt as if he had been burnt.

'There now,' she said, untying one ankle from its pipe. To his shame, his legs were trembling. He could barely make a single muscle obey his brain. She lifted his leg up and back and tied the ankle rope to the rope around his wrist, and then she did the same with the other leg, so he was lying with both legs raised in the air, hips curved upwards, buttocks splayed. He swallowed. He didn't like this. If he hadn't liked what had happened so far, he liked this still less.

'Oh, gosh, Illya, you're so beautiful.' The fact that she didn't swear, not at all, was chilling. She was like a woman at a bake sale, exclaiming about cup cakes.

She picked up the electric prod and just knelt there with it in her hand, stroking it. He watched with sick apprehension. And then she touched it to his balls, and for a moment the breath was snatched from his lungs. Then he screamed. She trailed the wand down the soft, sensitive skin to his anus, and his entire body convulsed, his legs jerking so hard they wrenched his arms after them. He closed his eyes and tried so hard to control his cries as she delicately played the prod over and into his most intimate areas, but tears were forced from his eyes and his throat grew raw with screaming.

And then it was quiet again. She left him still and panting, his stomach roiling, his legs up in the air and trembling and pulling on his tied wrists. She went to the water cooler and filled a plastic cup, and she sat there drinking the chill water with her eyes on him. He watched her, lusting after the water in that cup. Nothing had passed his lips for hours, and his mouth was full of the taste of her and his throat was so sore with screaming. She licked her wet lips, and smiled. Then she put the empty cup aside.

Illya turned his eyes to the clear blue glass of the cooler and fantasised about the water inside it.

'Please,' he said. He couldn't help himself. He was so thirsty. He hadn't realised how much he needed water until he saw her drink.

She smiled and shook her head, but then she dipped her fingers into her own wet mouth and traced them over his lips, and to his shame he licked the moisture into his mouth.

She sauntered over to the desk behind him and came back with her purse. She rummaged in it for a moment, and then smiled.

'I think we'll both like this, Illya,' she said, drawing something out from the depths. It looked to be about ten inches long, and it was thick, over-large, shaped like a man's erection even down to the veins patterning the surface. He closed his eyes, because he knew what was going to happen, and he knew it was going to hurt like hell.

((O))

He was on a plane, somewhere high above the surface of the earth, the vibration of the engines droning through the flesh and bones of his body. His hands were tied behind his back and his belt was cinched around his neck as a kind of leash, and his feet were roped together. She had dressed him like a doll after she had finished with him, and had called in a couple of men to lift him and drop him into a packing case. He had kept his eyes closed and his body limp as they carried him because he couldn't stand to look into another person's eyes, and then he had sat there in the dark as his box had been manhandled into a truck, perhaps, something that stank of gasoline and made him feel sick with the constant vibration. They drove for maybe forty five minutes and he tried to keep the contents of his stomach inside him. Motion sickness was a curse. It didn't always affect him, but when it did it came on strong.

He hurt all over. He hurt from the lash marks and the burns and convulsions from the prod, and where she had bruised his neck in sending him almost all the way to unconsciousness. His head hurt and his jaw hurt, and he couldn't quite remember why. And it hurt between his legs. God it had hurt when she had rammed that black thing up into him, over and over, and it hurt where she had used the prod to burn his cock and balls and the flat space beneath. He was shaking still, hours later on the aeroplane. Everything hurt and his mouth was foul and filthy, and if he had still been in the dark quiet of that box he would have used the chance to cry out his shock and his pain and try to recover some balance.

But he had been hauled out of the box once it was on board the plane, and now he was in a seat, a ridiculously comfortable seat opposite Miss Diketon, his tied hands an uncomfortable knot in the small of his back, his ankle bones pressed together by the ropes, and the seatbelt tight around his waist. He drifted into sleep and then she would kick or nudge him out of it, and he watched her blearily as she sat going over notes as if she were any ordinary secretary, legs crossed at the ankles and a little glass of sherry on the table at her side. Sometimes when he woke he couldn't help but moan as he was reminded of the pain, and then she would smile and take another sip of her drink. She was always looking at him when he woke. Every time he slipped into beautiful sleep she woke him up and smiled at him.

Drink, food. Anything. He was so thirsty and so hungry, and he needed the toilet so badly. He had asked once for permission to use the toilet, and she had just smiled. And then he had felt a dropping fear in his stomach, because if she took him to the toilet she might touch him again, and he didn't want her to touch him, so he didn't ask again. The engines hummed and the air was raw and dry and smelt of cigarettes, and he slipped into sleep again, because he was so tired that he barely dreamt, and it was a warm and pleasant place even for the few moments she allowed him. She kicked him awake again and smiled sweetly at him, and he looked at her through gritty, exhausted eyes and tried to keep his hatred from his face as she poured herself a glass of water and drank it down.

And then after some hours he became aware that they were descending, they bumped onto solid ground that whipped past the windows in a blur, and when the door was opened a tropical heat came in. His feet were untied and he was led, stumbling, out into the warm air.

'Please, let me use the toilet?' he asked a little desperately as he stood on the tarmac, blinking in exhaustion at his surroundings and trying to take them in, because every detail would be important if he managed to escape. But the need for the toilet right now was even more urgent than his drive to escape. He was afraid he couldn't hold it any more, despite his fear of the pain it would cause after what she had done to him.

And she stroked his cheek and said, 'Poor Illya, you're so tired, aren't you?' And then she looked at one of the male guards and said in an entirely different voice, 'Take him to the toilet. Don't untie him. You'll have to help him with what he needs. And watch him. Don't take your eyes off him.'

The guard looked disgusted, but Illya was so tired and so desperate that he went willingly with the man. It was a relief to be out from under Miss Diketon's eye, even for a moment. He was so tired he was tottering on his feet, and the guard had to hold him under one arm. He sat on the toilet with his hands tied behind him, and resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn't be able to do a thing to clean himself. But perhaps that would be good. Perhaps that would repel her if she tried to touch him again.

His thinking was becoming desperate. She would, he knew, just make him clean himself up, or clean him herself. She wouldn't let something like that stand between her and her fun. He dreaded her taking him anywhere alone, because it would start again, he knew. He could see it in her eyes. She wanted to have him again, and she would have him.

He wondered if the guard had seen or could smell the sticky residue that was still on his body, or the dried smear of come he couldn't wipe off his cheek. He wondered if he could sense his shame. He bit his lip into his mouth to keep himself silent as he pushed through the pain she had left him in. It all hurt so much, and he quailed to think what damage she had done. He didn't even want to look. He wanted to float away and be somewhere else, be someone else, be anything but this. He could have had a quiet job in some university lecturing on quantum mechanics, and yet somehow life had led him to this moment, slumped on a toilet in a Thrush base, trembling and hurt and degraded and only a tiny space away from repeated rape or death or one followed by the other.

He leant forward and closed his eyes, and then he felt as if he were falling, the guard was kicking the side of the stall, and he realised he had fallen asleep for a moment, even there, even with his trousers around his ankles and in the middle of emptying his bowels. He was so tired he felt sick in every cell of his body. When he had finished the guard roughly refastened his clothing and Illya looked at the basins opposite and said, 'Please, let me have a little water? I haven't had a drink for hours.'

And the guard glanced at the door and then back at the basins, and then he turned the tap on and Illya bent to it and lapped at the water like a dog. It tasted so good, it felt so good, it was so good to wash the taste of her from his mouth.

The guard shut the tap off too soon and roughly wiped Illya's mouth dry on the roller towel, and there was an unspoken pact between them that neither would mention this to Miss Diketon. That small bit of grudging kindness was the nicest thing that had happened to Illya since he was captured on the dock side, and he felt ridiculously, tearfully grateful to this man.

They walked back out into the warm air, and Miss Diketon took control of him again then, towing him along by the belt around his neck. He stumbled in her wake. All he could think of was the hope that there would be a bed somewhere, even just a floor, some corner, somewhere he could lie down and rest and close his eyes and sleep for more than a few grabbed moments. He didn't expect that to happen, but it was a pleasant waking dream.

((O))

She took him to a little room that must have been her bedroom, an anonymous little place with no ornaments or decorations. A Thrush-standard sleeping accommodation, perhaps. Illya stood there with fear growing in him, but he was also so tired, and he tried to edge himself closer to the wall just so he could lean against it. But that hateful belt around his neck jerked him still, and he coughed and hung his head. He hated that pressure on his throat. He hated it.

'Oh, you are tired, aren't you, Illya?' she asked him sweetly. 'You poor thing.'

She came around behind him and untied his wrists and tossed the rope onto the night stand. Illya brought his arms around to his front and rubbed his wrists, his eyes on the red marks there.

'Now, take your clothes off, Illya,' she said silkily. 'All of them, please.'

Something fell apart inside him. He was so tired. So tired. He couldn't do this. He just couldn't.

'Illya,' she said, and her knife was in her hand. 'You're on an island, Illya. There's nowhere for you to go. Everyone here is Thrush. The door behind me is locked and there's a man with a gun outside it. Now take your clothes off. I want to see you.'

He wanted to cry. He couldn't. Not in front of her. He couldn't give her that. So he started to strip off his tattered shirt, and he laid it carefully on the floor. He moved his hands to his t-shirt, but he hesitated, his hands shook, his muscles didn't want to obey. He made himself do it, stripping it off over his head, scenting blood and sweat in the fabric as it pulled over his face. Oh god, he wanted to cry. He wanted to break down. He wanted to sleep. His hands were shaking so badly.

'That's it, Illya,' she said, and he didn't look up, but he could hear the smile in her voice. 'Oh, what a lovely chest you have. Isn't that nice? Now, take off the rest.'

He wanted to plead, and he bit his lip into his mouth to stop himself speaking. He crouched to take off his shoes and socks, and as he crouched the pain seared between his legs. He saw his right foot and remembered how it had dangled above his face, and he felt as if he were going to be sick. He pressed a palm flat on the carpet to steady himself. Then he stood up, feeling the soles of his feet on the carpet. He wished he could stop shaking. He couldn't stop shaking.

'Come on, Illya,' she said.

He wanted to hit out, to kill her, regardless of the guard outside the door, regardless of the fact that there was nowhere to go. If he killed her now then she couldn't do this to him any more. Even if they killed him shortly after... Oh god...

The priority is survival... He had to survive. He had to get out of here and stop this insane plan that would wreak such havoc in the world. It was such an awful thing, being an agent. He couldn't choose to die.

He put his hands on the button of his fly, and slipped it open. He dropped his trousers down his legs and put them with his other clothes. He heard her make a little noise, and his stomach flipped over. Quickly, angrily, before she could say a word, he stripped off his underpants and dropped them, and he stood with his gaze directed at the floor as he heard her catch her breath.

'Oh, gosh, Illya,' she breathed. 'Oh, Illya. Turn around for me, Illya.'

And he turned himself for her, and she admired him from behind, and then had him turn back to face her. He was afraid he was going to be sick. Every inch of his skin was crawling. He wanted to break down and plead with her, but she said, 'Lie down on the bed, Illya. Lie down nicely and put your arms above your head.'

She had stripped the bed of covers and pillows. And he lay down, and for a moment all he could do was feel the blessed comfort of that mattress beneath him, under every inch of him, and, incredibly, for a moment he slipped into sleep.

She was cuffing his wrists to the bed head and tying his ankles to the corners, and he came dizzily into full wakefulness and just watched her. There was no need to try to speak because she would do whatever she wanted with him. He feared the garrote around his throat again, but there was no point in resistance, no point in anything. He was so tired and he was tied down, and there was nothing he could do. Nothing at all.

She sat for a while just touching him, stroking his body, murmuring to him about how beautiful he was and how he had been made just for her, and he slipped in and out of dizzy sleep. The bed was rocking underneath him, his head was spinning. She touched him between the legs and he moved and cried out incoherently and swallowed on sickness. And then she climbed onto him, sat astride his chest, pressing her nakedness onto him under her skirt, and she got that wicked knife and held it to his neck and said, 'I want you to do something lovely for me, Illya. I want your mouth on me. Your lovely lips and your beautiful tongue. I want you to do your best for me. I know you're very tired, but if you don't do your best for me I'll make you hurt so terribly, Illya. I know how to make people hurt so terribly they want to die, but I'm not going to kill you, because Mr Strago wants you alive, and I want to keep you with me. Will you be a good boy and be very nice for me?'

And with her knife against his bruised throat he nodded, because he was so afraid.

((O))

Later, in the rocky cell deep in the bowels of Strago's complex, Pia's kindness had been almost too much to bear. She patted at his sore, aching head with a damp cloth and chattered to him, and he tried to respond. He had just wanted to lie down and sleep, but of course that wasn't allowed either, not because of them, but because he was an agent and he had a duty to Pia. But just for a moment it had been nice to sit on the edge of the bunk in the cell as she pressed that cool cloth over his forehead and eyes and she had told him, 'I like you.'

Her words were so honest and kind, such a long way from Miss Diketon's twisted sexual breathings. Pia didn't think he was cute, didn't think he was a doll. She liked him. Him. He was a person, not a cute, blue eyed, blond haired shell. He wished he could lean against her soft breast, as if she were a mother, and just let her soothe him. He wished he could confess to her all that had happened. The urge to confess fought with the urge to keep it all so tightly inside that no one would ever be able to find it, not even himself. She must have no idea of the extent of what had happened to him. She had probably never even imagined that a man could be raped. Anyway, telling her would only increase her own quite legitimate fear.

'I like you too,' he said, and he meant it, but really he didn't know her, and he was so tired and so sore, and the sexual games between men and women seemed so twisted and convoluted now that he didn't know how to respond. He had hoped and prayed for the chance for sleep then, because the cell bed actually looked half comfortable, but then Miss Diketon had come knocking at the bars with a new agenda, her sudden hatred for Strago burning in her eyes, and he had sensed that the rollercoaster was just about to begin.

'I will do everything I can to free you,' he told Pia after Miss Diketon hurried away, and he meant it. There was such a sadness in her eyes.

'Ah, you must do what you need to do,' she shrugged, and gestured back at the bed. 'Now, come, sit, lie down. You rest, huh? You look like you need rest.'

So finally he let himself stop. He lay down on the bed and she pulled the blanket over him and sat near him, and he had been afraid that lying still would let his thoughts churn and roil, but as it was sleep came over him so fast it was like being drugged. He didn't sleep for long, and when he woke the pain was still there and the memory of Miss Diketon's assault was still there, and he was still deadly tired, but it was better, just a little better, and Pia gave him water and brushed at his head again with that damp cloth.

'I don't suppose there's any food?' he asked, and she smiled ruefully.

'For food I would have woken you. But no, no food. Only water that tastes like tin.'

She was right. The water didn't taste too good, but he needed it so badly, and because of that, it was good. So he sipped at it gratefully and then tried to muster his strength and his wits, because he was certain he was going to need both to get out of this place alive.

((O))

'How are you?' Napoleon asked him later. Much, much later, it was. So much had happened, and Miss Diketon was leaning dead against Napoleon's body, and he didn't know how he felt about that, because there was a strange closeness between them, a strange intimacy that he hated but couldn't deny.

'Pooped,' he said simply, wet and shaking and bruised and freezing cold, because he was too tired for words. And then he had remembered Pia, and that last bit of adrenaline had seen him through as they ran to find her trying to stop her uncles from performing a recreation of the St Valentine's Day Massacre with their Thrush captives.

It was all a joke, really, he thought as they ran for the boat. In no time at all Waverly's bombers would be there and the island would be reduced to rubble. Would he rather be shot or be left on an island about to be bombed out of existence? But he put that out of his mind because he didn't have to make that choice. He didn't have to make any choices any more, not for now, because Napoleon was holding his arm as they ran. Napoleon knew the way and was guiding him to where the boat was moored, and when Napoleon helped him over the side he collapsed in a nerveless puddle on the deck.

'Ah, Americans,' one of the uncles said in derision. 'Soft living.' And if he hadn't had been so tired he would have bridled at that.

'He's Russian,' Napoleon said tartly, and the uncle blustered, 'Well, the Russians – they're worse.'

Illya tried to drag himself up, but Napoleon said, 'No, no, Illya, they can handle this thing.'

So Illya lay there shaking as they powered the boat out into the open water, making for the anchored fishing vessel half a mile out. It took all of Illya's remaining stamina to drag himself from the first boat onto the second. Napoleon shouted to the men about the best course to take, and then grabbed Illya under the armpits and dragged him below, into the cramped cabin, where a couple of narrow seats doubled as bunks.

'Come on now, comrade,' Napoleon said, easing Illya down onto one of those beds. 'You weren't joking when you said you were pooped, were you?'

Illya arched his eyebrows. 'Napoleon, I have had about one hour's sleep in the last forty hours. I have been whipped and tortured and – ' He faltered. 'And shoved in a crate and in a cell. I have fought fist fights and I have killed men, and I have spent far too much time in very cold water, most of it under the surface. I have not eaten a thing in all of that time. No, I was not joking when I said I was pooped.'

'You've had a bad day, huh?' And Napoleon smiled and touched a hand to his leg and said, 'Well, you're still soaked. Let's see about getting these wet things off first.'

The cold was really pushing through now, and he was shaking. He was cold right to the core. Even in the Caribbean sea water from that deep down was cold, and all of his resources were exhausted. He was quite happy to just lie still as Napoleon started to strip the clothes off him. His partner winced in sympathy at the welts and cuts and bruises all over him. But he froze as Napoleon's hands touched his belt buckle, bile rising in his gorge at the memory of Miss Diketon's hands doing the same.

'I'll do it,' he said very firmly, moving Napoleon's hands aside, and he scrabbled the blanket over his body and then awkwardly peeled off the rest of his clothes. He handed them out to Napoleon and his partner tucked the blanket more warmly around him. The whole boat was vibrating around him as the engine pushed them away from the island, away from the path of the bombers, edging every second towards safety. He let his eyes drift closed as Napoleon was talking about trying to get his clothes dry, and then he was deep, deep in sleep.

He dreamt he was tangled in ropes, hanging above the ground, swinging as Miss Diketon pushed him with a single hand. There was a rope around his neck, cinching hard, and he coughed and choked and tried to fight her off, and then he woke trying to scream and be sick at the same time, his head spinning and feeling so bad he could hardly see.

Napoleon held a bucket under his mouth as he vomited what little there was in his stomach, and said, 'I wondered how long that would be in coming. We've hit some choppy seas, Illya. You're best lying down.'

Illya stared into the bottom of the bucket and groaned. What was in there was pitiful, but he didn't feel hungry any more, not at all.

'It's a shame,' Napoleon continued, 'because I found a few tins in the galley and I thought you'd be glad of something to eat, until we hit those seas and you started moaning. I've never seen anyone look that green in their sleep.'

Illya groaned again, and lay back, and Napoleon wiped his mouth gently with a cloth and offered him a little water. It was lukewarm and tasted of plastic, but it was better than stomach acid.

'Pia's up on deck helping her uncles,' he commented, then he looked at Illya pointedly and touched a single finger to the dark bruises on his neck, and said, 'Care to share with the class?'

'Miss Diketon,' Illya said simply, bitterly.

Napoleon was unscrewing the lid from a bottle of iodine and dabbing some onto a cloth.

'This will sting, but it needs doing now you're awake. God knows what was in that water you were swimming in.'

'Sea water,' Illya managed. 'Salt.'

'Yes, sea water indeed, but their sewage had to exit somewhere too, didn't it? Now, you just keep your head down nice and flat on the pillow.'

So Illya did, as Napoleon folded back the blanket and started to apply the stinging iodine to every single wound on his arms and chest and stomach.

'Your back too?' Napoleon asked.

'A bit,' Illya said. 'Not so bad.'

'Well, turn over,' Napoleon told him.

Illya turned, and the movement of his head made him moan again. He hated seasickness. Such an insidious feeling, and a weakness he could do nothing about.

'Ah, there we are,' Napoleon said, dabbing the fluid on a few cuts on his back. He moved down to a laceration on his left hip, and one in the small of his back, and then said, 'All right, back over.'

Illya turned again and closed his eyes, trying to steady his spinning head. The boat kept rocking and he felt so sick. He hated the sea.

'Illya,' Napoleon said in a low voice then. 'What did she do to you?'

'She whipped me,' Illya murmured. 'I told you. And she had an electric prod. It had a hell of a charge.'

He winced, remembering the pain of that thing as she pressed it against the open wounds on his chest and arms.

'Illya,' Napoleon said seriously.

Illya's eyes shot open, and he followed Napoleon's gaze. A cold feeling drenched over him. Then, almost angrily, he grabbed at the blanket and pulled it up over his hips again. Napoleon had seen the burns on his genitals. He hated to think of him discovering how they tracked down between his legs and around to his anus. The memory of her pushing that thing into him flooded over him, and he almost whimpered at the remembered pain.

Napoleon took hold of both of Illya's hands, clasping them together in both of his.

'Illya, I'm serious now,' he said. His gaze was so intense that Illya had to look away. 'I'm your friend, and I'm your senior agent. Tell me.'

Illya closed his eyes and let himself feel the strength of Napoleon's hands over his. Napoleon's hands were large and warm and protecting. Perhaps he would have got out of this alone, but Napoleon had come all this way for him, for him and Pia. Napoleon had come like his white knight to snatch him away from those who would hurt him.

'Did they have a rape course in Survival School when you were there, Napoleon?' he asked, almost casually.

Napoleon's hands tightened over his. 'Yes, Illya, they did,' he said.

'Have you ever had to draw on what you learnt?' Illya asked.

Napoleon looked very uncomfortable for a moment and he looked at Illya with an expression of deep sympathy. 'No,' he said.

Illya smiled. 'I'm glad,' he said, and he truly was. And then he felt it all washing over him, the memories and the pain and the horror and the debasement, and he began to shake, and then to his horror he began to weep.

Napoleon was whispering, 'Illya, Illya,' and his forehead was leaning against their four clasped hands. 'Illya, I'm so sorry,' he whispered.

Illya tried to catch himself, to stop the ridiculous tears. He was shaking so hard that it hurt. This was so stupid. When did he ever cry? What trained and seasoned agent cried like this?

They all did, he knew. They all did, sometimes.

'It's all right, Illya,' Napoleon said as if he knew exactly what was passing in his partner's mind. 'Let it out. It's all right.'

'I'm so tired, Napoleon,' he whispered.

'I know,' Napoleon said. 'It's been a very long day.'

Napoleon let go with one hand and touched it to Illya's neck.

'I think I understand this now. She – got you up with asphyxiation, yes?'

'Yes,' Illya murmured, and then he blurted, 'I was so scared she wouldn't stop in time.'

'I know,' Napoleon said soothingly, stroking his hair with such tenderness Illya felt tears swell again. 'Asphyxiation is a terrifying, terrible torture technique. Anyone would be scared.'

'And then I was so – I was so disgusted at myself, at what she made me do... She made everything feel...'

'You didn't do anything, Illya,' Napoleon told him firmly. He put his hand on Illya's jaw, turned his head so Illya could either look at him or close his eyes. 'Listen, Illya. You didn't do anything. There are some things you can't control. She did it to you.'

'Yes,' Illya whispered. 'Yes, I know.' But he still felt foul and squirming inside when he thought of it. He felt that pain between his legs, and another kind of nausea rose, different from the seasickness that was plaguing him.

'You're going to have to report this to medical,' Napoleon said seriously. 'They'll set you up with Psych.'

'I know,' Illya said. He lay there trying to get through what felt like an enormous lump in his throat, because he didn't want to confess the all of it. At last he said, 'She – had an enormous – well, it was a dildo, I suppose. She used that too.'

Napoleon's eyes widened a little, and his hands clenched hard on Illya's.

'She put it in you?' he asked. 'Did she – ah – prepare you at all? Did she use any lubrication?'

Illya shook his head miserably, remembering the pain that had made him scream aloud. 'I – think I'm pretty badly bruised, if nothing else,' he said. 'It hurts like hell.'

'Any bleeding?'

'I don't know,' Illya admitted. 'I couldn't bring myself to look. I haven't exactly had any privacy of late.'

'Want me to take a look?' Napoleon asked, although he looked as if that were the last thing he wanted to do.

'No,' Illya said. 'I'll see medical. I'll have to.'

He closed his eyes again. Napoleon pulled the blanket up to his neck but he still sat there holding Illya's hands. After a while he let go with one and gently stroked over Illya's forehead, brushing his hair back and then continuing, just stroking, over and over. Illya felt himself drifting closer to sleep again, falling further and further into that warm place. And then he woke with a sudden sensation of falling and panic, and Napoleon said, 'Shush, it's all right. I'm here.'

'Napoleon?' he asked.

'Sea's calmer,' Napoleon commented. 'Do you feel up to some soup?'

He blinked and looked around. The portholes were black and Pia was sleeping like a child in the opposite bunk, her hair tousled around her face. She looked so innocent he ached. He hoped that she had been spared what he had suffered. He didn't think Strago had gone so far, though.

'How long was I asleep?'

'About an hour. It's about two a.m.. You want that soup?'

He sat up a little and realised the overwhelming nausea had pretty much gone. Suddenly he felt ravenously hungry.

'Yes, please,' he said.

'Here,' Napoleon said, handing him an already open tin with a spoon in it. 'Rice pudding. Make do with that while I heat up the soup.'

Illya smiled. The congealed mess was cold and should look unappetising, but it brought him straight back to Cambridge. What simple days those had been. Why hadn't he realised that then? He took a mouthful of the creamy, quivering mass, and his stomach let out an almighty grumble.

'It's coming, it's coming,' Napoleon said jokingly, turning from the little gas stove. Then seriousness entered his eyes, and he said, 'Illya, you okay?'

'Yes,' he said, meeting his partner's eyes. 'Yes, Napoleon. I'm okay.'

'It's all right to not be.'

Illya gave a twisted smile. His okayness felt like a very thin skim across an awful lot of not okay.

'I'm very tired,' he said.

'Yeah, I know, but I'm not talking about that.'

'No, I don't think I am, either,' Illya said with a slightly hysterical laugh. He took another spoonful of the rice pudding and shoved it into his mouth. The food was comforting.

Napoleon took a look at the soup then poured it into two mugs.

'Chicken, just like mother recommends,' he said with a smile. Then he sat down, squeezing himself on the end of Illya's bunk. He looked enormously tired too. 'Psych will help you,' he said.

Illya wedged the tin of rice pudding at his side and took a mouthful of the steaming soup. Psych couldn't make it not have happened, and that was what he wanted.

'I know,' he said. 'It's just – hard. I've never – never had anything like that happen to me. All the classes in the world, they don't tell you how it will feel...'

He drank a little more. It felt so good to have that heat going straight to the centre of his being. Even after sleeping under the blanket for an hour he still felt cold deep inside from the chill of that sea water.

'I can't imagine how it must feel,' Napoleon admitted.

'No,' Illya said darkly. 'I'm glad you can't. I mean, I don't want you to ever have to feel that. It's so stupid though,' he said, suddenly unbearably angry with himself. 'We were prepared for these things. Hour after hour of training...' He tried to calm his shaking voice, stirring the soup around a little by turning the mug in his hands. 'I thought the training was adequate. We were told what might happen. That's what the sexual abuse and rape class was all about. We had our chance to turn back then.'

'Illya,' Napoleon said, meeting his eyes, looking very serious. 'That doesn't mean that it's okay when it happens. It doesn't mean you should just shrug it off. That's why we have a whole Psych department appended to the infirmary.'

Illya took another mouthful, swallowed, let the heat settle.

'No, I know,' he said pensively.

He shuddered. He could still feel her hands on him. He could still feel her body around him. He could feel the repeated stabs of that dildo into him and remember how she had shivered with delight at his cries of pain. He had finally pleaded with her to stop, and she had ignored him. What they will want most is a reaction from you. Do everything you can not to give it… Oh, she had delighted in his reaction. She had twisted that thing inside him and tormented his genitals with her pinching, twisting fingers and with that electric prod, and she had smiled as he cried out. She had spoken to him as if he were her lover, stroked him and caressed him with incredible tenderness, and then with the same breath caused him so much pain. He was so bruised now, so burnt and bruised and hurt, and he was going to have to lie on a bed in medical and let the doctors scrutinise everything that she had done.

'Illya,' Napoleon said, and he was snapped back to the present.

'Sorry,' he murmured, looking down into his soup again.

'Here,' Napoleon said, handing him a bundle of clothes. 'I dried out your underwear over the gas stove, and I found these in a locker.'

Illya put the soup down the side of the bed by the tin of rice pudding, and sorted through the clothes. There was a pair of jeans that looked a little long in the leg, and an oversized woolly jumper, along with his underpants. He slipped the underpants under the blanket, self-conscious about the fact that they were none too clean after his ordeal.

'What's the idea?' he asked.

'Put them on,' Napoleon said. 'Come on.'

So Illya passed him the rice tin and the mug of soup and carefully under the blanket pulled on the underpants and then the jeans and jumper. Napoleon gave him a length of twine to use as a belt on the over-large trousers, and he rolled up the cuffs. The jumper was far too big too, but it was a comfort, something he felt he could hide in.

'You look like a proper fisherman,' Napoleon grinned, looking him up and down.

Illya grabbed back his soup and downed the rest of it, then looked down at his bare feet. He had kicked off his shoes in the water on the island.

'Your socks are still wet and there aren't any spare shoes,' Napoleon told him. 'Anyway, you hardly need them on deck. Come on.'

So Illya followed Napoleon up the companionway and out onto the deck. It was quiet up there. He could see Pia's uncles up near the bow, their faces lit softly by a lamp and more warmly every now and then by the added glow of a cigarette butt as one of them took a drag. But Napoleon took him over to the rail, and nodded across the water. The sea looked like black silk, sparkling in a few places under the lights from the boat. And in the distance the blackness was pricked with little lights, golden and white.

'That's the Florida Keys,' Napoleon said. 'We're not far out. It won't be long before we're safe on shore and we can get a plane back to New York.'

Illya leant on the rail and gazed at the lights. His throat felt tight and sore and bruised, and all of his muscles were tired. The whip marks stung all over his torso, and the pain in his genitals and between his legs flared every time he moved. But there was such a peacefulness out there. The sea lapped so very gently at the hull of the boat that he could hardly believe it had been rough enough to make him sick just an hour earlier. And those lights, those lights were like the signs of angels. Illya didn't believe in god or angels or fairies or any of those insubstantial things, but the lights were such a comfort. They spoke of homes and normality and dry land and safety.

Napoleon patted his hand gently between Illya's shoulders. He was standing very close behind him.

'Soon, my friend,' he said softly, his mouth close to Illya's ear. 'Soon.'

Illya breathed in a deep breath. The air tasted of salt. It tasted fresh and clean. He felt an enormous sadness welling in his chest, because the world around him was so pure and beautiful and he was so damaged and broken. There was Pia below, a different girl now, he was sure, to the innocent young woman she must have been in Sicily, all because she had run foul of U.N.C.L.E. and Thrush. There was that island back there somewhere that must have been a pristine wilderness once, and then was tainted by Thrush like an insidious parasitic infection, and which by now must have been laid waste by Waverly's bombers. It all just felt so, so sad. He was so tired.

Then Napoleon put his arm lightly across Illya's shoulders and squeezed ever so gently.

'Still seasick?' he asked.

'No,' Illya said. 'Just – '

But he didn't know what to say. He felt so sad. He leant harder on the rail and dropped his head, just watching the swell of the sea. Napoleon's arm stayed across his shoulders for a little while, then he said, 'Come on, Illya. Let's get below. I want you to get some more sleep.'

Illya looked round then. Napoleon looked exhausted too.

'What about you?' he asked.

'I'm not as tired as you. I haven't been through as much. You know, just once in a while I pull rank, partner, and I'm doing it now. I want you to get some more sleep.'

Illya raised his eyebrows. 'Just once in a while, huh?'

Napoleon grinned. 'Every now and then.'

Illya huffed out a laugh. 'Aye, aye, sir,' he said with a twisted smile, and he left the rail and went below. When he clambered into the bed he pulled the blanket up over his head and he let the sadness swell over him, and he cried quietly, and it was like a cooling rain.

((O))

The sun was rising over a sea that looked so delicate it was almost unreal. The light was golden and pink and the colours caught on the top of every small ripple and nascent wave. A few gulls screamed in the air, circling around the ship as if hoping for nets to be reeled in full of flopping fish.

Illya probably should have still been asleep, but he couldn't sleep any more. He had woken at the shouts and calls of Pia's uncles as they got closer to shore, and had been glad to look across at the other bunk and see Napoleon in there, fast asleep. He had crept up out of the little cabin and onto deck, to see land coming closer fast on one side of the ship, and the still sea stretching out to the horizon on the other, like the mother of pearl surface of a shell under the glow of the rising sun.

'Ah, Illya,' Pia greeted him like a long lost friend, opening her arms to him. Illya saw an uncle glower threateningly as she hugged him, but he leant into her hug regardless. The uncle wasn't to know how very disinterested Illya was in Pia's body, apart from as a source of platonic comfort.

'You wait,' Pia said with a beautiful smile, squeezing his shoulders firmly enough to make him wince, with the injuries he still had under his jumper. And she disappeared below and came back after a few minutes with a wide, deep mug of steaming cocoa.

'It's a kind of breakfast, yes?' she asked him, and Illya smiled.

'Yes, it's a very good kind. Thank you, Pia.'

He took a sip of the hot, chocolatey drink, and felt it warm him. There were still good things in life. Rich tastes and beautiful scenes and good people. He smiled at Pia in gratitude, and she glowed.

'Illya, why do you seem so sad?' she asked after a moment of just contemplating his face. 'Things are good now, no? We're safe? Our enemies are dead?'

'Our enemies are dead,' Illya echoed. 'At least, those ones are dead.'

'There are more?' Pia asked in sudden alarm, looking about as if expecting them to sprout from the gunwales.

He smiled and put his hand on her shoulder in reassurance. 'Not for you, Pia, I promise. They're all quite dead.'

She looked directly into his eyes. 'But for you?'

His smile faded a little. 'There are always enemies for me and Napoleon, Pia.' And even the dead ones have power over us sometimes, he thought to himself. He had never hated anyone as he hated Miss Diketon. And yet... Perhaps if she were alive she would not be able to haunt him. He could not make sense of his own thoughts. He didn't know how he felt.

Her eyes were on him again, soulful and brown, and he turned away, suddenly uncomfortable. It was as if she were looking into his soul, and he didn't want anyone seeing him so deeply right now, because he hated what was there.

'I'd better go and wake Napoleon,' he said, and he ducked below, cocoa in hand, and crouched by his partner to gently shake his shoulder. 'Hey, Napoleon, we're close to docking,' he said.

Napoleon's eyes snapped open, but he lay there staring confusedly at Illya for a moment before clarity came into his gaze.

'Illya, what time is it?'

'I have no idea. I don't have my watch,' Illya confessed. 'About dawn, whatever time that may be.'

Then Napoleon frowned a little as if remembering something, and asked, 'Are you okay?'

Illya felt a strange feeling squirm through him. For a moment, Napoleon hadn't remembered. For a moment he had been clean. And then with the remembering Napoleon's face had changed, Illya had changed in his eyes.

Illya nodded silently. 'I've slept, at least,' he said. 'There were times the last couple of days I thought – ' He looked down at his knees. He didn't care to verbalise what he thought might become of him over the last few days. 'Well...' he trailed off awkwardly.

Napoleon's hand slipped out from under the blanket and clasped his, warm with sleep. It was a good, real, comforting touch and Illya valued it at that moment more than anything in the world.

'I guess we'd better stay down here while they dock,' Napoleon suggested. 'We'd only be in the way.'

'And you a sailor,' Illya said in mock censure.

'And you a navy man,' Napoleon countered.

'Submarines,' Illya responded. 'Very few ropes.'

He didn't argue with Napoleon, anyway. He just stretched himself out on the other bunk and carried on sipping his cocoa. He suspected Napoleon was trying to save him from exerting himself on deck, and right now he really didn't mind the protectiveness that could sometimes be irking. Together he and Napoleon had stopped a deeply flawed man from diverting the gulf stream, and perhaps that was enough exertion for one week.

((O))

The world felt startling and raw to Illya as they stepped ashore from the small fishing boat onto the tired old planks of a wharf. He was more rested than he had been. He was no longer the tottering mess he had been when he left the island. But he felt as if he had a sign over his head or a glowing aura pointing him out as changed. Besides, how many people came ashore shoeless and wearing over-large borrowed fisherman's clothing?

He wanted to be normal, to act as if nothing was different. But he found himself standing back and letting Napoleon act for him. Napoleon secured a cab and asked the address of a reasonable hotel. They took their leave of Pia and her uncles, although Napoleon was keen to transport Pia back to U.N.C.L.E. headquarters with them for the very necessary debriefing and offer of medical and psychological treatment if necessary. Her uncles would hear nothing of it, so all Napoleon could do was secure a promise from her to make her own way there, and hope she did.

In a way, Illya was relieved. He didn't have to pretend for Napoleon, or at least not as he did in front of Pia. Still, though, he felt as if he were pretending in front of everyone, as if he were wearing a carapace. He wasn't even sure where he was beneath that carapace, or what he was.

'Come on,' Napoleon said, nudging Illya into the cab.

'How will we pay?' Illya asked suddenly, hovering half in to the vehicle.

'Pia persuaded her uncles to lend me a few dollars. That might be the only way we can guarantee they'll turn up in New York, anyway. They'll come to get their money back. Once we're at the hotel I'll call Waverly and have him put everything else on the expense account.'

'Ah.' Illya settled back into the seat feeling reassured. Then he looked down at his socked, shoeless feet. 'You know, Napoleon, I'm not sure they'll let me in to any respectable hotel.'

'You and me both,' Napoleon said with a grimace, tugging at his own soiled and slept-in Thrush uniform. 'But they will, Illya. One call to Waverly and the wheels will be greased. We can order some clothes and food to the room and make ourselves respectable, and then we'll get the first plane out of here. We'll be home before you know it. Unless you want to go to the hospital here?' he asked suddenly, regarding Illya critically.

'No,' Illya said rather too quickly. Then he took control of his voice and said, 'No, I'd rather see U.N.C.L.E. medical.'

Napoleon patted him on the arm. 'All right, tovarisch. To the hotel, then.'

((O))

Illya reclined in his seat and listened to the dull hissing vibration of the aircraft all around him, drifting in and out of sleep. What had he become? He woke a little, and wondered what he had become. What had he let a woman do to him?

He lolled his head to the left and looked across Napoleon at the pale, fragile blue of the sky and the trails of clouds stretching across the horizon. He lolled right and looked into the aisle and at the very ordinary businessman in the seat across from him. His neck hurt as he moved it, and he remembered the purpling bruises that just showed above his collar when he moved. Napoleon had ordered two suits to their room, not individually tailored as Napoleon liked them, but smart, at least, and fitting, and Illya had dressed in his, thanking Napoleon silently for his consideration in choosing one that was just as he liked it; simple, black, unassuming. But he found he couldn't have the tie done up as it should be and he couldn't button the collar of his shirt, because he couldn't stand the pressure on his neck. When he closed his eyes he remembered Miss Diketon's hands at his throat. Miss Diketon. It struck him that he had never learnt her first name. Shouldn't one know the first name of a person who had shared those things? It was all she had ever used with him. Illya, Illya. She spoke his name as if she were talking about an exotic treat. The memory made him nauseous.

Oh, he was tired. Even after those hours of sleep on the boat, and another few hours grabbed in the hotel, he was so tired. You couldn't just make up for the kind of exhaustion he had felt with a few hours of sleep here and there.

He slipped back into warm, soothing sleep and then something kicked his foot and a soft female voice spoke and he jerked awake, gasping, staring wildly. Miss Diketon sitting across from him on the Thrush plane, kicking him out of sleep every time. He was poised to hit and holding himself restrained with every ounce of self-control he owned, because if he struck out she would hurt him, and he already hurt so much.

Oh. It was a stewardess, apologising for her clumsiness. His foot was sticking out a little into the aisle. He stared at her and fought to hold in his reaction. He made himself smile and say, 'Don't mention it. It was my fault. My foot in the aisle...'

His body was humming with adrenaline. He could feel something terrible coming over him like an approaching express train, and he looked about himself rather desperately, orienting himself for this plane type and seeing where the toilet was. Then he stood and said, 'Excuse me,' and he walked with great control down the aisle and opened the door of the toilet, and he closed it and knelt on the floor and vomited into the brushed steel toilet bowl.

He knelt there, eyes closed, sweat beading on his forehead. He felt her hands on him, her hands roaming between his legs, her fingers clenched bonily about his cock, her fingernails in the skin of his buttocks. He felt that hard black thing pushing into his body and heard her little gasps as she masturbated with one hand and pushed that thing in hard with the other and smiled as he yelled out in pain. Oh god, it had hurt so much. He had never imagined it could hurt that much.

He couldn't do this. His breath was heaving in his lungs. His heartbeat hissed in his ears. The taste of stomach acid was sour and sharp in his mouth, and he panted, his hands on the knees of his brand new suit. He felt like his throat was being constricted. He couldn't breathe. He fumbled and ripped his tie off and shoved it into his pocket, and he knelt there, gasping in breath, trying to force the memories to shrink away. Her hands on his throat, her thumbs pressing into his carotid arteries, his brain reeling and fading as it was starved of oxygen… He felt as if he couldn't breathe still, again, still. His skin was sheened with sweat. His chest was so tight, his heart felt as if it were cramping in his chest. Was he having a heart attack? Was this how it felt? Was he dying, after all this? He couldn't be dying, he couldn't, but he felt as if he were.

Don't mention it. It was my fault. My foot in the aisle...

Was it his fault? He remembered meeting her that first time, his hands up above his head because he had been carrying a crate of wine, already in a position of surrender. Hadn't he flushed a little at her naked admiration of his physical form? Had he? Had he made her think that he welcomed that admiration? Had he made her think that he wanted her? He had never wanted a woman less. She was so far from his type. He liked women of a far softer breed. But had he? Had he made her think she had a right to touch him?

Oh god…

He clenched his hands onto his knees and tried to understand what was happening. He made himself move one hand, to reach up to the button flush and press it, and he watched the remains of the good breakfast that Napoleon had ordered up to the hotel room swirl around the bowl and disappear. His mouth tasted vile. His throat hurt. He touched a hand to his neck and tenderly pressed the bruises that she had left there. Oh god, that fear of dying under her as she rode him, of dying like that… What noises had he made? Had he made noises that sounded like desire? Or had he just gasped dryly, or not gasped at all? He could hardly remember. He just remembered the constriction of whatever she had tied around his throat and the hardness of the two things she had put under the tie to press his carotid arteries closed. His stomach turned over again, and he found himself over the toilet bowl again spewing out the remains of what was in his stomach.

He dropped back so he was sitting on his heels in the cramped space. He forced himself to breathe slowly, in and out. He focussed on the hard realities of the space he was in. The curves of the toilet bowl and the little basin. The seams in the walls. The little light in the ceiling. He stood up and leant his back against the wall, and then he turned on the tap and scooped some water into his mouth. He spat out the bitter taste and bitty remains of the vomit, and then he scooped water again and swallowed and swallowed until the taste was almost all gone. Then he splashed a little water over his face and patted it off with a paper towel, and took a deep breath, and unlocked the door and walked back out into the aircraft cabin.

It was as if nothing had happened. The stewardess was leaning over the seats talking to a mother and her small boy. Businessmen were reading their papers. A woman was gazing out of a window with a dreamy expression on her face. Illya walked back down the aisle and sat back in his seat, and Napoleon blinked and looked at him, and asked, 'All right, IK?'

'Yes,' Illya said. He caught the stewardess's attention and asked, 'Could you bring me a double scotch, please? Neat.'

Napoleon blinked at him again, looking at him, taking in the open collar and the missing tie, probably noticing the pallor of his face or the exact set of his mouth, and he said, 'All right? Really.'

'Really, Napoleon,' Illya said firmly.

Napoleon shrugged, then stood up and slipped past Illya's knees, and disappeared into the toilet for a few minutes. When he came back Illya was just picking up his scotch and Napoleon sank back into his seat and played with his cuff links briefly, before saying casually, 'The air fresheners aren't what they should be in those bathrooms.'

'Well, you get what you pay for,' Illya murmured.

'Yes,' Napoleon said musingly. Then he looked penetratingly at Illya, and said, 'Care to share?'

Illya pressed his lips together. Share, here, in a plane cabin, surrounded by ordinary people, people who had no idea what he and Napoleon were and what they had just been through.

'Not really,' he said.

He took a mouthful of scotch and it drenched away the acid taste in his mouth and warmed his gullet, and he remembered Miss Diketon's wet fingers that smelt of cunt. He remembered them parting his lips and the taste of them in his mouth, and he took another swallow of scotch very quickly because his stomach was twisting again and he couldn't be sick here, not in his seat next to Napoleon and under his penetrating gaze.

Napoleon plucked a solid paper sick bag from the pouch in the seat in front of him and laid it on Illya's knees. Illya closed his eyes.

'Thank you,' he said primly, 'but I don't think there's anything left.'

'Well, just in case,' Napoleon said, and his voice was softened after Illya's tacit acknowledgement of what had happened. Napoleon put his hand on Illya's knee then. 'We'll be landing soon,' he said.

'Yes,' Illya replied, but he didn't feel the reassurance that Napoleon had obviously meant to give him. He just wanted to go home and close his apartment door behind him and crawl into his bed. He wanted to lie there in a ball under the covers, maybe get out after a while and flay himself clean in the shower, maybe bring a bottle of liquor back to the bed with him and drink himself into oblivion. But Napoleon wouldn't let him do that. They would land, and there would be a taxi, and then they would be walking into HQ and Napoleon would take him by the elbow and lead him down to medical. And then there would be touching and questions and an intimate examination, and he would be referred to Psych and he would have to go over it all again. And there would be the debriefing with Waverly, and the reports to write up, and all he wanted, all he wanted in the world, was to curl up around a hard bottle that stank of alcohol and to drink straight from the neck and fall asleep around it and to not dream, to not dream at all.

He looked into the soft golden liquid in his glass, swirled it around, and then drained it into his mouth. He couldn't order another. He still had that much control. But oh, he wanted it.

Napoleon's hand was still on his knee, and he was glad. There was a reassurance in that heavy weight, more than any words could give him. That touch didn't demand anything, not a response, not any kind of behaviour. Napoleon's hand was warm and his fingers curled over the contours of Illya's knee, and that human touch was exactly what he needed. He put his glass down on the little fold-down table and laid his hand over Napoleon's, glad that the table hid their hands from view. That was a perfect thing. His fingertips sat perfectly on Napoleon's fingernails, as if they had been made to go together. Napoleon's blood warmed his pallid hand. He hadn't realised until now that he was cold, but he was, and Napoleon's hand warmed his.

'Try and get some more sleep,' Napoleon said.

Illya was about to reply, I'm not sleepy, but he didn't say those words. He closed his eyes and welcomed the darkness and quiet that the pretence afforded him. Even if he didn't sleep, the pretence of sleep was a warm cocoon.

((O))

He really didn't want to be in the infirmary, but he knew he needed to be there. The pain in his rectum hadn't improved with time. There was pain every time he moved, reminding him constantly of what had been done to him. The last time he had attempted a bowel movement it had been almost too sore to bear, and there had been blood on the toilet paper. So he knew he had to go to the infirmary, but he didn't want to, he didn't want to. He wanted to shrink away and hibernate until all this went away.

'I know, Illya,' Napoleon said in a low voice as he walked with him towards the infirmary, and Illya looked at him sharply. Had they spent so much time in each other's pockets that Napoleon could read his mind?

'What do you know?' he asked rather irritably. He was so tired and so sore and so – afraid. Yes, he was afraid. And that, he supposed, was what Napoleon knew.

'I know you don't want to do this. And I know you have to do this,' Napoleon said. He put a hand on Illya's arm. 'I'll come in with you if you want me to, Illya.'

Illya stared down at the floor, at his feet slowly moving forwards. The shoes were so new the toes were barely creased. The suit smelt of newness. Everything on him was new except the ring on his finger and the thin gold chain around his neck. It all felt like a strange lie.

'Yes,' he said. 'Come with me.'

In the infirmary he spoke to the doctor hesitantly, with his eyes cast down, and at times Napoleon took over for him, explaining small details. And then the doctor said, 'Illya, you understand I need to give you a physical exam?'

Illya nodded jerkily, but he felt sick. The doctor went to a cupboard and fetched a patient's gown and held it out.

'Change into this, please, and I'll take a look. Mr Solo, why don't you come outside with me for a moment?'

And Illya was left alone. He swallowed hard, and his throat hurt. Then he carefully removed his clothing and draped it all neatly on his chair, pulling on the flimsy gown to cover himself. He hated these things, and he hated it even more so today. Last of all he slipped off his underpants and tucked them under his folded trousers, and he felt sick and exposed and tried to control the lurching, stupid fear. He stood there fiddling with the collar of the gown, and then the doctor knocked and was back in the room, and he could hardly bear the look of pity in Napoleon's brown eyes.

'All right, Illya,' the doctor said gently. 'I'll need you on the bed on your left side, with your right knee drawn up toward your chest. I think given what you've described that will be the best position for you.'

Illya glanced between the two men, and Napoleon asked, 'Illya, do you want me to stay?'

Something warred in Illya. No, he wanted privacy, he wanted no one to be witness to this. But he didn't want to be alone. He really didn't want to be alone.

'Stay,' he said after a long moment of indecision. 'Just – keep up at my head, will you?' He hoped the slight tremble in his voice was disguised well enough, but he thought perhaps by the expression on Napoleon's face that some of it had come through.

'All right,' Napoleon said gently.

'All right,' the doctor echoed as Illya got up on the bed and arranged himself as the doctor had ordered. The gown fell open at the back and the doctor tugged it back over him more, and he shuddered.

'Now, Napoleon, I want you to do a job for me,' the doctor said. 'I should have a nurse in here but I thought Illya would prefer privacy, so you'll be my nurse today, okay? I know as a field agent you've had a basic level of medical training.' He trundled a canister to the head of the bed and gave Illya a mouthpiece attached to a tube. 'Illya, given your injuries this is likely to be painful, so when I give you a warning I want you to take a nice deep breath of the nitrous oxide, okay?' He drew a chair over to the bed head and patted the seat. 'Napoleon, just keep an eye on him, won't you? Give him the mouthpiece if he needs you to. But Illya controls if it goes in his mouth or not. If he has too much he won't be able to hold it in there. It self regulates, by and large. I'll tell you if you need to take it away.'

Illya clenched his hand around the mouthpiece and tried to steady himself as Napoleon sat down on the chair near his head. He had been through far worse than this. He could do this. He had to. And then the doctor put a hand on his hip, and his heart started to race.

'All right, Illya, get ready to breathe,' the doctor said, laying a hand on his buttock. 'I'm going to insert a finger now. Try to relax, because that will make it easier.'

Illya locked his eyes onto Napoleon's and Napoleon offered him his hand. Illya took it, clenching his fingers around that solid warmth, and as he felt the doctor's gloved finger touch his bruised anus he bit his teeth down over the mouthpiece. He was hesitant to take in the gas and send himself into an altered state. He wanted to be, needed to be alert. But he couldn't relax. He was naked and exposed and in pain. He wanted to jerk himself off the bed and disappear.

Napoleon smiled gently at him and the doctor said, 'Breathe deeply, Illya,' and finally he sucked in the gas and felt everything drift further away. He could feel that finger, he could feel that pain, and he moaned, and his moan sounded far away, but he felt it vibrate through the mouthpiece into his teeth. He sucked again at the gas, hard, and his head spun. And suddenly he was thinking of her hands on his throat and the oxygen leaving his brain, and he moaned harder, crying out wildly, unable to discipline himself into calm.

'Doctor,' Napoleon said from very far away, and then the pressure and pain was gone from his rectum and he heard the doctor peel off his glove and wash his hands. There was a light clattering and movement, and Illya tried so hard to steady himself, and failed.

'Illya, I'm going to give you a light sedative,' the doctor said very clearly, and Illya felt the cold of an alcohol swab on his arm. 'Just a little sting.'

And the needle stung and the fluid went into his vein, and then gradually he felt a softness and warmth coming over him.

'Now, Illya,' the doctor said clearly, 'I'm trying my best to be gentle, but it will hurt. But you know I'm on your side. I'm helping you. Okay?'

'Okay,' Illya murmured sleepily. The bed felt so soft and solid beneath him. The pillow was soft under his cheek.

'Illya, I'm going to touch you again now,' the doctor said, and a moment later that pressure started up again against his intensely painful anus.

'Napoleon?' he asked.

'Yeah, I'm here. You want the gas?'

'Don't let him strangle me,' Illya pleaded stupidly, grabbing at the mouthpiece again and holding it close to his unfocussed eyes.

'No one's going to strangle you, Illya,' Napoleon promised, and he patted his jacket. 'I've got my gun. I've got your back.'

'My back's over here,' Illya said confusedly, twisting, and the doctor said, 'Try to lie still, Illya. Take another deep breath, okay?'

And Illya sucked at the mouthpiece and felt the world spin away again, and he held Napoleon's hand tight enough to bruise as the pain moved through him in a muffled, far away place. Everything felt so easy and so distant and although he could feel the pain, pain didn't really matter. He held Napoleon's hand and Napoleon said, 'Illya, dear, I've come through this affair with surprisingly little damage. It would be silly if I acquired a broken hand now, don't you think?'

Illya said, 'Oh, your hand, my hand,' and stared at the two hands entwined but didn't loosen his grip as that other hand inside him moved and made him hurt. 'There's too many hands in this room.'

'What was that, Napoleon?' the doctor asked from so far away, and Napoleon said, 'Nothing, doctor, you can carry on,' then looked at Illya closely and said, 'Illya, my Russian's not bad but I don't think Dr Babcock speaks it, so it's best to stick to English, huh?'

'Oh,' Illya said, and frowned and tried to work out of he were speaking English or Russian, because it was all just words and he couldn't tell the difference. He sucked deeply at the gas again as the doctor continued to do his work in that painful place and he stared at his knuckles and saw how white they were, clenched around Napoleon's, and Napoleon's hand stroked the hair from his forehead and he said, 'Never mind, Illya. I'll translate if I can and tell you if I can't.'

It struck him as enormously beautiful that Napoleon had made an effort to learn Russian since being partnered with him and he yearned to hear Russian from his mouth and he didn't know which language Napoleon was speaking.

'I don't know your mouth,' he said, staring at Napoleon's lips, frowning, and then he moaned again and sucked hard against the pain and Napoleon said, 'Illya, you do need a little regular air you know,' but he was talking from very far away and something clattered and everything faded, and then he was grasping for the hard mouthpiece because it wasn't in his hand or in his mouth any more and he needed it and he wasn't even holding Napoleon's hand any more.

'No bones,' he murmured as he breathed the ordinary, non-medical air of the room, and then Napoleon wrapped his one hand around the mouthpiece again and took hold of his other hand firmly and said, 'There you go. Just try to take it easy on that, huh? It's weird when you faint on me.'

'Did I faint on you?' he asked, and Napoleon smiled and said, 'Just a little, yeah.'

'I love you, Napoleon,' Illya said around the mouthpiece and another lungful of beautiful gas.

'Yeah, I love you too, partner,' Napoleon smiled, squeezing his hand, and Illya felt like everything was right but like he needed to say more, and he sucked as the pain sharpened again and listened to the doctor saying something from a long way away.

'Is his whole hand right up inside me?' he asked.

'Not his whole hand, no,' Napoleon said with a smile. 'Feels like it, huh?'

'Feels like I'm being buggered by an elephant,' Illya said, and then a squeeze of panic crept over him despite the sedative and the gas and he said tearfully, 'Get him out of me, Napoleon. Get him out of me.'

'Just a little longer,' Napoleon said, and his voice sounded anxious. 'Doctor?'

'Just a little longer,' the doctor confirmed. 'Just keep taking the gas, Illya. You can't hurt yourself with it.'

Illya sucked hard again, because the pain was strong and the feeling was hateful, and then he was spinning and Napoleon's hand was holding his and his other hand kept stroking his forehead, and he said again, 'I love you, Napoleon.'

'Yeah, you said that, and I love you too, but if you keep professing your undying love for me my reputation will be in tatters, Illya.'

'Oh, no, the doctor's confidential,' Illya assured him. 'So that means he's not really here at all and his hand isn't here either.'

And then the doctor said, 'There, that's it,' and Illya blinked, because he could still feel his hand in him but he was standing near his head now, and the panic spiked again.

'What's in me?' he asked. 'What's in me?'

'There's nothing in you but a couple of suppositories,' the doctor promised him. 'But you're very badly bruised and I've poked you about, so there will be some extra pain for a little while. But I've used some anaesthetic gel which should help dull the pain. I'm going to let you rest for a little while, Illya, while I note some things down, and then when you're quite ready I'm going to examine the rest of you and have a little talk to you. I want you to be clear headed for that, so just lie here a while and take the gas if you need it until the pain settles down. Napoleon, are you okay to sit with him while I'm out of the room? You know where the emergency cord is.'

'Yeah, that's fine, Doctor,' Napoleon said, and the doctor's hand pressed on Illya's shoulder, and then he left the room. There was a pulse of pain and Illya sucked at the gas again, and Napoleon smiled.

'Good stuff, huh?' he asked.

'The best,' Illya said. 'Think – I think we should sew some into our suits, you know. Suck it out when Thrush are torturing us.'

'And just how do you propose sewing a gas into your suit?' Napoleon asked in an amused voice.

'Not the gas, a canister, idiot,' Illya told him. 'I'm high and I've got a reason for being stupid. What reason have you got?'

Napoleon grinned at him indulgently. 'Let's say I'm allowed to be stupid when I'm concentrating on you in this state.' Then his face sobered and he said, 'Are you okay, Illya?'

Illya swallowed. 'I don't know,' he said. He felt silly when the gas was in him, and the sedative was softening the edges of everything very nicely, but beneath all that was the deep unease not only of what had been done to him but also the fear of his reaction to it. At times he felt as if he were falling apart.

'It's going to take time,' Napoleon said.

'I know.'

'And Psych will help, a lot. You know that, don't you?'

'I know,' Illya said again, then he said in a rush, 'They have to, because I don't think I can go back in the field like this, Napoleon. I'm a liability.'

'Illya.' Napoleon squeezed his hand. 'You've only had two days to process this.'

Illya blinked. 'Two days? Has it only been two days?'

'Two or three. I've lost track a little. But that's hardly any time at all. You haven't stopped until now.'

'Yeah,' Illya murmured. He took another lungful of the gas as the pain sharpened for a moment inside him. He felt so sore and uncomfortable and odd down there.

'If she weren't already dead I would find her and kill her,' Napoleon said earnestly, meeting Illya's eyes.

Illya flinched and dropped his gaze. He still couldn't work out how he felt about that. Although he never wanted to see her face again, he wished he could sit down and speak to her, to somehow work all this out, to ask her why it happened. He realised he was still lying on his side with his leg hitched up, and he awkwardly rearranged himself so he was lying on his back. The doctor had laid a sheet over him, and he was glad of that thin layer of privacy.

'She is dead,' he said, talking more to himself than to Napoleon.

'She was dead in my arms when you ran in,' Napoleon nodded. 'Just that moment.'

He took another suck of the gas to counter the stab of pain from moving, then dropped the nozzle onto the bed. 'Take that away from me, Napoleon,' he said. 'I don't really need it now.'

'You just used it a second ago,' Napoleon pointed out worriedly.

'Only because I moved. Only when I laugh,' he added with a slight smile, and Napoleon smiled too.

Napoleon took the nozzle and held it, but he didn't move the canister away. 'Just in case,' he said softly.

'I said some stupid things, didn't I?' Illya asked.

'Everyone does on that stuff,' Napoleon reassured him.

Illya squinted at Napoleon. 'Did I say I loved you?'

'Yes, you did,' Napoleon said, taking his hand again. 'But that's a given, Illya. That's not stupid. I have your back and you have mine. That's what we do. If I don't love my best friend, then what is love?'

What is love? Illya pondered. It certainly wasn't what Miss Diketon had done to him. There was a vast divide between love and sex. He closed his eyes, feeling suddenly tired.

'Oh, Napoleon, I am so tired,' he confessed, opening his eyes again and trying to focus on his partner.

'Well, you're loaded up with sedative. You're in a safe place, Illya. Close your eyes. You'll be fine.'

So Illya closed his eyes again and drifted into sleep, and then he was waking again to see Dr Babcock sitting in the chair by his desk and Napoleon sitting half slumped with his head on his hand on the chair by the bed. The sheet had slipped to the floor in his sleep and he wanted it back, but he was sore still and he didn't want to move.

'Oh,' he said, looking around confusedly, and Napoleon jerked awake.

'Oh,' Napoleon echoed. 'Ah, I must've dropped off too.'

'Do you feel a little better, Illya?' the doctor asked, and Illya looked down at himself, at his body in the thin hospital gown, at his bare shins and feet at the other end of the bed. The pain had dulled again and some of the strange, uncomfortable feeling had dissipated.

'Yes,' he said. 'I think I do.'

'Are you ready for the rest of the exam?' the doctor asked. He picked up the sheet and draped it back over Illya's body, and he clutched the edge in his hands like a security blanket.

Illya grimaced and looked at Napoleon. 'I suppose I'll have to be,' he said, and the doctor shook his head.

'I'm not going to force anything on you, Illya. I do want to perform a proper exam but only in your own time. If you want to come back tomorrow, that's okay. It's not ideal, but it's okay.'

It was almost harder to have the choice. The thought of his apartment called to him, but to have to come in here tomorrow and start all over again was too much.

'No,' he said. 'I want you to do it now. Get it over with.'

The doctor smiled. 'That's good. Now, I'm going to have to take some quite intimate swabs and run some tests, to be sure she didn't leave you with any nasty diseases.'

Illya squirmed.

'I know,' the doctor said, 'but it's a valid concern. I will also need to examine those burns and cuts and make sure nothing's infected, and take a little look at your throat. Then I will go through everything with you and prescribe you a few things, and then you can go home. I'm sure you'll be glad of that.'

'Very,' Illya said sincerely.

'What about Psych, doctor?' Napoleon asked.

'Yes, I'm going to put through a referral. Some counselling will benefit Illya greatly. Illya, I know you've suffered some pretty bad trauma, but I don't see a reason why you shouldn't come through this, okay? I'll recommend a few days leave and no field missions until you're cleared by Psych. Psych might extend that leave depending on how you get on. But now, you just relax and I'll get this exam over as soon as possible.'

((O))

'You want me to stay?' Napoleon asked at Illya's apartment door.

Illya stood with the door cracked open, half glancing in at the familiarity inside, his other eye on the wallpaper and carpet of the hallway, and Napoleon's face.

'No,' he said after a moment. 'No. I'm dog tired, Napoleon. I'll probably just fall into bed.'

Napoleon stood looking at him, his gaze penetrating. 'You'll make sure you eat?'

'When do I not eat?' Illya asked. 'You're a mother hen, Napoleon. I don't need it. I just need a good night's sleep.'

'You'll remember to take your pills?' At Illya's glower, Napoleon held up his hands. 'Mother hen, and proud,' he said. 'I just want to make sure you're all right, Illya.'

'I'm all right,' Illya said firmly. 'Good night, Napoleon.'

It was only five o'clock, but it felt like midnight as Illya slipped in through the door and locked it behind him. He half wished he had been able to ask Napoleon to stay. He stood looking into his empty living room, and that emptiness felt as if it were swelling from his chest and filling the world. Had anyone ever felt this lonely?

He walked tiredly across the room and pulled down a bottle of cognac and a small glass. He didn't particularly want cognac, but it was the first thing his hand lighted on. He poured himself a glass brim full and slumped onto the sofa to drink it. The pain twisted inside him, and he shuddered and took a huge mouthful of the drink. It helped. It really did. The liquor went instantly to his head. He hadn't eaten anything since that breakfast in the hotel in the morning, and he had vomited that up in the aeroplane toilet. But did it matter? It didn't. It was better without food in his stomach. It made the drink soften things out all the more.

He picked up his guitar and plucked in a desultory way at the strings. It was out of tune, and it sounded awful. He tossed it onto the other end of the sofa and went to put a record on the hi-fi instead. He bypassed the pile of jazz and stacked a couple of Rachmaninov LPs one on top of the other. That should keep him going for a while. He wanted the sound in his head to drive away the demons, but he didn't want to have to move again to change the records. The first one dropped and the needle hissed for a moment through an empty groove, and then the music started to swell through the room.

It was strange how the air could be so full of music and so full of loneliness and so full of evil thoughts all at the same time. Really, he thought, one of those things should be pushed out by the others. But it was the music that seemed to fade in the face of the emotions, when really the music should be the strongest thing. He refilled his glass and emptied it into his mouth, and oh, that helped to push some of the feelings out. It really did.

He stretched himself out on the sofa and then remembered the painkillers the doctor had given him, so he took the rattling bottle from his pocket and shook two into his palm. He reflected that he wasn't supposed to drink with the antibiotics he had been prescribed, but then he hadn't technically started taking those yet. Perhaps he would start tomorrow. Tomorrow everything would be better. Perhaps after a night in his own bed he would wake up feeling clean and whole again. He swallowed the painkillers with a mouthful of cognac, and refilled his glass.

Oh, he felt lightheaded now. He rested his head on the arm of the sofa and stared at the ceiling, and remembered the ceiling of that office in the warehouse. The pipes his ankles had been tied to went up the walls and one of them doglegged across the ceiling, fastened up there by brackets so covered in paint the screws were barely visible. There had been a damp patch up there in the shape of a dog's head. When she had re-tied his ankles to his wrists his foot had bobbed in front of the dog's head and he had stared at the whiteness of his toes and the peculiar vulnerability of his bare foot, and she had taken that thing and rammed it into him, and kept ramming it, over and over, and there had been tears in his eyes and he had pleaded for her to stop. And she hadn't stopped...

He dropped the glass onto the table and picked up the bottle and drank straight from the neck. Oh, it was good, that wash of vacancy that came over him when the stuff hit his stomach. He held his fist around the neck of the bottle and thought about how hard that black thing had been, that dildo that she had carried around in her bag. He remembered the taste of her cunt that she had dipped into his mouth with her fingers, and how later she had stood over him and lowered herself down until she was right over his face, and she had held her knife at his throat and told him exactly what to do. Oh, he wanted to roll into a ball and sob. He wanted to break something. He was going to have to talk about all of this. Psych would make him spell everything out, tell them every shameful moment.

That drink was so good, but the bottle was empty, and he got up and staggered across the room and picked up something else and brought it back to the sofa. Scotch, it was, and he drank some down. He should probably eat. Napoleon was right. He should have eaten something, but he couldn't order takeout because he had no money here, he'd forgotten he'd left his wallet in HQ before he took that longshoreman job. He wondered vaguely if he could go down there and get his wallet, but he knew he was too drunk for that, and really the sofa was the best and safest place to be.

He wandered into the kitchen and found half a stale loaf in the bread bin, and he cut himself an uneven slice and put some cheese on top and put it under the grill. Then he sat at the little table in there with his hand around the scotch bottle and took another drink, and stared at the empty chair opposite. He wondered if ghosts ever sat down in empty chairs, just to have company. Then his head was on the table and the kitchen was full of smoke, and he pulled the grill pan out with a flaming black lump at the centre and threw it into the sink and turned on the tap. He shoved the kitchen windows open to let out the acrid smoke, and he sat back down at the table and dropped his head onto the wooden surface, and his shoulders started to shake.

((O))

'Hey, Illya. Illya, come on now.'

It was cold in the kitchen and the air still tasted of smoke, and outside the sky was silky black. There was a bottle on its side on the table and another one next to it, and Napoleon was shaking his shoulder. Illya groaned and tried to make him stop.

'Illya Kuryakin! Wake up now,' Napoleon said, and Illya lurched to his feet and just managed to reach the sink before he vomited a thin mixture of liquor and bile over the grill tray and the carbonised lump of cheese on toast. The tap was still running, and he stared at it blearily. Napoleon came and tipped the tray up and turned the tap off, and then went across to the stove to turn off the grill. It must have been burning for hours.

'Window open, stove lit.' He sounded angry. 'You're lucky you didn't burn the place down or get invaded by Thrush – or both.'

Illya didn't know what to say, so he didn't say anything. He just let Napoleon take him by the arm and lead him back to the wooden chair.

'The doctor told you not to drink with that sedative in your system,' Napoleon said, still angry. 'Why don't you ever listen to medical advice, Illya?'

'Oh, did he?' Illya asked vaguely. He truly didn't remember.

'He did,' Napoleon said grimly. 'And did you take your painkillers?' Illya nodded. 'You're not supposed to drink with those, either.'

Well, perhaps that explained why he felt quite so drunk, although really the empty stomach and the amount he had consumed spoke for itself.

'I should have you down at the infirmary having your stomach pumped,' Napoleon said angrily, bending and checking Illya's eyes one at a time.

'Oh, no – ' Illya began to protest, but Napoleon patted his cheek.

'I think you're okay, but I'm staying with you now, Illya. You need someone to keep an eye on you.'

'Time is it?' he managed to ask.

'About nine,' Napoleon said. 'Or in your case, a bottle of cognac, too much scotch, and enough vodka to sink the Titanic.'

He sat there watching as Napoleon went to slam shut the ice box, put the kettle on the stove and then went through to the telephone and spent what seemed like an inordinately long time putting through an order for takeout.

'I don't have any money,' Illya admitted slurringly when Napoleon came back into the room. Napoleon patted his pocket.

'Good thing I do. Illya, you're going to eat and you're going to have some coffee, and then you're going to go to bed. And I'm staying here. No arguments.'

Illya just stared at him, and Napoleon said, 'What kind of partner would I be if I let you kill yourself in your own home?'

'I'm sorry,' Illya said finally. He felt ashamed at the state Napoleon had found him in. 'I think – things snowballed.'

Napoleon raised his eyebrows. 'Uh, yeah, just a bit,' he said, carefully gathering the bottles from the table and screwing the lid back on one and putting the other in the bin. He picked up the kettle as it whistled and poured the water into the coffee pot. 'You'll see Psych tomorrow,' he said.

'And everything will be magically better,' Illya said cynically.

Napoleon grimaced. 'No,' he said. 'But it'll start to get better.'

Illya groaned and rubbed his hands over his face. 'I'm sorry, Napoleon,' he said. 'I don't mean to be a self-pitying lump. I'm just – having a little trouble with this.'

'I know,' Napoleon said. 'And I'm here to stop you self destructing.'

He brought the coffee pot and a couple of cups over to the table and when the coffee was brewed he poured Illya a deep, dark cup.

'Get that inside you first,' he said, and Illya pressed his hands onto the warm sides of the cup. He felt more sane with Napoleon here. It was good to have another presence to stop his thoughts from racing.

'I'm sorry,' Illya said again. He took a large mouthful of the coffee and let it settle in his stomach. 'I keep – I suppose I keep thinking about it. It goes around and around in my head. And – well, you know the power of a good drink.'

'Yeah, I know,' Napoleon agreed tartly. 'And we both know it's not a good solution.'

Illya rubbed his hands over his eyes. 'Sometimes it's the only solution to hand.'

'Illya.' Napoleon put a hand over his as he rested his arms back on the table. 'It's not a solution. You left yourself vulnerable. You can't do that.'

Illya smiled a little. 'Well, you're here now, and I'm not going to drink any more tonight.'

'No,' Napoleon said decisively. 'You're not. Illya, is this really so – '

He broke off as Illya turned haunted eyes on him.

'All right,' he said, holding up his hands. 'That was a stupid, insensitive question even to start asking. I know. But, Illya, you can't let that Gorgon destroy you. She's gone now. She's dead. If it was a battle, you've won.'

Illya smiled tightly. It wasn't as simple as that. There wasn't winning or losing. There was lying there on the floor, whipped and weak and roped, and being so utterly exposed, stripped bare, taken advantage of. There was being forced to do disgusting things. There was being choked almost into death and forced to climax under her. There was thinking he was going to die under her, in such a situation. And then there was that pain, that terrible intimate violation of the inside of his body, the pain that reminded him of it all every time he moved.

'They'd laugh, wouldn't they?' he asked bleakly. 'All the guys at HQ. They'd ask how a man could be raped by a woman. They'd ask me why I didn't enjoy it. They'd make it into a joke.'

'Illya,' Napoleon said. 'For a start, no one but the Old Man needs to know. Him and medical. That's it. And secondly, no one there would joke about something like that.'

'Really?' Illya asked cynically, and he could see in Napoleon's eyes that he wasn't so sure.

Napoleon put both hands over Illya's now.

'You know and I know the truth of it,' he said. 'And I will never laugh about this, never treat it as office gossip. I will never share anything you tell me with anyone else. I will help you through this. I promise.'

Illya stared at him. Napoleon must be tired. He must be wrung out. Surely all he wanted to do was put his feet up and vegetate on the sofa, and then get a good, long night's sleep.

'Why are you here, Napoleon?' he asked, and Napoleon smiled.

'You shouldn't even have to ask that. Because I'm your partner, and your friend. I risked my job to get permission to go after you, and I'm not going to let you down now.'

'It's too much, Napoleon,' Illya said. 'It's just too much for you to – '

'No,' Napoleon said firmly. 'No, it's not.'

There was a buzz from the door, and Napoleon held up his hand as Illya made to move and said, 'You stay there. I've got the money, remember.'

He came back with good smelling bags full of cartons, and Illya's forehead wrinkled in confusion as he opened the first one.

'Borshch?' He opened another to find steaming fat dumplings. 'Varenyky? Napoleon, Veselka don't deliver. How – ?'

Napoleon grinned. 'They don't, but the Chinese just down the block does, and a little cash greases many wheels, my Russian friend.'

'Capitalist,' Illya murmured, but he was smiling so broadly there was no way to hide it. Trust Napoleon to bring him his favourite Ukrainian food at a time like this.

'You bet your shiny bottom dollar,' Napoleon said with feeling. He went over to a cupboard and pulled out plates and bowls and then opened the cutlery drawer and grabbed an assortment, which he dropped onto the table with a clatter. 'Eat up before it gets cold,' he urged his friend, and Illya did.

((O))

The sheet was over his head and clutched in his hands, and he remembered odd, unpleasant dreams, sweating into the sheets and trying to fight off that woman and then finally overpowering her and beating her with a rage that he would never allow in his waking life. He remembered the stench of blood and blood all over him, and that she would not die, she just would not die. And – Napoleon. He had a blurred memory of waking and Napoleon being there, giving him water and saying calming things, and then sinking back into sleep.

He lay there with the sheet over his head and the morning light illuminating the sight of his knuckles and his wrists, and then there was a clatter of cups being put on the night stand. He stayed frozen. His head ached blindingly and his mouth was vile, and he didn't want to come out of his cocoon. But Napoleon said, 'Rise and shine, Illya. I've brought you some coffee. Drink it up while it's hot.'

Illya huffed out breath and drew down the sheet, and saw Napoleon standing there already dressed and shaven and looking pristine. He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin and knew that he must be a diametric opposite to how Napoleon looked this morning. His head throbbed as the light hit his eyes, and his mouth felt like something had died in it. He needed that coffee.

'How are you feeling?' Napoleon asked.

'Hellish,' Illya replied.

'Well, we're not going to binge on the contents of our liquor cabinet again, are we?' Napoleon asked smugly, and Illya threw a pillow at him.

'What time is it?' he asked.

'Half past eight. Now, you're seeing Psych at ten and I know you're technically on sick leave but I'd appreciate your input on these reports, because after a mission of this size Mr Waverly will want the reports to be as thorough as possible. We're going to have to justify the bombing of an island and the deaths of as many as fifty Thrush personnel. I hate to ask you, but you were so much more involved than I was on the ground. I can't do it without you.'

Illya sipped at the coffee. In some ways it was a relief to be asked to help Napoleon with the reports. He didn't know what he would do with himself with nothing to do in the day but see Psych and then go home again and sit stewing in his apartment.

'Of course I'll help. I'll even do the typing,' he said, and Napoleon grinned.

'It's a deal,' he said. 'Do you feel up to some breakfast?'

Illya considered. In the sober morning his indulgence of last night felt very stupid. 'Maybe something gentle,' he said, 'starting with aspirin.'

Napoleon pushed a bottle across the night stand. 'Why not just take your prescription? Kill two birds with one stone?'

Illya shrugged. 'Why not?' he asked, and tossed two pills into his mouth. Then he looked at Napoleon and said, 'Thank you for staying. I didn't realise how much I needed it.'

Napoleon smiled. 'Not a problem, Illya. You'd do the same in a heartbeat.'

He disappeared and came back a little later with a very sensible breakfast of two slices of toast and butter. Illya regarded them and didn't feel like he was going to throw up, so he decided it was worth giving it a go.

'You didn't have much to choose from,' Napoleon excused himself.

'No, I discovered that last night.'

Napoleon sat down on the end of the bed and watched Illya eat. 'You think you'll be all right today?'

Illya shrugged. 'You keep telling me that Psych will help. I'm sure you're right. It's just hard to imagine in the middle of the night when the thoughts crowd in.'

Napoleon put his hand on Illya's thigh through the blankets. 'I am right,' he said with a smile. 'It might not feel like it at first, but you do know I'm right.'

((O))

Illya slipped into his and Napoleon's shared office quietly after his counselling session, and slumped into his desk chair. It had been hard, as he had expected, hard to peel back his defences and expose everything to a near stranger, but it had also been good.

He rested his head for a moment on his hands, breathing out long and slow. The psychiatrist had explained a lot of things about his reactions that had made a lot of sense, and he felt somewhat easier about everything. He was not going mad, and he was not alone.

He lifted his head then and wondered where Napoleon was. He had spoken about writing up the reports, but maybe he had taken the time that Illya was in counselling to catch up with something else, perhaps checking in with Mr Waverly. He smiled slightly. It would be like Napoleon to do that then, to save Illya the stress of having to meet with the Old Man and go through everything before he was ready.

He sat for a moment with his hand hovering above the intercom buttons, and then finally he made a decision. He pressed the button to be put through to records, and asked, 'I want everything you have on a Thrush employee. A late Thrush employee,' he corrected himself hastily. 'Miss Diketon. She was secretary for a Mr Strago.'

'It'll be about five minutes, Illya,' the perky voice replied, and he wondered which of U.N.C.L.E.'s many women it was on the other end. Napoleon loved to hone his skill at identifying every single female employee by voice – although Illya suspected he had just as much pride in being able to identify every man by voice too – but Illya had never bothered. It didn't really matter who he was speaking to as long as the job was done to his satisfaction.

He used the time he was waiting to fetch himself a cup of coffee and a pastry from the commissary, and he knew as he stood in the queue there to pay for his items that he really wasn't ready to be back in work. He had felt fine, but standing here with other agents all about him he just felt exposed and awkward, as if he had victim stamped across his forehead. He felt unclean and broken. He didn't want to talk to anyone because they would ask about this latest affair, and he didn't know what to say. He couldn't tell anyone other than Napoleon about this. He didn't want to, but he knew that even if he did he would be given blank looks. Every agent had been through the rape course but he knew that a large handful of them had dismissed the idea of a woman doing this to a man as a fantasy fulfilled at best, and a myth at worst. They were all in denial. He had been too. And yet she had done it. She had done all that to him, and it had not been a fantasy fulfilled. It had been a nightmare.

He stood there clenching his hands and grinding his teeth ever so quietly, and he handed over the money without a word. There was a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead, and his heart was beating fast. Dr Mathers had spoken to him about those feelings, the same feelings that he had experienced on the aeroplane when he had felt as if he were going to die. It was a natural response, he had said. He had suffered significant physical and psychological trauma and was having trouble adjusting to it. The doctor prescribed him sedatives, and promised that the counselling would help.

Illya clutched his cup of coffee and his pastry and walked out of the commissary with his head down, concentrating on the breathing exercises that the doctor had shown him. He drew air deeply into his lungs, trying to keep his walking pace calm and sedate, trying not to spill his coffee, trying not to bump into anyone else in the corridors. Someone spoke to him and he didn't reply, but that was okay. People knew him. He didn't always reply. Often he was lost in thought.

He got to the safety of the office and put the coffee and pastry down on his desk. There was a file there that hadn't been there before – Miss Diketon's details, he assumed. He pushed it aside with one hand and laid his forehead down on the cool of the desk, just trying to get through this horrible feeling of panic. It wasn't dangerous. Dr Mathers had told him that. It was an anxiety attack, and many people had them. Many agents suffered them at some point during their careers. He felt terrible, but it would pass. Just that knowledge helped, even as his heart raced and he struggled to keep his breathing in check.

A feeling of dread flashed over him, a moment where the enclosed, square space of this office made him think of that other office, the one in the warehouse where he had lain asphyxiating on the floor. He felt as if he were falling. He lifted his head and focussed on one thing at a time. The rectangle of the unlocked door. The pot plant on the filing cabinet. The stapler and discarded pens on Napoleon's desk. This was not that room. This was not the same place.

Things were calming down. The tightness of his chest was easing. He pressed his hands around the cup of coffee and let the heat sink into his skin. He felt able to take a sip, and concentrated on the feel of that hot liquid moving down into his stomach. It was all right. He was all right.

It took him almost half an hour to feel able to lean back in his chair and pull the file towards him and open it. There was a picture of her on the first page, a small black and white headshot, such as one might find in a passport. And there was her name. Lydia. She was called Lydia Diketon. Never married. The daughter of Harold and Ann Diketon. She was an army brat, and had moved from base to base. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. He flicked through the few pages. There wasn't much information there. Mostly it was stuff gleaned from school and government agencies. Her qualifications, her driving licence. She was very intelligent and should have gone far, but somehow ended up as a secretary in the employ of Thrush. There was a picture from her high school year book, and a witty little description of her perhaps written by her classmates. He didn't really understand this year book stuff. And then there was a little personal note, something that must have been obtained from a friend or family member. They did that sometimes in U.N.C.L.E. – went and spoke to innocent associates of these people in order to help build up a psychological picture of their enemies. Thrush operatives were so often ruled by their strange psychologies, driven by them, or brought down by them.

She had always been a daddy's girl, the friend had said. She spent all her time trying to please him. She could never be quite good enough. And then a small remark, something the friend had added only after a long time of being spoken to, a regretful little sentence. She thought that there was something off about Lydia's father. She thought that perhaps he had done things to his little girl that fathers shouldn't do.

Illya closed the file and pushed it aside, feeling nauseous. He remembered her face that first time she had seen him, the way she had looked at him, appraising him not as a person, but as a sexual possibility. He tried to imagine her younger self, visualising that blurry year book picture. He tried to pity her.

No. He couldn't. Perhaps in time that would happen, but right now he could not find it in himself to dredge up pity for that creature. He just felt a burning hardness in his throat.

'Illya?'

He looked up and saw Napoleon in the doorway.

'How are you doing?' Napoleon asked. Then his eyes fell on the file on the table, and he frowned, picking it up. 'Do you really want to be doing this, Illya?'

Illya shrugged, rubbing a finger along the edge of the desk. 'I wanted to,' he said. 'I had to. I wanted to know something about what made her tick.'

'Apart from pure cold clockwork?' Napoleon asked with a grimace.

Illya shook his head. 'Someone thought that her father sexually abused her,' he said slowly and deliberately. 'She spent all her life trying to please him, but she couldn't.'

Napoleon plumped himself down on the corner of the desk. 'Is that an excuse, Illya? Does that excuse what she did?'

Illya gave a small laugh. 'Not an excuse,' he said. 'An explanation, maybe.' He looked up at Napoleon then. 'Do you really believe that a person can be born bad? Don't you think our experiences mould us?'

Napoleon's lips parted a little as if he were trying to think of what to say. Then he said, 'You've been through a lot in your life, Illya. You lived through the occupation of Kiev. It didn't turn you into a monster.'

Illya picked up his pastry and tore it in half and offered one half to Napoleon. He took a bite of his own half and washed it down with coffee. Then he said, 'Don't you think we're both a little twisted to have taken a job like this one?'

'You're on the right side, Illya,' Napoleon said meaningfully.

'Yes,' Illya said, feeling the uncertainty and sadness swelling hard in his throat. 'But we hurt people. We kill people.'

'To save people's lives, to save them from harm. We kill the bad guys.'

Illya stood up suddenly, suddenly very angry, upset, something he couldn't define. Pain twisted inside him as he moved, revolting him, but he paced across the room, getting a perverse, angry pleasure from that twist of pain. It was a kind of punishment for all he had done in his life.

'We involve innocents. We shoot and ask questions later. We manipulate and lie.'

'Where possible we use tranquilliser bullets,' Napoleon countered softly. 'We only involve innocents when they've been fully appraised of the situation and give competent consent. We manipulate to stop Thrush and other organisations from murdering and terrorising millions of people.'

'Do we?' Illya asked.

On this last mission they had destroyed an entire island, not just the Thrush infestation, but every animal, every plant, every innocent person who happened to be caught up in Thrush's machinations. Perhaps it was Waverly who had ordered the strike, but it was all U.N.C.L.E., and he and Napoleon were as much U.N.C.L.E. as any of them. The weight of that felt huge on his shoulders.

'Do we?' he asked again. 'Or do we just enjoy the thrill?'

Napoleon put out his hands to catch Illya's shoulders, stopped him in mid-stride, drew him close.

'Illya,' he said quietly. 'Stop.'

Illya breathed out for so long he felt as if he were deflating. Napoleon caught him as he slumped and held him in a tight hug. Instead of struggling, Illya just leant in against Napoleon's body, feeling the warmth and solidity of him. He was such a dependable force.

'It's natural for you to have these doubts and questions, Illya,' he said, close to his ear. 'We all do when we've been through such a hard time as you have. And then things settle down, things even out, and we're okay again. You'll be okay again.'

'Will I?' Illya asked.

'Yes,' Napoleon promised.

And despite everything, Illya believed him.

'Do you think the counselling helped?' Napoleon asked, letting him out of the hug, and Illya sat down at his desk again.

'It gave me some new insights. It helped me to process my reactions. I've been having anxiety attacks, Napoleon. I didn't realise that was what they were. They're – horrible. Make me feel like I'm dying.'

Napoleon smiled tightly. He pulled his own chair over and sat down on the other side of Illya's desk.

'I understand,' he said. 'Believe it or not, I suffered from them at college. I never told anyone but the doctor. They are – utterly horrible.'

Illya looked at Napoleon as if he were seeing him anew.

'You did?' he asked. 'Really?'

Napoleon smiled. 'Really. I let the stress of things build up so far, and it just overcame me. But the doctor taught me some very good techniques and I started to manage the stress better, and I haven't had one in many, many years.'

'Oh,' Illya said. Just knowing that fact about Napoleon made everything seem so much better. He didn't feel like a failed human any more.

'So,' Napoleon said, 'I will be with you, Illya, and I will help you if you feel an attack coming on. You'll learn to recognise the triggers.'

Illya touched a hand to his neck. He still felt bruised there. He hadn't been able to don a tie this morning.

'We should start on that report,' he said a trifle uncomfortably. He was afraid that talking about triggers would trigger an attack.

'Are you sure?' Napoleon asked, 'because I can do it alone, you know.'

Illya pushed Miss Diketon's dossier aside and drew his typewriter to the centre of the desk.

'Watching you type is like watching a horse trying to use chopsticks,' he said. 'It's far less painful to simply do it myself.'

((O))

'Now, Illya, there isn't a single good reason why I shouldn't spend the night,' Napoleon said. He had a foot firmly placed between the door and the frame, so there wasn't even the chance that Illya could shut the door on him.

'No, really, Napoleon,' Illya protested. 'I don't need you to stay. You stayed last night. I was all right.'

'You spent most of the night having nightmares,' Napoleon pointed out.

'Then surely you want to stay at your place and have a good night's sleep?' Illya asked him. He felt so close to the edge of anger, and it wasn't fair to be angry at Napoleon, it really wasn't, because he was trying to help. But he wanted to go through the door and ball himself up on the sofa and just be alone. He didn't feel fit to be in company.

Napoleon muscled through the door and closed it behind him. He pressed his broad back against the door panels and folded his arms across his chest.

'Illya,' he said. 'I am staying here. That is the end of it.'

Illya sighed and shrugged off his jacket and threw it onto the back of a chair. He felt raw from the counselling and exhausted, and it was only six o'clock. He had stayed in the office all day going through the reports despite having no obligation to be there. Napoleon was right; he did need his input on the reports. There were so many parts that Napoleon hadn't been there for, and Mr Waverly needed the report as soon as possible to justify the strength of his reaction to the authorities. Leave was all very well, but parts of his job couldn't just be left to someone else.

'You can put it all out of your head for the evening,' Napoleon said, strolling over to the sideboard and looking through the bottles of alcohol that were left after last night's binge. 'Scotch? Ah, no, you can't have it with the medication, and it's miserable to drink alone. Well, how about I make us some coffee?'

Illya threw himself onto the sofa, wondering how it was even remotely possible to put it out of his head for the evening. He wished he could remove his very troublesome head and put it outside for the night. His thoughts were like a whirlpool. He touched his fingers to his neck again, and shivered. He had been strangled before, but never as she had done it, with such prurient purpose. His mind flashed back to lying on that hard floor, to how the lack of air had intensified every sensation, how she had touched him and he had tried to fight against the bonds and failed. He had felt so miserably exposed, so vulnerable and unclean.

His heart was starting to race again, his chest tightening. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing.

He looked up, and Napoleon was in front of him with a cup of coffee in his hand.

'I'm running you a bath,' Napoleon said. 'Are you okay?'

'Yes,' Illya said tightly.

'Coffee,' Napoleon said, and Illya reached out and took the cup, watching his hand very carefully to see if it were trembling. He didn't want Napoleon to see what he was going through. He didn't want to keep being so weak in front of him.

Napoleon went across the room and turned on the hi-fi, dropping the needle onto one of the Rachmaninov records from last night. The music teased into Illya's head like itching fingers, and he said precipitately, 'Can you put on something with a voice in it?'

Napoleon started to leaf through the stack of records and finally picked one out. The black disc shone in the light. He dropped it onto the turntable, and then Ella Fitzgerald's mellow voice filled the room.

'Ah,' Illya said. It was getting easier to breathe, and he drank a little of the coffee.

'Better?' Napoleon asked.

'Yes,' Illya said. 'Yes, that's much better to listen to.' He turned his ear towards the bathroom, listening to the sound of the running water. 'Thanks for running the bath,' he said. 'I think I'll take my coffee in there.'

Napoleon smiled. 'Go right ahead.'

So Illya went into the bathroom and checked his bathrobe was on the back of the door, then dipped a hand into the water and stirred a little extra cold in. He turned to close the door, then shivered with the uncomfortable memory of that small office room. The squareness and enclosure of it was just like his bathroom. So he left the door half open and methodically removed his clothes, then slipped into the water.

He hissed at the sting of the heat as it touched the lash wounds on his chest and arms and the electrical burns all over his body. The touch of the water was good, but oh, it hurt in those wounds. He ran his fingertip down one of the sore cuts that she had laid on him from just under his right nipple down to the bottom of his rib cage. The memory of the lash coming down made him shudder, and he closed his arms around his chest and closed his eyes too.

Suddenly his nakedness seemed too much. He didn't want to see himself. Perhaps the bath was a mistake. He didn't want to look at his body. The hot water stung on all of those burn marks and bit extra hard between his legs. He kept his eyes closed and moved one hand tentatively to touch the burnt places on his soft penis. The skin felt hard under his fingertips. He made himself open his eyes and he carefully drew his foreskin back to examine the burns she had given him on the glans, because the doctor had told him he must check those sensitive burns. He stared at himself, at the damage she had done to him, and then he jerked his hands away and clenched his fists.

Oh, it was all so hard… He sat there watching the faint mist of steam rising from the water and looking at the distorted shape of his body beneath. He looked at the length of his legs and his toes just poking out from the water. He remembered the oily, industrial scent of that warehouse and the forklift he had been hung from. He leant his head back and remembered her fingers pressing against his neck and watching the blank ceiling and the awful feeling as consciousness drained away.

Those fingers were dead. She was dead. She wasn't in this world any more and she had no power over him, but still, she was here, touching him, torturing him, making his skin crawl with hateful sensations. As his eyes moved over the sharp square corners where the walls met the ceiling a formless feeling of dread pressed over him, heavy on his chest.

He breathed in deeply and the hot, moist air caught in his lungs, and he couldn't breathe, he just couldn't breathe. He felt paralysed with that drenching dread, and he called out desperately, 'Napoleon!'

He was there in an instant, gun in his hand out of pure instinct, but he dropped it with a clatter as soon as he saw Illya. He knelt by the bath tub, his hands on the sides, and he said very calmly, 'Illya, do you need to get out?'

He tried to catch his breath. He hated the sight of himself. He didn't want to get out and see his body. He closed his eyes so tightly, and then Napoleon pulled the plug and the water began to drain away. Then Napoleon was pulling him up, slippery and wet, and wrapping his bathrobe around him and hustling him out of the room.

'Come on, sit down,' Napoleon said, taking him to the sofa. 'That's it.'

Illya's arms were under the bathrobe. It was over him like a cloak. He struggled to get his wet arms into the sleeves and shroud himself in the thick towelling, then he picked up a little bottle from the coffee table: the prescription the psychiatrist had given him. He tried to open the bottle but his wet fingers slipped on the lid, then Napoleon took it from him and checked the dosage and shook out a single pill.

'There you are,' he said, slipping it between Illya's lips, and he swallowed it dry.

'I'm sorry,' he murmured. He felt so ashamed of himself, so foolish for panicking in the bath and calling Napoleon in.

Napoleon just sat down beside him, very close to him, and smiled.

'You feel like you can breathe now?' he asked.

Illya nodded. 'It's much better,' he said. He rubbed his hands over his face. 'I need to just get over it,' he said furiously. 'This is ridiculous.'

'Illya, you don't just get over something like this,' Napoleon told him seriously. 'If it had happened to me would you think I was being weak for reacting like this?'

Illya shook his head miserably. He hated to think of Napoleon in that situation and for a moment he was almost glad it had happened to him instead. 'No, I wouldn't. Of course I wouldn't.'

'Then don't do it to yourself. If you could get over it that easily I'd be worried you were a psychopath.'

Illya huffed out a half mirthful breath. 'She was a psychopath. I'm just – ' He shook his head. 'I don't know what I am right now. I'm barely even an agent. I mean, I can't even take a bath without calling for help.'

'You know how it is with counselling,' Napoleon said. There was nothing but sympathy on his face. 'It always loosens things up at first. Sometimes it gets harder before it gets better. Maybe there are too many associations in the bathroom, huh?'

'She – ' Illya swallowed, closed his eyes, but then he saw that room in vivid detail in front of him so he opened his eyes again and focussed on his shelves of books and the few art works on the walls. 'She raped me the first time in a little office room,' he said slowly and deliberately, turning his eyes towards the window so he couldn't see Napoleon's face. Saying those words felt like plunging from a cliff. His words seemed to hang in the air. 'It was a very square little room, the same shape as my bathroom, cream walls like my bathroom. The – corners where the walls meet the ceiling. They look just the same. Isn't that a stupid thing to set me off?'

'It's not stupid. But I'm sorry,' Napoleon said, sounding very much as if he didn't know what to say. 'If I'd known...'

'What? You would have repainted my bathroom and put up cornices before running the bath?' Illya asked with something of a hollow laugh. 'You couldn't know. I didn't know it would set that off in me.'

'It's odd what can remind you of terrible things,' Napoleon murmured.

'Yes,' Illya replied. He looked at his hands, picked at his fingernails. Now he'd taken the leap he felt like he needed to carry on. 'She'd had me hung up by my wrists for hours in the warehouse, torturing me, and then she let me down and dragged me in there and tied me. I couldn't do anything, Napoleon. I should have tried to get away, but I could hardly move, I was so tired and in so much pain. She only had a knife but she was a demon with it. I was too exhausted to be able to try getting away with any hope of success.'

'In that kind of situation the priority is survival,' Napoleon said softly, his voice so quiet it almost wasn't an interruption at all.

'Yes,' Illya replied. 'The priority is survival. I kept that in my mind. I clung to it. When she dragged me into that office and locked the door and pulled down the blind, I knew it was going to be a sexual assault. She'd been building up to it for hours. She talked to me like I was her date, almost. Touched me like – like she had a right to touch me.' He stared at the books on the opposite wall, not really seeing a single one of them. 'And then I was in there on the floor, and she – she stripped off my lower half, and then she started. She touched herself – masturbated, I mean – and then she put her filthy hand in my mouth, and – ' He shuddered at the remembered taste. 'I wanted to bite her fingers off. She put her fingers down my throat so she could watch me choking.'

'You didn't bite her,' Napoleon said from beside him. Illya almost jumped. Napoleon had been so still it was almost as if he were alone, confessing to the bookshelves.

'No. I didn't dare,' he said. 'It wasn't so much that she could have killed me, but she could have done terrible, terrible things and still kept me alive. I was utterly at her mercy. Utterly.'

'I know,' Napoleon said gently. 'You did right, Illya. Everything by the book. You protect yourself as far as possible. That's what you did. That's why you're here now.'

'I really did think she was going to kill me when she put her hands on my throat. I know Strago would have killed her, but she was so lost. She was so gone on what she was doing. It was like – ' He trailed off, shaking his head. He didn't want to think about how his body had inflamed her lust.

'First she just pushed her thumbs into my carotid arteries and watched what it did. Then she tied something around my throat. God... When it was her hands I knew she was focussed on what she was doing, but when she tied that thing around my throat...'

He touched his hand to the side of his neck, shivering. He felt sick. Even with the sedative working its way through his system the memory had the power to chill him.

'Illya, you don't have to talk about this,' Napoleon said gently.

He shook his head. 'No, I do. I do,' he said almost desperately. 'I'm carrying this thing around inside me and I feel so foul, Napoleon. I feel rotten all through.'

'All right,' Napoleon said softly, putting a hand on Illya's arm. 'All right. You tell me, then.'

Illya put his hand over Napoleon's. He felt so warm and solid and real. It was a good thing to feel. He didn't have to look at Napoleon, but he could feel him there. He could feel that unconditional support.

'She – It was so strange, Napoleon. So odd.' A little peak of curiosity rose in him. Napoleon was sexually adventurous, surely? Wasn't it part of U.N.C.L.E. legend that Napoleon Solo did it every which way? He'd seen the way Napoleon looked at women, even men, at anyone who took his fancy. 'Napoleon, have you ever done anything like that? Have you ever used asphyxiation as an aphrodisiac?'

Napoleon moved awkwardly. 'Uh, no, I can't say I have. I get enough of that kind of stuff on the job. I prefer to keep my sex life reassuringly normal, and safe.'

'But varied,' Illya said with a little laugh. It was a relief to think about Napoleon for a little while instead of driving on on this awful, necessary confession. 'You have a different woman for every day of the week, sometimes a.m. and p.m..'

'You know, I'm not that promiscuous,' Napoleon protested, and Illya raised an eyebrow.

'Really?'

'Uh, well...'

'Well,' Illya said. Then he focussed his eyes back on the spines of the books on the opposite wall, and said, 'She must have done it before. She knew exactly what to do. She tied something around my neck, a scarf or a tie or something, and she put something under it on both sides, something hard that would compress the carotid arteries. And she tied it so tightly. It crushed my windpipe and those hard things blocked off the arteries and – ' He felt dizzy just thinking about it. His heart was racing.

'Illya,' Napoleon said, holding his hand hard. 'Illya, don't force yourself to talk about it. It must be such a terrible memory.'

'I – I – '

Now it came to it, he didn't know what to say. He'd talked about this already today, but he had thought that telling Napoleon was different somehow, necessary, a way to cleanse himself. He remembered how that asphyxiation had made him feel, how it had set every nerve alight and his body had responded to her despite his horror and disgust. How could he explain that to Napoleon? How could he lay himself so bare again?

'I don't know how to – ' he faltered. 'I don't know if I can. I thought I needed to tell you...'

'Illya,' Napoleon said, his voice very firm and quiet. Napoleon's voice was so rich and steadfast. 'I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that it was forced, that you didn't ask for it or lead her on in any way. I know that it was terrible for you. I was there when the doctor examined you, remember? I was with you all through that, and I'm with you now. You don't need to make me your confessional. You haven't sinned.'

Illya stared at the books, his eyes running along the shelves. There were all his Russian textbooks and novels and biographies and so on, then a handful of texts in French. The vast majority of his books were in English, tomes on quantum mechanics, on nuclear physics, along with journals and novels and factual books about so many subjects. He had always been able to lose himself in these things, but he didn't think he would be able to concentrate on a single one right now. Not one of those books would tell him how to deal with this.

Then Napoleon said as if he had been pondering on something, 'You said she raped you the first time in that room?'

Illya grimaced. 'She had me with her all the way to the island on the aeroplane, and then she had me in a little room when we were there. Strago was busy. He didn't need me yet. It was a long time...' He swallowed. He couldn't look at Napoleon's face. 'Napoleon, do you think I will ever be right again?' he asked quietly.

Napoleon's hand was so firm around his. 'Yes,' he said.

'I can hardly look at a woman without thinking of her.'

'That will get better too,' Napoleon promised. 'You'll keep going in and talking to the doctor, and you'll sort out all of these things in your head. You'll make yourself well again. And she's dead. She's far, far away now.'

He recalled her picture in that dossier, the few lines about her history, that little piece about her father. Had she been held down and violated? He saw a big man's body hulking over a small girl, and he felt a tiny flicker of empathy. How unthinkably awful that must have been for her. How terrible it was when those we should trust betrayed that trust.

'She just wanted to please him,' he murmured, and Napoleon looked at him, startled.

'Huh?'

'She idolised Strago and she wanted to please him, and he rejected her at every turn. He couldn't have cared less about her. She was – so confused. She wanted approval and she wanted power and control. She can't have had much control in her life, except by tying men down... Strago would have been disgusted, must have been disgusted at that.'

'Oh, I think Strago had his own barrel of hangups,' Napoleon agreed. 'That entire place, it was just a kettle of oddity. And we came out of it alive, Illya. You came out alive. Don't forget that.'

'Yes, I did,' Illya murmured.

That was some small victory. He had come out alive. He recalled everything that he had pushed his body through after that. Getting out of the cell and making himself go along with Miss Diketon because it was the only way to complete the mission, finding Napoleon in the undergrowth, and the surge of relief that he was there. Walking brazenly through the complex in a stolen Thrush uniform, and then opening that tube to the sea and fighting with his last reserves of strength in freezing water. Finding Napoleon, finding her dead, Strago dead, feeling that odd, muted burst of satisfaction that they had done it, that they had taken on this complex of dozens, and won. And he had come out alive. They both had.

((O))

Illya took himself up to the higher levels of U.N.C.L.E. with some trepidation after his most recent counselling session, hoping he had the mental strength for this. Mr Waverly had requested a meeting with him, and he knew it was because he had read both Illya's detailed report of what he had suffered at the hands of Miss Diketon, and the report written by the psychiatrist. The reports would have had the highest level of confidentiality, and Mr Waverly and perhaps Napoleon would be the only ones who would read them, but still he hated to think of anyone reading those awful details. He had made his report as detached as possible, but it had been terrible to write.

Waverly had asked to see him in one of the small and cosy meeting rooms up there rather than in his large, brash office, and as Illya stepped out of the lift he saw Napoleon lounging in the corridor, leaning against the wall.

'Napoleon,' Illya nodded, and his partner fell into step with him.

'Illya. Counselling go okay?'

'As well as it ever does,' Illya said. He always felt raw and emotionally fragile after these sessions.

'I just wanted to check you didn't want back up for your meeting with Waverly,' Napoleon said, and Illya smiled, feeling a swelling of warmth towards his partner.

'Thank you, Napoleon,' he said sincerely, 'but I will be fine. He wants to see me on my own.'

'Well, I'm sure you'll be okay,' Napoleon agreed, patting him on the arm.

'This is the room,' Illya said somewhat awkwardly, stopping outside the door.

Napoleon glanced at the door and Illya knew exactly what he was thinking. The room Waverly was meeting him in was just the kind that tended to set off feelings of panic. Small, square, cream painted, with those very stark corners between wall and ceiling and the privacy blind pulled down over the small window in the door. His heart was already starting to beat faster.

'I'll be all right,' Illya said, then he lifted his hand and knocked at the door.

Waverly's voice called him in, and Illya swallowed on his feelings of unease. He stepped inside, and he wanted badly to ask the chief if he could open the blind on the door, but it seemed such a foolish thing. Besides, this room wasn't so much like that one. There was no desk, no desk chair, just a couple of low leather armchairs and a round coffee table and a little alcove at the side for making drinks. Illya glanced at the little blind on the door and the hard corners where the walls met the ceiling, and tried to rationalise and control his feelings. There was no damp on the ceiling. No desk. No Miss Diketon to rope him down and –

Oh god... He felt dizzy. He had to catch his breath. Mr Waverly was directing him towards a chair and all he could think of was that woman and what she had done. He sat very carefully, hyper-aware of the slight amount of soreness between his legs and how he felt he was carrying a flag to mark him out.

'Tea, Mr Kuryakin?' Waverly asked kindly, wandering over to the alcove. 'Coffee is the custom here, but I do prefer a cup of tea. And tea's the Russian drink too, isn't it? That's something we share.'

'I suppose it is, sir,' Illya said. This whole situation was so odd, he felt so odd. 'Although Russian tea is made rather differently to English tea.'

'Plenty of English tea in Cambridge, though?' Waverly asked with a jovial smile. 'Am I right?'

Illya smiled too. 'Yes, there was plenty of English tea in Cambridge. I got quite used to it while I was there.'

Mr Waverly poured the tea which he must have made ready for Illya's arrival, and placed the two bone china cups and saucers together with a plate of biscuits on the table.

'I find Americans bother you with that awful nonsense of asking if you want cream with your tea. Why on earth would a man want cream in his tea?'

'I – can't imagine, sir,' Illya said. He picked up a biscuit, almost put it down again, then didn't and rested it on the edge of his saucer. He picked up his cup to stop himself from crumbling the biscuit to pieces in his fingers.

Waverly took a sip of his tea. 'There's no need to be nervous, Mr Kuryakin,' he said kindly. 'None at all. This isn't an interrogation.'

'No, sir,' Illya agreed, but if that were the case why were his hands trembling and why did his ribs feel as if they were banded with steel? Why was his head buzzing like this?

'I've read your report, along with that of Dr – er – your medical doctor, and the psychiatrist's preliminary reports. You seem to have had an awful time of it, don't you? Quite unpleasant.'

Illya could have bitten through the china of his cup.

'Yes, sir. It was quite unpleasant,' he agreed with veiled eyes. What an understatement. He glanced up at the cream walls and felt his throat tighten, and he closed his eyes for a moment.

'Yes. Very unpleasant. Well, I'm in full agreement that you should be placed on an exemption from field duty until the psychiatrist can give you a clean bill of health, but I find myself disagreeing with him over light duties, Mr Kuryakin,' Waverly said. 'He has recommended that you take at least two weeks off, completely off, coming in only for the necessary medical checkups and counselling.'

'I see, sir,' Illya said. The thought was awful to him. The idea of two weeks of nothingness was terrible. But he had such a hard time when he came in, so he didn't know what he should do. Those feelings of filth and disgust overwhelmed him at times. He could hardly look his co-workers in the face, much less hold a conversation with anyone but Napoleon.

'I think I know you better than that,' Mr Waverly said. 'What do you think, Mr Kuryakin?'

'Oh, I – ' Illya took a sip of his tea and looked down into the opaque liquid. He wished Waverly would just make the decision for him. 'Well, I wonder if I could do small amounts at first, sir,' he said. 'I want to be occupied, but I am having some trouble with certain situations.'

'Well, how would it be if you came in for a few hours a day, Mr Kuryakin? Say three hours? I can be flexible, of course, if you need to leave early or want to stay longer, and your medical appointments will be during those hours of course.'

'Oh, well, yes. That sounds – ' He didn't know what to say. He fiddled with his cup, turning it in his hands.

'Your psychiatrist told me you're having problems with anxiety attacks.'

Illya looked at his knees. 'Well, I am, sir,' he nodded. He didn't want to talk about that. He could feel the panic building and he was so afraid of it erupting in front of Waverly. This room felt so small and so airless, and he wished he had asked for the blind to be open. He wanted to put his hand to his throat and rip his tie off. He had worn it because he knew Waverly liked his agents to be formally dressed, but he wished he hadn't. He had tried a poloneck, but the high collar had provoked the same uneasy feelings.

'You've been through a terrible ordeal, Mr Kuryakin. A terrible ordeal,' Mr Waverly said, shaking his head.

It was so hot in here. Was it really that hot? Mr Waverly kept talking but he wasn't hearing him. His heart was thudding against his ribs. The air felt thick. He looked at the cream walls and the flat ceiling and where the two met, and he felt the concrete floor under his back and chill on his naked thighs, and he could smell her suddenly, vividly, that smell of her, some perfume mixed with a female smell. He couldn't breathe and his chest hurt so much and his head was spinning. His stomach lurched and suddenly he was vomiting down his front and onto the floor between his knees.

He was sitting there, panting, staring at the floor. Waverly's hand was on his back and there was a worried tone in his voice, but he couldn't work out what he was saying. And then Napoleon was there too. Napoleon must have been waiting outside, because he was there saying, 'Deep breaths, Illya. Nice deep breaths. In and out.'

He panted, his mouth foul, and Napoleon was sitting on the low table in front of him, their knees were touching, and Napoleon said, 'Look at me, Illya. Come on. Look at me. Deep breaths, just like me.'

And Napoleon breathed in deeply, and Illya tried to follow suit, but he breathed a shallow breath and then he was jerking it out again. Napoleon took hold of his hands and they felt so warm and dry against the clammy damp of his own.

'In and out.'

Mr Waverly put a glass of water on the table next to Napoleon. Illya tried to just focus on Napoleon's eyes. He wished they were alone. The stench of vomit filled the small room.

'In and out,' Napoleon said, and slowly, gradually, Illya managed to mirror Napoleon's breathing until he was breathing slowly too.

'I'm sorry,' he murmured. 'I'm sorry.' He felt dizzy, he felt stupid, mortified at behaving like this in front of Waverly.

'Nonsense, Mr Kuryakin,' Mr Waverly said. He was sitting in a chair angled towards him, nothing but concern in his pale eyes. He picked up the water and said, 'Have a drink, son. It'll help.'

Illya took slow, small sips of the cold water, still holding Napoleon's hand with one of his. He felt a brushing at his jacket and looked down vaguely to see that Mr Waverly was wiping splashes of vomit from his clothes with a damp cloth. How odd it was that Mr Waverly was tending to him with all the care of a concerned father.

'Would you, er, take Mr Kuryakin home, Mr Solo?' Waverly asked. He gave a wry smile. 'I think that's quite enough for today, don't you?'

Illya looked down at the pool of vomit on the floor, and felt wretched. He had created such a scene.

'Don't you worry about it,' Waverly said as if he had read his thoughts. 'After all, we do have cleaning staff. They need to earn their wage somehow.'

'Come on,' Napoleon said, then checked himself and asked, 'Do you feel ready to move?'

Illya nodded stiffly. He still felt awful, but at least his breathing was under control. He stood and he felt dizzy, and he stayed still for a moment with his head cast down, Napoleon holding both of his hands.

'I'm sorry,' he said again, but Napoleon led him out of the room, and that awful sick smell faded somewhat, although it was still in his clothes.

'You okay to come down to our office?' Napoleon asked.

Illya nodded, and he followed Napoleon vaguely, and soon he was sitting in his chair by his desk, and the office cat had followed him inside and jumped up on his lap, and was sniffing suspiciously at the damp patches on his suit.

'See, even he's worried about you,' Napoleon said, nodding towards the cat. 'But at least he's not under my feet for once.'

The cat had once given Napoleon a sprained knee, but Illya had never been quite sure how, because he spent most of his time sleeping near the heating vents or in boxes of paper. Nevertheless, Illya welcomed this unexpected visit, digging his fingers deep into the soft fur and letting the cat's purrs help to bring him back down.

Napoleon just sat quietly in the office, going through things on his desk, leaving Illya alone, and Illya sat and stroked the cat and let his body calm down. His thoughts began to settle, he started to feel calmer and less ashamed by what had happened.

'You feeling a bit better now?' Napoleon asked after half an hour. He crouched in front of Illya and looked into his face. 'You look better. More colour in your cheeks. Come on. I'll drive you home.'

((O))

He took Illya to his own apartment, which was larger and better kept than Illya's. Illya dropped himself down on the sofa and closed his eyes, while Napoleon threw open the balcony doors to let the salt air of the East River into the place.

'Do you feel up to a shower?' Napoleon asked, but Illya shook his head.

'No,' he said honestly. 'No, not right now. A change of clothes, maybe.'

'Well, I'll pop down to your place and get you some,' Napoleon said easily. 'You'll be all right?'

'I'll be fine,' Illya said, almost growled. He felt so stupid. He was fine now. He didn't want to have to confront himself naked in the shower, but he wasn't about to fall apart.

'All right,' Napoleon said, and a moment later Illya heard the door close and Napoleon's footsteps move away down the hall.

He lay there with his eyes closed, trying to marshal his thoughts. He had gone very deeply into things today with the psychiatrist. No wonder the triggers had been everywhere, the memories so quick to come. He had spoken at length about things he had never wanted to speak of to anyone. He remembered the feel of her coming down over his mouth, forcing him to taste her. He remembered the panic and the horror when she cut off his arteries and coerced him into performing for her. How awful, how horrible… And to think of Mr Waverly reading those details. He felt filthy to think of him reading all those reports. It was just terrible. He didn't understand how anyone who knew could look at him without turning away in disgust.

He got up and moved half-blindly into Napoleon's bathroom, where he tossed cold water over his face and tried to scrub away those awful feelings. He felt so unclean, but he couldn't begin to consider washing. Recently he had been washing by stepping into the shower with the light off, doing everything in the dark. It was better than seeing himself. Anything was better than seeing himself.

All those memories and thoughts and feelings... The sensations crawled on his skin as if they were happening again. What had she done to him? She had broken him, ruined him. He could feel it all over his body, all those feelings all over again, the feel of her on him, the itch of her hair, the slick wetness, all of it, on his mouth, on his groin. He felt as if he were going to explode with the horror of it all, and he hauled off and punched Napoleon's bathroom wall so hard that the pain burst in a red bloom in his hand and he sank to the floor, shocked, reeling, cradling that hand in his lap.

There was a light knock at the door, and Napoleon asked, 'Illya? Are you in there? Are you all right?'

He blinked, wondering just how long he had been in here. The tap was still running, an odd, distant, natural sound through the hissing of his heart in his ears. He got up and shut off the tap and dried his face with the towel, then came back outside.

'Sorry,' he said, not looking at Napoleon. 'Distracted. I'm all right.'

'All right?' Napoleon asked dubiously, taking Illya's arm by the wrist and lifting it to look at his loosely clenched hand. He hissed at the sight of it. There was blood on his knuckles and they were starting to swell.

'Did that help?' Napoleon asked, raising his eyebrows.

Illya snorted. 'I don't know. It gives me something to focus on.'

'How about you find a less destructive way to focus, huh? Is my bathroom okay?'

Illya frowned. 'I think so.'

Napoleon jerked his head towards the sofa. 'Your clothes are there,' he said. He went and fetched an ice bag from the freezer and brought it to Illya, then helped him as he painfully changed from his splattered clothes into the clean ones.

'Tell me what I should do with you, IK,' he said, slumping down on the sofa next to Illya.

Illya smiled wanly. 'Put up with me?' he asked. 'If you can?'

'Well, I'm used to that. Maybe I should just wrap you in cotton wool until your next counselling session, huh? Would that help?'

Illya grimaced. He tried to flex his hand against the freezing ice bag. His knuckles felt stiff and he wasn't entirely convinced he hadn't broken something. He wondered how much cotton wool Napoleon would have to use to protect him from himself.

((O))

He slept there, in Napoleon's spare bed, and when he woke the morning sunlight was streaming in obliquely through a crack in the curtains, and for a moment he felt as light and golden as that sunlight. Then he felt the stiff, sore pain in his hand, and he grimaced. Before he did anything else he reached out for his prescription painkillers and took two, then he got up and slid one curtain open and looked at his hand. His knuckles were purple-red, his hand was swollen, but he could move his fingers, at least.

'Good morning,' Napoleon said, and Illya turned from the window. Napoleon was poking his head around the door. 'How's the hand?'

'Sore,' Illya said, 'but I don't think it's broken.'

'Ah, good,' Napoleon said. 'You feel up to going out for breakfast?'

'Out?' Illya echoed.

He was always overtaken by momentary surprise by bourgeois suggestions like this. Napoleon thought nothing of going out and paying someone to make his breakfast for him. Illya's idea of having breakfast out was picking up a quick doughnut and coffee because he hadn't woken up in time to make himself toast before leaving for work.

'Out,' Napoleon nodded. 'Come on. I'll treat you.'

He bought Illya eggs benedict in a busy restaurant a few blocks away, where the waitresses kept the coffee topped up and there were couples and families and friends all chattering over their own meals. It was good. No matter how much dour Soviet criticism Illya wanted to muster, he couldn't do it, because the food was so good, and when he finished one plate Napoleon ordered him another. He had been afraid that the sheer amount of people would bring on the anxiety, but no one but the waiting on staff paid them any attention. They were anonymous in the crowd, and it felt like such a relief. This broad, low-ceilinged, softly lit place was a world away from the sort of rooms that brought on those terrible memories, and he actually found himself talking with Napoleon about other things, gossip about various neighbours and what they thought Mr Waverly's next project might be, and Illya became enthusiastic describing a type of explosive he wanted to experiment with in the labs, with thought to backing ordinary suit buttons with it. He had almost finished his second plate of eggs when he had that sudden feeling of falling, and realised that for the past forty-five minutes his mind had been completely empty of the events of the last week. For a moment his chest tightened, and he forced himself to rationalise that sudden feeling of dread. His mind wanted him to remember because it was trying to protect him from it happening again, but it wasn't going to happen again, it would never happen again, not at her hands.

'Hey, Illya. I was saying, shall I ask for the check?' Napoleon said, clinking his fork lightly on his water glass to get his partner's attention.

'Oh, er. Yes, thank you. I'm done here,' Illya said quickly. He had to work hard to push those feelings away, but he managed it.

'Excellent,' Napoleon said. He was chattering away, saying something about this place and the last time he had been here, but Illya's thoughts were wandering. Then Napoleon stood up, and he realised he had paid and was ready to go.

'Illya, you still with me?' Napoleon asked.

'Yes,' Illya smiled. 'Yes, I'm still with you. I'm sorry.'

'Are you thinking about – that?' Napoleon asked cautiously as they stepped down into the street.

Illya shook his head. 'Not really. Not in the way you mean,' he said. 'I'm working on not thinking about that. Thank you for breakfast, Napoleon. It was nice.'

'You want to take a stroll through the park? Neither of us need to be anywhere today. Hey, how about we walk the length, pass through the zoo. Would you like to go to the zoo?'

Illya grinned. Napoleon was so wonderful. It was so endearing, how hard he was working to make Illya feel at ease. He couldn't imagine how he would get through this without a friend like Napoleon.

'Yes, Napoleon,' he said. 'I would love to take a stroll through the park. It's a beautiful morning. And I would love to go to the zoo. I haven't said hello to the sea lions in far too long.'

((O))

It is a long way from Sicily to Chicago, and it takes a long time to take an old and dirty vacant store and turn it into a cheerful pizzeria, even with the money of the mob behind it. It had been enough time for the grieving family of Lydia Diketon, unaware of her involvement in a group bent on world domination, to receive what were apparently her remains, after her death in an unprecedented earthquake at the Caribbean health resort where she had been working. It had been enough time for them to bury her quietly and start to move on.

There had been time for Mr Waverly to successfully justify his decision to destroy that Caribbean island and sacrifice the lives upon it. Napoleon Solo had been given a commendation for his single handed rescue mission which resulted in an innocent and an agent's lives being saved, and the Stiletto brothers had quietly faded into the background of all the reports to avoid unnecessarily coming under the eye of the authorities.

And it had been enough time for Illya to go through so many counselling sessions that he felt that the entire inside of his head had been scooped out and thoroughly cleaned. He could see office rooms like that one in the warehouse without that awful feeling of panic and dread, and he could think of Miss Diketon without horrors overcoming him. Sometimes in the dark quiet of night he had trouble with his thoughts, but he had been taught strategies to deal with those thoughts, and it was all right. Most nights it was all right.

'I hope you enjoyed your pizza,' Napoleon said as he stripped off his tie in front of the mirror in the small hotel room. Always cautious about finances, if Mr Waverly wasn't going to pay for separate rooms on a mission he certainly wasn't for his agents to attend the grand opening of a pizzeria in Chicago.

'Oh, I did,' Illya grinned, kicking his shoes off onto the floor and dropping heavily onto the wide bed. 'That girl certainly has a talent for it.'

'That's not the only thing she has a talent for,' Napoleon said slyly, and Illya shot him a look

'Napoleon, you didn't?'

It had been Napoleon's association with Pia, no matter how innocent, that had led to him being carted off by the mob and leaving Illya without backup when Miss Diketon and her heavies came for him.

Napoleon grinned. 'With the grandfathers of the mob left, right, and centre? No, I didn't. I wouldn't dare.'

Illya breathed a sigh of relief. He didn't want to have to sleep with his gun in his hand.

'Good,' he said succinctly.

Napoleon tossed his tie into his own suitcase and turned to Illya. 'Illya, have you been on any dates since – '

'No,' Illya said shortly, then he added, 'but I hadn't been on any dates for two or three months before it, either. It's nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to worry about.'

Napoleon stared at him, shaking his head. 'I don't know how you manage, Illya. I mean, really, most agents – '

'Most agents are not as highly sexed as you,' Illya interrupted darkly. 'I'm quite content with my level of dating.'

'Hmm,' Napoleon said, still regarding him with a certain amount of suspicion. 'Illya, are you sure – '

Illya sat back up on the bed and looked directly at his partner. 'I'm all right, Napoleon,' he assured him. 'I've learnt to deal with it. I suppose it'll always be there, but it's not at the front of my mind all the time.'

Napoleon shrugged his jacket off and laid it over the back of a chair, then came to sit on his side of the bed, looking at Illya with a penetrating gaze. Illya looked straight back without flinching. He didn't have anything to hide. He had never had the level of sex drive that Napoleon seemed to suffer from, and he certainly didn't find anything unusual in not having dated in a few months. He had been telling Napoleon the truth. The weeks of counselling had helped him tremendously, and although the memories were in no way erased, they didn't have such power over him any more. They would always be there, but he could deal with them.

'I'm all right,' he said simply to Napoleon, and Napoleon smiled.

'You are, aren't you?' he asked.

'Uh huh,' Illya replied. He leant back against the pillows and crossed his legs at the ankles. 'If I want to date, I will date,' he continued. 'But I am just as happy to spend my evening with a journal or a novel.'

'Or me?' Napoleon asked rather hopefully, and Illya smiled.

'Or you,' he nodded. 'Always, Napoleon. You are the next best thing to Dostoevsky.'