Mastia, The Georgian Soviet Socialist Repulic.
(საქართველოს საბჭოთა სოციალისტური რესპუბლიკა)
(Грузинская Советская Социалистическая Республика)
The Winter of 1962.
Illya Kuryakin is a masterpiece of Soviet engineering. Wired like a well-calibrated missile, built like a tank, and smart as a scholar, the young man- impossibly young, his superiors scoff to themselves every time they send him out into the fray of some skirmish or another, to be so decorated and talented in the field-has been in the service of his Motherland for his entire life.
There was a life he had before KGB; he knows this because he reminds himself of it every day- his broken father and his soiled mother. But on days like today, it does not matter where he has come from. It does not matter, that life he had before he joined the service.
All that matters is the task at hand; all that matters is what lay so clearly before him: the mission.
It's not even a mission. Not really. In fact, had any dissent or disagreement with his orders not been beaten out of him in his younger days, he might have scoffed and kicked the assignment away. After all, he is a Special Agent for the KGB. What they have sent him to do is little more than a baby-sitting service. In the small town of Mestia, in the Soviet Republic of Georgia, about 2,000 kilometers south of Moscow, there have been rumors of a small opposition group steadily gaining momentum with anti-Soviet sympathizers. And so, naturally, as is the way when news like that reaches Moscow, a punishment is in order. A punishment designed to not only weed out the strongest of the community, but also to break the will of anyone who remains. The strongest of the young men from this small town will be forced into service for the KGB. It's a common punishment, but the KGB only trusts the best to select the future of their ranks, so here Illya is.
When he steps down from the GAZ, nodding his thanks to the driver, he stops and takes a deep breath of the cool, mountain air and allows himself a moment of a view. In the near distance, there is an old, decaying castle set against the farther, distant backdrop of picturesque mountains. A positively idyllic scene if he ever saw one. A perfect place, he thinks with a bitter note in his head- to tear families apart. He does not carry on with this line of thinking for long, but instead turns his attention to the chaos of the streets of the tiny townlet. He is the last boot to arrive on the ground, having given his small task force the duty of rounding up all of the unfortunate villagers to hear his speech and submit to the wills of the state.
Illya does not care about ideology, or politics, or conquest or war. He is a man concerned with honor and duty, redemption and salvation. If the world will forgive him the sins of his parents in exchange for the lives of the young men in this town, so be it.
The soldiers working beneath Illya have corralled strong-willed mothers and whining children, murderous-eyed youths and weeping old men. It is a scene that Illya has seen before. Everyone in the town knows what comes next. When they are all assembled before him, he does not do them the honor of speaking in their native tongue, or even bother to confirm that they all understand his speech; this is a Soviet state, and therefore all her citizens are required to speak Russian. Even if Illya could speak the language-which he can't- adjusting his words is not necessary here, even though many of these people secretly speak their native Kartuli out of spite for their Soviet masters. He proceeds in his own tongue, the words snapping from his mouth like the thick pops of bubble gum.
"Hello," he begins, speaking to the crowd of kneeling Georgians, a group of living souls more quiet, more grave-like than he has ever heard before in his life. The wind whistles as he takes a step toward them, "This does not have to be hard, but it can be if you do not cooperate."
Illya does not miss the way most of the townsfolk look at the soldiers out of the corner of their eye, and he certainly does not miss the hands of his soldiers going to their weapons. They look as though they expect a massacre.
"The State requires your best sons for her fighting force, and we will be taking them with us today. You have-" He looks at his father's watch, glancing at the perfectly ticking hand, "Seven minutes to comply. You will volunteer them, willingly, or we will take them back to Moscow in chains. Do you all understand?"
From the assembled crowd, there is a seemingly uniform nod of consent; or, at least, as much of a nod of consent as one can give with their hands behind their head.
"Good. Line them up. Single file," he adds a, "Please," from between tense lips for good measure. Anyone can accuse him of being cruel or cold or even callous, but they will not accuse him of being impolite.
Something odd happens then, something small, infinitesimal even, that ensnares itself in the forefront of Illya's mind all the same. The assemblage of bodies before him hesitates at his order, looking around at each other quickly, as if collectively reminding each other of a pact or a promise, as if looking for permission or answers from one another. A few sets of eyes flicker over Illya's shoulder, the smallest of gestures that sends the biggest warning flag up through his spine.
"Now," Anatole, a subordinate comrade of Illya's shouts, his hand rising to strike a blubbering, frozen child into action, his voice the yowling of an authoritarian hound dog.
Illya may not agree with the man's methods, and certainly not his tone, but he must give his comrade one thing: when Anatole speaks, the people move. The urge to turn over his shoulder and survey the distance for whatever it is that those select few Georgians were seeking out behind him is strong, but Illya's instincts are good, he trusts them. And his instinct tells him that he is not in any immediate danger. And further, what harm could become them? There is a sea of Russian soldiers and agents, and even without that, Illya could handle anything this small country could throw his way without much effort.
Where many of his countrymen despise the Georgians, look down upon them like less than dirt, Illya does not. The vitriol that his countrymen display toward the Georgian people time and time again simply does not exist within him, and it never has. Instead, Illya regards them with the same way he regards most everyone he meets outside of the KGB- with cold dismissal and near-pity. What is the strength of an untrained provincial next to the force of him, the golden boy of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti? It is not arrogance that makes him this way; he bears no ill will and gains no satisfaction from the knowledge of his superiority. On the contrary, it's just a fact. Nothing more, nothing less.
He watches mothers holding their sons for the last time, with the same calculating, detached knowledge that he has held in his heart for as long as he can remember, never quite forgetting that there must be something behind him, and- no matter how far away it may be- that it will need to be dealt with in the near future. Eventually, nine young Georgian men- he would have liked an even ten, but he will not quibble over one man- are standing in front of him, and Illya begins an inspection. It is not uncommon for these small towns to try and pass off their weakest, their sickliest, as their best and brightest, so Illya must ascertain just how cooperative they are being today.
To his great- and much concealed- surprise, as Illya travels wordlessly down the line of dark-eyed men, each with a defiant sheen in his stare, he discovers just how bowed these people have become. Each man is stronger, more fit for duty than the last. That is, until he comes to number nine, the final in his inspection. He begins at the boy's work boots- scuffed and marred, perhaps the only pair he's ever owned- and travels his way up. Sturdy leg, even hip, a strong enough looking torso. But then, Illya finds the boy's face, only to find that he is barely biting back ripples of laughter.
Hands resolutely at his sides, determined not to erupt, Illya feels a finger twitch. Is he being mocked? Laughed at? What is the joke that could cause this inappropriate display of frivolity in such a moment of sterility and fear?
"And what is so funny?" Illya asks, his voice grinding from between his teeth.
He is not given an answer, just the sound of full-bellied laughter as the boy ceases to hide the sound. The music of such gaiety strikes the mountains surrounding the small town, echoing back in horrifying melodies.
But not a melody so horrifying as the sound that follows. A twig snaps in Illya's mind, and the boy in front of him is rewarded with three swift blows- one to the stomach, one to the chest, and one to the side of the head. The sound of skin against skin, the scream of the young man, and the sound of his body falling to the iced-mud ground shatter the stillness of the valley. At the sight of the crumpled, unsmiling form beneath him and the blood spilled onto the dirty frost, Illya's anger subsides just enough for him to regain control. Not much control, but enough. Bending into a crouch, so as to better speak to the writhing body, Illya speaks in a voice as quiet and dangerous as a mountain wind.
"I said: what is so funny?" Illya asks cooly, dividing each word so there will be no misunderstanding.
The young man does something then that sends shockwaves through Illya's entire body. He smiles, a cruel reflection of his earlier laughter, with every exposed tooth dripping in sticky-thick blood, and then, he speaks:
"You think you have won."
There it is. That feeling, that familiar itch at the back of his neck. His intuition. His instinct. His training. They're all telling him the same thing: something is coming for you.
Finally, Illya rises to his feet and gives into his overwhelming desire to look behind him, finally giving away to whatever is watching him that he is aware of their presence. The air around him is tense with the stares of his soldiers and civilians alike, as they wait for a cue. He turns slowly, painfully slow, and surveys the expanse behind him. The decaying walls of a medieval structure stands, but barely, less than a hundred meters behind him. It must have been the town's old wall, as a towering structure- a lookout post, perhaps- rises into the sky. He only barely has time to register the slim barrel of a gun peeking out behind from one of the turrets before the first shot rings out.
He springs into action immediately, trusting no one but himself with the task of tracking the sniper. Closing his mind to everything and everyone but the task at hand, Illya takes off across the valley, straight toward the tower. He does not think to grab a weapon. This personal affront to him, this sniper, will be dealt with personally. The sounds of his mind racing and his breath drumming in his chest fills his mind as he dodges ricocheting bullets and charging soldiers trying to keep the peace. Every three steps exactly, he glances up at the turret, counting the shots. It isn't until he reaches the base of that tower that he realizes something is amiss. Very much amiss. There have been too many shots for one gun. From his new vantage point, looking down on the valley from the base of the tower, he realizes that what he thought was a singular tower is actually apart of a larger structure. On this side of the valley, there are actually four towers, each connected- or used to be connected- by a low, stone wall. From his place on the high ground, Illya watches the bullets fly from each of the four towers now, and realizes, too, too late, that he has fallen into a trap.
To his left, he hears the click of a safety being removed from a gun, and he can feel the pressure of the metal barrel pressing into his temple. Laid out before him, swarms of soldiers in uniform corral and brutalize the Georgians into submission. A terrifying scene that he is forced to watch with a gun pressed against his head.
Now, he wishes he had decided against a hands-on death for the sniper; he could do with the use of a weapon. It occurs to him how unlikely the scenario on his hands truly is. When was the last time he was outsmarted, much less by a provincial guerilla acting seemingly alone? Illya strains to see his captor from the corner of his eyes, but his vision of him is obscured by the silver body of a Dragunov rifle. Soviet made, he notes with an air of impressed pleasure, very good weapon.
Illya does not raise his hands in surrender, or allow his face to betray his surprise at the turn of events. He remains as stoic, professional as possible, buying himself some time as he attempts to tease out a plan of escape.
"This was a very good plan," he says, his eyebrows raising as his chin tilts slightly in appreciation, "Lure us into the valley. Set the rifles on timers. And wait for the pursuit. Clever."
It isn't a lie. He believes it a very clever plan. The rifles in the towers might not have been terribly accurate, but the death of the soldiers was not the aim of this endeavor and Illya knows it. They were not the target. He is. Well, not him specifically, but the Commander of the mission, who just so happens to be Illya. The surprise rising in his chest at this entire affair floods through him at a dizzyingly rapid pace.
After all, even he didn't exactly see it coming. The idea that these people could do something so drastic seems, even now, so far out of reality that Illya thinks that this must be a dream that he will soon wake from. And when he wakes, there will be Hell to pay. Whoever is holding this gun to his head is both the luckiest and most unfortunate man in the Soviet Union today.
Down below, the soldiers have brought the citizens into the town's hall, leaving Illya and his captor alone with the gunfire above. His hand twitches. A sure sign of what is to come.
"What comes next?" Illya wonders aloud.
But he knows the answer. And the answer comes in the form of a move so fast and so extreme that it sends his own ears ringing. In one motion, Illya ducks, bringing his right arm up in bone-bruising contact with the forearm of his assailant. The gun pops into the air, the pain from Illya's blow radiating until the hand has no choice but to release it.
It's a simple enough move. By all accounts, he should have been able to snap the gun easily out of the air and turn it back on its original owner. But, he made the one mistake he never should have. He miscalculated. He underestimated his opponent. His arm swipes for the gun, but when his fingers clench, they clench nothing but air. It turns out, for the first time in his life, he is too slow. The sickening sound of the gun tightening in the grip of a stranger strikes his ears, turning his stomach. Eyes widening, hand trembling, he finally faces this….disturbance head on.
And finds the absolute last thing he thought he would see. In his mind's eye, he envisioned a hardened revolutionary, a portly man in a herding jacket with a long beard and beady eyes. Perhaps a man of the town, a man with a host of sons ripe for the taking, sons that he would protect even to the death. Perhaps a former soldier, with skin made leather from the toil of service and hands calloused from the work. What he sees in front of him is quite different. Quite, quite different.
A woman, not much younger than himself, if he estimates her correctly, stands in front of him, the gun in her hands level and still, her grip as steady and sure as the look in her impossibly dark eyes. She is not exactly a beautiful woman, not by any classical standards. An ugly scar- the ghosts of an ugly burn she must have suffered- covers the right half of her face. She's a sturdy woman, not waifish or thin by any stretch of the imagination; she looks like she could bear the weight of the nation upon her shoulders. Outfitted in a collection of clothes that look half pulled from an old man's wardrobe and half from a silver screen starlet's, a dizzying ensemble that sets Illya's mind in a whirl of confusion, she stands with her chin held high and her spine straight as an arrow. Unafraid of him.
She looks like a warrior, he thinks.
With one flick of her wrist, the woman unloads the magazine from the gun, throwing it across the field. After seeing her enemy, with his smug escape attempt and his piercingly, infuriatingly Russian-looking eyes, she knows the swift release of something like a bullet would be too sweet for him to savour. She decides to lead him on a marry chase.
She turns. And sprints.
The entire interaction- the blow, the stare, the toss of the gun, the run- lasts less than three seconds.
If Illya were a different sort of spy, he might have smiled. He might have loved the heart-racing thrill of the pursuit. But Illya is not the kind of man who enjoys the pursuit. He is the sort of man who enjoys the capture. Even so, he runs after her with pounding steps.
She disappears into the nearest look out tower, the hem of her skirt dancing behind her before vanishing into the murky darkness of the soaring structure. Without hesitation, Illya sprints into the doorway, finding himself completely blinded by the encroaching blackness around him. On instinct, he runs forward, knowing that there must be steps straight ahead. The shock of the first step beneath his foot resounds up his body, but is cut short.
A sharp blow to his head knocks him into the nearest wall. He grunts at the impact. The sound of a pair of feet climbing up the stairs drives him from the haze of pain back into life. Stretching his arm forward, reaching out for that trail of fabric he hears in the stillness of the tower, his fingers lock around the thick weave of her woolen overcoat. He snaps his arm like a whip, dragging her backwards. She loses her footing on the slick staircase with a whine, but recovers quickly. Illya keeps his hand on her coat, but not on her. She steps out of the coat like dropping a fifty-ton weight, freeing herself even as Illya tightens his grip. Regaining the ground she lost, she pushes through her exhaustion and farther toward the peak of the tower, feeling the stranger hotter on her heels all the time. In the darkness, she steps out of her shoes, leaving them behind like Cinderella, for the prince behind her to trip over.
The woman has never felt more relief than when her hand wraps around the handle of the doorway leading to the lookout. Throwing her whole weight against it, she stumbles out into the open air. Her timed rifles- the instruments of a plan that worked out brilliantly, if she says so herself- ran out of bullets long ago, and stand idle along the parapet. Squaring herself for a fight, she stands in wait for the Russian.
Illya steps into the blinding light of the morning sun, lunging for her with the intensity of a speeding bullet. The corners of her lips tilt up, and she drops her shoulder into him. Her strength surprises Illya, but does not make him stop. Instead, he pushes all the harder, running her against the hard stonewall of the parapet. She screams in pain. Illya fears he struck too true, and leans back.
Another mistake. At the opportunity, the woman draws back and throws her fist into the Russian's face. Illya's head snaps painfully and the woman sees something in his eyes that sends a thrum of fear into her chest. A look in his eyes that tells her everything she needs to know about this fight: she will not win it. She is faced with a dilemma, one that she built herself. With her back against a wall, her mission has failed, and now she must either fall into the clutches of the enemy, or become the martyr her people need.
Her bare feet hop atop the parapet, and Illya straightens to his full height. His eyes widen slightly as her entire body trembles, the harsh early winter winds whipping the folds of her skirt. In her gaze, there is no uncertainty. No doubt. Her left foot lifts, and he knows what comes next.
"Don't."
The word falls out of his mouth before he knows that he's said it. In a flash, she turns over her shoulder to look at the source of the rough-edged plea. She does not want to die. But she knows it is the only way she will be free.
"I must."
She steps over the edge.
Only to be caught by the farthest hem of her long, white scarf.
The material whipped up her body as she fell, and on instinct, she grabbed onto the fabric, holding on for dear life, not realizing that its other end had been caught by the Russian. Her stomach falls to the ground that she had hoped so dearly to join only a moment ago, and she braves a glance upward, to the other end of that scarf she now knows she shouldn't have put on this morning, no matter how cold she thought she might be. Illya looks down the length of the scarf at her.
She will not be a martyr. Not today. She will be a prisoner.
"Do not," Illya says, breaking up the words with harsh intention, "Let go."
To her credit, the woman follows the command, her knuckles turning white with the effort it takes to hold onto the ripping fabric that Illya uses to pull her back up the side of the building. It pleases the Russian at the top of the tower to know that he has finally found a match who knows when they are beaten; others in her position would have let themselves go, would rather have died than admit defeat. This woman, however, bows out honorably.
It is an action worthy of Illya's respect.
He pulls her back to the safety of inside the parapet, watching as her bare feet land squarely back on the stone floor. The adrenaline pours out of her body like sweat and though her knees quake and threaten to give, she stands firm. She sniffs, but does not look at the Russian. Keeping her face squarely tilted squarely and resolutely downward, the posture of the defeated, she does not see anything but the Russian reaching his hands out to hers. Everything in her body tells her to fight, to use this opportunity to break him. But she doesn't. Gently- too gently, she thinks, for the man who tried to pull her down a staircase not moments ago- his fingertips pull her hands, extending them in front of her waist for his inspection. With deft swirls of fabric, he ties her wrists together, her long white aviator's scarf making for a passable make-shift pair of handcuffs. His fingers dance along her skin, brushing her ever-so slightly. The action is… more intimate than she ever could have dreamed. Any time she imagined herself being carted off to a gulag- which is most certainly where she is going, if not to her own execution- she envisioned being carried through the streets by a pair of steel irons, the metal digging into the flesh of her arms. Her nightmares conjured up dark expressions of terror and pain, but this is nothing of the sort. As he goes about tying, he speaks, his voice neither arrogant nor proud, simply soft and professional.
"Do you speak Russian?" He asks.
She shakes her head.
"Only when I want to spit blood," she responds in his cursed language, the Russian words leaving trails of fire up her throat.
The rising desire to cry and scream out in defeat is overwhelming, but she does not give into it. Will not give into it. Not with him around, not with this man looming over her. He may have earned the pleasure of her defeat, he may have saved her life, but he does not deserve her tears.
"You will speak Russian from now on," he advises with a brusque nod of his head.
The knot around her hands has left just enough slack for Illya to lead her by. He gives the slack one sharp tug, testing its hold, and when he is finally confident that she will not escape, he begins to lead her back toward the valley. They walk in a silence as painfully tender as a fresh bruise, the sounds of their feet- hers bare, his booted- crunching against the ice and dying grass. Along the way, they pass the evidence of their battle, fallen chess pieces from a grand and mighty bout. Her shoes. Her winter coat. The gun. The magazine. When at last Illya speaks, it is partly out of curiosity and partly to reassure himself that she is still behind him without turning around to check on her like a child.
"What is your name?" He asks, staring blankly ahead, but piecing together the bits of information he has about her to form a more cohesive picture of her.
She considers giving a false name. After all, her papers are in the breast pocket of her discarded overcoat and no one in Mastia would give her away. But she is proud of her name, of the stock she belongs to, of where she comes from, so she tells the truth, a truth which rings in Illya's ears. And, more than that, if she is to die today, she will die under her own name. It is only right that she should do so.
"Elene Ioseliani."
Elene. The name swirls around in the recesses of his mind; it has a kind of music to it, and gets lodged there like a catchy refrain he cannot seem to forget. It adds color to the mental portrait he is painting of this strange, strange woman. A trained or highly instinctive fighter, a strong and stalwart woman of honor, an odd and eccentric dresser, named Elene. It isn't much of a character description, but it is enough to begin understanding her. Illya nods down into the valley at the assembled men of Mastia, waiting in front of the green transportation vehicles awaiting his return so they may be shipped out to a training facility.
"Which one of them is your lover?" He asks.
Surely, he reasons, that is why she did all of this. She must be doing this for some man she loves very dearly, to try and save him from a being parted with her. It isn't a common occurrence that the arrival of men from Russia triggers such a response in the local women, but it happens on occasion; Illya assumes that this must be one of those rare times.
"None of them," comes the easy reply.
Illya furrows his brow in confusion, but then corrects his expression back to passivity and replies:
"Which one is your brother, then?"
Meandering behind him, her hands tied to the lead he carries, Elene lets a small, almost imperceptible smile break the plane of her lips.
"All of them."
In spite of himself, Illya can sense a little light return to his face. Of all the women in the world to be faced with today, this one seems to know exactly how to provoke the most odd reactions from him. Her dedication, unwavering and absolute, is impressive, and Illya is not an easily impressed man. After a few more steps, he reveals something else.
Perhaps it is the knowledge of her impending death that loosens his tongue. After all, she was good enough to impress him. No one with that sort of power should go to their firing squad without someone acknowledging that incredible honor.
"You are a good fighter," Illya says, his voice as stone and stoic as ever.
Untrained, raw, to be sure. But a good fighter even so.
"Thank you," Elene says.
Illya raises an appreciative eyebrow.
"And polite, too."
Elene remains silent, and it is in this moment, that it occurs to Illya that Elene is more fragile now than he has yet seen since making her acquaintance all of twenty minutes ago. Something about the sound of her footfalls and the lazy tug on the end of the lead he carries makes Illya realize just how aware of her reality this woman is.
She knows she is on her death march.
When they reach the edge of the town square, Illya stops. Elene, too, halts her steps, and looks up from the bloodied patch of ice to the face of her captor. Across the cobblestones, a stretch away from the pair, Anatole notices their approach, and begins walking toward them with a long and purposeful stride. Illya searches Elene's face, seeking any sign of regret or remorse, but finds none. Fear, which he had expected to see in spades, is completely absent from her entire being.
"Can I ask you a question?"
Elene considers what he has just asked. The first chemical reaction that strikes up bubbles in her stomach is that of righteous rage. She owes this man, this insidious intruder, this colonizing soldier, nothing. But, if she is to die, perhaps last words would be in order. And perhaps he will give her the chance to make a statement for her cause; perhaps she will die a martyr after all.
"I will only answer if it is the last thing you make me do," she says.
That quiet sentence, escaped from the red lips of a captive woman, knocks the air out of Illya's lungs, translating in his mind simply to: I'll only answer if you promise to kill me soon. As the punishment for what she has done today is death, Illya proceeds with his question.
"Why didn't you let go?" He asks.
After all, it would have been so simple. If she was willing to die by jumping off of the tower- for surely no one could survive that fall- then she could have just disobeyed his order and let go of the scarf. She could have been a martyr. She could have been a tiny black mark on the Soviet occupation of Georgia. The people could have rallied around her as a symbol. But, no. She chose to hold on.
Elene takes in the sight of her city, her beloved little town, the men rounded up, the women boarded into the church, and her own hands held by an invader. She answers:
"Because my work here is not done."
Yes, she could have been a martyr, but Illya's first estimation of her was correct. She is not a is a warrior.
When Anatole reaches the pair, flanked by two soldiers, Illya's mind is shrouded by the ever-darkening storm-clouds of the words he just heard. Usually focused and direct, he now feels thrown out into a confusing and foggy sea.
"I will have my best men take care of her," Anatole says, noticing the steadily blackening bruise on the side of Illya's face, but choosing not to mention it directly, "We'll put her against the wall and give the girl her own firing squad."
"Yes, good," Illya says, distant, dismissive, his mind still turning over just what it is that Elene said to him.
Anatole salutes, and goes to leave, but then Illya realizes what it is that he has just agreed to.
Over Anatole's shoulder, Illya counts the nine Georgians they rounded up earlier this morning as Elene is drug towards the nearest wall, surrounded by leering soldiers cursing her in Russian. Yes, the penalty for what she has done is death. Illya knows that. He recognizes that. And, all the same, he makes a different call.
"No. No, Comrade," he calls to the retreating Anatole, "I have another plan for her."
Hello, everyone! How good was The Man from U.N.C.L.E.? I absolutely fell in love with Illya's character, and his relationship with Gaby. Believe me, there will be plenty of Illya/Gaby fanfiction coming from me in the very near future, but there was a distance and immediacy and sadness in Illya that I wasn't sure came from the context of the film, so I wanted to write a story that would explore his pre-movie development! This is going to be a series (two parts in all, I think), with this story being pre-Man from U.N.C.L.E., and the following story being post-movie. I am desperately fighting the "woman's pain and suffering is the same thing as male character development" trope as well, so this will be an exciting two stories!
Please take the time to leave me some kudos and a review! I cannot wait to hear what you all have to think about this story!