Filthy: The Lark Ascending

by Aconitum-Napellus

Part 2 of Filthy. Illya has been rescued from months of imprisonment and rape, but he's depressed and fragile. Napoleon and U.N.C.L.E. have to help him to recovery. Still heavy. I'll try to make the next thing I write less horrid.

It's so hard to go out of his apartment and into the streets outside. It's ridiculous really. He's been all over the world. He's been to places most men would only dream of. He's relocated his entire life three times, from Kyiv to Paris, from Paris to Cambridge, from Cambridge to New York City. He should be able to walk those city streets. He knows enough techniques of self defence to bring down almost anyone he comes across. He has permission to carry his gun permanently due to that little card with U.N.C.L.E. on it. He should be able to walk those streets.

But he stands at his window and looks down on the street below, and the thought of it makes him shiver. Not again. Not trying that again. He went to the store on the corner that morning, and he had felt as though every person who saw him could see through his clothes, see into his mind, see exactly what he had become at the hands of Thrush. Meat to be fucked over and over again. They could all see that. They could all see how he had been taken apart and used.

Worse than that. It was worse than that, because the people were all around him like figures in a Lowry painting, individual but generic, unique but faceless to him, and he had flicked his gaze nervously at one man, at another, shied away when he was jostled at the intersection, and he had realised that any one of those men could have known him when he was a slave for sexual pleasure, chained to the bed under the club, used over and over every night.

It was terrible. That realisation was so terrible. He had seen men's faces, but sometimes he had been blindfolded, and he had known little more than the scent of their sweat, the timbre of their voice as they spoke roughly to him or just grunted as they thrust. He knew the feel of their hands, of their sweaty, hairy skin against his, the feel of their cocks inside him as they raped him. But he never saw their faces, not those ones who had him blindfolded before they came in. And it was terrible to walk in the street and know that any one of those men looking back at him could have been one of those men.

Napoleon had promised it would never happen again. Never again. But he couldn't promise that. Napoleon isn't even here any more, because U.N.C.L.E. stops for no one man. The fear as he walked the street that morning had been like a freight train running him down. He had felt like a marked man. It would only take a second, a gun in the ribs or chloroform over the mouth and nose, and he could be taken again, chained again, he could be being fucked again by a hundred strangers, or just one, over and over again.

How awful that had been, as he scurried back to his apartment with his bags of groceries, feeling like a woman walking in Central Park at night, feeling so helpless and so afraid.

So now he stands at the window and looks down at the street below, at the tops of the heads of the people in the street below, and he feels so terrible he could fall apart. He feels so small, so foul, so filthy. He can't do anything, can't make his mind work. His sink is full of dirty dishes. The groceries he bought are still in the brown paper bags on the kitchen table. There are clothes over the backs of chairs, unopened letters on the coffee table. He should go into the kitchen and tackle those dishes. He should take these tasks one by one. But he can't. He can't do it. Instead he goes into the bathroom and he sets the temperature high on the shower, and he turns the tap, and it hisses into life.

He takes his clothes off very slowly, because although he feels so dirty he hates to see his own flesh. He drops his poloshirt on the bathroom floor. His trousers follow it. He touches his hand to the waistband of his underpants, but he doesn't want to take them off. He wants to be clean but he doesn't want to take off his underwear. He closes his eyes and strips them off very quickly, steps into the bathtub very quickly with his eyes closed, pulls the shower curtain across the gap, and leans against the wall under the steaming, hissing spray.

It feels so good. The water takes that crawling, awful feeling that he has on every inch of his skin and it pushes it away. The feeling seems to wash down the drain. The water is so hot. It soaks through his dressings, soaks them off, stings on the cigarette burns on his body. It makes his bruises tender and flushed and sears in the sores. But it feels so good to be standing under that spray, burning his skin off. If only it could wash away all of his skin, all of his flesh, and strip him to the bones.

The white noise of the water shushes past his ears, an endless loop. It seems to push away his thoughts. It's so good to have something that erases the churning of his mind. But as soon as he thinks that the thoughts start again, revolving like dirty laundry in a washing machine, over and over and over. Foul. Filthy. He is so wasted, so thin, so dirtied by all those hands and mouths and bodies, all those cocks pushing into him, coming over him. The awful taste when they made him push his tongue into the hole between their legs. All that sweat and spit, the cigarette ash, the smell of booze.

He starts to sob again, his chest jerking, his shoulder blades jerking against the tiles behind him. He sinks down into the bottom of the bath, huddles his knees up against his chest, drops his head. The water blasts over him, running through his hair, down the sides of his face, into and out of his mouth. It's so hot on his back that it stings.

When he gets out of the shower his skin is red, his fingers and toes are wrinkled. The water has run from burning to freezing, and he's shivering, aching, sore all over. He pulls his bathrobe around him and cinches the belt tight, and he goes back out into his living room. It's still light out there. It's getting late, but it's summer, so it's light and it's hot, and he can hear the sounds of cars and sometimes sirens. A gunshot snaps somewhere a few blocks away and he automatically tries to judge the make and model of the firearm. Sirens whoop again. It's all so normal out there. People are going about their lives. But he missed the transition from spring to summer. He spent months confined in a dark basement. While they were walking around, shopping, talking with friends, going to work, he was lying there on that foetid mattress with his arms chained above his head and his ankles chained to the footboard, and they raped him and raped him and raped him over and over again.

It's too much. He can't even name the emotion that is ballooning inside him. He sinks down right where he stands, against the wall, under the window. He pulls the sides of his bathrobe more tightly around him, and rocks. He's starting to dry off in the heat. The soreness from the scalding water prickles all over him now the chill is easing away. He feels the crevice between his buttocks and the slack bundle of his genitals, and he wants to be able to divorce himself from feeling anything. How he wishes he could never feel that part of his body again. He rocks and presses his forehead against his knees and he tries so hard to pull himself back to something like normality. He should get up, do housework, put away the groceries. But he can't move, and he just sits there on the floor, holding his arms about his knees with his eyes tightly closed, feeling as though he were lost in a hurricane of grief.

There's a noise through the haze. He blinks, opens his eyes, looks about dazedly. Time must have passed because it's darker in the room now. It's still hot, but there's a dimness in here. Hours must have passed. It's as if he has been away from his body, lost in a void. But there's that noise dragging him back, so he moves his stiff legs, straightens his stiff back, stands up unsteadily, clutching at the bathrobe, pulling the belt tighter. He moves across the room to the source of the noise. The two-tone warbling of his communicator, there on the coffee table. He picks it up and assembles it. His hands are shaking.

'Kuryakin,' he says.

'Illya,' Napoleon replies. His voice feels like a lifeline. 'I was calling to see how you are. I called a couple of times earlier?'

His voice is questioning. He is worried. Abstractly Illya knows that he is worried.

'Oh. I was – asleep,' he lies.

He tries to remember where Napoleon is. Hyderabad, wasn't it? Didn't he have to go to India?

'It must be hot where you are,' he says. He's reduced to talking about the weather because he doesn't know what else to say.

'Yeah, it's pretty hot,' Napoleon says. 'But it must be hot at home. How are you, Illya? How are you doing?'

'Oh, I – ' How can he answer that question? He tries so hard to pull himself together. 'Yes, I'm fine,' he says. He tries to make his voice normal. 'I'm all right. I went for groceries. I've had a shower.'

There's a minute pause. It's so small that one wouldn't normally notice it, but Illya knows Napoleon so well.

'Have you eaten?' Napoleon asks.

'Yes, of course,' Illya says with a little laugh. 'I always eat. You know that.'

He ate a slice of bread at some point during the day. He can't remember when. He can't even remember if he put anything on it. But he knows he ate a slice of bread. The bread knife is on the kitchen counter and there are crumbs scattered around.

'Three meals, Illya. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner,' Napoleon says, like a parent admonishing a child.

'Of course. You know I always eat,' Illya repeats. He doesn't have the strength to face Napoleon's chiding. He has things in the bags of groceries to make for dinner. He was very careful to make sure he bought good, wholesome food.

'All right,' Napoleon says, and he sounds relieved. 'All right. I wanted to be sure, because you weren't eating so well when I left. Get take out if you need to, won't you? I left a hundred dollars in the tea tin in the kitchen so you have cash. You must have found that by now, yes?'

'Yes,' Illya says. 'Yes, of course. Thank you, Napoleon.'

He hasn't opened the tea caddy at all. He isn't sure if he can manage to phone up a take out place and to receive his order at his apartment door. His rapists could have been anyone. Delivery boys, busboys, lawyers, policemen. And he's not sure how to talk to people. He did all his shopping without saying a word. When he talks to strangers he's sure they can see what his mouth has been used for, sure they can smell all those men on his breath.

'Make sure you have dinner,' Napoleon says. 'And go to sleep at a sensible time. It must be late there.'

'Yes, it's – '

He looks blearily at the clock. It's almost ten. When did it get so late? He wonders if he fell asleep when he was sitting by the window, but he doesn't think he did. His sleep patterns are so messed up. Now he's back in a place with clocks he's realising how his sleep patterns have shifted around, so that he's awake until three or four o'clock in the morning, and sleeping until midday. And that pattern… That pattern was because that was when they used him, he's realised. It's because the club opened in the evening and there was a steady stream of patrons until the small hours of the morning, and when the last one left and the light turned off he was always shaking and exhausted and he slipped into sleep because it was an escape from the misery of being alive.

'Illya?' Napoleon says.

'Oh. Yes. It's ten o'clock,' he says. 'Yes, it's late.'

In that place he would have been on to his seventh or eighth man. More if they'd been quick. Lee got them through as quickly as possible, because he was cheap. His cheapness was a draw, and sometimes he could hear men in the passage outside, queuing, talking, laughing. He would have been lying there damp with sweat, filthy, cum sticky and trickling from between his legs, dark with the scent of his shit. His mouth would have been foul, full of their taste, his throat clotted with their taste. Someone would have come in and given him a cursory wipe to prepare him for the next client, and he would have lain there, shaking and sick and full of loathing for his body, and another man would have come in...

'Illya, have you had dinner?'

'No, not yet. I bought some things for dinner.'

His mind is dizzy with those memories. He can't imagine eating.

'Have dinner,' Napoleon tells him firmly. 'Take the sleeping pills the doctor gave you. Try to get a good night's rest.'

'Yes,' Illya says. 'Yes, of course I will.' He tries to make his voice normal again. 'You don't need to worry, Napoleon. You fuss so much.'

'All right,' Napoleon says in a gentle voice. He sounds so far away. He is so far away. 'I'll let you go, Illya. Go eat, okay?'

'Okay,' Illya nods. 'Yes, I'll eat. Don't worry.'

'I'll call you tomorrow,' Napoleon says. 'Listen, I have to go. Ciao, bella.'

That makes Illya smile, but then the channel goes dead, and he's all alone again. For a short space of time he had felt less alone, but now Napoleon has gone the aloneness feels so much bigger. He sits there running his fingertip over the communicator, before finally pulling the end out and closing it back into something more resembling a pen.

Dinner, he thinks. He promised Napoleon he would have dinner. 100 dollars… That suddenly leaps at him. That's a lot of money. Napoleon left him with a lot of money. That is so like Napoleon, to think of doing something like that. Napoleon could be down to his last cent and he would still be generous. But he can't bear to think of calling somewhere for take out. He considers the good, fresh ingredients he bought when he was shopping. But he can't wrap his mind around that either. He thinks he's probably hungry, but the thought of chopping vegetables and browning meat and bringing a meal together feels like climbing the Matterhorn.

He drops the communicator into his pocket and walks through into the kitchen and stands there, just staring at the paper bags on the table. The bottom of one of them is a sodden mess, and he suddenly remembers the ice cream. He bought a block of ice cream because it was so hot and he had had the stupid idea of being kind to himself, and he left it there on the table for hours, and now it has melted through the cardboard and through the paper bag, and there is sticky white fluid running over the table top. For a moment he feels nauseous.

It's too much. It's too hard. The mess can stay there. He puts the milk in the fridge, but everything else can stay. He pulls a tin of baked beans and a tin of rice pudding out of a cupboard and gets the tin opener and opens both tins. Even that feels like so much effort. He takes both tins through into the other room and turns on the television and slumps down on the sofa. He's not sure what's on. He doesn't get up to change the channel when the adverts end and a soap opera begins. It's in colour but all the colours seem dulled. The whole world seems to lack colour.

He sits there with a spoon and steadily eats through the tin of beans and then through the tin of rice pudding, and takes swallows from a bottle of sherry that was sitting on the sideboard. The food fills his stomach and the sherry warms him, and at some point he remembers to take the sleeping pills that Napoleon mentioned. He lounges back on the sofa in the pervasive heat that seems to be in every atom of the air. The window is open and the sounds of the city drift in. He wipes something from his mouth, licks his lips, takes another mouthful of the sherry. The American voices on the television rise and fall, drone, chatter on. They break into adverts and then the show is back on again. His body starts to feel so heavy, his eyes so hot…

((O))

There's a ringing somewhere. It goes on and on, one long trill after another. He blinks his eyes open, stares at the light in the room. It's hot again, hot still. His bathrobe is sagging open to show his chest, the folds of his thin belly, the trail of hair to the dark golden mess of hair between his legs. He cinches the robe tightly closed. His body is so foul. He feels so dirty.

There's a bottle tucked between his arm and his body, and he's lying on the sofa, his head awkwardly kinked up against the arm. He moves the bottle and takes a look. It's half full. He must have fallen asleep…

It's tomorrow, then. It was getting dark when he fell asleep, and now it's light, so it must be tomorrow. That ringing keeps on, jangling against his ears. He pats at the communicator in his bathrobe pocket, but it's not that, is it? It's the telephone.

He looks across the room. Yes, there's the telephone, ivory white, sitting on the sideboard near the door. That's where the noise is coming from. It seems to take so long for his thoughts to be processed, and even longer for impulses to reach his muscles. He gets up and walks across the room, picks up the receiver, puts it to his ear and mouth.

'Kuryakin.'

There's a voice in the distance, so far away on the other end of the phone. It buzzes in his ear like a bumblebee caught in a spiderweb. He stands there with it humming against his ear. Then he starts and says, 'I'm sorry, I didn't catch that.'

'Mr Kuryakin, we need to arrange for you to come in to the Infirmary for your next Psychiatry appointment,' the voice says in a rather louder tone.

'I'm sorry?' he says again, because even though he was trying to listen he wasn't really listening at all. He had thought that he was listening but he doesn't know what the male voice actually said. His thoughts run in Russian and Ukrainian at the moment because English is too much effort. That voice sounds so alien, so foreign.

'Mr Kuryakin, it's Dr Westingbroke. I want to arrange a time for you to come and see me in the Infirmary. When can you come in?'

'Oh,' Illya says. Why is his mind working so slowly? He's like a child slowly fitting together a jigsaw. Doctor. Appointment. Infirmary. He can't think. When can he come in? He doesn't want to come in. He doesn't know if he can manage that journey. He doesn't think he's capable of driving. And his last appointment was so hard. He can't –

'Mr Kuryakin, shall we say Wednesday at ten?' the doctor asks him.

'Wednesday at ten,' he repeats. What day is it today? He doesn't have any idea what day it is. 'Wednesday at ten,' he says again.

'All right. That's good. I want to see you there, Mr Kuryakin. You be sure to come in, all right?'

'Yes,' he says. 'Thank you, Doctor. Goodbye.'

He hangs the phone up while the man on the other end is still speaking. What did he say? What was it? What day is it now? He turns his eyes to the calendar that hangs on the wall, but the pages haven't been moved on since all those months ago, before all this happened. For a moment the Roman typeface looks so strange. What day is it? What month is it? What day did the doctor say?

He still has that bottle in his other hand. His mouth is dry. He takes a mouthful and recognises the taste of sherry. So that was what he was drinking last night. Sherry. He takes another mouthful, then goes through into the kitchen and puts the bottle in the fridge. He fills the kettle and takes it over to the stove. It takes a few tries to get the ring lit, but then the gas is hissing under the kettle, and he takes down the tea caddy and opens it and – Oh. There's money in there. He takes out the notes and rubs them between his fingers. There's a scrap of paper in there with them. He unfolds it and reads, 'IK. Look after yourself. Buy food. NS.'

That's so good of Napoleon. It's so, so good of him. He puts the notes back into the caddy and goes over to the window and looks out at the brick wall opposite, at the alley below the window, at the brighter cut of light where the alley meets the road. There are bins down in the alley. There's a cat sniffing at something on the ground. He watches it as it moves sinuously on to another patch of something on the tarmac, then turns its back end to a bin and sprays it vigorously, and then moves on.

There's a screaming in the room behind him. He turns round to see the kettle hissing white steam into the air. He goes to snatch it from the ring, sees it has boiled almost dry, holds it under the tap to put more water in. The water crackles angrily on the hot metal. It shouldn't be this hard to make tea.

Everything is such an effort. Find the tea pot. Take off the lid. Pick up the tea caddy again. Spoon tea leaves into the pot. Find a mug. Get the milk from the fridge. Pour the water into the pot when it boils. Try to keep his mind on track while the tea brews. It shouldn't be this hard to make tea. He can't even process the idea of making toast and he isn't sure if he's hungry, so he sits and drinks tea which is too strong and too hot and doesn't seem to taste of anything. He feels it burn down the sensitive lining of his throat.

((O))

He feels dirty again. He goes to sit in the shower again. He puts the plug in the bath and lets the water spray over him and fill up the tub and run out through the overflow. He lies back and watches the water as it hisses down from the showerhead and hits the surface of the bathwater like rain. The surface is dimpled and pocked with every little strike, and it makes it shimmer and distorts the sight of his body underneath.

He rests his head back against the curved top of the bath and closes his eyes, and listens to that hiss and patter of the water. The air is filled with steam, so warm it's hard to breathe. He moves his toes in the water, scissors his legs gently against the fluid solidity. The water moves, the heat billowing up between his legs, washing up between his legs.

Suddenly he's so aware of the feelings in his own body, so aware of the sensitivity of his own skin. He is repulsed. He feels as if he's going to be sick. He clamps his teeth together. He grips his hands on the edge of the bath, but he sees the bracelets of sores around his wrists, and that just makes him even more aware of his own body, his own flesh, and he lets go again and sinks his arms under the water.

He's there on the bed, the chains around his wrists, chains around his ankles. The sores under the chains hurt so much. It all hurts so much. His legs are hooked up to the beam above him, his knees wide apart, his muscles trembling from being in that position for so long. He's shaking so hard. And there's the man, there's the man over him, pressing down over him, his lips wet and rubbery and moving over his face, over his lips, down onto his chest. He has knelt there, masturbated, his hands and mouth have been all over Illya's cock and balls, squeezing and biting and twisting to the point of pain, taking so much pleasure in his pain. Then there's that man's cock, hard and insistent and pushing into him, and when he cries out in pain the man says, That's it. That's it. Come on. I like hearing you cry. I guess you haven't had anyone as big as me before. I guess you don't know what it's really like to be fucked by a man like me. I'm going to rip your ass apart.

He's had bigger. He's had worse. He's had the sadists coming into this room, stubbing out their cigarettes on his balls, pinching his nipples with their nails until he screams, inflicting so much pain, and panting with lust over his agonised reaction. This man is mild in comparison. But it hurts so much. It always hurts so much because he's already so damaged. The man's lips are all over him, wet with slobber. He's lying there, the mattress a biscuit of hardness beneath him, that man so heavy over the top of him, his ankles pulling hard on the chains, his head slamming into the metal bars of the headboard each time the man rams home. His head aches so hard, he feels so sick, it all hurts so much. The smell of the man's sweat, the feel of his skin, of his flesh pressing onto Illya's, the grunts he makes each time he thrusts.

He comes back to the world with a gasp, his lungs stuttering on the air, the water brimming around him. He is so foul, so filthy. He can't bear it. He can't bear how dirty he feels. The water is never enough. It never gets him clean.

He rips the plug from the plughole and hears the water starting to suck out of the bath. He jerks the shower knob to off, and he staggers out of the bath and onto the floor and in desperation he gets the bottle of toilet cleaner from by the toilet. He pours some onto the flannel, smells that clean, piney, chlorine scent, and scrubs it with desperation onto his body, between his legs, between his buttocks, into that filthy, damaged, painful hole. He scrubs over his chest where that man's lips touched him, scrubs his thighs, his stomach, his sides. He can't bear how filthy he is, and he scrubs and scrubs and his skin burns.

He's sitting on the bathroom floor, naked, sobbing, his skin an angry mess of red patches, everything so sore. The pain pushes through where nothing else would. It's terrible on the cigarette burns and in the splits in his anus and the small split cuts on his body. What has he done? God, what has he done? The air is thick with the pine scent of that cleaner and his skin is coming up in blisters, but he doesn't feel any cleaner. He still feels so foul.

He pulls his bathrobe down and wraps it around himself, shaking, crouched over with pain. Oh god, oh god... His lungs are full of the fumes, thick with the fumes. He coughs hard and his stomach lurches, but he isn't sick. He looks at his blistered hands and he snatches the robe off again and gets himself under the shower, but after ten minutes of standing under freezing water and then burning water he is still blotched with red and the blisters are broken and weeping, and it hurts so much but he's still so foul.

He gets out again onto the sopping floor, pulls his robe on again, totters out into the other room. He doesn't know what to do. His lungs hurt. The smell of the chemical is still all around him. And his pocket is singing to him. He puts his hand in and pulls out his communicator and puts it together. His fingers are blistered and shaking.

'Tovarisch, how's things?' Napoleon asks. He sounds happy. Bright and happy.

Illya doesn't want to smash that fragile happiness in Napoleon's voice, but he doesn't know how to lie, and he's a hair's breadth away from sobbing.

'Bad,' he says.

Napoleon's voice changes instantly.

'Bad? What's happened, Illya? Did you have a bad night?'

He can't even remember his night's sleep. He tries to work out what time it is in Hyderabad, but he can't.

'I slept well,' he says. 'I slept well.'

'What's bad, Illya?' Napoleon asks. 'What is it?'

He suddenly feels a little hysterical, and very ashamed. 'I – I did something stupid. Really stupid,' he says.

He's caught with a fit of coughing. He feels so sick.

'What?' Napoleon's voice sharpens. He's talking more loudly through Illya's coughs. 'Illya, have you taken something? Illya?'

'No,' he says. 'No, I – ' It sounds so stupid. How does he say this? His whole body hurts. 'I felt so dirty. I felt so – I got the bleach from the toilet, and – '

'Illya,' Napoleon says, his voice thin with worry.

'I w-washed myself with it,' Illya says. 'I need so badly to be clean...'

The silence is terrible. He feels as if he's waiting for Napoleon to explode. His breath trembles through his lips. His mind is full of men's voices. The shouting, the slurs, the belittlements and insults. He is starting to cry. He can't help it. He wants so badly to be strong but he can't help but cry.

'Illya, hold the channel open,' Napoleon says.

He doesn't sound angry. His voice goes away and Illya sits there, holding that precious metal pen. Then Napoleon is back.

'All right, Illya. There's a doctor on the way from headquarters. When he comes I need you to open the door for him. Do you understand that? Have you got that, Illya?'

'Yes,' Illya says. He's still sobbing. He wipes a hand over his eyes. They're slick with tears. He tries to modulate his voice, to not sound like a hiccuping, snivelling, snotty child. 'Yes, I know I've been stupid. I know it was stupid. Чорт, but it hurts...'

'You'll let him in?'

'I'll let him in,' Illya promises.

'All right, Illya.' Napoleon's voice is starting to level out. He never sounded panicked, but he sounds calmer now. 'Illya, have you washed it off your skin?'

'Yes,' he says. 'Yes, I went in the shower again.'

'Good,' Napoleon says. 'That's good.'

A sob hitches in Illya's throat again. 'Napoleon, am I going mad?

'You're in pain,' Napoleon says, but Illya knows that's a euphemism for going mad. He doesn't know what's wrong with him. He doesn't know how to control his mind. He's almost too tired to want to. The sobs overcome him again, and Napoleon says in a desperate tone, 'God, Illya. Jesus. Listen – Illya, don't cry, don't – '

His mouth is flooding with saliva. He feels so sick. And suddenly he's vomiting on the floor, and Napoleon is saying something, but his entire body is focussed on the cramping of his stomach and the surges of vomit coming from his mouth.

'Illya,' Napoleon calls. 'Illya!'

'Yes,' he says, gasping, his mouth full of bits of half digested food and stomach acid. 'I'm all right. Sick. Just sick.'

'Illya, go and get some water,' Napoleon tells him. He's talking to him as if he's a child, but he feels like a child, or worse. He feels like a robot with no free will. 'Drink some water. Go now, okay?'

'Yes.'

He stands up. Bits of vomit drip from the bathrobe. He goes into the kitchen and runs a cold glass of water and drinks it down. He coughs again and Napoleon asks, 'Illya, are you okay?'

'Yes,' he says. 'Yes, I'm okay.'

There's a buzzing, and then a knocking at the door. He cringes. He doesn't want to face anyone. But he says, 'I think he's here.'

'Go and answer the door,' Napoleon says clearly. 'Illya, let him in.'

His voice is so firm. Illya obeys, puts down the glass, goes back into the living room. When he opens the door there's a doctor in a suit, and an U.N.C.L.E. nurse, and he suddenly feels so naked under the bathrobe.

The doctor says, 'Now, Mr Kuryakin, what have you been doing to yourself?'

It's a kind of surrender. He lets them in, stepping backwards from the door in his vomit covered robe. The doctor takes the communicator and speaks to Napoleon, and the nurse is bustling around, and somehow he finds himself walking out of his apartment building in his robe and bare feet, getting into the back of an U.N.C.L.E. ambulance, lying down on the bed in there. It's all such a daze.

((O))

His skin hurts but he really isn't sure if he cares. He's bandaged in various places, medicinal smelling cream on his skin, and the doctor has spoken to him sternly about what he did. He couldn't explain to the doctor why he did it. He can't explain to himself. It seems so foolish to say I felt so dirty. I'm so filthy. I need to be clean. Who cleans themselves with bleach?

He's on painkillers and he's lying in a bed in the Infirmary, and nurses look in on him and smile from time to time. Someone brings him coffee. The vomiting has stopped and the cough has gone, and they say they want to keep him under observation but he's sure they're observing him not because of the burns, but because of the reasons behind them.

So, he's mad. He suspected it, but this is a brutal confirmation. No sane person washes themselves with bleach. He's not even sure if he cares, though. It's easy to lie in a hospital bed. He doesn't have to think. Thinking is so hard, because so much of his mind is taken up by memories and horror and that awful feeling of filth. He feels so disconnected from the world, as if all the voices and smiles and colours and sounds are so far away. He can't taste the coffee they brought him. He puts cube after cube of sugar in, and the tinkle of the spoon on the china is a distant sound, but when the sugar dissolves he still can't taste the coffee.

It would be good to sleep. It would be so good to sleep. His eyes are tired and his limbs are tired, but his mind keeps turning and turning. He sees the ceiling of that room, the beams cutting across it. He feels the chains on his wrists and ankles. He feels those men, one after another, using him over and over. It's all so heavy in him. It pins him to the bed. Gravity is like a lead blanket slumping over him.

A nurse brings in a tray of food and wheels a table over his bed. She takes the cover off the meal and he looks at the food on the plate. It makes impressions on him as shapes and dull colours but he doesn't put names to what is there. Little orange sticks. Green spheres. A white mound. Brown chunks. The nurse is talking to him and he replies but he doesn't know how, because he's not taking in what she says. And then she isn't there any more, and the plate is still there. He closes his eyes.

There's someone in there with a cup in her hand, tutting at the cold food that's still on the table. She tries to get him to drink some coffee, so he takes it and drinks it because it's easier that way.

'Didn't you like your lunch?' she asks him.

'Oh, I – ' he says. It takes time to understand words at the moment. Thinking in English is too hard. He looks up at her, blinking, then back at the food. 'I'm tired,' he says. That's a catch-all excuse for everything. It can all be excused by tiredness.

'Well, the doctor will be in to see you soon. I expect you can go home.'

Can't she see by looking at him what is wrong with him? Can't she see how dirty he is? He's so aware of his mouth, which was used so often and so brutally by those men. He puts up his hand to hide his lips. He can't taste the coffee but he can taste those men.

'All right,' he says.

'Shall I leave the food?'

He looks at the plate again. What struck him before only as coloured shapes and masses he can now see as carrots, peas, mashed potatoes, and meat.

'Mr Kuryakin, I hate to see you not eat,' she says, smiling at him, sitting down on the side of the bed so that the mattress depresses beneath her, and touching his arm very lightly. 'You're very thin. You could really do with eating.'

He looks up and recognises her. He doesn't know her well, but he's seen her around. She's been here in the Infirmary before, when he's been injured. That makes him feel so naked, so exposed.

'I'm not very hungry, Sandra,' he says.

He's trying so hard to sound normal. He even manages to smile. But he's thinking, does she know? Does she know? How much do the staff here know?

'All right, Mr Kuryakin,' she says, smiling back at him. Perhaps she doesn't know. Perhaps she has no idea what he is. She gets up off the bed again and wheels the table back to the side of the room, and takes away the tray and the empty coffee cup. He sits in the room and his eyes drift on the blankness of the wall opposite. And then there's someone in the room again. It's so strange the way he's seeing the world in freeze frames. The doctor is in the room, sitting on the chair by the bed and looking at him as if waiting for an answer to a question that Illya hasn't heard.

'I hope you agree with that assessment, Mr Kuryakin,' he says.

'Oh. I – ' He clears his throat and tries to focus. 'I'm sorry. What was – ?'

'I want to discharge you from the medical side of things, Illya,' he says, his voice a little slower and louder. 'You don't need to be in a medical bed. But I'm passing you over to Psychiatry. You'll have a bed there for a while.'

'Oh,' he says.

He looks down at the white dressings on his arms and hands. His skin stings in so many places. It's worst between his legs. Having them clean and dress the burns there was so terrible that he could hardly breathe. Having their hands on him like that, touching him...

'So I'll walk you over there now,' the doctor says. 'I think you have a bag with some clothes, don't you?'

'I – '

Illya looks vaguely around the room. He has a dim memory of the nurse packing some things before they left his apartment. There's a bag there, his bag, sitting on the floor in the corner. The doctor sees it too.

'All right,' the doctor says. 'No need to change out of your pyjamas. It's just a short walk.'

The meaning of his words drenches down over him like a slow, creeping cold. If it's not his burns keeping him in the Infirmary, then it's his mind.

'I'd rather go home,' he says. He wants his own bed, his own things. He wants his little kitchen and his low sofa, the scents and comforts of home. He was deprived of them for so long. It's awful to be trapped in a single room with one narrow bed.

'Not today, though,' the doctor says. Illya looks up at him. He sees brown eyes, glasses, greying hair, lines on his face. It's hard to see his face as a whole. 'Illya, you aren't well,' he says clearly. 'You're suffering from depression brought on by the terrible ordeal you went through. You need to stay in.'

Oh. Depression, he thinks. Is that what it is? Is that what's making him feel so bad?

'Do I have any choice?' he asks.

'No,' the doctor says plainly. 'You've caused yourself significant self harm. You don't have a choice.'

He pushes the covers aside with a dead, leaden hand and swings his legs out of the bed. He hates his legs, hates his hands, hates his arms, his chest, his face. Most of all he hates the place where his legs meet his body. He can't bear to think of that. His body feels like a dead weight, like such an awful burden. But he stands up and the doctor picks up his bag, and he follows him down the short corridor that leads to Psych.

((O))

It's very dark, very quiet. The whole room is dark. It's odd to be in U.N.C.L.E. HQ at night and not be working or confined to bed. Illya isn't confined to bed, not really. He's not physically in need of bed rest. But he feels simultaneously exhausted and restless. He's been here a few days and the pills they're giving him seem to have lifted some of the lethargy, but he still feels so wretched. He wants to wash. He wants so badly to clean the filth from his skin. These little Psych rooms have bathrooms, but the door to his bathroom is closed and locked because on the first day he stayed in the shower so long that they had to come in and bring him out, and he had scrubbed at his blistered skin until he bled. So that door is locked, and he can use the toilet down the corridor past the nurses' station, but he can't just strip off his clothes and douse himself any more.

They are giving him tablets every day. Anti depressants, they say. They should be starting to work by now. But he still feels so terrible. He still feels so heavy and hopeless. Only, he has a little more energy. Just a little more energy. So he lies there on his bed in the dark and he can't sleep, and his mind churns and churns.

He remembers the first one to come to him, in that terrible little room under the club. Lying there on that bed in the dark, shivering, wondering, waiting. And then the light coming on. Lee coming in with another man, standing there and talking, eyeing him like a product on sale. He saw the glimmer in that stranger's eyes and it sparked an instinctive fear. And then the money changing hands, and Lee turning to leave the room. The hungry look in that man's eyes as he came over and just stood above Illya, looking him up and down. All of his skin had prickled. He had come out in gooseflesh.

And the man had unhooked his ankles from the footboard and Illya had acted like a snake, lashing out, getting his legs scissored around that man's neck. But the man had cried out and struggled and thrashed, and then ducked down suddenly, head-butting Illya so hard between the legs that the weird, sick pain exploded over him. While he had been moaning and overcome with nausea the man had hooked his legs up to the beam so high his ass was off the bed and then slapped his behind so hard that his body swung, then so forcefully across the face that black and red flashed in his vision. And then he had stopped, stepped back, stood there panting and just looking at Illya, the glitter in his eyes changed to something far more dangerous.

Feisty fucker. You're a feisty fucker aren't you? But you're still sweet as a nut. God. I like a fighter. Look at you. You're a fucking wild cat. Look at the dick on you. God. Look at those balls. Look at that sweet, tight ass all ready for me. You're hungry for me, aren't you, pretty boy? Don't pretend you're not.

He had lain there, panting, splayed. He had felt so sick and so afraid. And the man knelt on the bed between his legs, opened his trousers and let his thick, hard cock out, already aroused. I'm here to break you in, he had said. I'm here to give you a lesson in how to be fucked. And he had come down over him, kissing and tonguing his chest, face, lips. And then he had spat on his hands, slicked the saliva up and down his veined cock, spat between Illya's legs and let the spittle run down to the tight pucker between them.

God, he had said, swirling a finger against that opening, and Illya had thrashed again, swearing, trying to get away, unable to get away from that awful, intimate touch. He had strained at the chains, his ankles burning with his weight hanging from them. But the finger had followed him, touching him, pressing into him.

God, I like a virgin. I like a fighter. That man had taken himself in hand, stroked himself, angled the purple, flaring head towards Illya and said, You want this, don't you? I know you want this. I'm going to fuck you so hard up the ass I'm going to knock your guts out your mouth.

And he had put the tip of his cock to that clenched hole and pushed. Illya swore, twisted, tried to get away. The lubrication of the saliva wasn't enough, wasn't nearly enough. His muscles clenched and seared, and he jerked and jerked his arms and legs to try to get away from that pain, from that awful invasion. But the chains were too strong, he was too helpless, the man slapped him again and put a hand on his throat and tightened his grip and said, Don't fight me, you little shit. Don't fight me. It's going to happen. You're too sweet to be left a virgin. I'm giving you a goddamn gift. And he had pressed his hand against Illya's throat until he coughed and choked, and then let go again and positioned himself again, and when Illya fought again he slapped him so hard that for a moment everything went black.

He had blinked and shaken his head and he could feel that awful thickness pressing into his body, his muscles in spasm and screaming. The pain knifed through him, the man pushed until he was filling him, thick in him, his pelvis hard against Illya's ass, a hand on Illya's cock, stroking it, pulling it, rolling his bruised balls and then stroking him again. Illya closed his eyes, tried to close his mind, tried to divorce himself from this awful thing, but the man was moving, plunging into his body, causing twists of pain to spasm through his gut. His own cock was hard. That was terrible, shameful and bewildering, because this was so far away from pleasurable. He could feel the heat of it, the blood filling it, the man's hand on him. He was thrusting harder and harder, lost in his desire, and Illya bellowed at the pain and strained at the chains and fought and fought. His balls tightened. He was coming himself, painfully after that awful blow between his legs, the ejaculate spattering onto his own chest. And then that man came, buried in him, panting, butting just a little as his cock jerked.

Everything became still. Everything was quiet. His legs were shaking so violently, his feet were numb. He could feel that man inside him, softening, and his muscles clenched and tried to push him out. The pain was so bad. And the man just knelt there, an arm looped around Illya's thigh so intimately, eyes closed, sweat sticky between Illya's skin and his own.

Then he pulled out, and left.

Illya hung there, gasping, the hot semen oozing from his body. He felt dazed. His mind seemed to be lost in a whirlpool. He had been raped, and he had come during it. What did that mean, to come for his rapist, to be lying there covered in his own cum? What did that say about him? And the door had opened, Lee had come in. He slapped Illya across the face with brutal anger, and hissed, Make that much noise again and I'll fucking leather you to within an inch of your life.

Again? he had thought. Again... Then this wasn't just a single lesson, a final humiliation before they killed him. Oh god, oh god...

He had been panting, dizzy, panicked in a way he was completely unused to.

Oh god, oh god. Again. Again...

And then Lee set about wiping the mattress, wiping him down with a cloth, unhooking his ankles and fixing them back to the foot of the bed. Illya was shaking, and he didn't know if it were with anger or fear. He fought against the chains again, but they wouldn't give. He had seen blood on the cloth when Lee wiped him between the legs, and he wondered fearfully how badly he was bleeding. But then another man was being ushered into the room, another man with that hungry look in his eyes, and he felt all hope ebb away.

He is so foul. So filthy. He lies on the bed in that little hospital room and his skin crawls with the filth. He remembers so vividly. It's as if those pills are awakening his mind. He scrapes his fingernails over the healing chemical burns on his arms and wishes he could get hold of something like that bleach again. He wishes he could peel off his epidermis and flush it away. He scrapes the dressings off, scrapes his skin until blood comes. The pain is nothing against the pain in his mind.

He can't bear this any more. He just can't bear it. It's so much, too much. He can't bear feeling like this. He can't even wash. There's only one thing that he can do.

He slips out of bed. His bare feet are silent on the carpet. He may be depressed to the point of disintegration, but he's still an agent and he knows how to not be seen or heard. He dresses silently in poloneck and trousers, and pins on his badge, because he will need it to pass through the doors. He doesn't bother with socks, but he picks up a pair of shoes. He slips across the room and opens the door so quietly that not even a dog would hear. The corridor is dimly lit and empty. His mind feels dizzy with the enormity of this weight inside him. It's so hard to think, but creeping is a body instinct with him by now, and he moves on his bare feet down the corridor, to the edge of the more brightly lit space that marks the medical area of the Infirmary, the place where they keep patients who are just damaged, not mad.

He can see someone behind the desk, distant from him, where the corridor widens out into the reception, but it's the small hours of the morning. The clock on the wall says it's ten past four. She's behind the desk but her head is tilted backwards and her mouth is a little open, and every now and then she snores.

Illya is silent as he moves through past the couple of private patient rooms, past the ward, past that desk and to the doors into U.N.C.L.E. proper. There's always someone here at night, but the corridors are empty. He slips his feet into his shoes. He has his badge on his chest and he's dressed like he's always dressed. His long sleeves cover his bleeding arms. He doesn't look any different to the agent he used to be. More tired, perhaps. Thinner. He has shaving cuts and his hair isn't brushed. But it's the middle of the night and people care less at times like this. If anyone sees him he will just be Illya Kuryakin, suckered with a night shift.

No one sees him until he steps out of the elevator on the top floor. Then another agent walks past him in the corridor and gives him the kind of muted greeting familiar to those who have worked these unsocial hours. Illya barely lifts his hand in return. It's getting harder and harder to think the closer he gets. His mind is whirling. His chest is so full of something terrible. It's incredible how a mental depression can produce such a physical pain just under the ribcage, like a tumour swelling to fill all the space. It's a wonder his heart can beat. It's a wonder he can breathe. But that won't be a problem for long. It's such a relief to think of this all stopping and leaving him in peace.

He's aware of the man saying something, but it's like a snatch of a conversation slipping past far away, unconnected, nothing to do with him. He goes to the door to the roof, punches in the code, steps into the little stairwell that automatically lights at his entry.

When he opens the door at the top the summer air wafts in at him like something solid. It's almost too warm to breathe. He stands there, nothing but the night sky above him. There's the cabinet that holds the laser defence mechanism. There are sundry shafts and vents. It's an odd space up here. An odd, neglected space. There are pats of bird mess on the ground, little pale marks in the dim light. The lights of the city impart a glow to the night air. The skyscrapers sparkle against the darkness. Even at this time of night there are the sounds of cars, sirens, sometimes voices. New York, the city that never sleeps.

None of it matters. Those sounds, those voices, the prickles of light in windows. It's all separated from him, all so distant. It's as if he's surrounded by a glass jar. Everything is so far away. He walks across the roof to the little wall that separates this space from the six storey drop to the street. He stands there, his eyes fixed on the road below, on the parked cars, on the glow of lights. He is so filthy that he could vomit. It's all so much, it's all so, so much. His mind is spinning with the magnitude of the pain inside him.

He puts a foot up onto that little wall, and then another. He stands there, staring down. It will be so fast. The hot night air will push past him and he will sail for a moment, and then he will hit the concrete below. It will be so quick. The pain of hitting will be nothing at all against the pain that's flooding his entire soul. And then everything will stop. The voices will stop. The memories will stop.

He's swaying on the wall, on the stark edge between the building and the void, between this awful life, and peace. He starts to lean, to deliberately unbalance. He tips from his heels towards the balls of his feet. And then there are arms around his chest, coming from behind, closing about his chest and jerking him back so that he falls, stumbles, sags against that warm body holding him.

'Illya, Illya...'

Napoleon. Napoleon's arms are tight around him, holding him so hard he can't breathe.

'Jesus Christ, Illya. Jesus.'

Napoleon turns him around, hugging him still, holding him. His lips press against the side of Illya's head, right against his temple.

'Please,' Illya says. It's so hard to speak. His heart is racing inside his ribcage. 'Just let me – '

'No,' Napoleon says. He shakes him, shakes him so hard that his teeth rattle. A moment ago he was kissing him and now he's shaking him like a rag doll. 'No, don't you dare. Illya Nikolayevich Kuryakin, don't you dare.'

He drags Illya back into the stairwell. The lights spark on. Napoleon locks the door to the roof and sits Illya down on the concrete steps and crouches down before him, holding his hands, touching his arms, hugging him, kissing the side of his head again. Napoleon is sweating. His face is white. His hands are shaking.

'Jesus Christ, Illya, do you know how close you were?'

It's not fair. He was so close, so close. He would have been in peace by now. Everything hurts so much. Tears are running down his cheeks and Napoleon wipes them with his fingertips.

'Illya, you are not going to keep feeling like this,' Napoleon says. 'Listen to me. You're not going to keep feeling like this. The antidepressants take time to work, okay? Do you understand that? Are you taking this in?'

He's not sure how to talk. He struggles for words. Then he says, 'I thought you were in India...'

'I got back a couple hours ago. Jesus, Illya, if I hadn't bumped into Geoff in the corridor I wouldn't have known you were up here. Illya – You'd have been – You would have been – '

Is Napoleon crying? It seems like he's crying. But Illya feels so tired. He's so, so tired all of a sudden. It's like his bones have disintegrated.

'Illya, listen to me,' Napoleon says. He lets go of Illya with one hand, quickly wipes his own eyes, takes hold of Illya again as if he's still afraid he'll fall. 'I spoke to your doctor yesterday through comms. He told me you were on antidepressants, but that they take time to work. Illya, listen. He told me they give you a little more energy before they start to lift the depression. He said there's a greater risk of suicide because you're still depressed but you have the energy to put a plan into action. Are you listening to me? Are you understanding this?'

He nods, but he feels so terrible. He feels so heavy, so enormously heavy and exhausted. When his head bows down with the nod it's hard to bring it up again.

'Illya, I'm going to take you back to the Infirmary,' Napoleon says. 'Okay? Come on, can you stand up for me?'

He's so tired. So very tired. Too tired to live, too tired to die. Is this what Napoleon meant about the energy? He doesn't feel like he could throw himself off a building now because it's so much effort even just to stand up. He does stand, though, Napoleon's hand under his arm, holding him up, helping him stumble down the steps.

'Back to bed,' Napoleon is saying gently. 'That's it.'

The corridors seem very bright, even though the lights are dimmed because of the time of day. He stands in the elevator, leaning against the wall, and the light seems so bright in his eyes. Napoleon is looking at him all the time, his eyes full of concern.

'You'll be all right,' Napoleon says. 'I promise you, Illya. You're going to be all right. Give the medication time to work. Give the counselling time to work.'

It all collapses inside him. It's as if his body has just given way.

'But I'm so filthy,' he sobs.

His knees buckle. He slumps to the floor, pressing his hands over his face. His head is so heavy he can't hold it up and the sobs are coming hard and loud, filling the tight space, echoing from the walls. The lift stops, dimly he hears the doors open, but they slide closed again when neither man moves.

'I'm so dirty, Napoleon. I can't bear it. I can't bear the memories. I can't bear what they did to me...'

Napoleon is crouching beside him, hugging him, rocking him as he sobs. He's surrounded by Napoleon, who is stroking him, kissing him again, holding him so tightly. Everything smells of Napoleon.

'Time,' he murmurs. 'You have to give it time, Illya. You have to let people help you.'

He's not sure how he gets back to his little room in Psych, but then he's there, standing there swaying as if his bones are made of rubber, and they're stripping off his clothes and putting him into pyjamas and he drops into his bed. There's a doctor there, and Napoleon is there, and words pass between them, fast and hushed. The doctor injects something into his arm with a sharp little sting. He hears them talking.

'...put someone in here with him.' That's the doctor. 'Need to keep him under observation.'

'I can watch him,' Napoleon says, and the doctor replies, 'Mr Solo, you must be exhausted. How long was the flight from India?'

'I took First Class. I slept a lot. It's the middle of the day for me and I'm probably more awake than your staff. More awake than the girl on the desk, that's for sure.'

There's censure in Napoleon's voice. Illya wants to say something but he feels so drowsy. He wants to say it's not the nurse's fault, that if he couldn't creep past a guard at night then he shouldn't be an agent. He wants to tell Napoleon to go and sleep. He wants to beg him to stay.

'All right,' the doctor says. 'I'll have someone check in every few hours. If he needs the toilet, go with him. Stand with him. He doesn't get privacy right now. He needs to be watched. Okay?'

'Yes, I understand the procedure, Doctor,' Napoleon says a little dryly.

Illya tries to hold on, to stay awake, but the drowsiness is so strong. It must be something the doctor gave him. It must be that injection.

He turns his head, tries to look at Napoleon, tries to smile.

''Poleon,' he murmurs, and Napoleon takes his hand.

'All right, tovarisch,' Napoleon says in a falsely cheery voice. 'Go to sleep. I'm not going anywhere.'

Napoleon starts to stroke his forehead, softly, regularly, stroking the fringe back from his face. His eyes are sinking closed. He can see Napoleon's face. The light is dim. He's so tired, so heavy, so sleepy. And then he is gone.

((O))

Had he expected to wake in a warm state of well-being? Even before he opens his eyes the awful, heavy feeling is upon him, pressing him into the bed. The mattress is soft and the covers are soft and the room temperature is just right. The only wrong thing is himself.

He opens his eyes slowly, blinks, turns his head to see Napoleon sitting there in a high-backed chair that they must have brought in from somewhere else, because the room didn't have such a comfortable chair in it before. Napoleon's head is lolling sideways, his face is relaxed in sleep.

He tries to find comfort in Napoleon's presence but he only sees it as a presence, as the solid body of a man in a grey suit sitting in that chair. All he can feel is that terrible weight, and physical sensation. Pain. Filth. His arms have been bandaged again. His bladder is full. He pushes back the covers and swings his legs over the side of the bed. Napoleon is awake in an instant, his hand moving as if to his gun, but it hovers and moves away again.

'Illya, where're you going?' he asks sharply.

'I need the toilet,' Illya says.

Of course, he must be watched. Napoleon has to watch him. He wonders how he would dispatch himself in the toilet. There are ways, awful ways, but the easiest would be to smash the mirror and use the broken glass. That thought is such a draw that he wonders if he could do it fast enough, before Napoleon could stop him. But it's no good. He could cut his wrists, but it takes time to bleed out, and they'd bandage him up and sedate him. Maybe his throat... He knows how to dispatch an enemy in a few seconds with a knife to the throat. It can't be so different on oneself... He wonders if he could get Napoleon's gun and put a bullet through his brain. But Napoleon is a formidable opponent and already on guard, and Illya is so weak and dull.

He sits there on the edge of the bed, his toes on the carpet, looking down at the little beige strands under his feet. He feels as though he were very, very high, teetering over a great drop, and he sways.

'Come on, buddy,' Napoleon says, putting a hand under his arm. 'Let me help you. You'll have to go down the hall because yours is locked.'

'Okay,' he says, and he stands up, and Napoleon walks with him. He isn't sure if Napoleon is acting as friend or guard. Maybe he's both.

Napoleon walks with him into the washroom and says, 'Ah, if you need to sit down you have to keep the door open, Illya. I'm sorry.'

'I don't need to sit down,' he says.

He feels too awful to feel humiliated. The only emotion is a dull acceptance of the fact that he wouldn't have time to immolate himself in the cubicle anyway. He goes to the urinal and lets loose a stream of piss, and Napoleon stands there, watching but not watching. Illya goes to wash his hands and wants to wash his whole body so badly that tears fall. He can't look in the mirror above the basin. It's terrible. He thinks about lifting his fist, smashing that mirror, but before he can do anything Napoleon touches his arm and says, 'I think your hands are clean now. Come on.'

So Illya turns away, dries his hands, and goes with Napoleon back to his room.

'How do you feel, Illya?' Napoleon asks as he settles back down in bed.

How does he answer that question? He has no idea. That's like looking at a Seurat and asking what colour it is. How does he put a sea of such awful, amorphous feeling into words? The surface is opaque and he can't grasp what's beneath. He closes his eyes and shakes his head and tries to think of a way.

'You should have let me fall,' he says.

'Illya.'

He doesn't have it in him to be angry, but he says, 'What did you expect, Napoleon? A miraculous recovery?'

'No,' Napoleon says, his voice so heavy. 'No, I suppose not. I hoped – I suppose I hoped you might have given yourself enough of a fright to regret it.'

Illya snorts. It's not really a laugh. He doesn't have it in him to laugh. It all hurts so much. He was chained to a bed for months and raped repeatedly every single night, hit and hurt and burnt and belittled and fucked, fucked, fucked, no matter how he pleaded or sobbed for mercy. Every single night. He's like a tree that's been sent to mill, ground down, turned to sawdust. There's no way to recover that original tree. He's been taken apart. He's so filthy, so ruined.

That awful feeling. The hands on his hips, the ramming over and over, that rhythmic motion that gets faster and faster until the man gasps and comes. The pain of it…

'I can't...' he whispers.

'I will sit here every minute of the day and night if I have to,' Napoleon says. 'I will keep you here, Illya, until you're ready to live again.'

To Illya it sounds like a threat, not a reassurance.

((O))

His badge is no longer authorised for all of the doors in U.N.C.L.E. HQ. He can't get through the doors from the Infirmary any more without someone opening them for him. The code to access the roof has been changed. He can't enter the armoury, the gun range, the labs, Waverly's office, or any places that might harbour weapons. He can't go out through any of the exits alone.

He's starting to care about that. At first it just didn't seem to matter, but now it feels infantilising, humiliating. It feels so invasive to be watched all the time like a child.

He understands, of course. He had been severely suicidal for a week, and it had been the longest week of his life. Napoleon had taken to removing gun and holster before he visited. Illya had been kept away from anything he could use to hang himself, from anything he could use to cut himself. His door had been kept locked to separate him from the wonderful drugs he knew the Infirmary stocked. He had just had his room and his bed, the bedding that couldn't be torn into strips no matter how hard he tried, the light fittings and sockets that had no way to access the beautiful current inside.

It had hurt so much to be forced to stay alive. It had felt longer even than a week in that basement chained to the bed. He wouldn't have wished such an awful state of mind on the most heinous of Thrush villains, not on the men who raped him, not on Lee, who put him in that room and hired his body out to be fucked by any man with a few dollars in his pocket.

Now the tablets are working, he thinks. Three more long weeks have passed. He is still so depressed, so caught up in memory and flashbacks, so disgusted by his body. But the tablets are working. He can eat without feeling it is an enormous effort. He can take a little interest in outside things. He's starting to be able to look other men in the eye, to be able to see something outside of his own terrible vortex of pain. He has long, intense sessions with the psychiatrist every day, and the nurses come and talk to him. Napoleon visits every chance he gets, and he's starting to feel he might be able to talk to other colleagues. Only a few of them have asked to visit, though, and he's turned them all down. Mental illness is such a terrible stigma. Rape is such a terrible stigma, and of course everyone in the building knows, because this is U.N.C.L.E., and gossip is a way of life. To be a man who has been raped by men and to fall prey to depression in response is to become an outcast, a cipher. He should have responded with fire and fury, not this awful mental collapse. He is no longer a real man.

'All right, partner. Shoes on.'

He looks up at the doorway. Napoleon is standing there, grinning, a bunch of flowers in his hand. He has taken to bringing Illya extravagant bouquets every few days. The flowers are never left long enough that they start to brown or wilt. It may be unconventional for a man to bring another man flowers, but Napoleon has never been conventional, and the flowers make Illya smile. They have to be put in an unbreakable vase because they won't leave him alone with glass or china or knives, but the flowers bring some joy into the room.

Illya has been sitting there trying to muster the energy to play his English horn, which Napoleon brought in a few days ago. The musical notation looks like little insects on the staves. He can't focus. He can't blow hard enough. It's stupid, but he can't muster the energy to blow hard enough to make a proper sound. So he lays the horn down and smiles at Napoleon. The smile is a very manufactured thing.

'Shoes?' he asks.

He's already dressed. They make him wash and shave and dress every morning. He's allowed to shower for ten minutes every evening. They check him when he comes out to be sure he hasn't harmed himself in his attempts to be clean. Then he changes into pyjamas and he's given sleeping pills, because they're trying to bring his sleep cycles back to normal, and he sinks into a dead, awful sleep.

'I'm taking you out,' Napoleon says.

Illya demurs. He hasn't been in the streets since that awful trip to the grocery store.

'Now, come on,' Napoleon says. 'It's July 4th. I've got special permission to take you out. Dr Westingbroke thinks it'll be good for you.'

He sighs and slips his feet into his shoes and stands up. Napoleon smiles and takes his arm and leads him out of the room. The nurse challenges them at the exit and Napoleon flashes a smile and explains the special permission, and asks her sweetly to take care of the flowers he left in Illya's room.

'Be sure and have fun,' the nurse tells them as they leave.

Illya follows Napoleon out into the corridor. It's weird to be here. He's been out of the Infirmary a few times, when Napoleon or one of the nurses have insisted on taking him to the Commissary, but it's always felt so weird, and when people have tried to speak to him he hasn't known what to say. He has looked at them and thought, It could be you. You could be one of my rapists. Napoleon found me, so why couldn't you? He knows that sexual perversions are the most hidden perversions, the most compulsive. How does he know that none of them came to use him in the same way all the other men did? Men are men, after all. All driven by their cocks. Even Napoleon. Even Napoleon... When Napoleon found him, was it because he'd been looking for him, or was it chance? Had Napoleon been there to – to –

He kills that thought. He can't bear that thought. Napoleon sought him out and rescued him. He wasn't there to fuck an anonymous body on a bed. He couldn't have been. Is his sense of trust really so fragile now?

When they get to the front entrance Napoleon has to speak quietly to the receptionist just as he did in the Infirmary, to confirm that Illya has permission to leave. He's always been able to walk in and out of here at will.

'Perhaps next time you should bring a leash,' he murmurs as they leave the little tailor's shop.

'Illya,' Napoleon says chidingly.

Illya looks up into the street and at the blue sky, and tries to smile. He tries to be rational. He tries to pretend that this black dog isn't really padding in his footsteps and dragging him down. But the heat pushes down on him. The sun seems so bright. There are no windows in the Infirmary and he hasn't seen real daylight for weeks.

'I'm sorry,' he says. 'Where are we going?'

Napoleon takes him to a park a few blocks away, and he buys hot dogs at a stand. Illya feels as though he were visiting from another planet. The food has more taste than it did a week or two ago. The ketchup and mustard are vibrant on his tongue. But he still feels strange and separate from everything else. He had always felt a little like a stranger in crowds, even at home in Kyiv, but the feeling is so strong now. He sits on a bench and eats his hot dog, and children set off firecrackers somewhere across the grass, and people are having picnics, and he feels as though he were outside of everything.

'Hey.' Napoleon nudges him in the side. 'You okay, IK?'

Illya wipes his fingers on a paper napkin, then wipes his mouth, then crumples the tissue and tosses it into the bin by the bench.

'I'm okay,' he says.

Napoleon looks at him critically.

'Too many people, yes? Too much noise?'

'Too much – '

He's stuttering, grasping for words, because he feels so tired. It's so tiring being out here. It's good to sit in the sun and the food tasted good, but there's always that shroud around him and it is so exhausting to try to go through the motions of being a normal person when everything is weighted down with lead. He looks sideways at Napoleon and thinks again, How did you find me? How did you manage to find me when no one else could?

'Illya,' Napoleon says softly. 'What is it?'

He rubs his hands over his face very hard, so hard that it makes his cheekbones ache. He suspects that he still has deep, healing damage from the amount of times he was hit about the face.

'How did you find me?' he asks suddenly. 'Napoleon, how did you know where I was?'

He feels so small, so awful, cringing and unpleasant. How terrible to think such a thing of Napoleon…

'Well, I looked,' Napoleon says simply.

'Looked?'

Napoleon shrugs. 'Illya, you know the procedure for finding missing agents as well as I do. I took the details of your last mission, your last known position. I took down names and places. I followed up. It was a delicate chain. It took time to reconstruct some of the parts. It took far, far too long...'

Napoleon sighs, sounding tired, and Illya glances at him again. The words tumble out.

'I was afraid – I was afraid – '

Napoleon stiffens suddenly. He stares at Illya. The directness of his gaze makes Illya turn away. He can't bear to be looked at like that. He was looked at by so many men. Pawed over. Invaded. So many men, men who probably had respectable jobs, wives, children, neighbours who never suspected. How is it possible to tell them from the crowd?

Napoleon is still staring at him, horrified. 'Illya, say what you mean,' he says, but his voice is hard.

'I – ' Illya says. 'I'm sorry. It's so hard – '

'You thought – You thought I might have come there for a night out? To have some fun? For a quick fuck?' Napoleon asks, and Illya feels scoured through by his voice. 'Illya, could you really suspect me of that?'

Illya presses his hands over his face again. He shakes his head. His own emotions are so terrible. He doesn't know how to accommodate Napoleon's too.

'I – don't know – ' he stutters. He's so confused. He feels as if he's falling.

Then Napoleon's hand is on his arm, warm and solid and somehow forgiving.

'Illya,' he says, and all the hardness has left his voice. 'I know I have a – well – a high libido, shall we say? I know I'm not always too picky about who scratches the itch. But I would never, never do anything with anyone who wasn't willing. I promise you that. I found you because I worked for hours and hours, into the night, through the night, researching names, following up leads, treading the sidewalks. It took me weeks and weeks to get hold of the name of Alan Lee, and when I did, everything said – All the facts said he'd killed you. I thought you were halfway down the Hudson, or buried under someone's floor. But I kept looking for you, Illya. I wanted you to be alive, but God forbid, if you weren't – I would have done everything to find your body and bring you home. I kept looking. I knew he owned a club. I got rumours about – well, about them having someone who – '

'Someone who – ' Illya echoes. He can't bring himself to say it.

'I found you,' Napoleon says. 'I had an idea of what I might find, but when I saw you there – God, Illya… When I saw you...'

Illya remembers himself how he was then, splayed and naked, filthy, blinking and waking up from a merciful sleep into the continuation of his nightmare. He remembers the door opening, the dull thought that it was all about to begin again, to carry on, that it would carry on like that until death set him free. And then Napoleon's voice… There is such a haze around that memory. It's all tangled and confused. He remembers Napoleon's voice, Napoleon's warm hands…

'Illya,' Napoleon says, and he feels as if he is waking from a dream. He sees the sunlight, and the grass spreading away in front of him, covered with picnickers, dotted with litter. The sounds come back, the shouting children, the firecrackers. There's the smell of hot dogs and hamburgers and popcorn in the air. It's so real it's almost too much to bear.

'I know it's hard for you to trust anyone,' Napoleon says gently. 'I understand that. And if you need me to I will take you through every record of my search, every bit of paperwork that led to where you were.'

'No, Napoleon,' he says. 'No, I don't need you to do that.'

Just that offer is enough. He knows it is enough. It is terrible to think that he might not trust Napoleon without that proof, but it's terrible to think that anyone could have come across him in that room and thought it was all right to fuck him against his will, and do nothing to help him. He knows that paper trail will be stored in the U.N.C.L.E. filing cabinets, and Napoleon's offer to show him is enough.

'Come on,' Napoleon says, taking him by the elbow, getting him to stand up.

He walks along the path back towards the city sounds. The trees give way to buildings that tower so high that they close in the streets. This place is so busy, so full of life. There are American flags everywhere, flounces of red, white, and blue on everything. The Americans think that the Russians live lives of propaganda, but they don't seem to see their own brainwashing. Everyone here is brainwashed to spend money, money, money, all in the deluded belief that they are free. Capitalism is their chain and their lock. It was capitalism that put him in that basement, on that bed. The free passing of green dollar bills from hand to hand.

The memory swells to terrible proportions, and he stops still, head down, trying to pull himself back from that awful place. He is swaying where he stands, dizzy in his mind.

'Hey,' Napoleon says, a hand on his arm. 'Look, come in here,' he says, and Illya follows him blindly up a set of stone steps and in through a vast wooden door. A sweet sound of voices washes over him as he moves from light to shade, from heat to cool, and he realises that he's in a church. Napoleon ushers him to an empty pew right at the back. There's a choir at the front, singing, their voices reverberating through the air. Someone approaches Napoleon and he murmurs something, and then he's passing over money. It's always about money.

Illya feels the cool solidity of the pew beneath him, against his back. It feels sore against his sorenesses, against the healing bedsores and burns and the soreness at the centre of him that still causes him pain even now. Perhaps this is some kind of penance for his sins.

Napoleon sits in silence beside him, just letting the singing voices fill the air. Illya slowly recognises it as Tchaikovsky. They are singing the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. It is the Hymn of the Cherubim. The haunting sounds hum through the molecules of the air. He has the recording of this at home, somewhere to the left of his jazz records, in the stack of classical music that he's amassed through the years. Suddenly he misses his little apartment so much that it hurts. He misses his old self so much that it hurts. He has been so changed from the confident agent who walked into that Thrush trap and ended up in that basement under the club. He has been hollowed out, emasculated, destroyed. The tears pour down his face as the music washes around him.

Napoleon's hand moves subtly to cover his. He is warm over Illya's cold. He passes Illya a handkerchief and Illya holds it as a child holds a comfort blanket, but doesn't touch it to his face. No one can see his tears. There is no one else in their pew and everyone else is in front of them, facing forward.

He lets his eyes roam over the vaulting pillars and arches, the carved wood and polished stone. There are candles lit, candles on the pillars, candles at the end of the pews. The choir stands in their white frocks, the conductor with his back to the congregation, lost in the music he is directing. It's all so beautiful. It's all so much bigger than Illya's own little life. It seems bigger even than the city outside, as if in stepping through this door they have entered another realm. He wishes he could manage to play his English horn, because perhaps if he could get lost in music again he might be able to lose some of the terrible thoughts as well.

In the end they sit there for so long that all of Illya's little pains seem to drill up into his body. His spine becomes stiff. The tears stop and his face dries, but the singing goes on. They've moved on from Tchaikovsky to Handel. The music feels timeless and placeless compared to the aggressive nationalism outside.

'Hey. Come on, tovarisch,' Napoleon says.

The singing has stopped. People are making an exodus. The choir members are talking and laughing with each other like ordinary humans. Illya stands, and his buttocks hurt, his spine cracks. For a moment he's unsteady on his feet. It's taking time to recover the muscle strength and poise lost through weeks of lying helpless on his back, and he hasn't been doing much but lying in bed since, either.

They start to move towards the door. People mill around them. They reach a stand of candles lit for prayers, and Illya hesitates. He touches a hand to his pocket instinctively, but he has no money, no wallet.

'How many do you need?' Napoleon asks, understanding without question.

'One,' Illya says. 'Just one.'

So Napoleon drops money into the collection box and Illya takes a little candle and touches it to the flame of another. The thought occurs to him that he is sharing the power of another person's prayer, perhaps a person who actually has faith, to whom God will listen.

The wick catches and flares. Illya puts the candle down on the stand. He passes his hand over the heat of those flames, quickly, just feeling the heat and then dropping his hand before Napoleon can catch his wrist. He sinks to his knees on the floor and bows his head.

He's not religious at all. He has never been religious. Religion is not sanctioned in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and it doesn't sit easily in the mind of a scientist, either. He doesn't believe in God. But he kneels there and bows his head and appeals to some higher power, because he feels so small and so weak. He kneels with his eyes closed and seems to feel something of legions of Orthodox ancestors in his blood. He feels the mass of the church around him and the weight of a century of worship. He remembers exploring the much, much older churches of Cambridge and London. He remembers wandering in the repurposed churches of Kyiv and breathing in that still-sacred air. He prays for peace.

A hand settles on his shoulder. He looks up, almost expecting to see a bearded Ukrainian patriarch there. But it is Napoleon looking down at him. Napoleon smiles at him and says, 'Time to go, comrade. Dr Westingbroke will have my hide.'

He blinks in the sudden light. When he stands up he feels momentarily light-headed. His eyes must be wet again because the candles are sparkling, and Napoleon is touching that handkerchief to his cheeks. They are almost the last people left in the church, but there is a man in a dog collar watching him from the shadow of a pillar. Illya turns away.

He realises, as he walks out of the church, that for this brief moment in time he feels clean. It's not God or a holy spirit cleansing him, he is sure. It's the music, and the peace. Perhaps faith is something one manufactures oneself, made in the body from beautiful experiences, like Vitamin D from the sun.

Outside the world is brash and loud again. Taxicabs and cars honk in the streets. People talk and walk, bright clothes, bright, brisk voices. A snatch of recorded music comes from somewhere, someone playing patriotic songs. He is so distant from American culture. So distant from most human beings.

'I'll get you a record player to have in your room,' Napoleon says. 'What records would you like?'

He's too startled to argue. 'Tchaikovsky. Elgar. Vaughan Williams,' he says. He wishes there were a piano in the Infirmary. It's easier to press one's hands on keys than to force air through a reed.

'I'll get a recording of that choral work,' Napoleon says. 'What was it?'

'Литургия святого Иоанна Златоуста,' Illya says automatically, then says, 'Tchaikovsky, the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. I have it at home.'

'Then I'll pick it up from your place,' Napoleon nods, 'and you can make me a list of the others you want me to bring or buy. Money no object. Whatever you want.'

'Thank you, Napoleon,' Illya says, and his smile is small, but real.

Napoleon lays an arm around his shoulders and walks easily alongside him.

'Don't mention it,' he says.

((O))

The roof isn't meant to be a place for sunbathers to take their ease. It's not meant to be anything at all but a useful space for the laser defence mechanism, and something to keep the weather from getting in. But at this time of year there's no bad weather to keep out. The sun bakes down every day. Illya lies on a lounger up there, wearing very little, his eyes shadeless and fixed on the sky.

'You were kept mostly in the dark for a long time,' the doctor has explained to him patiently. 'Obviously that's not the crux of your problem, but lack of sunlight has been proven to exacerbate depression. I want you to get as much sunlight as possible.'

He uses the sun lamp in the Infirmary, but he's making the most now of being allowed on the roof. It's a strange kind of therapy, to do nothing but lie on a sun lounger under the transparent sky. His skin is turning golden, his hair bleaching to a paler blond. It's strange to think that the sun pressing down through his skin and soaking into his bones will make him better, but it certainly doesn't hurt. It's better to be depressed in glorious sunshine than in rain, he thinks; and that marks an improvement in itself, because two months ago he wouldn't have cared whether he were being depressed under the sun, the rain, or a hurricane.

He turns his head sideways to look at Napoleon. Napoleon is sitting on another reclining chair in a ridiculous two piece lounging outfit, reading a book, because of course Illya can't come up here onto the roof on his own. Napoleon was right about the drugs, and he doesn't have that overwhelming need to make everything stop any more, but they won't let him come on the roof on his own. He still has bad days, some of them very bad.

Napoleon picks up a glass from one of those roof protrusions that makes a handy table, and passes it to Illya.

'Drink up,' he says.

It's a tall glass of orange juice, its sides beaded with moisture. He can't have alcohol, but the juice is welcome under this hot sun.

He takes the glass. Napoleon turns to the portable record player he bought, which he's plumbed in, against every regulation, to the laser's power supply. The power adapter to reduce the voltage is huge.

He drops the needle onto the record, and Vaughan Williams pierces the air. How strange that is. The Lark Ascending, that most pastoral, that most English of music, whispering into the air on top of this building on the edge of Manhattan, with all of those city sounds drifting up from below.

'That's nice,' he says.

What a banal word. But he still finds it hard to string together useful sentences, especially when he's spent all morning talking to the psychiatrist, pouring out his innermost thoughts and feelings. Thoughts are easier. Feelings are hard. This music conjures so many feelings.

He puts down his orange juice, gets to his feet, moves towards the edge of the building.

'Illya,' Napoleon says warningly.

'Don't be silly, Napoleon,' he replies. 'I'm not going to do anything.'

But Napoleon gets up too, walks with him to the parapet, keeps him from going too close. Illya accepts his presence, and doesn't try to go any further. Napoleon closes a hand around his wrist, and Illya lets it stay. It's good to feel Napoleon's hand so firm around his arm.

He stands there and looks out at the buildings opposite, at the skyline of Manhattan rising up, the beautiful angles of the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building. The day is so hot. The sun presses down on him and the heat rises from the roof. There is no breeze at all. Aeroplane trails cut the sky. Pigeons fly. That music emanates from the record player behind him, so beautiful, so sharp in its beauty that it could cut. It is so beautiful that tears come.

'Illya,' Napoleon says softly, drawing him back from the edge of the roof.

'I'm all right,' he says.

How does he explain to Napoleon that these are a different kind of tears? How does he explain that he had thought he would never see beauty in anything again, and now the colours are coming back and music has the power to move him, and the sun is so good? How does he explain that he has good days and bad days, good hours and bad hours, but that this hour right now, these precious minutes, are so beautiful that they are making him cry?

'I'm all right,' he says again, but his voice breaks and he is sobbing now, collapsing under the weight of that emotion. Napoleon turns him a little and presses his arms around him, hugging him tightly, holding him up. He strokes Illya's hair and his back, and says, 'Hey, partner. Hey. It's okay. It's all right.'

'I know,' he says through the sobs. 'I know.'

He is laughing as well as crying. He doesn't know what emotions he is feeling. It's all so strange.

Napoleon leads him to sit down on the sun lounger again, and hands him his drink. Illya swallows some of the orange juice and steadies his breathing and tries to calm down. He wipes his eyes on the back of his hand.

'I'm sorry,' he says. 'I'm sorry, Napoleon. What a mess.'

'Not at all,' Napoleon tells him. 'Not at all. Do you feel better? Was that cathartic?'

'Cathartic?' he wonders. 'Yes, it was. I think it was.'

He does feel lighter. He always does feel lighter after these bursts of emotion. The psychiatrist will question him tomorrow about how he's been today, and he will say, I had a funny breakdown on the roof. I sobbed and I don't know why. And the psychiatrist will probe further, and Illya will say that The Lark Ascending was playing, and that it was too beautiful, too beautiful to bear. He'll say that he thought he would never find beauty in the world again, but that it's slowly creeping back. That objects have colours. Food has taste. Music can transport him into delight. And the psychiatrist will tell him that that's good, that's positive, that he's making progress. Perhaps he can believe him at last.