He blows a mission.
He's not even sure how it happens, just that he freezes when he should be reacting, mind caught in a thick sludge of apathy and indecision and detachment, so that when he should be moving, he simply stands, unable to find the will to act.
It's Illya that tackles him to the ground, pushing him from the path of a burst of automatic fire, but even that seems slow and distant. Illya's shouts fall on ears gone deaf, the words not strong or important enough to break through the fog that's been thickening for days.
In the end, Illya leaves him there, presses an extra magazine into his hand and disappears into the fray.
He comes back once the warehouse has gone silent, not that Napoleon notices. He's tight-lipped, obviously angry, but he doesn't say anything, and Napoleon doesn't care.
He doesn't care about anything at all.
Gaby calls it in once they're back at the safehouse. Napoleon's on the couch, trying to feel. All he has is exhaustion, and that same feeling of persistent unreality.
Gaby doesn't lie in her report to Waverly, just speaks dispassionately of their failure to apprehend their target. She doesn't look at Napoleon. To be fair, he's not looking at her either.
"There was a complication," Gaby says calmly. "Solo's unwell." There's a pause, and he stirs himself to look up at her. He's unprepared for her gaze, the pity and apology in her eyes, but he can't even be bothered to care that he's about to lose his job. It's a minor concern, far less a problem than the back-bowing weight of everything holding him down. It may even be a relief – no work, no responsibilities, nothing to stop him from simply giving in.
"He has a high fever," she says. "It made it hard for him to act."
He closes his eyes, and the weight of the world redoubles on his shoulders.
He was so close.
And Gaby did lie.
"I'm sorry," he says once he can think again. It's the next day, and it still hasn't really gotten through to him. He's hoping it never does, because as much as he hates the fog, he hates even more when it lifts, leaving him with a guilt and shame and apologies and reparations and work, so much work, to try to get his life back in order. He hates feeling this way, but it's not really hatred, and it's not really even feeling. It just is, and sometimes (often), he thinks he'd rather live this way forever than fight his way out of it one more time.
"I know," Gaby says, "but it's not your fault."
He laughs tonelessly at that. "Who else's fault could it be?"
"Nobody's," she says, like it makes perfect sense.
"Nothing is nobody's fault," he tells her, and rolls over to put his back to her. He's still on the couch, but now he has a pillow. He tries not to feel ashamed, which is easier now than it will be later because he's still so fucking tired.
Later is a specter lingering ever present at the edges of his vision, and it tracks him down with unerring precision.
The first day is exhaustion, which he never notices because he's almost always tired. It makes sense, though: his job is dangerous and demanding and he never sleeps quite as much as he'd like to.
The second day he's irritable, on-edge, and every little thing pushes him closer to snapping. But that too is natural, since he's tired, and doesn't everyone get irritable when they're tired?
The third day, he loses all his appetites. He doesn't eat, finding the process of preparing food too tiring to be worth it and the product wholly unsatisfactory. He stops noticing the beautiful things around him, the temptation to take buried by the knowledge that it wouldn't change a thing. He stops wanting to talk, to flirt, to argue; he simply doesn't have the energy.
By the fourth day, there is no color, no meaning, no joy. Simply to exist is an unbearable burden, and remaining awake is an unconscionable waste of his efforts because nothing has ever mattered and nothing ever will. This vast expanse of emptiness and hopelessness is his life forever, and he rather wants to die.
The fourth day is always the day that he realizes what's happening, and it's always too late to stop it. He should be better at recognizing the episodes by now, but. Well. He should be better at a lot of things, shouldn't he.
No matter how much he wants to not, however, he always does his job. He gets up, he gets dressed, he holsters his gun, he smooths his hair, and he gets to work.
No matter how much he wants to starve himself until the world dissolves around him, no matter how much he wants to sleep so long he never wakes up, no matter how much he wants to be deaf and mute and so give up his role in the world, no matter no matter no matter, he always does his job.
He cooks, he talks, he chases, he drives, he shoots. And maybe it's duller than usual, maybe it lacks his signature flair, maybe it comes across as tired and pale, maybe maybe maybe, but he simply cannot care.
No matters and maybes aside, he does his job, and he does it well.
It might be a blessing, but it feels like a curse.
This is the worst fall he can remember, not that it particularly matters. He's starting to get tired of this – the exhaustion, the apathy, the inability to do anything even should he want to (the inability to want in the first place) – which means that he's wading through it one laborious step at a time, coming incrementally closer to the end, but that doesn't make it stop.
"I would like to be done with this," he says to the ceiling, just to taste the words. It feels like a rebellion, somehow, to not simply take what he is given and stew in it. Resentment isn't a right he's earned: he's not too good for this, not somehow above this punishing grey, and if he were any sort of reasonable person, he'd simply fight against it and break free of its hold on him. But he's not reasonable, obviously, because he still gives in the moment he feels it creeping up behind him. He lets this happen; he has no business being unhappy about it.
"I'm sure you would," Gaby says quietly, and he startles. He'd forgotten he wasn't alone. He looks over, and sure enough, there she is – curled up in a chair, wearing one of his sweaters and doodling in her schematics notebook.
"You don't have to stay, you know." Why she would want to is beyond him; even ihe's/i growing tired of his company, his mind being what it is.
"Don't be stupid," she says calmly. "I'm not leaving you alone like this."
"Illya did," he says without thinking, and immediately regrets it. Illya doesn't deserve to be maligned like that, let alone by a pathetic bastard like him. But even as he says it, he feels the truth of it, feels the sting of the words. Illya did leave him, did drop him in disgust at the first opportunity, did realize what he was and distance himself as much as he could.
It shouldn't hurt, but it does. It isn't unfair, isn't even unexpected, yet it still wraps his heart in stone and drags it down. This is who he is, after all. This is what he is. He has no doubt that he'll find himself alone at the end of it, cut off from everyone he once held close, because that's what you do to anchors – you cut them away to keep yourself free. And he's resigned himself to it, but that doesn't mean he's embraced it.
There's quite a bit of distance between acceptance and peace.
"Illya didn't leave," Gaby tells him. She should probably be angry, or at least frustrated, but she doesn't sound like she is. "He's following up a lead. And besides," she adds, voice growing ever so slightly steelier, "he didn't leave you alone, did he?"
No. That's something, perhaps.
When he goes to bed, Gaby doesn't try to stop him.
When he sleeps through the night and much of the next day, she doesn't try to wake him up.
She just keeps him company, makes food for him to pick at and brings him tea and water, gives him her flannel so he can wash his face without having to stand at the sink.
Illya comes back two days later, and Napoleon resolutely doesn't look at him. He keeps his eyes closed and his face to the back of the couch, and pretends to sleep so successfully that he actually does.
"Do you want to go to bed?" Illya asks him once, when he caught him unawares with his eyes open, staring blankly at the upholstery.
"No," Napoleon says. He doesn't think he could actually stand right now, and even if he wanted to try he wouldn't want Illya to see.
No one mentions the mission.
Only once he's slept enough for a month does the fog start tentatively creeping away. His mind is clearer, but his body is still weak and unsure of itself, and he'll need a few days' more rest if he doesn't care to have an immediate relapse.
He's far enough through it now to be annoyed, infuriated by his failings and sullenly seething that of all people, this had to fall on him, and of all the illness he could contract, he had to get the one that no one would believe. Insolent, they called him, for not responding to orders and barbs with sufficient alacrity. A womanizer, they sneered, but how often had he let them see seduction when all he'd really had was sleep?
His life is far too worthless to be so much work, yet here he is, getting ready to go back to it and pretend that nothing happened.
In the end, all he can do is keep moving forward, over and over, again and again. It's torturous and brutal, but maybe one day it will be better.
thank you for reading this week's installment of writing angst to attempt to cope with my problems!
I thought about putting this in the same 'verse as "I Myself" and "A Life-Long Endeavour" but more often than not, depression strikes without reason or cause, and it's still just as serious, and still just as hard. Two thirds of the battle is accepting that you don't need a reason to feel shitty, and you don't need a reason to deserve to feel better.
Title inspired by Florence + The Machine's "Breaking Down."
As always, please feel free to share whatever feedback you'd like to!