Illya Kuryakin had known the day would eventually come. Perhaps it was more a series of events than one solitary moment.

Distance had certainly proved to be a fatal element in his relationship with what was now his past. Too many diversions from his faithfulness; too many missed opportunities to prove that he was still loyal to only one.

As with so many affairs of the soul, this one had proven to be vulnerable to new ideals and … people. What had once seemed irrevocable and solid was now merely a whisper in the wind, his old ideas suddenly challenged by a new element.

Freedom. When that had finally, fully blossomed as a way of life, what Kuryakin had thought of as the only path of life diminished along with those who populated it. Old loves, old friends… all of them still held within the confines of that other life he had lived.

Perhaps the worst of it was that he was not entirely prepared to be cast off as unnecessary, although he knew that he was. His own misgivings about moving on were augmented by his regrets at having failed to maintain the required amount of allegiance to his former mistress. Nothing hurt like being replaced, and Illya Nickovetch Kuryakin had surely been supplanted by others more willing, more pliant in the hands of the one who had molded him for so many years.

New York had been the final element in the dissolution of the love/hate relationship he had endured since his youth. Partnering with a man like Napoleon Solo, who personified a life unhindered by a political leash of any sort, had spurred Kuryakin onward into this new life. That the Soviet masters whom Kuryakin had served for so many years recognized the shift in their man's allegiance was a nominal concession to life in the West. Nothing about this UNCLE proposition had been sure, and their man's inability to share secrets (or perhaps his refusal), had made him less important to their agenda.

With no fanfare and only a minimum of veiled threats to the now disavowed ex-patriot, Kuryakin drifted farther and farther from his beginnings and the system in which he had grown to manhood. He would never forget where he came from, but those who had sent him into the arms of a new master would no longer encourage his return.

If Mother Russia had abandoned Kuryakin, sent him away with no more than an empty look in her eyes and no desire for his return, then he would comply by making the best life possible in this new world.

There were other lovers who would call out to him. Someday.