Illya grasped the casket's handle firmly as he and the other pallbearers bore it to its destination. For Ekaterina Nikolaevna Aleksandrova, there was no brass band to play as she was laid to her final rest. Instead, dead silence filled the air. Katya had died not as a martyr, but as a traitor.
There was no way the KGB officer who'd shot her could have understood the urgency of her mission, that she'd had to see her brother who'd defected to Canada just one more time before leukemia claimed his life, that there would have been no time to wait the months it might have taken to get an exit visa, that by the time one could have been procured, Kolya would have been long gone.
The mournful procession reached the open grave and sat the casket down beside it, and Illya looked down at the familiar face framed with flyaway blonde hair so like his own, the eyes now closed in death that used to twinkle and laugh every time she saw him, the lips he'd kissed so many times when they'd been warm and vibrant.
It was a crisp, cold day, and a tundra wind whipped the grieving young man's golden locks to and fro as he stood, the only Soviet citizen willing to eulogize his fallen comrade. "Katya was a very special girl," he began. "When I first arrived at the academy, I was a very lonely malchik. Katya taught me how to laugh again, and how to love. For everything she gave me, I could never repay her. I will never forget the kindness she showed me."
Several men moved forward to nail the lid of the simple wooden coffin shut, but Illya signaled for them to wait a moment. He bent and kissed the cold lips. "Dosvidanaya, moy vozlyublennyy podruga."
As he slowly walked away, he felt as if a part of himself had died as well. Never before had he realized that anything could hurt this much. He'd heard the phrase 'love hurts' before, but never had it rang so true for him as it did right now.
It was almost fifteen years later that he and his new partner Napoleon Solo were discussing their love lives; or rather, the gregarious Napoleon was going on about his own, while a taciturn Illya merely listened.
"So tell me, Illya, have you ever really loved a woman?" Napoleon finally asked.
Illya opened his mouth to lie, then suddenly telling his new friend Katya's story. "She was so young," he said mournfully. "She never even really had the chance to experience life."
"I can tell that it still hurts you, even now," an observant Napoleon replied.
Illya nodded his agreement. "I had hoped that the two of us would spend the rest of our lives together. I do not know if I will ever find another woman like her."
Knowing that this was one of those times when no words would suffice, Napoleon nodded sympathetically.