Filthy, a man from uncle fanfic

'...filthy down here. I can smell it already.'

Dimly he drifts out of sleep. Dimly he blinks crusted eyes and moves his spine a little on the biscuit of a mattress and tries to move his hands. The chains rattle and his hands flush with pins and needles, and he stops moving straight away. He hates the sound of the chains.

'...you expect for five dollars? The Hilton?'

He should be grateful that once he had been handed through various decreasing ranks of Thrush employees and passed on to this one with the instructions, 'Just shoot him and put the body in the furnace,' that instead the man had brought him here. He should be grateful, but he's not. Here is more like hell than the peaceful thought of that furnace taking him after death.

There is often a moment of forgetting as he wakes, but then there is the remembering, and everything seems to sink. He hears the door handle turning. They don't bother to lock it because he has no chance of getting free of the chains that hold him to the bed. He had tried hard enough early on.

Is it that time already? Yes, there is the music thumping through the low ceiling and the sound of footsteps, the herds of people that frequent this club or bar or whatever it is above him. It's that time already, and he wants to melt away, to die. He wants so much to be away from here that adrenaline surges through his body and for a moment he pulls against the chains, but his wrists and ankles are so sore and he gives in quickly and lies limp again.

He doesn't open his eyes as the light comes on. He wouldn't be able to see anyway, because the light is dazzling after so long in the dark. He gives it time for his eyes to get used to the rose light through his eyelids before he tries opening them.

They walk in, and the sinking feeling sinks further still. Sometimes when the door opens he has a thread of hope, but it breaks very quickly. He is so tired. He is so hungry. So filthy, so sore, so degraded. The steps move closer and a little sob lurches out of him. He doesn't want it to start again. He tries to make himself silent and invisible when they come in, but it never works. He's obvious enough splayed on this bed.

He turns his head away, trying so hard to stop himself from uttering a plea. He doesn't know how to hide the little sobs any more, but he can bite his lips closed to stop the pleas, and he does, so hard he can taste blood.

'All right, fella. You got thirty minutes with him. His wrists are locked but the ankles are just hooked. Plenty of hooks up there so you can get him in the right position. Just watch out when you rearrange his legs because he's got a good kick on him when he's in the mood.'

What a joke. In the early days he had thrashed and kicked and fought every time, but not any more. He's too tired, too bruised, too worn down. They like to pretend he still has fight in him, but there's nothing left.

'So. I'll give you some – uh – privacy. Enjoy.'

'Er, just a moment, before you go – '

That voice... That voice...

There is a sput, and a thud. Illya's eyes snap open, his head snaps around. The filthy neck tie that had sat under his clean shirt collar and now acts as a collar of its own pulls at his throat as he stares, as he focusses his eyes on the only standing figure in the room.

Napoleon.

He opens his mouth but instead of words comes another sob. It's as if an angel has appeared in the room. Napoleon, casual in a blue pullover and slacks, as if he's just there for a relaxing evening. Napoleon, with fire in his eyes. Napoleon is at his side, pressing putty into the chains on his wrists and ankles, tenderly resting a hand over Illya's eyes as he detonates the stuff and white light flares.

'All right, buddy. Yeah. Come on. Sit up. That's it.'

Illya is incapable of talking. His mouth works but only sobs come out. He sits up, curling slightly onto his side because it hurts to sit, his hand clasping around Napoleon's as Napoleon offers him help.

A flash of memory. Those ones who like to hold his hands. Those ones who liked to stroke and kiss…

He flexes his hand and can't quite commit to Napoleon's grasp.

'All right,' Napoleon says. 'Yeah, quietly now…'

Napoleon is being so quiet and so gentle, but underneath he is angrier than Illya has ever seen him. He can tell that. There's something in his eyes, something in the set of his mouth. How often does Napoleon execute a man as he just has, instead of using tranquilliser bullets, instead of shooting him in the heat of battle?

'Come on,' Napoleon says, a hand under Illya's arm, warm on his bare skin. 'There, just sit there for a moment. That's it.'

Illya's gaze flickers around the room. The shut door, windowless but flimsy; a man at full strength could have kicked it down, but he hasn't been at full strength for a long time. The bucket in the corner that they let him use as a toilet. The once-white, dirty brick walls. The beams in the low ceiling with the hooks in convenient places. The single unshaded light bulb on its twisted flex.

And then Napoleon isn't holding him. Napoleon is kneeling on the floor, stripping the clothes off the man he has shot, that Thrush man who brought Illya here instead of shooting him and throwing him in the furnace. Illya looks down at himself, at his crustily filthy torso. The cigarette burns. Bruises in red and purple and yellow and green bloom over him like roiling storm clouds. He looks down at his nakedness and suddenly sees it as a new thing. He has been naked for so long, but Napoleon is stripping the clothes off his captor and thrusting them at Illya, and he holds them in his hands and stares at them.

'Put them on,' Napoleon urges him, then begins to help, shoving the neck of the t-shirt over Illya's head, starting to feed his arms into the sleeves. There is a patch of wet over Illya's heart, a patch soaked with the man's blood. He touches his fingers to it wonderingly, but Napoleon is already pulling trousers up over his filthy legs and turning up the cuffs and cinching the belt tightly around Illya's waist because the trousers are too big and he is too thin.

'Come on,' Napoleon urges him again. 'Socks. That's it. The shoes won't fit. They're dark socks. Maybe no one will notice. Come on, jacket. That's it.'

The jacket is large too. It comes down over his wrists, over the red marks of the chains, and down over the heels of his hands. Napoleon touches a hand to Illya's head, tries to pull fingers through his greasy, matted hair, but he stops as they get caught in a snag, and he just tenderly brushes Illya's fringe from his forehead.

'Can't do anything about your hair. It's dark up there. Never mind.'

He puts a hand gently on Illya's face, his palm against the fuzz of a beard grown from neglect, and he tilts Illya's head up, putting his thumb very near the cigarette burn by his eye but not quite touching. Illya looks away, looks at the dirty wall to the side of him. He knows every brick of that wall. He can't look into Napoleon's eyes.

'Looks sore,' Napoleon says.

'Yes,' Illya agrees.

The burn is a few days old, and was left there by a man who threatened to stub the cigarette out in his eyes if he didn't be a nice boy. He had been as nice as he could. The cigarette hurt, and he had been as good and as nice as he could because he was so tired of pain and so afraid of what the man might do.

'Try to keep your face down and they might not see the bruises,' Napoleon says. 'Come on, Illya. You can walk?'

'I – I – '

He hardly knows how to talk. His mouth feels foul and must smell of all those men. His face is crusted and foul and he had stopped speaking voluntarily weeks ago. Napoleon is lifting him to his feet, a hand tight on his arm, steadying him as he sways.

'Napoleon?' he asks in wonder.

'Yeah, I'm getting you out of here. Come on. Come on.'

Then Illya is leaning against the wall, his knees threatening to give way, and Napoleon is lifting the naked dead man onto the bed where Illya had lain for so long. Illya stares down at him, at that ugly single hole over his heart, the sluggish line of blood, the slack face. He thinks he should feel hatred, but he feels numb. His feelings are dead inside him. Then Napoleon puts his arm around Illya's back and says, 'Walk. Come on. You're drunk. We're both drunk.'

The passage outside is empty. It feels so long since he walked down that passage into this room, a gun in his back, still wearing his neat suit, his white shirt and tie, all a little sullied by his captivity but still intact. He hadn't known then what he was about to become. He had looked at the bed but seen it only as a necessary part of a cell. He hadn't expected to use it. He'd been waiting for the gun in his back to cough, for his life to suddenly end. He could hear the furnace somewhere else in this basement area. But Lee had said, Take off your clothes. Everything. Lie on the bed, and he'd done so, his stomach crawling, his throat closing up. He had lain down and they had chained his wrists and ankles, and they had left him in the dark.

He looks at the passage now, at the stairs at the end, the doors that lead to storerooms that must store things other than unfortunate U.N.C.L.E. agents. It's hard to believe he's actually leaving this place, that his feet in a dead man's socks are walking on this brick floor. It's all so hard to believe. For a moment everything seems to disappear and his knees give out and Napoleon is holding him up, asking, 'All right, Illya? Are you all right? I need you to walk out of here on your feet. There are men everywhere. It's like Thrush central up there.'

The world comes back. His mouth is so dry he isn't sure he can speak. He leans on the wall and on Napoleon for a moment, then nods his head.

They navigate the stairs and then the club, Napoleon with his arm around Illya's back, Illya leaning on his partner, taking one step at a time as the music grows louder. For the first time he can hear it clearly, hear more than just the beat. The club is dark, like Napoleon said, and the music is so loud, and bodies move and sweat. The music is so loud it feels solid in the air, and he sways. He doesn't need to act as if he were drunk. Surely he looks drunk anyway, because his knees keep letting him down and his eyes are half closed and he doesn't know where he's going. Napoleon leads him safely through the crowd, drunkenly singing along to the tune that is playing.

He's gripped with a sudden fear. They'll be able to smell him. Surely they'll smell the sweat and filth and cum on him. Surely they'll smell that he is anointed by a hundred different men's sweat as well as his own? But no one turns, no one calls out, and then he stumbles down a step into suddenly cool air. He is in the street, he is breathing good, fresh air, and a hysterical sound breaks out of his mouth.

'Shush,' Napoleon says. 'Shush. Come on, Illya, let's get out of here. Car's just down the street.'

So they walk, the pavement rough through his socks, and then Napoleon is putting him into a car, the engine is rumbling, and they are rolling away.

Suddenly he is crying again. There's no reason to hold it in. He sobs and sobs, and picks at the stolen clothes he wears, and draws his knees up then lets them drop again, and Napoleon says, 'I'm going to take you straight to the hospital.'

'No,' he insists. He swallows on his tears. His throat feels raw. 'No, take me home. Just take me home. Please...'

There is a moment of pause. The car slows a little and then speeds up again as Napoleon's indecision translates into his driving. And then suddenly he has thrust the car into reverse, he is doing a u-turn, they are driving in the other direction. Napoleon is taking him home.

((O))

The lights of the city are bright and beautiful. He watches them through the window, clear and brilliant in the dark of night. He has been so close to home all this time. So very, very close to his own apartment, his own bed. So close to U.N.C.L.E. headquarters, to a thousand New York police officers, to so many people who could have helped him if only they'd known he was there, chained to that filthy bed, made available to satisfy the lust of men every day. He was so close, so close to safety and so far away.

He lets his head rest on the window, lets the vibrations from the road drill into his skull. He watches the light sparkling on the black water as they cross the Brooklyn Bridge and thinks about how dark and quiet and cold it must be down there, deep under the silent surface. He wonders if any of this is real. Crossing the bridge is like flying. Can it be real? Perhaps it's all a dream.

Napoleon's hand is on his arm. It is real.

'Hey, don't do that. It must hurt.'

He jerks his head off the cool window and stares at Napoleon, tears starting in his eyes again. It is so beautiful to have someone who cares if he is hurting. It's so different to, Just take it, you slut, or, Cry out again and I'll give you something to cry about, or, Once I put this in your mouth you won't be able to make a single damn sound.

His throat closes up momentarily at the memory of something thick and hot and merciless pounding into his gullet, making him retch helplessly. The memory of fingers clenched in his hair, of his head being pulled up and the cock being rammed in harder and harder until fluid spurts into his throat. The scent, the taste, the aching of his jaw. The scent of a man's sweat, the crevices of his body, the dirty scent that came when he brought his buttocks down close to Illya's face.

'...get you into the bath, get you cleaned up,' Napoleon is saying, and Illya jolts back to here and now and says, 'Bath, yes. I'm dirty...'

He smells so bad. In that room he had grown used to it, as one grows used to something that's always there. But now, in Napoleon's clean car, he can smell it so strongly. The sweat, the stale cigarette smell, the smell of filth. It comes through the clothes he wears in waves, mixing with the smell of that man's sweat in his clothes, that man's scent of alcohol and food and cigarettes, and the metallic scent of that man's blood.

He drops his head against the window again. The city closes in around them as they come off the bridge. There are bodegas and restaurants and take out places still open. There are clubs with neon signs. As they pass one the thudding music pushes into the car and that evokes such a reaction of revulsion that he doesn't know what to do with it. He closes his eyes and the sound moves away and gradually the nausea subsides.

They didn't always come when the music was playing. The wearisome foot traffic of man after man always came in the evening, when the music was thumping through the ceiling above, but some came in the day, what he thought was the day, because there was no daylight in that room. The light was on if someone else was in there and off the rest of the time, and when it was off the dark was absolute. He lay there and drifted in and out of sleep, and evenings were marked by the start of that music and the first footsteps down the stairs. Sometime between the small hours of the morning and later in the day it was silent, he thought, and the rest of the time was marked sometimes by noise and sometimes by silence. Sometimes someone came in and unchained him and stood with a gun on him while he emptied his bladder and bowels in the bucket in the corner, then made him wipe himself and chained him back on the bed, complaining viciously about the smell. Sometimes someone gave him food or held his head up and made him drink. Sometimes it was someone else, a paying guest outside of the nightclub hours, and Illya would close his eyes and pray for this one to be quick, because they didn't impose the half hour time limit on guests during the day. Those ones were always more inventive. They were almost always more intimate, more sadistic, so much harder to bear.

He opens his eyes again and sees the streets becoming more familiar. It's so wonderful that it's painful, and he longs for the sanctuary of his apartment in a way that's too strong to bear.

'Almost home,' Napoleon tells him.

'Yes,' he says.

((O))

He hasn't felt anything as beautiful as this shower in a long time. He sits in the curving bottom of the bath and the shower water cascades over him. It stings in the sores and the burns, but that is a beautiful thing. It's like being cleansed by fire.

Napoleon is kneeling outside the tub, gently stroking the dirt from him with a washcloth, gently massaging shampoo into his hair, speaking softly to him all the while.

'I don't know what I can do about your hair,' Napoleon says, rubbing his fingers into the tangled mass at the back of his head. That felted mat of hair had itched so badly and he hadn't been able to do a thing about it except for rubbing the back of his head against the bare mattress, and that only made it worse. Bugs had crawled in his hair and over his skin and he hadn't been able to do a thing.

'Maybe better cut it off,' Napoleon says, and Illya flinches. Despite all that has been done to him, despite all the pain and indignity, he flinches at the idea of Napoleon shearing him of his hair.

'All right,' Napoleon says then. 'All right, I'll do what I can. I'll try to get the shampoo all through it and get the dirt out, then when it's dry I'll see what a comb can do.'

'Thank you,' Illya says.

He hasn't really realised until now that it hurts to talk. They had threatened to break his jaw, early on, unless he opened his mouth and did just as they told him. He had submitted to them and they hadn't broken it, but that didn't stop them slapping him. Some were strokers. Some were slappers. Some were punchers. Some of them came in apologetically, lay with him apologetically, whispered apologies to him even as they hooked his legs back and took him. Some of them seemed to care about nothing at all, certainly didn't care about his pain, cared about nothing but their animal triumph. Some of them wanted to humiliate him. Some just wanted to fulfil a need. But they all did the same thing in the end. They all used his body as a port, as a convenient thing in which to spend their lust.

A body coming over him, hot, sweaty, its skin so sweaty and hairy that it itched, its fat hanging down in rolls. So heavy. The hands everywhere, the mouth on his with its thick, rubbery lips so he couldn't breathe, he couldn't breathe, and the tongue in his throat, slopping around in his mouth, all that man's hot breath in his mouth and nose –

Illya gasps and blinks, staring around. He is still in the bath. The water is still running down over his body and swirling past him to the plughole. Napoleon is next to him, holding the washcloth, saying, 'Illya? Okay?'

'S-sorry,' he says. 'Sorry.'

His arms are around his drawn up knees, and he is rocking. Somehow that rocking helps. It is something he can control.

'That must hurt,' Napoleon says, touching his fingers lightly to Illya's lower back. He flinches away, because it does hurt, badly. 'You've got a lot of bed sores. Did they never let you up?'

'No, they – Well – Once a day,' Illya murmurs.

Crouching in the corner of the room, using the bucket with a gun levelled on him. Trying desperately to train his bowels to cooperate, because it was the only chance he got, because the one time he soiled the bed they beat him so badly he thought he was going to die. His guard's impatience, the mutters of Come on, you fucking son of a bitch. I don't want to spend all day watching you take a shit. Trying to force himself, trying to push through the pain.

Napoleon is trying to clean those sores, trying very gently to ease away the dirt.

'Illya, I'm going to have to take you to the hospital,' he says very seriously. 'To the Infirmary at least.'

He clutches his arms more tightly around his knees and listens to the patter and shush of the water as it hits his skin, hits the bathtub, hits the wall. His distress comes out in a long hum between his closed lips.

'Illya,' Napoleon says again. He puts a hand on Illya's shoulder and then walks away. He comes back into the bathroom after a minute and carefully arranges the shower curtain behind himself again. He lifts Illya's wrist and presses a tumbler into his hand, sheltering the top of it from the scattering shower water. 'Come on. Drink up,' he says.

Illya drinks. He drank some of the shower water as it ran over his face because he didn't know how to tell Napoleon how thirsty he was. This is different. This runs into his gullet like fire. It stings on his raw throat and settles in his empty stomach, and he is promptly sick.

'Jeez,' Napoleon says. 'Jeez...'

He doesn't need to tell Napoleon how hungry he is because there is nothing in that vomit but whisky and water. Sometimes they had brought him food. Sometimes they tipped water into his mouth and sometimes they dropped a sandwich or a chunk of bread onto the mattress by his head and left him to eat it as best he could, with his wrists chained to the bars of the headboard and his ankles chained to the footboard. And he ate like an animal, pressing his mouth against the food and trying to coax it in with his lips, chewing and chewing and swallowing no matter how dry his throat was. But they hadn't always remembered. They hadn't always bothered.

'Come on, Illya,' Napoleon says, more urgently now. He finishes that washing, washing very carefully over the bruises and burns, washing tenderly but in a detached way between Illya's legs. And then the shower stops and that constant shushing of the water disappears and all the thoughts crowd into the void. Illya murmurs, 'No, I'm dirty. I'm still dirty,' because he can't possibly be clean.

'You're not, Illya,' Napoleon assures him. 'You're clean. Head to toe. You're all clean. I promise you.'

'All right,' he says. 'All right.'

He feels too tired to argue. It's easier to just believe Napoleon, who is towelling off his hair and shoulders and showing him how the towel comes back with nothing on it but wet.

Then Napoleon is easing Illya's arms into the sleeves of his bathrobe and helping him up out of the slippery tub. He feels so heavy. He feels as though his body is not his own, but at the same time it is so intimately his own that he is repulsed.

Illya walks out of the room, and his legs are still like a newborn creature's. He leaves wet footprints on the floor. He leaves wet handprints where he reaches out to steady himself.

'Jesus Christ, Illya,' Napoleon says, settling him onto the sofa, and then he is on the phone, calling some delivery place, ordering food. Then he comes back and crouches in front of Illya, puts a hand on his knee, looks up into his eyes.

Sometimes they had tied something over his eyes. Sometimes it had been by pre-arrangement. Sometimes it was Lee, that Thrush man who hadn't shot him and thrown him into the furnace but had brought him to the basement of a club and stripped him naked and chained him by wrists and ankles to a metal bed. He would come into the room and wordlessly tie something around Illya's eyes and leave him, so that he was blind to the next man who came in; man, or men, men in their twos and threes, fives and sixes. Some of them liked their anonymity. Some of them liked to look at him for a while first, and then they blindfolded him or gagged him, or both, and did what they wanted with him. Some of them would take hold of his jaw with their hands and shake him until his brain seemed to rattle in his skull, and they would say look at me. I want you to look at me. I want you to look into my eyes when I come. And those were the worst. Those moments were the worst, looking into a man's eyes at that moment, having that man look into his eyes. The more intimate it was the worse it was. Eye contact. Stroking. Kissing. A man's tongue in his mouth, a man telling him how good he looked. He would rather be slapped than kissed.

He wrenches in air. He has forgotten to breathe again, and Napoleon is still looking up at him. His lungs don't want to move and he fights to draw in air, his head spinning, his ears singing.

'Illya,' Napoleon says, a hand still on his knee.

He meets Napoleon's brown eyes just for a moment, but he has to look away. He has to. Napoleon is too clean, too caring. And then he is sobbing again and Napoleon is holding him, his arms all around him, like a mother and father rolled into one.

'Hey, hey,' Napoleon says. 'Hey, it's all right now. You're safe now. I got you out. You're all right now.'

But the sobs don't abate. He can't seem to stop them. It's as if they're not even part of him, nothing to do with him at all. He is sitting there, his face against Napoleon's shoulder, and his entire body crawls with self-loathing, the many bites itch, the bruises throb. He thought that washing would wash it all away, and he feels so clean now on the surface, but deep inside he is still filthy. His mind gives him flashes. Lying on that bed, another man coming over him. The animal jerking, the thrusting, the wordless grunts. The feeling of tumescent flesh in his mouth, the trickle into his throat. The searing pain between his legs.

And then he is back in his apartment again, against Napoleon, sobs wrenching out of him, and it is as if he is many people. He is the sobbing man and he is the man with those memories, but he is also the man who sits a little apart from all this and watches it curiously, thinking how strange it is that a person can be so undone. He looks down at Napoleon's shoulder, at the colour of his pullover, very blue, very clean, and thinks how amazing synthetic dyes are these days. He looks obliquely at the rest of the room, at the books that Illya Kuryakin used to like to read, at the physics journals that Illya Kuryakin the PhD liked to curl up with and devour cover to cover, at the records that Illya Kuryakin the jazz enthusiast liked to put on the record player. He isn't any of those men any more. He doesn't know who he is.

((O))

When the buzzer sounds it's a sudden shock, like an alarm ringing when one is fast asleep. Illya is still against Napoleon's shoulder, the sobs damped down to little shaky breaths, but he feels lost in his private agony. Napoleon's hand is on the back of his head, his other hand on his back, stroking, and the buzzer makes both men stiffen.

'That'll be the pizza,' Napoleon says, and he carefully moves back from Illya, making sure that he can hold himself up before he stands. He pats his pockets then looks around and picks his wallet up from the coffee table. Illya watches him through hot, blurred eyes. He doesn't want to be seen, but Napoleon must understand that, because when he opens the door he only opens it a crack and stands solidly in it, shielding Illya from view. He passes over money and takes the food, two enormous flat pizza boxes, and the whole interchange is over very quickly.

'There,' Napoleon says, coming back to the sofa and putting the boxes down on the table. He fetches plates and two tall glasses of water from the kitchen; perhaps he doesn't want to repeat his mistake of earlier, and make Illya sick with alcohol. Then he sits down.

'Dig in,' he says.

Illya reaches out a hand to one of the boxes. He almost can't believe it. He can't believe that this food is here, that it's not a stale piece of bread or an old bagel or a curling sandwich. He opens the box and the scent curls into the room, warm, rich, delicious. There's so much cheese on there that his stomach aches in anticipation. He reaches out shakily, and Napoleon puts a hand on his.

'Hey,' he says, holding out a sharp knife and nodding towards the plate. 'I couldn't find your pizza cutter,' he says apologetically.

'Oh,' Illya says. 'I don't have. I mean – '

Napoleon takes over then, cutting him a triangular slice and putting it on the plate, then handing it to him. Illya picks it up in trembling fingers, smells it, brings it to his mouth. It's almost too much. He piles it into his mouth and chews it and swallows it down. Oh, it is perfect. It is so good. To be able to eat fresh food, moist, hot food, to be able to pick it up with his hands and put it in his mouth.

'Didn't they – didn't those animals give you anything to eat?' Napoleon asks. His eyes are rich with concern, and he isn't touching the pizza himself.

'Not much,' Illya says around grease and cheese and tomato. He reaches out for another slice, takes it, starts to fold it into his mouth. Now he's eating he's so hungry. All he can think of is the taste of the food, the joy of swallowing it down, of feeling it fill his stomach.

And then he's feeling something else in his throat, something thick and fleshy and unwashed, and suddenly he gags, suddenly he's being sick. He's shaking, gasping, staring at the mess in front of him on the floor, tasting the bitter stomach acid in his mouth.

'Oh god, Illya,' Napoleon says, and he's rushing around, finding cloths, cleaning up the mess. 'I shouldn't have let you eat so fast. I didn't realise – '

'It's not that,' Illya says.

The acid is in the back of his nose and his eyes are streaming, his nose running. He picks up his glass of water and swallows gulp after gulp.

'It's not that,' he says again.

Napoleon thinks it's starvation that's made him vomit. How does he explain? How can he explain any of it to Napoleon? Napoleon must understand. He saw him there on the bed. He knew what he was coming to find. But how can he – how can he verbalise any of it?

But Napoleon knows. He must know. He's staring at Illya and there's something in his eyes that shows that he knows. It's as if a horror has been revealed to him, and he stares at Illya for a long moment, and then looks away suddenly. He walks over to the window and just stands there, looking out over the dark street, and very quietly he says, 'Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.'

Napoleon hardly ever swears. There's that steel hard anger, the anger Illya saw in him back in that awful room. Illya glances at him and sees that his hands are clenched so hard on the sill that his knuckles are white. It's an awful moment, because Illya knows that Napoleon is thinking about what happened in that room, is standing there visualising those things that happened to his friend. Even though Napoleon isn't looking at him, it's like being exposed.

But then he comes back. He gathers up the cloths, sprays something on the carpet, and takes everything away. He comes back, wiping his hands dry on a towel, and he tosses the towel onto the table and sits down.

'Why don't you start again?' he asks, his voice all gentleness and care. 'Take it a bit more slowly this time. Try to chew before you swallow, yes?'

So Illya takes another slice and eats very deliberately, chewing slowly, swallowing only small amounts each time. He focusses on the pizza and on Napoleon's quiet chatter and on the reality of the room around him, and somehow he manages to hang on to reality until the first box is empty, and he really doesn't think he can manage any more. He realises then that Napoleon hasn't eaten at all, and he says, 'Why don't you have something? Really, shouldn't you eat?'

Napoleon smiles at him. 'Now I'm happy that you've eaten,' he says, and he opens the second box and takes a slice of his own.

Illya sits there on the sofa, his stomach uncomfortably full, the taste of the cheese and tomato still rich in his mouth. He sits and looks at the wall opposite, at the couple of prints he has framed there, at the second hand chest of drawers he keeps near the front door. And he seems to see-saw. He rocks back and forth. One moment he's in his apartment, wrapped in his bathrobe, clean and safe and warm, and then he's back there, in that dank basement room, stretched out on the filthy bed, unable to move, unable to do a thing to protect himself. He's lying there in the dark, wondering what time it is, feeling the pressure in his bladder, feeling the cold on his skin. He's staring into the blackness and remembering what the ceiling looks like, the beams across the width that are the joists for the floor above, the hated hooks that they attach his ankle chains to when they want to hoist up his legs. He can feel the thin mattress underneath him, feel the itch of the crawling bugs. And then he's looking at his wall again, at his prints, at the chest of drawers and the front door with the little spy hole and the chain to stop unwanted entry.

Napoleon is still eating, but he looks at Illya and finishes his mouthful and closes the box.

'Hey, partner,' he says gently. 'Are you all right?'

'Yes,' Illya says, although it's plain that he's not all right. He's so far from all right.

'You're exhausted,' Napoleon says.

Illya cogitates those words. He's not sure how to interpret them. Perhaps he looks tired, but he's spent so much time sleeping. In that room he dozed off and on all the time, only coming awake when he heard footsteps, when he heard someone coming down to him. It was easier that way. There were long periods when he couldn't sleep, when he lay there shivering, miserable and hungry and alone. And there were all those other times, those awful times when someone was in the room with him. But whenever he could, he dozed. He thinks he spent a lot of time today dozing, but it's so hard to remember. It's hard to break up time properly. It all started to blur together. He has no sense of today and yesterday, or the day before. It's all a blend.

He feels like he's falling again. For a moment he can't tell if he's here in his apartment or back there on that bed. Perhaps he's hallucinating. Perhaps the full feeling in his stomach isn't real. Perhaps the warmth isn't real. Perhaps Napoleon isn't real. Suddenly he's breathing very fast, he's jerking in breath but it won't reach the bottom of his lungs. His heart is racing. He's going to wake up, and when he wakes up he'll be in that room, chained on that bed...

'Illya,' Napoleon says. 'Illya.'

He's here. He's home. Napoleon's hands are on Illya's, holding them tightly. He remembers the hand-holders and jerks his hands away. He can't be touched like that. He can't be pinned down. But Napoleon has him again, holds him again, says, 'Illya, come back. Come on. Try to breathe slowly. Breathe deep. Come on now.'

The fear is like a creature inside him. He fights to breathe. He fights to accept Napoleon touching his hands, to accept Napoleon's help and comfort. And then he realises all of a sudden that Napoleon is right. He is exhausted. It's as if he's divorced from himself, as if he doesn't understand any of his emotions. He needs some kind of key, a chart for understanding what each feeling is. He needs an anchor to pull himself back to his body when his mind takes him away.

Suddenly his spine can hardly hold him up and his legs ache, and he thinks he might be crying again, because Napoleon's arms are around him again and his face is pressed in against that warm blue pullover, and he's so tired, so, so tired, that he can't speak at all.

((O))

He wakes slowly at first and then all at once, heart racing, breath coming in jerks. He starts to sit, remembers the chains, realises the chains aren't there, sits right up and stares at the walls of his bedroom, his bookshelves, at the faces of Napoleon and –

'Hey,' Napoleon says. 'It's all right. You're all right.'

He pants and Napoleon hands him a glass of water. It is so strange to be able to drink water like that, holding the glass, drinking as much as he wants. But – He turns to look at the other man in the room, the dark face, the white shirt and grey tie. He smiles at Illya and Illya tries not to shrink away.

'Dr Davidson,' he says.

He wants to pull the covers right up over himself. He holds his hands rigidly on the glass. He is naked again and covered only by the blankets, but they fell from his torso when he sat up. Napoleon must have taken the bath robe off him when he got him into bed.

'Now, don't be annoyed with Napoleon,' the doctor says with a gentle smile. 'He did the right thing, calling me in. He should have taken you straight to hospital, but this is the next best thing. You need a medical exam.'

The panic clenches tight inside his chest. He looks between Napoleon and the smiling doctor and then looks about for his dressing gown, pyjamas, anything. But there isn't anything. There is nothing within reach.

'I don't need – I'm fine. I'm fine,' he grates.

'You know that's not true,' Davidson says in a very rational tone. 'You've been assaulted and sodomised. You could have contracted a number of venereal diseases. You have bed sores, cigarette burns. Napoleon said that bed was crawling with fleas and bugs. You need an exam.'

Nausea jerks in his stomach, crawls up into his throat, presses up into his mouth. He swallows it down again. He wants to be left alone, to lie here in his own bed, curled under the covers, in utter dark and silence.

'What – what time is it?' he asks, looking around in a bewildered way. He glances towards the windows and tries to work out if it's light, but the curtains are tightly closed. His bedside clock must have been stopped for weeks.

'It's about three a.m.,' Napoleon tells him. 'You haven't been asleep for long. I called the doctor as soon as I got you into bed.'

'Oh,' Illya says. 'Oh.'

He tries to work out the meaning of three a.m.. In that place it might have meant dark and silence and being left alone. The men would come late into the night but he isn't sure if they came that late. Perhaps it would mean dark and silence. Perhaps it would mean that unshaded bulb blazing brightly from the ceiling and a drunk or stoned man crawling over him.

'Illya,' Davidson says.

'All right,' Illya says at last, because it is inevitable that it will happen. 'But not here. I don't want – I don't want to associate all that with here.'

'The Infirmary then?' the doctor asks, and Illya nods.

'All right,' the doctor says. 'The Infirmary. I'm trusting you, Illya, to come in first thing tomorrow. Napoleon, I'm trusting you to bring him. I'll give you a very brief look over to make sure you'll be all right overnight, and if you pass you'll be seen in the Infirmary in the morning.'

((O))

His eyes feel crusted and he is curled very tightly onto his side, and – that's wrong, isn't it? How is he curled onto his side? How is he lying like that, with his hands curled and brought up right by his cheek, and his knees bent and up towards his chest? How is it that there's something touching his skin, something soft over his skin? And light. There's light through his eyelids. He can see light there through his eyelids, but it's quiet in the room, and –

He snaps his eyes open and he sees the wall of his own bedroom opposite him. He sees the spines of his books on his current reading shelf; Sartre; Ginsberg; Goncharov; Merezhkovsky; Camus. He's in his own bedroom, in his own bed. Oh god, I'm home, I'm home…

He's crying again. It's all he seems to be able to do. The relief of waking up in his own bed makes tears flow down his face. His eyes blur and he can't read the spines of the books any more.

Then he sees Napoleon, sitting in a fireside chair that he must have brought through from the other room. He's sitting fully dressed in that chair, his head against the meagre wing, his eyes closed. Napoleon must have spent the night sleeping in that chair.

Illya rubs his knuckles into his eyes, wiping away grit and glue and tears. He lies there just looking at Napoleon, at the carpet, at the cream wall and the spines of his books. He savours the light in the room and the comfort of the bed underneath him, that cradles all of his aches and hurts. He savours that he can lie on his side instead of his back. He savours the fact that his wrists aren't chained and his ankles aren't chained and that his body is his own again; and then the sobs threaten to come again, because that's so hard to believe, because that's so much, so much to take in. How can it be true that his body is his own again?

He pulls the sheet and blanket up to his face and bites his mouth onto it, biting hard, feeling that woolly thickness between his teeth. This is real. It's all real. He has to keep himself quiet because he'll wake Napoleon. Napoleon must have sat vigil all night and he can't wake him. He can't lie here crying. But he can't make himself move. He can't make himself get up. His bladder is full. He needs the toilet. But he can't make himself move from his bed. He clenches his teeth on the blanket and forces the sobs back down and presses his knuckles against his face, against the wiry beard and the bruises, and tries very hard to breathe in and out, in and out, again and again.

He must have fallen asleep, because he realises he is warm and relaxed again, and there's a hand on his shoulder, and he opens his eyes and Napoleon is bending over him, shaking him lightly with one hand. In the other is a steaming mug.

'Hey, partner,' Napoleon says gently. 'Time to wake up. Sit up. Drink your tea.'

'Tea?'

He stares at the wisps of steam rising into the air. Then he presses his palms onto the mattress and pushes himself up, leans his back against the headboard and looks around as if the room is new all over again.

'Tea?' he asks again.

Napoleon gives him the mug. He takes it in both hands, curls them around the hot ceramic, revelling in its smoothness. He takes a sip of that beautiful liquid and lets it slip down his throat. Oh, tea… How long has it been?

'Thank you,' he remembers to say, and Napoleon smiles.

'Thank your kind neighbour who gave me the milk,' he says. 'I didn't want to leave you, but I thought you'd appreciate some tea.'

'Yes,' Illya says. 'Yes, I do.'

'We can grab something to eat on our way to headquarters,' Napoleon says, and Illya's stomach seems to drop away. He had forgotten about that. He had forgotten about Dr Davidson being there last night, forgotten that he has to come in to the Infirmary today. It is as if reality has fallen down around him in an ice cold wash.

'I really don't – ' he begins, hiding his mouth behind the mug of tea, taking another sip.

'You do,' Napoleon tells him firmly. 'There's no choice, Illya. You do need to see the doctor, and I'm going to take you in as soon as you've finished that tea and gotten dressed.'

Illya drinks the rest of the tea in silence. His stomach seems to be full of writhing snakes. He tries not to let his hands shake, or at least to not let Napoleon see his hands shaking.

He finishes the tea and puts the mug on the night stand, and the ceramic clatters on the wood. Napoleon's hand settles over his, just for a moment, steadying him. Illya looks at the carpet on the floor, at the door on the other side of the little room, at the handle of the door and the latch holding it closed.

'Can I – ?' he starts to ask. 'Can I get up?'

Napoleon just stares at him for a moment, then he looks round at the door, then back at Illya, and says, 'Illya, you don't have to ask me. It's your apartment. This is your room.'

For weeks and weeks and weeks he has lain on the same bed, in a room that isn't his. For weeks he has lain there, unable even to put his hands or feet where he wants them to be. He hasn't been able to turn over or sit up, to scratch an itch or ease an aching joint. He's lain there in the dark, blinked when the light was turned on, but had no choice but to lie in the light or the dark as they chose. He's woken when he was told to wake. He's done whatever he was told to do. If you don't eat that I'll choke you with it. Be a good boy and relax for me. Fucking stay still. Shut up and let me fuck you or I'll break your fucking arms. If you don't shit in that bucket now you won't have another chance. Get back on that bed and put your arms and legs in position. Open your mouth and be nice.

He can walk out of the room on his own? He can choose to get up out of his bed and go where he likes? He looks at Napoleon again and pushes back the covers and swings his feet to the ground. He sees the sores on his ankles, just below the cuffs of his pyjama trousers. In the end the chains rubbed so deep that the wounds wept when he moved.

He stands up, and his knees buckle, and Napoleon catches hold of his arm, saying, 'Woah, there. You okay?'

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

The room is spinning and he doesn't know why. Is it because he's free? Is it because he's hungry, because he's been so long spending almost all his time lying down, because he's so churned up inside emotionally that he doesn't know which way to turn? It doesn't matter. Napoleon holds his arm while he breathes deeply and gathers his strength, and then he steps away from that support and takes himself into the bathroom, where he sits on the toilet and tries not to fall into the void, tries not to look at himself, tries not to think about the movement of the muscles down there, muscles that he doesn't want to ever think about again.

Lying there on that bed, the chains pulling at his wrists and ankles every time the body slams against him. That pain in the centre of him, twisting, burning, that relentless pain because the person on top of him doesn't care, doesn't care at all, wouldn't care what chunk of meat was underneath him, receiving his furious lust.

He gasps in air, rubs his hands over his face, finishes on the toilet and goes to wash his hands. He splashes water over his face, amazing himself with the pure sensation of that cold liquid all over his skin. How incredible it is to be able to wash his face. He doesn't know, he really doesn't know, if it's good. He doesn't know if it makes him happy. His emotions feel so confused and blurred. But it's incredible. His mind is staggered by the cold water on his face.

'Hey, partner,' Napoleon says softly from the door.

Illya straightens up, catches himself ever so briefly in the mirror, and turns away from what looks like the face of a ghost. He snatches the towel and dries his skin, his wet beard, his wet fringe. Then he walks back into the other room, looking around again as if he doesn't believe it. He can't believe he's here. He doesn't know what to make of his feelings.

'Come on,' Napoleon says, touching his elbow. 'Bedroom. I've found you some clothes. Get changed, and we can get in the car. I want to get some food into you before you see the doctor.'

There's that cold again, that writhing feeling in his guts. He can't do that. He doesn't want to do that. The thought of being touched like that again makes him want to vomit. He doesn't want to do it. But Napoleon's hand stays on his arm, and he steers him into the bedroom. His clothes are laid out on the bed, and he knows he has no choice.

((O))

'All right, tovarisch,' Napoleon says.

His arm is around Illya's shoulders and Illya is shaking. He can't stop the shaking and he doesn't know why. He feels so cold. The air isn't cold. The day isn't cold. But there is cold in him, through all of him, and he shakes.

'Well, at least you didn't quite vomit on the doctor,' Napoleon says, as if he's searching for a silver lining.

His mouth still tastes of stomach acid and bile. He remembers how suddenly his stomach had turned, how he couldn't stop himself retching, and that was before the doctor had even asked him to disrobe. But he had done it. He survived the examination, and the doctor let him leave. Thank god he is letting him leave. He couldn't bear the thought of being trapped in another metal framed bed.

'Let's get you home,' Napoleon says.

He is steering Illya out through the corridors of the U.N.C.L.E. HQ. He feels as if he were marked, as if it were obvious in every facet of his being. Everyone must know, surely? They must be able to see it on him. He feels as though it were painted on his forehead, or at least spelled out by the bruises and that burn on his face. They must know that he's been in the Infirmary, they must know what the doctor just put him through.

'Come on,' Napoleon says.

They're in the little reception area. Napoleon plucks off Illya's badge and passes it to the receptionist with his own. Illya follows him through into the changing cubicle and out into the shop. He feels dazed. He barely acknowledges Del Floria's salute as they leave. He rubs a hand over his arm. He has been given injections there, and injections in the firm muscle of his buttock, and those places sting. Injections against infection, injections of vitamins, antibiotics. He has been doused in insecticide, his hair washed again with a foul smelling concoction to kill lice. Napoleon is carrying a rattling bag of pill bottles and dressings, and a piece of paper with the time of his appointment tomorrow with Psych written down on it.

He shivers again when they step out onto the street, and he shouldn't, because the sun is warm. Napoleon opens the door of his car and ushers Illya in, and he's grateful to sink in to the stifling heat inside. He felt as if nothing would penetrate to his bones, but the heat in here is starting to get there.

'There you are,' Napoleon says. 'Okay? Home, yes?'

'Yes,' Illya says.

He feels uncomfortable on the seat. The sores on his pelvis and back hurt, and it hurts to sit properly after what he's been through, and after the doctor's internal examination. He feels so wretched. He wishes he could be home instantly, curled in his bed in utter darkness. He spent long enough lying in darkness in that foetid room, but lying in the soft darkness of his own bed would be so different.

Napoleon gets in to the driver's side and slams the door closed. He starts to wind the window down but then looks at Illya and stops.

'You don't need to stay,' Illya says, looking at the dashboard in front of him instead of Napoleon. He's not sure how to meet anyone's eyes, even Napoleon's. The longer he's away from that awful place the worse he feels, the more different he feels. He is a broken thing in a world of the healthy and the hale. He shouldn't be here.

'Of course I'll stay,' Napoleon says simply.

He starts the engine, pulls away from the kerb. Illya tries to hold on to reality. He tries to feel the heat around him. He's still shaking.

Waverly came to see him in the Infirmary, and Illya couldn't meet his eyes. The old man spoke of debriefing and whether he broke and passed information to his Thrush captors, and he couldn't make his throat open, couldn't say a word. The thought of debriefing made his mind close down, made him want to huddle and rock and scream. The doctor had said with unusual sternness, 'Not now, Mr Waverly. No debriefing until he's been passed by Psych, and I should think they'll recommend doing debriefing through Psych. He's not in a fit state for any regular debriefing.'

The car drones on through the streets. After a while Napoleon asks, 'Listen, Illya, do you think I can open the window? Just a bit?'

The car seat is warm against his back and the sun through the window is hot on his face and shoulder, and he's just starting to stop shaking. He's not sure how to reply. He doesn't want to have the window open, but he says, 'Okay.'

So Napoleon winds down his window. They crawl along a busy street and the store fronts and glittering windows are too much on either side, too much crowding into his eyes. All the brash noises of the street seem closer now with the window open. Illya closes his eyes to cut everything out. The car slows and stops, and he squints sideways to see they're stopped in a queue of traffic, very close to the busy sidewalk full of normal, healthy people. The scent of a freshly lit cigarette drifts into the car just as Illya is breathing in, and it fills his lungs, and –

Lying on that bed with his hands fixed above his head, with his ankles hitched up and hooked to the beam above so his hips are up off the bed. Feeling so naked, so exposed. The pain inside him and a man kneeling between his legs, fully dressed but with his trousers open and pushed down. Hands on Illya's hips, gripping into the bones of his bruised hips, holding him still because the man has just come, he is buried deep inside him and doesn't want to pull out.

And then he shoves a hand in the pocket of his shirt and gets out a cigarette. Lights it. Puffs out smoke across Illya's body, directly into his face. Takes hold of his hip again with one hand. Smokes with one hand. Taps the ash off onto Illya's belly and smiles. He's still in him, all the way in, although the muscles of Illya's body are contracting and trying to push him out. He hates that feeling, and he hates what comes after, that awful trickle of hot fluid.

But the man kneels there smoking and holding Illya against him, and smiling, tapping ash onto his body, pressed so hard against him that there is sweat between their skins. He hates the feeling and he hates that choking smell and he wants to cry, to run, to kill. He can't do anything but lie there watching the cigarette growing shorter, watching the ash scattering onto his stomach, until the man's cock is soft and out of his body and that trickle runs down his skin, and the cigarette is down to its filter. The man smiles again and stubs it out slowly on the soft skin of Illya's belly, twisting it left and right in a point of gritty red-hot ash. He bites his lip into his mouth to stop himself from crying out, and he closes his eyes, and when he opens them again there is just the ash and the cigarette butt crumpled on his stomach, and he is alone and waiting for the next one to come.

'Illya. Illya.'

He blinks and gasps. The car is pulled over at the side of the road. Napoleon is looking at him, and he looks so worried. He's gone from feeling cold to feeling too, too hot, but Napoleon has stopped in a narrow street shaded by the height of the brownstones on either side, and he's so grateful for that.

'Sorry,' he says. 'I'm sorry.'

He touches his hand to the thin cotton of his poloneck shirt, over his stomach. He can feel beneath it the adherent dressing and under that the hot soreness of the cigarette burn the man inflicted on him. When was that? Was it yesterday, two, three days ago? What are days anyway? They were all the same in there. It was just an exchange of long hours. Light and dark. Sleep and waking. Solitude and those men, those terrible men and their touching, touching...

He's gone again. He realises that before Napoleon even says anything, and surely that must be good, that he realises and brings himself back? He presses his finger hard into that burn and it hurts, it hurts so much, and that brings him back with a gasping sob.

'Illya, I wish you wouldn't do that,' Napoleon says, catching his hand.

Illya looks at his hand, at Napoleon's hand around it. His nails are still dirty, over-long and chipped and split. There are burns on his hands. He recalls with nausea the time when one of them used the palm of his hand as an ashtray. It's strange how cruel humans become when they are given licence to behave just as they like. He has to force himself to remember that not all men are like that. There are men he can trust. There is Napoleon.

'Illya,' Napoleon says. 'Illya, you're zoning in and out.'

'Sorry,' he says again.

'No, I'm just worried about you,' Napoleon says quickly. 'I'm worried about how this is affecting you.'

'Oh,' Illya says.

He's not sure what to do about that. He's not sure what to do about how he reels from the present to the past, from emotionally numb to overwhelmed by feelings. The doctor prescribed him various drugs that he said would help, but he doesn't know how drugs will touch the fact that he was confined in a room for weeks and weeks and raped multiple times every day. At times he thinks death would be the only way of helping himself. At times he wishes he could sink into non-being. Maybe a very large amount of alcohol would help. But he's afraid that this awful thing is a worm in his brain, that it will keep burrowing through his head, infecting his thoughts and making him live his horror over and over again.

'Illya, will you be all right until we get home?' Napoleon asks.

'Yes,' Illya says. He's not all right. He knows he's not all right. But there isn't much difference between being not all right in a stationary car or a moving car, or between being in a car or being at home.

Napoleon looks at him as if he's trying to read small type in a very important book. Then he turns back to the steering wheel and sets the car into motion. The engine rumbles through the seat again, making Illya aware of all the little pains and the big pains in his body, and he closes his eyes and lets Napoleon take him home.

((O))

He is lying on his bed, face down, so tired. Napoleon has told him that he has to go to bed, and he doesn't have the will to argue. So he changes into pyjamas while Napoleon changes the bedclothes in case they harbour lice, and he lies down on the bed.

Napoleon says, 'Turn over, why don't you? I'll see to that hair. I need to try to comb out the tangles.'

'All right,' he says, and turns over, resting his face in the pillow, welcoming that soft darkness. The burn and the bruises on his face hurt, but it's a pleasure to rest his pain against something so soft.

Napoleon's hands touch the back of his head, the teeth of a comb snag in his hair, and he winces.

'Sorry,' Napoleon says. 'Sorry. I'm trying not to pull.'

He turns his face sideways, just enough so that he can speak, just enough so that he can breathe. His hair still smells of insecticide.

'It's all right,' he says.

The pulling is nothing, really. Nothing to what he's been through. It's only a very little, kind pain. One of Napoleon's hands pulls the comb and the other strokes his hair, working through the tangled felt carefully, gently. He feels so safe like this, lying on his soft bed clothed from neck to ankle, knowing that Napoleon is here with his gun and his alert mind and all of his U.N.C.L.E. training.

Napoleon goes on combing, saying nothing beyond an occasional apology for pulling too hard. And Illya lies there, drifting in and out of sleep. He comes to and feels Napoleon still there, and realises how tired he is, how heavy his body is. He supposes he's still exhausted, although he doesn't know why. He hasn't been running races or walking for miles. He's just been lying, lying, lying on that terrible bed, lying passively under men's bodies, lying passively alone in the dark. Just lying.

He feels himself falling again, and he tries to hold on. It's as if his stomach has suddenly flipped over, as if he's suddenly remembered the full horror of the last few months. He relaxes, and a red alert sets off in his mind, because relaxing leaves him open to attack.

Napoleon's hand strokes his hair and Illya breathes deeply, making himself feel the bed under the length of his body, the sun coming through the window and melting into his aching muscles. He feels Napoleon's hand stroking, over and over, and he starts to drift asleep again...

'It's coming,' Napoleon says, and Illya thinks it's the first thing he's said in an hour, except for those little apologies. 'It's starting to resemble hair more than a rug.'

'Oh. Good,' Illya says.

He's so ridiculously drowsy. He's staring at the cream wall of his bedroom with one eye, and the blurred contours of the sheets and blankets on the bed closer up. He feels Napoleon's hand stroke his hair and then he's drifting away again, drifting into a soft little sleep that's too light for dreams.

'There. Done,' Napoleon says, and Illya blinks again. He stirs himself, and his body feels like lead. His wrists are sore from the constant chafing of the chains, and his ankles are sore from the same, and his back aches in a dull way, somewhere just above his pelvis, aching just like it did when he was immobile on that bed.

He twists himself onto his side and touches a hand to the back of his head. He can feel the frizziness of the hair there, but there are no tangles. He can pull his fingers through. He can touch his scalp.

'You okay, tovarisch?' Napoleon asks, laying a hand on his shoulder.

'Yes,' Illya says. 'Yes, I'm okay. Just – '

'Okay, just not all right,' Napoleon says. 'It's all right, Illya. I don't really expect you to be all right.'

'I'm not all right,' Illya agrees. 'No. I'm not all right.'

'You've slept a while,' Napoleon tells him. 'I think it would be good if you could get up for a bit.'

'Oh,' Illya says, and he turns to look towards the window and the gap in the curtains, and sees the low golden light of evening in summer. It had been spring when Thrush first captured him. It had been cold. That more than anything shows the passage of time. It is hot now and the sun is setting late and there are leaves on the trees. All that happened while he was locked away.

'Yes, I should get up,' he says. 'Yes, I think I'm hungry. You must be hungry.'

'I grabbed some lunch a few hours ago,' Napoleon says. 'You were fast asleep. I took a break from the hair.'

'Do I have any food?' Illya asks, confused.

'Not a thing. I called for take out again. If you don't mind me leaving you alone, I could do with running out for some groceries. Unless you want to come?'

'No,' he says, then wrinkles his forehead, confused. 'No, I don't mind. No, I don't want to come.'

'Well, all right, then.' Napoleon pats his shoulder. 'I'll run out for some food and you get up. Get dressed. Give your face a wash, yes, and have you thought about shaving?'

Illya touches his hand to his cheek and feels his beard. Perhaps if he had thought he could have judged the length of his captivity by the length of his beard. He remembers squatting over that bucket, his chin sunk into his hands, the chains hanging from his wrists. He remembers how his fingertips sunk into the hair, how he had tried to scrape off the crust of filth left by men, and by pressing his face against his food to eat. Couldn't he have used that as a yardstick of sorts? He hadn't thought to do so.

((O))

He waits until Napoleon has left, and then he puts his legs over the side of the bed and sits there, just sits, feeling the uncomfortable feeling in his rectum, feeling the sting of his burns, smelling the disinfectant scent that is all around him. He has to make himself get up, to be a normal person. So he gets up, tries not to feel shaky, walks into the bathroom. The freedom to do that is so odd that he stands in the bathroom door for a moment, just staring, thinking how he can move anywhere, to the toilet on the left, the basin on the right, the bath straight ahead.

The basin. Right now he needs to go to the basin. He turns on the tap and the pipes clank and the tap spits until hot water comes out. He lathers up foam and he applies it to the beard that has grown. He tests his thumb across the razor blade, tightens it up, looks up into the mirror –

His breath stops in his throat as he catches sight of himself in there, with that dark beard covered in foam, with the bruises along his cheekbones, one on his temple, spreading around his eye. That cigarette burn is an angry punctuation mark in his skin. And his eyes. He meets his own eyes, and he just can't breathe. He can't look at himself. He feels as if he is falling, as if those mirror eyes are stripping his soul bare.

He closes his eyes. He's dropped the razor in the basin. He stands with his eyes closed and he tries to get his breath as the steam rises from the white porcelain. He fumbles at the towel rail, pulls off a hand towel, lifts it, blind, and forces the top edge of it under the top edge of the mirror. It's not until he's satisfied that the mirror is covered that he opens his eyes, and he's looking at a blank piece of towelling instead of that awful reflection and those awful eyes.

He shaves, slowly and with great care. Clumps of hair and foam drop into the basin. The plughole becomes blocked and he scrapes the hair out into the bin and then carries on. He touches a hand to his cheek to feel how well he's managed. There are specks of blood on his palm and in the foam that falls into the basin. His skin stings, but he gets all of that beard off, it all washes away or is scraped and dropped into the bin, and in the end he splashes cold water on his face and pulls the towel down and turns from the mirror before he can see his reflection again, pressing the towel to his stinging skin.

He handles the razor for a moment instead of putting it straight back in the bathroom cabinet. The blade is so perfectly sharp. He scrapes his thumb across it again and thinks how if he were to just move his thumb the other way blood would well out. He would only need to take it from its metal frame and slip it across the veins in his wrists, and everything would become quiet, everything would become still, and he wouldn't have to hurt any more.

He is so shocked at himself that his heart starts to pound. He throws the razor, hurls it so hard that it hits the mirror, which shatters and smashes into the basin below. He doesn't want to die. He doesn't want to die. He fought to stay alive and sane all that time, and now he's safe, and he doesn't want to die, he doesn't. His heart is pounding in his ears and he's crying, gulping up sobs, weeping and weeping.

He stumbles out into the living room and drops onto the couch and clutches his knees up to his chest. He doesn't want to die. He survived for so long. He doesn't want to be mad, he doesn't want to hurt, he doesn't want to hate himself and not be able to look into his own eyes. He just wants to be back as he was before, confident and whole.

He struggles to get control again, breathing in so deeply that it makes him dizzy. He swallows the sobs. He feels his way into his bedroom and finds clothes, and he dresses himself with great care, exposing his skin for the shortest possible time as he swaps pyjama trousers for underpants and slacks, pyjama shirt for a poloshirt.

When Napoleon comes back, two bulging bags of groceries under his arms, he is sitting on the couch again, just sitting there, trying to behave like a normal human being. He looks up when Napoleon comes in, and gives him just the faintest smile.

'There, that's my Kuryakin back again,' Napoleon says fondly, dumping the bags on the coffee table and touching a hand to Illya's newly shaven cheek. 'Feel better?'

He isn't sure what to say. Should he say, My mirror is broken, but it doesn't matter because I can't look at myself anyway, and by the way, I almost slit my wrists while you were out?

'A bit,' he says.

'Ah, good,' Napoleon says. 'I just need to go to the little boy's room, and then I'll fix you something to eat, yes?'

'Oh, I wouldn't – ' Illya begins, but Napoleon has already opened the bathroom door.

'Uh, care to share?' he asks, turning back to look at Illya.

Illya drops his gaze. 'I – had an accident,' he says.

'An accident? Really?'

And then that heart-racing, panicked feeling rushes over him again and before he can stop himself he says, 'Napoleon, you'd better pack up the razor. Get rid of all that glass. Take the sharp knives out of the kitchen. Take the key to my gun locker. Please.'

The expression on Napoleon's face changes then, from almost amused to deadly serious.

'Illya,' he says. 'Illya, are you telling me you're suicidal?'

'No. Yes. I don't know, Napoleon,' he says, rubbing his hands over his badly shaven face, feeling the tenderness of the bruises on his cheeks. He remembers hands coming down, fists hitting him. Shut up, stop making that noise, just fucking enjoy it, why can't you?

His heart is still racing. He feels as if he doesn't know where to turn. He wants to fold in on himself and disappear.

'I don't know,' he says again. 'I have – thoughts. And then I stop them. I don't want to die. I'm not suicidal. No. But – ' He heaves in air and steadies himself and says, 'I – I am in so much pain, Napoleon. No. No, not like that,' he says as Napoleon turns to where the pill bottles are lined up on the sideboard. 'I – I don't know how to look at myself. I don't know how to be alone with myself. I feel – I feel so disgusted with myself… If I could just stop all of my thoughts...'

Napoleon comes and sits by him on the couch. He takes his hands, turns them over, examining, it seems, the chipped nails and the healing burns on his right palm. And then he presses those burns to his lips, and kisses them as if his lips have the power to heal.

'Illya, I will take away the knives, if you like, and clean up the glass,' he says, lowering Illya's hand and holding it in his. When he looks into Illya's eyes Illya manages to meet his gaze, just for a moment. 'I will look after the key to your gun locker, and keep the pills in there if you need me to. I know there's no point telling you not to feel how you do. I know there's no point telling you you did nothing wrong. I know you're going to need a lot of help to heal. But I'll help you, I promise. Any time you feel like that, the first person you turn to is me, okay? I will hold you above water, I promise. Will you do that?'

Illya smiles. They are only sitting on the couch, but he feels as if he's been drowning in deep, cold water, and Napoleon has reached out his hand to pull him onto dry land.

'Counselling tomorrow, yes?' Napoleon says. 'They'll start to help you untangle all of this.'

'Counselling tomorrow,' he echoes.

He had forgotten about that. The thought of talking about all of this to Psych makes his heart race again, but he knows that it's necessary. He knows that in the end it will be for the best.

'Meanwhile, why don't you come into the kitchen?' Napoleon asks. 'I'll make some coffee. We can talk about dinner. I bought some steaks, if you want them, or I have ground beef and ingredients for something Italian.'

He almost laughs. How ridiculous that is, to go from talking about suicide to talking about coffee and steaks. But he can't think about what he wants to eat. It's so hard. He hasn't had a choice for such a long time. Crusts. Old bread. Scraps from the club upstairs. Whatever was put beside him on the bed. Eat it, you son of a bitch. Be grateful I bothered today. How can he decide what he wants to eat?

'I – I'd like – I don't mind,' he falters. 'Whatever's easiest. Whatever you want to cook.'

'Illya.' Napoleon is trying to hold his gaze, but he can't do it. Illya ends up looking at his knees. 'I want you to make a choice. Steaks or pasta? What do you want?'

So he fights with the need to just withdraw and abdicate all responsibility, and says, 'Steaks,' for no better reason than that it's what Napoleon mentioned first. But he's made a decision. That's all that counts.

'Steaks,' Napoleon nods, and he puts a hand on Illya's back and ushers him into the kitchen.

((O))

The smell of frying meat is so rich in the air. It fills everything. Illya sits there on a wooden chair with his arms resting on his little table and he watches the swirl of minute particles of smoke and steam in the air. He watches Napoleon move gracefully from the pan to the sink, back to the pan, to the fridge, to the chopping board. Napoleon moves like a man who has been taught deportment. There's never anything clumsy about him.

He's lying on that bed and every inch of him is naked. His skin is raised in goosebumps on his upper arm, which is only an inch away from his eyes. He keeps his head turned on its side and looks at his upper arm, looks at the curve of muscle, at each of those tiny little bumps where his body hair is trying to keep him warm. Beyond his arm is the dirty mattress, and beyond that is the wall with all of its cracks and lines in the dirty white paint over old bricks. He keeps his eyes away from the man in the room, keeps his eyes on his arm, the mattress, the wall.

But then there's the first touch. Then a hand touches his hip, and he closes his eyes and bites his lip hard into his mouth, and tries not to writhe away. The chains scrape at the bottom of the bed, and then pull on his ankles, and then his legs are being raised up again, yet again. His feet will go numb and for a while he won't feel the sores on his ankles so badly. The mattress is moving as the man kneels on it. He's making small noises as he concentrates on hooking the chains to the beam. A cloth covered arm brushes against Illya's bare leg. Then fingers stroke down his inner thigh.

Tiny particles of carbonised beef in the air. Tiny particles of water catching the light that comes from the bulb in the centre of the kitchen ceiling. Napoleon moving about the room, poking at the steaks with a spatula, shifting the frying pan on the ring, lifting the lid from a pan of boiling water and dropping potatoes into its depths.

Illya swallows so hard it hurts his throat. He drops his head onto his arms and closes his eyes. He tries to breathe. And then a hand touches him in the flat space between his shoulder blades, and he reacts so fast he almost knocks Napoleon to the floor. But Napoleon catches his wrist in his hand. He is so weak, so clumsy. Napoleon holds his wrist and Illya catches his breath and subsides back onto the chair, and Napoleon says, 'All right. All right, Illya. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have touched you without warning you first.'

He pulls in breath and tries to speak but his words catch on a sob. Napoleon lifts his own hand, shows it, palm open, to Illya, and touches his back again, stroking softly in circles.

'All right,' he says. 'It's all right. It's all right. You're here, yes? You're right here. You're out of that place.'

'All right,' Illya says. He's managing not to cry. He stares at the wood grain of the table in front of him and feels the soft circular motion of Napoleon's hand. He thinks of tides and currents and the ebb and flow of life. 'I'm here,' he says. 'I know. I'm here.'

'It's never going to happen again,' Napoleon says. 'Never again. Okay?'

'Yes,' Illya says.

The lines in the wood are beautiful and endless. They're so real in front of him. The scent of the cooking meat is real in his lungs. The seat is real beneath him. Napoleon is real, stroking his back.

Never again.

Napoleon can't promise that. There's no way he can promise that. In his job they both put their bodies forward in the fight against evil, and bad things happen to them. Napoleon can never promise him he will be safe. But he is here, in his kitchen, with good scents in the air and the swirls of wood grain in the table and Napoleon's hand protectively on his back. Outside his window a thousand injustices are raging just in the dozen blocks around his building. New York is a mass of rape, murder, violence, discord. But he is sitting here in these strong walls. He is here. The only thing that can harm him now is his mind.