"Good morning, tovarisch," Napoleon greeted Illya as he entered UNCLE headquarters the following morning. "Another sleepless night, I take it."
"Da, you are correct," the Russian replied. "I cannot wait for Trinochka to return. Domka misses his Mama so."
"I'd imagine someone else misses her just as much, if not more." The American winked at his partner.
"I have never met anyone with as much of a one-track mind as you have, moy droog," Illya retorted. Yet he had to admit that his bed had been very cold and lonely since Trina had left. Sometimes he went to sleep hugging her pillow, as her lingering scent brought him comfort, but it was only a poor substitute for actually having her warm body there to cuddle with.
"Speaking of which, I can't wait for this weekend," Napoleon bragged.
"Say what you will, but I know you still miss Elspeth," Illya replied. The pressures of Napoleon's career as an UNCLE agent had sadly proven to be too much for his budding relationship with Elspeth Whittaker to handle.
Napoleon didn't answer, instead pretending to be busy with paperwork on his desk.
That weekend, Illya and his children received a surprise visit from his cousin, Alexei Kolchin, and Alexei's wife, Alison.
"Alexei and Alison are here!" Lydia exclaimed, running to meet her new visitors.
"Hey, sweetheart!" Alison said, giving the little girl a fierce hug, which was a bit awkward with her eight-months-pregnant belly in the way.
"It's almost time for your baby to be born, isn't it?" asked Lydia.
"That's right!" Alison replied. "Just four more weeks!"
"And then Domka and me can play with it!" Lydia said hopefully.
"Oh, no. Not right away." Alison laughed. "Babies are too little to do anything much but sleep and eat when they're first born, but when it's a little bit older, you and your brother can play with it, if you're very gentle."
"And your baby will be half Russian and half American too, just like me and Domka!"
"That's right!"
"She's so precocious," Alison complimented Illya's young daughter.
"Spasibo. She is," he agreed.
The Kolchins visited for several hours. After dinner, they were all sitting in the living room watching television when the program they were watching was interrupted by a news bulletin. An airplane headed for New York City had exploded in midair, killing all passengers on board. When the flight's number was mentioned, all the blood drained from Illya's face.
"That was Trina's flight number...' he gasped.
"Words seem insufficient at a time like this," Napoleon said to his partner and best friend. Illya and all the other family members of the doomed passengers had been officially notified of the disaster, and recovery teams were now sorting through the wreckage and retrieving the bodies and any valuables worth keeping. The remains would be stored in a makeshift morgue at a local hospital until they could all be identified and released to the responsible parties.
"I find it strange that I cannot even cry," Illya remarked. "I feel only numbness, a sense of unreality, as if I know that I will awaken at any moment and find that this has been but a horrible nightmare."
"You and I have both worked with the survivors of victims of tragedies long enough to know that what you feel is typical," Napoleon replied. "Although I realize that that fact gives little consolation when you're going through it yourself."
"Da," Illya agreed. Following such a loss, the first reaction was shock, and once the shock wore off, a deep, aching sorrow, a paralyzing grief, would follow. Illya knew the cycle all too well, but for him, the challenge would be to not only manage his own emotions, but also to provide Lydia and Dominik with the comfort and support they would need in the weeks and months to come. They were both much too young to fully grasp the magnitude of what had happened, but as they got older, they would understand much more clearly. Illya would have to be both mother and father to them from now on, and that thought completely overwhelmed him.
The days seemed to pass seamlessly, blending one into another as he went about his daily tasks, doing his routine investigative work as he waited for Mr. Waverly to send him out of town on his next assignment, picking Lydia and Dominik up from child care every evening, patiently answering their questions as best he could, feeding them, playing with them, reading to them, putting them to bed, drying their tears.
When the harsh reality finally hit him, as he'd known it eventually would, it washed over him like a tidal wave, threatening to block every other structure from his mind except for the terrible finality of the knowledge that he would never see her face nor hear her voice again, that he'd never hold her hand and walk along the beach with her, that he'd never make love to her and then hold her in his arms until he could hear her gentle snoring, ever again. The crushing grief that brought him was like no pain he'd ever felt before.
Days, or possibly even weeks, he couldn't be sure which, after the tragedy, Mr. Waverly asked to see him in his office. He entered to find that, to his surprise, May Walker had also been summoned.
"The passenger list of the recently destroyed airplane has been released," Mr. Waverly began. "The list includes the name Franz Mueller, which, as you and I know, Mr. Kuryakin, is one of the pseudonyms used by Reinhardt Gutmann, one of the most ruthless operatives of THRUSH. As we all know, Mr. Solo is currently out of town visiting his sick aunt, so I am sending the two of you to the crash site to help with the recovery effort, in case any information related to Mr. Gutmann and his mission turns up."
Illya looked at May in disbelief. How on earth would he be able to endure her company for the length of time it would take for this case to be solved?
