(Nothing's mine . . . but you knew that.)
The Stray Guide Affair, Part 1, by DarkBeta
"I have no intention of interfering with your personal choices. However unwise."
Napoleon kept his hold on the doorknob, not for support but for an anchor. He hadn't been this close to an unbonded guide since his senses came online.
Sentinels without guides faced a short, unpleasant life. Survival instinct told him to grab the pale-haired man. (Three steps. No more than that. Only Waverly was near enough to be a rival, but he'd be slowed by the desk between them, and by his age.) To take him somewhere private and secure. (Several offices nearby were empty. If Napoleon triggered the security measures, UNCLE's technicians would need hours to break in.) To kill anyone who interfered.
You didn't qualify as an UNCLE field agent unless you could, when the situation required it, ignore the desire to survive.
"You aren't due to report until Monday," the Section Head noted.
Napoleon walked over to put the Jakarta report on the corner of Waverly's desk, circling around the guide at more than an arm's reach. The flinch at his approach would have been invisible to any eyes but a sentinel's. Only a sentinel could have tasted despair.
The man was feverish, too hot even for a guide, with the blotchy warmth of hidden bruises. He smelled of vodka and ice and blood. He'd eaten a sandwich from the UNCLE cafeteria, roast beef with mustard, about six hours before. Before that he'd flown in an unpressurized craft. He was worse than afraid, with the resignation of a trapped animal waiting to die.
For the rest, that even non-sentinels would see, he had blue eyes and white-blond hair. He wore brown uniform pants rolled up at the cuffs, a sweat-stained teeshirt (the sweat was his, though the shirt wasn't), and a flight jacket too big for him. He had the balanced, conscious stance of an actor or a martial artist. He was too thin.
He had courage, since he refused to acknowledge the Nemesis behind him. Napoleon pulled a chair over to the corner of Waverly's desk, within the stranger's range of vision but still out of reach, and sat down. The fact that he was now between Waverly and the guide was coincidence. Probably.
"Hello. My name's Napoleon Solo. Pleased to meet you."
"Of course you are. Sentinel."
The guide's hostility was plain. Napoleon smiled, trying to look trustworthy but not ingratiating. After a minute or two the stranger decided that surrendering his name was not an irretrievable precedent.
"Illya Kuryakin."
"You're Russian?" Napoleon asked.
Not a product of GDP training then, brainwashed out of all initiative and terrorized into obedience. He might be a real partner, instead of an appurtenance to be towed about and guarded. Napoleon might have a chance to bond without surrendering his field status.
"That . . . is being decided."
The guide feared sentinels, or bonding, or Napoleon himself. A bright prospect was withheld. Napoleon hated self-denial. So easy to reach out . . . . He held the side of the chair, hoping neither Waverly nor the guide would see his knuckles whiten.
"Mr. Kuryakin is currently persona non grata in his homeland," Waverly put in. "UNCLE, on the other hand, has reason to be very grateful indeed. I've granted him provisional status as an agent with the North American office. Dependent upon the completion of training, of course."
Oh. No. Not the island. Training in warfare, espionage, and assassination. Weeks of trials designed to fold, spindle and mutilate. Convincing a would-be agent that he was going to die so often that he stopped caring. A guide would endure the fear and rage of his fellow students as well as himself.
Napoleon put together "exile" and "provisional status" and "guide", and came to an unpleasant conclusion.
"The GDP has no right of entry or seizure on UNCLE's property, here or on the island."
"Correct," Waverly agreed. "A right upon which we remain adamant."
"You're trying to keep Kuryakin out of their grip. But agent's training . . . that's for volunteers. You can't be forced to go through it unless you believe in the result."
"Who has said I don't?" the guide asked.
Waverly brought his pipe out of the desk and began to tamp tobacco in the bowl. Smoking in a sentinel's presence was one way to indicate extreme displeasure.
"It won't work! He needs to go on assignment to keep his status. As soon as he steps out the door they can grab him."
"It would be a good test of our training to resist coercion," Waverly mused.
Kuryakin almost smiled. Napoleon stared at him. A match flared, and Waverly applied it to his pipe.
"Sir, get him out. England, Switzerland . . . some place where guides have a reasonable legal standing."
"You underestimate the rancor surrounding his departure. The notoriety of the GDP's behavior in the Americas was, I believe, the deciding factor in the agreement of his superiors to my offer of residence."
The first wisp of smoke emerged from his tobacco. Waverly contemplated it fondly.
"Does UNCLE employ any other unbonded sentinels in this sector?"
"You would be aware of them, if we did."
Napoleon leaned back in his chair, though relaxation was the opposite of what he felt. The guide's despair was explained. Death at home or slavery abroad; a delightful choice.
"I consent," Kuryakin whispered. "Is that what you need to hear? One man cannot do me as much harm as the apparatus of the state. I consent."
"I don't."
That surprised Kuryakin. He looked straight at Napoleon, for the first time. The sentinel looked back, allowing himself that much luxury. He wondered what his mixture of regret and pity and resentment felt like to a guide.
"Enough," the section chief said. "Mr. Kuryakin, I need to speak privately with my agent. Please wait in the adjoining room."
"Of course, sir."
He circled about the sentinel in leaving, as Napoleon had circled him before. Napoleon closed his eyes. Waverly's office was well soundproofed. The closing door cut off the sound of the guide's breath and heartbeat. His scent hung in the air though, and a fading trace of his body's warmth.
The pipestem clicked as Waverly set it down.
"I have no intention of interfering with your personal choices. However unwise. Nonetheless, Mr. Kuryakin will accompany you to your apartment, and remain in your company for the next ten hours."
He raised a hand to stop Napoleon's protest.
"Mr. Kuryakin's treatment prior to UNCLE's extraction of him was not gentle. That portion of the past six hours not given to debriefing, he spent in the medical wing. The treatment he received means that he will be unable to bond for --" Waverly glanced at his watch. "-- some twelve hours. I am told that the attempt would be frustrating, on the sentinel's part, and painful, on the guide's."
Napoleon coughed as fumes rose from the unattended pipe. The section chief gave him a stern look.
"As you point out, Mr. Kuryakin is in grave danger if he is identified as a guide outside these premises. Without formal proceedings though, the GDP has no right to remove a guide in the presence and control of a sentinel such as yourself."
Napoleon started coughing again, but he nodded. The GDP might not hold to the letter of its legal constraints, but he could dissuade informants or guards from interfering.
"You will return Mr. Kuryakin here at nine tomorrow. Meanwhile I will research alternative sanctuaries."
"Yes, sir."
Napoleon stood up, and found that air was gone. Soot was in his mouth and lungs. He clutched his throat and collapsed.
He would have laughed if he'd had breath. Ridiculous. After all the Thrush attempts, to die of smoke. And in Waverly's office, in the middle of the New York headquarters -- barring the White House, the most intensely guarded square footage in the Americas. Did this count as friendly fire?
He rolled his head far enough to watch the door the guide had gone out of. Illya Kuryakin. Not that he expected help. Even if Kuryakin somehow felt his distress, in that spooky way guides did, what could a sentinel's death be to him but a reprieve? Waverly said there was a debt, and the old man paid his debts. He'd make sure the guide was safe.
Napoleon could have helped. Could have guarded him.
Darkness.
Illya.