Part Four: Don't start speaking in tongues again.

A red mist rose in Illya's vision, his eyes transfixed on the ghastly sight before him. It wasn't just any piece of meat the creature was eating. It was a hand. And the ring on the pinky finger identified it as none other than that of his partner.

Rage filled him and he allowed it to enter. Normally, he suppressed such outbursts, knowing that clear-headed action was usually best. It was an attitude that had earned him the nickname of Ice Prince. But now, he just didn't care. He was too tired, too disgusted, too angry. Heat rose from his very core and he gathered strength from it that he hadn't known he had had.

Coldly, the world seeming to shift around him, Illya reached for a large stone, surprised at how light it seemed. He crept up behind the creature slowly, raising the stone as high over his head as he could. Just before he could bring it down on the creature, it started, snapping its mask back into place and whirling around just as the stone began to descend toward its head. With an inhuman shriek, it skittered to the side and came to a halt on on all fours, growling.

The creature leaped at Illya. With a single bound of its legs, it covered the entire distance. This time, though, Illya did not dodge. He let the creature come, standing his ground and screaming a war-cry as it came at him. It slammed into him and they were both tumbling to the ground, grappling. Illya reached for his stone again and swung a glancing blow to the creature's head. The creature recovered quickly, regaining its four limbs and pushing off from the wall it had tumbled into like a demented jungle cat.

It slammed Illya backward into the fallen remains of a stone piller. For a moment, Illya saw stars, but they only faded into the red mist that swirled around him, giving it strength. He lashed out with his fists, flailing in a very clumsy set of strikes that at any other time he would not have allowed himself to fall into. But each one found its mark, pushing the creature back. When it was back against the wall again, Illya leaped toward it, knocking it to the ground again, his hands going for its throat. They grappled again, rolling across the ground and each trying to find purchase. The creature ended up on top and Illya felt its claws around his throat.

Desperately, he flailed his arms, casting about for something that would help. His right hand landed on another stone, grasping on to it. Illya swung for all he was worth. The stone connected with the side of the creature's head with a sickening crack. The creature fell to the side, boneless, and lied still.

Illya sprang to his feet again, ready for the fight to continue. When it did not, and he saw the creature laying in a heap on the ground, he gasped as if he had been holding his breath and the red mist in his vision fell away. The chamber tilted and he fell to his knees next to the creature, staring at it.

He wasn't certain how long he sat there, staring at the garish mask and shaking. There was a foreign pull from it, beckoning for him to pull the mask away and look at the creature beneath it. Slowly, one shaking hand reached for the mask and pulled it away.

Once again, terror slammed into Illya. The face beneath the mask, covered in blood on the side he had hit, was like looking into some nightmarish mirror. His own blue eyes stared back at him, empty and dull. Letting out a cry and dropping the mask as if it had burned him, Illya scrambled backward on all fours, trying to put distance between himself and the twisted, broken mockery. He ran into the wall and scrambled up to his feet, still backing away from the sight, gasping for air. He watched as the creature with his face seemed to melt, a sickly green goo draining into the cracks between stones. Finally, Illya tore his eyes away, turning toward the chamber entrance. There was no other thought in his mind now but to leave, to get away.

But when he turned, he found another form blocking his way. A noise filled Illya's ears, high and piercing. He looked into the face of his partner, eyes sunken, face a deathly gray. His mouth was wide open in a twisted scream and Illya realized that the noise was coming from him. There was anger in Napoleon's clouded eyes. Napoleon's left arm ended in a messy, bloody stump and his right held a large rock. He was winding up to swing with the rock.

Illya covered his ears against the shrieking sound, shaking his head in disbelief, he thought he heard words falling from his own mouth, pleading with his friend, telling him that he didn't mean for it to happen.

Napoleon swung with the rock and Illya ducked under the swing on pure instinct and sprinted for the chamber entrance. Stumbling over loose stones and other bits of ruin he sped through the maze of corridors, uncaring of whether he was heading for the entrance or not. Behind him, Napoleon's hideous shriek continued, instilling more panic in Illya's chest.

Illya ran on, blindly. He needed to get away. Some distant part of him realized that he was doing exactly what he shouldn't. But training held no sway in the face of pure, primal fear and instinct.

Eventually, Illya tumbled out into an open space, his feet sliding out from under him and he fell, skidding to a stop in a puddle of muck. Thunder roared above him and there was a bright flash as he flopped over in the mud, turning his face upward to the falling rain. Fight left him for a moment as he watched the clouds rolling and flashing above. He shivered in the cold downpour, chest heaving convulsively in some sort of disgusting mix of laughter and sobbing. He wasn't certain if the water pouring down his face was from the rain or his tears.

It didn't matter.

The shriek sounded from the opening of the ruin and lightning flashed above, conjuring up visions of another time he had raised his hand against Napoleon. The rolling thunder faded into a cacophony of his partner's voice, calling his name over and over as he ran up to him. All of this compressed into an instant and Illya jerked upright with renewed fright.

Napoleon, or whatever it was that was left of him, was lit by another flash of lightning as he jumped down from the wall of broken bricks. Feeling his breath catching in his chest again, Illya scrambled back to his feet and started running, hearing a horrible parody of Napoleon's voice calling his name angrily behind him. He ran onward, heedless of the branches scraping at his face as he burst through them, ignoring the momentary blindness that came when the thunder struck and flashed only to plunge him into darkness again.

Lightning flashed again and he saw Napoleon directly in his path, swinging a large branch toward his head with a roar of anger.

He couldn't stop, couldn't dodge it. It connected with his skull and he tumbled into oblivion.


Feeling returned first, a sharp pain in his head and something warm on his face. Illya felt something pawing at him. Sound came back next, voices, all speaking over each other, sounding demonic, speaking in a language he couldn't make any sense of. His eyes finally opened slowly to a bright green blur far above him. It resolved into the canopy of the forest far above him, daylight shining through the leaves. He gave a weak moan, trying to shake off the hands grasping at him. The voices grew louder, more agitated.

And then a face appeared above him, the same hideous tribal mask with the bleeding eyes staring down at him. With a shout, Illya tried to sit up, but found something holding his shoulders, keeping him down. Looking around in a panic, Illya found several sets of clawed hands holding him. Several more of the masked faces hovered over and around him.

"Get away!" he screamed, trying to move his arms or kick his legs. But the masked creatures were holding him down, preventing escape. Another approached, holding a jagged, wicked-looking knife. Illya struggled against the ones holding him, but it was of no use. Helplessly, he watched as the knife descended, stabbing into his shoulder. His strength left him quickly and the ground seemed to suck him under, back into darkness.

The weight of the ground settled onto his chest and the surface under him changed to something smooth, soft, and dry, tangling his legs. He opened his eyes again to a bright, burning white, weight getting heavier on his chest, making it hard to breathe. He flailed desperately, trying to clear the pressure from his chest, needing air. But the masked faces appeared above him again, grasping his arms and legs, holding him down again. Laying across Illya's belly a white snake slithered up toward his face. He felt the stab of another knife in his shoulder and darkness began to pull him down again. Just as it did, he felt the snake force its way into his mouth and down his throat.

When the darkness yielded again, Illya floated back into the nightmarish burning white. There were screams nearby, regular and rhythmic as if someone was being tortured in some gruesome, systematic way. Illya tried to cry out but found he could make no sound. The distant screaming increased in speed and intensity. Something cold forced its way into his chest and when he tried to clear it away, he found he could not move his hands or legs, though there was no one holding him down. The white snake reared up, emerging from his mouth to open its jaws wide and hiss, revealing long, needle-like fangs. Illya tried to cry out again, but this only seemed to make the snake angry. It struck, the fangs piercing the skin near his neck. The world tilted around him and he could no longer hold his eyes open. He surrendered to oblivion again, hearing the distant screams fade away and grow quieter and less frequent.


Something cold and dry was covering his mouth and nose, blowing whooshes of air onto his face. He flinched at it, surprised to hear his voice give a soft moan. He became aware of a soft rhythmic, electronic beeping somewhere nearby.

"Illya?" a voice said from his side, the first intelligible thing he felt he had heard in days. Something warm and gentle covered one of his hands.

He tested his voice again and it sounded stronger this time, though what came from his mouth sounded like a muffled mash of sounds.

"Illya?" the voice next to him, familiar and warm, prompted him again. "Are you with me? C'mon, Illya open up those eyes."

Illya opened his eyes a crack, white once again forcing its way into his sight. He slammed them closed again and groped for words. "Where am I?" he managed out.

"Getting beauty sleep in your favorite place in the world," said the voice and Illya finally placed a name to it, "c'mon, show me those baby blues the girls go crazy for."

Squinting, Illya forced his eyes open. A dark blur amidst the sea of white came into focus, slowly resolving into the face of his partner. Napoleon gave a winning smile, gentle and relieved-looking.

"Napoleon?" Illya mumbled out. "How'd you get here?"

"Ah, there you are, partner mine," said Napoleon, "though I figured you'd ask how you got here."

Dizzily, Illya looked around. He found that he was laying on the soft, antiseptically clean and inclined mattress of a hospital bed. Napoleon was sitting in a chair next to him. Clean sunlight shone through the room's single window and an oxygen mask covered Illya's mouth and nose. Every whoosh of air seemed to clear a few more of the cobwebs from his mind.

"Where's here?" Illya blearily asked.

"UNCLE medical in Rio," Napoleon answered, "back among the living. You've been incoherent and in and out of consciousness for two days."

"Two days?" Illya exclaimed, sitting up and moving to reach for the oxygen mask on his face. His hand came to an abrupt halt, something encircling his wrist pulling back stubbornly. He looked to it and found a padded leather cuff around his wrist. He tested his other hand and found the same there. He became aware of similar restraints on his ankles as well. Adrenaline shot through him and he tasted something bitter in his mouth. "What is...?" he trailed off, pulling against the restraints.

"Easy, easy!" Napoleon urged, gently placing his hands on Illya's shoulders and guiding him to sit back again. "Like I said, you were incoherent," he said, "they had to put those on you when you started to try and claw out the eyes of the pretty nurses. You were having some pretty powerful hallucinations for a while."

"Oh," Illya breathed out, settling back against his pillow. "I didn't hurt anyone, did I?"

"No, no, they got those on you before things really got ugly," Napoleon answered, "We can probably remove them. Just don't start speaking in tongues again and it should be fine."

"Tongues?" Illya asked.

Napoleon gave a grimace. "Yeah, this is the first English anyone's heard from you in two days. Otherwise it was obscenities in a little bit of Russian and mostly Ukrainian." He gave a chuckle. "It was pretty colorful. I didn't even know you knew those metaphors!"

"Wow," Illya rasped. Napoleon heard the catch in his voice and reached for a covered cup with a straw in it. He pulled the oxygen mask off of Illya's face and held the straw up to his lips. Illya took a pull from it, cool water going down his dry throat and feeling heavenly.

After setting the cup aside, Napoleon reached for the call button, then undid the cuff on Illya's right wrist. "Don't think these are necessary any more," he said. When Illya turned to reach for the one on his left, Napoleon halted him and stood up from his chair. "Here, let me."

Illya watched as Napoleon reached for a pair of crutches that had been leaning against the wall behind the bed. He tucked them under his shoulders and then hobbled around the bed to the other side. Illya got a good look at him then and saw a plaster cast encasing Napoleon's left leg almost all the way up to the knee.

"When did that happen?" he asked Napoleon.

"The plane crash," Napoleon said as he loosened the cuff on Illya's left hand, "all things considered, I came away pretty lucky."

"The plane crash?" Illya asked. "But you were just fine when we were walking through the-"

Napoleon was looking at him with concern and for half a moment, Illya thought he might put the restraints back on.

Illya gave a sigh, looking up at the ceiling. "Hallucinations you say?"

Napoleon gave a nod.

"You weren't actually with me in the woods at all, were you?"

"No," Napoleon said, almost apologetically as he loosened the cuffs on Illya's ankles.

There was a knock on the door frame of the entrance to the room and a doctor appeared there, consulting a clipboard.

"Ah, finally back with us, Mister Kuryakin," he said as he entered, "trust me when I say, the rest of the staff will be relieved. You were a tough customer."

"So I've been told," Illya said with an apologetic nod, "sorry about all that, Doctor...?"

"Gomez," said the doctor, extending a hand. Illya took it and gave it a shake. "And no need to apologize. That was one of the worst cases of hallucinations I've seen in a while."

"You've no idea," Illya agreed, "so what happened to me?"

"Well obviously, we don't have all the details and we're hoping you could fill in some blanks," said Doctor Gomez, "but there were a couple of factors laying on top of each other. First of all, you had a fever of 103 when you were brought in, we're still not sure what brought that on, though it could have been shock. And you had a couple of knocks on the head, leading to a concussion. How is your head feeling?"

"Like it's been rattled by a two-year-old," Illya admitted.

"Yeah, you might have some migraines for a couple of days," Gomez continued, "but the biggest factor was the substance we found lining your lungs. The lab identified it as some sort of pollen, highly hallucinogenic. Never seen anything like it."

Thinking back, Illya gave a nod. "I fell into a patch of some flower or another," he said, "there was a... a cloud of pollen that went up."

"When was that?" Gomez asked.

"When I first landed," Illya answered.

Gomez made a note on his clipboard with a nod. "So, almost four days ago, now." He gave an impressed whistle. "You Section Two guys don't do anything by halves, do you? Strong stuff. Guess that explains the anaphylactic reaction. Your throat started closing up and we had to intubate for a while."

"Ah, that must be why my throat feels like sandpaper," Illya mused with a nod.

"Yeah, afraid so," Gomez confirmed, "well, we'll want to keep you one more day for observation, then I think we'll be able to release you so you can get back to the New York office. Other than the head trauma, with which your file says you are well acquainted, there don't seem to be any lasting effects."

Illya gave a heavy, mournful sigh. "No way I can talk you out of the stay?"

"Not a chance in hell," said Gomez, "and your Mister Waverly sends a message that you are ordered not to go against medical advice and he doesn't want to see you in the New York office for another day and half."

Napoleon was unable to suppress a chuckle. Ilya shot him a glare and rolled his eyes. Napoleon's chuckle drew Gomez's attention to him.

"And you, Mister Solo, should be off that leg," he said, "I told you to keep it elevated as much as possible."

Looking like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar, Napoleon hobbled back over to the chair he had vacated and sat down, setting the crutches aside. With some effort, he lifted his cast up and set it on the edge of Illya's bed.

"I won't bother trying to get you back to your own room," Gomez allowed with a sigh, "he's barely left here since you came in, Mister Kuryakin."

"Well, that explains the nightmares," Illya said, a small smirk on his face and giving Napoleon a meaningful look.

"Ouch!" Napoleon replied. "What'd I do to deserve that? Wait. No, don't answer that."

Gomez chuckled. "Well, I see you two are going to be a handful for the next day," he said, "I'll get something light ordered for you to eat, Mister Kuryakin. And if you need anything, just press the button for the nurses."

"Yes, thank you," Illya replied.

"Take it easy and rest up," Gomez said as he swept back out of the room.

Once he was gone, Illya gave a heavy sigh and sunk into his pillow a little deeper. "Well, hallucinating since the moment I landed," he said bitterly, coloring a little, "what a sight I must have been, shouting at the trees and shooting at the air."

"Wanna talk about it?" Napoleon asked.

"Not on your life!" said Illya. "Did they ever find out what caused the plane to go down?"

"EMP," Napoleon replied, "turns out there was a THRUSH satrap in the area. They had an EMP field going in order to keep the area secure. Since we were searching, the plane was low enough to run into it. Knocked out every system on board."

"That explains my communicator and my watch, then. So tell me, Napoleon. While I was stuck in my own personal heart of darkness, what were you doing?"

"Well, I kind of went down with the plane," his partner replied, "just after you bailed, something whammed me in the head. Next thing I knew, I was on the ground, broken airplane around me, and a leg broken in three places. I managed to contact Central and they were able to get someone to me. The plane must have managed to glide until it was just outside the EMP field. It was only about six hours before they picked me up."

"Well, that figures," Illya said, sourly, "I should've stayed on the plane. Strapping in, we both might have been out of there with a lot less drama."

"Yeah, I don't think so," said Napoleon, sucking air in through his teeth, "like I said, I was lucky to get out with just the broken leg. And that was only because I was back in the cabin when I got knocked out. The cockpit was completely destroyed. We would have been crushed."

"And the satrap?"

"Our guys stormed the place. Found it by finding the center of the EMP field."

"All nice and tidy then," said Illya, "just one last thing. How did you end up finding me?"

"Oh! Yeah! Turns out all the hiking you did got you outside the EMP field. Your communicator came back online and our boys were able to track it."

Illya gave a sigh. "At least I had one stroke of luck," he said.

"Whatever possessed you to leave your LZ, anyway?" Napoleon asked.

"Concussion and hallucinations, remember?"

"Ah. Yeah, that would do it," said Napoleon. He began to reach for his crutches. "Well, I should probably leave you alone to get some rest."

Something about him saying that gave Illya a chill. He very nearly jumped. "Ah, Napoleon," he began, but found he didn't quite have the words. His partner sat down again, giving him a concerned look. "I think maybe... stay? I've had quite enough of being alone with my own thoughts for a while."

Napoleon gave Illya an half-smile of understanding and settled back into his chair, propping his leg up on the edge of the bed again. "Sure thing, partner," he said, "it wasn't exactly a picnic for me either." A thought seemed to occur to him and he looked back at Illya slyly. "So, you hallucinated me being there, eh?"

"Oh yes, until you were kidnapped by a savage cannibal monster. Er... you do still have your left hand, right?"

Napoleon looked a little disturbed, but held up his left hand and gave his fingers a wave. "Maybe I don't want to hear about it."

"Well, I did say I didn't want to talk about it."

"You always say stuff like that."

"Nonsense, I do not."

A few minutes later, when a nurse came in with a tray of light food, she found the two agents still bantering with no end in sight. Luckily, she knew better than to break them up.


NOTES: And there we are! What was real? What wasn't? We'll never know, will we?

This is shorter than most of my recent pieces. And my first foray into the fandom, too boot. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed. Please leave some feedback!