It did feel strange to be at JFK again, not waiting to meet Napoleon or seeing him off, but standing with his passport in hand in the queue for boarding, and knowing that he was about to exchange frigid New York where snow was falling for the heat of Cairo. He handed his passport to the official and took off his glasses when asked, then slipped them back on again and followed Napoleon's arm through the doors, where the cold air and a flurry of snow hit his face. He tilted his head upwards, feeling those flakes melting on his skin, imagining the sky heavy with grey cloud. Not far away jet engines roared and the air was thick with the scent of fuel and busy with the voices of the other passengers.

Napoleon took him across the tarmac and then said, 'Here's the steps, Illya,' and he reached out a hand to find the rail and used his cane to gauge the height and depth of the treads.

'21A and 21B,' Napoleon said smoothly to a strong scent of perfume and make-up at the top of the steps, then he added, 'Mr Kuryakin is totally blind. Will you make sure the other attendants are aware of that in case of emergency?'

'Oh, of course, sir,' the stewardess said, then she raised her voice and said, 'Mr Kuryakin, please let any of us know if you need anything. We'll be pleased to help.'

'Yes, I will,' Illya said rather awkwardly.

'You can leave the cane with me, and I'll be sure to get it back to you when we land,' she continued.

'Er – ' Napoleon began, and at the same time Illya gripped a little harder at the cane.

'No, thank you,' Illya said very firmly. 'I'll keep it with me.'

'Oh, well, it really would be better to leave it with us,' she urged him. 'It'll be quite safe. It's just it might get in the way of another passenger – '

'No, thank you,' Illya said again. For over a year and a half, since he had first been taught how to use the cane and had learnt suddenly that he need not be trapped by his blindness, he had grown to see it as almost another part of himself. He had grown so proficient with it that he could navigate with relative ease for blocks and blocks around his home, and it was a life-line in unfamiliar areas. He had no intention of letting it go now. 'It will not get in the way of another passenger because I will keep it with me.'

Something in his voice must have convinced her that she would not win this argument, and Illya was glad, because he knew that if she raised a fuss they could compel him to leave the cane with her. He felt deep relief when Napoleon moved on. He heard the woman say behind him, 'Oh, I know, isn't he a doll? Such a shame...'

He leant in towards Napoleon and said, 'It's amazing how many people think the blind are also deaf.'

Napoleon chuckled quietly. 'Squeeze in a little here past the bathroom,' he said, angling Illya in behind him, and he followed Napoleon down the aisle and then into his seat. He raised his hand to trace his fingertips over the cold glass of the window, then asked, 'Wouldn't you rather have the window seat?'

Napoleon put his hand softly on Illya's thigh and he could hear his smile when he spoke.

'Not at all. Now every time I go to look out of the window I see you too.'

Illya smiled and leant his head back against the seat, then he fumbled at the seatbelt and Napoleon's hands came over his and helped him to fix it.

'It's been too long since I flew,' Illya commented.

'And too short since I did,' Napoleon countered lightly.

'If only we could find a middle ground,' Illya said jokingly. He sat there for a moment feeling the hum of the engines coming up through the floor and through the seat and hissing in the air around him, then said, 'It really has been too long. It's hard to believe that Waverly let me go.'

'Waverly's a human being,' Napoleon shrugged beside him. 'He knows how you feel. He said so himself.'

'Well, I suppose he did,' Illya mused.

He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the final few passengers straggling by and then heard one of the stewardesses going through the safety checks and warning people to fasten their seat belts and not to smoke until the no smoking lights went off. Then the turbines roared into real life, and the plane started to rumble as it moved across the tarmac, and Napoleon said, 'We're just hitting the runway now,' just as a sudden acceleration jerked him back into his seat and then he felt the beautiful rush and lurch of the aircraft leaving the ground.

After a while the air started to grow stale with cigarette smoke and there was a scent of spirits and Napoleon asked him if he wanted a drink, and he grunted a refusal. He realised he was still wearing his seat belt, and he fiddled with the buckle and got it open, and stretched his legs out a little. He touched the back of the seat in front, feeling the fold-down table and the little pouch below that held a magazine and what was probably a sick bag.

'Who's around us?' he asked, because every time he flew, even on that last flight when he had been so distracted by pain and grief, he needed to know the likely threats.

'No one,' Napoleon said, and Illya knew what he meant. No threats. 'A family and their kids off to the left of us. A balding guy in a trenchcoat and a businessman, I think, in front of us. I think the guy behind is a salesman, and the seat next to him is empty. I did the scan and Laura checked the passenger list this morning. We should be fine.'

Illya grunted and shut his eyes again, then took off the sunglasses he wore and pushed them into the inside pocket of his jacket. It wasn't too bright in here, and they would be uncomfortable if he fell asleep. He felt by habit to his right for his cane, and it was just where he had left it, leaning against the seat to the right of his knee, sticking up in front of the window.

He imagined thick banks of cloud outside the window, and remembered that last flight as the plane droned on, steadily climbing. He remembered sitting on the plane back from Stockholm after a few days in hospital there, sitting in a seat just like this one, with a bottle of pills in his breast pocket to counter the pain that still burned in his eyes, thick bandages around his head, and Napoleon next to him, almost vibrating with his concern for his injured partner. He had tried to sleep and found himself unable to sleep, and he had tried talking to Napoleon, tried acting as if this were just a normal flight, but he couldn't. It just didn't work. He had tried to say something about the weather and Napoleon had told him it was brilliant sunshine outside, and he had tried to reply, but his voice broke and he had to bite his lip into his mouth and was grateful that the bandages covered his eyes and that tears were not remarkable at the moment because his eyes watered so much from the pain.

Napoleon had just been a ball of guilt in those early days. Illya had transferred to U.N.C.L.E. medical and they had looked at his eyes and reiterated what had been said in Stockholm; that if the eyes had been irrigated early enough then he would have been all right. The delay had blinded him. And he thought of how he had crouched there in the corner in that lab, sheltering under a table, while bullets flew through the air and his eyes hurt so much that a bullet would have been a relief, and he had shouted to Napoleon, 'Leave me. Go on.'

And Napoleon had, and he blamed himself, would continue to blame himself, blamed himself still. His guilt was easier now, but it was still there. In the darkest times it came out and it was Illya's turn to comfort Napoleon, because really there had been nothing he could do. They were agents, and their first duty was to the mission. Because Napoleon had left him he had secured the entire building and most of its complement of Thrushies, and an entire cell had been brought down. Agents often had to pay the price for these victories, and this time the price had been Illya's eyes. But Napoleon blamed himself for leaving him, blamed himself for not being with him in those first hours at the hospital, blamed himself for having to leave him again in the infirmary to type up reports and debrief with Waverly and do all those necessary things.

But, oh, they had been hard days. Illya hadn't known what to do, where to turn. Napoleon had brought him home to his apartment and Illya had stood in the middle of the chaos of Napoleon's attempt to blend their combined possessions, and he had fallen to his knees and sobbed right there on the carpet, boxes around him and the door still open and a bewildered man from the moving company asking tentatively what he could do to help. Napoleon had just ushered the man outside and shut and locked the door, and knelt facing Illya and held him until the tears turned to exhaustion, and then Napoleon led him through the chaos into the room that had been his study and helped Illya down into the familiar smell of his own bed, and he had sat with him until he fell asleep.

When Illya had woken some hours later he heard voices in the apartment, the moving men back again, and Napoleon directing them, and he had huddled under the blanket with his arms around his head and waited until all was quiet. Then Napoleon had come in and led him out and so gently and carefully guided him around the entire place, telling him where everything was, the books he couldn't read, the records he couldn't tell one from the other, the clothes that all felt the same, the kitchen equipment he couldn't use and the television he couldn't watch and the open fire that he couldn't light but must always be careful of when Napoleon had it lit. And he had thought that his life was over. He had thought of walking out onto Napoleon's balcony with its glorious view of the East River and just tipping himself over the edge. Those days had been black and awful and filled with anger and fear and frustration and grief, and Napoleon had gently and patiently coaxed him through, until he was ready to face the fact that this would be his future, ready to enrol in the rehabilitation school for the blind across town and to consider that perhaps he could actually still make something of his life, once he had learnt to adapt.

And now he had adapted. Now here he was sitting on a plane again, flying back towards the European continent on a Boeing headed for Paris, where they would make their connection to Cairo. It all felt so odd. Twenty-three months felt so long, but so short as well. He was so changed. He had never imagined in the early days that he could be sitting here with a cane at his side, able to read and write Braille, to cook his own meals, to walk around his neighbourhood alone and buy his own groceries and go into work every day at the U.N.C.L.E. as if this were normality, almost as if he had always been blind. Almost…

He missed it all so much. He felt a ridiculously strong grief rising in him, and he turned his face to the window. They must have climbed above the winter clouds now and the brightness out there was almost painful. He closed his eyes and clenched his hands, and then Napoleon said, 'Hey, Illya. Are you okay?'

He very deliberately relaxed his hands again, and smiled.

'I'm okay,' he said. 'Just – thinking.'

Napoleon's hand came to rest over his, curling around it, and one finger gently stroked his palm, underneath where no one could see.

'I know it's still hard,' Napoleon said. 'I know.'

Illya smiled tightly. 'It's hard,' he acknowledged, 'but look at me. I'm out of the office on a mission. That's got to be good, hasn't it?'

'It has,' Napoleon said. Then he said, 'Illya, it's pretty quiet now. Do you want me to show you the bathroom in case – '

And Illya took that lifeline. 'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, please, Napoleon. Show me the bathroom.'

So he slid out of his seat after Napoleon and put a hand lightly on his arm from behind to follow him down the narrow aisle, and when they both rather awkwardly squeezed past the stewardess coming the other way Illya tilted his head down and smiled as Napoleon said, 'I'm just showing Mr Kuryakin the facilities, if you don't mind. While they're clean, you know.'

'Oh, they're always clean,' the stewardess began, but Illya knew that was not true, and although Napoleon had an ulterior motive he did far prefer to look around the bathroom before anyone else had used it, when a hand in the wrong place didn't mean touching someone's discarded tissue or a suspicious patch of wet.

Napoleon took him into the small bathroom and locked the door and said very quickly, 'You know exactly what this one's like, Illya. Boeing 707, standard design. They haven't changed.'

'Then the basin's here,' Illya said, reaching out a hand and touching the curved edge. 'And the towel dispenser here, the toilet here,' and he knocked it with his cane, 'the flush here, the paper here, and the trash – Oh, I don't remember where that is...'

'Just here,' Napoleon said, guiding his hand to the opening.

'Thank you, Napoleon,' Illya said, but Napoleon said, 'Oh, Illya,' and pressed his arms around him and held him so tightly he found it hard to breathe.

'Now, don't, don't, Napoleon,' Illya said gently. 'Don't. Don't make me think about it.'

'Don't you always think about it?' Napoleon asked, and Illya rested his head on his shoulder and said, 'Yes, I do. I do. But I make myself move on. I have to.'

'Illya,' Napoleon said, and he stepped back a little in the small space and put a hand under Illya's chin to lift it and then slipped that hand behind his head. Then he kissed him hot and hard and with so much passion that Illya's heart began to race.

'It will look just as bad if I come out of here hard as it will if I come out of here crying,' Illya warned him, and Napoleon brushed his fingers swiftly and lightly over the bulge in his trousers and then brought his hands back to Illya's face and brushed his fringe from his forehead and kissed it, and then his nose, and then his lips again.

'All right,' Napoleon said, giving him one last light kiss and then stepping back. 'All right, Illya. I just needed to know that you were okay.'

'I'm okay,' Illya smiled, stroking his fingertips down Napoleon's cheek, feeling the slight roughness of the beginnings of stubble and the bump of the mole on his jawline. He traced his fingers round and stroked across Napoleon's beautiful lips, touched his nose, smoothed his eyebrows and then trailed his fingers through his hair. 'I'm okay,' he said again. 'I am now. Let's go back to our seats and have a drink.'

((O))

The plane landed in Paris and the air was colder than New York as they crossed the tarmac to the terminal building, because it was three a.m. local time, but there was no snow. The air was crisp in Illya's lungs, a wonderful fresh relief after the stale smoke filled air of the aircraft cabin. He was tired and hungry and he stumbled after Napoleon with his eyes closed, not even trying to be graceful in his blindness. He just sat next to him in the cab and then followed him into the little hotel that Laura Wentworth had booked and sank into the cool, clean bed leaving his clothes dumped on the floor. And Napoleon kissed him and pottered around the room tidying up after him, then asked, 'You sure you don't want me to show you the bathroom?'

Illya murmured, 'No, too sleepy. Come to bed,' and held out an arm, so Napoleon got in next to him, naked and feeling bone tired in the way his body just slumped down against Illya's side. Illya cast an arm over Napoleon's hip and snuggled his face into his neck, and then he was asleep.

In the morning, or some kind of morning because Illya's body could hardly tell what time it was and it was light although his mind told him it should be dark, they both roused at the sound of Napoleon's little folding travel alarm clock, and Illya sat blinking stupidly, ridiculously hard with morning glory, and said, 'Now I want you to show me the bathroom, dear. Can you?'

Napoleon chuckled and said, 'It's shared, down the hall. Are you sure you don't want me to do something about your little problem first?'

So Illya stretched and put his arms behind his head and let Napoleon take care of him with his hot mouth, and it felt so good. Napoleon was so talented at that particular art. And then they went to the bathroom and washed and shaved and Napoleon took Illya down into a clattering dining room where they tore into fresh croissants and brioche and drank coffee, and Napoleon checked over their travel documents and their Egyptian money. Illya tried to learn the feel of the coins and worried that Sarah had packed all his equipment correctly and that he had remembered his spare cane, the folding one, and his spare tips as well, and he touched his ankle against Napoleon's under the table and felt so glad that he was there.

((O))

They were on a plane again by nine, this time heading south and east across a slice of Europe and then the Mediterranean, and Illya felt it strangely in his blood how close they were to the Ukraine, close compared to New York. He wondered what it would be like to turn up there now, unsighted. Would everything seem different, or would it be all the same? If he met his university friends or his navy colleagues what would they make of him? He wondered if there would be pity, or just open arms and slivovitz into the night, until they were all as blind with drink as he was blind to start with.

'Where are you, Illya?' Napoleon asked, tapping him on the thigh.

'Huh?'

'I've said your name three times. I started to wonder if you were asleep behind those glasses, but you were smiling.'

'Oh.' Illya shook his head and took the glasses off and turned to Napoleon. He couldn't see him but he could feel how close he was, his head only a space away on the other seat. He could smell his aftershave and when Napoleon spoke he caught little puffs of warm breath. He recalled that sublime feeling earlier when Napoleon's mouth had been so hot over him and he had come so beautifully into Napoleon's throat. He still felt good from that.

'Just reminiscing,' he said with a small shrug. 'Sorry. What were you saying?'

'Nothing, really,' Napoleon said, putting a hand on his thigh. 'Just conversation. What were you reminiscing about?'

Illya smiled. 'I was remembering Boris Andreikiv and the slivovitz he used to make that was so strong it would just as likely kill you as cure you,' he said. 'Have you ever had a night, Napoleon, when you've woken up with absolutely no memory of a thing that happened, but you knew that it was perfect? That you were so happy?'

Napoleon laughed. 'Maybe,' he said, 'but somehow I think your people do unrepressed joy rather better than mine. You let yourself feel everything right down to your toes instead of listening to that little puritanical granny on your shoulder telling you you'll go to hell.'

'Ah, perhaps that is it,' Illya grinned.

He wished he could take Napoleon home and share all those things with him. It was almost impossible now. He found in general that blindness laid a little film down between himself and everyone else, and all their reactions were altered until they had grown to understand that really he was still just a man like the rest of them. He wondered how it would be if he took Napoleon home to meet his mother, who hadn't seen him since he had become blind and cried when she spoke to him on the phone and tried to hide her crying from him.

'What's out there?' he asked, nodding towards the window.

Napoleon leant closer to him and was quiet for a moment, then he said, 'We're passing along some coastline or other, along the Mediterranean, I guess. It's clear, so the water's pretty blue. Very small waves coming in to the shore. There's a boat down there, a fishing boat, I think, and – oh, Illya, I think I can see the shoal under the water, like a shadow under there. Wow...'

And he trailed off and left Illya imagining what he could see with a degree of wistfulness and a degree of pleasure.

'I'll always tell you what I can see, if you want to know,' Napoleon had said on that first morning in their now-shared apartment, over breakfast. 'Whatever I'm doing, just ask me and I'll tell you what I can see.'

And Illya had tried hard to hold in the need to weep, because that was all he seemed to be doing at the moment. Because what he really needed was to be able to see the plate in front of him with its load of bacon and eggs and toast, because he had tried to work it out with his fork and had ended up having to touch his fingers into the mess of food just to know where everything was. He lifted a forkful of egg to his mouth but his throat was so thick that he couldn't swallow, and then he just swept the plate aside and heard it clatter and smash on the floor, and he was crying again, for god's sake, and Napoleon was holding him again as he wept and raged and wailed out so much formless anger and despair, his words barely making any sense. There had been so much anger in those first weeks, and Napoleon had been so patient and so good. When that particular storm was over Napoleon had cooked him another plate of food and said, 'Listen, Illya, let's try something they suggested in the infirmary. Imagine your plate is a clock face. Now, your toast is at twelve, you have two eggs at four, and your bacon is at eight.'

And Illya turned his head away for a moment, revolted at such childish strategies, but then he had turned back and picked up his cutlery, and found that it worked, it helped. It didn't help him balance food on his fork or be better at cutting up what he couldn't see, but it was a small thing that helped in a small way.

'Perhaps it's Greece,' Illya said, thinking of the coastline that Napoleon could see, wondering if it were ragged and broken into islands, wondering if the water around them looked like sliced and polished agate with the changes in depth.

'I think more likely Italy,' Napoleon said. 'I think we're flying down the length, keeping to the coast mainly. We've not been in the air long enough for Greece.'

'Ah,' Illya said, and the image in his mind immediately shifted. 'Italy. Yes, that makes sense.'

And then suddenly the reality of all of this buzzed through him, reaching down into his fingers and toes. He was really doing this. He was sitting on an aeroplane heading out to Cairo with Napoleon, with a suitcase full of equipment in the hold and the trust of Waverly that he could do this job. He wouldn't be sitting in the office running his fingers over second hand reports and compiling them into something to be fossilised in the files. He would be there, listening, transcribing these things as they actually occurred, and if Napoleon were out there in some anonymous Egyptian building with his gun and his eyes on the target, Illya would be whispering the intel to him just as he needed it, just a few miles away. The thrill itched through him, and he grinned, and Napoleon's hand squeezed on his, and instead of thinking about what he couldn't see he thought about the fact that he was flying, sailing thousands of feet above the ground in thin air with the heat of the sun pressing into his cheek through the window, with Napoleon at his side and the prospect of real agent's work in the very near future.

((O))

'What do you see?' Illya asked as the car rolled along the Cairo streets.

He could feel the trundle of the wheels over a rather uneven surface and smell dust in the air, and on occasion the sound of oncoming cars or sudden overtakers was rather alarming. But it was a good car, an E-type with the top down, leather seats underneath him and an engine sound that made him itch to take the wheel. He had tried that once, in Napoleon's car in an utterly deserted parking lot, and it had been a weird, incredible thrill to power up to speed and hear Napoleon shouting in terror beside him, calling him a mad, crazy, insane Russian and turning the wheel for him as they reached the limits of their space.

'Not much,' Napoleon said rather distractedly as he took a turning. 'Damn, no, that's the wrong way. I should have taken the third right.'

And he stopped and Illya touched a hand to the dashboard as Napoleon swung the car around in a three point turn.

'There must be something to see,' Illya objected. 'You can see a lot more than I can.'

'What do you want me to tell you about, Illya?' Napoleon asked, suddenly sounding repentant. 'There really isn't much to see, and if you could see you'd be looking at a map, because I think I'm lost.'

Illya ignored that minor problem. 'I want you to tell me how you can see the sun setting behind the pyramids or behind the Sphinx,' he said with half a smile, 'or how there's a row of camels just setting out across the desert, silhouetted on the dunes.'

Napoleon laughed. 'Well, I can't see the pyramids or the Sphinx from here, and I see no camels, and the desert is flat, but we left it behind a few minutes ago. The sun's not setting, either. But I can tell you about an ugly rash of apartment buildings that have sprung up since you were last here, and how there's a woman walking down the other side of the street with such an enormous bundle of dates on her head that I can't see her from the shoulders up, and how the sun catches beautifully on the tin roofs of the slums.'

Illya laughed. 'Well, you can't have it all,' he said.

He could, at least, smell the rich exotic scents in the warm air, the smells of dung and cooking and dust and exhaust fumes. He could hear the deep tapestry of sounds from the city, car engines and horns and a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer, a donkey braying and a woman shouting and children playing. He could smell tobacco smoke in the air mingling with the exhaust, and as they rolled slowly past the clatter of a café he caught a sudden strong scent of mint tea. He imagined men sitting outside with faces like sheets of old bark and hookah pipes in their hands, and he didn't ask Napoleon if the men were really there, because he didn't need his image to be dispelled.