They drove for forty hours straight, Willy and Barney taking turns to relieve Rollin at the wheel in shifts. Napoleon wasn't asked to drive, and he was glad. He didn't want to leave Illya, even for a moment. The Russian slept for a good part of the journey, waking only once to down water and rations, but there wasn't much food left from their time in the woods, and Napoleon was glad Illya slept so much.

He watched him lying there, huddled on a pile of cardboard and clothes, sleeping as if he were on a feather bed. And then sometimes he reached out to touch him, stroking his fingertips down his hollow cheek, brushing a hand over his forehead. Sometimes he looked up and caught Permyakov's look of malice, but he didn't stop stroking Illya. At times Illya stirred and muttered in Russian, but never woke entirely. He seemed utterly exhausted.

Napoleon lifted Illya's arm once and looked at his wrist, so thin the bones stuck up under the skin, a ring of bruises fading just below the heel of his hand as if someone had restrained him, hard. He wanted to see more of him but Illya was curled in his clean clothes, so he made do with face and wrists and hands, and that fuzzed expanse of shaven head. He had seen as Illya changed that his whole body had been shaven, and his mind dwelt on the knowledge of how utterly dehumanised he must have felt.

When they reached the house that Jim had rented he had made to carry Illya in, but the Russian came awake in his arms and struggled, so Napoleon put him down and held his arm as he walked into the shabby place. Illya stood staring around in the light as if taking in the place piece by piece, then asked in Russian, 'Where can I go?'

That much Russian Napoleon could understand, but he didn't think he knew exactly what Illya meant. He recalled the plans of the house Jim had shown them so long ago – he had plans for everything – and said, 'Uh, the bathroom's upstairs on the left. There are three bedrooms up there, if I recall correctly. I thought we'd take the first on the left, just after the bathroom.'

Illya moved to the stairs and started to climb. Napoleon watched him go, walking like an automaton, not trying to stop the shaking of his hands. He looked between the assembled group, then fixed on Rollin.

'All right, give,' he said. 'I've never seen Illya like that in his life, and he's been through some bad times, I'll tell you. Now, I was cut off from everything in that tent, but you were on the ground the whole time. So give.'

Permyakov shuffled in his chair, and Napoleon shot a glare at him. Cinnamon would be taking him out in the morning, pretending to be his wife. They would step on an aeroplane and just leave, just like that. It was almost unbelievable how easy it was. Napoleon was glad he was going. He despised the man.

Then Rollin cleared his throat. He glanced at the others, then took Napoleon by the elbow and led him into the tiny parlour. He shut the door and said, 'Napoleon, in the camp Illya was raped, violently and frequently.'

A blanching cold dropped down over him. He knew his mouth was working but no sound was coming out. And then he said, 'Wha-what?'

Rollin held up his hands in a placating gesture. 'Jim and I thought it best to keep it between ourselves. To keep it from you. We were afraid you would have done something – '

Suddenly the ice turned to blazing rage. 'You bet your life I would have done something! I wouldn't have left him in there to – to – '

'Napoleon.' Rollin caught him by both arms, and he realised suddenly how deceptively strong the man was. He stared into Rollin's grey-green eyes as he spoke. 'Illya understood the risks – all of them. If you'd gone in there you would have endangered everything. If we'd pulled him out before he could get to Permyakov, the whole mission would have been for nothing. Illya knew what was likely to happen. He knew more about the camps than any of us. He made that decision. He never asked for extraction.'

Napoleon didn't know what to say. Rollin was right. But, but… He knew, he thought. He tried to tell me, in as many words, without ever saying those words. And I let him go. Oh god, oh god...

Rollin suddenly had him in a vice like hug, and Napoleon realised how close he was to crying. Illya, Illya... Anger and grief clashed inside him. Then he knew where he needed to be.

'I have to go to Illya,' he said.

Rollin let him go without a word. At the door, Napoleon turned back and said, 'Thank you.'

He took the stairs two at a time. He cracked open the door of the first bedroom and looked inside. The light was on, but he couldn't see Illya. Then he realised he could hear water running, and a strange sound above it, and he darted out of the bedroom and into the adjacent bathroom. Illya was naked in the shower stall, hunched with his knees up and his arms locked around himself, the shower head raining water down over him. He was rocking and keening and scratching his arms so hard that blood ran from his skin as the water poured over his shaven head and down his back and swirled to the drain beneath him.

'Oh my god, Illya,' he whispered. He looked around for a towel, but there was nothing in here, not even soap. He ran into the bedroom and grabbed the bedspread, then back into the bathroom to turn off the water and wrap Illya like a child in the thick cloth. He carried him out of the cold room and back into their bedroom, where he placed him gently on the bed and wrapped his arms around him and held him as the sound wailed out of him.

'I know what happened,' Napoleon whispered. 'I know what happened...'

He tucked the bedspread more tightly around Illya's shoulders and rocked him gently, stroking his hands over his back, whispering with the little Russian he knew, 'It's all right. It's all right.'

Words began to make their way through the wailing, but Napoleon couldn't understand them, distorted as they were by tears and in a language he didn't know nearly well enough.

'I can't understand you, honey,' he said, rocking Illya softly. 'Can you try English? I want to be able to understand you.'

The words came again. Illya's face was buried against him, but then he started to grasp bits of English. '...so sorry, Napoleon. So sorry. Can't – I can't seem to – They hurt me... So long... Can't find the white room. I want the white room...'

'Illya – ' he began, then stopped. He seemed to keep saying he didn't understand and he didn't want to do it again. And then suddenly he remembered. Illya had told him about it before. It was a technique for lasting through torture. Illya had constructed himself a room, a white room that no one could get into. If he needed to, he took himself there.

'But they're gone now, honey,' Napoleon pleaded with him. 'You don't need the white room. That's why you can't find it. You're safe now. It's your mind's way of telling you you're safe now.'

Illya rocked of his own accord, and then Napoleon realised that he was still tearing at himself under the bedspread.

'No, Illya,' he said. 'No, no, don't do that.'

He unwrapped it and took Illya's wrists firmly in his hands – and Illya bolted backwards across the bed, pleading, breathing hard, and Napoleon suddenly remembered the rings of bruising around his wrists and realised what they meant.

'No! Illya, I wasn't – ' he began.

He stood up, possessed with the powerful urge to put his fist through something. He held himself for a moment, controlling that urge, and then he came back to Illya, who was free of the bedspread now and pressed back against the headboard. He saw the long lacerations down his arms and on his thighs and across his hollow belly. He had tried to scrape himself raw.

He went to the door of the bedroom and called down, 'Cinnamon!'

She came at a run, and took one look at Illya through the doorway before turning away, calling over her shoulder, 'I'll get the medical kit.'

Napoleon went back to Illya, who was holding himself and rocking again. He sat next to him at the head of the bed, talking to him very gently. He hardly knew what he was saying. He tried to explain what Cinnamon would need to do, and Illya just stared at him through blue eyes, lost and confused.

'Illya, you don't need to go to the white room now,' he told him gently. 'You're safe now. No one's going to hurt you now.'

He looked up to see Cinnamon was back, with another syringe full of that almost colourless liquid.

'Give it to me,' he said, horribly conscious that just as he had told Illya he wouldn't be hurt, he was about to drive a needle into his skin. Cinnamon handed him the syringe, and he turned to Illya again. 'Honey, I'm going to give you an injection. It'll help, I promise.'

Illya nodded, his eyes tracking the movement of the syringe down to his arm. He didn't flinch when the point entered his skin, but he looked bemused when his eyes fell on the red streaks that he had carved into himself.

'All right,' Napoleon said as some of the tension slipped from the Russian's body. 'Okay, just lie back there.' He settled Illya's head on the pillows, brushing some of the shower water from his eyebrows. 'That's it. Cinnamon, what have you got in that kit for these cuts?'

She opened it and perused the contents. 'He'll want a topical antiseptic. His fingernails aren't clean.'

Illya looked between the pair of them. 'Covered,' he murmured. 'Covered in lice...'

'No, those clothes have gone,' Napoleon assured him, 'and I can't see anything on your body.'

He must have been shaved recently, because there was almost nowhere for the lice to cling. Napoleon could hardly bare to look at his emaciated, bare body, but he forced himself to, taking a smear of the antiseptic cream from Cinnamon and gently applying it to all the scratches on one side of Illya's body, while she took the other side. Illya moved a hand vaguely, fingers bent as if to scratch again, and Napoleon caught his arm and laid it back on the bed.

'Now, Illya, I want you to try not to do that, okay?' he said gently. 'Don't scratch yourself again.'

'No,' he said. He looked very sleepy.

'Not an unusual reaction,' Cinnamon commented, 'to try to tear the skin off like that. Washing isn't enough.'

Napoleon looked at her, startled. Even though he knew that she was just as much an agent as he, it still shocked him that she knew so much of the vicious side of the job, and could speak so prosaically about it. He hoped she wasn't speaking from personal experience.

He looked back at Illya and saw that his eyelids were drifting down, his breathing becoming soft and easy despite the pain that he and Cinnamon must be causing by applying the cream.

'Here,' Cinnamon said, handing him a roll of thin bandages.

Napoleon began to wrap the arm on his side, and finished off with a safety pin. Then he lifted Illya's thigh up to start wrapping the cuts there, hoping that the bandages would stop him from doing it again. Illya half-murmured something, sounding scared, his eyelids coming open. Napoleon froze, suddenly terribly afraid of how this manhandling of his body must feel to Illya after what he had been through. He glanced at Cinnamon.

'Do you have anything stronger in there that he can have alongside what you just gave him? Something to send him properly to sleep?'

She rifled through the case again, then drew out an ampoule and a fresh syringe

'This,' she said. 'Five ccs. What are you intending?'

'I want to examine him a bit better,' Napoleon said, filling the syringe. He quickly swabbed Illya's arm between two bits of bandage and pressed the needle in. 'And I don't want to give him flashbacks.'

'Do you want me to leave?'

He looked up at her, and she gazed back at him with a small smile on her face. He trusted her.

'No,' he said. 'I want you to help.'

They finished bandaging him, then examined his head, under his arms, and between his legs for any sign of lice, and swabbed him with a topical insecticide just in case. Then Napoleon rolled Illya carefully onto his side and hitched his leg up as if putting him in the recovery position. He didn't want to look there, but he had to, and he was shocked at the sore, cracked, filthy state of the orifice he had only ever known as clean and sweet.

He pressed a hand over his mouth at the sight, taking a step back and suppressing a moan. He turned to the wall and pressed his forehead hard against the cold plaster, working to suppress the shuddering cries that wanted to come. How much pain must Illya have been in each time he was raped? How could he have endured it?

'Napoleon, I can do this,' Cinnamon offered.

He turned around again, blinking hard.

'We should – shouldn't we get a doctor?' he faltered, even though he knew that was impossible.

She shook her head economically. 'Napoleon, I can do it,' she said again.

'No,' he said. 'No, I'll do it. Just – soak a couple of washcloths in warm water, can you? Actually, bring a bowl of water. I'll get him clean and then we can at least sterilise the outside. He'll be more comfortable then, when he wakes up.'

He sat there while she was out of the room, eyes closed, trying to remember the Illya he had known with the silken corn-coloured hair, the lithe, muscled limbs, the soft belly and strong chest. It was like having a changeling on the bed before him. He just wanted Illya back.

And then Cinnamon was there, and he pushed aside his thoughts and applied himself to cleaning away the residue of last night's rapes, perhaps of many nights' rapes. Illya had obviously been unable to touch the area in the shower or clean himself there at all. But now Napoleon eased the crusted dirt away and swabbed antiseptic over the area, and then applied a soothing cream. Then he rolled Illya onto his back and folded the bedspread over him.

'We were going to have something to eat,' Cinnamon offered. 'Why don't you let him sleep, and join us?'

Napoleon felt sickened at the thought of leaving Illya to go and indulge in something as frivolous as food. He shook his head.

'No,' he said. 'No, I'll have something when he does.'

'He'll be asleep for a while,' she warned him.

'I know,' Napoleon nodded. 'But I'll wait.'

Cinnamon nodded. She packed up the medical kit and left the room. As soon as the door was closed Napoleon stripped down to vest and underpants and slipped under the bedspread, catching Illya into his arms and just holding him while he slept.

((O))

Illya woke with arms around him and legs around him, and he was warm, warmer than he had been in months. The surface beneath him was very soft, the covering above him was soft. Even the air he breathed into his mouth was warm. He lay very still, cautious, trying to read the situation. He was naked, but there was constriction around his arms and legs. What was that? He couldn't understand. He felt so sore...

He moved a little and breathed in, and then he smelt – Oh god – He could smell Napoleon. That was Napoleon around him, holding him. He moved again and his face touched Napoleon's skin. He inhaled until he felt dizzy. He sobbed and clutched at what he felt, and then Napoleon's arms tightened and he said as if in sleep, 'Shush, honey. It's all right. Shush, shush...'

Illya pulled back a little way, and swallowed those ridiculous, easy sobs back into his throat.

'Since when have you called me honey?' he asked.

Napoleon came awake in an instant, sitting bolt upright and staring at Illya. There was morning light in the room, the blue of light reflected from snow, and it shone over Napoleon's face and gleamed on his dark hair. Illya swallowed hard, because the tears were so close.

Napoleon leaned forward as if to kiss him, but he didn't. He just said, 'Well, you're sweet, and golden, and – ' The stock flirtatious look dropped from his face all of a sudden, and he just said tiredly, 'Since I lost you and got you back again.'

'Oh, Napoleon...'

Illya fell into his arms again and didn't try to stop the tears that were seeping into Napoleon's vest. Napoleon held him and stroked him, and he realised that his arms and legs were bandaged, and there was sore, stiff pain. He remembered it then; sitting in the shower, trying to remove his filthy skin. Something lurched inside him. He felt as if he were falling, spinning, but Napoleon held him more tightly.

'Hey,' Napoleon said after a while. 'Do you want to come downstairs and have a decent meal?'

Illya passed a hand over his own chest, then felt the soft gauze taped on his stomach too. He felt ashamed, ashamed at what he had done to himself, ashamed for what he had let happen in the barracks every night. But – he felt cleaner there, too. There was pain, but not of the same stinging and itching intensity around the outside as it had been.

'Illya?' Napoleon nudged him. 'Or would you rather I brought something up here?'

He breathed in hard, looking around the room. It was an ordinary room, an ordinary Russian room. He had stayed somewhere like this during his last year of his degree. It was resoundingly familiar, wrong, unheimlich. He thought he had left this life behind years ago.

'When do we leave?' he asked, almost desperately.

'Uh – tomorrow, I think, if the tickets work out. Jim should be joining us today. He had to stay back long enough to slip Lagoshin's details back in place of yours in the camp. Then we drive down to Moscow tomorrow and get the plane. Cinnamon and Permyakov have probably already gone. They were going today. And we'll get a separate flight to the others, just in case.'

He felt scared then. 'Napoleon, are you sure they'll let us out?'

Napoleon nodded smoothly. 'I've looked over our documents. They're perfect. There won't be a problem. It'll be all right, honey,' he promised.

Illya gave him a look at that endearment, and Napoleon laughed aloud. He seemed enormously relieved at something.

'Dear, dear, Illya, I have waited so long to see that look on your face that I'm never going to stop calling you that now. Honey.'

Illya just looked at him for a long moment, but then he disentangled himself and swung his legs out of bed. Then he looked down at himself, at his shaven, starved body, and he felt that falling sensation again, the feeling of the bell jar dropping, the void coming down over him. He was very far from everything, he was so small he dwindled to nothing, so large he swelled to fill the universe.

Napoleon caught him as he tumbled, and he snapped back into a world of colour and substance.

'Hey, are you all right?' he was asking solicitously.

Illya pressed his hands hard onto the edge of the bed, and nodded. The carpet seemed very far away. His legs didn't seem to belong to him.

'Where are my clothes?' he asked.

'Oh, let me get them.' Napoleon went to a small suitcase and opened it up, pulling out various underclothes and a brown suit that wasn't exactly Illya's normal style, but would suit the persona in his travel documents. He brought them to Illya and started to dress him, easing each item on carefully over the sore, bandaged limbs and stomach. Illya sat and watched as if from outside himself, watched himself being dressed like a doll.

'Hey,' Napoleon said, and Illya jerked his head to look at him. 'I said, do you want to come downstairs now?'

'Yeah,' Illya said.

He walked downstairs holding on to Napoleon's arm, feeling as though the treads of the stairs were very far away, as if he were twenty feet tall and staring down from afar. Or maybe he wasn't in his body at all. Maybe he was looking down from a great height, just hovering, disembodied.

When men spoke as he walked into the room he stared at them in bewilderment. Someone clapped him on the arm, and he winced, focussing on Rollin. He looked up into his face and then down at his clothes. He was wearing a normal suit, not a guard's uniform. He had always known Rollin was not one of them. But then he'd tried to – He frowned. Hadn't he raised his gun to Rollin yesterday? Was it yesterday?

'I'm – sorry,' he said.

Rollin smiled, and American English came from his mouth, not Russian, when he said, 'That's all right. Just don't try it again.'

Rollin made as if to hug him, and Illya stepped back precipitately. Rollin didn't seem to mind. Napoleon went after him and took his arm.

'Come on, Illya. Sit down. Have some breakfast.'

He stared across at the table. Jim was there with his shirt sleeves rolled up and tieless collar unbuttoned, just about to start eating. Barney and Willy were already tucking in to something that smelt so good. He moved over to the table almost without realising it, and reached out his hand towards a thick slice of ham on Jim's plate. Jim's cutlery hovered. He had been about to cut into the ham. Illya caught himself, realising what he had just done. But then Jim smiled and pushed the plate in front of an empty chair.

'You have it. I'll go cook some more,' he said.

That kindness brought tears to Illya's eyes. Suddenly he remembered how Rollin had slipped him bread when he could, and the tears were coming thick and fast now. He held his eyes wide, trying not to blink so they would not spill. He sat and stared at the vast plate of ham and eggs and dark bread, and couldn't believe it was there. He thought of Ivan, who would have eaten his meagre bowl of stew and bread hours ago now, and would be working in the forest already. Then he blinked, and rubbed his eyes furiously on his sleeve.

'Hey, Illya.'

Napoleon's hand was on his back, gently patting, and he looked up through blurred eyes.

'Come on,' Napoleon said, reaching around him to cut off a morsel of the meat. He pushed it onto the tines of a fork, then came around to crouch by Illya, and lifted the ham to his mouth. 'There you go. Open up.'

He took in the sweet, salty, melting piece of meat, and saliva gushed into his mouth so strongly it almost passed his lips. Suddenly he remembered what it was to eat, and he grabbed at another piece of ham with trembling fingers and pushed it into his mouth. He cut off another piece with the tip of his knife, swirled it into the yolk of the eggs, and pushed that in. Oh, god… He was dizzy with the delight of it. He crammed in bread too, yellow and dripping with yolk. Napoleon slid a mug of coffee towards him and poured cream into it before Illya could start drinking. He watched the pale and dark brown swirl together, then lifted it to his mouth and let the smooth taste of fat spread over his tongue.

He stopped before the plate was half empty, staring in dismay at the food that was left. He couldn't manage it. He just couldn't manage it. His stomach hurt.

'Hey, you okay?' Napoleon asked, and he realised his lover was still crouching next to him, watching him eat.

'I'm full,' he said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

Napoleon's eyebrows rose, but Jim said laconically, 'His stomach's shrunk. Never mind, Illya,' he said with a smile. 'There's more where that came from. You can have some later.'

Illya nodded. He saw Napoleon eyeing his plate and realised that he hadn't eaten himself yet. He pushed the plate towards him.

'You have it,' he said, and was suddenly reminded of Ivan so painfully that tears started again.

'Are – are you sure?' Napoleon asked, catching his expression.

'Eat it, please,' Illya said.

He pushed the chair back from the table and stumbled over to the couch at the side of the room. He threw himself there lengthwise, and closed his eyes. The world was rocking again, his body was performing its odd contortions where he didn't know whether he were massive or infinitely small. Suddenly he could feel it again, his back against the hard barracks floor, hands on his thighs, someone splitting him open. The world was rocking, rocking, his mind became white. And then he opened his eyes and saw Napoleon eating, Barney passing over the salt, Willy lifting his cup. No one had noticed that for a moment he had been somewhere else entirely.

The sobs threatened to come and he held them in furiously, staring at the ceiling. Napoleon needed to eat and he needed to let him eat. The couch was rocking beneath him like a child's see-saw, and he clung on with whitened knuckles, trying to stop himself from spinning away.

And then there he was, back again. He looked along the length of his body, saw his chest in its white shirt, the brown tweedy trousers, his feet at the end in thick cream socks. All of that was his body. All of it his. He didn't understand why he kept hovering above himself and feeling as if he were falling. Why now, now when he was safe?

He glanced over at Napoleon again. He was oblivious. That was good. He made himself sit up, stand up, go back to the table and pick up his cup of cream-rich coffee. He knew the fats in the cream would be good for him. He wished he could have finished the plate of food, but it was impossible. Jim was right. His stomach had shrunk.

He took his cup and walked over to the window. He looked out into a street that was thick with snow, but dirtied in the middle where vehicles had moved. The windows of the houses opposite were blank. The sky was blank white. The ground lurched under him again.

There was an arm over his shoulders. It was Barney.

'I guess this must all be pretty familiar to you, huh?' he said.

Illya shook his head, with half a smile. 'This isn't like Kiev,' he said.

'Well, I guess Russia's a big place,' Barney laughed.

'Yes,' Illya said.

After a while Barney's arm dropped, and he was left alone. He put down his cup and gripped onto the windowsill with both hands, trying to anchor himself against drifting away like a helium balloon.

((O))

The engines of the 707 roared outside the thickness of the fuselage. The plane was moving slowly, taxiing to its take off position, making a ballet of the world outside. Through the window Illya could see other aeroplanes manoeuvring in the twilight, white lights steady and red lights and green lights winking. Men walked casually across the tarmac, waving torches held high. Not far away a pair were unreeling a long, heavy hose and bringing it up to a light aircraft to give it fuel.

He leant his head back against the antimacassar and closed his eyes. This plane felt too small, too tight. There were too many people. Somewhere down the back a baby was crying and the mother was crooning the words of a Russian lullaby, tunelessly.

He gripped his hands hard over the ends of the armrests, and then Napoleon's hand touched over his, stroking him, bringing him back down. He moved his other hand to brush his fingertips over the cool metal of the safety belt buckle, and they twitched in a reflex need to unbuckle himself.

'Not yet,' Napoleon said in a low voice.

He opened his eyes abruptly and blinked at the shock of bright lights and colour in the cabin around him.

'I need to go to the bathroom,' he said. He felt as if there were someone sitting on his chest. He thought if he didn't move he would suffocate.

'Not yet, David,' Napoleon said again. Illya was travelling under that name, in the guise of an Englishman. Napoleon had spoken to him very firmly about cultivating his Cambridge accent and not slipping into Russian words. Napoleon looked sideways and must have read something in Illya's face, because he said, 'Just breathe. There you go. Breathe slowly.'

A stewardess paused in the aisle, looking concerned, and Napoleon said with an easy smile, 'Just a little aviophobia. He'll be all right.' He turned back to Illya. 'Didn't you take your pill?'

Illya just shook his head. He didn't have any pills, didn't remember being given any pills; and then he realised Napoleon was making the pills up. He didn't have the composure to go along with this façade.

'He'll be all right once we're in the air,' Napoleon said to the stewardess. 'Maybe once we're up you could bring a couple of gin and tonics, huh?'

'Of course, sir,' she smiled, giving Napoleon the kind of smile he always got from air stewardesses. She spared a smile of reassurance for Illya, then moved on.

The engines surged, and Illya was pressed back into his seat by the sudden acceleration. The tarmac rushed by. Lights became blurs. Vibration increased, increased – and then suddenly the acceleration overcame gravity, and the ground dropped away. The lights below dwindled. Taxiing aircraft became toys. The air hummed with the steady resonance of movement, people started talking again, a cotton mass of cloud blanketed the window, and the seatbelt light went off.

His fingers scrabbled at the belt buckle, and then he was pushing past Napoleon before the man could move for him, almost running down the aisle to the bathroom. His hands fumbled with the door catch, he opened it, and fitted himself in a huddle in the tiny space as he struggled to draw in breath.

He was floating higher than the plane, far away from everything, everything was spinning and dwindling and inflating and there was nothing in the world but white. He wanted to scream but he couldn't move his lungs, couldn't move anything...

'Illya. Illya, breathe slowly. In, and out, in, and out...'

He saw Napoleon capping a syringe and dropping it into the bin. He looked vaguely at his arm and saw his shirt sleeve had been rolled up. There was a bright drop of blood in the crook of his arm. It was getting easier to breathe. He looked at his hands, and they seemed like his own.

'Again?' he asked wanly.

Napoleon gave him a rueful smile. 'Again.'

Illya dropped his head into his hands, started to rub them up to his scalp, remembered the wig, dropped his hands again.

'I'm sorry, Napoleon.'

Napoleon kissed him lightly on the forehead.

'It's all right, honey. Never mind. That shot should see you through for a while. I should have given you one before we boarded.'

'I thought I would be okay,' Illya admitted. 'But I'm not okay, am I?'

Napoleon kissed him again. 'You will be,' he promised. 'Now, are you ready to come back to your seat? Can you manage that?'

'I wish we'd got first class,' Illya admitted, but then he nodded, and said, 'I can manage.'

Back in their seats he sipped at his gin and tonic almost like a normal passenger, although he wished there were more gin and less tonic. Napoleon took a magazine out from the back of the seat in front of him, and flicked through it. Cigarette smoke drifted in the air. Illya looked out of the window and saw the dark arc of the sky above, the fleece of clouds below, the glimmer of the setting sun as they raced to catch it up.

Almost normal, he thought. None of them knew. All those other passengers on the plane; the businessmen steadily ignoring their seat mates, the elderly couples, the mother struggling with her young children; none of them knew what he was. His skin crawled. He became disgustingly aware of the movement of his sphincter, deep the under the layers of respectable clothing, the vest and long underwear that had been padded a little to disguise his emaciation. None of them knew how vile he was. Even Napoleon had no idea, he couldn't have, because otherwise he wouldn't be here now...

((O))

Napoleon hoped Illya wasn't aware of him watching him. He was making a good show of reading the magazine. He was a spy, after all – but then, Illya was a spy too, albeit slightly off his game at the moment. He had three more shots he could give Illya between here and JFK, and they would have to change planes in Germany. It was shaping up to be a very long trip.

He hated to think that he had grown used to Illya's panic attacks or – whatever they were. Napoleon was no psychiatrist and he didn't know what to call them. But they were frequent, too frequent for his liking. He toyed with the idea of taking Illya straight to U.N.C.L.E. medical when they got back, instead of to his apartment, but he felt as if that would be a betrayal. Illya had spoken with anticipation about sleeping in his own bed. And he wasn't mad, was he? He was traumatised. Deeply traumatised. But he wasn't mad?

He stared unseeing at the page of the magazine, then slipped his eyes back to Illya. Illya was tapping his fingers repetitively on the meal tray; but then Illya often did that, didn't he? He was a fiddler.

Illya lifted his glass, took a swallow, put it down again, and started to drum on the table again. His eyes were very far away, and Napoleon realised there was no point at all in pretending to be reading. He could have been sitting there in a chicken outfit, and Illya would have no idea.

He saw Illya's mouth move in a moue of disgust apparently unrelated to anything in the outside world. Napoleon's heart ached for him. He knew that Illya was working through a very complex set of reactions to what had happened to him. He thought it had started even before Illya had left the States for this mission. Some kind of engrained cultural guilt had been playing on him over his perceived homosexuality. He had enough cultural guilt just over enjoying himself, enjoying the capitalism of the West, without the added taboo of sex with another man. From the start he had seen this mission as some kind of inevitable punishment for his sin. Illya was as atheist as they came, as was the country of his birth, supposedly, but these things ran deep in people's veins.

And then those – those bastards had come on the scene, had taken him when he was already exhausted, malnourished, worn down and dehumanised, and had added that extra layer of trauma. If someone could have written down an exact recipe for dismantling Illya's soul, this would have been it. Napoleon's pulse began to beat hard in his temples when he thought about what they had done to his beautiful, precious, intelligent, witty partner. He could have executed them without a qualm. He had told Illya over and over in the last few days that he was not dirty, that he didn't need to feel shame, that it wasn't his fault. But he didn't think Illya heard him, or if he did, he didn't believe him.

He couldn't bear the separateness. He reached out and put a hand over Illya's, and Illya looked down in surprise, as if he hadn't realised the hand was his own.

'How are you doing, kid?' Napoleon asked him, and Illya manufactured a smile.

'Oh, fine,' he said. 'Hey, do you think I could have another drink?'

Napoleon wrinkled his face. 'Best not, with that sedative in your system. Why don't you have some coffee when they serve dinner?'

'Because coffee isn't gin and airline dinner isn't food,' Illya said cynically.

In moments like that Napoleon could almost believe Illya was all right. He made plans to just get him home, see whose apartment he wanted to use, get him in the bath, give him food, let him sleep. But then Illya would drift into that strange non-being again, where he hardly seemed to inhabit his own body. Napoleon knew he had spoken about the white room early on, but this wasn't the same. He, Napoleon, knew about withstanding torture. He'd done it often enough. But Illya didn't need that now. That was something one used only in the immediate situation. The instructors were very clear about that. If Illya were still retreating there it meant he still felt he was under torture, and the white room was turning into something bigger than it was meant to be.

He had seen the same looks on the faces of Korea and Vietnam vets. They ended up in mental institutions or panhandling on the streets.

His mind changed for the umpteenth time. He would get a cab and take Illya straight to U.N.C.L.E.. He needed help. The staff were sworn to confidentiality twice, once to U.N.C.L.E. and once to their patients. The sooner Illya saw someone, the sooner he would be himself again.