He does, on several occasions, wonder if this is something he's done to himself.
Granted, these occasions tend to find him on the maudlin end of the emotional scale, often courtesy of more alcohol than is entirely wise in his predicament, so it's easy enough to dismiss whatever hazy conclusions he'd drawn once he's sobered up and returned to his usual self.
It would be too much, really it would.
It's just bad luck, that's all.
It has to be.
Napoleon Solo's first crime is his enlistment, at age sixteen, under a false name. There were others before that, of course – one doesn't simply begin out of nowhere with felony forgery – but none that could be tied to that name. Who he was before then vanished as cleanly and instantly as Napoleon Solo appeared, never to be mentioned again. By the time he's cornered and collared, all exits cut off and cold consequences caught up, he's almost succeeded in forgetting who he used to be, almost finished burying his corpse in the shell of his new persona. His time in prison completes the transformation, and when he is released into the bondage of the bastards who bought him, he has become himself entirely.
A conqueror, alone.
He despises Sanders from the moment they meet, and the feeling is unreservedly mutual.
Sanders thinks he can use him. Napoleon Solo refuses to be used. Sanders doesn't care; he has broken people with harder shells, and Napoleon Solo didn't make himself to be a monster. Sanders finds the cracks, the seams imperfectly fused, and pries him open inch by agonizing inch.
He learns that there are things that even Napoleon Solo won't do. Sanders learns that there is precious little Napoleon Solo can't do.
He gets sent back to prison exactly once that first year, to prove a point. It's nothing short of torture. Sanders has found something he wants, and he won't let it go.
Prison is only one of the threats that Napoleon Solo learns will work against him.
There are many, many more.
(It's possible that this new shell isn't as strong as he thought. It's possible that that buried corpse is more alive than he'd intended. Or, hell, maybe it's just that Sanders' personality is shaped precisely like splinters to be driven under fingernails and he's had years to perfect the art of wedging himself into any crack he can make.)
(Whatever the case, Napoleon Solo has work to do.)
The first team Sanders tries to place him with, after he's been sufficiently broken in, lasts all of two months. There are six of them, five plus Solo, and it's a mess from the start. Too many personalities, too little trust, too much to prove, and Solo on the edges, watching and waiting and wary. Even he can tell it'll never work, but it's got to be some twisted experiment pushed by someone higher up, someone blind to everything but a potential too far distant for anyone else to see. They scrape together one success, then another, then another.
Then one of them sells the rest of them out, and Napoleon Solo is the only one to walk away. Not that he walks anywhere for a while, after.
He half-expects Sanders to put him back in jail for it, but apparently three bullets in his body is enough evidence in his favor; once he's out of the hospital, Sanders gives him a laundry list of Interpol's current targets and access to a room full of records and profiles. He tracks down an even dozen over the next couple of months, and another seven once he's cleared for fieldwork.
He moves stiffly for about a year after that, contractures in the scar tissue shot through his side leaving him aching and tight, but eventually he learns how to hide it, and then ignore it until it fades.
What doesn't fade is the memory of the other list Sanders had given him, while he was still weighted down with the recent absence of lead and not nearly drugged enough to make the company bearable. He'd recognized all of the names on sight – people he'd worked with before he was caught, mostly, as well as some of the well-meaning guys he'd served with before he'd started working – and known that some of them were dead.
He hadn't known they all were.
Sanders had let that sink in for a little while, long enough to penetrate the haze of pain and exhaustion, then pulled the list back across the tray-table in order to add five more names to the space at the bottom. His usual handwriting was an angular scrawl; this neat printing, each letter carefully and deliberately formed, had registered as something like a sneer.
"What do you think of that, Mr. Solo?" Sanders had asked, turning the paper back towards him.
"I think it's a dangerous world," he'd answered, or something similar. He doesn't really remember.
"That it is," Sanders had agreed. "Very dangerous. More so for some than others, it would seem." He'd smiled, then, in that way he did when he thought he had some sort of upper hand.
Talking was too painful for any rejoinder to be worth it, so Solo had simply let it land, unchallenged. Even later, he's not sure he could come up with a suitable response.
It was a long list.
It gets longer.
The second team is more carefully selected, more actively supervised. They're not pushed as hard, not run as ragged from the jump. They make it almost ten months before everything goes to hell.
Solo's not caught in the crossfire this time, literal or metaphorical. He's just in another car.
There's no hospital, after. This time, when Sanders confronts him, he's cuffed to a metal table in an interrogation room with a drain in the concrete floor.
Napoleon Solo has gotten stronger over the past couple of years. The cracks are thinner, harder to find. It's easier to remain impassive in the face of threats and fury. Easier to keep his body under his control, keep it speaking the language of languid disinterest when any rational instinct would be scrambling for self-preservation.
Sanders doesn't entirely believe him. Thinks Solo set it up, thinks that he's playing a longer game.
Maybe he should be, but he's not. After a week, Sanders believes him enough to let him out.
They don't give him another team.
The handful of partners they place him with instead don't fare much better.
By the end of his fourth year, the CIA has dispensed with any predictability. He works almost entirely alone, and when a job requires his particular skills but more hands or eyes or ears than he has to his name, the rest of the places are filled seemingly at random, always at the last minute, and never by the same person twice.
They're usually all right, then.
It's still safer if he works alone.
"How do you do it?" Sanders asks, a few weeks into year seven. The bastard's in a good mood for once, happy to inflict himself on Solo's attempt to unwind after a stressful yet successful mission. Solo's never really been one for the gentlemen's clubs, so it won't be a particular shame to burn this one, but his handler's appearance anywhere he chooses to spend his off hours always leaves a bad taste in his mouth.
"Sir?" Solo replies politely, blandly. He knows the image he presents, taking his leisure in a leather club chair with a bourbon in hand and the haze of cigar smoke in the air working like Vaseline on a camera lens. No one in this room knows that he has bone-deep bruises splashed across his ribs, or that just an hour ago he was combing plaster dust from his hair with trembling hands. No one but Sanders knows that he's done anything more strenuous today than applying pomade and shaking out a newspaper, and Sanders looks considerably rougher around the edges than he does. He knows it's infuriating. It's one of the few pleasures he has left to him.
But today Sanders seems amused, almost. Which for him means just a hair less spiteful than usual, but Solo's had a hellish enough day that he'll take whatever rounded edges he can get. Instead of answering, Sanders snorts and shakes his head – rueful, maybe, or something like it. "Well, however you do it, keep it up. You're worth your weight in gold."
It's not a compliment. It's further from a compliment than the last time someone tried to shoot him in the head. That, at least, had been an admission of fear. This is the callous observation of collector accruing interest on a purchase.
Napoleon Solo smiles – politely, blandly – and lifts his glass in toast as Sanders stands and departs, then knocks back the rest of his drink as soon as he's out of sight.
Bourbon, he decides, is too sharp and sickly sweet. Too American.
It's time for a change. Scotch, perhaps.
The list holds steady at twenty-three names throughout his eighth year and only bumps up to twenty-six during the course of his ninth.
The number of people he's killed on purpose is quite a bit higher, but he doesn't make a habit of dwelling on it.
The names on the first list aren't necessarily innocents, perhaps, but they are accidents, and none of them died by his hand.
The second list... Well. He does what he has to. He doesn't have to like it, but he does have to survive.
Someday, someone will get lucky, and his name will end up on someone else's list.
It had better be on purpose, though. After everything, it had fucking better be on purpose.
Year ten's been going well (only two more on the first list, less than ten on the second) so of course it has to hit a snag in East Berlin.
He likes Gaby Teller. She drives like a demon, for one thing, and her glaring distaste for him is positively refreshing. She wrecks her car with the determination of someone with too much to prove, yet for all her snaps and retorts she chooses to trust him, her arms strong and sure around him as they hurtle over wall and wire and watch lights.
She wants freedom more than she wants safety, and he very suddenly wants nothing more than to give it to her. Someone who wants that fiercely should have her wants rewarded. He can't give what he doesn't have, however, so he cooks her dinner instead and fails to be moved by her terrible manners. She's testing him, refusing in every possible way to play the damsel post-distress, slouching and drinking and insulting his food, but to be frank he's never been interested in the demure and complacent sort. Spark and spitfire is much more his type, and she has that in spades. This is already the most fun he's had in damn near a decade.
The CIA guys have no idea what to make of her, of course, and mostly settle on ignoring her. Jones and Ryan speak maybe two sentences of German between them, so when Solo comes back out into the kitchen after his reaming-out by Sanders he takes a stab at making conversation in her language. She shuts him down even harder than she did the first time and unapologetically holds out first her plate for more risotto, and then her glass for more wine. He refills both in short order.
"Anything else, madam?" he asks, only half-joking, and she pauses with her plate held almost level with her mouth and her fork poised to shovel. She glances over at the door to the other room, where Jones and Ryan are getting their own briefing, then back at him.
"I want to shower later," she tells him in German.
"Of course," he answers.
"I don't want to be bothered," she says, and despite the flinty challenge in her voice he catches his first glimpse of genuine concern. She may not be a damsel in distress, but she's still a young woman trapped in a flat with four strange men who have already claimed a lot of power over her. Even without the 'young woman' part, he's learned how badly that can go for a person.
"You won't be," he promises. His second list is a complicated thing, a mix of guilt and careful distance, but he'd far rather add to it than start a third. It's not the first time he's made that choice, and it almost certainly won't be the last.
Gaby looks at him for a long moment, then nods curtly and goes back to inhaling her dinner.
Somehow, she's decided to trust him a second time.
Napoleon Solo can't remember the last person who did that. It feels like a complication.
He likes Gaby Teller. He wants her to get her freedom. He doesn't want to continue working with her, but he's going to have to.
It feels like betrayal.
Illya Kuryakin is a lot more straightforward, at least for the first minute or so.
Then, after throwing him around with far too much ease for Solo to feel good about and getting him in some kind of wrestling lock with no real effort, he holds back. His arm's not positioned right for a real choke, and there's no chance he doesn't realize it. He has more training than Solo does, that much is painfully apparent, but instead of catching Solo's throat in the crook of his elbow and squeezing, he just keeps him in place. It's check, not mate, or a blank instead of a live round.
The Russian ripped the trunk off of Gaby's car – choking Solo into complacent unconsciousness would be the work of seconds. Snapping his neck would be even faster. He does neither.
It's a puzzling conundrum until his handler emerges (what is it with these guys and loitering in bathrooms), and Solo realizes that Kuryakin had been waiting for orders. Neutralizing an opponent is second nature to him; killing, apparently, requires a bit more of a nudge.
Solo tries to give the nudge himself, just to see if he can. Call him curious. All he gets for his efforts is a smidgen of property damage, and he even saves his coffee first.
Interesting. And a bit disappointing, if he's feeling candid.
He finishes his coffee before heading back to the safehouse for a briefing that will, hopefully, contain some actual information.
The most useful information he gets the rest of the day is that Illya Kuryakin has strong opinions about fashion, but he's worked with less.
He boards his plane to Rome and reminds himself that it'll only be a few days.
Plenty of people have survived a few days. They'll be fine.
"I work better alone," he says outside of the factory, and means I've outlived twenty-eight people who tried to work with me.
"I work better alone, too," Illya retorts, and Solo knows enough about him to fill in Everyone else just slows me down.
"I'm not leaving," he says, because he can't really say anything else, so when Illya snips back at him about wasting time, he concedes.
He really shouldn't have.
The alarm was a fluke, but hey, it happens. The window was a bad idea, but to be fair it was an even worse idea for him to blindly follow Illya through it without checking for himself. He earned himself those bruises fair and square. The boat seemed like a fair bet until they started closing the gates, shortly after which point it wasn't really his problem anymore.
Sitting in the cab of the unlocked truck and availing himself of the bounty left behind in it, it occurs to him that this is a slightly more exaggerated version of the dynamic that's become familiar over the past decade. He can almost count down to the sudden rush of flames as the gas tank of the wooden boat is punctured by a stray shot.
Sometimes, when he's in this position, he wonders why he doesn't just accept it. There's no love lost between him and the CIA, but that doesn't mean that he's never tried to go back for anyone. He has tried. He's tried more often than he'd admit to anyone, partly because so many of those attempts have ended in failure, but also because he can't quite shake the feeling that he's betraying himself in some way. Napoleon Solo wanted to be alone. Napoleon Solo should be alone. Why the hell would Napoleon Solo risk his own life trying to save someone who has, invariably, distrusted and degraded him? Even when he succeeds, it's not like it's ever gotten him anything.
Maybe it's that corpse that still isn't dead enough. Maybe it's the shell that still isn't smooth enough. Maybe it's the only thing he can point to as a distinction between himself and someone like Sanders, someone he hates even as he emulates.
And besides, Illya's not CIA. Illya's been collared just the same as he has, or near enough, and driven along with much more stick than carrot. Illya doesn't deserve to die for the misfortune of being assigned to him.
He puts down the wine and puts the truck in gear.
Once he's made the choice, it's easier than it should be to get Illya back to the surface. The salt water stings his eyes, and his chest is a bit tight by the time they make it up, but all in all it's not that much trouble.
As rare as they are, his successes are more of a relief than he'd like to admit, either.
Napoleon Solo has never wanted to die. He's wondered about it, of course – what it will be like, when it finally happens, and what it will take to make it stick – and he's taken risks that skirt suicidality, but he's never wanted to die. He's expected to die, and been surprised when he didn't, and felt the formless yearning for end that everyone enduring war or torment has felt at some moment or another, but he has never actively wished for the finality of death.
Strapped to an electric chair only loosely modified from an executioner's design, he comes closer than he ever has.
All at once, in excruciating synchronicity, he thinks this should kill me and this is killing me and why hasn't this killed me and god I wish this would just kill me already, and then he can't think anything at all for a very long time.
When the current stops long enough for him to catch a breath, one of the first thoughts that coalesces in his buzzing, sparking brain is that either this voltage isn't that much lower than is used for executions, or he's a lot less resilient than he likes to think he is. Then it starts up again, and there again is that instant of die die die let me die let me die, and then nothing.
The current stops a few more times, never long enough for him to get enough of himself together for anything as complicated as a linear thought, but he does get impressions. The light is different, or Rudi has moved, or the air smells worse. Each time he feels himself floating somehow above his body, only to be slammed back in when the circuit closes.
Then it stops for longer, long enough that his hearing comes back from its greyed-out ringing, and words start filtering through. Much more interesting than Rudi's self-aggrandizing monologue, though, is the blurry view of the guard outside suddenly slumping and toppling over. That's different. Then comes Illya, a finger to his lips, and that's different, too.
No one's ever come back for him before.
In some analytical corner of his mind, mostly buried beneath the far more pressing plans they have to devise and enact to get Gaby back, remains the stubborn and unsettling notion that this should have been the thing to kill him. He certainly feels closer to dead than he's ever felt before, for all that he's on his feet and mostly able to push through the bouts of dizziness and ringing and static. There's a heaviness in him that's never been there before, a weight in his chest that feels wrong in a way he can't put to words.
Not that he would try. Who would listen? They have a job to do, and he's not dead, so best press on. Illya keeps shooting him these looks, though, like he's seen something that Solo didn't even know to try to hide and is trying to decide what to do with it.
Maybe it's just lingering distaste for Rudi's...proclivities, or else concern that his soft American partner is about to collapse. (Again. But that was once, and once was more than enough. Got him all sorted out, and now he's fine.)
Oh, well. They'll get Gaby back and then go their separate ways, and if he's left Illya something to wonder over, that'll be a better parting gift than he's managed for any other erstwhile partner.
Napoleon Solo doesn't let himself feel very deeply – that's part of his design, after all – but by the time they reach the island and begin their assault he is empty even beyond that. It's not the careful wall that comes down between goal and distraction, the honed attention that allows him to do what he must no matter the chaos or discomfort that would prevent him, but instead something more like the cold and unresponsive flesh of a limb gone too deeply to sleep. He moves out of habit, acts out of instinct. Shoots without thinking, without even truly seeing, just as he doesn't truly hear the voices relaying information and orders, his own among them.
It's not like it was in the chair, when he was floating above himself. It's like he's not even there anymore, like the weight in his chest has grown and forced all of him out.
Dissociation. He knows this. Shock. He knows this, too.
It's not like those, either.
It's like he has to remind himself to breathe.
Like it wouldn't really matter if he didn't.
Something of his former self sparks a little at the sight of Illya's watch, at the glimpse of Gaby on the grainy cameras, but it's not until Illya's flying over the handlebars of his motorcycle and Gaby's shrieking his name that he comes back completely, preparing to ram Alexander the way Alexander had just hit Illya and giving Gaby nothing more than a silent warning to ready her.
She trusts him.
She trusts him with her life, even after condemning his, because she sent Illya to go back for him and trusted that Illya would go.
Freedom over safety and he wants to give it to her; everyone else just slows him down and Illya came back for him.
The emptiness collapses, the hollow curl of a towering wave shattered against the shore, violent in its unmaking.
His body is a terrible place to be just then and gets worse fast, but it gives him these: all the gentleness he can spare as he pulls Gaby from the car; the surprise of her savagery as she jumps on Alexander's back with nothing but her weight and her fury; the fierce relief at the sight of Illya, avenger, taking the kill.
He's shaking on the ground, adrenaline and cold and a few good hits to the head doing their work on him, but Illya and Gaby are alive. He won't have to add their names to his list.
They're damaged and exhausted and they still have work to do, but they're alive. He won't have to carry the deaths of the only two people who have trusted him since Napoleon Solo came into being.
He doesn't know how, and he doesn't know why, but he'll do whatever it takes to keep it that way.
...
Written for the 2023 Winter Holiday Gift Exchange over on AO3; prompt was for Napoleon Solo not realizing he's immortal, and/or "something a little spooky, like a curse." I wanted to try to combine them, but that would only have resulted in a much less impressive version of bullroars' fabulous cursed-immortal Napoleon fic, "make them stay, make them stone." In the end I did my best to play the immortal prompt straight, if a little on the darker side to hit some of those spooky notes.
I have a few more chapters planned, and about half of them written, but I won't add the rest until it's all finished.
Thank you for reading! As always, please feel free to leave whatever feedback you'd like to.