Archive of Our Own ^beta

Illya frowns down at the wooden chessboard in front of him. Something is wrong. Something is off about the pieces, but he can’t quite put his finger on it, as the Americans say. (He’s gotten better about his American idioms over the years. Napoleon hasn’t laughed at him for it in a long time.) He lifts a hand to run bent fingers over the delicate curves of the black king in front of him. There’s no one on the other side of the board—no one masochistic enough to try playing him anymore—but he doesn’t need an opponent—there’s just something wrong with the pieces—

Illya tips over the black king and pushes away from the table in frustration. How is he supposed to play like this?

His assessing gaze sweeps over the other residents, half out of boredom, half out of long-ingrained habit, and it’s then that he spots him. He would know the back of that head, those curls, those broad shoulders, anywhere, even after all this time that’s been no time at all. Illya lunges to his feet, ignoring the creaking protest of his aching knees, his stiff back, the weight of years of hard use on his bones, and pushes himself forward till his hand is on one of those broad shoulders.

“Napoleon—!”

Illya spins him around and there is Napoleon’s face, his sharp jaw and stately brow and wide blue eyes looking just as surprised to see him as Illya feels. How long has it been? It can’t have been more than a few hours or days but the ache in his chest feels like years.

“Napoleon,” he says again just to feel the name on his lips after too long, and feels his eyes starting to burn with tears. But he’s not sad, is he? The last time he cried he had been sad, almost crushed by the press of grief, but this doesn’t feel like that. This feels like the opposite of that.

“I’m sorry, sir, you must have me confused with—” Napoleon starts but Illya cuts him off by pulling him into a tight embrace, squeezing his eyes shut as he squeezes Napoleon to his chest.

“I have missed you, my friend,” he murmurs in Russian, and then in English, “Where have you been?” He releases Napoleon and draws back just enough to get a good look at him, and frowns. “And what are these ridiculous glasses? They hide half your face.” He deftly plucks the glasses off Napoleon’s nose despite sputtered protests and easily deflects the clumsy lunge for them, tucking them away in his own pocket. “Yes, that is better.”

“Sir, please, can I have my glasses back? I’m not who you think I am. My name is Clark.”

Illya frowns again, casting a wary glance around the sitting room even as he reluctantly hands the thick-framed glasses back. “I did not realize you were undercover,” he says in a low voice. “What is the mission? Why did Waverly not brief me?”

Napoleon stares at him blankly. “What?”

“Is not very good disguise. I recognize you right away,” he advises, and Napoleon flushes, probably in well-deserved embarrassment for his terrible disguise.

“It seems to do the job all right,” he mutters defensively, shoving the glasses back on and slouching a little. Admittedly, it might fool the casual observer, but Illya knows his partner too well to ever miss him.

“Come, sit down and tell me about mission.” Illya takes him gently by the elbow, his mind ever conscious of his strength but his body not willing to stop touching Napoleon yet. How long has it been? Illya takes in the planes of Napoleon’s face with a hungry eye, the smooth skin around his eyes and the corners of his mouth where laugh lines had been just starting to form. “You have not aged a day, my friend.” Which would make sense since it’s only been— “In fact you almost look younger than the last time I saw you, while I am very old now,” Illya chuckles. “Is that why Waverly did not assign me this mission?” He sits Napoleon at the table on the other side of the chessboard, taking his own place again behind the black pieces, but doesn’t rearrange them for a new game.

“I’m not on a—a mission.” Napoleon stumbles a little over the word, looking perplexed to hear it coming out of his own mouth. “I’m only here because my neighbor fell and broke her hip and had to be moved here and she doesn’t have any family in the area to come visit her.”

“If she has broken hip, then she will not be going anywhere for a while, so you can stay and talk to me,” Illya reasons and Napoleon opens his mouth as if to protest and then closes it again with a resignedly amused look and a small shrug.

“All right then. Tell me about yourself.”

Illya tilts his head at him. “What do you mean.” Napoleon already knows everything there is to know about him—more than anyone else ever has. He’s told Napoleon things about himself even his old handlers never knew, things about his mother, his father, his childhood, dreams and fears. And in return Napoleon had opened up to him so beautifully, in that way so unheard of in their business. The memory of Napoleon’s warm blue eyes shining in the Venetian starlight still sends a pang of something like melancholy through his chest, even with those same eyes staring at him from across the table now.

“Well, what have you been…up to…lately?” he asks awkwardly.

Illya waves the question away, idly picking up the black knight before replacing it in the same spot. “Nothing. It is nothing like the old days here. All anyone wants to do is eat pudding and knit. Though I admit it is nice to have so many weapons to hand in case of emergency.”

Napoleon looks a little alarmed at this. “I’m sure it won’t come to that,” he tries. “Why don’t you tell me some more about these missions of yours?”

Illya gives him a strange look. “Are you all right, Cowboy? Did you hit your head on last mission? You know you are not supposed to hide injuries from us, after what happened with Uncle Rudi. You could have had heart attack.”

“Um, no, I didn’t hit my head. But why don’t you refresh my memory on what happened with Uncle Rudi?”

Illya snorts. “I do not think you want to be reminded. Although we have certainly been through worse together since then, have we not?” A flash, a memory of blood on his hands, pulsing through his fingers as he desperately presses down, desperately orders him not to—

“Here’s your medications, Mr. Petrov.” The nurse—the nice one today—holds out the small white paper cup full of pills and he obliges her by smiling politely (another thing Napoleon taught him and endlessly mocked him for until he got it right) and swallowing them all. He waits until her back is turned before dropping the smile and grumbling.

“Pills, pills. Nothing but pills and pudding.” He turns back to Napoleon and answers before he can ask. “An alias, of course. Even now there are plenty out there who would like to get their hands on an agent of U.N.C.L.E. and learn our secrets, yes?”

“I—I—yes?” Napoleon looks bewildered.

“But do not worry about me. I have been making…modifications,” Illya reassures him with a significant look. “We are quite safe here.”

“Oh dear,” Napoleon murmurs. “I’m not sure—”

“Enough of that. Tell me what you have been doing. You are doing solo missions again?”

“I—well, yes, mostly. There’s another guy that I work with sometimes and we’re working on putting together a— Look, I really shouldn’t be talking about any of this.”

“Because my security clearance has expired?” Illya guesses. “I will talk to Waverly about having it renewed. And then you and I will go back to saving the world together, yes? We are partners, after all.”

One of Napoleon’s rare genuine smiles slowly spreads over his face. “You are a very interesting person, Mr. Petrov.”

“And you, Clark,” Illya says with a quick wink and a suppressed smirk. “Now tell me all the places you have been. It has been too long since I left this city.” Though it was just last week that they were in Peru, running from a drug lord’s armed guards, Napoleon laughing breathlessly beside him until Illya found out about his sticky fingers and berated him for endangering the mission, authentic Pissarro or not—

“Well, I mostly stay in Metropolis too, unless I’m on assignment across the bay,” Napoleon says a little too loudly, glancing around for listening ears before leaning in and lowering his voice. “I really shouldn’t be telling you any of this, but I think it’ll be okay this once, right?”

Illya nods solemnly. Napoleon’s secrets have always been safe with him.

“There was this earthquake in Thailand last week that I helped with. I heard the tsunami coming and was able to get there before it struck and cleared out the whole fishing village in time. That one felt good. And before that there was a seven-car pileup in Bristol with a leaking gas tanker and a baby trapped in a crushed car that I was able to get out right before the truck blew. I don’t do this job for the thanks or the glory, but the look on that mother’s face when I handed her baby to her would be enough to keep me going,” Napoleon smiles. “And then there was this kidnapping in Lyon that I—”

“Don’t go to Lyon,” Illya interrupts, surprising himself almost as much as Napoleon.

“What? Why?”

Illya isn’t entirely sure himself. But there’s blood, and gunfire, and screeching tires coming too late, too late, and wetness pulsing through his fingers, and he doesn’t want Napoleon anywhere near there. “I don’t like Lyon. Don’t go there.”

“I can’t do that,” Napoleon says, a little apologetically, a little reproachfully. “If the job calls me there, that’s where I have to go.”

“It’s not safe,” Illya hisses. “Don’t go.” Running, gunfire at their backs, Illya dragging him by his arm around a corner, toward safety, Napoleon stumbling, his arm slipping from Illya’s hand—and when he looks back, Napoleon lying still on the ground. Diving back for him, bullets biting the rough pavement around them, pulling him into the alley and finding the blood, too much, too much, where’s the car? wetness pulsing up between his fingers as he desperately applies pressure, shouting for Napoleon to stay, damn it, stay with me!

“Peril—”

“—Petrov? Mr. Petrov?”

A gentle hand on his wrist. Illya blinks and gazes down blankly at the chessboard. The black side is in chaos. “Don’t leave me behind again,” he whispers.

Napoleon is frowning, a deep furrow in his brow and pity in his familiar blue eyes. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Petrov.”

Illya shakes off the strange feeling—not a memory, because Napoleon is sitting here in front of him, alive and well. “Do not call me that. Call me by my name, like you used to.”

Napoleon looks a little helpless. “I’m sorry. I don’t know—” He stops, perking his head up and turning toward the wall with a faraway look on his face, as if listening to something at a great distance. “I’m really sorry. I have to go right now. There’s a—thing—”

Illya grabs his wrist before he can even finish standing, holding him there a little while longer. “You will come back and see me again, yes? And next time we will go together.”

Napoleon hesitates just briefly before smiling again. “Yes. I’ll definitely come see you again.”

Illya lets him go and watches him hurry out, content in the knowledge that he’ll be back soon. Napoleon always comes back.

He turns back to the chessboard in front of him and finally realizes what’s wrong with the pieces. The white king is missing. How is he supposed to play like this?