Chapter Text
“Help.” There was a jagged pause. A breath. “Him.”
Dr. Donald Mallard dropped to his knees beside the limp figure sprawled on the riverside. He was breathing, if shallowly. That was good, since the man was also bleeding. Heavily. The CPR which might help one would complicate the other. Plus? The doctor looked at his own age-spotted hands. What impact could he make on a chest that muscular? He was not as strong as he had been.
So instead of his medical bag, he clicked his radio. “Gibbs? I need an ambulance.”
His team would be here soon. That would be a good thing for the wounded man, but only if... He looked up at the figure in black. He had not moved – not even in the little ways that any man would to keep balance on the slippery slope. But then – The Soldier was not just any man.
“You are… Kuryakin.”
“Not any more.” He laid his badge picture-up on the ground, letting the operative read what he would. Even as a young man he would have hesitated to approach The Soldier, and he was now far from young.
A twig snapped.
Both men’s necks whipped right – checking the approach. Not, Ducky considered, his own crew. They would have been louder – calling and commenting. Not The Soldier’s people either. They would have made no noise at all. Unless…
“Your handler?” asked.
The Soldier focused his black gaze on Kuryakin – and then at the blue sky. “Up there.”
“Oh dear.” Up there now meant down… well, sufficient to say his current handler wouldn’t be responding. Which left the man who had been Illya Kuryakin with a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand? He was facing a covert, quite possibly unsanctioned, off-mission, lethal Russian asset. On the other hand? He was a covert, off-mission, still somewhat lethal (thank you very much) Russian asset.
And they had once been… not friends, but certainly not enemies. (Comrades fit, but that was a complex word.) And Illya recognized the blackness behind those eyes. And Illya remembered every day what it was like to be nothing-any-more, to be unmade and untethered and inexpressibly alone.
Reaching into his bag, he clipped one green triage flag to the tree and dropped another on the chest of the not-quite-drowned man. Already the blond man’s breathing was even, normal. The paramedics would find him. No one – on this day of disaster – would question a doctor who treated and moved on.
“I have a house.”
“Safe house.” There was no question in the intonation, but Illya treated it as such.
Shaking off his white jacket, Illya passed it to his comrade. The sleeve and blue glove covered the silver metal of the exposed arm. It was not a disguise that would last past a second look – but in this mob of medics and responders, who would look twice?
“Safe enough. No one…. “ Will suspect me, he almost said. Except… his phone was buzzing as long-abandoned code words hit Google Alert. “We won’t be questioned.”
Not today. Likely not tomorrow.
Mostly because he hadn’t been content with retirement and had insisted on being – at least for purposes of paperwork – dead. Yes, it meant he didn’t get a pension. Right now that seemed like a fair price for not getting agents invading his basement.
The soldier hesitated.
“I have supplies. I can help.”
Still the man did not move.
Voices were approaching. Perhaps his team, perhaps some other. Friend? Foe? Illya laughed – one sharp snort. How would he know?
Desperate – he switched to Russian.
“Поставляются с меня.”
And the soldier did.