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She slips the ring among his things somehow. The opalescent surface of the pearl peers back at him from the practical and neatly kept kit he keeps his shaving tools (those had been a sentimental purchase, a faux mother of pearl handled straight razor that reminded Illya of one his father had once kept, repossessed with everything else when they took his father away for embezzlement).
He wonders when she managed it, impressed despite his better instincts. She has that affect he’s learned.
-
In the morning he watches her tear a round loaf of bread to pieces, her fingers merciless in her attack. She hands him half loaf, pushes a plate honeycomb and tangy yogurt towards the middle of the table. Solo will not join them for another hour, if he joins them for breakfast at all.
The bread is still warm in his hands, and he watches her gut hers, scoop the soft white innards of it out and roll them into balls she dips into honey. She’s methodical in her method, and there’s a mesmerizing quality to her movement. He doesn’t go unnoticed of course, but he’s beginning to suspect there’s very little she misses. She chews pointedly. He watches the column of her throat as she takes a sip of tea, his face warm to have been caught. There is something about her that catches him off guard again and again, it frightens him, how poor an operative he proves in her presence.
“I hope you don’t expect me to feed you.” She says coyly, though it’s hard to read her clearly with half her face obscured by the round white frames of her sunglasses. (She’ll need more clothes soon, Illya thinks. All the rest of her belongings are still behind the wall and there’s little hope of retrieving them in light of her allegiances. Her little apartment back in East Berlin has undoubtedly already been ransacked, her things taken to be examined and stored as evidence against her. He wants to ask her how she could do it, leave everything behind so completely and never turn back. It’s not a skill he’s mastered.)
It’s a test he’s sure of it. She tilts her head delicately, sends her glasses down the bridge of her nose. Her eyes peer at him curiously, dark-rimmed and sharp.
“Of course not.” He answers, reaches for a tomato, enjoys the burst of it when he bears his teeth down. She smiles at him and he cannot for the life of him determine if he’s passed.
-
They go months apart the three of them. Solo is somewhere in Canada while Gaby is called back to London. Illya spends four too-long months in Spain, tracking down a network of arm’s dealers.
When Waverly finally calls them together again they’re to meet in Amman. In a dimly lit café with cups of sugary mint tea on the table they’re debriefed (the café is loud, crowded, but there’s an artificiality to the whole scene. The men two tables over have lifted their cups three times and never let them touch their lips). Solo looks as neatly put together as Illya remembers him, impeccable from the top of his dark head to down to his Italian leather shoes. There’s a yellowing bruise half hidden behind the heavy curtain of Gaby’s fringe and when she grins there’s something predatory to it she does nothing to hide.
Waverly looks between them all with an air of open bemusement. “Right then,” he says after they’ve exchanged their series of not-quite pleasantries, “The work.”
-
They’re not placed in the same hotel, but there she is, perched in the single chair in the corner of his room, pouring herself a glass of gin from a bottle that does not belong to him.
“You must think you’re very clever.” She says easily, as though he had not greeted her with his finger on the trigger of his gun. She holds her left hand up for him to see. He smiles.
“You are not the only one who can break into a room.” He says fondly, taking a seat at the foot of the bed. Gaby rolls her eyes, holds her hand out in front her with her fingers splayed wide for inspection. There’s a deceptively fragile quality to her hands, but he knows how hard they can strike, the surety and force of her blow singed across his memory. The ring suits her.
“Are we playing a game then?”
“No,” Illya answers without a second thought, his eyebrows furrowing almost against his will. “I do not play games.”
Gaby rises, her black skirt sways against her thighs (Chanel if he is not mistaken. And he knows already that he isn’t). She crosses the few feet between them, straddles his lap deftly, and settles her weight entirely on his knees. Her knees squeeze at his hips, anchoring her, pinning him, as once more she catches him off guard. She leans forward, “Good,” she says, and her breath smells of alcohol, warm and damp against his face, “I don’t either.” Her mouth is as vicious as her fists, sharp and demanding against his. Her hands knot in his hair, pull him close, hold him in place. Illya keeps still for three long seconds—he imagined this, in Rome, in Istanbul, in Spain, in all the countries in between, when she was half a world away and out of even his range, but never quite like this—and then he moves, groans into the kiss and grips her waist. It is more for his benefit that hers and they both know it.
This is not a game, but that does not mean they cannot both win.
-
Solo eyes them both suspiciously.
“Well,” he says as he looks away, holding his paltry American-made binoculars up to his eyes to spy on the factory they’ve come to do reconnaissance on. “Took you long enough.”
Gaby punches him in the shoulder hard enough that Illya worries the sound of the blow will give them away and Solo flinches so badly he almost drops his binoculars.
“This is not a matter for group discussion.” Gaby says with an air of unerring finality.
Illya, who has very little by way of experience and, as such, cannot say with any kind of certainty other than that which he feels in his gut, thinks he might very well be half in love already.
-
In Amsterdam she’s paired with Solo, meant to play the part of a businessman’s bored wife. “I dream of a day you’ll play each others' spouses and I can trail behind in a van.” She grouses, slipping into her shoes for the evening. She’s dressed in an understated black cocktail dress, her jewelry subdued, her hair perfectly coifed. It had taken Solo twenty minutes to get it to perfection. Illya hates it.
She does not look like herself, not as Illya has learned her. She’s something else, someone else, far away and unreachable. Her hands are encased in kidskin gloves, under which hides an unremarkable gold band that matches the one on Solo’s finger. Illya hates that too.
Gaby snaps at him when he tries to help her into her coat. Solo whistles from the bathroom where he has spent the last six minutes pretending not to listen to their conversation. “I do hope this little affair isn’t causing trouble in paradise.” He drawls, mirth barely held in check beneath a thin veneer of effortless charm. Gaby groans. “When you’ve both finished removing your heads from your asses, I’ll be downstairs.” Her voice rises, sugary-sweet and deadly, “And try not to take too long darling, dinner begins promptly at eight.”
She leaves with a hard slap to Illya’s face, the door slamming behind her. “Don’t worry Peril,” Solo says, his mouth terse and mocking at the same time. “I’ll have her back by curfew.” He claps Illya on the shoulder as he goes.
“She can kill you with her bare hands.” Illya calls after him and he catches the beginning of Solo’s laugh. “She can kill us both.” Solo calls over his shoulder before the door latches shut.
-
“I’m not yours you know.” She starts, voice steady as her hand when she lashes out. He’s past the point of worrying now when she or Solo appear in his room unannounced. Neither of them ever seems to worry about protocol. She’s still wearing the cocktail dress from earlier, but she’s already begun picking pins out of her hair. Her hands are naked where they rest on her hips. “What I am is an agent same as you, same as Solo, and when I have a job to do I intend to do it properly. I won’t stand for you brooding like some sort of caveman ready sling me over his shoulder. Do you understand me Illya?” She looks ready for a brawl, and he casts his eyes around the narrow confines of the room, the cheap furniture that will splinter to pieces beneath them. Things were simpler when she was a chop shop girl and he was a KGB agent and he understood where the lines were drawn. He could call her his woman knowing she could never be, and now he understands the truth of that in completely new ways.
“I understand.” He answers, though it’s a partial lie, and she must see that in him because her shoulders rise, like a cat’s back arches before it pounces and sure enough she leaps, tackles him clean to the floor through the sheer force of her momentum. Watching her fight, fighting with her, is a thing of beauty, the only kind of dance Illya has any skill at. She throws her whole body into it, feral and brutal, uses everything at her disposal to gain the upper hand on her opponent. Illya does not fight back, gainsays every impulse in his body and merely does his best to weather the storm as they knock over a small table, crash into a chair, push the mattress askew. The headboard hits the wall so hard plaster dust sprinkles down from the ceiling, turns the black brocade of her dress into a study in contrast.
Her hair is a ruin about her shoulders, falls over his face when she ducks in close and bites down hard on his throat. His hips jerk involuntarily, groans in pain and pleasure and a desperation that runs so deep he can't define the source of it.
Except.
“I could be yours, then.” He says, uncertainty so clearly defined in his voice it pains him to hear it, a kind of truce that feels like unconditional surrender. “If you’d like.”
Her chests heaves against his, her body shudders. She collapses all at once, heavy despite her size. “I wouldn’t be a very good keeper.” She mumbles, plaster dust in her hair, her dress wrinkled up around her hips. He runs his hand over her back, careful, “That is okay. I require very little care. You’ll see.” She leans up on her elbows, peers down at his face.
Her eyes are inscrutable, searching and searching and Illya knows she will find him wanting. Not in comparison to Solo, who is not competition, not in this arena, but to everything she deserves, everything she could have that is not this. Not him. Illya does not require partners or superiors to list his shortcomings.
She runs her fingers through his hair, the touch gentle as though he is the one who might startle. He’s startled enough already.
“I think you’d require more care than you think.” It isn’t a condemnation on her tongue.
-
The laws of inevitability conspire against him and eventually, in Vienna of all places, their mark gets wise and Illya does not run fast enough to outrun the hired guns who pursue them. He manages to kill two of them and disarm the third before he’s overtaken and when wakes his arms are aching, stretched overhead and chained to an exposed pipe. His feet are bare and the floor underfoot is wet and cold, the pipe overhead dripping steadily over him. A nondescript man while bland blue eyes visits at random intervals, asks question Illya does not answer, and draws blood from Illya’s silences.
He does not give this man the satisfaction of screaming, not matter how deeply his blade cuts, or how sharply his knuckles land. They do not know about Napoleon or Gaby, only that there are others. They’re working on outdated information, he does nothing to correct them.
(if he dies here, if he dies here, if he dies here. Illya does not sleep, does not dream, does not allow himself to finish the single recurring thought inside his head. If I die here I will die here. He tells himself practically. But they will not leave him to die here. He believes that. He wishes belief were enough to secure actuality.)
When they do arrive it is dark, silent except for the hiss of a silencer, his hands are numb and his wrists are bloody from fighting against his restraints. He is missing two nails on his left foot. Gaby levers herself on the wall to reach the chain securing him in place while Napoleon braces him for the fall that follows. His tries to lock his knees, tries to keep to his feet, but the chain gives way and his arms fall free, dead weights at his sides as his body folds over. Solo doesn’t let him fall. Gaby’s hand covers the nape of his neck, a quick fleeting touch before she takes point, Solo shouldering his weight as they make their retreat. He has no gun, his hands useless appendages, his chest tight despite his best attempts to breathe easy.
“C’mon Peril we’re almost there.” Solo mumbles under his breath. Against every instinct, Illya loses track of their progress, one hall becomes another and then another and another, until it’s not rough concrete underfoot but wet grass, slick leaves that stick to the soles so his feet.
In the back of a retreating van, after the field medic’s prodding and the drip has been attached to his arm and Solo has reeled off the details of everything Illya has missed in the six days he spent chained to a pipe, Gaby touches his hand, her finger tips calloused against his skin.
“Sleep now Illya.” She says in her stalling Russian, “We’ll be here when you wake.”
And they are.
-
In a safe house outside Edinburgh he wakes to the sound of her singing in the shower (she’s terribly off-key crooning along to some music station on the radio). She's yet to explain how she's managed to be here at all. Perhaps she's been sent to fetch him. The wounds around his wrists are mostly healed now, he's been expecting Waverly’s call for days now.
He blinks in the low-light of morning, the weak grey-blue dawn he’s taken to understand signifies the Scottish summer, catches the weak glean of it on the dark face of the pearl that rises up over the wreath of diamonds at its base. The metal bites into the skin of his pinkie, too small and so ridiculously out of place it makes him smile.
“So I can find you,” she'd said last night as she slipped it on his finger, and her mouth had trembled, soft and frightened like he had never had an opportunity to see before.
He’d kissed her because it was better than reminding her that the tracking device hadn’t been active for almost a year. He does not consider himself an overly sentimental man, but can appreciate a gesture. "Yes." He'd finally answered, though there hadn't been a question at all.
-
“Your man.” Solo is saying when Illya approaches, dripping pool water as he goes, and Gaby rolls her eyes, pushes her sunglasses up her nose after she’s sure Napoleon has caught the full brunt of her derision, but not before catching Illya’s eye, grin dancing just out of reach at the corners of her mouth.
“Yes and what of it?”
-
The End