Work Text:
The following document is the property of the [REDACTED] and should only be viewed by those with the clearance to do so.
Name : Napoleon Fiorenzo Vinceguerra
Nationality : Italian
DoB: [REDACTED]
Sex: Male
Height: 1.80m
Eye Color: Blue
Hair Color: Black
Winged: No
Wing Type: N/A
Mother: Victoria Vinceguerra
Father: Napoleon Solo [DECEASED. See files on Commander Solo: Trans-Siberian War.]
Address: [REDACTED]
Telephone: [REDACTED]
Current Residence: [REDACTED], LONDON. UNITED KINGDOM.
As U.N.C.L.E. Director, Gaby Teller doesn’t really see all that much of Napoleon Vinceguerra. She doesn’t go on missions anymore. Hasn’t for a long time. She had never quite healed from that wound she had gotten in France, back in 1976, and her hip still aches in cold weather.
Which is why she’s in her office, drinking alone, while everyone else is in the pub across the road. They had hired it for the event… Another year gone.
She wonders, sometimes… is it really something to celebrate? Time slipping through one’s fingers. Her hair is lined with faint silver; probably a little premature, but Waverly had always said that the job took its toll on you. Like it or not.
She misses him.
Her desk is clean. She’s a tidy person, always has been. All it holds now is a half-empty bottle of gin, some files and two faded photos.
She is so much younger in the first; clad in stained overalls and a messy ponytail. The man behind her is laughing, black curls loose and carefree as his eyes. He’s handsome, devoid of the fear that had overtaken him on the day when he had been stolen away from her.
Napoleon Solo.
She had traced him, after recruiting young Mr. Vinceguerra. Had sifted through draft records, old notes from the Siberian Front, pieced together his story. The blanks had been filled in by the Vinceguerras themselves. Their story.
The other photo is of a tall, handsome man, his short hair a pale blonde, dove wings spread behind him. He had not survived the war. Killed in a Kiev, if she remembered right. He had sparked the Kryl’ya Nadezhdy. Wings of Hope.
Trust Illya to be made into a fucking martyr after he was gone…
It hadn’t helped, though.
Russia is a wasteland, and Gaby is here, alone without either of her boys. She wishes they could have met, Solo and Illya. Maybe the three of them could have been a family.
So, she toasts them and leans back in her chair, tongue burning with the gin. She stopped tasting it long ago.
She’s not sure how long it is before she hears the knock. It echoes, and Gaby lets out a sigh. She’s not sure if she can handle people right now. But, sadly, handling people just so happens to be her job, so she calls out,
“Come in.”
And of course it is Napoleon Vinceguerra who opens the door.
He looks so much like his late father. The same blue eyes; the curls, though he wears his free from pomade; the little half-smile, crooked and quirked. But he’s slimmer than Solo had been, his face slightly more angular. From his mother, no doubt. Not to mention that despite both his parents having wings, he’s somehow flightless. It happens. It’s a bit like Russian roulette: sometimes you’re lucky, sometimes not.
“Yes, Mr. Vinceguerra?” She cannot help how her heart twists. She cannot.
“Ma’am.” His voice is deep for one his age. Melodic. Sometimes she catches him humming a song, always the same one. She’s still not sure what it is. “Uh, Danielle was asking after you. Is there a reason you’re not joining us?”
Gaby gazes at him, not really seeing the young man. She’s seeing a ghost. A man who grins and spreads his wings, the gleaming feathers blotting out the sky. Then she shakes herself, the spiderwebs of old memories breaking like torn lace. “Sit down.”
He closes the door behind him and settles into the chair before her desk. He’s more composed that Solo had been, less casual. But his dress-sense… this evening it’s a smokey-blue waistcoat and slacks, his undershirt a pale grey. He wears his father’s signet ring on his pinkie, the gold muted in the dim light. Stamped with the crest of Janus, if she remembers correctly. She’s never understood that.
For a moment, he is silent. Gaze taking in the gin, the cleanliness. “You… prefer to be alone?” he says at last.
“Very perceptive, Solo.”
It slips out, like a breath of wind through the chinks of a wall.
“Solo?” Napoleon’s eyes are wide, suddenly full of an almost desperate interest.
Gaby curses herself for the slip-up. She has been trying so hard to avoid this conversation. The pain. “I… I’m sorry…”
“You… you mean Napoleon Solo?” The young man swallows, now looking unsure. “You knew my father?”
Well, shit.
No getting out of it now. Gaby pours herself some more gin and dulls the ace in her throat with its burn. “I did. We were good friends before the war.”
Napoleon says, “Oh…” The sound carries so much. It is longing and loss and perhaps a little bit of pride. It’s the admission of a son who has nothing of his father save for tales told by others. And while Gaby might not be overly fond of Victoria and Alexander Vinceguerra, she had realized very quickly, during one of their few meetings, that they had loved Solo. That he had not been alone.
It was hard to dislike them after that.
“He was a good man,” muses Gaby. “A good man in a terrible circumstance.”
“Mother said he wasn’t cut out for war,” says Napoleon. “That it broke him. Somewhere… deep.”
Gaby nods in acquiescence. “It does that to most people, liebling.” She had fled America after Solo had been taken. Joined Waverly in the UK. Her uncle (no pun intended) had insisted on it.
Napoleon looks away, biting his lip.
Sometimes, Gaby longs for children. She recalls a conversation with Illya one night in the Russian camp, the snow falling like rose petals. One of his beautiful wings spread around her like a cloak. The war was still young back then. The sorrow only beginning. None of them could have predicted how it would end.
“It’s like an agreement,” she had said, warm under his feathers. “Choosing to start a family with someone.”
“And love?” he had asked in reply, ice-blue eyes serious. He was always so serious… “Is this not important?”
“Oh, yes, it is.” Gaby had blown on her hands to warm them up. Her cheeks rosy from the cold. “But I think you need to be friends too. Be able to depend on each other, you know?”
Illya had thought this over, brow furrowed, then nodded. “Da, I see.” A faint smile had followed. “Yes… yes, I understand. You make good point.”
Would she have had children if everything had been different? Would they have been his?
She re-focuses on Napoleon with some difficulty, gentling her tone. “Are you okay?”
He lets out a small laugh. “Yeah. I’m alright.” He runs a hand over his face. It shakes a little. “I just… I wish I could have met him, is all.”
“He’s be proud of you,” says Gaby, and she knows it’s true. What she doesn’t tell him is what Victoria had said that one evening over wine. That she didn’t think Napoleon would have chosen life even if he had known she’s been carrying his child. He had been to badly broken, Victoria had said. And the sheen in her eyes had looked almost like tears. He’d suffered enough.
“Thanks, Ms. Teller.” Napoleon gives her a smile, less sad now. More wistful.
Then he gets to his feet and offers her a hand. When she raises an eyebrow he says, “Join us.”
Gaby feels that ache once again. Sees two ghosts, one fair-haired, the other dark. Both smile, their wings dissolving into smoke. She feels so alone. “I’d rather not.” But it sounds weak, even to her ears.
Napoleon’s eyes are gentle, his voice low when he says, “No one should be alone all the time, Ms. Teller. Not even you.”
She takes his hand.
It’s late. Or possibly early. All Gaby knows is that it is still dark outside and the pub is warm and full of life.
All of U.N.C.L.E.’s London HQ is here. Trainees to desk managers. Field agents to security. All smiling, all slightly drunker than originally intended.
And Gaby finds that she is enjoying it. The ache is less. And Napoleon has noticed, because she catches the grin he sends her way. She flips him off.
It feels too easy.
It’s not easy enough.
At some point, Napoleon commandeers the dusty old piano in the corner and begins to play. It takes half a verse for Gaby to recognize it as the song he is always humming. Except, this time, he is singing, voice rich and smooth as he works the keys. He’s singing in his native tongue, Gaby knows. The young Italian man… so like and yet unlike his father.
“Vorrei tenerti qui vicino a me, adesso che fra noi non c’è più nulla.” His eyes are far away, and Gaby finds herself swaying to the music. “Vorrei sentire ancor le tue parole, quelle parole che non sento più.”
Perhaps the sense of family has been here all along… thinks Gaby to herself as she looks about the room at these people. Her people. All working tirelessly to keep everyone safe. To help those in need. To ensure there is never another war like that which destroyed Mother Russia.
They are a light in the darkness. A flame in the lamps. A shield.
A team.
“Che me ne faccio ormai,” sings Napoleon Vinceguerra, voice soaring on the melody. “De tutti I giorni miei. Se nei miei giorni, non ci sei più tu…”
It really is a beautiful song.
Gaby feels some of her aching sorrow begin to lift away and rolls her shoulders.
No more looking back, both Solo and Illya would have agreed. Only forwards.
They are the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.
They are U.N.C.L.E.
And out there are people who need them.
A world who will always need them.
Her family.