Chapter Text
Gaby shrieks Illya awake. She’s on the floor, screaming like a steam kettle, and the room is shaking violently, chunks of plaster coming off the ceiling and ornaments jolting off the tumbling tables and walls. Illya hurls himself out of bed, taking one long stride on a floor that is heaving under his foot like an amusement park ride and throws himself over her. Gaby quiets as he hits her (no breath, no scream) and grabs onto his forearm so hard her stubby nails break into his skin. The planks are separating in inch-wide gaps as the floor rolls in waves, and Illya can feel plaster and lathe impacting his pajama-clad back.
The sound is incredible; dull roaring from outside, crashes, screaming, deep, tearing groans, animals crying in fear, shouts for help- it’s a cacophony of hell. He can’t see a thing, but he can feel Gaby shuddering under him as his body slams against hers. His alarm clock bounces by and the glowing dial seems to show around 5am. With an abrupt rending sound, a wall comes down. He’s not able to tell where, but the sudden cooler breeze makes him think it was the front facade. Gaby’s intake of breath lets him know she feels it too, and with no warning, the floor is dropping away underneath them, and Illya is sliding forward on the warped planks, Gaby trapped under his body. He rolls hard, flipping himself off her, and shoving her away. Gaby locks her hand around his wrist as he drops off the edge into the air. She’s screaming again, anguished repetitions of his name, as simple physics works against her. Illya grabs the edge of the flooring, grunting in pain as something tears his palm, and holds on, legs dangling over God knows what.
Gaby brings her other hand around and grabs Illya’s wrist. She’s being dragged inexorably forward by his weight, and all she can do is cry his name over and over. Her foot hits something hard, and hooks around it, and she can arrest her forward motion, but Illya’s too heavy, and she can’t find any purchase. He’s over the edge and her tenuous grip is the only thing between him and the three-story drop, and as she holds, groaning with the effort, tears running down her face, the building continues to vibrate and shred apart.
“Gaby. Let go.” Illya’s voice is strained, but determined. She shakes her head in frantic denial, but her foot is slipping. “Let go. Is going to be okay.”
“No! You’ll fall!” She’s not letting go of him, not in the dark and the unsteady world. Even Illya Kuryakin can’t fall off a building and remain unscathed.
“Let. Me. Go.” He’s biting off each word, and Gaby pulls back with all her strength on her wedged foot when he gets his free hand up and hits her arm hard, knocking her fingers open. She wails in echoing protest as his wrist pops out of her grasp and lunges, but grasps empty air as she slides away from the anchoring foothold.
“IllyaIllyaIllyaIllyanononono…” She’s chanting his name at a hysterical pitch, crabwalking toward the edge, and when his calm voice sounds beneath her, she bursts into noisy sobs and collapses facedown on the floor. He’s not dead.
What’s saved Illya is low ceilings. He’s hit his head in stairwells many times, but in this instance, his height is a blessing. Once he stopped sliding, his feet found the edge of the floor below him and he landed safely but painfully on his face in a welter of furniture and picture frames on the level planks of the next story. He can hear Gaby crying his name and it tears his heart, but she’s secure and he can turn his attention to getting them safely out of the ruined hotel.
There is some light now, as the sun is beginning to rise, and Illya picks himself out of the furniture tangle and speaks to Gaby. “I am okay. Are you hurt?” She snuffles wetly, and her voice is tear-soaked when she replies in the negative, but it’s a sweet sound to him. “Can you see any of our cases? Or my shoes?”
Gaby sits up and wipes her face on her pajama sleeve. Illya is alive and well, and she’s going to slap him so hard later for making her think she was dropping him to his death. She crawls across the canted floor with care, avoiding as many jagged edges as she can, sweeping her hands before her in slow arcs as she looks for their things. Below her, Illya’s growl admonishes her to be careful, that supplies aren’t worth injuring herself over. She bangs her elbow on something and curses and he anxiously calls her name.
“I’m fine, Illya. Can you see anyone else?” Gaby asks, locating one of his boots and shoving it behind her. What looks like his gear bag is about two feet away, caught on a piece of pipe sticking out of the wall, and Gaby squirms toward it, freezing in place when the floor emits a mighty groan and sags.
“Be careful.” Illya snaps. “Floor could go at any minute.”
“I think I have your bag, the mission one. We can’t leave it here. It has the fake passports and the trackers in it.” Gaby retorts, stretching her arm to its fullest extension and brushing her fingers across the leather. Another vicious shake of the building helps her even as it causes more debris from the ceiling to rain onto her head. Tugging Illya’s bag by the strap, she sidles toward where she thinks the bed was. Her clothes are catching on broken wood and plaster, and her bare toes are suspiciously sticky where she dug them into the floor.
“The bag is not worth your life,” Illya frets. “Come to edge, I will lift you down.”
“We need whatever we can find to wear and use. I can’t imagine that many shops are still standing after this. Or that we are going to have a mission to accomplish.” Gaby says quellingly.
She hears Illya’s breath suck in harshly below her at the mention of the mission. Solo is not in their hotel. They have no way of checking on him and no idea if he is even still alive. Gaby closes her eyes against a welling of fear for the suave American and then returns determinedly to her search.
If the building was stable enough, Illya would be pacing. Having Gaby a (creaking) floor above him is unnerving, and he wants to get both of them out of the ruined structure as fast as possible. She’s dropped his suit jacket, one of his Chelsea boots and his mission bag down to him, and now he can hear her grunting as she yanks at something making ominous shifting noises. He’s told her to leave it, but can’t get up to her to enforce his wishes, and once he gets his hands on her, a spanking is a strong possibility, as well as a lecture on obeying the orders of a more experienced agent during emergencies.
Gaby is cursing under her breath, and then quite loudly as she digs through a pile of broken glass and objects under the toppled dresser. Tiny cuts are searing her fingertips as she wrestles the sideways top drawer out and slows the fall of everything in it. Illya’s gun is in her hand, and she sighs with relief. They are no longer defenseless; assuming freely that anyone would ever consider Illya Kuryakin without defenses. He’s a human weapon.
The weapon speaks irritably from below, hurrying her along as she ignores the unsteady floors. There’s something else she needs to find, more important than Illya’s gun, or his wallet, which she locates and shoves into the cups of a bra she’s fished out of the pile. An aftershock has her flattening herself to the boards, arms outstretched for stability. Something separates in the walls and the floor abruptly cants the other way.
“Time to go.” Illya commands, but she ignores him, picking desperately through the last contents of the drawer and bundling them into a pair of his briefs.
“I’m coming.” Gaby slithers across the floor toward him, encountering the duvet on her way. She drags it along behind her. It may come in handy. There is shouting from the street below, and she hopes that one of the voices is Solo. She bundles everything into the duvet and hands it down to Illya who holds up his arms to her.
“I can do better than that,” she chides, and locks her fingers around a former water pipe, allowing herself to flip forward and hang much like the parallel bars of her childhood. The Communist obsession with gymnastics has come in handy before. Illya plucks her effortlessly from the air and cradles her into his body, and she hugs him fiercely in return, burrowing into his solid warmth and wrapping her legs around his waist as he holds her. Something thuds against the floor behind them. It’s a ladder, leaned there by a bedraggled hotel employee.
“Kýrios kai i̱ kyría Kuryakin, are you unhurt?” the desk clerk calls up, “Do you need help to get down?” A small crowd is forming behind him, a ragtag assemblage dressed in the gamut of sleepwear and various underthings. One lucky individual has a robe. No one has shoes.
“No. We are coming.” Illya says curtly. He releases Gaby reluctantly and sets her back from him to assure himself she is undamaged. He frowns deeply as he sees the wet footprints she is leaving on the dusty floor, and seizes her hands to inspect the myriad of tiny cuts from sorting though the broken glass. He runs his hands down her arms and legs, but when he moves to her torso, she swats him away.
“I’m fine, Illya. Let me look at you.” Gaby dabs ineffectually at his ear, coming away bloody. “Still attached, which is good.” She pokes at the side of his head and he grumbles.
“We get down first. If building falls on us, we will need more than cosmetic bandages. We will need comfortable coffins.”
Illya goes first, handing down the bundles to the many helping hands and pausing a moment to put on his single boot.
Gaby laughs, “Cinderella, you’ve lost your slipper.”
“This was terrible party.” He swings around the edge onto the ladder and a quarter of the edge crumbles under his weight, slamming the ladder forward as he yanks his hands off it. Barely two inches of ladder are braced now, and Illya scrambles down as fast as he can. If the ladder slips he can still catch Gaby as she falls.
Gaby picks her way daintily to the edge, staring down at him with the challenging expression he likes so much. The sun crests the horizon, gilding her face and turning her frazzled hair into a glowing nimbus. She’s a goddess, even battered and bleeding. Another quake hits hard, and Gaby leaps, soaring into the air, absolutely confident that Illya’s hands will be there, and they are. He grunts as he takes her weight, then he’s carrying her to the center of the street, flopping down to sit with her in his lap with none of his usual lethal grace.
They ride out the aftershock wrapped in each other’s arms. When the earth stills again, Illya runs his hands down Gaby’s back, and she lifts her face from his neck. “We have choice to make,” he begins.
“We’re not leaving.” Her tearstained face is resolute, grimy and gamine, and her pretty jaw is set in the pugnacious expression he knows so well.
“You stay where I can see you, then. Always. Or we leave here.” Her eyes flash, but she knows that arguing is the least effective way to get Illya to do anything. “Solo is lost,” Illya pauses, and his eyes shift away from her as he swallows painfully, then back, piercing in their icy intensity. “I do not want you lost too.”
Gaby clambers out of his lap and heads determinedly for the pile of their remaining possessions. She slings the duvet over her shoulder, and ignoring the hovering desk clerk, returns to Illya in the middle of the ruined asphalt. Crushed cars line both sides, covered in brick and mortar, furniture, and dust. The destruction goes as far as the eye can see; downed buildings, piles of furnishings, a few limp bodies. The Skopje Hotel is piles of debris, as is most of the Macedonia Hotel behind them. Small groups of people are gathering here and there, many weeping, some wandering in shock, others helping the less fortunate. Gaby drops the duvet and says quietly, “I have your gun.”
Illya nods tightly and a moment later the pistol vanishes under his pajama top. “Ammunition?”
“Only if you had some in your bag.”
His bag yields no ammo, but it does have a small medical kit, which he wastes no time in using on Gaby’s feet and his face and hands. While she fusses over his torn ear, he takes stock. Besides the duvet and his suit coat, Gaby retrieved three pairs of his briefs, one of her brassieres, his checked wool cap, a towel, two silk scarves, her makeup bag, and a random tangle of jewelry. His heart stutters. His watch is wrapped in and around her earrings and a pair of sunglasses, tangled in a chain belt (not the Rabanne, the Schiaparelli), and he immediately secures it around his wrist. “Thank you,” he murmurs, voice choked.
She looks up from where she is searching through the pile on the duvet and sees what he is staring at. “Of course,” she says briskly, passing him the tracking receiver. “Next time don’t rush me.”
He fiddles with the receiver, trying to see if he can pick up a signature from the various bugs stashed in Solo’s luggage, but nothing signals a return. He’s not surprised; even if Solo survived, the transmitter may not have. A sharp ripping sound gets his attention, and he looks up to see Gaby using his combat knife to cut the bath towel into strips, which she proceeds to wrap around his bare foot, covering them with a random sock lying nearby. The sock is a bit small, but that’s to the good, since if the towelling works loose, the sock will secure it. More tearing, and his briefs are swaddled around Gaby’s feet, the elastic serving like odd Roman sandals. She hacks at his suit coat, ignoring his protests, and fashions him shorter sleeves and opens up the underarms. He finds a pair of leather gloves in his bag, and tugs them on while Gaby maneuvers into her brassiere under the pajama top. She wiggles into his undershirt under the pajamas the same way, then ties the ripped top into a knot at her waist, braids her hair swiftly and ties it back with a scarf, looping the other scarf through her “engagement ring”; the one he gave her in Rome, and hanging it around her neck.
He’s pleased. “Now I can keep track of you. Good thinking.”
Gaby flashes him a quick grin. She’s rolled their remaining things into the duvet and uses a pair of her ruined stockings to make a bedroll style pack, looping the makeshift straps over her shoulder.
Illya checks his watch. It’s 5:37, and another tremor shakes the city, flinging Gaby off her feet and back into the circle of his arm. This time the rest of the hotel collapses, covering them both in a vicious dust cloud and hurling another board into his sore back. Gaby huddles into his jacket and he closes his eyes against the flying debris and buries his face in the space between her neck and shoulder. Her scent is sweetly floral, overlaid with the tang of fear sweat, and he breathes her in deeply.
The new screams get their attention, and Gaby leaps from his lap. The collapsed hotel has trapped someone, as evidenced by the group of people throwing aside debris. Illya moves swiftly to help, locking his gloved hands under a huge section of wood and lifting. Other men rush to his aid, and in a moment the desk clerk is squirming bravely into the revealed space and dragging free an older woman. She seems undamaged, but upset, and sobs noisily in the arms of her rescuer.
“Is everyone who is left accounted for?” Illya demands, lowering the chunk of wall slowly as the answer comes in the affirmative. “Good. Everyone who can walk, go to the river. Find a clear space in a park, or on a street. Help will be coming. Stay out of buildings, if any are standing. The structures will be weak.”
“Always the architect,” says Gaby from under his elbow, ignoring his glare.
Somehow Illya has become the leader of the little group from the hotel, and as they walk, the desk clerk stammers questions at him. Illya does his best to offer reassurance and information, but really, the man knows just as much as he does. Skopje is his city, after all.
They stop several times to assist in rescue efforts. It seems that half the city’s inhabitants had been on the way to work when the quake hit, and almost everyone is dressed, as opposed to the déshabillé of the few remaining Macedonia Hotel guests. Illya’s strength is much in demand, and people try and press money into his hands several times, which he refuses. During one such pause, Gaby gets a half-crushed truck running, and they load it with wounded. The river seems to be where most people are heading; between the live electrical wires, the cracked gas lines, and the random geysers of water from broken pipes, the riverbanks seem like a haven.
News comes slowly, and rumors. There is a great fire burning the right bank of the river, and the Emperor Duahan Bridge has been swallowed into the Vardar. No, the bridge is fine, and the left bank is ablaze. The train station has collapsed and there are no survivors. There are survivors and they are digging them out. The five-story Kaarpus building is now three stories, two of them swallowed up by the earth. Typhus will spread soon; all water must be boiled. All the hospitals are gone, as are the clinics and the pharmacies.
Gaby clings to Illya’s hand as they walk, leading their small band of bewildered tourists. She steps daintily to save her makeshift slippers; Illya’s underwear can only hold her for so long, and the footing is a mess. The big hotel was full, but the group behind them numbers only about thirty, including a few employees. Most of the guests and staff are gone, crushed under the building, and as Gaby looks up into Illya’s grim face, she realizes that Solo is most likely dead. She doesn’t know how he could be anything else. The world went mad and the Gods destroyed Skopje. Attuned to her as always, Illya pauses for a second, touching a gentle hand to her cheek and raising her eyes to his. “Cowboy is nothing if not resourceful. Maybe he is okay,” he says, as much to convince himself as her. His mouth quirks slightly in what she has come to know as his smile. “Your eyelash is…” .
Her eyelash is loose, and flopping, and he flutters one huge hand descriptively. Impatiently, she shoves it back, but gives up and peels it off, dropping it to the cracked pavement like a ruined caterpillar. Illya barks a surprised laugh. “You look…lopsided. Like butterfly with one wing.”
Gaby bats her remaining false eyelash at him. “Ugly stepsister?”
“You could never be ugly,” he replies, blue eyes crystalline and always truthful. “Cleaner, maybe. And clothes leave something to be desired.”