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When Illya walks away from U.N.C.L.E., he does so with a certainty and a finality. He closes every door firmly, drops each and every key into the Hudson, and doesn't look back, not once.
He chooses fashion completely at random, but with a degree of deliberate care. There are very few professions that scream quite so loudly that one is of a certain persuasion, and fashion, for a man, is one of them. Women's fashion is the specialty that removes all doubt, in the average person's mind.
As a deterrent, it works beautifully. Any agency that otherwise might have tried to recruit him, white, black or grey in moral fibre, is dissuaded. After all, homosexuals are undesirable in the hypermasculine, heteronormative world of espionage, the exception being as a weakness to be exploited in a mark, a lever to force someone to submit to your wishes. He'd used it himself dozens of times, somehow hating himself more for it than for preventable deaths or abuse of women he could have interceded to stop. He doesn't know what that says about him, save that it's a particularly vicious thorn of self-loathing he has so far been unable to draw.
Purely by chance, fashion is something he finds he has a natural aptitude for, and even enjoys in a quiet way so opposite to the adrenalin swoops of his former career. It shouldn't surprise him so much, he realises. After all, it's just lying. A cut here, a pleat there, the drape of this fabric over that – it's a series of lies told in cloth that add up to a beautiful illusion. Instead of a sting or a con, it's a dress. In the end, it's all fake.
His is not a name on the lips of common people all over the Western world, but he's not unknown, either. In an era of glaring colour and dizzying print, he builds a brand on catalogues of clean lines, striking but simple colour palettes and unvarying elegance. He's brusque and abrasive and sullen, and certainly isn't one for functions or events not absolutely required for the success of his business, but he's respected. He pays his workers fairly, his ego is frankly humble for the industry, and he doesn't fuck his models. He doesn't fuck anyone. He develops a reputation as something of an ascetic. He doesn't party, he doesn't screw, he doesn't get high or mellow. He doesn't even smoke.
“He's a Communist, man,” he hears someone murmur to someone else once, meaning, he knew, they don't know how to have fun.
He's not rolling in money, but he's pretty sure his new career alone has set his feet firmly down the path to being a filthy bourgeoisie. After all, fashion is arguably one of the most frivolous industries of all. It's aimed almost exclusively at the disgustingly wealthy, and the products aren't even practical for wear outside events that are essentially fashion parades combined with jockeying for social position in the capitalist echelons.
“Krufts, for humans,” he mutters more than once while he finishes the final touches on designs for a gown that will in short order be worn to the Academy Awards.
It's dazzling in the flashbulbs of the cameras.
I made that, he thinks. From the sketches to the seams. Everything. He hadn't trusted anyone else. Those fingers that had squeezed a trigger, defused bombs and pressed against mortal wounds, futilely, had created something beautiful. Ephemeral and timeless, all at once.
And beside the odd pin prick, nobody had bled for it.
He only sees Napolean once, after.
He's at a party, all glamour and sequins and champagne. His head hurts, and there's a half-finished dress that he's seriously thinking about unpicking and starting again with a different line – more tailored, flaring out a bit more at the waist – and suddenly, he is there.
Napoleon is across the room, leaning into the personal space of a girl, always a girl. He's somehow older but exactly the same, the same smug tilt to his smile, the same confidence that always made Illya want to... do something. Hit him. Hold him. Shout at him until he ran out of breath. Whatever it was, he never, ever let himself lose his self-control to find out.
He's transfixed, like a rabbit in a headlight, when Napolean glances over, uncannily staring directly at him for just a moment. His expression doesn't change, but Illya knows he's been seen, knows that now is the moment -
It passes. Napolean is flirting with the girl again. He never stopped. Illya doesn't know if she's a mark or just a pretty face Napolean wants to see gasping in his hotel sheets. It never really matters. There is always another girl.
There's a champagne glass in his hand, dampening his fingertips with condensation, and the fingers of his other hand are touching his ear gently. His radio receiver isn't working. He couldn't hear what Napolean just said to make her laugh and place her hand on Napolean's chest, above his heart...
There is no receiver. There hasn't been one for years.
He replaces the champagne, untouched, on the tray of a white-gloved waiter. He doesn't look back as he leaves.