the motherland don't love you, the fatherland don't love you, so why love anything?
prompt: drowning their sorrows
whumpee: kind of all 3 of napoleon solo, illya kuryakin, gaby teller
fandom: the man from uncle
hey!! this fic is a bit different from my usual stuff, it's much more about the angst and kind of the character study type aspect, so it's not whump in a traditional sense. nonetheless i really enjoyed writing it and i hope you like reading it!! (title from ya hey by vampire weekend)
“Listen,” Napoleon says, after his sixth or seventh glass of Scotch. “Fuck the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Gaby raises an eyebrow at him, takes a sip from her glass, and waits for him to say something else.
Napoleon, however, seems to have lost his train of thought. “Fuck the CIA,” he repeats. “Nothing but a bunch of extortionists.”
“Yeah,” Gaby agrees, with the tone of one who doesn’t know exactly what it is they’re agreeing with but who is staunchly in support of it nonetheless. “Fuck the CIA,” she echoes, giggling at the English curse.
Napoleon smiles, then grows serious, evidently having remembered his earlier thoughts. He sets his glass down with a thump.
“No, really. I mean, God knows I’m no saint, but…look at us.” He gestures in a vague circle that encompasses himself, Gaby, and Illya, all painted with bruises and cuts of varying severity, marks of a severely botched mission and the reason for their present collective inebriation.
Napoleon then gestures to himself, prods at his fresh black eye with a bit more force than is wise. “Ow.”
“We do not work for the CIA,” Illya points out, speaking slowly to avoid jumbling his words. “Only you.”
Napoleon scowls at him. “Not the point, Peril. My point is…my point is, how often have we looked like this because of an UNCLE mission?”
Illya shrugs, scrunching up his face like he’s actually trying to count.
Gaby answers for him. “Not very often. Not this bad.”
Napoleon points at her. “Exactly. UNCLE has better intel - well, maybe not this time, but you know - and they actually sort of care about us. Like, Waverly probably wouldn’t threaten me with prison if I was a little cheeky with him. Probably.”
Gaby and Illya both nod.
“And,” Napoleon starts, more to indicate that he wants to keep talking and less to introduce a well thought-out sentence, “and. Okay. I mean, I’ve never been in the KGB and I didn’t grow up in East Berlin, so I can’t really speak for you guys, but my boss here?”
He stops, considers his use of prepositions, realizes they’re not actually in the States at the moment, and rephrases. “Back in the US, I mean. Sanders, my boss, terrible man, really, talking a big game about the country being on top of the world like he’s the one who put it there. Anyway. He threatens me with prison pretty much weekly.”
Gaby looks at him intently. “Can he actually send you to prison?”
Napoleon shrugs, does his best to be nonchalant. “Probably. It wouldn’t be too hard to convince whoever it is that needs convincing. I mean, sure, I’m useful as an agent, but at the end of the day I’m nothing but a dirty thief who should worship the ground the CIA…well, I guess the CIA as like, a thing, can’t walk, but you know…I should worship the ground the CIA walks on because they kept me out of prison. Not that working for them is anything like freedom.”
“I understand,” Gaby says, leaning slightly against Napoleon’s shoulder, partly as a gesture of comfort and solidarity and partly because everything has gone a little spinny. She waits until the feeling subsides, then speaks up again.
“In Berlin, they trap us. East Germany is supposed to be a good place, that’s what they tell you, but then they build this wall through the city. And what are we supposed to do? We can’t go over it, they will kill us. It’s like they don’t understand that it’s the same city on both sides. There’s no freedom like that. I don’t even miss it.”
She falls silent, finishes her drink, pours another, contemplates it for a moment.
“I do miss it, I guess. Is it possible to not miss your home?”
Her eyes have gone a bit glassy. Unconsciously, she rubs at the fresh red scratch on her cheek.
“It isn’t like East Germany ever cared about me. Or anyone, really. Do you know how many people they arrest every day? For nothing. They questioned me about my birth father once. Two years ago they arrested my neighbor for…how is it in English? Sed… something. They said he was against the state. He was only a painter.”
“Sedition,” Napoleon chimes in, shaking his head.
Gaby nods. “That’s it. Sedition.” She pronounces the word carefully, committing it to memory. “And even then I - I do miss it. Even after everything. There is nothing left for me there, no one. Still, sometimes I think about how I can never go back, and I think it should feel like…like freedom, but it doesn’t.”
She leans more heavily into Napoleon and shuts her eyes. She will not cry over this. Over a place that does not care for her in the slightest. Over a place that she is indifferent to and misses in the same breath.
A soft silence. Gaby scrubs at her eyes. Illya shifts slightly in his chair, keenly aware of the fact that it would seem to be his turn.
He finishes the last of his drink - he doesn’t know what it is, something Napoleon made that had tasted good earlier but is now horribly bitter. He doesn’t know how many of these terrible drinks he’s had. He should have kept count. He shouldn’t be so drunk. But he is, and so his tongue is loosened. He takes a deep breath and tries not to wince when his bruised ribs protest.
“My father was not a good man,” he says, and then stops. Napoleon and Gaby both look at him, attentive. He looks away, continues after a beat.
“He was arrested. Sent to Gulag. He stole money from the Party. I thought, they will kill him. But he is still alive. No one can see him. They will maybe tell me when he dies, I don’t know.”
He pauses, considers, formulates the English words. “He is a criminal. Or else they would have freed him. He is in prison for almost twenty years. Oleg Grigorievich, he says to me sometimes… Solo,” he says suddenly, looking at his partner.
Napoleon looks back at him with startling intensity. “Yeah?”
“You said that Sanders, he threatens you with prison, yes?” Illya asks, and then barrels on atop of Napoleon’s affirmative answer.
“Oleg Grigorievich also does this. He tells me I will end up in Siberia like my father if I do not perform well. I love my country, I will die for my country, but…I do not love him.”
Gaby nods seriously. “Fuck Oleg Gri…gorievich,” she proclaims, pausing in the middle of the patronymic to hiccup. Napoleon snorts, and she elbows him. He winces.
“Your elbows are sharp. And I already have a bruise,” he complains.
“Sorry,” Gaby apologizes, mostly sincerely.
Illya looks at them. He is beginning to think he should not have begun speaking, because now he is not sure that he can stop.
“I am good at my work. KGB needs me. I am happy to work for my country. But…”
“Go on,” Napoleon encourages, leaning forward.
“We won’t tell anyone,” Gaby adds. “Nobody tells anyone anything.”
“Except each other.”
“Obviously.”
“I was just making sure!”
“But,” Illya continues, and Napoleon and Gaby turn their attention back to him. “You are nice to me.”
He doesn’t say anything else. His face feels hot and his throat feels tight. For a very long moment all three of them just look at each other.
And then, as if by design (though neither one of them had spoken to the other), both Gaby and Napoleon get up and grab hold of Illya’s hands.
“What are you doing?” Illya asks, scarcely moving despite their straining.
“Come sit with us,” Gaby says.
“Please?” Napoleon adds. “So we can all be miserable together.”
“We are already together,” Illya points out.
“Come on, please?” Gaby asks.
Illya heaves another sigh that has him wincing. “Okay.”
He lets them pull him to his feet. For a second he gets horribly dizzy and he has to close his eyes. When he opens them again, he’s leaning against Napoleon and Gaby has her hands on his back.
“I’m fine,” he says. “Just dizzy.”
“So’m I,” Gaby agrees. “Come on, let’s sit.”
The three of them stumble back to the couch and sink down onto it rather ungracefully. Napoleon ends up in the middle, with Illya curled into the corner beside him and Gaby lying her head on his leg.
“I’m glad you ruined my car,” Gaby suddenly says, not moving her head from its pillow.
“What?” Napoleon asks. “We destroyed it. Beautiful car, too.”
Gaby shrugs as best as she can given her current position. “If you didn’t ruin my car, we would not be here now.”
She does have a point, Napoleon figures. “I’m glad we’re here,” he adds. “Working for the CIA is mostly terrible. Working with you is fun. You’re…” He trails off, unsure of or unwilling to fully voice any further words.
Illya shifts a little closer to them, carefully. “At home I am part of machine. I do not mind this, but with you I am something else. Not a machine.”
“Just a person,” Gaby says. “More free.”
It’s different for her, she knows. Her career as a spy has been with Waverly alone. The only person controlling her is someone she trusts and likes.
And yet Napoleon agrees. “Yeah,” he says, slowly. “I mean, Sanders is still in charge of me, but so is Waverly, and with UNCLE I’m not a prisoner of the US government, or at least I don’t feel like one. Maybe one of these days I won’t be, I don’t know. I’d work for UNCLE, with you guys, even if it was my choice, is what I mean, I suppose.”
“I am maybe not so free at home,” Illya chimes in, leaning slightly onto Napoleon. “This is how it is, I don’t mind. It is important that there is an order, things like this. But we…we care about each other, yes?”
It takes Gaby and Napoleon a second to realize that they’re being asked a question here.
“Of course,” says Napoleon.
“Obviously,” Gaby agrees.
“Okay. We care about each other. And maybe so does Waverly. This is different. I am…I have…I can be something else here. And that is good too.”
“Well put,” says Napoleon. “Now, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m feeling a little bit too drunk and a lot bit like I’d like to go to sleep.”
“Me too,” Gaby chimes in.
“Yes,” agrees Illya.
“And I’m not moving.”
“Me either.”
“I will stay.”
Napoleon nods slowly, closing his eyes when this makes him too dizzy. “Glad we’re agreed.”
They rearrange themselves as best as they can, which involves a lot of shuffling around, grabbing of arms for support, and general wincing. Eventually, they manage to configure themselves in a reasonably comfortable manner, all stacked and tangled together.
“Goodnight,” Gaby mumbles, voice muffled by the fabric of Napoleon’s shirt.
“Night,” Napoleon echoes, already half asleep with his face pressed into a cushion.
“Goodnight,” Illya concludes, head propped up at a slightly uncomfortable angle against the armrest.
In the morning, there will be pounding headaches, empty glasses and bottles to clean up, and various injuries to check in on. But for now, there is only silence and comfort. There is only them.
thanks for reading! this was a whole different kind of beast to write but i really loved getting to explore their characters like this, i have so many thoughts about them that don't often get to come through in my usual 'beat them up' fics. i hope you enjoyed this!!
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