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As curious as he is about this whole “UNCLE” lark, as as glad as he can put off seeing Sanders for a little while, Napoleon isn’t sure he can handle whatever mission is waiting for them in Istanbul. He doesn’t think he’s ever ended a mission as banged-up as he is right now, and he doesn’t know how much help he’ll be. Even setting aside the havoc the electrocution has played on his body and psyche, he’s pretty sure he’s at least mildly concussed, there’s something wrong with his right wrist, and just about every inch of him is bruised.
His first mistake is getting on the plane.
Between the cycles of pressurization and depressurization and the turbulence they experience on nearly every flight between Rome and Istanbul, the plane rides awaken what feels like another thousand aches in his body. He’s dizzy. His breathing feels wrong. His joints hurt. Honestly, he just might pass out, and wouldn’t that be embarrassing?
His second mistake is ordering a drink.
He watches the pretty flight attendant pour the drink. He sees other passengers with drinks poured from the same bottle. But when he takes a sip, chemical bitterness coats his tongue, and it takes everything he has to not choke. It’s not real, he tells himself, closing his eyes, but he doesn’t trust his body or his mind. There is one person on this plane – hell, on this planet – he does trust, though.
“Peril,” Napoleon says tightly to the man sitting next to him.
“Yes, Cowboy?” Illya asks. He sounds concerned. Napoleon wonders how bad he looks to invoke that reaction.
Napoleon finds asking for help mortifying, especially from a man who was an enemy agent a week ago. But it would be more mortifying to have a flashback on a jetplane, and he’s aware enough of his own psyche to realize that’s what he’s heading for. He thrusts the glass in Illya’s direction.
“Tell me this isn’t drugged.”
Illya takes the glass, and then Napoleon hears him sniff it before taking a cautious sip. A few seconds go by, and then Illya says, with no judgment whatsoever, “Is not drugged, Cowboy.” Illya carefully hands Napoleon his drink back, making sure Napoleon’s hands are wrapped around it before letting go. That makes his irregularly-beating heart flutter in a way he is not going to examine.
But the surge of panic had done its job, and he feels even worse than he had five minutes ago.
He at least realizes what a mistake trying to sleep would be.
Four hours in, though, he’s starting to regret his decision to not sleep. His head hurts too much to read. He begs the flight attendant for paper and a pencil, but his hands are trembling too badly to sketch on the airline-branded stationery.
He glares over at Illya, who’s snoozing away beside him. Napoleon steals Illya’s cigarettes in revenge. Maybe the nicotine will numb his aching lungs.
Shockingly, it helps a little, and he breathes easier for a little while.
Maybe, Napoleon thinks as they land in Istanbul, not sleeping was a mistake. He’s limping and trying not to stagger like a drunk. He aches and aches and aches.
The time between deplaning and getting to the hotel is a blur. Napoleon only really comes back to himself when he’s standing in a hotel room, staring at the two matching beds. Illya is beside him.
Oh, hell. He had thought he would at least have a room to himself so he could fall apart without an audience.
Napoleon is so tired he moves on autopilot as he drops his suitcase by one of the beds and begins undressing, uncaring of where his clothing falls. Once he’s down to his undershirt and briefs, he crawls into bed and flops down on his back. He’s asleep in seconds.
Almost immediately he’s back in that chamber of horrors, reliving it in vibrant color, only this time Rudi looks like he must have after roasting alive. His eyeless sockets bore into Napoleon as his blackened lips split in a grin.
Napoleon is pretty sure he’s crying.
When he gasps awake, there’s a dark figure looming over him, and he strikes out. The figure has better reflexes, though, and grabs his wrist. Napoleon can’t help the small noise of pain that slips from his lips, and then his wrist is dropped. The dark figure resolves into Illya, looking even more worried than he had sounded on the plane.
“Thanks for the rescue,” Napoleon says, and he doesn’t just mean from the nightmare. He takes a few hitching breaths, hoping his pounding heart will slow. It doesn’t.
“Going to make it, Cowboy?” Illya asks, trying to sound blasé.
“Not sure yet,” Napoleon answers, and it comes out a lot more sincere than he wants it to.
Thankfully, that seems to be the end of the night’s dramatics: when Napoleon finally drifts off hours later, he sleeps dreamlessly, and he feels a little less dead in the morning.
Then he makes his biggest mistake: he takes a shower.
When he wakes up, the room’s air conditioning is on full-blast, and the room is almost icy. Peril must have turned it on to keep from melting like a hunk of Siberian ice. Napoleon thinks nothing of it as he turns the shower on to his preferred warmth. Then he steps into the shower a minute later, and the sudden change in temperature makes him suddenly, violently nauseated. He bends over, heaving, and something about the action makes black spots overtake his vision.
It seems his body has finally hit its limit.
He doesn’t remember crashing against the glass shower door hard enough to crack it. He doesn’t remember Illya rushing in to catch him before his head hits the tile wall. He doesn’t remember Illya’s frantic phone call to Waverly’s room. He doesn’t remember the way Gaby speeds the whole way to the nearest hospital.
When he comes back to awareness, his first realization is that his hands are trapped. He jerks, trying to move them. His first conscious thought is not again.
“It’s just us, Cowboy,” a familiar voice says. It’s a voice he trusts. If the owner of that voice is holding his hands, he won’t fight them. It’d be nice.
He comes back to himself in bits and pieces, and after a small eternity of floating in the blackness behind his eyelids, he opens his eyes to face whatever situation he’s found himself in now.
The first thing he sees is Illya, who looks at him with an absurd amount of relief.
“Welcome back, Cowboy,” he says. Napoleon realizes that the hand Illya is holding is in a cast, and his eyebrows furrow.
“Oh thank god,” says a voice from his other side, and he rolls his head toward it. Gaby is sitting at his other side, holding his left hand between both of her own. There are tear-tracks on her cheeks, and his brow furrows further at the sight of them. What had happened?
First, though: “Where am I?” he asks, voice so rough he can barely get the words out. Illya lets go of his hand to bring a cup of water to Napoleon’s lips, helping him take sips of it until his throat is soothed.
“You are in hospital,” Illya says. “You collapsed,” he continues, answering Napoleon’s next question before he can ask it. Gaby sniffles and, as Napoleon watches, begins to cry again. He hates making pretty ladies cry.
He must say that out loud, because Gaby coughs out a wet laugh.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Gaby asks suddenly. Napoleon’s brow furrows; he’s honestly having trouble remembering what he didn’t tell her. “About what, what he did to you.”
Ah. That.
He swallows heavily. “You didn’t need to know.”
“Bullshit,” she says. “It’s my fault.”
Napoleon sighs and closes his eyes. He doesn’t have the energy for this argument.
“Let Cowboy rest,” Illya tells Gaby, not unkindly. “You will have plenty of time to question him while he is recovering.”
“Recovering?” Napoleon asks with scorn. They’re on a mission. There isn’t any time for recovery.
“Yes, recovering, Mr. Solo,” another voice chimes in, making Napoleon go stiff. Waverly.
“Sir,” he says, opening his eyes and trying to look as professional as he can while lying in a hospital bed.
Waverly comes to stand at the foot of Napoleon’s bed. “You’ll likely be discharged soon since they were able to even out your heart rate,” he says. “I’ve moved the four of us to a house I’ve rented, so you have more space while you heal.” Then he sighs. “I’d like to apologize, as well. Had I realized the extent of your injuries, I would not have had you immediately move on to this mission. We’ll be taking things a good deal slower to account for your recovery.”
Napoleon bristles. He doesn’t appreciate his current handler treating him with kid gloves. “I hope you won’t make Peril pick up the slack, sir. He did have a motorcycle land on him, after all. I bet even Soviet super-agents need to heal after that.”
“Oh, did he,” Waverly says, looking over at Illya, unimpressed. “Mr. Kuryakin, after you’ve finished your visit with Mr. Solo, I believe you need to have some x-rays done.”
Illya glares at Napoleon, who just smiles back.
True to Waverly’s word, the hospital discharges Napoleon a few hours later. By then, Illya has had x-rays done and has returned to Napoleon’s bedside, now with wrapped ribs. Apparently Soviet Superman only has a few broken ribs and no worse internal damage. If only all of them could be so lucky.
Before they discharge him, though, a doctor comes in to discuss Napoleon’s injuries: damage to his heart and lungs and nerves, a concussion, a broken wrist, damage to a host of muscles and tendons, and plenty of bruises. Then the doctor tries to have an awkward conversation about some of the injuries Victoria left behind, but Napoleon shuts him down with an assurance he won’t be seeing her ever again. Before leaving, the doctor goes over the medications he’s prescribed to keep Napoleon’s body from falling apart.
They make Napoleon sit in a wheelchair between his bedside and the car Waverly has apparently rented, which is frankly a little humiliating. Illya helps Napoleon into the car, then slides into the backseat with him. Apparently Waverly snagged the passenger’s seat. Gaby, of course, is driving, but she’s as gentle as she can be in Istanbul’s traffic. The rumble of the engine lulls Napoleon to sleep, and when he wakes up at the end of their journey, he’s mortified to find he’s leaning against Illya, and even worse, Illya’s arm is wrapped around him, supporting him. Napoleon’s heart beats hard for reasons completely unrelated to the damage from Rudi’s chair.
Their new safehouse is a charming two-story building, but Napoleon barely pays it a second glance. Just the trip from the hospital to the safehouse has exhausted him all over again. He doesn’t want to make it obvious, but Illya still notices.
“We’re still sharing bedroom, Cowboy,” Illya says as he leads Napoleon to a bedroom on the ground floor. Oh, good. No stairs. Napoleon had been a little worried about that. “House only has three bedrooms, and you should not be on your own, in case you have episode again.”
Honestly, that’s a wise decision. He would rather not think about what would have happened had he been on his own when he tried to shower. He’s still going to sigh dramatically about it, though.
Illya hovers as Napoleon undresses and slips into his pajamas, which isn’t necessary, but he can’t bring himself to ask Illya to leave. It also isn’t necessary for Illya to help him into bed, but Napoleon is going to milk this for all it’s worth if it means Illya touches him like that.
The mattress is soft and comfortable, and the sheets are cool under Napoleon’s skin. He sighs happily, eyelids fluttering closed. He feels a hand brush his hair away from his face, and then hears the other mattress creak as Illya settles down onto it. Napoleon opens his eyes just a little to see Illya settling down with a book.
At that moment, Illya looks up and sees Napoleon watching him. “Go to sleep, Cowboy,” Illya says softly. “I will wake you if you have nightmare.”
Napoleon sighs. He hadn’t wanted to admit to himself that he was a little afraid of the dreams that would come once he fell asleep again, but now, with Illya’s promise echoing in his ears, it’s easy to let sleep take him.
In his last moments of consciousness, Napoleon marvels at having found not just teammates, but also a handler who are all willing to rework a mission just to let him heal up a little. Maybe this UNCLE assignment won’t be so bad after all.