"Survival School Days" ~ for What's my Line?

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

Challenge: What’s My Line?

Prompt: “There’s no use in trying”

Title: Survival School Days

Author: mrua7
Word Count: Approx. 750

“There’s no use in trying! You’re nothing but a runt and you’ll never make it! Survival School is for real men, not Commie pussies like you!”

Those were the words shouted at a young Soviet recruit by Jules Cutter.

Kuryakin shook his head, but chose to remain silent as the head of U.N.C.L.E. Survival School obsessively hurled taunt after taunt at him. Some would have infuriated the average man, but Illya was not an average man. He had spent his life learning to control his emotions, and focus his energies on completing whatever task lay before him.

A few of his fellow recruits tried to defend him but he would hear nothing of it and he'd dismiss their efforts with a sharp wave of his hand. Not exactly the best way to gain friends, but he wasn't there to do that.

The Russian was already a somewhat experienced agent, put through much more rigorous training for Soviet military intelligence years ago back in Moskva. There if you failed, you were sent off to to die in the ovens at Sepekov, or so that’s what all recruits were told.  Still Kuryakin had seen many a man disappear, never to be seen or heard from again once they had failed in their training.

He’d had been offered up to the U.N.C.L.E. as a sacrificial lamb of sorts though Alexander Waverly told him otherwise when he was recruited as the Soviet representative to work for them.

Previously, he'd been stationed by GRU in England, and there while earning his Doctorate in quantum physics at Cambridge; he was assigned to monitor and report on the activities of his fellow Soviets attending the University... among other things.

Once taken under Waverly's wing, so to speake, he returned to Great Britain, sent there to ‘learn the ropes’ and U.N.C.L.E. methodology under the tutelage of Harry Beldon.

The man was brilliant but unorthodox and in the end Kuryakin refused to let Harry sway him. The young Russian realized he was being used as a pawn in one of Beldon’s dangerous and manipulative games that were in reality strictly for Harry’s benefit.

It couldn't have timed out any better when Waverly decided Illya was to transfer to New York, but before he could join the ranks of Section II there, Kuryakin had to attend Survival School...a mere formality as Waverly put it.

But now here Illya was, somewhere in the South Pacific at the remote training facility and he was not warned about the the mere formality that was Jules Cutter.

The man had been against a Soviet recruitment from the beginning and rode Kuryakin harder than the rest, trying to get him to fail. That only spurred the Russian on not only to succeed, but excel.

Illya Kuryakin’s greatest challenge however, was not from the likes of Cutter, but from a man he’d not even met, and that was one Napoleon Solo.

Two years prior, the man had set nearly every record at the training facitly, and now his performance was the standard by which every recruit was judged.

Yet this young upstart of a Soviet recruit made it his personal goal to beat as many of Solo’s records as he could.

Illya would picture the man, imagining him to be a tall and muscular specimen, the ideal Americanskii hero;  who would be humiliated to learn he was bested by one skinny tow-headed runt of a Russian.

That was what kept Illya Kuryakin going. It helped him get past the taunts and the jibes of not only Jules Cutter but of another recruit, a German named Eric Lehrner who seemed to have it out for him as well.  So there was a triad of sorts, a competition between the Russian and the German, the Russian and Jules Cutter and the Russian and the invisible American.

“You will succeed,” Illya vowed to himself. He would show them and he would make Alexander Waverly proud that he had accepted him to work for the U.N.C.L.E.

His performance as a Section III agent had been exemplary, and now Kuryakin planned for it to be so when he finally joined the ranks of Section II in New York.

He looked forward to meeting this Napoleon Solo someday, if just to let him see the man who had broken his winning streak at Survival School.

Solo would see just how good a Soviet could be at playing this spy game…

A/N: *Eric Lerhner was a character introduced my 'The Survival School Affair,' and played important roles in 'The East Berlin Affair' and 'The Summit Affair.' all on Fanfiction.net under Mlaw

Comments

[jantojones.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly certain there was no kink involved LOL :-D

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

LOL DANG auto spell correct! I meant to type 'kind' Thank you for your kind compliment! Oy!