Fic: To earn your wings (Heather McNabb, Napoleon Solo, Illya Kuryakin)

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

Couple of links to drop at once with this one, since this is a fic with a bit of backstory. When I offered a fic request in a charity auction a while back, the winner asked me for something centering on one of recurring UNCLE staff girls like Sarah Johnson or Heather McNabb, since the those characters have long been a bit of a pet topic of mine (my original post on their roles and all sorts of behind-the-scenes trivia surrounding them blew up to over 4K words in length). I chose Heather McNabb, a recurring communications girl from the first season.

One of the first things we learn about Heather is that she used to be a stewardess–which I wasn't planning on using as a basis for the story, until it dawned on me that an organisation like UNCLE recruiting stewardesses as espionage agents makes a rather beautiful amount of sense. So that got me sidetracked writing up yet another lengthy post of research and meta about the idea, and how it could fit into the background of other recurring characters like Wanda Townsend (and of course Napoleon, who would have to be on board with the plan).

Or, you could just read the fic itself–which turned into the sort of origin story that happens when you take one line of dialogue from the show and get completely carried away. It's on AO3 at the link below.

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Title: To earn your wings
Characters: Heather McNabb, Napoleon Solo, Illya Kuryakin
Rating: PG
Word Count: 7041
Summary:

Heather McNabb's career as an airline hostess comes to an end in much the usual manner: she meets a man.

(Two men, really, though not at once, and she wouldn't know it until later—but that's getting ahead of the story.)

Huge thanks to Tallihensia for the original request, and to hypatia_66 for betaing for me.

Comments

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

Wow, you've presented such an interesting scenario here. I don't remember the stewardess part, but I'm looking forward to finding out more about that. Thanks for posting here, I'm going to dig into all of the links you've provided.

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

Oh, I couldn't blame you for not remembering it - it literally comes up in just one throwaway line in her first appearance (that only becomes notable at all because the character was *almost* played by a different actress who, well... *waves hands at links*). But what sort of fans would we be if we weren't occasionally prone to massively over-analysing the most trivial of details? ;)

[duckys-lady.livejournal.com]

This is superb! I love that you have found a very plausible backstory for many of the women of U.N.C.L.E.

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

Thanks!