"It's not your fault"

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

Not a drabble, just revisiting something I wrote years ago, with a few changes added.

                                              

A gruesome scene. They’d cut off his shirt and tied him to a telephone pole in a junk-filled back lot and began to whip him with a cat-o-nine tails.  At first Illya forced himself to bear the pain in silence, but as the leather continued bite into his back, he finally grimaced, and cried out.

“Ahhhhh, so you’re not impervious to pain as they say,” the interrogator, a man called Doombrosky also known as Doctor Doom, sneered in a heavy accent. “Tell me vat I vant to know and it vill stop.”

“Noooo,” Illya barely managed to get out the single word before the whip finally finally drew blood as it ripped into his skin.  This time he passed out.

“Revive him you parasite!” The doctor ordered his lead underling.

The lumbering guard took a nearby pail of icy water, tossing it at the Russian;  Illya gasped to consciousness at the shock, choking at first as he’d breathed in some of it.

The temperature was below freezing and now drenched in water, Kuryakin began to shiver uncontrollably. He wasn’t sure which felt worse, the burning cold or the stinging of his back.

“Tell me vere is John Kingsley?”

Illya refused to answer and he cried out again as the punishment  continued to be ministered without mercy.

“One last time, before I switch to my bullvip and then you vill truly know an exquisitely painful kiss. I can flick fly off nose of a moving horse and I can flay skin from your back with it one painful stroke-at-a-time.”

The man turned to one of the guards,”Give him injection now, he should be veak enough to be pliable and responsive to it.”

Kuryakin was numb to the little needle prick in his arm as he slumped, no longer able to stand on his feet and as the new whip cut into him; he finally broke.

“Brooklyn, he is at...101 Grand.”  His knees gave out and he collapsed, passing out again.

.

Napoleon Solo was desperately searching for his missing partner, after having moved the scientist John Kingsley to a new safehouse in Manhattan.  Waverly had ordered it, fearing his missing U.N.C.L.E. agent might give away the Brooklyn location if tortured.  

Though Illya Kuryakin was known for his stubbornness under such duress, there always remained the possibility he could be broken, as the man was only human.  A strong one, but still...

Illya had given up information only a very few times in the past and that was when he’d been heavily drugged with truth serum. Waverly was confident enough in his Russian agent to hold out if he was indeed being interrogated, but one needed to take precautions just in case.

John Kingsley and his knowledge were too dangerous should he fall into the wrong hands.

Thanks to chatter on Thrush channels, intelligence got a fix on Kuryakins location. Napoleon found his partner in the middle of a vacant lot, behind a burned out building in the Bronx. Illya was shirtless, strung up against a telephone pole and severely beaten.

The Russian’s lips were blue as he shivered from the cold and Solo quickly removed his overcoat, eyeing the wounds on Illya’s back. He cut down his partner and held on as Illya fell into his waiting arms. Napoleon wrapped him in the coat, hefting the smaller man over his shoulder and carrying him in a fireman’s hold to the safety and warmth of his car that was parked nearby.

An hour later the senior agent sat in a comfortable white arm chair, a gift to agents sitting vigil from the infirmary staff.  He was, as always, waiting besides Kuryakin as he lay on his stomach in his bed in Medical, with his face resting on the bed pillow. He was pink again, but...

Napoleon stared at his partner, something wasn’t right. His face looked strange and he called in the nurse to take a look.

“Illya wake up,” Nurse Medea called to him.

The Russian moaned, raising his head slightly to look at her. That’s when she clearly saw it, and she called for the doctor to come immediately.

Half of Illya’s face was drooping, his right eye swollen and that side of his mouth turned downwards.

After examining him the doctor reached two possible conclusions...either it was Bell’s Palsy or a stroke and he immediately ordered tests.

“Bell’s Palsy Doc?” Napoleon asked, unfamiliar with the term.

It’s a form of facial paralysis resulting from a dysfunction of the facial nerve causing an inability to control facial muscles on the affected side. No specific cause has been identified but I’m sure the extreme duress he suffered today could be a contributing factor, if it is indeed that.

The doctor lifted the bandages, looking at Illya’s back, and shook his head.

“Two hundred stitches, Mr. Solo. I think that’s the worst I’ve ever seen.  I have to be truthful; I’m always astounded at the strength of your partner, but we can’t rule out the possibility of a stroke. The stress of this event could have triggered it.”

Napoleon tried to disguise his worry. “How soon before you know?”

“Not long, I’ll let you know as soon I get the results. You do know that if Mr. Kuryakin has indeed suffered a stroke, he will be removed from the field permanently.”

“I know Doc.” Solo nodded gravely.

Napoleon refused to vacate the chair and waited patiently as his partner was moved to a gurney and taken out for what the doctor called  computed tomography scanning. It was to be done with a new and rather expensive piece of equipment that had recently been added to the Medical wings testing facilities.

Illya was pretty much out of it when he was returned to his bed a short while later…the test results were in not long after as Dr. Miller promised, confirming it was Bell’s Palsy. A relief to Solo that it hadn’t been a stroke, but still a concern as the condition was a bit of a mystery to him.

Illya was asleep as Napoleon spoke to the doctor while still in the patient’s room.

“How long does this palsy last Doc? It’s not permanent is it?”

“Most people recover spontaneously and achieve near-normal to normal functions. Many show signs of improvement as early as ten days after the onset, even without treatment. We’ll be giving him steroids for the inflammation and keep a close eye on him, I promise you.”

Amazingly two days later, Illya’s symptoms were nearly gone.  Dr. Miller wasn’t surprised, knowing the Russian’s constitution and his unusual recuperative powers.

Napoleon knew his friend was going to be fine as soon as Illya’s demands to be released from medical began. Other than those periodically loud outbursts, Kuryakin was very quiet, much more than usual.

“What’s going on tovarisch? Is there something bothering you?”Napoleon sat at the Russian’s bedside and leaning forward on his elbows; he listened intently.

Illya was sitting up in bed, able to lean back, propped up against several very soft pillows.

“Napoleon, is Kingsley safe?”

“Yes, why?”

Illya’s voice changed to a whisper, and he looked quite disheartened..

“They broke me, and I gave them the location of the safe house. The pain was beyond excruciating and once they injected me some sort of truth serum, I just could not help myself. I betrayed the Command.”

“Kingsley is fine. Mr. Waverly ordered him moved to a different location once we discovered you’d been taken. Though he had confidence in you, he still was smart enough to cover all bases.”

Illya’s shoulders drooped in relief. “I guess he assumed I would break, that is not good.”

“It’s okay chum, you’re not a traitor. You’re only human after all, just like the rest of us.... Your  blood tests showed evidence of a new serum they used on you and it was very potent, so it wasn’t like you willingly gave up the information.  Remember on top of that, you were in a very weakened condition, in shock and suffering from hypothermia.”

“Still, I should have been able to resist,” Illya insisted.

“Yeah right, Superman,” Napoleon smiled.

“No, not Superman,” Illya flashed his crooked smile, with one side of his mouth still drooping ever so slightly, "as you recall I prefer Spiderman * When I was studying at Cambridge I was given a nickname, it was ‘Spider’ and was in reference to my ability to free climb the buildings on campus. It was referred to at Night Climbing, and is still a tradition at the University.”

“Now I know why you like the costume better,” Napoleon shook his head; still he was glad the Russian was nearly back to being his old smart-aleck self.

.

* ref to “The Randomness of life- Chapter 10” underl mlaw on fanfiction.net

a/n Spiderman first appeared in DC comics in 1963

thanks to JantoJones for the idea of the white armchair in Medical.

Comments

[jantojones.livejournal.com]

One of my favourites! I have the original filed in a folder called 'Favourites by Other Writers'.