Redemption - Song Story

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

The Prompt
 I've written some stories centered around the premises suggested by the Return Movie.  I actually don't hate it and have had some fun working with the scenario provided by it.  This is how I think it was before that fateful day in the restaurant...
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There was a question niggling at his brain, something important...

Nyet, he could not find it.  Why did he still speak to himself in Russian?  Was he not now functioning as one of these ex-patriot types that populated New York City?  English, that was his language now, perhaps it had been since his days in England.

He preferred French.  It was more natural to him, teasing at the tongue, challenging him to sound like a native.

Accents.  Accents made him think of Napoleon, of those days when his partner was unsure whether the criticisms were delivered with a snicker or something more serious.

Illya Kuryakin wondered once again where his partner had gone, and why.  Leaving UNCLE without a word of warning in the midst of a mid-life crisis was bad form as far as the Russian was concerned.  They had been partners, friends...

Friends didn’t run away without explaining why.

Unless he couldn’t explain, because the agony of his decision was too difficult to put into words.  Illya thought he could understand that, being a man of few words himself.

He missed his partner, and at this moment he needed him.  Perhaps more than in the early days Kuryakin needed help from the only man who had ever been true enough, and brave enough to be called friend; the only man who had broken through his youthful delusions of maintaining a solitary life.

Just when their partnership had become a finely tuned machine, Napoleon was gone.  Illya was left to face Mr. Waverly with the awful truth that ‘No sir, I was not aware of Mr. Solo’s resignation.’

Even now it ate at him to have been left out, to have been denied the opportunity to try and dissuade him from leaving the Command.

Illya had taken it personally, something he wouldn’t have done ten years earlier.

Ten years.  That was a long time for a partnership to survive in their line of work.  It was a long to survive, period.

And now, after fifteen years and an incarnation as a couturier, a dress designer of all things, the phone was ringing again and UNCLE was trying to dredge all of it up.  He had sworn to never go back after the debacle in Yugoslavia; after the betrayal by Janus.  The memory of it, the death of that innocent young girl... it had finally been too much for him as well.  In that instant he forgave Napoleon, and understood why his friend had left.

It was no good brooding.  He didn’t want to go back, and even if Napoleon were nearby to help him out of this melancholic state, where would they go from here?  Anyway, he needed to clear his mind, to concentrate on this presentation.  This woman seemed to think she was somehow of interest...

And suddenly it was like being transported back twenty years.  He saw him, but instead of hailing him, as a friend might, Kuryakin, of the House of Vanya, hid his face in the hope of not being discovered.  Was he embarrassed?  No, he had fully embraced this new identity, had made it work as a profession and a means of still being in the ‘game’, so to speak.

He looked again.

Napoleon was in trouble, and in less time than it took him to say ‘excuse me’, Illya was jumping into the action, swinging and dodging, adrenaline pumping like it hadn’t for at least a decade.

When at last the two former agents had disposed of Napoleon’s assailants, the men from UNCLE bolted for the exit and the busy sidewalk outside.  It might take longer than a walk around the block to clear the air after fifteen years, but it was a beginning.

Maybe there was help for him yet.