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The killer in me is the killer in youMy loveI send this smile over to you.-'Disarm' by The Civil Wars. In the short time she had been with U.N.C.L.E., Gaby had learnt many things. She had learnt to fully rebuild, load and shoot a gun in under a minute. She had learnt a more efficient style of fighting from Napoleon. She was learning at least two new languages with the help of Illya. She had learnt to work as part of a team and trust others to have her back and had even learnt that she really despised post mission paperwork.The only thing she hadn’t learnt was how to stop the nightmares.She woke, heart pounding. The gun going off in her head. Her father’s body crumpling to the ground. The Land Rover flipping down the mountainous terrain. Being dragged through mud, choking on it. Being trapped back in East Berlin, chased by KGB agents. When she’s cornered the face looked familiar. Illya being hurled from the motorbike, not knowing if he was dead or alive.A rattle as her apartment door clicked open.Gaby was out of bed like a shot, gun automatically in her shaking hand as she stood beside her bedroom door. When it opened, the safety clicked off her gun and the nuzzle is pointed at someone’s temple.“It’s only me,” Illya said with a softness for someone who had just broken into an apartment and had a gun pointed at his head. Gaby didn’t apologise but clicked the safety back on the gun and tucked it in the waistband of her pyjamas. “You’re getting better at that,” she commented, brushing past him into the apartment. Her partner’s night-time break-ins were something she was getting used to now. He may be an agent, but Napoleon had been a con. It was well known that their third partner was the best at breaking and entering.“Cowboy has been giving me tips,” he admitted begrudgingly.“I’m sure he’s loving that,” Gaby replied, reaching her miniscule kitchen.“Too much,” he agreed. As Gaby reached into a cabinet for two glasses and another for a bottle of sharp, clean liquid, silence fell between them. She didn’t need to ask why he was here. Her nightmares were known to be loud-PTSD, anxiety and insomnia, according to the psychiatrist on U.N.C.L.E.’s payroll- and the walls in their provided building were thin. They could have gone and got their own accommodation, but when Waverly offered the use of one of these ones Gaby took him up on it. She had been up to her eyes in training and didn’t have the time for an apartment search in the States. It was small, and shabby, but every single item in it was hers, from the record player, to the outdated wallpaper, to the dingy sofa that was at least a million years old, to the mix-matched glasses. She adored it.And where else would Illya, a KGB agent get a place in America?So, they found themselves neighbours. Napoleon would never be caught dead in one of these hell holes, he informed her.As to why Illya was here, Gaby didn’t know. But he came every time he heard her anyway. Curiosity. Concerned partnership. He thought she was being murdered. Who knew. “You were screaming again,” Illya said, as blunt and straightforward as ever. She felt herself flinch, the images from her nightmare rearing in her mind. Gaby took a swig of her drink to chase them away, offering the other glass to him. He took it and cradled it, watching her carefully. “I’ll try to keep it down next time,” she offered.Illya’s eyes were soft, a look reserved for her. She wished he wouldn’t look at her like that. It would make it much easier “That’s not what I meant.”Gaby sighed, set the gun on the counter and leant against it. Of course, it wasn’t. he was worried. He was always worried, overprotective, and taking on responsibility for things that weren’t his. “I know.”More silence. It was comfortably between them, and the silence tended to say all they couldn’t. That he understood. That it was okay. That it would get easier. That she knew this was her penance to bear. “Would you like me to sing you a lullaby?” he enquired. If it were anyone else, she would know they were joking, making fun of her. Gaby could tell from his face he’s serious and it melted her. He would do anything to chase the nightmares away. It can’t melt her. The thought hits her like a lightning bolt. The face behind the gun in her dream, the KGB agent chasing her down.Illya.She knows he would never hurt her, never make her go back. But her nightmare is like a steel door slamming shut in her face, a reminder of all the things she let herself forget.He’s not hers, and she’s not his. Maybe a long time ago, in Rome, a hairsbreadth apart. They could have. But not now.“What? Like ‘Tili tili bom?’” she asked archly, hoping her voice sounded normal, referring to the frankly creepy Russian lullaby. Illya huffed at her.“No,” he replied shortly. “The aim is to help you sleep, not terrify you.”“Good to know,” Gaby retorted. The familiar silence fell over them again until Illya leant against the counter opposite her, his long legs brushing hers. In his hurry to get to her he hadn’t put on shoes, and the sight of his bare feet was oddly endearing. “Are you- unhappy here?” he asked her hesitantly. He couldn’t imagine Gaby going back to Berlin. She hated it. But maybe she also hated being an agent.“No,” Gaby said fiercely. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. It’s just- this life. I’m not used to getting what I want,” she admitted sheepishly. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him anymore than that.“You’re waiting for this to be taken away,” Illya surmised. Gaby nodded, not trusting herself to speak. “Well,” he said, nudging her leg gently with his own. “Anyone trying would have to go through me first.”Gaby couldn’t help but crack a smile. “They wouldn’t.”“Exactly.” Their eyes met, and she felt her heart catch her in chest.When Illya left her apartment half an hour later and padded down the hall, Gaby couldn’t help but watch him go.Well. She hadn’t learnt to control how she felt about him either. X.x.X The U.N.C.L.E. team were on a mission in China to attempt to recover homo-erectus fossils that had resurfaced after going missing during World War II. U.N.C.L.E. had reason to belief it had come into the possession of the Triad. The only problem was that they had walked into a trap.A string of curse words flew out of Gaby in her native German as she hurried from car to car, looking desperately for one with keys in them. No such luck. They ducked as shots rang out in the night, shouts in Mandarin following. The Triad weren’t far behind them. She could lose them if only she could find a car. She glanced behind her, firing off shots at their pursuers.“Any time now, Gaby,” Napoleon snarked as he took more deliberate aim, calmly with one hand, the other white-knuckle tense as he supported an injured Illya giving away his true feelings. Illya, the best marksman of them, didn’t let his injury stop him from covering Gaby as she worked at a car. His hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat, his combat clothes dark with blood.“Sorry, stealing a car isn’t just a matter of sparking some wires together,” Gaby growled back at him from under a steering wheel, fiddling with wires until the engine spluttered to life. “Get him in,” she demanded, and Napoleon didn’t need told twice. Gaby helped him pull Illya into the back seat and floored it when Napoleon dived in himself.“I’m fine,” Illya said gruffly from behind them. Gaby’s eyes flicked to meet his in the rear-view mirror, swerving expertly through streets, losing the Triad within five minutes. Confident she’d lost them, she sped to the extraction point under Napoleon’s instructions.“You were shot,” she retorted flatly as images flitted through her mind. A gun shot. Illya’s body crumpling as her father’s did.“Work risk,” he replied, grimacing.“An inch higher and it would have hit your femoral artery,” Gaby hissed back. Why he had to be so heroic and self-sacrificing Gaby didn’t know. The bullet would have hit Napoleon worst had Illya not gotten him out of the way.“Good job I move fast then,” argued Illya.“I hate to interrupt a lovers quarrel but immediate left then the second right,” Napoleon interjected, bordering between guilty and concerned. Gaby was right- and they weren’t entirely sure it hadn’t.“Shut up,” both his partners barked back at him, but Gaby careened left, heeding his instructions anyway. X.x.X “I’ll be fine,” insisted Illya as they transferred him to a gurney, preparing for emergency surgery in the mobile operating theatre. Gaby kept pressure on the wound as the doctors, anaesthetist and scrub nurses bustled into action around her, prepping the environment and her partner.“Be quiet, save your energy,” Gaby told him. The anaesthetist was putting a cannula into a vein, and one of the nurses telling Gaby she could let go now.“I’ve had worse, Chop Shop Girl,” Illya winced from the handover.“We have to take him now,” the surgeon informed Gaby and Napoleon briskly.Gaby glanced from Napoleon to the surgeon to Illya, whose eyes were starting to droop with the anaesthetic being pumped into his veins. She surged forward impulsively, ducking between medics to place a gentle kiss on his forehead.“Come back to me,” she whispered. She felt weakening pressure as he squeezed her hand before it’s slipping from her grasp.“Always.” X.x.X “You care about him,” Napoleon said as they both sat at Illya’s bedside. He’d been to surgery to remove the bullet, which hadn’t hit the artery but was too close to leave. He was still out of it before them. Napoleon’s tone isn’t a question, it’s factual and bemused.“So do you,” Gaby pointed out. She’d seen his face when they wheeled Illya into surgery, all pale skin and red blood. She knew it mirrored her own.“I tolerate Peril. You want to ride into the sunset with him,” Napoleon corrected. Gaby snorted indelicately but said nothing. Eventually she conceded.“I don’t want to lose this.”“You don’t want to lose him,” Napoleon reminded her, surprisingly gently. Gaby breathed out slowly, staring down at her bloodied hands. Gaby felt a hand on her shoulder, and Napoleon was giving it a squeeze. “We can’t keep him, Gaby.”His words hit her like a brick. “You make him sound like a stray cat,” she told him, frowning. Napoleon looked at her levelly.“He’s not our cat.”Gaby’s partner’s words remind her of another country, another organisation, other team members and other people that want a part of him. He’s not hers, and she’s not his.Gaby knows that Napoleon is only trying to protect her from the inevitable.It doesn’t make it hurt any less.“Illya will wake up soon,” Gaby told him as she stood. “I’m going to go clean up.” When Illya woke up, he searched for soft brown eyes that he last saw looking terrified. He hadn’t meant to scare her. Instead, he found Solo’s piercing blue eyes examining him over papers.“Gaby’s cleaning house,” his partner answered his unasked question.“Why aren’t you with her?” Illya demanded groggily. The fact their partner had been sent to lead a secondary team to clear out the base of the Triad made him proud, but uneasy. They should be with her. He should be with her.Solo shrugged. “She asked me to stay with you. You drool when you sleep.”“Shut up,” Illya replied irritably. “Why?”Napoleon concealed a smile with his papers. “Maybe she’s gone soft, Peril. Maybe she’s gone soft.”Like someone like Gaby could care for someone like him, Illya can’t help but think. “Wake me when she comes back,” Illya instructed before sleep took him again.She didn’t. X.x.X By the time Illya could go back to America and was chained to desk duty for a month, Gaby had already been on three missions. He didn’t know when she was coming into the office, but it was certainly when he wasn’t there. Gaby’s door stayed firmly shut and apartment silent, no music as a tell-tale of life. He didn’t let himself in. It felt wrong in a way it wasn’t before, a chasm dividing them. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but something had changed in China. He had frightened her, driven her away.Napoleon rolled his eyes as he caught Illya staring at Gaby’s messy desk. “Children,” he muttered before returning to the mess that was Belize.Illya didn’t see Gaby until he’s returning to his apartment at the same time she is, six weeks after China. Gaby’s eyes widen at the shock of seeing him, before sliding into an impenetrable mask. When they were in Rome Illya had prided himself on being able to read Gaby, before she betrayed them. Then he realised she was a better liar than she seemed. She nodded at him as they walked down the hall. “Illya,” she greeted.Illya stopped and stared at her. “That’s it?”Gaby turned back to him, keys clenched in her hand as she forced herself to look at him. “What’s it?”“I don’t see you for six weeks. The last time I was heading into surgery half the world away. You’ve avoided me for all this time and when you have to see me you say Illya?” he said tightly. Gaby swallowed hard. She had hoped he wouldn’t have noticed. That he wouldn’t care. But Illya, as always, noticed everything. “I haven’t been here. I’ve been away on missions, only checking in with Waverly outside the office. I’m only here to get a few hours sleep and some of my things, I leave again in nine hours.”Illya frowned. “That’s a lot of missions in a short amount of time.” Gaby was a quick study, dedicated and whip smart, but she had only been with U.N.C.L.E. a year, and in Waverly’s service two years before that. She was still a rookie.“Well since someone got themselves shot, we’re short staffed on field agents,” Gaby replied with an arched brow, challenging. Illya sighed.“So that’s it,” he realised. Gaby took a few more steps towards him, equally frustrated and curious.“What’s it?”“That’s why you are angry with me,” Illya surmised. “I was injured.”Gaby let out a slow breath as she shook her head. “I’m not angry with you,” she told him softly. “I don’t want to be. But you- you frightened me.”Illya grimaced at her, rubbing the back of his head. “I’m sorry.” “It’s the job,” she said simply, shrugging, trying to be unaffected. It’s the job. She tried to remember that when she got the pit in her stomach about where she was heading to next. She startled when Illya’s hand gently tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, his thumb brushing her cheek.“I’m sorry, Little Chop Shop Girl,” he repeated softly. “I’ll be more careful next time.” Gaby leant into his hand, her eyes closing briefly at the comfort his warm, calloused hand provided. Illya’s hands could destroy. Calloused from years of fighting, weapons and field work. She had seen them in action.Yet he was also the gentlest person she had ever met. Moving considerately over a chess board. Knuckles clapping together as she tried to make him dance. Placing a ring in her palm, his fingers brushing hers. Gaby put her hand over his much larger one for a split second, then pulled away.“I might be gone for a while,” Gaby looked up at him, memorising his face. He’s not hers, and she’s not his. It didn’t mean she couldn’t keep him with her where she went.“But you will be back?” Illya queried, worried at the way she was looking at him. He wanted to reach out, to hold her. But Gaby would never accept his comfort. They had missed their window, any opportunity for a ‘them’ lost in a hotel in Rome.Gaby smiled. “Always.” X.x.X Two weeks later Waverly enters the office with a grim face. “We’ve lost contact with Miss Teller.”Illya is rooting through his desk immediately for his tracking device. “What happened?”“Gaby had been sent undercover to bust a human trafficking ring. The agent sent with her to act as her handler lost contact a six hours ago when she failed to meet at the rendezvous. When Agent Fitch went to the ring, they said the last shipment of girls had went out and he would receive his money shortly.”“Sent out where?” Illya demanded as he thumbed in the code and started searching for the frequency.“Miss Teller finds herself in a precarious position, Kuryakin,” Waverly admitted regretfully. “Our intel leads us to believe that the shipment is going to the Soviet Occupation Zone.”Illya’s heart is thumping in his ears and he can no longer hear Waverly. His hand shakes as he pictures Gaby, who never wanted to go back over the border. Gaby who felt like a prisoner in East Berlin. Gaby who swore she would do anything it to stay on this side.Even volunteering to go back.“Why?” Illya gritted out as he stood abruptly. “Why would you send her back?”“I needed a German female agent, Kuryakin. Unfortunately, we’re short of them,” his superior said apologetically. Illya was staring desperately at the screen on his tracker, waiting for the blip of co-ordinates and sign of life. As he did so he moved purposefully around the office, grabbing his go bag from his locker.“I’m going to get her,” Illya tells him, and it’s not a suggestion.“I wouldn’t dream of sending anyone else. The chopper will be on the helipad in three minutes and Solo is waiting at the airfield.”Illya was surprised by the mention of his third partner, who had been finishing up in Iran. At the same time, he wasn’t- Cowboy cared about Gaby almost as much as he did, a solid friend and good partner. As begrudgingly as he admitted it, Illya wouldn’t trust anyone else but Solo when it came to Gaby.“Where is she?” Solo asked immediately when Illya met him on the airfield, the two men striding towards the waiting plane.Illya didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. Everything was still tinged with red as he angled the tracking screen to his partner, who whistled when he saw the result.“You’re kidding me.”“I wish, Cowboy,” Illya replied tightly. Napoleon clapped him on the shoulder briefly as they stepped onto the plane, already checking his weapons.“Let’s go get our girl.” X.x.X Gaby didn’t know how she’d found herself in this situation.She did. She’d agreed to a mission in Poland, having felt simmering anger on behalf of the girls being traded and bought like cattle. She and Fitch had been sent in as a new girl and a prospective buyer in the hopes of getting the location of the stolen girls. The only problem was that they had drugged her before she had even gotten to the other girls and Gaby doubted they would tell Fitch where they were being kept- a secure channel was instead used to bid on girls and the selected girl would be dropped at a pre-discussed location. They didn’t know where the base was, but Gaby felt like she was about to find out.Alone, without backup, and no one else to know.Maybe not no one. May someone.Gaby snapped herself out of wishful thinking and looked around the non-descript truck that she and the fellow girls were being transported in. Hands tied, mouths gagged. Gaby managed to slip the knot that bound her- thank you, Napoleon for being a con- and examined the situation. There were three other girls in the truck, and an armed guard stationed with them. Another was no doubt in the cabin with the driver, who was also likely packing.So, everyone had a weapon but Gaby, which was fantastic. The loud and bumping roads they were jostled over allowed for Gaby to snap off a board of the wooden truck, the tarp and her body leaving the gap invisible. The guard was opposite her, leering at an exceptionally young girl beside him. Fear and adrenaline pumped through her as Gaby’s brain racked over the possibilities, and the dangers of having three civilians in close proximity.Gaby saw her chance when they seemed to start over mountainous terrain, making the journey impossibly louder. She could just about hear the two in the cabin yelling in rapid Polish in order to be heard over the noise. The guard in the cabin’s hand slid up the leg of the girl beside him, leaning into her, his back angling towards her slightly. The opportunity was all she needed. Gaby surged forward, hitting him with the board in her hand as hard as she could. The shock sent him sprawling backwards into the girl, who scrambled to get away. The third girl reached for the broken board Gaby had flung away, already using the splintered edges to try and cut through the ropes. Before his hands could reach her, Gaby kneed him in his groin hard, slamming her hands over his ears to disorientate him. The boys had taught her to fight dirty.Struggling to sit up, one hand grabbed for her and the other for his weapon, and Gaby leapt for it, slamming his arm with the gun into an impossible angle. She barked at the girls to get out of the way as with a grunt he released the gun, and Gaby kicked it backwards out of his reach. She couldn’t grab for it as he was already reaching for her, hands digging painfully into her side. Ignoring the pain, Gaby pushed all her weight into him, pulling the ropes still looped around her wrists taut as she wrapped it around his neck, gritting her teeth at the pain of him trying to yank her off him by her hair, tugging off her gag in the process. They tumbled to the floor of the truck bed, Gaby whacking his head against it. God, she hoped it just sounded like really rocky terrain. Hands reached for her throat and Gaby felt her airways cutting off. Knowing she didn’t have much time she leaned harder into his grip, tightening the rope impossibly. His eyes started to flutter as she could feel her arms weakening when one of the girls, all freed from their bonds, stumbled forward for the gun and struck him over the head with the butt of it, knocking him out cold. His hands left Gaby’s throat and she tumbled back, gasping and awed. The girl looked wide eyed from the guard, to Gaby, to the gun in her hand. The girl who he had tried to feel up spat on him.“I know the feeling,” Gaby muttered tiredly in Polish, accepting the hand offered by the third girl and gently took the gun off the first. “I’m here to help,” she told them. “I’m going to get you out of here. Back to your families.” Gaby searched the guard for any other weapons, taking a knife from his belt and the rounds from his jacket pocket. That was it. Gaby racked her brain for a plan, any plan to get these girls out of here, into the forest. If she could get them hidden, she might have a chance of taking out the driver and other guard. She could feel panic creep into her veins, knowing she was totally alone and blind in this situation with only a handgun and a knife to her name.“When it stops, as soon as they open the back, run. As hard as you can, it’ll take them by surprise. Get to cover as fast as you can and run in a zig zag. I’ll hold them off. Get to the nearest town or village and scream your heads off,” Gaby instructed them, hoping this would work. Murmured agreements were made as she kept an ear out for the driver. A third muffled voice from a radio crackled through, and Gaby frowned at the German voice. A fourth Russian voice had Gaby’s veins turn to ice.“No, no, no,” she muttered, dread filling her. She could hear the driver report back in stilted German that they were entering Germany. Gaby had to work to keep herself from crying out. It was bad enough being back in Soviet occupied country. But to be back in East Germany? She would find herself dead in an unmarked grave once they figured out who she was, never to be seen again.She would never see Illya again.She felt like she was choking and tried to calm her breathing. She couldn’t lose it in front of these girls, they needed her to get them out of here. That was proving more difficult by the second and Gaby quickly deducted the only way a Russian would be in radio contact with both Poles and a German would be if he were stationed in Germany- KGB. And the only way that this truck could get passed the German checkpoint was if they had Stasi waiting on the other side.The truck came to an abrupt stop, bouncing off another vehicle. The girls were hurtled around the truck before righting themselves. They shared a nod with Gaby as arguing voices came from the front of the truck, a flurry of good and bad Polish that Gaby struggled to keep up with. She positioned herself at the side of the back entrance. Either the Polish had been double crossed or had been caught by unsuspecting Stasi/KGB positioned at East Germany’s boarders. Either way it was potentially not good for the girls and definitely not good for her. Footsteps crunched towards them and Gaby fired a point blank shot as soon as the truck bed opened. “Now!” she yelled at the girls and they hurtled from the truck, streaking through the night. Gaby was out a split second after them, rounding on the truck and ducking a shot from the driver. Cursing him seeing her through the wing mirror, she shot out the wing mirror, killing his advantage. Knowing she was a sitting duck waiting here, Gaby surged round the other side of the truck, crouching low. She ducked as a shot whizzed past her, a cry emanating from behind her. Gaby whipped round to see the truck driver lying on the ground behind her.Heart pounding, she leapt for the cover of the cabin, sliding in low, eying out the window, gun steady. A rustle in the trees gave positioning away and Gaby automatically fired. “Chop Shop Girl!” a voice yelled sharply. A familiar voice.The gun almost slipped in her hand. “Illya?” “Clear!” hollered another familiar voice.“Napoleon?” Gaby said faintly.“Present. I’ve got the girls, Gaby. They’re scared out of their minds, but unharmed. Good job.” Napoleon’s face appeared at the far truck door, giving her a flashing smile before disappearing. “How-” Gaby managed to get out before her door was wrenched open.“Gaby,” Illya breathed, his eyes scanning her battered and bruised being. Realisation dawned on her as she felt a steady, familiar weight near her heart.“The ring,” they said at the same time, before Illya gave her a smile, his face looking down at her as he gently pulled her from the cabin. “I told you I’d always find you.”Gaby found herself doing something she hadn’t in a long time. She found herself crying, big, fat, stubborn tears rolling down her face. Illya’s worried eyes and gentle hands searched her. “Are you hurt?”Gaby leant uneasily against the truck. She felt like she was dying, she wanted to say. But not like that. “You can’t say things like that to me, Illya,” she said finally instead.Illya was confused. “Things like what?”“Things that make me feel like I’m yours and you’re mine,” she whispered, hugging herself, stopping herself from unravelling. Illya’s gaze softened as he reached for her. “Gaby.”“No, Illya. You see where we are. How close that was,” she insisted, finally letting the panic she felt out. Once she found herself pacing, she couldn’t stop. Illya moved towards her, his hands out to calm her.“We were waiting at the boarder to intercept. They never would have gotten you,” he reasoned fiercely. He meant it. Once his KGB handler had pointed him in the direction of a lower level KGB agent involved in the trafficking, Illya did what he had to do to find out when she would be entering Germany. After some more broken bones, a secondary team was sent to the warehouse the rest of the girls were being kept to raid the base as Illya and Napoleon went for Gaby.“That’s not what I mean! I’m back in East Germany. I’m behind the curtain. I knowingly worked with CIA and MI6 operatives, not to mention am the daughter of a defector. If the Stasi or KGB had gotten wind of who I really was,” Gaby felt the terror rise in her bruised throat at the thought, “you would never find me.” Illya didn’t know what to say. The KGB was a tricky subject for them, the looming threat of Illya’s organisation a dark cloud over their heads. Illya felt loyalty to his country, would have lived and died for it. But to Gaby it was an all-consuming darkness, being trapped in a cage with no way out. She knew how the KGB worked, how brutal and ruthless it was- she had lived under their iron fist and felt its force when Solo smuggled her to the West.So, he said what he felt. What he knew was true. Despite the fact he wasn’t good enough for her, despite the fact she worked for MI6 and he was KGB, despite the fact that he must represent everything bad and repressive for her. Despite the fact that what he was saying would make him a traitor. He took a hold of her arm gently to stop her struggling and tilted her head until she looked into his eyes.“I will always find you. Even if it means burning everything to the ground. There is no where they could take you that I wouldn’t come for you, nothing they can do to stop me. If I had to betray all I knew, leave my country, make the world pay. I would find you. I’ll always find you. Because-” Illya swallowed, knowing he was about to go over a line he couldn’t uncross. If she didn’t feel the same, if she never wanted it spoken of again- at least she would know. “You are the most important thing to me, Little Chop Shop Girl.” Gaby searched his eyes, earnest, pained, hopeful. It cost him to tell her this. Her tears had stopped by now, but she didn’t reach to wipe them away. “Illya we’ve made promises, just not to each other. I want to.” Oh how she wanted to. “But I can’t see a way of this working. You still work for the KGB. You’re on loan to us,” she reminded him gently, the words burning in her throat. Napoleon’s words echoed in her head.
He’s not our cat.
“Someday you’ll have to go back. They’ll make you go back. I won’t let them see you as they saw your father. I won’t let them brand you a traitor. I care for you. If I could find a way to get you away from them I would, but I can’t think of one, Illya. You- I-we- I want that,” she admitted, her heart aching. “But I can’t afford to lose you,” she told him fiercely. Losing him as friend may kill her. She loved him. But if she had him and lost him? “I couldn’t bear it,” she whispered. Gaby knew what his family meant to him, how much it had messed him up by what happened to his father, how people talked about his mother. The Kuryakin name dragged through the mud in Soviet Russia. How hard he had fought to be respected. She didn’t agree with where he came from, but she couldn’t let him throw it all away for her. Illya saw how this pained her. The distant horror in her eyes, the regret. She wasn’t his and he wasn’t hers.Oh, how he wanted to be.“I don’t care what they want,” he told her quietly. “I like our team. I like the work we do. The good. Not for one country or another, but just to help. I even like Cowboy. My place in this world- I was always searching for it,” he grimaced. Bouncing from foster home to orphanage to foster home. His father in the Gulag. Beaten and broken down in the KGB. His eyes met hers steadily, his hand brushing a bruise on her cheek. “I love you, Gaby. My place- if you’ll have me- is with you.”Gaby couldn’t help the sob that left her, the comfort of him so close and yet so far. She leaned into his hand, her body drawn to his. He towered over her, a force in her life she didn’t think she could live without. But she had to. “I can’t ask you to leave, meine Geliebte,” she shook her head as he caught a tear, “and I can’t stay.”Illya’s other hand came to rest on her lower back, drawing her closer. “Gaby,” he spoke, and something in his voice made her open her eyes. “You’re not asking.” Time stopped. The noise of the groaning guard now tied up was cancelled out. The sound of U.N.C.L.E. agents arriving on the scene died away. There was nothing but the feel of his heart beating under her, the sound of her heart pounding in time. The blue of his eyes, the feel of his hand on her spine giving her goose bumps. The flicker of his eyes from hers to her lips.Then a cough. It’s Napoleon, a way to the side with the girls, taking notes on where they were from and family members they could contact. “This is where you kiss the girl, Peril.”The double glare that hit him nearly knocked him back. Gaby’s, whose disgust and anger he was used to now. Illya’s, who last time he was glaring at him like that knocked him round a men’s public bathroom. He didn’t know whose was worse. That’s what you get for trying to help. He turned back to his notes and the rescued hostages, giving them some privacy. “I’ll leave you two to it.” Gaby turned back to Illya, ignoring that her third partner had even spoken. “But they’ll come for you,” she reminded him, touched.Illya shrugged, the intensity of his gaze not leaving hers. “I don’t care.”Gaby reached up her arms around his neck, straining on the tips of her toes. Thank goodness for years of ballet training. Her fingers stroked the back of his hair, once, twice, before giving his face a tiny slap. Shock washed over his features as she replied.“They’ll have to go through me first.”A rare smile erupted on Illya’s face, shock changing to understanding. “Don’t make me put you over my knee,” he warned her playfully as her eyebrow raised challengingly.“Shut up and kiss me, Kuryakin,” she directed him.“Yes, Little Chop Shop Girl,” Illya replied into her mouth. He didn’t need to be told twice.
Finally.
X.x.X Gaby had learnt a lot in the time she’d been with U.N.C.L.E. She’d reinforced that she was a total badass who could handle missions on her own. She learnt that using her head as a weapon could hurt like a bitch afterwards. She’d learnt that Napoleon was partial to jazz clubs and loved to have a dance partner, and that Illya detested them. She’d learnt that had made Napoleon love them even more. She’d learnt that Illya was a good teacher in more than one way, and a good student. She’d learnt that the nightmares wouldn’t go away, but eased when Illya was there, even when he sang ‘Tili Tili Bom.’Illya shot up in the bed beside her.She’d learnt that Illya had nightmares too.Waiting a beat for his wild eyes to recognise the apartment, Gaby tugged him back towards her. He settled routinely with her tucked under his chin, her head on his chest, her leg thrown lazily over his, the feel of the thrumming of her heart and the heat of her body bringing him back.“Another nightmare?” she murmured into his skin.Illya’s hand traced her spine, the small but solid weight of his little mechanic bringing him back. “I’m not used to getting what I want,” he echoed her words from what seemed so long away.Gaby craned her neck to look at him. Her Illya. “They can just try to take it away,” she said simply.Because he is hers, and she is his. She didn’t want to learn to control how she felt about Illya anyway.