Work Text
Gaby's feet hurt.
They throb, dully and mercilessly, even worse than when she was dancing ballet daily. But it seems that pushing a cleaning cart around a hotel for three days wearing ugly, uncomfortable pumps, a polyester uniform that makes her drip with sweat and itch annoyingly, while she is forced to listen to an untrustworthy woman flirt with Illya is much more challenging that spending hours
en pointe
.
UNCLE's latest mission had been dogged by ill-luck from the briefing, when Gaby knocked a full cup of coffee onto her white and purple striped dress. They'd come to Montevideo to track a possible cell of nazi sympathizers. A reconnaissance mission had gone sideways, resulting in Solo stumbling out of a burning mansion with one arm around a stolen Renoir painting and the other around Chriselda Chotek von Chotkow.
Chriselda Chotek von Chotkow had
no idea
that her brother was involved with nazis - she had left all that behind when she fled Berlin before the advancing Red Army, she harbored no ill will towards
anyone
, all she wanted was her simple life and her paintings, what was she to do?
Gaby doesn't trust her as far as she could throw her, Illya seems to have no opinion about her allegiances, and even in private, Solo acted as if he has swallowed her story hook, line, and sinker.
UNCLE hadn't had time to establish any safehouses in Uruguay, MI6's safehouse in Montevideo had been compromised, so while an SIS team searches for her brother, Chriselda is ensconced in a hotel room, under 24 hours guard. Which is mostly Illya, as the most suspicious person who could also physically restrain her without too much trouble. If she is as oblivious as she claimed, she will be set free. If she is guilty of the same crimes as her brother, there is a civilized cell in London waiting for her.
It isn't possible to effectively secure the hotel, so while Illya is babysitting, Solo and Gaby move about the hotel searching for suspicious activity. Solo saunters this way and that, playing the lost American tourist, while Gaby kept her head down, stole a maid uniform and cart, and circled the hotel over and over, while everyone ignored her.
In her earpiece, Chriselda is trying to get Illya to go fetch her some ice, did he have to call the room service instead? They were so slow and the ice machine is just down the hall?
"We go together," Illya says, brusque but detached.
Gaby tunes out the sounds of them getting ice, the silence when they return to their hotel room.
"I've seen the way you look at that little German girl,"
Chriselda Chotek von Chotkow says.
Gaby pauses in the middle of halfheartedly making a bed and presses her fingers against her earpiece. There is a bite in Chriselda's that had been absent from all the previous cooing compliments.
Illya didn't reply.
"You poor man. You must know that she doesn't care for you?"
A month ago, this would have sent Gaby's blood roiling. Today, the comment itself is mildly amusing. Illya 'must know' that Gaby had spent several pleasant evenings in his bed, taking him apart and letting him do the same to her. Hardly something she would risk with a Russian, and a coworker, if she didn't care about him.
But the sharpness of Chriselda's voice has Gaby grabbing her gun and heading upstairs.
Chriselda is clearly done playing the oblivious sister.
“She’s a silly little girl who doesn’t know what to do with a man like you. But
I
do…”
There is the sound of rustling, and then a thump, as if a woman has been shoved away to land ungently on a sofa.
“Nyet
,” Illya says harshly.
There is a pregnant pause. Chriselda bursts into tears.
Gaby takes the stairs at a run.
There is another long pause, filled with the sound of Chriselda’s sobbing.
“I am so humiliated!”
she wails.
“...There is no need for that,”
Illya says.
“Here, dry your eyes-”
Gaby hears a vase shatter and a heavy thud.
She bursts onto the fifth floor and races down the hall.
Chriselda yanks open the door and then freezes when she sees Gaby, pointing her pistol right between the other woman’s eyes.
Behind Chriselda, Illya is slumped on the ground, unconscious, blood marking his temple, surrounded by shards of vase, cut flowers. He is bleeding from his temple.
Further inside the hotel room, the curtains are on fire, flames licking upwards and igniting the ceiling.
Chriselda smirks at her. "Step aside, Liebling,” she says in German. "We both know you won’t shoot me.”
Gaby lowers her gun and pulls the trigger.
Solo can't find his earpiece.
A fellow guest had crossed his path in the hallway and invited him back to her room for a mid-afternoon aperitif. Solo had politely removed his earpiece and slipped it into his trouser pocket for safekeeping (it would have been good to for Illya to hear the proper way to seduce a woman, to get him and Gaby out of their little detente but he had no wish to hear Gaby’s color commentary, so it was her loss, really).
Upon extracting himself from the woman’s hotel room, he found his pockets empty of anything, including his wallet and the wallet of an argentinian business man he’d pick-pocketed in the hotel bar last night. The minx.
He starts towards the elevator and the fire alarm begins shrieking. He detours to the stairs.
Solo goes up as a crowd of people swarm down. At the third floor, he smells smoke.
Just before the fourth floor, he runs across his team.
Chriselda swears and shouts at Gaby as she crawls down the stairs. She’s been shot in the left ankle and is leaving a trail of blood behind her as drags herself down the stairs.
Gaby walks behind her with a heavy tread, Illya draped over her shoulders like an impossibly heavy Russian stole. His head is narrowly missing hitting the ground on one side of Gaby, and his toes dangle hilarious close to the ground on the other.
Solo tsks.
“Chriselda, I am disappointed,” he comments. “More arson?” Black smoke is billowing into the stairwell.
Gaby makes an unamused grunt. “Stop flirting and take Illya,” she demands, walking directly to him and sort of - shrugging Illya off and into Solo’s arms.
Solo staggers back. “Did the Kremlin fill Illya’s bones with lead?” he asks.
“Yes,” Gaby answers grimly.