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God Only Knows
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Disclaimer
This is a work of amature fiction, no contravention of copyright is intended and no profit is made from this endeavour.
Napoleon knelt down by the cloth covered body and dipped into the pocket of his expensive grey suit to withdraw his pen communicator. With great care and distaste he lifted the corner of the sheet away and stared at the face of the man who lay underneath the shroud. Instinctively he shuddered as he took in the gentle curve of face and mentally corrected himself, child he thought, barely a child. He dropped the cloth back and studied the room. A well appointed residence with fine furniture and oak panelling glowed darkly against the bright porcelain on the mantle piece.
Illya dodged passed the myriad technicians that swarmed the room as he came closer head bent over a sheaf of papers and his coat hanging open.
“Ah there you are Napoleon.” He said softly as the American stood.
“According to reports the boy suicided.” Napoleon shook his head.
“Oh yes, quiet inventive as well, managed to have a fine meal, drown his sorrows and then slit his wrists from elbow to palms with the steak knife.”
“And then bled to death all over the antique Persian rug.” There was a dangerous darkness in Napoleon and Illya snapped the clipboard closed.
“Sarcasm?” Illya raised an eyebrow and pocketed the thick rimmed glasses into his pocket and sat on the sofa.
“Any mitigating circumstances?”
“None that we know of, background says that there was no evidence of impropriety, or financial distress. He was well known and to all intents and purposes was well liked by his peers.”
“Ivy league student with a bright future.” Napoleon ran his fingers along the oak mantle above the wide fire and frowned again.
“You don’t understand it do you Napoleon?” Illya’s voice was a calm anchor in the sea of his turmoil as he leaned back and pushed his hands into his pockets.
“And I suppose you do.” Again the dark tone, bordering on anger and Illya squinted against the late afternoon sun. The momentary lull interrupted by the coroner’s removal of the body and the last of the flash bulbs going off to immortalise the charnel scene.
“Actually I do.” Illya looked down at his over large hands and clenched them for a moment, his voice still soft. Napoleon shrugged elegantly as he looked at his partner waiting for the explanation. “Look around you Napoleon, what do you see?”
“Nice house, filled with exquisite decorators pieces, the body of a dead boy who if we are to believe the reports killed himself for no apparent reason.”
“Why was there no reason Napoleon? Because he was beautiful? Because he chose to live amongst beautiful things? Because his family is well connected and without the creeping lethargy that poverty invokes?” Illya stood and did up his coat.
“Probably.” Napoleon eyed his partner suspiciously and advanced slowly.
“Look around you again Napoleon, what do you see?”
“I’ve already told you.”
“Ah yes, you see through the eyes of wealth of privilege. I don’t my friend, I see through the eyes of one who has known bleakness.”
“Meaning?” Napoleon asked growing alarmed.
“Where are the photo’s Napoleon? The pride a parent displays for their child with precious medals and ribbons? He was a sportsman Napoleon, where are all his trophies?”
“I, ah, don’t know.”
“If I were a betting man Napoleon I’d say in a box in the basement.” Illya headed towards the door but not to the basement he made for the front door and after long moments Solo jogged to catch him up.
“Where are we going?”
“To the park across the street, the house is oppressive.”
“The smell of blood always is.” Napoleon answered and saw a flash of anger flare in the bright blue eyes of his friend. Something felt decidedly wrong.
A small well manicured cheerful park with mature trees that sent the sun dappling onto the soft carpet of lawn.
“You don’t understand because it goes against the grain that someone could choose to die like that. I can track his movements, the remnants of food on the table, the expensive cognac in the glass, he was giving himself a going away party and the act was deliberate. He planned it well and timed it perfectly. Can you imagine what it is like?” Illya did not pause in his alliteration; he continued his feet beating a restless path through the tiny park. “To have to pretend that everything is fine when clearly it isn’t, to feel not good enough despite your achievements?” Illya looked up a ghost of sadness in his eyes.
“I must admit that I don’t.” Napoleon’s voice was troubled and Illya spared him a glance.
“He had nothing to hold him to this world. He was beautiful but it wasn’t enough people wanted him because of it and left the soul shuddering in their wake as they seek to own, to manipulate. He was smart again it probably wasn’t his father’s chosen field so would be met with derision and scorn, his academic achievements going blind into the well of his father’s disappointment. He could never live up, never be the man people wanted him to be and finally realised that they didn’t matter; only he did. And in that moment Napoleon, he knew that he was incapable of going on, continuing the lie that was his life. To not be able to love freely or live where the crushing pressure was no longer part of your very heart.” Illya had stopped moving and gazed upon the imposing structure of the house in front of them.
“You sound like you knew him.”
“Perhaps there was a time when I was him.” Illya answered sadly and walked away leaving Napoleon stunned in silence standing in the small park alone.
“Perhaps there was a time when I was him.” The phrase worked over and over in Napoleon’s mind, his date chatted aimlessly at him unaware that he wasn’t concentrating on her. The last of the bourbon swirled around the bottom of the glass and the ice all but melted. He had heard it in his mind through out dinner, his soul felt the shudder as he took the woman in his arms on the dance floor, and his heart beat to a staccato rhythm of fear as it pounded restlessly in his body.
He sat with his back to the wall, wider field of vision ingrained into his body making him react to things that were beyond his control. Each movement careful and controlled but his mind was weary, the turmoil boiling over into anger as he saw the child on the floor, they would not have been called except for the father’s political standing but still it haunted him.
He pulled down the cuffs of his fine shirt, unconsciously drawing them over the scars on his wrists from ropes bound too tightly months before. Under his coat his revolver sat comfortably and he acknowledged with a wry smile that he was indeed a hunter; a feral beast carved from the old red white and blue and knew exactly what he was.
And in that there was a freedom, how could he understand the pain that Illya so eloquently did? How could he know that life was not always filled with pretty girls with their elegant coifs and designer frocks? Yet he did and he still did not understand.
“To live without being able to love.” Another phrase caught him off guard and the background report swam into view. How was it Illya had guessed upon the answer? The boy had eclectic tastes and one of them was other young men. A vice his puritan father would surely find distasteful. The lack of a note suggested that this was the culmination of a previous argument. A hostile act as a last moment of defiance to a world that wouldn’t care about his passing, and had known Illya without looking.
The band stopped its steady beat and one by one the couples left the dance floor and returned to gather coats and wraps. His date was watching him from under dark lashes and smiled. He couldn’t remember what she had said but smiled disarmingly at her stood to offer his arm as he walked her home.
Illya propped the book on his lap as the record player scratched out a soft and haunting tune. Full of anguish and despair and anger at the world at large. How could he expect Napoleon to understand? He didn’t himself but he knew that child and it ached. He knew the look on the face, when he closed his eyes he saw the knife in the hand and the grim determination as the blade bit into soft white flesh forever staining the carpet underneath him.
He could smell the despair in the room; it reeked of pain and anger. He wondered if the parents would continue to live there, would they lament for the gentle soul who could no longer face their derision. Would they even in their darkest moments admit to themselves and their God that they were the cause of a bright light being extinguished?
Deciding that he was far too cold he doubted that they would even notice a week from now the blood stain would still be there and they would fret over having it removed from the carpet. The grave would go unkept and forgotten by the parents, a small tithe would be paid each Sunday for the flowers to go on the spot and perhaps the mother would grieve. Illya liked to think she would. And for the first time in what seemed forever he felt the cracks in his own heart.
God only knew the mind of the innocent and he grieved.
Nearly midnight and the front door protested the fist that pounded on it. Upstairs lights went on in Illya’s small apartment building and Napoleon smiled when the door opened to reveal a slightly dishevelled blond. The hair charmingly askew and the blue eyes still foggy from sleep.
“Not that I’m not always pleased to see you Napoleon could you explain exactly what you are doing here?” Illya ushered his partner inside and closed the door, pulling his robe tighter about his body as he went to make tea.
“It bothered me.” Napoleon said at length as he undid the bowtie and top button of his shirt to lean on the door frame.
“Yes it bothered me too, but we cannot change it.”
“I know.” He took the proffered mug of tea and sat in the lounge room. The small apartment with the overstuffed book shelf, the cast off furniture mixing with the pieces Illya had chosen. The old armchairs worn and comfortable and the record player a few minor luxuries as he looked around the room again. No photos, no memento’s it was as bleak as his heart as he turned pained eyes on his friend.
“Have you been drinking?” Illya asked suddenly unsettled by the naked emotion that welled from the normally urbane man.
“I had two bourbons about three hours ago. Since then nothing.” Napoleon answered. “How did you know Illya?”
“That it was deliberate?”
Solo nodded. “It was obvious, suicide is a hostile act. To ease the suffering and most often to inflict suffering on those around you. A chance to say screw you.”
“You swore.” Napoleon smiled in spite of the conversation.
“That’s beneath you I never swear.” Illya retorted as he sat back down in his chair, long well muscled legs pulling up under his body.
“Ah my mistake then.”
“I should think so.”
“So he was telling his father to go to hell?”
“Or his mother, usually it’s the father though.”
“Was yours?”
“Was my what?” Illya frowned momentarily as reason finally lit his eyes. “Did my father approve of me? What father ever does?”
“Mine did. He adored me and I him, we grew up in privilege and station. I disappointed him when I joined the army and went to Korea but still he was proud of me, proud I came home.” Solo smiled. “I took a cab home and got off at the end of the street, very proper, tree lined New England heritage I’m sure you can imagine.” Solo noted the barley concealed grunt that Illya made. “I was in my dress uniform, complete with my medals and I marched Illya, I marched the length of that street to show my father I was proud to be his son. He cried when I got home, put his arms around me and patted me on the back. I knew where I belonged, that there wasn’t a thing I couldn’t tell him, nothing I could do to drive him from me. I thought all parents were the same.”
“It is a nice dream Napoleon, but it is not the truth. Families torn apart because they cannot feed themselves tearing at each other, the unfair pressures on the only one who might escape to better all their lots? It’s a heavy burden and even more when you cannot do anything to help them.”
“Which is why your pay check mostly goes home to you mother.”
“Grandmother and not most but a good sum, she can buy bread and food and with it she feeds the children in the area. It’s not much Napoleon but it’s the best I can do.”
“A fact you should be proud of.”
“I’m not ashamed by it if that’s what you mean.”
“No, I wasn’t suggesting that.” Solo leaned forward. “How did you know he was gay?”
“Ah, the real question? Call it instinct.”
“Because?”
“You need to ask?” Illya quizzed as he looked into the dark brown eyes aware of the need that lived there.
“Yes.”
“In the Soviet Napoleon, we do not discuss such things. Children who do not conform do not get fed; do not send money home to Babushka’s who need to feed the orphans she cares for.”
“We are not in the Soviet Illya, we are here between friends.”
“There is no safe place for that discussion Napoleon as you should know.” Illya was pacing restlessly across the aged carpet.
“My father knows I prefer men.” Napoleon finally said into his cup of tea.
“You expect me to believe that?” Illya scowled.
“Believe what you will it’s the truth. You can ask him if you want.”
“No I doubt I would do that. Besides what of all your women?”
“Camouflage.”
“Ahah, to hide from what?” Illya sat back down.
“You said that there was a time when you were that boy, when you understood what it was like to pretend that everything was alright when clearly it wasn’t. When the anger and pain would sometimes be too much and you longed to live freely, to love whom you chose.”
“Yes I said that mostly, I’m surprised that you took notice.”
“I’ve always noticed Illya, everything about you. And if that makes you uncomfortable I will apologise. But I know that feeling Illya and like that child who will be buried within the week, I weep for being a coward and not being able to live the life I want for myself.”
“And what is it you want?”
“What I’ve wanted for years. You Illya, I’ve wanted you and I know you are so far beyond my reach I shall never touch you.”
“We touch each other constantly.” Illya answered softly as he looked up.
“In more ways then you can know, but it’s not enough to be secret. To live in fear of being found out? The pain would tear us apart and I couldn’t bare to loose you.”
“Nor I you.” Illya reached forward and cupped the proud jaw in his hand and smiled.
“I also know that if I had you once I could never let you go.”
“I know.”
“Seraphim treated you grievously, and you lost an innocent in the last affair. But this life is all too much Illya.”
“So you’re leaving me?”
“I have no choice Illya, I’ve walked for hours, Waverly is royally pissed but I have to go. I have to take the chance to make a life for us and I can't if I stay in UNCLE.”
“Thank you for coming to tell me.” Illya felt only cold seep into his body, these last few years had been, torment and pain not withstanding, the happiest of his life and he was loosing it.
“Come with me.”
“Napoleon you can’t be serious.”
“Why not? Come with me Illya.”
“No, I am not yet an American citizen Napoleon. If I leave UNCLE I will be recalled. I have no choice.”
“Then have Alex fix it.”
“And then what?”
“Be true to yourself. Understand that I shall always wait and the love I have for you has grown for years a few more won’t change that.”
“Napoleon please don’t.” Illya stood as Napoleon drew his coat over his shoulders and looked back.
“I’ll let you know where I am. When you can if you’re so inclined come to me.”
“And be sure of my welcome?”
“As you always were, and ever will be, only you and I and God know’s Illya but don’t ever doubt that I love you.”
The door closed softly and yet to Illya it was the cruellest sound he had heard in years, he sank back onto the sofa, the fear coursing though him of being alone in a loveless world. That he had lost the only anchor he had and for long minutes stared pointedly at the gun on the coffee table.
Hours later as dawn lit the morning sky he stood and turned off the light and went to bed. Children grow into men who can give into pain or can grow from it. Illya grew and for the first time his heart pounded at the thought, he was loved and that alone would sustain him until the time was right.
Only that.
Finis.
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