Pieta wandered into the cluttered living room, his linen suit hung limply in a sweaty rumpled mess as he sipped a glass of sweet juice. Vasily cast a jaundiced eye over his younger compatriot and winced. The man was a beast, too eager to feast on tender flesh, to ready to do the dirty work their masters required of them. He too had fallen far from grace but never so far as to allow himself to enjoy the banquet of the fallen.

"You should not have come here." Vasily admonished, before he turned his back to the man and continued to mark exam papers in his home office.

"The brat is well and truly confused and away from here, last I saw he was mooching around some monks. We will not be disturbed."

"You, are already disturbed." Vasily gave up the unequal task of ignoring the uninvited and turned around to study the man.

"You know Comrade you might just be right, but still we have orders."

"No, our orders are to find the antidote and save the Premiers son, not for you to destroy an innocent because of a fit of pique!" Vasily was up and pacing.

"Illya Kuryakin is not an innocent. I was there old man you have no idea!" Peita shouted into the still room, the heat of his anger radiated from him and Vasily watched the barely held sanity slip for a moment behind the wide eyes.

"Then if I am to be an accomplice perhaps you should tell me the tale."

"And why should I do that?" Peita regained his calm and finally sat down in the old chair.

"Come now, engage and old man in the tale so that I may truly understand your hatred of this one."

"Humour you?"

"If you like." Vasily poured another cup of the jasmine tea into the porcelain cup and studied the other man, sure now that sanity and duty were speculative at best in his actions.

Pieta paused for a moment, considering his options and with a half shrug he smiled slowly. In that moment Vasily knew that Pieta would tell him and that his own life would sooner or later be forfeit.

"Illya was married to my sister."

"Was?"

"Natalya was young and spirited, not classically pretty but nevertheless our family was well placed within the Polit Bureau. General Kuryakin was keen on sending his son to America to join UNCLE but needed to ensure his obedience. They were orchestrated into a relationship, and later married."

"How long were they married."

"Until she died, five years, four months and a handful of days."

"How?" Vasily watched the complex play of emotions cross the features and winced inwardly. He knew Illya would no more kill an innocent than he would strangle a cat, so either Natalya was not innocent or there were other matters.

"In child birth."

"And the child?"

"She was buried with her son." Pieta spat.

"That state is not that well equipped, I don’t understand how this is Illya's fault."

"No you wouldn’t, he was always your golden child." Pieta grew quiet again and sighed. "Neglect. Illya neglected Natalya, they knew she could not deliver the child without intervention. Nearly 8 months pregnant she went to pick him up from the port and was hit by a car on the way there."

"Ah so now I see he came home from sea duty, a month before the child was due to be born, his wife picked him up and died on the way in a tragic accident."

"The child lived Vasily! For 17 minutes the child lived, and Illya never held him, or her, nor did he cry. He never loved her she was a pawn and his callousness killed them both and I will kill him." Pieta stood up and put the glass down. "But not before I make him suffer."

And silently he left the room, the only thing that followed was the acrid scent of his body odour that trailed behind with his last shred of sanity.

~~~000~~~

The addiction like the heat and subsequent pain in his limbs was oppressive. Illya sat quietly in the long tail boat as it bobbed on the klong, the fetid brown water of the Chao Praya river making him faintly nauseas as he watched with despair the front of Vasily's house.

Peita Romanov swung out the door without a care, a happy smile on his lips as he perched the battered panama hat on his head and flagged down a tuk tuk.

The mess was starting to make sense. He felt gutted by yet another betrayal but understood now how his judgement had been lacking. Always the pessimist, he assumed that it was nothing more than politics. He understood that world, even felt comfortable in being a pawn in that world, but this had a very personal agenda. Pieta would never understand the depth of despair he was driven to after Natalya died. He could not look upon the child or hold him in his arms, aware that he would soon pass and the open wound of his soul could no more bare another loss so soon.

He drank, heavily for days, his father delivered the news he was to finally go to the west and Illya was prepared to die. At some point in time he would be expendable and they would kill him, simple, clean, and without emotion to cloud his judgement. Pieta hated him then and now, and this little nest of vipers was driven by hatred of him and not some wicked plot to overthrow the known world. THRUSH in this instance was simply being opportunistic and combined plots.

The heat finally overcame him and he vomited into the stinking river, his boatman nodded with concern towards the bottle of water and Illya drank sparingly. Grateful, not for the first time, the gentleness of the Thai people, he heaved a sigh and dropped a few satang into the boatman's hand and requested him to wait, as he disembarked on shaking legs and headed towards his friend.

If he was to die now, it no longer seemed to matter and Illya sighed again, he had he reasoned, very little left to loose. And what there was he would willingly let go.