"No..."

Dark brown eyes, blank with horror and disbelief, continued to stare at the madly dancing flames.

"Oh, God...*Illya*...no..."

Darkness.

The first thing he woke to was darkness...and yet...not quite.
 

Competing with the blackness was a strange light -dancing reds, oranges, and yellows twisting a wild dervish to a thunderous roar with its chorus of crackles, groans, and screams...the wailing and gnashing of teeth..? He knew that phrase from somewhere. From... Oh yes, from one of Father Alexander's sermon's on hellfire and damnation. *Now*, he knew where he was. The only place that would accept the soulless son of a bitch like him.

Most appropriate.

The Devil claims his own, wasn't it?

Tortured lungs spasmed violently at an inhalation of thick, black smoke. Strange. Not sulfur -he had always thought that the smoke here would be full of the stuff. Probably was -he just wasn't aware of it yet. Had to be patient -it would come. It wasn't like he was going anywhere -demons held him down by the legs, waiting for...

"Did you honestly think any jail could hold me, mein bruder?"

Bleary, half smoke-blinded eyes looked up as the weight was lifted from his legs. Ahh!! Pain!!! So *now* the torture starts. Instead, a cloaked figure stared down at him, blood dripping from a long angry gash beneath one soot-soiled cheek. Strange...he'd never expected Satan to look so much like himself.

"Pathetic, mein bruder," the Devil hissed, flames reflected in his cracked, wire-rimmed glasses. "So smart that you should see through my deceptions, and yet so stupid that could think to destroy THRUSH and *me*!" A vulpine smile turned the evil one's lips. "I should let you die here or kill you with my own hands...a payment in kind for the betrayal of your birthright and bloodline, nein?" The cloaked being shook his head. "But no...that would be no true challenge for the likes of us."

The madly twisting flames lurched closer. So...his punishment was to burn after all despite all the confusing chatter, but just then, the cloaked Lord of the Flies reached down and lifted him up, wrapping his shroud around the both of them. "Later then. We will fight to the finish later."

Blackness surrounded his senses.

Antonia Solo stared at the ancient building that was being eaten from within by the unstoppable conflagration and then gazed sadly at her brother who had sunk to his knees and was sobbing inconsolably. She should have been rejoicing -one of THRUSH's most important citadels was going up in flames and everyone within it- but all she could feel was rage. How *dare* he? How *dare* Illya Kuryakin break her brother's heart this way! How--

There was another explosion and Antonia Solo was inclined to drag Napoleon from this place if needs be -THRUSH reinforcement would be arriving soon, she was sure- when, all of a sudden, a figure cloaked in a smoldering, sodden blanket hurled itself from one of the shattered lower windows, rolling as it landed on the scorched glass-ridden ground below.

At once, guns were drawn, but the figure ignored the threat as it almost immediately took to its feet in the opposite
direction...leaving a crumpled form on the ground where it -they- had landed. "Napoleon! No!" But Antonia's warning went unheeded as Napoleon, woken from his grief-bound daze, darted towards the unmoving human bundle and gathered it up into his arms, a trembling hand searching for a pulse as tear-glazed eyes took in the bruised, soot-smeared face and the almost alien uniform of THRUSH's highest office. "Please..." he mouthed, begging for a miracle. "Please...you *promised* me..." Just then, there was the throb of pulsing blood beneath the purpled skin beneath Solo's fingers, and then again...and
again as a tentative breath was drawn from between pale lips. "Thank God..." Napoleon murmured, cradling the limp form to his heaving chest. "Thank God... Illya... Thank God..."