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In retrospect, he supposes he was being dramatic.
But for those few, heart-stopping moments, Solo will forever maintain that he’d needed to be. It was not his best look by any stretch of the imagination: braced against a tree, clothes and hair disheveled by his own hands, knees threatening to buckle out from underneath him. His face the same, ashen gray of the newspaper he was clutching.
That newspaper, sweat-damp and creased as it is, has been haphazardly stuffed into his briefcase since, though its contents are not so easily compartmentalized. Out of sight, maybe, but not out of mind. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
He is still recovering from the ambush.
Solo had been walking to the office, cutting through the park as he was wont to do on his way to work. It was, by all accounts, a typical morning in early November… right up until he passed by the newsstand.
The words had seemed to leap off the pages, grabbing him by the lapels and shaking violently, headlines frozen on a silent scream.
He had fumbled for his wallet then, overpaid without waiting, or even caring, about getting his change. His head was reeling, his insides roiling as he stumbled away—only to find himself clinging to an oak tree for support.
He’d called for a cab after that.
Now, with the benefit of twenty minutes’ hindsight, Solo has managed to accept his actions as the utterly justified, if slightly compromising, display that they were and managed to muster up a reasonable facsimile of himself.
The newspaper article is no longer spinning endlessly before his eyes, but he feels it all the same, crawling under his skin and swimming through his veins.
Still, he thinks with a sigh, the time for dignity has come.
With a smile plastered on his face and as much casual arrogance as he can muster, Solo sweeps into the office he shares with his partners. Husband and wife lift their eyes in an eerily synchronized gesture, looking him over and plucking easily at the seams of his facade.
“You’re late, Cowboy.”
“Fashionably so,” he says airily, making a beeline for his desk. Gaby steps straight into his path, however, sets a hand on his chest to stop him.
She tilts her head to the side, reading him by degrees. “What’s wrong?”
“Under-caffeinated,” he lies. “Didn’t have time to stop for coffee along the way.”
Solo catches the barest hint of a nod from Gaby before Peril slips quietly from the room. “And what—or, should I ask who—held you up?”
He shrugs, and she allows him to pass by. “A man’s entitled to an off day every now and then, don’t you think?”
The American has just set his case down when he hears the low rumble behind him. “Here,” Illya says, pressing a mug into his hands. The hot ceramic is a balm, chasing away the chill and darkness.
He blinks in surprise at this unexpected gesture. “Thanks, Peril.” Solo takes a tentative sip of the steaming liquid and grimaces. “But I don’t think this is what I ordered.”
“No coffee,” Illya says sternly. “Tea. You look like mad man.”
Before Solo can refute the claim, defend his honor with some kind of witty retort, Gaby is tugging on his bicep and gentling him into a chair. Her husband moves to stand behind her. They are a unified front—not against him, but for him.
And that is infinitely worse.
His sigh is a heavy one, long-suffering and distinctly unsettled. “Am I being interrogated?”
“If that’s what it takes,” she says lightly, “but not now. Drink your tea, Solo. We’re meeting with Waverly in ten.”
He takes an early lunch afterwards. He doesn’t tell his partners. In fact, Solo goes to great lengths to avoid running into the married couple and facing their now familiar tag team of Good Cop/Soviet Cop.
His stroll back to headquarters is a leisurely one, giving him plenty of time to mull over their latest mission brief—civil unrest in Jordan, apparently—and to let his mind run over the familiar tracks: where and how he can stretch the law or wriggle through a loophole. Where and how he can escape.
It’s no use.
And so, with heart in his hands and a resolve that alternately humbles and horrifies him, the American returns to Waverly’s office. He feels exposed, naked without his usual armor of indifference, of insouciance, as he knocks on the door and walks in… whether the man is ready to see him yet or not.
His superior arches an eyebrow at him but motions for him to take a seat. “Mr. Solo,” he deadpans. “What can I do for you?”
“Sir, I…” the words catch in his throat, and for a moment, he is tempted to just apologize and walk back out. But then he remembers the headlines and regains his resolve. “I can’t go to Jordan.”
Waverly gives a knowing nod. “Florence,” he says. “Yes, I saw it in the papers. Flood reached nearly seven meters from what I heard.”
If Solo is surprised the man has connected all the dots, he manages to hide it. He infuses his voice with a sense of professional detachment, though his heart is pounding wildly. “The water’s receding, but the mud’s still there. Seven meters, sir. That’s more than twenty feet.”
“One ton for every resident is what they’re estimating, but—” there’s a sudden wryness to the Englishman’s tone, “—I take it they’re not where your concern most lies.”
Something like a flush crawls up the back of Solo’s neck, but he ignores it. He takes a deep breath and forces himself to meet the man’s gaze steadily. There’s no use hiding it. “The homes weren’t the only buildings damaged when the banks of the Arno burst. It was churches and museums too. Libraries. Galleries. Centuries’ worth of culture and art and, and—and humanity at risk.”
His hands clench at his sides to try and regain some semblance of composure. He wonders, briefly, if this is how Peril feels. That tightrope. That razor’s edge. “I care about the people, sir. I do. But not just the ones there now.”
“You’re referring, I assume, to the legacies. Our bridges to the past.”
“And to the future. Think of all the generations to follow who may never get to know or be moved by these pieces, the way that…”
The way that I was.
He’s said far more than he’d meant to already without bringing his backstory into this. He shuts his mouth, his eyes to the honesty threatening to overwhelm him. When Solo opens them a moment later, all of the walls are down.
“The world may not be ending, sir,” he says softly, “but mine is.”
The seconds stretch into an eternity as Waverly contemplates this revelation. At last, he breaks the silence. “You know, I hate to say it, Solo, but civil unrest is something like old hat for us. There’s a new revolt every day, it seems. This situation in Florence, however, now, that is something out of the ordinary.”
His words have none of their usual suavity. The American’s voice is rough, laced with a rare uncertainty. He will not call it pleading. “I have your permission then?”
“I believe your team would be much more effective in Italy, would they not?”
Solo’s lungs burn as he exhales his relief, savors the taste of hope in the air. He may or may not have been holding his breath while awaiting his superior’s pronouncement. His smile mirrors Waverly’s own until his mind finally catches up to him.
“My… team, sir?”
His superior lifts a folder from his desk, revealing a copy of The Times beneath. “Your partners came in here not twenty minutes ago to plead your case. And they made it very clear that they would be going with you.” He grins at Solo’s stunned expression. “I believe they’re packing you a bag as we speak.”
He huffs in mild disbelief. So, he really hadn’t given them the slip earlier. Gaby and Peril had gotten the jump on him, the sneaky, little—
“Keep up, Solo.” The Englishman’s eyes are bright with humor as he shakes his hand and walks him to the door.
Florence is not the disaster zone that Solo is expecting. By all accounts, it should be: the city is deluged with mud—debris-studded and oil-blackened—and its citizens have limited access to potable water. To food and electricity. The news travels from door-to-door in the wake of more instantaneous methods.
And yet, these dire straits do not appear so treacherous. There is an undercurrent of hope thrumming beneath his feet as he walks through the ruined roads. It echoes off the buildings, imbues him with a startled, awed sort of humility.
His partners feel it too. Peril has Gaby tucked against his side, and they follow slowly after him, taking in the various tableaus of humanity around them.
“The city is in the hands of the young,” a woman tells him in lightly-accented English. And Solo can see that it is true. Everywhere he looks, there are young men and women providing relief in some form or another: a hurricane of relentless, vibrant optimism, a passion and an energy that knows no bounds.
Even Gaby, at the ripe, old age of 27, seems ancient by comparison.
“Not even the soldiers have come yet,” their new guide continues. “But these angels. They come from all over the world. Uninvited. They just decided to show up. Like you three, yes?”
Solo nods, his throat feeling a shade too tight to speak. The woman smiles gently at him, gestures for him and his partners to follow her. “The day is growing long. You will need a place to rest. Come, we will take care of you.”
He opens his mouth to protest, to insist that they should be giving aid, not receiving it, but she has already turned briskly on her heel and is heading off without them. Gaby slips her arm into his, while Peril flanks him on the other side.
A unified front, he repeats to himself as they set off into the shadowed sunshine of the approaching night.
The days that follow are a surrealist dream, a tapestry of language and culture woven from all corners of the world.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of volunteers flitting in and out of Florence. The hostels are packed to bursting, necessitating... alternative accommodations. He and his teammates spend their nights in the city’s main railyard, in idle sleeping cars and coaches.
It has become a familiar sight to him: Peril curled protectively around the mechanic in their too-small berth, while a rotating cast of volunteers occupy the other bunks. Solo lounges across from the happy couple. He spends his evenings thumbing through the handful of paperbacks they had brought with them (an eclectic mix of dry Russian classics and Gaby’s more sensational pulp fiction) or sharing stories over the odd bottle of wine.
Some nights, he doesn’t sleep at all. Solo has never enjoyed the quiet, but there is something peaceful, almost, about the stillness, the companionship of a shared human journey. There are no foreigners in Florence, he heard a man say. There is only our family.
Solo finds himself meditating on that statement often. Only when the dawn breaks does he let his eyes drift closed, resting on borrowed time until the day begins.
The hallowed grounds of the Uffizi Gallery serve as the central office for the relief effort. It is a triage station of sorts, dispatching workers to where they are most needed—its own buildings included. The American, himself, has spent hours leading search and rescue missions in the depths of the former palace, saving as many paintings as they can recover.
Gaby, meanwhile, has put her trade to good work, fixing everything from cars to generators to basement heating units that had burst during the flood. The rest of her time is spent at the Biblioteca Nazionale. Nearly a third of the library had taken on water, she’d reported, but they were retrieving as many of the texts as possible.
The mechanic is just one link in a seemingly endless human chain that stretches from the cellar to the street and beyond, passing the priceless documents hand-to-hand where they could then be catalogued and dried. So international is the scope of the volunteers, in fact, that a color-coded system has had to be introduced. It mitigates the language barrier, but also helps the preservationists keep track of every item.
And what about the third member of Solo’s team?
The Red Peril has been flexing his heart of gold on the humanitarian front. His focus has been on the citizens, rather than the culture. With additional support from Waverly, the Russian has coordinated daily brigades to the upper-floor apartments in the surrounding area, bringing fresh food and water to the elderly and the invalid, and delivering news and comfort in his typically stoic fashion.
Only when the people have been cared for does he put his strength and endurance to more physically-demanding labor. After clearing the mud from the roads, Illya has since been assigned to the Basilica di Santa Croce—that famous “Temple of the Italian Glories” where such greats as Michelangelo, Galileo, and even Machiavelli have been laid to rest.
On this particular day, the stars have aligned to unite the team once more. It is rare that their schedules coincide, but somehow, they have all arrived at the Galleria dell’Accademia to enjoy a hot meal together. A makeshift canteen has been established inside its inner sanctum—a necessary evil, he knows, though Solo is still trying to accept the sacrilege of having a mess hall beside the David.
Following their lunch break, the American and his partners now attend to two of Il Divino’s masterpieces at the Palazzo del Bargello. Solo and Gaby tackle the grime-caked bust of Brutus with nothing more than toothbrushes and elbow grease, while Peril gives what ultimately amounts to a sponge bath to Bacchus… the very indulgent, very naked deity that stands just a hair taller than the Russian himself.
Solo fights to hold back his grin when he sees the hungry way Gaby is staring at her husband. She has given up all pretense of working. The toothbrush dangles idly from her fingers as she watches his muscles ripple in the sunshine, the tireless, devoted way he cleans the marble. It is a sight for the mechanic’s sore eyes, and Solo could laugh if he might not start crying instead.
It has been nearly two weeks since they left London. Two weeks immersed in the ground-level ministry of all that their agency aspires to be. It has renewed his faith in humanity, reconnected him to his purpose at UNCLE. The citizens have taken to hailing them as gli Angeli del fango—the Angels of the Mud—and, for once, he believes himself worthy of such a title.
The ‘antiquities dealer’, the war profiteer with the checkerboarded past may be finally be making amends. Above him, the sun is dipping low over the horizon, casting rose-gold shadows over man and marble alike. The volunteers go quiet, as if on some unspoken cue, to absorb the sacredness of the day’s last breaths.
A snippet of Foscolo’s Alla sera runs through his mind, and he can’t help but murmur the lines softly. “E mentre io guardo la tua pace, dorme/spirito guerrier ch’entro mi rugge.”
“What does that mean?” Gaby asks.
Solo hesitates, especially when Peril abandons his post to join them. He pulls the mechanic in close, nods his head at him to continue. “And while I watch your peace,” he translates, “the warlike spirit that roars within me can find some rest.”
Foscolo had been writing about the twilight, but Solo sees the poem in a new context now: one of altruism that soothes and saves, and the shared humanity that binds the world together.
He scoffs half-heartedly at the sentiment. Going soft? He mocks himself. He supposes he may be being dramatic, but as the first tear courses down his cheeks and his partners pull him in close, Solo realizes then that he needs to be.