Fandom: The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Pairing: Napoleon Solo/Illya Kuryakin

Category: slash

Rating: G

Word Count: 479

Notes: Written for the Colours Table Prompt – “pink”

 

The cool wind picked up again and shook the limbs of the tree overhead.  It was barely May and though Spring had arrived, it was merely flirting with coming to stay, cold nights were still the norm.  But in the day, the sun was bright and hot, the cloudless sky brilliant and painful in its clarity, a blue so deep it could never be touched.  The ground was still cold even in the day and only the bravest of the crocus and tulips and daffodils had dared pierce the hard soil with bladed green.  Every brush of breeze pulled more petals from the blooming trees until the air was filled with a rain of pink, a haze of pale scent that danced with those blossoms, drifting against tree trunks like the snow they replaced in the air and on the greening grass of the new season. 

He leaned against the trunk of the tree, rough bark on his skin and cold earth beneath him, head tipped back and sunlight hot on his closed eyelids.  He took a deep breath to savor the scent of the Spring coming to life around him and coughed.

His eyes opened and he realized he had dozed, sitting in the cement block cell, surrounded by the dark and the cold and the empty.  It was not Spring here in this hole, it was no season at all except bleak.  He tipped his head back against the wall, breath shallow from what he suspected, hoped were only cracked ribs.  He had attempted a few escapes, until his captors had caught a clue and started manacling him each time they brought him in here.  On very little food and even less water, he knew he would soon be unable to stay conscious, let alone to attempt the escapes. But attempt he would, he had a partner out there somewhere, possibly captured as well, he needed to find that partner and get out of this bleakness.

He thought again of the dreamed hallucination, of the pink petals of the flowering tree raining down on his upturned face, of how the scent had surrounded him like a blanket, the sunlight warming him even as the ground leeched warmth from him.

There was a stirring at the door to the cell and the light it let in when it swung away made it impossible to see the features of the man silhouetted there.  It was a familiar silhouette. 

There was no more imagining the spring times of years passed.  Spring had arrived with his partner, boldly opening the door and arrogant at the rescue he was pulling off.  It was the most beautiful flower he had ever seen bloom, the smile of relief as his partner discovered him, waiting under the trees only he could see, pink with blown blossoms and tight buds of potentials not yet ready to unfurl.