Chapter Text
“Would you care for some tea?”
“Yes, please.” Mandy smiled, sliding into a seat at Illya’s kitchen table. He rummaged in the sink for clean-ish glasses; he hadn’t expected to be home that day.
“Thanks for making the time to speak with me,” she continued. “I brought pão de mel as a thank you.” Setting a white bakery box on the table, she opened it to reveal a dozen of the tiny, chocolate covered honey cakes. Illya caught a whiff of sugar and spices and found that his mood, which had been sour ever since Napoleon had phoned him that morning to explain how he’d been called in for an administrative meeting on what was supposed to have been their day off, improved considerably.
He returned to the table with two steaming tea glasses and helped himself to a cake. “You know it’s not necessary to bribe me for my assistance. Although, I’ll admit it helps. You said you had something to discuss in confidence?”
“Yes. Only now that I’m here, it’s, well...”
“Is it something to do with your work for Control?”
He thought about why she had asked to meet at his apartment rather than in the office. “A KAOS mole in UNCLE?”
Mandy gasped. “No, no. Nothing like that. Gosh, I feel silly now even bringing it up. But it is to do with my work for Control, in a way.”
Illya felt cold anger building in his stomach. He should have expected something like this. He’d never had a qualm about female field agents, and, in their own organization, April Dancer was certainly showing up everyone who’d doubted her, but he knew the industry well, and for a bunch of outsiders by definition, spies could be terribly cruel to anyone who didn’t fit their preconceived notions of belonging.
“They’re treating you unfairly? Shutting you out? Passing you over for missions?”
“No, nothing like that. The chief’s been fantastic. And I’m really getting in on the action.”
The anger curdled deeper in his gut.
“Is it your partner? Has he behaved… inappropriately towards you?”
Mandy groaned and pushed her tea away. “Oh, that’s just the trouble, Illya. I wish he would!”
“What?”
“Oh, I don’t mean that, exactly. But he’s always running after other girls, even robots and double agents, and, well, women who are all wrong for him. And it’s like I’m invisible!”
She lowered her voice and looked at him from across her cup. “I was just wondering, you know, whether you had any tips.”
“Tips?” He repeated, wondering suddenly whether she wasn’t speaking in some subtle code.
“You know, for how you finally got Napoleon to notice you.”
He inhaled hot ‘Russian Caravan’ and choked.
“Mandy! What do you…? How did…” He set the tea down. “Don’t be absurd.”
“I still see Napoleon from time to time, and I keep up with some of the girls from translation, who tell me they’ve been seeing considerably less of him. I wouldn’t say it’s obvious, but I happen to have excellent skills in observation. Don’t worry; I can keep a secret. I am a secret agent, you know.”
She was quiet a moment while Illya tried to decide exactly how comforting that assurance was.
“Do you think it’s because I’m taller than him?”
Illya frowned. Before Napoleon, he’d had occasional, pleasant encounters with women taller than himself, to say nothing of the men.
“If his ego is that fragile, I’m not sure he’s worthy of you, anyway.”
“No, Max isn’t like that.” She sighed.
“I assume you’ve exhausted your basic training?”
“Basic, intermediate, and advanced.” Mandy looked down into her tea. “And still not a thing – I’m beginning to think there must be something wrong with me.”
“If I had to guess, I would say that he respects you as an agent; perhaps so much so that it’s blinded him to your charms as a woman.”
“Well respect is all well and good, but… oh, what do I do now?” Mandy looked as though she might cry.
“Hmmm. Without confirming or denying anything, what finally worked for me was getting shot through the chest, which as a seduction technique I’m afraid I can’t recommend.” Illya gave her a thin smile, his fingers ghosting absently over the spot where the entry wound used to be.
“No, I suppose not.”
He watched as Mandy glumly nibbled a cake, then ate one himself in solidarity. Resigning himself to the difficult truth of the matter, he ate another as he tried to formulate what to say.
“It seems to me that you have only one course of action remaining. I hate to suggest it even more than I imagine you will hate to hear it, but have you tried telling this ‘Max’ how you feel?”