Title: Growing Up Doesn't Mean Growing Old

Fandoms: Man from U.N.C.L.E. and N.C.I.S.

Rating: Teen for now

Disclaimer: I own nothing of the Man From UNCLE or NCIS.

Year: 1964

Illya Nickovetch Kuryakin lay in a hospital bed looking at his latest round of surgical scars. As an Enforcement Officer for U.N.C.L.E. he'd picked up quite a few over the years. The quiet sounds of the U.N.C.L.E. medical ward did nothing to help him to sleep, thus resulting in his personal examination. His sensitive hearing picked up a conversation right outside the door to his room and he dropped the blankets, listening closely. "I tell you they are all a bunch of over grown children!" a male voice exclaimed in disgust.

"They can't all be that bad," a woman's voice answered. Illya wondered who they were discussing, although he had a pretty good idea in general. There was a constant battle between the Enforcement Agents and the Medical Personnel of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, mostly on the matter of how soon Enforcement Agents could return to their duty. Medical Personnel wanted their patients to be fully healed before returning to duty and Enforcement Agents generally wanted to be out of confinement as quickly as possible. No Enforcement Agent liked being in a hospital, even if they weren't the patient. As they were the ones who were sent straight into trouble, stopping terrorists before they could launch their plans, they were frequent visitors to the medical section, either as patients or visiting their friends who were.

"Oh yes they are, although Section Three aren't quite as bad as Section Two. Not one of them will stay still long enough to heal properly and you absolutely can't tie them down. I mean it, don't ever even suggest it. They panic if you restrain them in any way and as they're trained to kill it isn't worth your life to try, and it means that they end up a mass of scars if they survive long enough to retire," the man said.

"Well that's understandable, Jack! Not one of them hasn't been tied down and tortured for goodness sake! Of course you can't tie them down! Of all the harebrained ideas," the woman said exasperated. Their voices faded out as they continued along the hallway. Illya personally agreed with the woman, that was a hair brained idea. Shuddering at the thought of the restraints that had been used on him in the past, Illya returned to his examination of his incision site. Jack, whoever he was, was correct. He should be a mass of scars as he had done little to prevent them, but he wasn't, which was something he now found puzzling. Good, he needed a puzzle to solve right now.

He carefully eased his pajama shirt off, going slowly to prevent any more pain than could be helped. This was one of the things he hated about having surgery -being careful about the stitches. Very carefully, inch by inch he went over what skin he could see and reach without bending or stretching anything that he shouldn't. That wasn't easy as the surgery had been to stitch back together a knife wound that he had taken in his side, not to mention the other wounds he had sustained in the fight. Speaking of knife wounds, the scar on his left forearm, the one that he had thought had faded a few years ago was gone. Not faded but actually missing. There had been other wounds to that arm in the same location in the last few years, a bullet wound and a hot poker burn if he remembered correctly but there were no signs of those injuries either. In fact, the only scars on that arm that he could find were actually only partial scars. Most of them had sections of completely unblemished skin running through them.

That made no sense. He brought his wrists close to his eyes to examine them. He had been tied up with a variety of objects over many years. He had scraped the skin off of both of his wrists enough times getting himself loose that his wrists should be nothing but a mass of scars. But there was nothing of the kind on his wrists. That was the one place that he was certain that he would find some kind of scar. He examined himself well into the night, but came up with no explanations.

In time he returned to duty and once more to the field. The questions never left his mind, but were shoved to the back; coming to the forefront of his mind only when he was examining the areas that he had most recently had surgery on. He had decided to quietly monitor them in an effort to answer the puzzling phenomenon. At least that had been his plan until late one night a month or so after hearing that snippet of conversation.

That was when he realized that whatever was happening to him, it wasn't just him alone. He had hauled his partner and section chief, Napoleon Solo up the stairs to their hotel room after rescuing him from yet another THRUSH trap. It had been the usual; get in, find Napoleon, rescue him, blow up the satrap, and then haul his partner somewhere so he could look over Napoleon's wounds.

It was nothing that didn't happen with disgusting frequency in their lives. But the moment Illya removed Napoleon's shirt and started examining his chest, he found that the questions about scars weren't for him alone. Napoleon had been tortured with acid on one occasion soon after they were partnered together. The acid had spread down his chest and caused a rather gruesome scar. Now as he lay on the dingy mattress of Illya's very cheep hotel room, Illya could see that what had once been a very smooth and rather large scar singular scar was now a series of patches. The realization only took a moment for him to processes and then he moved on to removing the rest of Napoleon's clothes. There was no time now for his questions about disappearing scars. Right now he had to treat the torture wounds his partner had received this time.