#Lippy still doesn't trust him

[ikeepwatchinghelicopters]

Please, point me to the fic if it already exists, but if it doesn't, how about an Ella Enchanted AU for TMFU?

If Illya was the one cursed with obedience, his KGB handlers would know about the fact that Illya has to follow every command they give him. I think they wouldn’t even use the curse to command him that often, they’d just use it to threaten him into obedience (because they found out that if they commanded Illya to, for example, assassinate somebody and triggered the curse, he’d be much more reckless when carrying out the command, because the curse would push him to do it right away, so he often wouldn’t have time to do it stealthily). So they just have some long-term commands (like “don’t kill yourself”, “don’t betray us”, etc.) and they like reminding Illya that they could make him do literally anything (even murder his mother) and keeping Illya obedient this way. I guess the events in the movie could play out basically the same way (though count Lippi probably wouldn’t end up in a hospital, because Illya would be forced to obey when he was told to “use the ladies”). And then at the end, Oleg commands Illya to kill Napoleon, so he has no choice, but to do it. Napoleon’d still return the watch and expect that Illya will not want to kill him anymore, but Illya draws his gun to shoot him anyways. I can think of two ways the scene would go. Either Illya’d manage to break free from the curse because of the power of love. Or Napoleon had been suspicious of Illya’s obedience for a long time without ever mentioning it, and he manages to cleverly override the command to kill him. I’m not sure what the rules of the curse are in the original, but maybe just Napoleon telling Illya not to kill him would do the trick.

If Napoleon was the one cursed with obedience, no one except his parents’d know. He’d be amazing at finding loopholes and getting out of the commands. Like, Illya’s way to fight the curse in the first scenario would be more about willpower. In order to not arouse suspicion by obeying right away without even a second of consideration, he trained himself to be able to hold back for a few seconds. That way his behaviour doesn’t look totally unnatural. But Napoleon’d be more about obeying the command, but definitely not in the way the person intended it. Of course, it doesn’t work with very direct commands which have basically no room for interpretation, but Napoleon found out that he can at least delay for a bit by asking for clarification (as in: someone tells him to sit down, so Napoleon is like: “Oh, you want me to sit down? On this chair right here?”). And the curse’s strength is also significantly weakened when someone commands Napoleon using one of his fake names. This way Napoleon manages to keep the curse a secret. I like to imagine that Illya’d somehow randomly manage to find out very early into their relationship (like, even before they break into the Vinciguerra factory). Napoleon would totally expect Illya to use it against him, but the Russian would never abuse the knowledge. In fact, he’d take care to not command Napoleon to do things even unintentionally. Napoleon and his trust issues are not sure how to handle it, lol.

[sunshinykittens-blog]

Meanwhile, Back At The Tower

“Tell him I’m busy!” Tony snapped at JARVIS’ interruption of his work. There was a problem with the coolant on a mini-suit he was working on.

“He says it’s extremely important, sir,” Jarvis replied. “He has something that he needs to give you.”

Tony swore and threw the wrench across the shop. He took a deep breath, set his jaw, and blipped open the screen for his phone. “This had better be important.”

“Oh it is, Mr. Stark,” the young face at the other end promised, “it really is.”

Tony raised an eyebrow and glared at the screen for a moment. “I’ll meet you in the deli around the corner in 10.”

When Tony walked into the deli, he was greeted from across the room by the owner. He waved back at the man and nodded. Might as well pick up lunch while he was here. A few minutes later the kid rushed in, carrying a backpack and panting. Tony took his latte and sat at a table in the corner. The kid took the seat opposite him.

“Hey, thanks for meeting me, Mr. Stark,” the kid tripped over his own words. “I just knew that this was something you needed to have…”

Tony held up a hand and cut him off in mid-sentence. “Stop, I don’t have all day. What did you bring me?”

The kid reached for his backpack. “Oh, yeah, sorry. Ummm, here.”  The kid drew two items out of his bag. One nearly filled up the kid’s backpack. The other was somewhat smaller.

“OK,” Tony looked at him quizzically, “why are you carrying around, what are those, purses? And what’s more important, why are you giving them to me? Neither one goes with my outfit.”

“Well, see, I thought you could return them.”

Tony grunted irritably. “What do I look like, Manhattan’s Lost & Found department?”

The kid’s eyes grew round and he stammered a bit. “Oh, no no, it’s just that, well, these belong to two of your employees.”

Tony had never seen these bags before, but then he never paid attention to this sort of thing. “How do you know they belong to my employees?” he asked.

“Because that’s what one of them said,” came the reply.

“When?”

“She was yelling it as she chased the guy.”

Tony grew more and more confused. “What guy?”

“The guy that snatched the purses.”

Tony shook his head. “OK, why don’t you tell me the story, from the beginning.”

“Oh,OK,” the kid said. “Ok, so I was out last night, kind of late, I know, I should have been studying for that math test, but I’d already been studying all night, and I really just needed a break for a while, so I just went out for a bit.”

“Your aunt let you out late at night?”

“Oh no! Aunt May wouldn’t let me out after midnight, even on a weekend.” He looked around, ducking down and whispering, “Please don’t tell her, Mr. Stark, she will ground me forever!”

“You were out after midnight? Are you crazy, you aren’t even 150 pounds soaking wet!”

“Well I put on… I mean...”

Tony ground his teeth and gave him a threatening look. “Just go on with the story.”

“OK, so I was just kind of swinging around – um, hanging out, near Bryant Park, see, and I hear this lady kind of scream. Like not a real scream, but like cut off, you know? Yeah, so I kinda went over, and I saw this guy, and these two ladies, and one of them kinda threw her bag at him, the other one was doing like a tug of war thing with the other bag, until the guy like cut the strap to get it away from her. See, this one right here, see how it’s cut? So he turns and takes off through the park. And the lady who was pulling at her purse, she just takes off running after him. So I figured I oughtta, you know, be like a good Samaritan or something and get the purses back for them. And anyway so she runs out of breath kinda fast, and she’s yelling after him, ‘you just wait until my boss hears about this! Tony Stark WILL find you and he’s gonna kick your ass!’”

Tony smirked. He could just guess who that was. And he had to admit, not many women would chase after an armed purse snatcher in broad daylight, much less into a park after midnight. He kinda respected her a little for it. She had guts. Or no brain. He wasn’t completely sure which, but he expected that the new additions to his Tower were about to make life interesting. Not that life was dull up to that point.

The kid continued. “So anyway, I followed the guy through the park and finally caught him. He had stopped for a minute to look through the big one, so you could say I caught him red handed.” He smiled at his own little joke, then sobered up when Tony frowned at him. “OK so I wrapped him up, took the bags back from him, and then delivered the guy to the cops.”

“And how did you do that, walk in wearing your onesie?” Tony was rewarded by the flustered expression on the kid’s face.

“It’s not a onesie! You gave the suit to me –“

Tony cut him off, “And I told you not to play around with it. But nevermind. What did you do with the mugger?”

“Oh, I left him kinda tied up at the door of the Penn Station PD office. Oh, with a note!  I figured somebody would trip over him, and I didn’t want them to let him go. I left the other stuff he’d stolen with him. I just brought these two.”

Tony sat back a minute and regarded the kid. He was growing up, that was true, but he obviously still needed the approval of an older man. Tony didn’t like to think of himself as a father figure, but sometimes he had to just resign himself to the inevitable. He finally gave the kid a tight smile.

“Good job, kid. I’ll be sure to get these back to their owners.” Tony looked over at the deli owner who nodded and put a paper bag on the counter. “Now, get back to your room and get ready for that test, ok?”

The kid hesitated a moment. “Oh, uh, ok yeah. So can I have-”

Again Tony cut him off. “You know the rules, ace the school, be responsible, keep on doing the friendly neighborhood thing. But let’s confine that to daylight hours, got it?”

*             *             *             *             *             *             *             *

 Tony was waiting that evening when the two housekeepers arrived. He was pouring himself a cup of coffee and watched as they exited the elevator and hung up their coats in the closet. When they walked into the kitchen, he stopped them. “I need to see the both of you. In the meeting room. Now.”

Both women stared at him with big eyes, glanced at each other, and then preceded him into the room. He was being dramatic, he knew, but sometimes a man just couldn’t resist. He waited until they took seats and then walked to the other end of the room and stood with the window at his back. He looked down on the nervous women.

“So which one of you wants to tell me about last night?”

The women looked at each other, the Quiet One pleading with the other silently. Lippy One shrugged and replied, “What would you like to know about?” When Tony pursed his lips and frowned quietly for a moment she went on. “Well, we come in, I start the dishwasher, she goes up to check the theater, and we meet on the top floor. We gather the towels –“

Tony reached under the table and pulled out the bags he’d received that afternoon, plopping them down on the table in front of them. Lippy One fell silent for a moment, then uttering a single, “Oh.”

“Let me try again. What happened last night?”

The Quiet One snatched up her purse and began digging through it excitedly. Lippy didn’t even reach for hers, just stared at it as if it were a snake. After a moment, she let out a big sigh.

“OK, so after we left here last night, we decided to celebrate our first check. She wanted to go to the Tick Tock Diner, so that’s where we went. And on our way to the train station, we got mugged. Guy pulled out a knife, demanded our bags.”

Tony frowned. He was concerned for his people, and, for better or worse, these women were now his people. Even if they didn’t like it. “Did you get a good look at the guy?”

“Oh yeah,” she replied, “White guy, about 5’9”, 180, curly hair and a mustache. He was wearing jeans, a black hoodie pulled up, Converse, and dark sunglasses.”

The Quiet One looked at her friend. And actually spoke. “No he was closer to 6’. And he was wearing camouflage pants and a navy blue hoodie. And a ski mask. And he had a gun, not a knife.”

Then they were talking over one another, arguing about what the guy looked like. Tony rolled his eyes. He noticed Barnes and Rogers stop outside the meeting room and have a short conversation about the arguing women before moving on. Tony shook his head and turned to pull a file from a drawer, dropping that on the table. That stopped the argument, with a comment from the Quiet One of “you are describing the Unibomber.”

“Yeah, they caught him a while back,” Tony mentioned. “Your guy’s name is Davis, Eliot Brandon. He’s a small time thief, deals mostly in purse snatchings, shell games, the occasional knock down and grab. About the only thing you two got right was he was a white guy wearing clothes. He’s 5’11” and was found with a knife. NYPD has him now, though, and he’s not going to be making bail this time.” They exchanged another glance, and finally the Lippy One pulled her purse towards her. “Double check, make sure everything is there. Let me know if anything is missing, I’ll see what I can do about getting it replaced.”

They checked through their bags, and he saw relief on their faces when Lippy found their uncashed paycheck. She pulled out a wad of folded bills and thumbed through them. “Wait, I wasn’t carrying this much cash, this isn’t mine.” She held the bundle out to him.

Tony shook his head. “Think of it as a reward for helping get the guy off the streets.” She gave him a sour look. “OK kids, let’s get back to work.” They rose and headed for the door. “Uh, for what it’s worth? Next time something like that happens, call me. I can pull some strings. Oh, and I’ll have someone drive you two home from now on. No need to thank me.”

Lippy cocked her head to the side. “OK, just one thing. How did you get these back for us?”

Tony smirked. “Let’s just say an associate brought them to my attention.”

They didn’t look so much like they believed him. But the Quiet One nudged her friend and jerked her head in his direction. Lippy huffed. “Thank you for getting them back.”

Tony grinned. “Any time.”