Title: Pictures at an Exhibition
Author: Kellie Matthews
Fandom: Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Pairing: Napoleon/Illya
Categories: Romance, Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Length: Long
Warnings: none
Author on LJ: n/a?
Website: Home Page for Kellie Matthews

Author’s Summary: Relationships evolve, people change, but love remains.

Review:
It seems that every fandom has some particularly thorny element that authors feel compelled to try to explain or to just AU out of existence. In the MFU fandom, I would have to say that, hands down, this would be the made-for-TV movie (“The Fifteen Years Later Affair”) made long after the end of the series and the referenced fifteen-year separation of Napoleon and Illya.

Kellie tackles this subject with Pictures at an Exhibition. She structures the story as a string of related scenes chronicling their relationship with a clever recurring device of comfort soup. The slow development of Napoleon and Illya’s relationship is lovely and genuine – and the two of them are utter boys in that they don’t exactly communicate. Kellie’s explanation for the fifteen-year separation is believable and heartbreaking in how preventable and downright pointless it is. But there is a happy ending of the smooshiest kind I promise!

Pictures at an Exhibition