Napoleon with an apron baking a cake makes me think of him with the cottagecore aesthetic
Yes!! You're so right, cottagecore!Napoleon would be a fucking dream.
Listen; I've always had a headcanon that at least one of Napoleon's properties/safehouses is a beautiful countryside cottage/manor/farm, so giving him the vibe and aesthetic to go with it is definitely An Idea.
I'm picturing a Napoleon so much looser, so much freer. He still wouldn't be caught dead in corduroy or flannel, but his closets are full of woollen pea coats, loose chemises, thick knit sweaters and little fingerless mittens and arm warmers for the winter nights.
His cottage is surrounded by lush farmland full of trees and wildflowers, with a lake off to one side near a thin river that, in the warmer seasons, Napoleon wades barefoot looking for pretty rocks and things washed down from the towns way up north.
Napoleon is still That Bitch so I imagine his cottage would be pretty extra; two fireplaces, a den, a library. Old stone and marble statues litter the property; one kneels and weeps moss tears above a well, figures forever frozen in dance are clothed by trailing ivy and willows.
He has a horse he lets roam the hillsides, but once a month he hitches it to a cart and takes the trail up to the town, buying what meats, vegetables and produce he cannot sow himself. He keeps the meat in a freezer out in the shed; powered by solar in the summer and a generator in the winter.
Napoleon Solo has been missing, presumed dead for over two years after earning his freedom with UNCLE when Illya tracks him down, following flimsy lead after flimsy lead to a cottage in the middle of nowhere; surrounded by flowers with herbs drying from the rafters and a quaint little table out front, where Napoleon likes to read and watch the bees.
Another dead end, he thinks. Pretty and picturesque as this place is, Napoleon wouldn't be here. He'd be somewhere rich and regal, flourishing under a fake name, with pockets full of cash and stolen jewels and a pretty girl on his arm.
Except here is exactly where he finds Napoleon; laying amongst the wildflowers with a book, nibbling on cake and cookies he'd baked himself, looking far more beautiful than any painting Napoleon had tried to teach him about.
"Took you long enough, Peril," Napoleon smiles.











