a holy fool, all coloured blue
and my love is no good,
against the fortress that it made of you,
queen of peace, florence + the machine
"Hello Vesper."
And with that, her heart breaks again.
The façade, so carefully built, crumbles and crumbles, until she stands there before him, feeling like she is drowning again.
…
Later, when she reflects, the one thing that stands out is that her name sounded strange spoken aloud after all this time.
Later, when he's gone, she wonders why that's the only thing she can remember.
It might just be down to the bottle of scotch she consumes just a few hours later, though.
…
The sun's rays pound down on the baked earth. She's leaning back against the cool brick, her soft cotton summer dress rising and falling with the slight breeze. There's a book, lying forgotten, on her lap and slanting across her face, hiding her, is a hat, a straw thing she bought in a market in Cambridge long ago, back in Lucy Brown's first stint as a librarian – before Paris, and the brutal reminders of her past.
It's the perfect remedy to the gloom and never ending rain of London.
She needs this - this antithesis of London, and what it represents.
She ran away then - freezing in the face of all memories, before bolting through her front door and leaving him, sitting there, sitting in her home.
She'd spent hours wandering around in the cold, and when the first drops of evening rain had begun to fall, she had been glad. She let the rain wash her away, and take her somewhere, to a place where James Bond or M or MI6 or anyone could not hurt her.
She'd taken her shoes off, she remembers, and the hot ground beneath her feet now is in stark contrast to the freezing concrete of then. She'd stared up at the sky, the water clinging to her and invading her bones – her arm aching from the bullet that still remains within - and she'd cried.
And then, she'd returned to her flat and James Bond was gone. By the morning, she was in Spain, sleeping in lemon-scented sheets and with a kind old lady to look after her.
He had looked for her before, she knows. She knows this will not stop him, and that they both know that – knows that's why he didn't chase her.
He knows that she will go and he will follow, and in time, he will get the answers he craves.
…
She stays in Spain for two weeks.
The old lady, Señora Rivera, begs her to stay, and Lucy – because despite James and the reminders of her past, that is who she is now – says she must go, the Spanish rolling of her tongue easily.
(another stark difference to the woman she was, who could speak French but that was all; Lucy Brown is fluent in French, of course, and Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese.
What else was she supposed to do with all that free time?)
…
She flies to Rome, checks in to an anonymous hotel somewhere far out of the way of tourists. The weather is better than England, but then isn't practically everywhere?
The sun is not as oppressive here.
She doesn't know why Rome, just that it is not London, nor had she visited the city whilst working for MI6.
(that's a lie as blatant as her life.
she picks Rome because she isn't brave enough or stupid enough to go back to the water, and the red dress and the heartbreak and yet the need for the past to overwhelm her is there, clear as day, in every beat of her heart)
…
It's in Rome that he finds her.
She would be lying if she said running doesn't cross her mind, but she dismisses it.
He's at a bar over the street, leaning back in the late summer sunshine and she sees him instantly.
She doesn't say a word, or get his attention, instead she walks into her hotel, her head held high, falling apart inside.
Because she knew he'd find her, but not this quickly. It's only been a month, and she was careful to hide her tracks.
Because she hasn't thought about how to explain the fact that she is alive, and not dead at the bottom of the Grand Canal.
She wonders how long she has before he will follow her inside and she will be forced to tell a tale as old as time – the tale of a person who let love change them and, then, condemn them.
…
A knock sounds on her door fifteen minutes later.
She is surprised to find that she has not fled down the fire escape or jumped from her balcony - is surprised to find herself changed into her favourite dress and waiting, sitting on the end of the bed.
She is scared of what is about to happen.
She loves him, has done for twelve years – ever since that fateful trip to Montenegro – yet he has haunted her like a chain around her neck, choking her, for all that time, too. It was for him, she acquiesced to whatever it was M wanted, it was for him she lived, just like it was for him she died in the first place.
And yet, he has moved on without her, and seen his dreams become reality – he has left MI6, taken her very own advice, administered so very long ago now, that just because you did something once doesn't mean you have to do it again –and fallen in love, too.
He has moved on, and she has stayed the same, frozen in time because the last time Vesper Lynd lived was in a Venetian hospital with M glaring at her.
She wonders if now, this is her time to finally come alive again, to rally against her chains and begin living again, truly live, or whether this is her time to realise that all her dreams, her tiny, inconsequential daydreams of a future where she is happy, and James is too, are really just that – dreams, never to be realised and to be crushed in an instant with a gold band glittering in the night like water, and anger and a sorrowful smile.
She wonders, and then there's a knock at the door and she stops wondering.
…
He stands, awkwardly, silhouetted in the doorway, his hands stuffed into his pockets, looking everywhere but at her.
"I think, maybe, you better come in." She speaks softly, gently, turning away and handing him a choice.
She goes back inside, leaving him and returning to her perch at the edge of the bed.
Her fingers tap noisily, pointlessly, against the bed as she waits to see what choice he will make.
She knows he followed her across the world, but even still, maybe he will change his mind when confronted with the real her – maybe she doesn't measure up to the image in his head, maybe she disappoints him.
Then he appears in front of her, his hands still tucked away, frowning.
She's about to speak, to say what, she's not sure, but before she can, James brings a finger up to his lips and she falls silent.
It's then she hears them, and she curses herself – she should have realised, but she had been so preoccupied with James, and the past, that she'd let her guard down.
There are footsteps in the corridor and hushed voices.
She meets gazes with James and that's when she knows that he knows who it is in the hall and why they are here. It relieves her - she thought maybe it was her they were after.
It happens in a split-second; one moment she's watching his face tense and idly noticing he still is wearing a wedding ring, the next he's launching himself toward her, slamming them
both against the bed just as a gunshot rings out in the hotel room.
Instantly, and with instincts she thought had faded with time, she rolls out from under him and opens the desk draw and removes her gun. She turns around to see James looking quizzically at her, his own weapon mysteriously in his hand.
She shrugs. The explanation can wait until the people who are trying to kill them are dealt with.
She can still hear voices in the corridor, but now she can discern the language – Russian, from what she can hear, which is not a language she is fluent in, but she knows rudimentary words, like kill and back and outside.
She looks at James again, before gesturing at the balcony.
She knows a way out.
…
They run half way across the city to escape. She whispers at him not to shoot if he can help it - he is no longer an MI6 operative, he has no license to kill anymore.
Neither does she, but she doesn't tell him that, not then.
No one dies, she is glad.
She doesn't need any more blood on her hands.
She can see the strain it puts on him – his finger itching on the trigger but he refrains, for her.
…
They find themselves at the airport. Thankfully she had remembered to grab her passport before they fled, and when they had thought they were all clear, they had returned to James' hotel and gathered his belongings.
She wonders if he will drag her back to London, force answers out of her, or whether he will ask her here and now and then leave her at the airport to go wherever she wishes.
What she doesn't expect is that she will go to the desk and buy two tickets, before she walks back to him and takes his hand, leading him to the gate.
He doesn't question her, which comes a surprise, as she takes him through the twisty corridors.
After twelve years, the feeling of his hand in hers – or anyone's she admits – is strange.
She can feel his eyes – eyes that haunted her – on the back of her head as they walk. She knows he is biting his tongue, and that he wants to ask her so many questions.
She just keeps her mouth shut and keeps walking.
…
They end up at the gate, and she feels his body tense when he sees their destination. He stops in the middle of the walkway, and his hand snags hers so she stops too.
She doesn't want to turn around, but after a pause, she does.
He's looking at her with wide eyes.
"Venice?" he asks, and all she can do is nod in reply.
…
The next time they speak is on the plane.
She thought maybe he would refuse to fly with her, but here he is, his knee bouncing up and down next to hers and his face screwed up in a frown of concentration.
The flight is not long – an hour, give or take – and it takes nearly all that time for one of them to speak.
She's looking out the window, when suddenly, a thought strikes her.
"You should phone Madeleine. Tell her where you are."
His gaze flicks up.
"How the hell do you know her name?" His voice is but a whisper, and yet she can hear the anger running through his words.
She realises she's given herself away, and it takes her a moment to think of a response, stumbling for words.
"You're not the only one, James. Alright?" she snaps. "I had to check you were still alive."
Her words are a lie – she did nothing of the sort, just like M commanded – but she wanted to and doesn't want to admit the truth.
They fall back into the silence.
She is gratified, however, when she returns from the Ladies at baggage check-in to find him on the phone, clearly to his wife.
After a pause, though, the gratification makes way for something else – an ache in her heart that doesn't go away.
…
They exit the airport together.
She makes it six steps before she stops.
She has no clue why she thought this would be a good idea.
She can already see the water, shimmering and glistening, and it aches her heart almost as much as hearing James on the phone to his wife.
She feels like she's suffocating all over again, and she can feel the water clinging to her skin and over her mouth and nose and eyes.
Her eyes are tight shut when she hears, gently, "Vesper?" and without meaning to she lets out a sob.
With her eyes closed, and the Venice sun beating down on her, and James' voice in her ear, the years might have turned back.
But then she opens her eyes, and the sight of the water reminds her of M's cruel face, and blue painted bathrooms, and innocent faces laughing at her and all the death that is on her conscience – and suddenly she feels sick.
The contrast between the two of her who exist at the moment - the one who first came to Venice with James all those years ago now, and this her, now - is so great it compounds the overwhelming sadness and guilt and anger that washes over her in that moment.
James turns to look at her, and goes to speak.
She cuts him off before he can.
"Let's go."
…
They check into a hotel.
(not the same one as last time – oh god no)
Separate rooms, of course.
She retires to hers almost instantly, leaving James in the hall without so much as a backward glance.
She has no clothes, no money, nothing.
Just a passport with a fake name, that's all.
She had the room in Rome booked for another week, so maybe her things will still be there. Then again, they had left a bullet hole in the door.
…
A knock comes after an hour.
She's lying on the bed in her crumpled dress, her eyes shut, drifting close to sleep.
She gets up slowly, and opens the door.
James stands before her.
"Can we talk now?"
She's never heard him sound so defeated, so tired.
She lets him in.
…
"What happened earlier," James starts, once he's sitting in comfortable chair, an ice cold beer in his hand, and she's sitting cross legged on the bed like a child. "gave me a few answers, at least."
She nods, slowly. She is content to let him do all the talking. She is so tired, now.
"You said in Paris that you carried a gun for the same reason I did." He paused. "You've had training, that I can see. And I'd be blind if I didn't put the pieces together, wouldn't I?"
She shrugs.
"M."
She doesn't look at him.
"She knew?"
"Knew what?" she replies, shaking her head.
"That you weren't dead."
And there it is – the crux of the matter.
"What do you think, James?" she says, sighing. "Just because you think she'd never lie to you-" she adds, contemptuously.
"Of course I knew she lied to me. She did it all the time." His tone is curt, but she can hear what he doesn't verbalise. James never thought M would lie to him about something as big as her.
"She told you not to find me - to tell me, I assume." His voice is cold again. She begins to doubt her instinct, all those months ago, in Paris when she thought that there was still something between them. There is no affection in his tone, not anymore.
"You know why," she offers. "You would have destroyed her and MI6 and everything they stood for."
"What makes you so sure of that?" he asks, harshly.
"Because I know you."
"Do you know what I said to M when I called after you died?"
The words are abrupt, a change of subject.
"I told her the bitch was dead."
She is glad she's had all these years to prepare her façade. The words hit her deep in the chest, but on the outside, she barely even flinches.
"Well, the bitch wasn't as dead as you thought," she responds, her tone just as icy cold as his.
"Clearly."
Silence falls.
She feels like there is a crushing weight on her chest.
Twelve years of dreams, no matter how small, have come crashing down beside her, her whole world burning as she watches, helpless.
She thought James Bond would forgive her. She was wrong – he hates her.
"Were you a double-o?"
His question comes out of nowhere.
She nods.
"I wouldn't have believed you but for earlier."
She shrugs again.
"People change, James."
"Where were you living?"
It's another question out of the blue, but they are better than the anger and hate, she concedes.
"Newcastle, to begin with, for a year," she starts. "Then London, then anywhere in the world. Depended on M's whims, really."
It feels strange to be talking about this. She's been lying for so long, to finally speak the truth seems wrong.
James nods, before taking a sip of beer.
"It was hell, you know."
His eyebrow quirks, but he doesn't speak.
"Drowning," she says, before she pauses. "without dying."
She stops again, casting a look out of the window, catching a glimpse of the depths that should have been her watery grave.
"I have drowned on dry land every day since."
…
Not long after that, when the silence become unbearable for both of them, he leaves and she's alone with her shadows, and her ghosts.
When he's gone, she no longer has any distraction from the rolling and pitching water outside of her window, glistening in the moonlight.
…
Her sleep is an interrupted one, the fractured hours tumbling together with the nightmares that plague her. There is a picture, stuck somewhere deep in her mind, somewhere she cannot reach - of green on grey, but its lost in the flash of other, more recent, pain and she's left flailing in the Italian air for the a ghost of a man who left her so very long ago now.
…
She wakes late, to a knock on her door.
Her dress – her only possession bar her passport –is rumpled and she smoothes the creases as she walks to the door.
She swings to open to find James, his suitcase behind him in the corridor.
She wants to ask him why he bothered following her to Venice if all he wanted was answers. She wants to tell him that he can't leave her, not now, not with things as they are - wants to yell at him for abandoning her, but knows she doesn't have the right.
She sighs.
"Go, James – go."
Something – she doesn't know what – flashes behind his eyes.
"Go back to your wife – just go."
She tries to stop the bitterness that creeps into her tone, but she can't. She's too tired.
There have been so many years, and she's travelled so many miles, and she has been so many people – that right there, right then, she wants to be Vesper Lynd, who's angry at James Bond for going back to his wife.
"Vesper," he says, and suddenly, with the way her name sounds coming from his mouth, she doesn't want to be Vesper anymore.
She shuts the door.
…
She goes to Rome, grudgingly using money James gave her the day before, and is surprised to find she managed to find the type of anonymous, back street hotel that doesn't worry when there's a bullet hole in the door, or when their customer goes missing for two days – the type where all they worry about is when the money comes in.
Her stuff is all there, lying in jumbled piles -clearly the men who came to kill them have searched the room, but after a quick look she realises nothing is actually gone.
She gathers her things, pays the lady at the front desk, who gives her look that tells her that she wants to know what happened but won't ask, and then she goes home, not that she knows what that word means anymore.
…
By the time she graces her doorway for the first time in a month, her shoulders are slumped and she's weary with tiredness in a way that has nothing to do with the two flights she's had that day.
For a split second, she wonders whether she'll find him in her kitchen, or living room, but the moment she flicks the first lights on, she knows he won't be.
She can remember his face the night before, can remember the lines of his face set, frozen, and she can remember his face from that morning, and the flash of whatever it was behind his eyes.
…
She slips back into Lucy Brown's life with ease. Her colleagues – the only colleagues she's had, probably ever, who don't see her as cold, or aloof – inquire about her impromptu holiday, but they are kind natured people – Lynn, the grandma whose been working at the library for twenty years; Alan, who watches the cricket during his breaks and is always talking about his trips to Lord's and Sammy, a nineteen year old on a gap year who's always got her head in a book - who don't question her. They are harmless, and don't expect her holiday to be anything but that.
It's a breath of fresh air to Lucy, whose past has been full of secrets in the half-dark and closed relationships with people who'd stab you in the back given the first chance.
…
She keeps expecting James to appear again.
She doesn't try and hide, waiting, even though she knows that what happened in Venice was probably the end, damn it all.
…
What she doesn't expect, however, is what she gets.
A blonde walks into her library (it sounds so domestic, doesn't it, her library) looking for Lucy Brown.
It's been a while, and she has finally become used to her new identity, so when the woman approaches her as she's stacking books and says, "Hello, the lady over there said you were Ms Brown?" in a lilting French accent, she turns instantly.
"Yeah, that would be me," she replies, smiling. She can see Lynn and Sammy talking quietly behind the desk, shooting her looks every so often and shakes her head, before switching her attention back to the woman, who's looking at her – studying her, Lucy know, with all the training she's had.
She wonders who this woman is, and instantly her guard is up. Her fingers twitch for a nonexistent gun.
"Is there somewhere else we could talk?" the stranger asks, looking around. "Somewhere private?"
"It depends," she replies. Surely this woman, if she was someone sent for revenge for something that Lucy – or more correctly 009 – did, surely she would be dead already. "on the nature of your inquiry."
The woman stumbles over her words, and Lucy hears a muttered French swear, an outlet for the stranger's frustration.
The woman's gaze suddenly snaps up and they meet eyes.
"It's about-" she starts, but she stops abruptly. Lucy frowns. This is clearly not about her past, though, so her shoulders relax.
"It's about James."
It comes like punch to the gut.
Lucy turns back to her books, and starts stacking them again. She figures that if she ignores the woman, she will go away.
There's a flicker of a memory, suddenly, of a table and a woman in an evening gown, her fingers tapping on the wood, waiting for company.
The memory had been lost to what had come next – the rush of cold air on her face and the shock of him, so familiar – so she hadn't connected this face with that one, but now it is clear who this woman is.
Her face is still fixed on the books, but slowly she turns.
"James?" she says. "James who?" The lie rolls off of her tongue easily – after so many years of pretending to herself that he was no one, nothing, non-existent, the denial is simple.
The woman regards her carefully.
"I think we should take this to your office, Ms Brown, if of course you didn't want your colleagues to discover what it is that you used to do."
The threat makes her blood ice cold.
"Yes, I think we should."
They walk in silence to the office.
Lucy sits behind her desk, leaving the stranger she assumes is Madeleine, the woman James left MI6 for, hovering around the door.
They regard each other warily.
It is the other woman – Madeleine – who speaks first, breaking the tense silence.
"I know who you are."
She wants to laugh - she's not sure if she even knows the answer to that question.
"Vesper Lynd –the woman who so very clearly isn't dead."
It sounds strange to hear her name reverberating around the small office, so connected the room is to her identity as Lucy Brown.
"You know, the first time I heard your name I knew." Her words falter for a moment. "I knew that whatever happened, however you hurt him, how much he loved you – I would never know."
She looks down at her desk, and shuffles some papers.
"He would never talk about you. No matter how many times I asked, he wouldn't say a word, nothing –rien!"
Madeleine is flustered for a second, and Lucy gets a sense of the deep rooted frustration she feels about this.
"And then he goes to Italy."
Then Madeleine turns her face away, and it's there in the curve of her jaw, the twitch of her lips, the flinty determination in her eye.
It feels like a ghost has walked over her grave, and she shivers, but she can't put the pieces together.
Who is this woman who has stolen James' heart and why does Lucy suddenly feel scared of her?
"He went to Italy for you."
"He didn't go to Italy for me – he went for answers," she shrugs in reply.
She sees Madeline tense on the other side of the room and it's then that Vesper – because she is there in that moment, in the curl of her legs towards her and the catch of her breath and the fear that overwhelms her – knows exactly who it is that this woman is reminding her of.
She can see the blank white walls, and feel the anxiety and the pain coursing through her veins as if she was back there.
She can see the wicked smile and the cold, dead eyes. She can hear her own screams and can feel the blood that raced down her skin in sticky trails.
Her words after that stick in her throat painfully.
"I think you should leave."
"Why? I haven't-"
She cuts in then, her fingers of her left hand tracing a pattern in the opposite wrist of a scar that has faded in time, but not in potency to remind her of the past– of the white room, and the torture and relief when it was all over.
"Go – please." Her words crack with desperation.
Madeleine looks at her, a frown knitting her brow together, but after a long moment, she gives a sharp nod and a flash later, she's gone.
The second she's gone, Vesper flies from the office chair and retreats into a corner, dragging her knees up to her chest.
Time has its benefits, she figures. It might have meant that she has forgotten her mother's touch, or the curve of her father's jaw, or how it felt to be loved – but it also means that all the guilt has begun to fade, and she has forgotten what had happened that dark and cold night in Montenegro.
Until now, of course.
Because now she can see his face, and the glee that lit his eyes and the soft way he whispered when he said he was going to kill her.
Maybe it would have been better for them all if he had.
…
It's like that – folded into the corner with her knees drawn to her chest with tears lining her cheeks – that Lynn finds her, half an hour later.
It jerks her from her stupor, and she springs up, furiously wiping away the tears.
Lynn tries to ask her what is wrong, but their worlds are too far apart, and she doesn't have the words to explain anyway.
…
She gets in late, makes a beeline for the kitchen, where a bottle of scotch sits in a cupboard, waiting for her.
It's as she switches the lights on, in the split second between the switch turning and the light coming on, that she knows what she will find.
James Bond is sitting at her kitchen table, the bottle of scotch next to him and a tumbler in his hand.
"I heard my wife came to visit you today."
She puts her bag down on the floor heavily before slamming her keys into the bowl.
"You should have told me."
"Told you what?"
He looks genuinely confused, and if the anger hadn't already taken hold, she probably would have taken a step back and taken a different tack.
"That you married that bastard's daughter!"
He frowns again.
"Do you know what he did to me?" she demands. "No – you don't because you never asked."
He looks at her with cowed eyes.
"He asked me to keep his daughter safe."
"And you what? You couldn't help but fall for her? A woman who is probably just as much a monster as her father was!"
"And you and I aren't monsters too?"
She stops dead, and notices for the first time that her fingers are tracing the scar again, unconsciously.
"Get out."
He doesn't.
"Just fucking get out," she hisses, but almost instantly she knows he won't. He stays silent, his eyes unable to meet hers, but he doesn't move.
Her shoulders slump.
She goes over to the table and slides into a chair. She clumsily grabs a tumbler and pours herself a glass. Before she can replace the bottle on the table, James stirs into life.
He grabs her, his hand encircling her wrist. Then, with their eyes meeting, he slowly runs his finger down her scar.
"He did this to you?" he murmurs.
"Fuck off," she says, harshly, shortly followed by a softer, "Yes."
"I love her," he says, softly, and it feels like a part of her is missing, sitting in the gloom of her kitchen at gone ten, with his hand still holding hers.
"And you died," he says after a pause. "I loved you and you died."
She wonders how much scotch he's had.
"I never meant to hurt you," she stumbles out in reply.
She can see Venice in her mind's eye – a beautiful, crisp blue day; mumbled "I love you's" whispered when no one was supposed to be listening, easy days with carefree laughs and smiles. Love, for the first time in such a long time that she can remember.
It happens as if in slow motion.
He leans forward, and she knows she should say no – he is drunk, not thinking straight, but all she can remember is love, and happiness and she can't.
He kisses her, and she feels alive for the first time in twelve years.
Afterwards, she looks up at those midnight blue eyes and she knows what is going to happen.
He goes, and she doesn't stop him.
He leaves her at the kitchen. She downs her scotch in one gulp.
She knows that whatever this was, it has shifted things.
She came home Lucy Brown, and by the time he goes, he is leaving behind Vesper Lynd.
She is breathing for the first time in what feels like forever.
…
She finds herself at work without thinking.
Everything is moving as if on automatic, and she doesn't know how to face her startling and painful revelation that Vesper wasn't as dead as she thought – that the years didn't do quite enough to bury her.
She wants to stand in sun: no guilt, no regrets – but time has passed and that is impossible.
She wants time to turn back, but that's impossible too.
…
For the second time in as many weeks, she finds herself face to face with a stranger who reminds her of her past.
It's just, this time, the stranger isn't quite such a stranger.
Oh she knows him, alright – and at the sight of him, she stops dead. Not because she's scared of him, just that she's scared of what he represents and scared of who came before him.
She cannot help but look at the 'new' M and be reminded of the woman who changed her life so irrevocably, with a bottle of hair dye, and whispered threats and the way she played on the guilt and the shame and the fact that she wanted nothing more than what she had lost, and failing that, nothing itself.
So she trembles, not for the man before her, but for the guilt and shame and nothingness he is without a doubt linked to.
She faces him square on, her hard gaze meeting his and not looking away. Her jaw is locked, her eyes glassy.
She knew this day would come.
She always knew the chains were still there, just invisible, and that freedom – freedom, well that was just an idea, abstract – not real in the slightest.
Not for her, or for James.
With the torture she had suffered that appalling day in the half-dark, freezing cold room with its blank white walls in a country she didn't know, the scars were lily-white and as clear as day, unable to be hidden– with M, and MI6, the scars are inside, where no one can see, haunting her and hurting her even when her perfect disguise hid them.
"I have something to ask of you – an imposition of sorts," he begins.
"Let me guess," she replies, contemptuously. "You need a dead woman, a no one. I fit the bill, because despite your detailed list of powers and controls – you still don't know who I am."
He looks at her, his head turned slightly on its side, and she wonders why it annoys him so – why one more woman in the world without an identity matters to him.
It doesn't matter to her, not really. Not anymore.
And whatever the answer to that question, her answer to his question will remain the same.
She knew the moment he walked in what it would be.
"No."
"You haven't heard what I want you to do yet," he notes, raising an eyebrow.
"I said no."
He looks at her again, his face a mixture of interest and annoyance.
"You made me a monster once. I will not let you do it again."
Something, almost imperceptibly, softens in his eyes.
She knows he will let her go.
But at least this time she's well aware the chains will still be there, binding them together for the rest of her life.
"I think that concludes our business, then," he notes.
She gives him a brisk nod.
M turns to go, clutching his file – clearly intended for her – towards him. He takes no more than a step before she speaks, calling him back.
She can't help herself.
"Vesper," she says. "My name is Vesper."
It has been so long since she has said her name out loud, that twelve years and so much pain later, it feels like heaven. .
He leaves then, and she hopes that that will be the end of it.
…
Her father was a soldier, poor and down on his luck; her mother a socialite, a pretty little rich girl.
They never really fitted together, like two pieces of a jigsaw that were forced together and stick, just right, for seemingly forever and ever.
The thing with puzzle pieces though is they are so fragile, and so they always fall apart.
Here is how the story goes:
He is a friend of her brother's – and they sit on the porch in the dying summer night and talk, joking and laughing like teenage boys do. The sounds drift up to her window, and painstakingly, she'd piece together the stories of the visitors she would never get to know.
One voice particularly catches her attention. A solider like her brother, he'd flit in and out of the revolving cast door of her brother's friends, his tales captivating her.
The first time she meets him properly, she knows that he is it; her puzzle piece that fits all wrong but fits all the same.
She runs out into the night after him, bare feet on the grass, finds him - and things go from there.
It ends twelve years later, with cold frosted breath and rain sodden ground, and a man with a tear-stained face holding hands with a girl who will never know her mother, as a priest speaks those immortal words – "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."
Three years later, another cold day dawns and six year old Vesper Lynd discovers the meaning of heart-break.
He is buried next the woman he loved more than anything.
Vesper is taken in by an aunt – her mother's sister – but the woman is distant and aloof, and she grows up in a home devoid of feeling, just as cold as the winter's day her parents were both buried on.
…
That is what she dreams of, that night; of puzzle pieces and coldness and of love.
Of her parents.
She wakes at two in the morning, shivering, tears glistening her cheeks.
She wonders why life is so cruel.
…
It happens four weeks later, in the evening.
She wakes like normal, at midnight, just like every night - her fractious sleeping schedule having fallen into a pattern over the years. Instantly, she knows something is wrong and, without thinking, her hand slides into her draw and removes her gun.
She is greeted by a French assassin at her dining room table.
He has underestimated her, it seems.
She shoots him and flees, going god knows where.
She knows that the one man in her kitchen will not be just that. Her prediction is proved right – she is ambushed half an hour later as she wanders the streets.
She's found herself by the river, some quirk of fate leading her to a place she swore never to return to.
There's a firefight.
She downs a few of them – but it's her against five or more, and after ten minutes pinned against the banks of the river, she knows how this will end.
A gun shot. It hits her in the same arm as last time, getting the shoulder this time. That's her last thought before she pitches over backwards, tumbling in to the water.
It swallows her and she wonders if it's possible to cry under water.
…
It is not like Venice.
She tells herself that again and again afterwards, because this time she fought the water and tried and tried.
She surfaces somewhere down river, where there are no men ready to kill her.
Her lungs still scream though, and the feeling was all too familiar, despite what she tells herself later.
…
Maybe she should have given in.
She had once wished more than anything that the water had claimed her, but given the chance again, she resisted with every muscle in her body.
Strange, eh?
...
She may fight, but the outcome is the same - the crushing weight across the chest, eyes burning, lungs burning and then, suddenly - nothing.
And it comes as such a relief to her.
...
AIR.
AIR.
AIR.
(she needs air)
...
Beep, the machines go.
Beep, beep, beep; the rhythm of her heart. A pulse, there but weak.
So very weak.
Beep, beep, beep, be-
...
Her chest muscles spasm, her lungs cry out for oxygen they do not have, the race of her heartbeat returns, stronger now, a soft thump, thump, thump, under skin.
...
A blurred figure above her, moving and changing. She fights to focus, but it takes more energy than she has, and once again the darkness overtakes her.
...
When she thinks back to this time, the memories often run into those of M, and hair dye and Venice, and crushing disappointments and the ache of a broken heart. The darkness is the same, as is the heartbreak.
...
They tell her later, that she died for three minutes. Her heart stopped for three minutes.
(it's shorter than before, than the seventeen minutes where she was dead in Venice, but crossing that line is a dreadful experience no matter the length of time)
She wonders why they bothered to bring her back.
Her body is wracked with injury, lily-white scars crisscrossing her skin, telling a story of a woman who's grappled with death, and still is yet to tumble into his arms.
Her gaze falls on the spider web of lines that snake across her elbow, all connected by a white circle the size of a fifty pence piece in the centre, like earthquakes radiating away from the fault.
She can suddenly remember the chill of the Amsterdam night on her skin, and the agony that exploded within her when the bullet hit.
She can remember the abyss she nearly tumbled into that night, on the plane home.
It reminds her of Venice, and of earlier and the shock of the cold Thames water and all three moments seem to fall together, becoming one, and she wonders when she became such a failure that she couldn't even die right.
Sometimes, she can't feel her hand, her fingers locking and aching painfully.
Just like how sometimes, she wakes up in the morning wondering where her dead father is, or thinking she'll be late for a job she hasn't had for years, or wondering where James is, and missing his embrace.
It's got better, over the years, but it still crushes her every time.
...
This time is longer.
They kept her in for two months after the first time. The second time, a few weeks, though really she should have stayed in for longer, but both she and M knew the white walls and blank faces would drive her crazy.
This time she has no choice.
Four months.
It seems three near death experiences and the ravages of time, and working for MI6, have taken their toll on her body, and recovery is harder this time.
She nearly gets out, two months down the line, just like before, just like after Venice, when pneumonia hits her like a ten-ton truck.
It sets her back weeks, and her body is so weak, she thinks maybe this is it, she will go down not from a gunshot, or drowning, or from anything exciting, no, she will die of damn pneumonia.
But then, suddenly, it lifts, and she is okay.
Well, as okay as a dead woman walking can be, but okay all the same.
...
They let her go and she finds herself wandering.
She leaves England as soon as she can; the grey streets and the grey rain such chilling reminders of her past.
She goes to Spain for a few weeks, soaking up the winter sun, using the time to build up her strength, the ravages of the water still evident deep in her bones.
After those weeks are up, she flies to Switzerland, and takes up home high in the mountains where, hopefully, no one will ever find her.
She gets a job, working in a quiet hotel, checking guests in and out, and in and out; anonymous faces greeted with a smile - where the cast of people around her is in flux, constantly changing; no one to know, no one to lose.
She craves the sameness of the day; something she used to achieve in England in the library, but England is too painful now, too much of a reminder of a past she doesn't want to face.
...
At night, she dreams of blood on hot sand, and the weight of metal in her hand, so familiar now, and yet so alien once. She dreams of her parents - of the people they were, of the people she never knew. She dreams of Venice, of the only place in the world where she was really, truly happy; and of water, and horror and pain, deep inside, somewhere no one will ever reach.
(though really - aren't they nightmares?)
...
She didn't know until she was seven years old.
She didn't know about monsters who took guns and destroyed lives.
Then one day there is a knock at the door - her aunt answers, and she watches from upstairs as the figures move through into the living room.
The new strangers are as instantly recognisable even to little Vesper, conspicuous in their dark jackets with the white writing in block capitals and the hats with their chequered rims, clutched respectfully to chests.
...
It's later. The strangers and her aunt are still shut away in the living room; low, murmured voices tangible to her through the walls.
She's in the kitchen.
She cannot remember why; time has taken that away.
But she can remember everything else.
The door opens, a flash of evening light slants in. One of the police officers - the man - stands silhouetted in the doorway, frowning, clearly not expecting the sight he has found before him. They lock gazes, shocked into stillness.
Then she looks past him, into the room, with the soft glow of the setting sun and she sees it.
A photograph; a sea of grey punctuated by green and then a cloud of red.
Her father, lying on the pavement. Dead.
She knows she is not supposed to have seen the photo, but now she has and she knows it will haunt her (and she's right)
...
They sit her down, her aunt and the two police officers, their faces grim and drawn.
A bad man did this to daddy, they say, just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A bad man, they say.
...
Later, she finds out the details. Later, she finds herself swallowed in regret and blame and hurt.
This is what she remembers:
She is little. Six years old. She wants to get a toy from the shop - the new one, better than every other toy she has. Her daddy says no. She cries. Her daddy relents. They go to the shop - she races inside. She finds the toy but cannot find daddy. She searches high and low but she cannot find him. She hears sirens. She wants to cry. She tries to leave, but no one will let her out. A flash of green, and then the back room of the shop. A lady, her face all sharp angles and points, leading her by the hand to a car. Someone tells her daddy's gone. She asks where. Someone else tells her he's gone where mummy did. She doesn't remember her mummy. She cries. In time, she goes to live with her aunt.
What she discovers:
Her father stays outside whilst she runs into the shop, to make a phone call. As he makes the call, a man across the car park attempts to steal a car. He sees. He goes over. He confronts the man. The man shoots him. The man runs away. A staff member at the shop runs over to him, but it's too late. He dies.
...
She watches it all on grainy CCTV, the black and white relaying the horror with simple flickers, when she is sixteen, when she wants to know more than a monster took daddy away.
Her father's face, the recoil of the gun, the crumple and stillness that follows: the slash of green on grey.
And she cannot help but think - if not for me...
...
She tosses, turns, wakes up feeling worse than she did before she went to sleep.
Images roam in her mind - and feelings chase the shadows within.
She wants to cry. She wants to scream at the world - for taking away her parents, and taking away James and making her into a monster of the type who takes away little girls' daddies.
She wonders, sometimes, about how her life would have turned out if that man hadn't decided to steal that car, or if he hadn't had a gun, or if her father hadn't noticed him, or if she hadn't cried and begged him.
So many possibilities, all leading to same result.
He lives.
And yet he did not.
Who would she be if she had tangible parents, instead of blank spaces, just the idea of parents, just empty space where love should be?
Would she be curled up in a ball on a cold bed somewhere, nowhere, crying herself to sleep because her daddy died, and lost, so very lost?
...
She doesn't remember her mother. Maybe that makes it hurt less. You can't miss what you never had.
But she had a father.
(had being the all important word there)
Now she has no one.
Black waves of grief crash into her at obscene moments in the day, choking her just as much as the real water had in the icy depths.
...
Days blend into weeks, into months, into a year.
She doesn't much care.
...
She loses herself in the anonymity of it all.
She no longer feels like a monster. She no longer feels like a lie, living and breathing and being.
Her nightmares slowly start to subside, the ebb and flow of the seasons calming her when her fears threaten to overwhelm her or the memories of blood on hot sand rear their ugly heads, or when the slash of green on grey plagues her mind.
...
Then one day, her carefully constructed illusion of peace drifts softly into pieces, gently floating away to the four winds, and she doesn't know if she will ever be able to return.
...
James Bond is sitting at the bar when she turns up for work on snowy morning.
"Hello, Vesper," he says.
Her world pitches and shifts.
...
Her daddy used to read her bedtime stories.
She can still hear his voice, if she concentrates really hard and screws up her eyes and lets the world go. Can still feel his warmth through the covers of her little bed, her hands gripping the covers.
...
She wonders where that little girl went.
...
A/N: The title comes from What Kind of Man by Florence + the Machine.