A/N: Dedicated to Solargirl29.
His colleagues had a name for women like her - Bond girls. Beautiful ladies with cute names and a casual manner, women you could trust, for at least one night, when otherwise you were all alone.
Alexander Brand still remembered his first Bond girl, a glasses-wearing brunette by the name of Lucky Wager. She was an innocent bystander, who took him in when he was injured escaping from a death trap. He spent two days with her. Not long enough to know her very well. He left in the middle of the night, to avoid having to explain anything.
The next day, the Big Bad kidnapped her and tortured her to death.
Looking back now, years later, Brand realized that he never even saw her grave. Right after assassinating the Big Bad, his handler had sent him off on another mission. That one took two months, and between the stress and the regret he forced himself to repress, Lucky Wager was completely forgotten. To Brand she became merely another pretty face in the sea of people he used to know.
Sitting in a forgotten corner of the Falls Church Public Library, Brand sighed. He didn't miss Lucky, not really. He knew he was only thinking of her now to avoid thinking of the only other Bond girl he had lost, one Lisa Holiday.
She was - well, had been up to the point where she was infected - a cheerful person. She put her job above everything else, always efficient and responsible, both as a librarian and as assistant director of the NERDS. Yet behind that smiling mask lay a masterful personality.
When Brand had first arrived at the Playground, he was still the slightest bit insulted at having been sent to take care of a bunch of children. He didn't like children very much; he had been to enough spy academies to know that they always ended up broken, and that was only if they survived to adulthood in the first place. He would handle the kid spies if Uncle Sam asked him to, but he sure as heck wasn't going to get emotionally involved.
He did try to smile, though, but only once, at the little girl codenamed Wheezer. She bared her teeth like a mad dog and snarled at him. He didn't bother after that.
Ms. Holiday, however, seemed to get along just fine with the agents. She acted like a mother figure, encouraging the kids, giving them advice, baking them cookies. And Brand saw that all on the first day.
After sending the team on a mission, Brand and Ms. Holiday stood together on the platform. Below them, the dozens of scientists scrambled about, like ants. Brand looked down, watched them.
Ms. Holiday introduced herself, extending her right hand. Brand switched his cane to his left hand, and shook hers.
"I didn't catch your name," she said, blushing slightly as she realized her mistake.
"Brand. Alex Brand," he replied.
They talked, briefly, about their respective careers, family life, et cetera. He learned that she had been the daughter of previous director, the one who had died under mysterious circumstances. That she was utterly determined to catch his killer, she said; she had full confidence in these kids to bring the criminal to justice.
Brand hadn't voiced his disagreement then; yet somehow, Holiday acted as if she already knew. She smiled politely and let the subject drop.
In the one year they would be working together, she would end up using that method very often. Brand learned to ignore it...
In the Falls Church Public Library, he threw his cane across the empty room, cursing himself for being such a fool. He took a deep breath, stood, and limped over to retrieve it, telling himself that it wasn't his fault.
If he hadn't been so trusting, he would have seen her betrayal coming. All the clues were there, but he had brushed them aside without a second thought.
The first rule of espionage was that you don't trust anybody. He should have remembered that.