Q has always loved her from afar.
Q as he is known now, met her in the 1960s. Walking the corridors of work with an arm full of supplies off to some meeting or another. As with most that work for this particular branch of the government they acknowledged each other with a friendly smile and a tilt of the head.
Q was drawn to her immediately, she was a petite woman with lovely blond hair, the deepest blue eyes and a curvy figure. It seemed that only half of the men that observed her took a second look. Those men Q considered intelligent and dangerous, the spies always took a second glance. They were trained to observe and the 00's always looked twice. She did not possess conventional magazine model beauty but to him she was an ethereal angel.
She was never a field agent. Q thought that she may have wanted to be a field agent but the office was in more need of her technical excellence. Q was secretly happy that she never went out into the field. Although, he often fantasized about the two of them going out in the field together and romanticized about the adventures that they could have...but he was a scientist not an agent.
Q was a shy man and methodical in everything he did. A technical and scientific mind, he had difficulty in social situations. This did not bode well for courting the lady of his dreams. Q observed other women in the office. They were obvious and blatant in their quest for sexual conquests. It was like watching a territorial hunt for future mates or husbands.
The secretarial pool drooled over every 00 they saw but she never seemed to take more than a cursory glance at them. She was busy with accounts and strategy manoeuvres. That is what drove her and she was smart and ambitious in her dealings with her supervisors.
For a female, advancing in MI6 was fraught with hazards. Some department heads would grope and badger their female underlings, using position of power to garner sexual favours.
The internal gossip about this never touched her nor was she mentioned in a negative way other than in degrees of cool to frigid. She danced a graceful line through their testosterone driven world, proving her worth without having to compromise her virtue.
This enthralled him even more...but there was a man in her life already.
Q attempted to spend as much work time with her as he could to work up the nerve to ask her out.
It was a rainy Tuesday when he sat with her in the lunch room and he noticed the ring.
Q's world came tumbling down around him as her smile lit up when she spoke of him...
It was enough to drive him to leave his work but he couldn't. Even a glimpse of her would sustain him...a smile a shared lunch...she had no idea.
Once she introduced him to a new employee as her friend...he died a little.
She got promoted to Hong Kong. She was gone for a decade but she did remain in contact with him and even sent him Christmas cards from herself and Nigel.
Q had looked into her husband just to make sure he was a decent bloke...and damn and blast...he was.
They had two lovely children and she kept working on what he could only guess was her perfect life while he created toys that protect, maim and kill.
She came back to command the organization in the mid 1990s and he became the head of Q division.
They were now middle aged.
They shared tea on occasion and had meetings for work a few times a week but more if there was a crisis. It seems morally wrong but he alway loved the intensity of being around her in a crisis. Even if it meant death and destruction around the world or at home in Britain.
Since her return, he thought of his work as being for her not for the Empire any more. The Empire was gone but the two of them remained and remembered.
Even in her sixties she was stunningly beautiful. Q often wondered if the secretaries that were flamboyantly and pretty in the seventies had aged as gracefully as she had.
Then it happened...Nigel died.
Q sent his condolences and went to the funeral.
Q relished the quick hug she gave him after the service.
They shared a strange bond of being acquainted for so long.
It was time to start his plan...he would win her love by taking away time.
Q knew that all the years of her marriage could be erased...not from her memory but from the physical body.
Yes, Q had spent the last 40 years working on the fountain of youth in his spare time.
Q had taken their blood samples years ago and now these DNA samples were a snap shot into their past. This is how Q synthesized his serum and how he would change them back to what they were then.
Q wanted to win her for himself but he wanted a lifetime with her not just the few aged years that were left to them.
Q wanted it all...he wanted a life with her.
Even if he had not said it aloud in years, Q was one of only a few people that knew M's real name.