Title: Family History
Parings: James Bond & Q
Disclaimer: I own no rights. I make no profit.
To a casual observer the gentleman entering the London apartment complex at 15:00 was clearly tired. A businessman dressed in what had originally been a pristine suit before its encounter with the rigors of international business travel was not an uncommon sight in this particular neighborhood. A more astute voyeur would have noticed the faint hitch in his gait, the slightly irregular breathing pattern and the stiffness in his shoulders all indicating some sort of injury. Luckily there was no such observer as the building guard/doorman had just moments before left his post to investigate a sensor malfunction on one of the back entrances.
So much for being a secure building, James Bond thought as he trudged up the stairs to the second floor. The apartment he was looking for was 221 and it was a matter of moments to locate the correct door. Bond was now faced with a choice. There was a lock as well as a biometric reader disguised as a doorbell on the door. Thinking for a moment Bond decided to attempt the biometric reader by pressing his thumb against the doorbell. His guess paid off when instead of hearing a ring the lock released with an audible thunk. He opened the door and entered the flat.
James didn't know quite what he'd expected from the Quartermaster's flat but it certainly wasn't this. A tastefully decorated high ceilinged space scattered with comfortable looking furniture and the occasional antique met his gaze. There didn't appear to be tech anywhere in sight but knowing Q that didn't mean it wasn't there. Bond took a second glance around the sitting room and spotted something on the molding that ran around the top of the room which very well could be either a camera or a motion detector or both. There was an armoire which most likely held a television and/or gaming console with something that looked like a wireless signal booster barely visible over its top edge.
The interesting mix of old fashioned style and hidden high tech continued throughout the flat. There was a master bedroom, a guest bedroom as well as a kitchen and a third bedroom which had been converted to an office/workspace. It was only in the latter room that the high tech had taken over every available surface. Even without entering James could tell that the cupboard had been modified to hold something that looked suspiciously like server racks. Bond was just thorough enough in his examination to ensure that he was alone in the flat before heading to the bathroom.
The bathroom was quite modern and larger than he had expected given the size of the flat. A quick rummage in a cupboard yielded a towel and a flannel. It was at this point that he twisted just right and the pain caught him by surprise causing him to lean against the wall. Once there he found that the adrenaline and shear stubbornness which had kept him moving for the last 12 hours was gone. He slid down the wall to a sitting position to rest for a moment on the tiles and gather his strength to clean up.
He came back to consciousness with Q's voice in his ear, "007 report!"
That was strange. Bond could have sworn he'd lost his earpiece in that fight on the train in Eastern Europe. "Mission accomplished," he managed to mumble.
"Damage Bond?" The Quartermaster was being very insistent. "Where are you injured?"
"Mostly just bruised, couple of lacerations, maybe a cracked rib and a knife wound in my right thigh." James managed to respond.
"Do you need medical? Shall I let anyone know you are back?"
Back? But Q was in London. Oh. James opened his eyes to see Q in the bathroom doorway. Q had been smart and had not attempted to wake Bond by touching him. Given his exhausted state he could have very well assumed an attack and reacted violently.
"The mole is Perkins as we suspected but he wasn't acting alone."
"Damn," Q grimaced. "M's ears only then." Q glanced at his watch and thought for a moment. "I'll deal with that in a bit. Let's get you cleaned up and tended to first. I'm going to touch you O.K.?"
James grunted his assent. Somehow over the next half hour Q managed to get him stripped, washed, patched and into the guest bed. Throughout the whole process Q kept up a continuous stream of one-sided conversation. Current events and office gossip were interspaced with bits of instruction; move here, sit there, hold still and the like. In addition Q never once stopped touching him, always keeping some skin to skin contact. It vaguely reminded James of some of the techniques used to groom nervous horses. He was too exhausted to object to the treatment and fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
James came awake suddenly. It took a moment before he remembered he was back in London, in Q's flat. A glance at the clock on the bedside table told him he'd slept for over 12 hours. Looking around the room he saw a set of sweats neatly laid over the back of a chair. No sign of his suit but his shoes were neatly on the floor beside the bed. Shifting slightly he cataloged his injuries and realized that he needed to move. He'd been in this situation enough to know that if he didn't he'd stiffen up and it would take the rest of the day to work the kinks out.
Quietly with an ease born of lots of practice sneaking around the morning after James got dressed and wandered into the kitchen in search of coffee. From the well-used coffee maker and the beans in an airtight tin on the counter Bond deduced that Q was a coffee first, tea for the rest of the day person. He made the coffee and adjourned to the sitting room.
Television or whatever game console lived in the armoire was right out, too noisy, so James investigated the bookcase. There was an eclectic mix of hard cover science fiction and fantasy novels interspaced with a few biographies and A Brief History of Time. Then he spotted it, an older leather bound volume with no identification and a light layer of dust. Curious Bond pulled it off the shelf. It appeared to be an old style photo album.
Sitting on the sofa and opening the book Bond found that the first photograph was a modern picture of what appeared to be a painting. Husband and Wife stood behind their two teenaged sons. Judging from the clothing styles it appeared to be somewhere in the mid 1800's. The next few pages were old photographs the most interesting of which showed a slender wavy haired man with a long thin face seated with a stockier man with a mustache standing behind him hand resting on his shoulder. They were posed in front of a fireplace which had a variety of things on the mantel piece including a jack knife stuck into the wood, some sort of embroidered shoe and what looked to be a human skull. The seated man had his head turned slightly, as if caught in the act of almost turning to look at his companion behind him while the standing man smiled down at him.
The very next page proved to be quite a shock. Bond knew this face. There was an oil portrait in the executive conference room of MI6 of this man. It was Mycroft Holmes, the first head of the agency who had always signed his dispatches and orders in green ink with the initial M. That practice was why the head of the agency always bore the code name M. James flipped back to the first page. Yes, the older of the two teenaged sons could very well be Mycroft and the younger one the seated man in front of the fireplace. He continued paging through the album to discover, at the very end of the Victorian era photographs another familiar face.
James didn't really have a chance to reflect on his discovery because just then Q wandered out into the sitting room. It was clear that the young genius was not completely awake. He didn't even acknowledge Bond. He simply made his way into the kitchen with a semi-somnambulistic shuffle. Shortly thereafter there was the sound of someone rummaging in a cupboard followed by pouring and a rather orgasmic sounding groan as Q got his first taste of the coffee. Q wandered back into the sitting room and sat in one of the arm chairs. He pulled his feet up and proceeded to almost crawl into his coffee mug. James wondered how long it would take him to truly wake up.
Surprisingly it only took about 5 minutes before Q's eyes focused on James as he sat on the sofa. He vaguely waved the coffee mug in a sort of impromptu toast and said "Thanks."
"You are welcome."
Q blinked a bit owlishly then said, "I talked to M last night. You are officially missing in action and I have the flu. He said to give him 24 hours and he should have the co-conspirators. If not we'll reassess at that point."
James found it fascinating. It was somewhat like watching a computer boot up. Q had started rather sleepy but by the end of his imparting the information he was focused with his formidable intellect completely on line. Unfortunately due to M's orders there wasn't going to be much for the genius to do at least on the work related front.
Before James could say anything Q spoke again, "More coffee?"
"Please." James extended his cup.
Q took it and fetched both of them another cup. As he handed over James' now full mug he noticed the album sitting next to James on the sofa.
"I see you found my dead relatives file."
"You are really related to the first M?"
"Yep."
"Your great, great-grandfather I presume"
"Three greats actually; he was 71 when he took on the job."
Bond hadn't realized that the first M had been that old. He certainly didn't look it either in the pictures or in the portrait at MI6.
Q continued, "He'd actually been instrumental in setting up the Secret Service Bureau in 1909 so they gave him MI6 on a temporary basis. He ended up serving as director until the end of World War I and died in his bed at aged 87 allegedly not looking a day over 65."
"So you are following in the family footsteps?" Bond was curious.
"Family tradition more like. Mycroft's eldest son Neville was executed as a spy in the closing days of the great war. His son Quentin, my grandfather, ended up as the first head of Q-Branch in the 1930's"
James chuckled, "No wonder you fit in so well."
Q gave him a look, "It's more likely to be a genetic predisposition. I didn't know any of this until my father died several years ago."
This was even more interesting than Bond had thought when he first picked up the album. It the time he'd only been interested to see if he could find out more current information about his enigmatic Quartermaster. However, judging by the tension of Q's body when he spoke of his father Bond wouldn't get much information if he pursued that line of questioning.
"So what happened to the younger brother?" Bond smoothly went back to the family history.
"Oh, Sherlock? He survived Mycroft by a couple of years. No offspring."
"Good thing, god knows what kind of name he'd have ended up with. Mycroft, Neville, Quintin, Sherlock the poor kid would have probably been named Ferdinand."
Q laughed, "or Bertram. They'd already used Sherrinford for Mycroft's second son."
Something occurred to James just then, "Sherlock Holmes after the literary detective?
"He was the detective. There's a picture of him and Captain Watson in front of the fireplace in there." Q waived at the album.
"I thought he was completely fictional."
"No he was all too real and apparently quite a character. Watson has often been portrayed as a dunce but he was actually quite clever. He hired Doyle as his literary agent and only gave him cases with the names and some of the facts changed to protect the clients."
"And you know this how?"
"I ended up with most of Watson's personal journals. When you compare with the published versions the changes are obvious. In addition, there were quite a few cases that he didn't even hint about in what he gave to Mr. Doyle. A couple of them are actually in our archives and the events match up with what Watson said in his journals."
"Interesting." Bond wondered if Q knew about the last photograph he had been looking at. He grabbed the album, opened it to the appropriate page and passed it to Q. "So who's this?"
"Ah, that's The Woman as Sherlock would call her. She's from one of the published cases, A Scandal in Bohemia, although Watson changed a couple of key details. It wasn't the King of Bohemia but the Prince of Wales who couldn't keep it in his pants and Ms. Irene Adler wasn't just an opera singer she was also a free-lance spy. Her real name was…"
"Elaine Norton," Bond interrupted.
Q's eyebrows shot up and he cocked his head eyes alight with curiosity.
"My Great, Great-Grandmother."
"Well James," Q said when he'd recovered from his surprise "It seems that I'm not the only one in the room with a genetic predisposition for intelligence work."
Author's Note: Well I was working along on Metamorphosis and this plot bunny started nibbling on my muse's toes. It refused to stop until it was written. Kenoria then read it and remarked that it looked like, with a minor change, it would fit into the Callahan's/Sherlock crossover timeline. I made the change but I'm not listing it as part of that series since there is no Callahan's involved. As always comments and typo spotting are welcome.
Since this one is complete as it stands I'll sign off as usual with apologies to the Bard:
If this writer has offended,
Think but this and all is mended,
That you have but tarried here,
While each chapter did appear,
And these words upon this theme,
Are of no import, only my dream.
It has been an honor to share my dream with you.
K2N2