He never did wipe the Smart Blood data — it's pointless to wipe something when the data is continuously being fed into the programme designed to parse it. He built the servers down in Q branch; he knows they can handle the extra computer power required to run this programme on the low, in the background, 24/7.
The first few weeks after Bond's riding into the sunset are hectic, uncoordinated, a giant web of tangled mess — Q branch has had to handle the media and wikileaks, of all things — so Q doesn't spare a thought about the Smart Blood parser, running in the background. He doesn't even realise the window is still open behind layer upon layers of avalanches of information, to dos, newspaper headlines and urgent incoming messages, until the next major scandal takes over in government and things quiet down around here a little.
M is walking around like he's been hit in the shoulder again, a perpetual grimace on his face like he's lost a limb. He probably has, too, in a figurative sense: despite every conspiracy coming to light as it did, the double o section is still being suspended. All the agents are being sent on a long, overdue holiday, dispersed across the world, none too happy and demanding all kinds of 'souvenirs' from Q branch, paying no heed to the fact that half of Q's annual budget has just gone up in smokes in the recent clusterfuck of a scandal.
Q still sends them away with what he can — a pen loaded with paralytic ink, a tiepin capable of emitting an electric charge of a taser. There's a look in each and everyone of their eyes as they leave — a jaunty dismissal in a smile, a wave of a hand, that says, 'we will be back'.
The Double Os are the most loyal of the kind — they have faith in England, in London, in their underground bunker of a Q branch and they have faith in the combined alphabet of MI6 to make things right again.
And things will. Probably. Be right again.
Except Bond isn't coming back.
"I think he rather lost faith in everything," Q says, sitting on the rooftop, frowning at the simmering skyline.
"I rather think he's found faith in something," Moneypenny replies. She looks a bit pensive, eyes following the movement of pigeons on the bell tower. "Himself, perhaps."
Q scoffs. "Riding into the sunset for a happily ever after? It's not that he doesn't deserve it. It's just that once again, we are the ones having to pick up all the pieces and wipe his arse."
Moneypenny laughs. "Same old, same old, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Q's reply comes out as a sigh. "Except in the good old days, one can look forward to shouting at him when he gets back."
Sometimes when Q is alone in his workshop and there is an experiment that needs to be supervised and he can't go home and he can't sleep, he watches Bond's vitals.
This unhealthy habit starts six months into Bond's happily ever after, two weeks after Q had personally sealed and suspended all of the Double O's files on the encrypted server, and thirty seven minutes after the last minion staggered out of Q branch past midnight.
It's Scrabble against a pathetically weak AI or watching Bond in a somewhat illegal and creepy fashion, so Q naturally opts for the latter.
Every man is allowed a moment of weakness, Q thinks, and watching 007 while on the mission had always brought him a sense of comfort, of control — of all the agents under his care, Bond was (is) the most indestructible, fearless, rising against all odds. He always came back.
Of course, except when he chose not to.
After a moment's refreshing, the parser locates 007 in Tokyo. Q watches the dot that represents Bond moving slowly down Ginza and wonders if he's accompanying Madeleine on a shopping trip. With all of Bond's supplies deftly managed by Q branch on all the missions, Q muses if the man knows how to handle a run of the mill shopping trip, other than pulling out a MI6 sanctioned credit card and saying 'wrap them all'.
The dot moves slowly, in a leisurely fashion, much slower than what Q is used to seeing — and it makes a few stops here and there, as if Bond himself is perusing the goods. Q zooms in on the map and finds that Bond is in an electronics store, one of the largest in Tokyo.
It would be easy — all too easy, to tap into the numerous CCTV feeds there to get a visual.
Q drums his finger on the table, looks to the side, trying to will away the temptation. It's not any of his business. Not even his concern, really. He's no longer 007's quartermaster — or any double o's, for that fact.
He hasn't seen Bond in six months.
"I hope you haven't grown a beard," Q mutters, as he keys in the commands that would give him eyes in downtown Tokyo.
The visual takes a few agonising seconds to load — the images flicker to life before Q's good conscience can win the internal struggle and pull the whole thing offline. Instead, a store full of civilian faces show up on Q's screen, and Q instinctively sits up straighter, looks for the familiar figure.
"Feels like old times," Q murmurs, smiling lopsidedly to himself.
There are too many people and not nearly enough cameras — Q hones in to the camera in the store centre, and overrides the camera's position to get a better angled look.
The camera turns deftly to obey his command, and someone standing in front of the mobile phone section looks up.
Q's finger leaps away from the keyboard, burned. Bond is wearing a long overcoat, even though it is reasonably warm this time in the year in Tokyo. Even with the grainy resolution, his eyes appear sharp, piercing; his life long instinct as a Double O does not let him miss out on anything.
He's the only one to notice that the camera has tilted in the entire crowd.
Q doesn't move for several long beats. Even though it is entirely improbable, he feels like Bond has seen him — has seen his moment of weakness, knows exactly what Q is doing. As if any moment now, Bond will smile at the camera, or scowl, or use military sign language to tell Q to fuck off.
But Bond just stands there. After a moment or two, stretched out impossibly long, something in his expression fades — like a light has dimmed, an eagle that folds back his wings. Bond looks down again.
Q lets out a breath he doesn't know he's holding. He contemplates rotating the camera again, and is keying in the codes when Madeline turns up.
She looks good, Q thinks. Pale complexion, radiant dress. Happily ever after suits her.
Madeline says something and laughs, and from the way she is standing half turned, Q can only read half a sentence: it won't explode no matter how hard you stare at it, James — Bond smiles, and Q smiles a little, too.
Madeline sweeps away again and Bond is left standing there and he's running a finger along the contours of the mobile, the way Q has seen him do many times with a gun. Then Bond's lips move and Q sits forward and squints and —
I can think of someone who can make it explode, Bond is saying. He doesn't look up, but his smile turn a touch melancholy, and Q is knocked back into his seat by the sudden pang in his chest.
After a long while, Q looks up and Bond is gone, and Q closes the window with a small sigh.
"I miss you too, 007," he murmurs, and stands to make himself a new cup of tea.
Q fully intends it to be a one-off occurrence — after all, he knows all there is to know about Bond's new life now. Bond hasn't grown a beard, Bond is doing normal things like a normal person, Bond seems to be happy.
It's nice that Bond thinks about Q as he is enjoying his happily ever after — even though it's in the context of making mundane objects blow up, but that's always the bedrock of their relationship, hasn't it?
Q doesn't intend to follow up on Bond again.
Then it happens, six days later: a minion is busy waving a folder in Q's face explaining how his signature is needed again on acquisitions form 171A-C, and Q hears an insistent beeping noise.
"What, what is it?" Q demands, already feeling way too irate for 10 o' clock in the morning. "Someone turn that off!"
The minion peddles backs two steps. "I think it's coming from your office, sir," he says, eyes dashing towards the half open door and the arrays of monitors standing on Q's desk.
Q looks over his shoulder and frowns for a total of two seconds over the unfamiliar warning noise — it's not a klaxon, and it's not a boatswain whistle, which means the world isn't coming to an end and M isn't looking for him with a level seven emergency call — then something snaps into recognition.
"Shit," Q breathes. Bond.
The minion is eyeing him curiously. "Everything alright, sir?"
"Yes, yes, everything is fine and dandy," Q says distractedly while making claws at the stack of forms the minion is holding. He signs them off with a flourish and waves the minion away. "Leave me be, I need to save the world."
It's a testament to the kind of madhouse he works in that the minion just nods solemnly with a 'luck be with you, sir,' and trots off.
Q goes into his office and locks the door — double checks the lock and engages the blind curtains. He slides the chair over to the monitor standing on the rear end of the desk, the one that has a fullscreen, auto-scrolling view of BBC news. Several taps on the keyboard minimises that window and brings up the source of the noise, as Q suspected.
The SmartBlood window is flashing red, Bond's vitals are going all over the place — heart rate and blood pressure all elevated, breathing patterns erratic, cortisol levels through the roof. Q quickly checks Bond's location — downtown New York, in the range of a fancy hotel but not quite moving enough to be engaged in any perilous chase — and glances at the clock.
It's 5am in New York.
"What the hell is happening to you," Q breathes. He checks the hotel details; no cameras in the guest rooms, but they do come equipped with iMacs. It's all too easy to remotely access their network and turn on the iSight camera in Bond's room.
"You better not be having early morning sex," Q mutters, as he presses the enter key.
The video feed comes to life. Q pushes his glasses up and sits forward: the room is dark, the only source of light coming from the massive billboards outside. There is a human shaped lump on the bed, and a silhouette near the glass window.
Q would recognise that silhouette anywhere.
Bond isn't moving. His heart rate is still high, but his breathing has resumed a recognisable pattern — four seconds in, five seconds hold, seven seconds out. Combat breathing. He looks to be casually admiring the view outside, but there is a tension to his shoulder that Q doesn't miss, even in the low light.
"Shit," Q breathes again. Bond is having a panic attack.
In a fit of empathetic adrenaline rush, Q's hands grow cold and his fingers seem to freeze on the keyboard. PTSD is something that only happens on paper for the Double Os; if Medical retained everyone on the basis of that diagnosis they'd have no one left in the field. Still.
Bond's heart rate isn't coming down.
Theoretically, panic attacks usually peak around 10 minutes, but Q also knows that irrational panic — anxiety that has no present cause — comes in waves. It's different when there is nothing to look out for and no one to shoot; when the worst enemy you have is inside your own head.
For a brief moment, Q is seized by the helplessness of it all, feeling his hands shake minutely as he watched the light from the billboard cast an eerie yellow glow to the silhouette of Bond. The person on the bed — Madeline, presumably — shifts, and Bond's heart rate peaks again briefly, even though he doesn't quite turn to look.
Q watches Bond's half turned face in the shadow, all sharp lines and disproportionate alertness in the dark, and an idea flits into his head.
Pulling up the street view of Bond's hotel, Q quickly locates the company that owns the billboards outside, and hacks into their practically unguarded system. With lightening speed, he replaces the flashing advert of a fast food chain with a tourist ad for England.
The burger promptly disappears and the Big Ben comes into view. Q watches as Bond turn back to the window, the lines on his face shifting minutely. Piccadilly circus comes up next, traffic with red double decker buses, trains whistling across the Scottish highlands, the London Eye lighting up the sky at dark, change of guards at Buckingham palace, the sweeping panoramic view of Southbank, and the MOD building standing in its old glory.
The beeping noises ceases. Bond's breathing slows, and his heart rate dips back below acceptable range. The parasympathetic system kicks in and the cortisol slowly metabolises. He is watching the ad intently, the tension in shoulder replaced by rapt attention. After the ad repeats for the sixth time, Bond turns and slides quietly back into the bed.
Q lets out a breath and puts his head in his hands.
This is going to be harder than he thought.
This is how Bond watching becomes a habit for Q. He modifies the alarm system on Bond's SmartBlood parser to send a direct vibration to his phone whenever Bond's vitals are elevated beyond acceptable range, and re-modifies it when it keeps sending false alarms when Bond is engaged in rigorous but otherwise safe exercise. A man can only be subjected to so many false alarms where he thinks you are having another panic attack and it turns out you are having fun parktouring across Paris at arse o'clock in the morning before he snaps, honestly.
Q does manage to optimise the programme though, with everyone at Six none the wiser. Sometimes when he is staying late in the workshop and no one is around and he can't sleep and Bond is awake somewhere with electronic screens, Q hijacks into whatever system is closest by and plays things that reminds him of England.
After a while it becomes more of a self-indulgence than it is a necessity, but by then even Q admits that he's too far gone to stop.
He's not sure if Bond ever notices the strange pattern of all things England popping up around him — an odd episode of Yes Prime Minister playing in the old VHS store, the billboards suddenly changing to show BBC news instead of CNN. The malfunction of doorbells in a store that sells British paraphernalia, which gets Madeline's curious attention. She buys a figurine of the Queen with a bobbing head, and Bond smiles lopsidedly, neither endorsing it nor objecting.
The panic attacks decrease in severity, but the PTSD has been there too long to simply evaporate. Q tries not to think about the fact that Madeline is a psychologist whose expertise is on treating PTSDs, because she probably wouldn't approve of Q's methods. Q doesn't know if they ever talk about this while traipsing across the world, Bond doesn't seem the type to talk about feelings — but then again, he didn't seem the type to ride off into the sunset, either.
It goes on like this until one night Bond jolts from a nightmare, and there isn't anything in the immediate vicinity that can display pictures of England, and Q panics and scrambles to hijack a radio in the nearby empty room to put on an old Beetles song that 009 likes. He isn't even sure if it will work, or if the sound can penetrate the wall, but after a moment Bond looks up, bewildered, and Q relaxes by degrees when Bond turns towards the sound of the music and his lips form the shape of a huffed laugh.
Madeline doesn't wake from the interlude.
This is really a dysfunctional facsimile of therapy, Q thinks. He watches Bond slide back under the covers and turn down the volume of the song.
"Good night, 007."
Sometimes Bond disappears to somewhere so rural that there are no CCTV coverage for miles around, and Q gets more work done during these nights. He keeps an eye on Bond's vitals: slow, steady, calm, occasionally peaks but nothing that sends Q off as well, and he watches as the dot representing Bond moves leisurely through farmer's markets, mountain cabins, riverbanks cutting across meadows.
Sometimes Q thinks Bond is having a better time than he is, and he hates Bond a little for that. Other times, though, he would look at prototypes of guns and allow himself a moment of wistfulness, as he approves a piece of upgrade that he knows Bond would have loved.
Bond moves across the world and Q follows him — sometimes Madeline makes an appearance in the view of the camera, as they do mundane, normal things. Q doesn't watch them, knows when to turn off visual, and never turns on the audio.
"Get a grip," Q says to the mirror one morning. The young man that stares back at him has a solemn expression and hard lines around his mouth, with a look that is both disapproving and all too knowing.
"Even in his retirement he's the source of all my problems," Q mutters, as he watches Bond's heart beat silently and steadily on his phone.
There's talk to reinstate the Double O programme a few months later, coming up to the one year anniversary of the SPECTRE clusterfuck. One would think that's enough water under the bridge, but no, the rumour for discussion on the reinstatement gets leaked during a brief lull in global terrorism, and suddenly they find M on the tabloid headlines as the person trying to bring the person back into the surveillance, a human touch in digital era of Big Brother, and all that.
"They should all be shot for treason," Q gripes, flipping through the front page of the Sun, where M's half blurred, unflattering picture makes a feature piece along the headline of BIG BROTHER WILL BE BACK. "And what makes them think Big Brother ever left in the first place? I bet I can find out what dirty little secrets they are keeping in the office in under ten strokes."
"Easy, tiger," Moneypenny says, rubbing him affectionately on the shoulder. "One might think you are being grumpy."
"Who, me?" Q says, in mock surprise. "Heaven forbid. I'm a ray of sunshine."
"Right you are," Moneypenny says airily, and Q scowls after her. "When's the last you've seen some of your kind, then, sunshine?"
"We are in London," Q says. "There's just as much chance of getting sunshine down here than there is up there."
Moneypenny hums noncommittally, picking up a half finished prototype of a gun from Q's desk and scrutinising it closely. The gesture is so Bond like that Q is momentarily taken aback — then he realises that before Moneypenny became the second most powerful individual in MI6, she was a field agent too.
"It's not what they think, you know," Moneypenny says suddenly, cryptic.
"What is?" Q asks, baffled.
"The talk to reinstate the Double O section." Moneypenny puts down the gun, and she looks straight at Q in one of her knowing looks and Q fights the urge to avert his eyes. "That much is certain. They are merely talking about whether they should bring in a replacement for 007."
Q feels like someone has just punched him in the gut.
"Oh," he says eloquently.
Moneypenny looks at him and there's something in her expression that Q can't parse. "The inevitability of time, don't you think?" she murmurs.
Something clenches uncomfortably in his stomach as he thinks back to the first exchange he had with Bond, and Q starts to hate himself, a little wildly, for reasons unknown.
"Yes, well," Q begins. His thoughts stray for a while, however, to Tokyo and Milan and New York and Paris, and by the time he looks up, Moneypenny is gone.
Bond sends him a post card and a tin can of loose tea from Yunnan.
The postcard says: tell M to lose some weight, and Q finds that he hates himself a little less, and hates Bond a little more.
On the day the Double O programme is reinstated, Q tracks Bond to Hong Kong. Q breathes easier because it's a metropolis covered by electronic devices and insecure networks easily tapped into, and Q watches Bond's movement on the map, as he would if Bond was on a mission.
The new Double Os would come in tomorrow and the SmartBlood tech is officially back in use, which means Q has to replace Bond's feed with someone else's, in about six hours.
Q isn't sure how he feels about that — a bit numb, really, like something that is long since coming but he's been in denial for as long as he's been in pain, so he does what a Double O would do and ignores it all.
"Once more, for old times sake," Q says to himself, and zooms into Bond's location.
Bond seems to be in a good mood tonight, as the map shows him to be in a casino. His heart rate and breathing is remaining steady on the monitor, and Q has him at the roulettes table, looking every bit the eligible bachelor that he used to be on missions like this.
"Just like old times, then," Q says, and puts the window to one side as he works on the paperwork for tomorrow.
There's something cathartic about watching Bond move in a familiar environment — appearing at ease, poker face going strong and mysterious, smiling at the female patrons with irresistible charm. If Q looks past the fact that Bond is now wearing a commerically available watch — expensive one, granted, but commercially available — and his jacket isn't hiding a shoulder holster and several more pistols, Q can almost fool himself into thinking that this is business as usual.
Of course, nothing has been the usual since SPECTRE, but Q is young and he has a promising career in the dwindling world of espionage and he isn't going to think about old warships being hauled away, even if it's on its own accord.
Some blonde woman touches Bond on the arm and Bond smiles and gently moves to lean back against the table, a soft and smooth rebuttal that doesn't hurt anybody's feelings. Q is impressed; then he realises Madeline isn't with him.
Q thinks it's rather bad form to leave a lady at home (or in a hotel) on a Saturday night in a town like Hong Kong, but he has long since learned not to judge any of the Double O's skills in romance. For all he knows, Madeline could be waiting for him at another table, playing the stranger routine, a game he knows Bond is fond of.
Q loses himself in the fine print of the Supplies form for a total of twenty seconds. When he looks up again, his phone is vibrating and the monitor is flashing red again and Bond's heart rate has jumped twofold and he is nowhere to be found on the screen.
"What the…"
Q drops his pen and scoots closer to the computer, fingers flying over the keyboard already to bring up multiple camera sources, scanning quickly for the familiar form.
He finds Bond in one of the security rooms, standing next to a guard knocked unconscious, and watching the display avidly. Q taps into the feed with two strokes and sees what Bond is seeing — a human trafficking exchange in one of the rooms.
"Well shit," Q says, sitting back in astonishment. "This really isn't what I had in mind when I said let's have one more for old times' sake."
Except, it really is.
On the monitor, Bond seems to have identified the room where the exchange is happening and he turns to leave. In a split screen however, Q also sees five men with impressive firepower creeping along the corridor, and Bond is unarmed —
Q sees the guard's mobile lying on the desk and does lightening fast work to find out its number.
The phone rings just as Bond has his hand on the door handle: the number shows up as 0044 - 020 - 007007007. Q's heart hammers wildly in his chest, as Bond takes a cautious step towards the desk, pauses, lifts an eyebrow, and picks up the phone.
"Yes?"
The voice is rough and familiar and warm and everything Q knew he missed but didn't want to think about in the last eleven months and twenty eight days, and it knocks the breath out of Q's chest. He inhales, feeling the axis of his world shift into place, and clicks into mission mode.
"The bluetooth headphone on your right," Q says. "Put it on. There are five armed men coming to your right, one of them has a flamethrower."
Bond doesn't hesitate to comply, and after he shoves the phone into his breast pocket, he accurately locates the camera in the corner and smiles at it.
"Just like old times."
Q exhales and lights up all the monitors on his desk, all the servers whirring to life and starting to parse every byte of information in the vicinity.
"Just like old times," Q agrees. "On my mark. Three. Two. One."
Bond smashes out the door like a panther pouncing on prey, and in less than ten seconds time, he loses five enemies and gains two pistols and a flamethrower.
Q watches as Bond uses the said flamethrower to make a dramatic entrance, and quickly mangles the security feed on the hotel's end to ensure he can make a less dramatic exit.
"You should make me one of these sometime," Bond says, discarding the flamethrower and going for the pistol, whipping the ring leader on the back of the head.
"You don't get anything from me anymore," Q gripes, although he really doesn't intend for it to come out like a teenage whine. Bond just laughs.
"I have a feeling I've been getting something from you all along," Bond says, warm and welcoming and amusement curled up in corners of his lips, and Q wants to bury his face in his hands.
Instead, he flings open a security door, disarms the alarm, and sends Bond down the service lift. Bond turns to the camera in the lift and grins again, all boyish charm and warm gaze, loose limbs and hidden strength, coming alive.
Q sighs through his nose. There is really no point in denying it. "Well, you know what they say. Once a quartermaster, always a quartermaster."
"Quartermaster for life," Bond says, as he knocks down the two guards waiting at the lift door. "I think I like the sound of that."
"Of course you would," Q says. "Do you need me to wipe the security footage? This isn't sanctioned, I take it? You aren't moonlighting as a vigilante now, are you?"
"You ask a lot of questions," Bond observes.
"Oh yes, beg your pardon. I only have a career and a mortgage to think about," Q says. This feels like slipping on an old, well worn glove. "Three more coming up on your heels. Are you getting slow?"
"Still an annoying little shit, I see," Bond says, as he knocks a casual elbow into his pursuer's face. "And don't forget your two cats."
"Well colour me surprised," Q snipes. "The man rides off into the sunset for an entire year and of everything he left behind he chooses to remember my cats."
"Do you have them close by? Maybe if you stroked them you'd be in less of a snit," Bond advices, and the hairs stand on the back of Q's neck.
"Do you want me to blow up some shit in the bad guys' faces or not?" Q says, irate.
Bond chuckles. "Do your worst, then," and Q keys in several long lines of code and the water pressure in the nearby fire hydrant increases by fifteen fold, and a pipe explodes. Sewage water splatter everywhere as crowds scatter and the pursuers lose Bond in the chaos, and Q feels marginally better — marginally.
Bond is still laughing quietly as he comes to a stop beneath another CCTV camera. Q hacks into it with effortless ease and rotates it once, to let Bond know that yes, he's caught up, and yes, he's opening watching this time.
"Where to now?" Q asks. He's busy hacking into the security footage at the casino and alerting relevant authorities who might be interested in the recent shakedown, and who are likely not too interested in the person that initiated that shakedown. He's trying not to ask the question, but it's sitting in his throat like a rabbit trying to escape.
"I don't know," Bond says. He leans against the wall and watches the passerby with a nonchalance unbecoming for someone who just escaped from a brutal fistfight. "Where can you take me?"
Q pauses in his work and peers at the screen. Bond is looking at him, smiling mildly and relaxed, like he's merely asking for extraction details after a mission well done, and there really isn't any need to expand on anything anymore.
"Well," Q says after a while. "If you think I'm paying for your ticket back to London on business class, you've got a second thinking coming."
Bond's eyes crinkle at the corners. "Surely this is something you can fix in under thirty key strokes," he says easily.
"Thirty?" Q says indignantly. "You know nothing, James Bond."
Bond huffs out a quiet laugh and Q pings his mobile — electronic ticket for a flight back to London, leaving in four hours, first class.
"Thank you," Bond allows graciously. "I could also convince the lady at the counter to give me a free upgrade since I have a back injury, but you've always been competitively quick."
"Oh shut up and get back here already," Q snaps, feeling every nerve in his body sing. "Retirement doesn't suit you."
Bond looks up and grins sharply at the camera.
"I missed you too, Q," Bond murmurs, and Q sits back and feels his eyes sting.
"Tosser."
END