Q put his forehead against the mirror and closed his eyes. He concentrated on taking deep, steady breaths, on purposefully clearing his mind of all thoughts, on not remembering. He gripped the sink so hard that his knuckles were white, but his mind at least was empty.
In a daze he eventually exited the restroom and went back to work. Like a robot he answered questions and gave orders and sat silently, chewing on a thumbnail, whenever he could. In the short moments he allowed himself to think, he thought, What should I do? Then he would rub his eyes hard and answer himself. I can't do anything.
When someone called him out on it, pointed out in front of everyone that Q was acting excessively weird, he knew he had to get out of there. "I'm sick," he tried to admit, hoping he looked as helpless as he felt. "I didn't want to say anything. It's that flu that's been going round, I'm sure."
He sped home, far exceeding the speed limit, not really caring if he lost control of the car and overturned it or hurtled himself into a restaurant. He went faster the closer he got to home, faster the more time that passed. He had to slam on the brakes, and they squealed, when he arrived. He was about eighty percent sure the government wasn't following him just then, but he certainly wasn't helping the situation by acting outrageous and making a spectacle of himself. An old man stared at him from across the street when he jumped out of the car and ran up the steps, two at a time, to his flat. He just couldn't help it.
He went into the bedroom closet. He pushed himself back behind the smart, ironed dress shirts and sat on the floor. It was dark outside, night time, and he hadn't turned on any light in the house. It was black in the closet, and he was hidden, and he cried. It wasn't a big sobbing melodrama, but he allowed himself a few minutes of quiet, utter despair; a time when he felt like his lungs and heart were being ripped from his throat and that he was falling into a black hole and that the whole world was ending, and then it was over. He bit his tongue and wiped away the tears and looked at his cellphone, which hadn't made a sound all day, for the seventeen millionth time.
He was going to have to go to fucking Scotland. No one else would go after Silva's body. He didn't have family, at least none who knew where he was or what he'd become. His friends were all fake and wouldn't stick around long enough to take care of it. If anyone ever found him, it would be a stranger. They'd probably cremate him, and throw away the ashes. Wash him down a drain, or something.
Q hadn't spoken to his parents in almost three years, but he could clearly hear his mother's grating voice in his mind, the sound of his conscious. Why exactly do you want to give a dignified burial to a ruthless murderer? Not exactly pragmatic, is it?
"Not exactly," he answered himself under his breath, and wiped the last of his tears away. He pulled the Internet up on his phone, thought better of it, and went to his laptop instead. The phone was secure enough, but the laptop was even securer.
He'd almost booked a train ticket to the highlands, under a different name, of course, when the phone he'd abandoned in the closet rang, muffled and distorted.
He went back for it, crawling on his knees to reach it in the back where he'd been sitting. The display announced an incoming call from the number 0. He accepted it and put the phone to his ear, but said nothing. Neither did the caller. They just breathed for a while.
There was some scratching on the line, some scuffling, some rearranging, and then Silva said, sounding a million miles away, "Shall I come to London for a while?"
Q closed his eyes and sighed. "You can't… you can't just pretend to be dead around them. If they weren't so shaken up over the death of M, they would have brought you back and locked you in a crypt until you were a skeleton to be sure you weren't faking it. I didn't think you were that careless. I thought something had actually happened to you."
"You thought I was dead? From a little scratch, from a little knife?" Silva laughed, half manically, half scoffing. "You've seen me at the brink of death before. I was far more worse off then. If nothing has killed me yet, a little knife won't kill me now."
"Well, I didn't actually know the specifics of the whole thing, you know. He could have hacked you up in a passionate fit. They said you were dead, and M was dead, and everyone immediately forgot about you once that came out."
"But not you."
Q squinted at his nails in the dark. His eyelids felt heavy after crying. "I have complicated priorities."
Silva laughed again, and then coughed harshly. He sounded sick, or in any case not healthy. Q wanted to ask if he was all right. His mother's voice floated through his mind again. Ruthless murderer, she said. He bit his tongue and asked Silva nothing. Complicated priorities.
Silva regained composure and posed the question again. "Anyway, shall I come to London for a while?"
"You might be noticed," Q answered dourly.
"I suppose I can't stay at your flat."
Q snorted. "They've stopped stalking me, mostly. I've checked the place ten times for cameras but I can't find anything. But, obviously, no. I shouldn't even be speaking to you on the phone here."
"Then we'll stay at a hotel. I'll get us some nice rooms. A suite. And I'll put it under a new name. I'll have to think of one. My life as I knew it is over now, you know. I'll have to start all over again." He paused. "And I'd like for you to be there with me. I rather miss you."
Q weighed his options of response carefully before speaking, but couldn't help himself from trying to be mildly hurtful. "Why don't you just find another island and a gaggle of prostitutes? It suited you fine last time."
"I don't know about the future. I just know, for now, I'm going into hiding. I'm not speaking to or meeting with anyone. You're the only one I'm telling. You're the only one who will know I still exist."
He didn't know what to say, so he was silent for a while.
"Q?"
He frowned. "Don't fucking call me that."
Silva laughed softly. "But it's so… winsome. It's cute."
"Why did you kill that girl?" Q changed the subject. "Severine, right? One of your thug bodyguards told me her name before they rather aggressively led me in the opposite direction of you, the last time I saw you. I had a black eye after that."
Silva sighed. It might have been annoyance, it might have been sympathetic. "Then the skin around your eyes will be the first thing I kiss when I see you." He paused, but Q didn't respond, so he went on. "Do you remember what I said to you the first time we met?"
"You said a lot."
"I told you you were the first person I'd looked in the eyes since I came back to life. And I want you to be, again. You're my angel of resurrection. I've been hiding from everyone since I came out of that wretched chapel. I haven't looked at a soul. I've been wearing sunglasses. I've become a shadow."
Q sighed. "Are you ever going to apologise?"
"For what?" Silva asked, but before Q had a second to protest he said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I am sorry."
Q was quiet again.
"You're thinking I might kill you," Silva said. He didn't ask if this theory was correct. He just stated it, because it was.
"Well, I don't know why you wouldn't," Q said. "I'm not a fraction as good looking as that girl."
"As soon as I see a person for the first time I judge whether or not I should kill them," Silva said. "Not whether or not I will, but whether or not I should. Whether or not I should like to. I look into a person's eyes and I know. Sometimes I think I am wrong, but I never change my mind. I would never kill you. I would never hurt you."
"Except emotionally," Q interjected.
"Why do you think I encouraged you to take that ridiculous job? You're protected there, at the holy MI6, from evil and depraved people such as myself. You're safe. I didn't pay attention to you for so long because I knew you were safe. I knew you were too smart to believe the bullshit and could exploit the protection anyway. And, you know, be of invaluable service to me when I needed you."
"I think it puts me more frequently in contact with evil and depraved people, actually," Q said.
"Maybe you get closer to them, but no one will let them touch you. You're cleverer than all of them combined, you're as innocent as a little puppy. The agents would fall over themselves protecting you. I knew it all along."
"I am not as innocent as a puppy," Q frowned. "I just said 'fucking' a minute ago."
"I meant you look as innocent as a puppy."
"The point is, you knew it all along. You had this all planned since you met me. I knew you had a lot of it planned, but I didn't know you ever planned to leave me out of some of it."
"For your protection, of course."
Q rolled his eyes. "You probably had me planned before you met me."
"The point is," Silva repeated in agreement, "I knew everything all along. All you have to do is keep trusting me. Now, shall I come to London or not?"