Title – A Question Of Assistance
Author - Moonbeam
Rating – M
Spoilers – Skyfall and season 2 of Sherlock
Disclaimer – Alas, I own absolutely nothing. I just play…a lot :)
Summary – The one where Q is Sherlock's brother, Sherlock is going after Moriarty and Bond is Q and Sherlock's blunt instrument.
Author's Note – Sherlock and Mycroft are both Old English names so I went looking for a name for Q. I settled on Cynric which is old English and means 'with royal might' – quite relevant since he works for Her Majesty and all.
This popped into my head and I wrote it down. It could have been so much longer but I didn't want to write a long story so I hope you enjoy this anyway. Enjoy.
A Question Of Assistance
by Moonbeam
"Bond," a male voice said when 007 walked into his hotel room.
James Bond turned his head and glared at the intruder even as he trained his gun on the tall, thin man. The only reason he didn't shoot was the strange familiarity of the man watching him with steepled fingers.
"Q sent me."
"MI-6 thinks I'm dead."
The man laughed. "What MI-6 thinks and what my brother knows are two distinctly different things 007."
"Which one are you?" Bond asked. "The detective, the Politian or the magician?"
The man let out of small hollow laugh. "The detective of course, he told you about the magician?"
Bond shrugged. "He told me lots of things, Sherlock."
"Well done."
"Why are you here?" Bond said dropping everything on a chair near the door with his gun still trained on Q's brother.
"Have you heard of a man named Moriarty?"
Bond walked further into the room and sat down across from Sherlock. "Yes."
Sherlock nodded. "Q told me that you would be helpful in my mission to bring him and his empire down."
Bond smiled. "I might be in Brazil but I can use a computer, Moriarty is dead."
Sherlock laughed. "So am I and so are you."
Bond conceded the point and Sherlock threw a DVD at him.
"From Q?" Bond asked.
"Obviously."
Bond grabbed the disc and slid it into his computer never allowing Sherlock to slip from his line of sight.
Q appeared on the screen. "Bond, I do hope that this finds you well." Bond watched Q carefully, his green sweater over a checkered top with a startlingly red tie, his hair heavy over his brow and glasses hiding his eyes, he looked tired but he was still a welcome sight. "I have been keeping an eye on you and I know you haven't come back for a reason but I need your help. My brother Sherlock has a mission, I have been helping him and will continue to do so but for this last step we need a blunt instrument, as you told me M once called you. Sherlock is brilliant but he doesn't see everything he should and he refused to bring John along." Bond could see Sherlock tense at the mention of John, whoever he was. "Moriarty is the tip of a great mountain of criminality, but I will let Sherlock tell you what you don't already know about him, Sherlock tried to go after him openly and things didn't go well. We need your help to stop him. I don't know why you're dead at the moment but if you can help this will be of assistance to the whole world not just our Queen and country. I will keep your secret regardless but we need someone we can trust and I trust no one as I trust you. On the disc is information on a number of people connected to Moriarty and some of the crimes we know he has been behind. Don't underestimate him Bond; he is more slippery than anyone you have dealt with before. Be careful, I expect to see you again."
Q disappeared from the screen.
"I see," Sherlock said with an unwavering gaze. "You disappeared because of my brother. To see if you could leave it all behind. Ridiculous. He enjoys his job."
James glared at Sherlock. "I suggest you leave me be Mr Holmes, come back tomorrow and I will give you my decision."
Sherlock huffed and flounced out of the room. "I'll be in the room next door."
James took a deep breath when Sherlock had left and watched the video again before he checked on the rest of the dossier. He had made his decision as soon as Q said he needed help but James liked to know a little more before he walked into a situation if it was possible. Q had mentioned Moriarty during one of their conversations, mentioned that he was a side project that he was working on with one of his brothers. James hadn't known that it was this serious, he would have tried to help before now if he had have known this was what was going on. Q worked on a lot of side projects, for both Mycroft and Sherlock, though the projects he did for his other brother, the only one that Q had never given a name to, were the only ones that seemed to allow him to relax. If Q was embroiled in everything that the disc contained then Bond needed to be there to stand between Moriarty and Q.
Bond had a feeling he was not going to like working with Sherlock though. The man had annoyed him more than Bond cared to think about in the brief time they had spent together, it was the only reason that he'd sent Sherlock away.
The last file on the computer buried within another file was one named 'Sherlock' and was the only one that was password protected. Bond typed in the word without thinking; it was the same password that Q used on anything sensitive that was sent to him out in the field. Q appeared on the screen again.
"Thank you for helping us. I assume by now my brother has pissed you off, please don't shoot him, from experience it only makes him more annoying." Q laughed and Bond watched the motion carefully to see how stressed Q was at the moment. Very. "This isn't going to be a quick job and it is going to take you all over the world and it will take…years. It might not be possible for you to come back while you're doing this but if you need anything, ever, call this number," Q held up a sheet of paper with a number and James paused the video to memorise the number. "It is secure and I will do what I can. I will always be here for you, whatever you need. If you ever need me to get in touch with anyone I can. I've cleaned out your apartment and have secured the important things. I've kept the dog." Q smiled and then looked down and ran his fingers through his hair. "I miss talking to you, I've listened to the surveillance but I don't know what happened on that mission and I'm worried about you. My cat keeps looking at my couch as though it expects someone to be there who scratches him behind his ears. But this isn't why I recorded this. Sherlock likes to deduce things, he is looking for reactions and he will pick at you until he knows what he wants to know. He is the smartest of all of us but he's also the most socially awkward. The only person he actually likes is John but don't mention him. Mycroft doesn't know about Sherlock being alive, Sherlock doesn't trust him to be able to keep the knowledge to himself. Moriarty knows more about Sherlock than anyone but Mycroft and I; don't trust anything he says. I have organised a number of weapons, your favourites of course, at a number of drop sites, the usual ones. As soon as I know where you are going to be I can get something to you but I have guns stashed in postal boxes in all the capital cities and a number of the smaller ones. I have used the same system." Q ran his fingers through his hair again. "You know all this. I wish I could be there to help you James, be careful and I-" Q disappeared suddenly his hand cutting off the video before he finished his thought.
James shut the lid of his laptop and had a shower. He turned the lights off, checked his gun under his pillow and went to sleep with Q's voice circling in his head. The next day Sherlock was standing outside his door when he opened it.
"So pleased you've decided to help. This is the first person we are going after. He is here in Brazil. Q said you'd know where to get a weapon." Sherlock said as soon as the door was closed behind him.
That was how it all began. They moved methodically, more methodically that Bond had ever done any mission but they were successful, Q found them what they needed, Sherlock made sense of it and James was the blunt instrument that decimated whatever Q and Sherlock pointed him at. Sherlock liked to watch him work, asked him questions about previous missions and how many people he'd killed. Bond taught him a different way to fight just to shut him up but for Q he didn't shoot the guy. Q's discs, which were also helping him refrain from doing bodily harm to Sherlock, appeared sometimes next to his weapon in drop spots. They were mainly information but there would always be a hidden files, password protected which was nothing more than Q talking to James.
Sherlock treated him like a human gun he could pull out when he needed to but since Sherlock also was right most of the time he didn't remove any fingers when he did it. It took almost a year for Sherlock to trust him, to listen when Bond said something and even then he would look at James sometimes like he was expecting someone else to be speaking. James assumed it had something to do with John but the one time James had mentioned him Sherlock had sulked for a week. James didn't mention him again.
They were both injured a number of times but Sherlock seemed just as capable of stitching things back up as he was at working out what someone had eaten for breakfast that morning. It helped that he was slightly better at doing it than James.
They had been going for just over three years and they were going after the last person. Q had left him a pen with a note, three clicks, two minutes. James had smiled and grabbed the pen and the guns. His name was Sebastian Moran and he was apparently Moriarty's very own blunt instrument. James should have known things had been going his way for too long. Moran wasn't alone, Moriarty wasn't dead, Sherlock's John was tied to a chair with a bag over his head but James trusted Sherlock on what he observed. The fight was messy, the knife was sharp and James was down. He didn't remember anything after three clicks and a careful throw.
He woke up in hospital in France, there was a doctor standing above him with an apologetic expression. Nerve damage, permanent limp, scars, physical therapy, James only paid attention to the highlights until the doctor left. Then he broke out of the hospital. He saw Q entering the hospital when he was escaping into a taxi. Q didn't see him.
"You hid yourself well," Q said when Bond walked into his apartment three months later.
"Do Holmes boys not know how to wait? I don't like people breaking into my accommodation."
"I've been waiting almost three months Bond."
James limped over to his kitchen and put the food he'd bought on the counter. He busied himself putting the perishables away while Q watched him.
"Do you know a Dr John Watson, army captain?"
Bond looked up suddenly. "He is Sherlock's John?" Q nodded and James smiled. "He is the cause of some of my better non-scars."
"He saved you after the explosion, said he'd met you a couple of times when he was in the army. Sherlock was incredibly jealous and kissed John before dragging him out of the warehouse when the paramedics had collected you."
"If John can stand him," James said. "I am happy for him."
"John is the only person in the world that Sherlock has never grown tired of. He cares for John more than he has ever cared for anyone."
"So he isn't that annoying to John?"
Q laughed. "Sherlock was worse to John; he didn't understand why he found him so interesting. But John, for some strange reason, doesn't punch Sherlock when he tries to be annoying." Q shook his head. "I don't want to talk about them."
James nodded and started putting the rest of his groceries away. Q let the silence stretch out for a few long moments.
"I've known where you were," Q said and James could imagine him pushing up his glasses. "I thought you would have contacted me by now."
"I'm not much use when I can't walk properly; Her Majesty's Secret Service can so without me now, I'm sure there is a new 007."
"That's what Sherlock said, he told me you were hiding because you had this bizarre notion your only worth was in your ability to be an agent."
"Only thing I am good at," James said.
"I didn't become your friend because you're an agent. I became your friend because you're James."
"I've been recuperating."
"No, you've been hiding and I don't know why. I thought you understood, I thought you got it. As soon as you were ready I was waiting."
James turned to look at Q, standing on the other side of the tiny kitchen island. "Things are a bit different now."
"My name is Cynric Holmes, your name is James Bond and so nothing has changed. I don't give a fuck that you can't walk normally. I've been waiting for you to come back for three and a half years."
James kept the island between them. "I cannot be what I was."
"Okay, so don't go back to MI-6, but come back to me, my cat is old and misses you."
James smiled at Q-Cynric and watched the younger man push his hair away from his face. "I'm not ready to go back."
"That's okay," Cynric said and walked towards James. "I took some time off. We don't have to go anywhere."
Then Cynric kissed him like James had always imagined Q would, with artless grace that made him weak at the knees and craving, so hungry for more.
The End