set post casino royale. non-canon, since vesper lives. a glimpse into their lives after that. no sexytimes, sorry, the muse didn't go in that direction. enjoy!!

When she woke up, they were in an MI6 ambulance, and she never wanted to see Italy again in her life. On the metal corrugated floor of the vehicle was the enormous amount of water she had coughed up, sloshing around over Bond's leather shoes and the EMT's sneakers. Her throat was raw. She had coughed and coughed and the EMT had aspirated water from her lungs, at one point on the verge of intubating. She had bruises on her torso and throat. Bond's face was bleeding. It was quiet, save for squealy turns. The siren wasn't on.

She woke up amazed, realized she was breathing, and passed out again. Someone must have given her a painkiller. When she woke up again they were carrying her on the stretcher into a safe house, in through a back entrance, and Bond was looking down over her. She tried to say his name but could barely open her mouth, no feeling in her hands and feet, numb and floating.

"I'm not leaving you," he said, and got that concentrating expression on his face like he was aiming a gun. He looked into her unfocused eyes and she heard him as if he was on phone, calling her from the other side of the world.

Shortly after they got inside, Bond pulled a chair to her bedside, curled a hand around her forearm, and got on the phone. Presumably he called his superiors. She was too woozy to tell. He said the letter M over and over. He cursed. "She doesn't leave my fucking side until we figure this out," he said, darkly muttering. "We could have both been killed."

A sharp little crackle emitted from the phone. Evidently, someone was yelling back.

Bond continued, unrelentingly. "I don't care! Our resources—we—you can arrange something, so she is taken under our wing. We are coming home. I know that! I will train her myself, for all I care. We stick together or I'm done."

"James," she finally managed, and at that his eyes widened; he hung up abruptly and looked down at her.

"You made it," he said, the relief in his voice evident, even in that tightly controlled voice he had, every ounce of noise measured.

She managed a little smile, and whispered, raw-throated: "I did."

***

A few weeks later, they returned to England on an M16 jet, a 'commuter' flight full of other employees, and Vesper did not know what to expect. She didn't bring up what they would do when they landed. She was terrified and compensated by being as smooth and elegant as ever. Holding James' arm and peering out the window as they took off, she considered herself a menial employee again, when just months before she was the woman who had laundered espionage money and tossed poker chips at the table alongside the world's new emperors.

Between them they could have filled about one big suitcase with their belongings. She had no idea where James lived, and how he lived; he had never spoken about his home. He had fallen in love strategically, looking only forward, never telling a single story that spoke of the past, except to hint at his lack of "honest jobs". Vesper reflected on this. She considered bringing it up, but hesitated when she realized she did not want to divulge much of her past, either.

At this point it was clearly impossible for her to go back to her own job. She would have to re-evaluate. Did the double-oh division need an accountant? There was no turbulence, but for a moment the flight made her dizzy. She put her head on Bond's shoulder. He held his hand to her face for a moment in response. He had also been silent throughout the flight, but she could hear the wheels turning, his face tight with anxiety.

When she got back, suddenly her apartment was gone. Her things were gone. Her phone number changed. She got a new passport, a new license, a new car, new plates, new insurance policies. On paper she was someone else.

In the hotel he held her face in his hands and kissed her. "I'll call you Vesper, but to everyone else, Sophia," he said, and she wanted to just nod but it felt like her whole history had disappeared around the bend; she was overcome, and pressed her lips to his shoulder and stared at the wall behind them.

James never told her how he put his job on the line to make her escape happen, but she had suspected something, when he began going away longer and more frequently.

First she stayed in a spare room at a government flat-block, then in a hotel room for a night when they needed the flat back, and then, finally, at James'. She ended up there for good, accumulating things of her own, new things. She had no idea what happened to her old things. Often he was not home. Often he was across the world on operations, which she tried not to think about: infiltration, sabotage, extraction, reconnaissance, research, analysis. There were many ways to describe the sort of work that essentially came down to nearly eating a bullet. She worried for him. He worried for her.

This worry was kinetic energy in their home. He worked out his concern teaching her how to survive in the worst situations. Amid his capable skills she learned to handle a weapon, pick and shim locks, fight, escape; she learned CPR and basic medical techniques, how to hotwire and repair a car, hack a sat-phone, charge a portable battery off an engine. Later on it was things like riding motorcycles, firing rifles, how to fall, how to jump, how to pull off parkour-like moves for escape in urban environments. She started meeting his MI6 friends for boxing, for climbing, for long runs up and down the river. Nobody called her Vesper, but they knew her name. They did hills and intervals on weekend mornings. She got heavier, denser, stronger. She filled open time at home easily, obsessively focused on understanding the strange skills and dangers of his world.

Once they sparred in the living room, coffee table pushed aside, so she could show him a new move she'd learned. Of course, he took her down—gently, and onto carpet, and yet for a moment she felt the kind of terror she knew he must feel on a daily basis. He sensed this and froze, then released her, and sat up, pulling her into his arms. "I'm sorry," he said, "I did not mean to make you afraid." When she responded, she was angry and bitter and spoke into the curve of his neck.

"Then are you sorry every day, my dear?" She said.

He made her memorize all kinds of codes. They had codes between them: how he would alert her to something over the phone if he was being watched, or if he was being followed, or if he was in danger, or if she should try to reach M, and how he would do the same in writing or electronically. In their apartment, the second to the top floor in a high rise building, he'd long ago had someone install quite a bit of custom security and communication tools, as well as a selection of (his favorite) weapons.

She did as she was told partly because she had plenty of time on her hands, and partly because she sensed in him a very poorly disguised current of fear-rage layered neatly over quite a strong protective instinct towards her, neither of which she was inclined to disrupt or dismantle. He was a man driven. She did not understand, at times, but pretended all the things he did were common sense.

One hot August night they lay awake and she finally asked him what had made him teach her all these things.

"I'm trying to get you a job at the MI6."

"What?

"I'm trying to get you a job."

"I heard you. James…I'm not a secret agent." She rolled over and crossed her arms above her head. They'd had similar conversations before, which had also irritated her. She did not need a reminder of how she would only ever be involved in a small fraction of his life.

"I've trained you in all that they prepare their analysts with."

"Why? For what good? You don't want me watching telenovelas all day? It isn't as if we need the money."

"No, because I want them to protect you like they do me, and even if I make you my wife, they would not protect you as one of their own unless you became one of them. So you must. These are the only people in the world I have faith in," he said. "Besides you, but you know what I mean."

"James…I don't know."

"Every night I am awake worrying about this. About us, and about your safety. I've been trained for what I bring upon myself but you haven't, and what if something were to happen?"

"But I could never go to the field—I'm not—that's not what I do, I can't imagine why they'd want me."

"Vesper," he said, and rolled onto his side, taking her face in his hands, "you are quite more capable than you think. Especially now. And you might not even be in the field."

"I should ask you to stay home, in exchange. You think I don't worry, that I don't cry for you, I do," she said, rolling over and raising herself onto an elbow. "The times you've come home fresh from the hospital? Lately when you leave I just keep waiting for M to call me with the bad news. And I only know half of what you do."

"You wouldn't worry so much if you knew the full of it," he replied. He looked at her with a hand pressed into her hip. The air conditioner shifted the curtains, ghost-like. Outside lightning crackled in the distance.

"I don't want to kill anyone."

"Darling, analysts are not killers. Your work and mine would not be alike."

She had a good way of shutting him up, which was to throw a leg over his hip and pull him in for a kiss, rustling a free hand through his hair. It never failed to disarm him. They kissed. A thunderstorm built outside. A thunderstorm built between them. A couple of hours later she came up for air and threw the covers off the bed, lit by lightning as he brushed his palm across her stomach.

"I'll do it, on the condition that M keeps you here at home for another few months. Well, three months."

"Like a sabbatical?" He was almost purring. "We can make it half a year."

"Then make it half a year. For once I just want to be with you and not worry."

"I know," he replied.

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