Author's Note: Hello everyone! So, to those who know me, this is the first chapter of the promised sequel to The Best Laid Plans. If you don't know me, then this is the first chapter of a multi-chapter fic that can be read separately of it's prequel, though I would encourage you to read my other story for purely selfish reasons. Anyways, I expect this fic to be rather different than The Best Laid Plans, because of a shift in point-of-view and shorter, less action filled plot. Regardless, I hope you all enjoy and please review!
The sniper rifle allows such an intoxicating level of clarity to its user. Through the lens, the world becomes very uncomplicated. The rifle enables distance, which in turn enables simplicity, and with a finger on the trigger the universe becomes very black and white.
James Bond has always thought that if he lives to retirement age, sees the time when he no longer has the wherewithal to leap around with razors between his knuckles or a Walther under his arm, he'll become a sniper. Get the job done by raining cut-and-dry death from above. Protect Queen and Country until what's left of his soul finally fails him forever.
Two and a half hours ago he awoke in a hotel room with the distinct notion that today would be a day that could be neither stood nor understood—it would be either inexplicably unfair or ridiculously fortunate, and both would be, in their own way, unbearable. Half an hour after that he steps out of a scorching shower and catches his cell phone on the last ring, with Moneypenny on the other end telling them they've confirmed the target's position and are moving in to retrieve him imminently. It's only later, when Bond shows up at the scene along with the field agents and the double-O's being deployed, that he realizes she wasn't supposed to tell him this. His knowledge was planned to be latent, but Moneypenny has always been a little more virtuous than she lets on.
But it's too late, so they hand him a high powered rifle and tell him to go climb a windmill, which he wastes no time in doing. The turbines spin lazily behind him as he braces himself against the flat surface, watching the fenced compound while wrapped in camouflaging reflective foil. Through the lens he watches the black clad figures surround the target area in the concealing predawn light. He hears their short, clipped radio chatter in his ear and swallows the ache that comes whenever he thinks of the voice that used to drift smoothly through his earwig.
On the signal, three dozen MI6 operatives storm the fence, guns blazing. They leap through the barbed wire unflinchingly, roll gracefully into standing positions as they hit the icy ground. Ragtag guards stream from the compound's buildings, flailing Kalashnikovs and Ak-47s ineffectually. A fully trained strike force is almost unbeatable, and this mission has been so well planned it's a virtual guarantee that the agents will triumph, on the whole. It's a matter of speed, now—a question of who will get to the retrieval target first.
A commotion draws Bond's sights to the southwest corner of the area, where a door is slammed open and a familiar figure swaggers forward. Tove Baek is bundled against the Icelandic cold, her blonde hair stuffed under a fox fur hat, leather gloved hands clasping two nine millimeter pistols. Her husband, Dae-Jung Baek, wearing a tasteful maroon scarf (Bond can't help but admire it for a moment, because separation does strange things to strange minds), is clawing at her, trying to persuade her out of the agents' line of fire and away from certain death. She shoots off a few rounds into the crowd of invaders, then slips behind a low cement building and around to it's backdoor, Dae-Jung on her heels. Time passes, with every muscle in Bond's body tensed. Eons later they emerge again, dragging a shape that at first he mistakes for a dead animal, but unfolds into a full grown person. A person with olive toned skin, shaggy dark hair. A person with a thick beard below a broken and crookedly healed nose. A person with thin, bruised wrists and tattered, bloodstained clothes. Bond chokes. Dae-Jung holds the ragged creature and Tove raises one of her guns to it's unkempt curls.
"I have a shot," Bond rasps. The airwaves are silent in the response. He stabilizes his sights between Tove's eyes. Still, no sound from his comrades, and he allows one eye to slide to where the earwig has slipped from it's cradle in his ear canal and on to the windmill beside him. As far as he's concerned, this signifies that the universe has affirmed his actions.
Across the icy plains a single gunshot rings, and blood splatters across Dae-Jung Baek's acetate-rimmed glasses.
m m m
The moment his feet touch the earth, the rifle drops from James Bond's hands, and he breaks into a sprint that tweaks his strained thigh muscle from last week. Personnel are flooding into the compound, medics and clean-up crews, and Bond's long strides push through them to where gore and flesh stain the ice. Tove Baek's body is being zipped into black bag, leaving bits of her hair and skull where she fell. Dae-Jung has collapsed, eyes glassy, mouth half open in shock. He sees Bond and it seems to jar him to the reality of the situation, and he lets from his lips a strangled little "no."Agents pull Dae-Jung away before Bond does something inevitably rash.
The third person is being lifted onto a backboard, face pale and strained. His eyes are shut tight, as though fending off pain or exhaustion or fear. The medics secure him, and as one reaches out to take his pulse he seems to spring awake, hazel eyes fierce and lucid. His eyes meet Bond's, whose carefully composed gaze is struck down into it's primal elements of relief and horror and disbelief. Neither man says a word.
And then the impossible happens: Q's face twists into a smile, showing off a chipped front tooth, enunciating the jagged line of his nose and cracked, dried liquid on his skin. The expression should be grotesque, but it's too pure. Months have passed and agony has etched lines in both their faces but nothing can damage a full smile.
Then he's gone, whisked away to be healed as best they can.
Moneypenny has appeared at Bond's side, speaking efficiently into a mobile phone. "He's alive. We'll be in Reykjavik in an hour."
She hangs up, and turns to Bond. Her smile is not quite as pure, because she is fully in touch with actuality, or at least the MI6 verisimilitude of it. She knows the protocols that follow the rescue of high level employees from enemy captivity, and in some ways they are as formidable as the captivity itself. Debrief, quarantine, reevaluation, reintegration. Exponential time and stress.
She communicates as much as she can through silence, though on some level Bond already knows that this is not the end of their troubles. Rather, it is the beginning of something infinitely new.