"Promise, Bond. Swear on your honour as an agent," Q exhaled, Bond moving above him, bodily pushing stolen air from straining lungs.
Bond didn't consider himself much a man of honour where a promise made in the heat of shared lust was concerned, but breathing the raw, faintly metallic aroma of his Quartermaster, his senses filled with the sounds and smells of their long overdue union, he would have promised him the stars.
That, at the very least, was a vow he could keep.
The sun was shining bright and clear in the Autumn sky. In stark contrast, the mood of the small crowd gathered around the open grave below its blue expanse held dark and sombre vigil. It's not every day you bury the Chief of the SIS, gunned down in the frontline of duty she had no business being in the front of. Taken to her fate by her best agent, the vengeful demon of her past led to them by her chosen Quartermaster.
Q stood by the graveside. Her casket was simple, the funeral similarly so. Olivia Mansfield. As pragmatic in death as she was in life. Flanking his left and right shoulders were Bill Tanner and his Q-Branch righthand girl, R.
He couldn't help but wonder what life at MI6 would be like without the old bat looking over his shoulder. He glanced over the grave at his new superior and his assistant. Gareth Mallory was looking pensively into the half-distance, but Eve Moneypenny, Mallory's PA, caught his eye. The old (well, figuratively speaking) guard and the new guard sized each other up briefly before turning their attentions back to the burial ceremony.
He didn't even notice when it came to an end and those in attendance began to drift away. "Coming, Q?" Bill asked. "There's to be a small gathering of senior staff at one of the safe houses."
He nodded absently. "Yes. I'll be along. Just a few minutes more." Bill nodded and turned to leave him to his thoughts. "I'll text you the address. See you there then."
The crowd dissipated but Q remained, eyes shut, head bowed in silent thought. He hadn't noticed the man standing some yards away by the nearby trees, watching.
He didn't notice still, when the same man approached to stand across from him over the gaping hole in the ground and James Bond made his presence felt when he finally chose to speak.
"She recruited me personally, you know."
Q startled from his thoughts. He took in the sight of their most prized asset in the Double-O division distractedly.
"I did not know." Seems this was a moment for sharing. "As it happens, she recruited me as well."
The silence hung between them. The sense of death in which they had both played a part hung there too, waiting for acknowledgement.
"Any regrets?" Bond asked.
Q tilted his head back to look at the sky and squinted in annoyance at the brightness of the sun. "Fucking shitloads," he exhaled, burying his hands deeper in his pockets.
Bond tossed the lily he had been holding in his hand onto her casket and walked around the grave to meet him. "Then I suggest we go and get shit-faced with a view to burying those regrets along with the woman I failed."
Q nodded numbly. "We failed, 007." Q looked into the gaping earth. "Though somehow I think she wouldn't have wanted to die any other way but on her feet."
Turning to follow Bond, they departed from the side of their illustrious leader for the last time.
Q was on his third Scotch. Bond, on his fourth vodka martini.
"I absolutely do not believe that you told the Head of MI6 to fuck off in the middle of a mission," Q laughed.
"I absolutely did," replied Bond, glad to have dragged the man out of his distracted frame of mind. Swirling the remaining liquid, he momentarily slipped further back into his rare visited former life, his other self pre-MI6, in which Olivia Mansfield had stood back and let him act out in all manner of teenage angst ridden ways, dispelling the anger and grief out of his system, before she sat him down and gave him the choice that would determine the rest of his life.
Blue pill or red pill, he thought to himself, sipping his cocktail. Down the rabbit hole he had fallen. He dragged himself back to the present and looked across at his drinking companion who it appeared had also taken a detour to wonderland.
"I don't hold out much hope for her replacement," groused Bond, dragging Q himself back to the present with him.
"Don't be so sure," replied Q. "You know, he caught Tanner and I helping you on your way to Skyfall? We're all complicit in her death in some way. Just glad we didn't lose you into the bargain as well," he said, clinking his glass to Bond's.
"Humph," came the Neanderthal response. "Couldn't imagine the world without me in it, eh Q?"
"I'd be out of a job if you didn't keep destroying my toys. The perpetual cycle of destructive creation that you and I inhabit keeps us both off the streets. Unfortunately, we're fucking stuck with each other."
"United by a dead woman…"
"… May she rest in peace."
"Every fucking person I love ends up on a slab," Bond mumbled into his glass. With the exception of you, he mused to himself. So far, came the unwelcome words appending themselves to that thought.
Q's eyes narrowed. He wasn't accustomed to the raw honesty on display. Death can be a sobering experience no matter how drunk you try to get, he supposed. M, Vesper, his parents… Bond was a perfect example of how much shit the world could throw in your direction and how often you could get up and knock it all off if you had half a mind to do such.
His thoughts turned to the other display of raw honesty he had witnessed back at his house, the night Bond had dropped him home. Bond had been true to his word but the experience had affected Q in a way he had not foreseen and despite several intimate liaisons since, nothing had come close to the experience of that one night.
His curiosity and perhaps one too many got the better of him. "That time… At my house… After the LeChiffre mission. Were you interested because I reminded you of her? Trying to recapture those memories?" Bond stared at him, no doubt wondering from where the left-of-field question had come. "I mean, I don't mind if that's the case," he mumbled. "Quite flattering I suppose…"
"Ridiculous boy," huffed Bond, knocking back the contents of his glass. "I was not with you that night, nor here with you now because you remind me of her."
Q frowned. He'd been so sure.
Bond's eyes held that raw truth again, unmistakably recognisable because it was so rare. "I fell for her because she reminded me of you."
They looked away from each other. Bond, evidently had decided to go for broke. "Vesper was that echo of what I wanted but couldn't have. Ever since we first met. And when you finally conceded me one fucking incredible night, I took what you were willing to give, hoping it would be enough to sustain me. That it would be enough. But you. Hearing you during every mission, seeing you after every mission. It's bloody maddening not being able to touch you, to hold you. Fuck you into the oblivion you so frequently bring me back from. Of course it wasn't bloody enough."
Q remained stock still for a time, slowly releasing a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding while allowing Bond's revelations to seep into his consciousness. His brain processes had been put on momentary hold and he truly had no response. So he stood from his stool at the bar and provided the only coherent thought occupying his mind in that moment.
"Well. That's torn it."
Logic and sensibility certainly took a strange turn when faced with one's mortality. Funerals tended to have that effect.
Bond watched his reflection while Q took out his wallet and paid for their drinks. He returned the storm-blue stare in the mirror behind the bar, apparently coming to a decision. He faced Bond, shoving his hands into his overcoat. "Twenty minutes. The Ambassador across the street. I'll text you the room number." And with that he strolled out.
Bond ordered another drink.
And passed what were possibly the longest twenty minutes of his life previewing the many and varied plans he had for his Quartermaster.
