Chapter 4
Bond's comfortably numb for the moment. Amazing what pills, booze and sex will do for you.
It doesn't heal everything...
Her voice still rings in his ear. "take the bloody shot!"
Damn it!
He swore he would stop thinking about her. "Bitch!"
The woman sleeping beside him stirs. He stares out the dark window as the curtain blows in the ocean breeze. No matter how numb he becomes, M always invaded his thoughts. The verbal sparring matches that they bantered back and forth during their meetings, were one of the best parts of his job.
Now he hopes she is...what?
Horrified, sad, despondent...No...Not bloody likely, her and her damn stiff upper lip. Did she stand silent after the order to shoot him and...What? Did she shed any tears for what she did to him?
He observed very little difference in her professional demeanour when her damn husband died. Until the train fight, he always found her voice reassuring when she personally oversaw his missions.
He liked her voice. It's why he tried to get her going all the time. Breaking into her flat, flirting shamelessly in front of Tanner and anyone else within hearing distance.
When did his feeling about her separate from the feelings he had for the job?
Excitement, money, cars, women...no girls they were all girls compared to...when did he stop thinking of Vesper and replace her with M.
After that bastard tried to kill her...that's when. Bond thinks she was worried that he was going rogue to punish them for Vesper. Ha, that was rich.
What Vesper did hurt his pride. It was an act that he fell for because he had wanted and needed to feel loved at the time. Vesper had been a bloody good actress for Quantum, nothing more.
What Quantum tried to do to M had incensed him. It was an attack on the personification of Britain and all it stood for, honour, history, empire...christ they might as well attack the Queen, it was the same bloody thing.
M groomed him and trusted him to become the best 00 and Vesper was a lying traitor. M would lie for Queen and country but she could never be a traitor. It went against the moral fibre of her being. With women, age had never been much of an issue for him but M had almost 30 years on him.
Still, she's a damn fine woman. Bond spied her at a few government functions over the years, and she could still turn heads. Not just because she was the head of MI6. It's the way she carries herself; who she is, not what she is. Bond sneaked a peek at the photos in her flat, of when she was younger. M's husband was a very lucky, lucky man.
Why is M allowed to lead a life like that? Why was he denied that life, that life he had hoped to have with Vesper? Was this job worth the heartache, the longing for the life M had with her husband.
Bond admitted to himself that he was jealous. Pure and simple, green with envy. Well, he would let her stew until he felt like returning. Bond hopes she can't sleep because of him.
After all he keeps losing sleep over her.
