It happened one day as she stepped out of the bath. She'd reached for a towel to wrap around her hair and then for her bathrobe, only to realize she'd left it in her bedroom. So, instead, she pulled the towel off her head and was about to wrap it around when she caught sight of herself in the mirror.

She spent very little time in front of the mirror these days. She often gave her reflection no more than a cursory glance before stepping out of the flat, and she didn't very much like to look at or touch herself either lately.

Her body had become almost alien to her. It was for getting around, utilitarian, no longer for pleasure or to be fussed over. When the bruises and scars had faded she hadn't paid much attention to it. She couldn't make herself care about her figure or her appearance anymore. It simply ceased to matter.

But what she saw in the mirror gave her pause, and, very slowly, she turned to the side. It was more pronounced that way, what she saw. Her pulse quickened, a spike of panic poking through the barrier. She brought her hand up, surprised to find the area around her navel felt firmer and distended. She stood up straight, pulling in her belly as much as she could. It didn't go away.

She frowned at her reflection, her blue eyes wide beneath her dark brows. She hadn't noticed the area because it was barely there, just a little swelling on her firm abdomen. Several possibilities ran through her head as she ran her hand over it again, that solid little bump. But as the more likely one came to the forefront, she found it very hard to breathe.

At once she looked up at her breasts to find them slightly fuller than they'd been before. Not noticeably, though she rarely spent much attention on them these days. It nothing more than maybe half a cup size, but there was no mistaking it. They were larger, despite the weight she'd lost and hadn't been able to put back on.

Her mind reeled, her breath coming in short gasps. No, she thought, no, they would have found it. They would have tested me for it. They would have told me. Unless M— But then a thought struck her and it all made sense. She almost laughed. Or would have, perhaps, if the circumstances were different.

The night before that day, in the hotel room in Venice, their last night together, she'd been preoccupied. The man with the eye patch had rattled her; they'd had more than a little champagne and had been careless, the condoms forgotten in one of their bags on the floor. And then again the next morning. It had been stupid, she knew, but she'd been much more concerned with the very real possibility that she would have to betray James, or that she may even be killed.

Before that, they'd been careful. That was when it had happened.

She'd fallen pregnant the day she had nearly died, and the reason the doctors had not found out was because it was too early. They'd probably tested her when she arrived, found it to be negative, maybe even tested her a week later. But it probably would still be too early to show up. They wouldn't have known.

And her complete detachment from reality had meant she simply hadn't noticed her body changing. She'd attributed her lack of a period these past few months to the trauma, to her bruised and battered body healing herself, to the emotional stress she'd experienced.

But, she realized now with a sick, sinking feeling, she'd been wrong. James Bond had left her with a little souvenir of their all-too-brief time together, and now he would never know.

Ω

How long she remained on the bathroom floor, she was not sure. She was shocked, shocked right to her core. She'd been managing, coping as well as she knew how. Her body had healed, her psyche would, she knew, eventually. Some day she'd be able to live again.

But now that feeling was creeping in again, the one she'd felt in her hospital bed. That broken, hopeless, feeling, crushing her, pushing her down.

Guilt filled her again, but this was a different guilt, one that made her, for the first time in all these months, want to cry. She wanted to sob at the guilt she felt for this fledgling life. It surprised her how strong it was, how it sliced through her anhedonic haze and cut her to the bone. She wanted to weep for this child, who would never meet its father and who was cursed with a mother who wasn't completely there.

She felt helpless as well, trapped in this approximation of a life. Whether she liked it or not, she was under the thumb of the Secret Intelligence Service. She had no freedom. What would they do to her, if they found out? She couldn't tell M. She knew that much.

She didn't even know if she was safe to see a doctor on her own. Would they be keeping tabs on her health records? Could they do that? She didn't know. She couldn't think. She was cold, her hair was still wet and she was naked, sitting on the cold tile of her bathroom floor.

And for the first time in a very long time, she thought of James Bond. She thought of the way he had found her that night, when she had sat not unlike she was sitting now, on the floor of the hotel shower. He had saved her that night. And, oh, how she wished he was here to save her now. She didn't care that it was weak, that thoughts of him were off-limits, dangerous.

She wanted the firm warmth of him next to her, she wanted to hear his deep voice assure her, wanted to feel his arms around her.

And suddenly she wondered what James would think of her now, helpless and broken, naked on the bathroom floor, too dissociated from reality to realise her condition, to give their child the care it deserved. And the thought of his scorn spurred her into motion.

She stood, wavering slightly, and exited the bathroom to find the flat completely dark. She walked to the bedroom, mildly surprised to find it was nearly eleven o'clock. She'd been in there for hours.

She went to the wardrobe, pulled on a pair of cotton pyjamas and shut the blinds. She crawled into the bed, shutting her eyes against the images that came, unbidden.

James, on the beach, telling her he loved her, James in his wheelchair after they'd transferred the money, when she'd realized the kind of man he was. The immediate, visceral need she felt at that moment, at the memory of his face took her breath away, and she felt the dam crumbling.

Everything she'd tried to push back these past months threatened to burst forth, and she tried, valiantly, to hold it back, but the emptiness of the bed, and the room and her life suddenly struck her. She was alone, was to have this child alone, raise this child alone. And thoughts struck her, things that would never be: James with a child, their child. James rocking a baby, James reading their child to sleep.

The tears came then, and she wept for the father James Bond would never get to be, she wept for this wretched child in her womb, and she wept for herself, just as unlucky. She sobbed like she never had before; wept until she had no tears left, until her throat ached and her head throbbed. And when she was spent, she slipped off to sleep.