Bond

They're sitting in the business class lounge at Amman airport, each lost in their own thoughts.

Bond's mind keeps replaying the scene in the camp: Romanoff, shielding her fallen partner with her body during the exchange of fire between the remaining HYDRA operatives and the Jordanian security forces, yelling at him about what an idiot he's been and how she'll kill him if he dared die on her.

Burying her face in Barton's hair as they waited for medevac.

Bond remembers the apparent enthusiasm with which she had slept with him, back there on Skye all that time ago. The ease with which she had left him and Barton in the hands of HYDRA, the cool detachment with which she had walked away that last time.

And now this. It's not that he's jealous, it's more that he is surprised, and trying to process that fact. He doesn't surprise easily, not when it comes to people. Not since Vesper.

Finally, he can't stand it any longer. He hopes that she won't misunderstand his question, but he just has to know. Needs to know.

"How did you manage tochange?"

Her cool green eyes hold his for a moment, and she seems to find enough in his to give him an answer that might just be the truth. At least, as much of the truth as it exists for her, at this moment in time.

"Clint was the first person who ever gave me his trust. He's still the only one."

Bond takes a moment to digest this response, but he thinks he gets it. It always comes back to Vesper and in this case the betrayal that ultimately wasn't. (Unless it was?) He'll never find out, but he does know that he changed from what he had been, when, and why - then.

Trust.

Romanoff's answer, honest or not, deserves something in return.

"I'm sure he'll pull through."

He's not sure whether he really believes it, but it seems to be what she needs to hear.

"He usually does."

Her face tightens a little and their conversation, such as it was, seems to be over. Bond reaches for a paper when the door to the lounge opens.

It's Zeid, wearing another official-looking badge around his neck, one that must have gotten him into the airline lounge without actually holding a ticket. He is dressed in a suit and looks a lot more … authoritative than he ever had as a driver. Older, too.

Bond glances back to where Romanoff sits, now curled in on herself and playing with her smartphone. (Sending text messages to Barton, in case he wakes up?) He briefly and irrelevantly wonders whether she uses emoticons, like Moneypenny always does, and what the appropriate one would be for chewing out someone for trying to die an excessively noble death.

Romanoff looks up at Zeid's approach, her eyebrows drawn in a question that the latter is happily prepared for. His answer sounds a bit like a press statement, but is welcome nonetheless.

"I am pleased to advise that the helicopter carrying Mr. Barton landed at the US military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, an hour ago," Zeid says with a slightly forced smile. "He is stable and resting comfortably, I am told, and is in good hands."

Romanoff would obviously rather be with Barton than hear second-hand reports, though, and looks more irritated than happy. But then she remembers her manners.

"Thank you, Zeid."

Her smartphone chooses that moment to ring, a distinctive tone she obviously recognizes; she doesn't bother looking at the call display as she puts the phone to her ear and her face is unreadable.

"Agent Romanoff."

As she gets up and walks out of the lounge, Bond hears her saying, "Do you really think that's a good idea, Maria?"

The answer on the other end seems to be yes. She follows up with a "That's cold, even for Fury."

There's an awkward silence during which Zeid makes no move to leave, and so Bond decides to move the conversation into a different place.

"I assume your Service will send a replacement to infiltrate the Embassy in due course? Maybe as a gardener this time? Or a cook?"

Zeid has the good grace to look embarrassed.

"I'm sorry," he starts, but Bond waves him off.

They both know bloody well that he is no such thing – it's how the game is played. Any population of locally engaged employees at any respectable embassy is presumed to contain a certain percentage of spies; Jordan, friendly or not, is neither the first nor will it be the last country to follow that tradition.

Bond grins at the erstwhile driver.

"Just make sure that whomever they send, he or she is as competent as their predecessor. Oh, and tell your people not to bother with the broken English next time. We know that most of you went to Cambridge."

"Oxford " Zeid flashes a genuine grin now. "The same college as His Majesty, actually, just a few years later."

Bond snorts, but having mentioned his King, Zeid is on an evident roll.

"I came to express my Government's thanks to you and your colleagues. We still have no idea why those people decided to attack the camp. There is nothing there to be won, other than bring more fear and misery for people who cannot defend themselves, and to bring those fears to Jordan. And if they had succeeded, the consequences could have been … very bad. For the refugees at Za'atari, for the UN, for my country."

It occurs to Bond then that maybe that had been the point of this exercise: to shatter a place that had managed to stay out of the conflicts on its borders - by bringing a new, alien horror into the game? But to what end? More weapons sales? To outflank Syria, and go for its oil?

Bond is a field operative, not an analyst. MI-6 and S.H.I.E.L.D. have whole divisions of experts, who maybe can come up with the whys and wherefores of Marquardt's intent and how this bizarre, apparently one-off action might feed the prevailing political winds.

For now, at least, the problem has been contained. Deter, Detect, Delay, Defend. He's done his job - delay and defend. As have Barton and Romanoff.

And Zeid, too, for that matter. Maybe he should be gracious for once.

"You're welcome, and thank you. Most other agents in your situation would have just tried to slow down things and waited for instructions, instead of outing themselves and getting involved."

It's Zeid's turn to shrug.

"I watched you. You fight and you kill, but you care for ordinary people. People you have never met, in a country that is not yours. Those were all the orders I needed."

He smiles a little impishly.

"And whatever trouble I might get into with my authorities for blowing my cover, your Director will fix. Your Miss Moneypenny says so. She sounds very fierce."

Bond can't help the grin that steals onto his face.

"That she is. With Eve Moneypenny on your side, you have nothing to fear but fear itself."

Fortunately, Zeid isn't one for drawn out farewells. He extends his hand for a shake, which Bond returns with sincerity.

"Please give our thanks to Miss Romanoff and to Mr. Barton, if … when he recovers," Zeid says simply, and walks away.

If Barton recovers.

Bond looks at his watch. The plane is late, and they've got at least another hour to kill. Romanoff isn't back from wherever she went for privacy, not that she'd be a great conversationalist anyway in her current mood. Time to stretch his legs.

The airport shopping concourse is a bit of an open bazaar, boasting the usual perfumes and booze, with a liberal dose of local products and kitsch at ten times the price you'd be charged outside. There are racks upon open racks of Dead Sea products and stacks of Middle Eastern sweets. On impulse, he grabs a bag of bath salts for Moneypenny (he does owe her for those Friday night bookings).

And then he sees it, on one of those turning racks of cheap jewelry, right by the checkout. It's stupid and tacky, but it's also perfect and while James Bond isn't given to mawkish gestures, Barton is a friend, and Romanoff … well, she is whatever she is, to either of them.

Sod it.

He grabs the thing off the rack, watches an indifferent clerk stick it first in a little box and then a plastic bag with the salts, and heads back to the lounge, uncomfortably aware that he may have just made what Eve would call a major evolutionary advance.

He returns to the lounge to find Romanoff back in the same spot she had occupied earlier, leafing through a magazine he would not have associated with her in a hundred years. He contemplates giving her the box right away, but the wall around her seems a mile high and capped with razor wire, and so he collects a couple of expat English newspapers instead.

It's odd, Bond reflects as he leafs through the first one, how different places deal with so-called major incidents. In London, an exotic animal with large fangs had brought out the mainstream media, the twitterati and the Metropolitan police in equal numbers. It's been several days, and the pictures are still on the front page of the Sunday Times, beside ongoing braying about the Greenwich aftermath. ("What is the Government doing about the alien menace in our streets?" "Is MI-6 up to the job?")

There are calls in the House of Commons for a public inquiry into how the 'Southwark T Rex' was allowed to rampage for several days. Killing a (tragically still unknown) number of homeless Londoners before being slain - by Americans, for goodness' sake.

In the Za'atari refugee camp, on the other hand, just yesterday an alien weapon had killed a woman, caused several dozen secondary injuries to civilians, and triggered a shootout resulting in almost a dozen more deaths. The response?

A one-paragraph piece on Page 8 of the Jordan Times, without by-line, characterizing the whole thing as an "…altercation between opposing factions in the Syrian conflict, attempting to bring their fight to Jordan. Jordanian security forces were on hand to quell the incident, in which a small improvised explosive device resulted in the death of a Syrian refugee, critically injured an American aid worker. Calm was restored within minutes of the incident."

Either Jordanian intelligence is a lot more effective at suppressing reporting than MI-6 could ever hope to be, or people in this part of the world are so inured to violence that it no longer rates front page treatment, let alone investigative reporting.

Bond puts down the paper, feeling twitchy already. Double-Oh-Seven was not meant to spend more than ten minutes in an airport lounge without an active assignment. He heads over to the bar, bypassing the cappuccino machine. It's still morning, but what the hell.

Another point in Jordan's favour: The counter, in addition to passable wines from the Bekaa Valley, holds a bottle of Gordon's gin and a half-decent Vermouth. Not to mention the bowl of nice, plump olives he spotted over by the salad bar. Not bad, provided you're not too proud to drink your martini from a wine glass.

He mixes two – dirty - and sets the second glass down on the coffee table where Romanoff is sitting. She looks up with a muttered thanks, which is as good a conversation opener as anything.

"New assignment?" he asks. She nods, frowning.

"Fury wants me to go to Colombia. Since Barton is out of commission, as Hill says he put it, might as well pair Romanoff up with Rogers. I'm not sure whether he expects me to learn something from Captain America, or the other way around. All I know is that I get to board another plane at Heathrow."

With her partner in hospital on a military base in Germany, possibly fighting for his life.

"Can you say no?"

Romanoff shrugs.

"Clint would want me to go if he heard what the mission was. Besides, he's a pain in the ass as a patient. Apparently, a new group of narco-terrorists has popped up that make the FARC look like the Salvation Army. They're terrorizing the campesinos, driving them off their land. Seems like a good year for attacking the defenseless."

Indeed. Who would attack the seats of power, when wars can be fought in farmers' fields, markets and shopping malls?

"Saving the world, one menace at a time," he quotes Barton.

"I guess," she says diffidently. "It's like we're playing a game of whack-a-mole, though. You knock out one monster, another pops right up."

You cut off one head, two more will grow in its place.

For some reason Bond feels a chill, like a bug crawling across his spine.

"Let's just hope those monsters don't ever decide to touch feelers and swarm."

There's a moment of silence, and so he adds, "Zeid sends greetings, by the way, and thanks."

"Thanks for what?" Romanoff says diffidently. "We were all just doing our jobs. Again."

Bond is pretty sure that the diffidence is meant to cover for the fact that Zeid had had to almost physically restrain her from getting into the chopper with her partner. They'd been bloody lucky that medevac had been available on such short notice; taking passengers had not been an option. As if to prove him right, Romanoff sighs.

"You know, sometimes I wish the world would stay saved, just for a little bit."

He nods, and they share a moment of sympathetic silence. There it is, then, that lowering of her walls that he's been waiting for.

"I got you something."

She frowns in surprise.

"You went shopping?"

He points at the bag from the Duty Free.

"I did. For you and Moneypenny."

Romanoff escalates her disbelief to a raised eyebrow, but her usual ironic smirk has lost a bit of its luster in the last twenty-four hours.

"Oh James, you shouldn't have."

Ignoring her, he pushes the bag over to her side of the coffee table.

"Little one in there is yours. If you don't like it, you still have that Martini. And don't worry, I didn't poison that."

She hesitates for a moment, but takes a demonstrative sip from her glass before shaking the small box out of the bag.

"It's nothing special," Bond says, suddenly feeling awkward. "I got it in the Duty Free."

"I guessed that much, by the elegant wrapping. What's the occasion?"

"Why don't you just open it?"

Bond finds himself getting a bit impatient. Can't a guy do something nice for a colleague without being suspected of planting an IED? Moneypenny wouldn't …

He eyes the bag of Dead Sea Salts. Of course she would. ("What's this, Bond? Anthrax? I didn't know it came as crystals.")

Right. Trust.

Natasha gives him a long stare, but finally opens the box. Her eyes widen a little as she dangles the thin chain with the silver arrow off her index finger.

"Why?" she asks simply.

It's Bond's turn to frown. Truth be told, he doesn't actually know why he bought the thing, only that it felt … right.

"To wear until he's better? Until you can work together again?"

Her lips curl in the tiniest of smiles.

"You realize, of course, that Clint will think I've gone totally over the edge if I wear that."

"And is that a bad thing?"

She looks at him with those unfathomable green eyes. (Damn, but Barton is a lucky man.) Her answer, when it comes, isn't an answer at all.

"You know, you should really ask her out."

The sudden turn of the conversation brings him up short.

"Ask whom out?"

"Your Moneypenny. When you give her those bath salts. She'll be so stunned, she'll probably say yes. Here, help me with this."

Natasha (and just when did she become Natasha?) walks over to him, handing him the necklace before holding her neck out just so. Bond's throat goes a little dry as he watches the silver arrow settle in the dip between her clavicles and inhales her perfume. It's the one he remembers from Skye - but all he can think about all of a sudden is the difference between her pale, almost translucent skin and the much richer glow of Eve's.

That look in Natasha's eyes has become a full-fledged grin. For a moment Bond is concerned that she might be able to read his mind, but either she can't, or she is deliberately changing the topic. (Again.)

Her voice is a throaty purr when she says, "You realize, of course, that since this is a gift from a foreign intelligence operative, S.H.I.E.L.D. will want to sweep it for bugs."

…..

Moneypenny

M fixes Fury with a stare that could freeze steel, as if he were to blame personally if not for Greenwich, then at least for its more recent aftermath.

Officially, the Director's presence in London is the classic post-apocalyptic courtesy call. People in his and M's position are expected to ruminate over damage their political masters think they should have prevented, so as to better try and avoid a next time. And so it really had only been a question of time until a post-Greenwich intelligence summit.

But once Fury's Council and their Committee issued their marching orders, M had insisted he come to London alone – a clear signal that while Greenwich might be the subject of some of her talking points, there was something else to be discussed as well.

So here he is, in all his towering, leather-clad glory, filling the doorframe leading into MI-6's inner sanctum.

"Things have changed," she says by way of a greeting.

"They have."

Fury doesn't appear to take much joy in agreeing with her, nor is he interested in small talk.

"Aliens and their arsenals seem to be everywhere these days. And thanks to that last hiccup, I have to make do without Barton for God knows how many months. Just when he was getting good at dealing with this shit, too."

M could, of course, offer him her sympathies, but she usually can't be bothered with hypocrisy; it detracts from the now. In her world, assets get used, damaged and killed; you move on with what you have left at the end of the day.

But she has been known to express mild interest in human well-being on occasion, always to Eve's surprise. She does so now.

"I'm sorry your Agent Barton was hurt in the operation. How is he doing?"

Fury lets out a heavy sigh.

"As well as can be expected. Cracked skull, broken scapula, three broken ribs, gunshot wound to the thigh. Profound hearing loss from the shockwave caused when he neutralized the weapon with that EMP arrowhead. The comms device in his ears probably saved his life, but there was some damage to the cochlear nerves. The doctors in Landstuhl hope that it'll be temporary."

M makes sympathetic noises, while Eve's mind makes a few quick calculations. Would that kind of disability take Barton out of the field? Fury must have noticed her concern; his next remark is directed at her.

"He should be able to get back on the job by late spring. Stark and Banner have already offered to work on a hearing aid for him until he gets his full hearing back. Knowing them, they'll design it so Barton can only hear the kinds of orders he's interested in following. Not much of a change, but he'll have a better excuse. In the meantime, he'll make life for a bunch of doctors very, very miserable."

M smiles a little sourly and points to the seating arrangement in the corner of her office.

"While Mr. Barton recovers, we should determine just why HYDRA was trying to feed the crisis in the Middle East."

Fury nods, and takes the offered seat, duster flapping as he does. Eve has learned her lesson, and doesn't bother offering to take it for him. If the King of Spies needs a security blanket to do his job, he should have one.

"Also, why Marquardt was there. Killing unarmed refugees must be considered a chicken shit operation for HYDRA, no matter how fancy the toy or how large the ripple effect. I'd have thought he was more important than being used for something like that."

M snorts her dismissal.

"I assume that whatever rank he held in HYDRA, he lost it after the debacle on Skye. That must have cost them millions of pounds. He has probably been in the wilderness since." M casts a loving look over her bulldog bobble head. "And so they sent him to the modern-day equivalent of the Eastern Front. Unglamorous, menial duty, resulting in probable death in the name of The Cause."

Fury digests this, and finally nods.

"As for objective, do we assume they were after upping the ante in the Syrian war? People in that part of the world don't even blink at a mere gun anymore. So having extremists come up with a truly gruesome new weapon, now that might get attention. And it wouldn't matter that there was only one of those things. Remember what one moron with a bomb in the heel of his shoe did to civil aviation."

"Except we still don't know why. And why target the most vulnerable people in that region? The ones who've already lost everything?"

For a moment, M sounds almost compassionate, like the woman she might once have been, before her desensitization by daily disaster.

"The only thing that would make any sense is that HYDRA is intentionally stoking conflict and violence, so that they can emerge from the chaos like a balm. The people of Afghanistan once embraced the Taliban, you will recall, as saviors from the warlords."

Fury shakes his head; he clearly isn't sold.

"HYDRA doesn't have the numbers or the organizational strength to be a balm of any kind."

M looks at Fury thoughtfully, then abruptly motions Eve to get out the Scotch. A reverent silence descends while Eve pours two decent-sized portions. Finally, after making a show of inhaling the bouquet – Eve can smell the fragrant peat from where she is sitting - M speaks again.

"I hope you are right. The last thing the world needs is a resurgence of national socialism, or whatever bizarre ideology these people are espousing. I suppose we will all just need to keep our eyes open. But interesting as this discussion has been, that is not actually why I asked you to come here."

Fury bares his teeth in a half-assed attempt at a smile.

"Romanoff mentioned you might be pissed off about her expense claim. Or did you want to yell at me some more for allegedly bringing the alien plague to Britain?"

M huffs out a breath through her nose that could almost conceal a laugh.

"Not to talk about plagues, no. And despite Bond's report, this is not about locusts, either."

She takes another sip of her drink, and directs her ice-blue gaze at Fury over the rim of her glass.

"We have done a bit of detective work and looked into those communication issues with your European bureau." She adds smugly, "That is, after all, what MI-6 is good at. Basic intelligence and analysis."

Eve keeps her head down. The thought that her little midnight research effort for the boss might end up at the centre of an intelligence summit between two of the most powerful agencies on the planet is … daunting. (And worth remembering at performance evaluation time.)

Fury swirls the amber liquid in his tumbler and watches it for a second.

"We know there was a bad apple in our Vienna office. Guy named McMullen. He's been moonlighting for that Serbian arms dealer Romanoff took out in Vienna, and appears to have been the one to deliver the weapon to Marquardt's group."

M gives him a long, hard look.

"Yes, this is in part about your Mr. McMullen. But I'm afraid it does not stop with him. I recommend you take a closer look at that Vienna office of yours. Moneypenny, the file please."

Eve hands over the folder; it's not very thick.

"We did find a total of three calls from the same number, made from Ground Zero in Greenwich by an unknown operative. to two numbers in Austria. The first belongs to Radovan Vaskovic; this is the call that triggered our alert, since we were watching his lines. The second, we now know, was to that embad apple/em of yours, Agent McMullen. Vaskovic, it seems, was only the middle man; whoever made those calls knew that McMullen would ultimately be responsible for the weapon's delivery to the end user."

Fury looks thoughtful.

"You tag who made those calls?"

"Regrettably, no. He – or she - used a burner phone, probably threw it away as soon as they left the scene. Given the potential domestic implications, we alerted our sister agency, MI-5, but I'm afraid the trail is cold."

She slides the file over to Fury.

"What should be of interest, though, is that the Greenwich caller contacted another entity linked to S.H.I.E.L.D. Perhaps McMullen is not the only … freelancer in your organization,"

Fury stares at the folder as if it were something toxic.

"Who?" he asks, his voice almost resigned.

"A charter company."

"A charter company? I thought those weapons went into Jordan by private cargo plane."

"They did. This call was made an hour before Malekith made landfall, and may be totally unconnected to the discovery of this weapon. The only connection is that it was made from the same phone. Still, it bears investigating, in my opinion."

M takes a sip of her drink, almost as if she deliberately wants to keep Fury in suspense.

"The company is based in Marseille and runs a number of ships for sophisticated, technical operations, such as the laying of fibre optics cables and satellite launch platforms. And one of those ships happens to be under contract by your Vienna office."

"Ships."

It's a statement, not a question. M gives Fury a withering look.

"That is what charter companies do, Mr. Fury. You may choose to disregard this information, but given that neither of us can say with any certainty whether your Agent McMullen's primary links were to Vaskovic or to HYDRA, it bears pursuing. In my opinion. But S.H.I.E.L.D. is not my agency."

Fury stares at the file for a while, flipping through the pages. The documents may not be Gamma classified, but it's not M's habit to let guests take things out of her office. He seems familiar with the approach and takes his time to commit the details to memory. Finally, he hands the file back to Eve with a world-weary sigh.

Eve looks to M for approval to leave – she might as well dispose of the document now, lest she leave it on her desk and get another security infraction. (They never give one of those to the boss, always to the assistant, funny how that works.) Dispensation is granted, and Eve heads for the shredder.

Of course, there is no harm in looking before you shred, is there?

The information about the charter company was compiled elsewhere though and is new to Eve, but M will undoubtedly expect her to know it at some point in the future.

There in the file is the phone record she herself had dug up, and a public corporate profile. The matching telephone numbers are highlighted in yellow. According to the information, the company runs four vessels; as is often the case, they have similar names.

In this case, the names are drawn from legend – based evidently on a theme of lost continents and doomed cities: The Horn of Atlantis. The Heraklian Sun. The Song of Mu. And her personal favourite - The Lemurian Star.

What kind of sick tosser names a ship after a drowned civilization, let alone four? Why not just call them Titanic A, B, C and D?

Eve returns to her desk, where Bond's mission report is waiting under a box of Dead Sea salts. She smiles at the packet of blue crystals. The gift had been a major surprise – so much so that she agreed to meet him for dinner, but perhaps that's not such a bad thing. (He could be sidelined and in a hospital now, like Agent Barton, but she prefers not to think about that.)

Eve moves the salts and picks up the report with a sigh. M will need a summary of the highlights to present to the Committee in the morning; she may as well get started before the inevitable tasking comes down.

Bond must have written the thing on the plane; he usually never provides more than bullets. This one's positively ponderous though, full of ruminations about Jordan and … biblical plagues? Seriously?

And so it comes to pass, as she flips through the barely legible notes, that Eve finds herself wondering whether there had been sightings of locusts in Lemuria before it sank.