Auhtor's Note: This is the second to last chapter, though I am considering a sequel. Chapter title from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness: "And outside the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion." Reviews are much appreciated!
He'll admit he's been spectacularly foolish to assume that a simple location would bring him any sort of solace. He's never been lucky enough for things to turn out neatly and still isn't lucky enough for the act of arriving back in London to heal all wounds now. He marvels at the naivete it took on his part to believe that returning home would be the end of his problems.
The increasingly frantic messages from Rivka dissuade any hope of peace as they set down on the tarmac.
He's supposed to be meeting with Tanner as soon as he's back on English soil but once he tells Moneypenny what's going on she can't put up much of a fight. She's too good of a friend. He uses a few MI6 perks to make it through Heathrow and out onto the curb in record time. He doesn't even allow himself to taste the tangy, sharp London air before he's flagging down a cab.
St. Bart's is as packed as the airport—he pulls a few more credentials (and frankly he couldn't care less if he's not being ethical or attentive to security measures) to make it through the crowds of worried loved ones and sleep deprived physicians. He's spent entirely too much time in hospitals over the last few days, and he does his absolute best not to think of Bond. Once again it is the time for unwavering resolve.
He finds his mother, slumped in a plastic chair, in the fourth floor corridor.
"What the hell's going on?" he snarls, because the surge of emotion he experiences as soon as he lays eyes on her has to go somewhere.
She doesn't say anything when she sees him, just rises delicately to her feet and envelopes him in a hug. Her curly black bun brushes his cheek and he feels himself coming undone in her arms. She says nothing about the obvious plasters on his skin. Too much has happened for him to maintain any semblance of normalcy but he doesn't have any good options anymore—he feels raw, stripped, on the edge of insanity and yet still weak in every fiber of his being.
"What's going on?" he murmurs, the misplaced animosity seeping out through his feet. His body follows her into the room on the left and his mind drags behind doggedly.
Kurt sits in a recliner with his eyes closed by the window, but his breathing is such that it's obvious to Q that he's not asleep. He 'awakens' when he hears their muffled footsteps, and looks to a ragged Berenice, whose lying in bed and inspecting the IV in the back of her hand.
The first words out of her mouth are Q's name. His true name, not the letter. He lets out a sigh, in respect to the unfailingly consistent ease the dropping of his title brings. Berenice promptly bursts into tears.
He goes to her without saying anything and hugs her. She presses her face into his shredded shoulder and wraps her bandaged arms around him, leaving him to wonder when, if ever, they last embraced.
m m m
Kurt slides a cup of coffee to him across the cafeteria table, raising an eyebrow a moment later when Q makes no motion to drink from it.
"Oh, shit, sorry," his father murmurs. "Forgot you don't do caffeine."
Q shrugs, taking the tiniest of sips. His left hand taps incessantly on the formica table, changing rhythms every few bars, going in and out of syncopation and weaving through time signatures. He watches his fingers as though they are a rare insect, and knows their movement to be the only thing that allows the rest of his body to be still.
He looks to Kurt, after a long silence, and says, "When did this all happen?"
"They found her in a hotel room in Cardiff yesterday."
Q imagines, against his best efforts, what the morbid scene must've looked like. It boils down to a few needles, a razor blade, and a bathtub full of blood. His brain spins back to the present.
Kurt's eyes dart around the room. "The message was clear enough."
"Dad—"
He holds up a hand. "I know. Someone had to do something sometime."
Q sits back in his chair, ignoring the flair of pain, overcome by surprise. The future spreads out before them, a future he once thought impossible, in which Berenice goes to rehab and gets psychotherapy and finally, their parents get their shit in one sock and recovery can begin.
And he knows he's being an absolute dick when he says, "It's about time." But to handle his own, similar impotence on the subject of Berenice's health at a time like this is to renounce any hope of holding it together.
Kurt gives him a warning look that Q evades.
"I heard something about a shooting in Copenhagen," Kurt starts, too clever for his own good. "You wouldn't—"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Q folds his arms across his chest, feeling more distant than ever. A letter for a name, a few days out of reach, and ultimately they're miles apart. When he took the job as quartermaster, no one ever told him it would be like this. No one ever told him having two names would mean having two such succinct identities with so much space in between. No one ever mentioned watching your best friend die and your lover shot in another country while your sister bled out at home. No one ever mentioned this because no one could have known that the job had changed. With the death of Colonel Boothroyd and the beginning of a new era it seemed natural that he should have his file cleaned out, that this occupation of his would change, subtly at first. Ramifications were never considered. They never are, not in an establishment run by those so closely associated with the double-O mentality: act now and clean up later.
The unfairness of it all, for a moment, manages to pause the movement of his left hand and mute the pain of sitting.
Kurt gazes at him, knowing there's nothing he can say.
m m m
His flat is cold and dark when he steps inside, and it's still disheveled from his brisk packing a few days before. He drops his bag and turns on the overhead light, then wanders over to put on the kettle. He's distracted halfway there by an old bike chain and his welding mask, next to a pile of sketches. His eyes bound to the oil paints on his night stand. To the bow that needs re-stringing on the kitchen counter.
He doesn't sleep for thirty hours.