A/N: Okay, not quite the last. It just got longer and longer and I wanted to separate the last bit to be on its own. Also couldn't bare to just leave so many characters without a goodbye, so this just sort of and Louella still for the very end and then this story will be a wrap.
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Chapter Thirty-Eight – She Gets Around (And No One Minds)
Q glared at the map of Kabul with a dot scurrying along the streets and he has to remind himself that he was not sulking into his Earl Grey because 004 decided to not give a damn about his instructions. "I don't know why I even try with you lot anymore," he says and on another day someone might've laughed, but there's the tense breathing of a chase on the line and Q tries to keep his blood pressure from rising.
He wanted to pretend he hated it, because there had been a time when it had driven him mad, but he secretly enjoyed the slow burn of just a touch of adrenaline crawling through his blood as subtle as half a spoon of sugar in tea. So, he breathed in the scent of his cooling Earl Grey and watched the mission unfold in front of him on its own accord.
"Sir?"
He glanced up at one of his employes, who held out a tablet with streaming security footage. "She is registered personel here to see you, but the access doesn't reach Q-Branch," the man said.
"Let her through and direct her to the back. Perhaps a cup of tea; I'm tied up for a few minutes still."
The man nodded and rushed off again and Q turned back to the mission at hand, asking 004 whether or not he was up for a bit of co-operation with none of the frustration he felt slipping into his voice. In the back corner of the room a kettle came to life.
Louella brushed the flaps on her paper cup and thought they made a terrible ear for the cup, but would've fit Dumbo well. She lost interest in the steaming tea that she wasn't allowed to touch anyway and tried to spy what was happening in the strange room from behind Mary-Jo's legs.
Everything seemed to be either static black and white or a moving burst of colours on giant screens on the walls. She recognized some bits as being letters or numbers, but most most of it didn't make any sense to her.
"Sorry for the wait," she recognized the voice with a growing smile, "my office is over there."
"I was rather surprised we even got in," Mary-Jo said and picked her up. She held Louella's tea by the over-sized Dumbo flaps and the large room grew smaller as they pass into a corridor.
"And hello to you too, Louella," Q greeted, when her attention shifted away from the heart of Q-Branch to its Quartermaster.
"Hiya! D'you haaved some tea too?"
"Plenty, rest assured."
Louella glanced around his office, eyes lingering only briefly on the stack of papers on the floor and a plant in the corner. Q took his seat behind the desk, Mary-Jo hers in one of the hard looking chairs on the front and Louella was tempted to jump on the couch towards the side, but didn't dare. Instead she walked onto Q's side of the desk to inspect the world from another angle, only then tuning in on the conversation that had sprung to life between the adults.
"-Cornwall. One must take their chances, where it's possible. But that's not something you need to know anyway," Mary-Jo said in the effortless way she'd been taught to change subjects and rattled on, "I'm here, because the clock fell from the shelf the other day. Louella had a bit of a tantrum, didn't you dear?"
She nodded, desperately trying to be a part of the group. "It broke."
"Did it now?" Q asked.
Louella nodded again with wide, solemn eyes.
"Well, I thought I might as well swing by to see, if you could fix it, since Bond's upstairs to debrief. He doesn't ever have the time and Louella went bonkers, once she realised she could see you and her Dad, if she insisted on tagging along," Mary-Jo sighed, "Besides, it would be better to have it in order before Bond's whisked off to the end of the world again."
"Life without a clock, what a crazy thought." Q smirked, unwrapping a granola bar. "Hand it over. I'll take a look at it some day."
Louella perked up at the prospect of chocolate in the room. "Please?" she asked Mary-Jo, fully aware of whom the bad cop in the room was.
"Oh, I see how it is," Q huffed with mock hurt.
"I'm not the one with the chocolate, Lou Lou, but I'm not saying no."
Q broke off a corner and handed it over to Louella. "Well, there goes my breakfast and you'll be horribly disappointed, because there's more honey and grains than actual choclate. Not that it stops people from complaining.
"But I promise to fix your clock right up," Q said, " Just watch out for a fairy in delivery man uniform tonight." He turned to Mary-Jo. "And you enjoy yourself outside of London for as long as such a thing might be enjoyable."
Louella waved goodbye as she and her tea moved yet again.
Eve Moneypenny had gotten used to a desk job with surprising ease. She still thought of her years abroad, scrambling through dust in the scalding afternoon sun for Queen and Country, when she watched London unfold in its rainy greys from her office window. She didn't miss it anymore. The world at home was just as exciting as the world out there and Eve Moneypenny had made her choices.
That morning She sat at her desk, content with pestering half of MI6's branch heads to keep the ship running as Tanner rushed from one corner of the building to another, gathering confidential reports for M's eyes only. He would appear soon enough to drop them off with her and they would throw quips back and forth in playful banter, because that was what she did. To Eve Moneypenny playful wit was power and she never ran out of it.
She smirked at the whoosh of elevator doors down the corridors only to realise the gait was not Tanner's. The hand that knocked on the edge of the door was most decidedly not his either. Instead Mary-Jo Poppins appeared in the doorway.
"Hello," she said, "Is Bond still up here?"
"Yes, he is still in a meeting," Eve answered politely, shuffling the more confidential documents into a pile and covering it in a sheet with notes of the MI6 betting pool. "Would you like a cup of tea?"
"Already had one downstairs. I'm a bit in a hurry to catch a train really."
"Quick," Louella piped up and thew her hands in the air as an indication of speed. "Down." She demanded next and Mary-Jo obliged, glancing at her watch.
"Oh yes, your vacation," Eve mused, vaguely recalling the week's holiday schedule, "Bond said you could leave her here, if he's caught up. I promise to take good care of her." She added a conspiratory wink and a smile.
"Really? You must have more important things to do."
"A coffee break."
Eve could see the hestation cross Mary-Jo's face. The woman had been trained never to leave a child and this went against all her instincts, but not against her reasoning. "Alright, but just this once and only because my mother gets horribly upset, if I'm late for dinner."
She left Louella's tea on the desk and glanced at the girl, who had plastered her face against the long glass walls, one last time before she was off.
Eve gave her a quick wave and then turned to Louella. "Isn't it good those windows are bulletproof?"
"Though that won't save them from spit," she added, when Louella withdrew her face from it with a wide grin.
Tanner scurried down the hallway with an armful of paper and two cups of coffee and tried not to spill any of it. Fridays weren't supposed to be so hectic, he thought to himnself, but he'd learned that getting MI6 into shape for the small amount of weekend employees and taking over again on Monday was far more stressfull than the odd few days in between.
"Moneypenny, my arms will fall off one of these days," he grumbled as he reached her office.
"England will certainly fall." She gives him a smirk and frees him of half the load. "I've got croissants stashed in the cupboard."
He sat down on the edge of her desk and sipped at his coffee, greatful for the surge of hot liquid that carried a promise of caffeine with it.
"D'you have tea in da cup?"
Surprised by the timid voice, he spat his coffee right back in the cup and swiveled around to see Louella pointing a pen at him.
"No, darling. That's coffee and it tastes very very bad." Eve swooped in and snatched the pen from the little girls hand. "You'll understand it someday, and until then, let's not point around any pens in this building, lest they be weaponized," she continued as she handed over a ruler, "Now this, this should be safe and it even measures things."
Louella looked at it doubtingly for a moment, but took it nonetheless. Tanner watched her hold it up against the window completely dumbfounded. "Alright, you might want to explain why she's in your office, Eve. There are things a man simply can't deduce."
"The nanny was in a hurry and I lied a little bit. How is she ever supposed to become a little devil, without proper training after all?"
"Mmh, Bond must be so happy about it too." He let his eyes drift back to the toddler by the window. Louella was typically friendly – not a screamer – and typically not one for clammy hands, but he couldn't help feeling weary. Eve, of course, had slipped into the role of an oddly charming aunt with natural ease and without being asked.
Eve handed him a croissant out of a paperbag and another to Louella. She leant back in her chair with a devilish smile, but soft eyes and Tanner realised once again how smitten he was with her.
Louella pulled him from his thoughts. "Tea, pwease." She pointed to the edge of the desk, where her papercup still sat.
"Here you go," he gave her the lukewarm cup and got a pacifier in return. In his confusion he took it with a thank you.
Eve whispered, "I think it's a sign of trust or acceptance or something like that." Her smile was genuine and wide. "Welcome to the club, Mr. Tanner."
He let the smile infect him with something like pride, even if he didn't quite know what for. The door to M's office opened and a loud scream of 'Daddy!' pierced everyone's ears. Tanner thought they'd survived the worst, when Louella spotted M and his ears went through another round of abuse. He couldn't say he minded too much.