Summary: March 1991. Stuart Thomas, also known as Agent 005 of MI6, finds out why his colleague, the former 007, disappeared. Features Baby Q, who is, of course, a child genius. Part of my Bright Star 'verse.
Note to clarify and reduce confusion over my OCs: Stuart Thomas is listed in the James Bond Wiki as a former 005. I'm just borrowing his name and designation for this story. Damien Drake is the name of a character Timothy Dalton (one of the James Bonds in the film franchise) played. I'm borrowing the name only for my story. In my universe, only Daniel Craig's James Bond is named James Bond, but Timothy Dalton's 007 was named Damien Drake. There was another 007 between them, played by Pierce Brosnan, named Sam Carmichael.
Q is not yet Q in this story, for obvious reasons. His name is Danny, and he is a baby. He does have an Uncle Geoffrey Boothroyd who answers to the designation Q, though.
Disclaimer: I know nothing of medicine, babies, or aircraft.
Fibonacci
6 March 1991 05:40 GMT
Somewhere in England
Stuart Thomas, also known as Agent 005 of MI6, knocked at the door of a charming little Tudor cottage in the middle of the English countryside. The rosy-fingered rays of the rising sun caressed the vines creeping up the off-white outside walls with contrasting decorative half-timbering in brown. There was a well-tended garden and a pretty stone pathway leading to the door from the picturesque wooden gate at the front. The surrounding village had one road in and one road out.
It was all very quiet and peaceful, and Stuart didn't know how the ex-MI6 agent who lived here could stand it.
He leaned against the front door with a sigh, leaving a big red smear on it, and watched the blood drip from the wound in his side to the worn surface of the brick doorstep.
He didn't have to wait long for the owner of the quaint little house to open the door with an annoyed expression. He nearly fell in before he caught himself with a drunken stumble.
"Stuart," Damien Drake, formerly known as 007, said, not bothering to hide the gun that he held loosely at his side. "How lovely to see you. What brings you to my door?"
"Oh," Stuart said with a shiteating grin, "I thought I'd drop in on my good friend Damien. Haven't seen you in ages, old chap."
"Emphasis on the 'drop,' it seems," Damien said dryly, as he reached out and pulled Stuart's arm over his shoulder. "Come in and drip blood on my freshly-mopped floors instead of my front stoop."
"Ta, mate," Stuart smiled tiredly, finally able to relax. His feet felt heavy as he struggled to drag them into the house. "How about a drink?"
"How about I patch you up first?" Damien quipped back, rolling his eyes. He put the gun away in the drawer of a hallway table with practiced ease.
Stuart looked curiously around at the house as he was half-dragged into the small bathroom on the ground floor. A staircase curved its way up to the upper level.
"Charming little place," he commented. "It's positively homey."
"It ought to be," Damien said, setting him down on the closed toilet seat lid as gently as he could. "I've put a lot of work into it."
He rummaged in the cabinet under the sink and brought up a large first aid kit. You can take the agent out of the field, but you can't take the over-preparedness out of the agent.
Stuart watched his blood drip on the white tile floor with detached curiosity. Now that he was out of danger and in a safe place, he could feel his strength ebbing.
Damien stripped him of his jacket and shirt with efficient movements and began cleaning and stitching the wound without another word. This was a familiar routine, something they had done for each other a million times.
Still, Stuart felt the need to reassure his friend. He had heard...things, and he knew that the ex-agent would be more paranoid than ever before about danger coming his way.
"I wasn't followed," he slurred. "Made sure of that. You don't have to worry about anyone coming after me."
Cold green eyes met his grey in a steady gaze. "You'd better be right about that, or they won't be the only ones wanting your head, Thomas." There was a very real threat under the quiet words, and it took all of 005's training to not flinch.
He and Damien Drake were friends, or at least, they had been before Drake's abrupt retirement from MI6 a year before.
Rumors had abounded, each more preposterous than the other (e.g. Drake had retired to spend the rest of his life lounging on exotic beaches with a beautiful woman he had met, or Drake had been eliminated and MI6 didn't want the word to spread, or Drake had gone rogue and decided to part ways from MI6).
The latter two of the abovementioned rumors were definitely out, Stuart reasoned, since the man was very much alive, and there was nothing suspicious about his village existence that Stuart had seen so far. One simply didn't plan terrorist or treasonous acts in quaint little English villages. Besides, Drake as a traitor? A ludicrous notion.
As for the exotic beach scenario, they were nowhere near the sea, and England wasn't quite as exotic as the Caribbean or the Mediterranean. There might be a woman, though, judging from the protectiveness emanating from the man.
Or, it might be…
A sudden cry echoed through the house, making both men tense. Damien held Stuart's gaze for a moment, then washed his bloodied hands hurriedly before heading out of the small room.
He turned at the door, saying fiercely, "Do not move. I will be back. If I find you have stepped one toe out of this room, I will shoot you."
Stuart believed him.
Well, he thought with a bemused laugh that pulled at his half-done stitches, that was certainly an unexpected development.
A baby.
Damien Drake, MI6's most feared agent, with a baby.
Damien soon returned, as promised.
"There's a milk stain on your shirt," Stuart pointed out.
Damien didn't look down but merely washed his hands and began picking up where he had left off.
"Not a word of this to anyone," he warned, taping the bandage over the neat row of stitches.
Stuart met his eyes with the most serious look in his arsenal. "Not a word." Then he risked a smile. "Congratulations, Damien."
The man's entire demeanor changed. The soft smile on his lips was one Stuart had never seen before on the cold, hard assassin, and the expression in his eyes…
"Thank you," was all Damien said, but Stuart heard the pride, love, tenderness, warmth - all things that were so rare as to be nearly alien in the former agent.
"Where's the mother?" he asked. How many people were there in this house?
As usual, Damien knew what he was really asking. "It's just the two of us," he said quietly. "And you."
Stuart had to use the last dregs of his strength to keep his eyes open as his friend dragged him up the narrow stairs and into what looked like a guest room.
"What a charming little room," Stuart remarked, slurring his words.
"Shut up and sleep, Stuart," Damien sighed, closing the door after him.
. . . . .
It was late afternoon when Stuart woke again, judging by the shadows.
There was a glass of water on the table next to the bed, which he gulped down. The ache of dehydration behind his eyes eased a little.
He leaned back against the pillows and examined the room.
Old wallpaper lined the walls, but it had been well-preserved. It had tiny pink roses on it, a detail that jarred incongruously with Stuart's mental mage of Damien. The window, which was south-facing, had soft white curtains. There was a rickety-looking chest of drawers and chairs to match the bedside table with its practical lamp. A carved cherrywood wardrobe finished off the furniture in the small, pleasant room.
It wasn't so much how the room looked, but how it felt that was odd to Stuart. It felt like a home.
On one of the chairs was a stack of fresh clothes with a note written in his host's elegant hand.
'Bathroom down the hall. Come downstairs for dinner. DD'
It should have disturbed Stuart that Damien had been able to slip into the room without waking him, but it seemed that either Stuart was still used to him, or Damien's skills had not yet gone rusty from disuse. It was probably both, Stuart reflected, as he dragged himself into the upstairs bathroom that was equally as quaint and well-stocked (in the medical sense) as the one downstairs.
Feeling much more like himself, he made his way down the stairs to find his friend in the kitchen with a baby in one arm and stirring a pot of something that smelled heavenly on the stove with his other hand.
Stuart's stomach gurgled, reminding him that he hadn't eaten in a while.
"Good evening, Stuart. You're just in time for dinner. Did you sleep well?" Damien asked amiably, flicking an assessing glance up and down Stuart's body.
The baby was snuggled up against Damien's shoulder with his cheek pillowed on the soft cotton shirt, and his (for it was undoubtedly a boy-child) head was turned to watch Stuart with a shockingly intelligent curiosity.
"Yes," Stuart said, somewhat belatedly, being too busy staring at the bizarre image of Damien Drake holding a baby. "What's his name?"
"Danny. He's turning one next week." Damien glanced down at the top of the curly head and dropped a soft kiss on it, swaying his body in a practiced way as he did so. "Aren't we, baby?"
Danny picked his head up and pressed a slobbery kiss on his father's cheek with a happy squeal, eliciting a deep chuckle and another kiss, this time on the tiny nose.
The baby - toddler? - looked small to be a year old, but what did Stuart know about babies? He was a spy, for goodness sakes.
Little Danny had fluffy wisps of curly dark hair and his father's serious green eyes, and his tiny hands clutched small handfuls of Damien's shirt.
"Ah. Congratulations," Stuart said, for lack of anything else to say. What did one say, anyway? "Planning anything for his birthday?"
"A small party. Q's coming, if he's able to get away."
"Am I invited?" Stuart asked reflexively. He was curious - occupational hazard.
"If you like. Make yourself useful and slice the bread, will you?" Damien nodded towards a loaf sitting on a wooden cutting board. Its crust was golden and it smelled delicious.
Stuart washed his hands and picked up the bread knife. He paused when he found that the bread was warm.
"You baked this?"
"Yes."
This happy homemaker version of Damien Drake, spy and secret agent extraordinaire, was absolutely bizarre.
Stuart was further flummoxed when the fragrant bowl of soup was placed before him. It looked to be tomato-based with neatly cut vegetables in it, along with...
"Damien, this soup has letters in it." Indeed, there were tiny alphabet noodles floating in the red broth amongst the bits of potato, onion, and green beans.
"Danny likes them."
And indeed, the little boy happily began eating each spoonful his father airplaned into his mouth.
However, Stuart had the feeling that what seemed routine for this father-son pair was not quite...normal, as far as ordinary people were concerned.
"Beeee," the baby said after peering at the proffered spoon for a moment, clapping his hands when his father repeated the letter.
"B. Open wide for the Boeing Chinook, Danny," Damien said, and zoomed the spoonful of soup into the waiting mouth. "Mmmm, is that good?"
"Mmmmm," Danny agreed.
"What's this one, Danny?"
"Ate."
"That is an H. Good job, luv," Damien praised, oblivious to his slack-jawed companion who had long since stopped eating. "This one's a DHC-1 Chipmunk. Mmmmmm!"
"Damien…" Stuart said weakly, unable to wrap his mind around this surreal sight.
"Hmm?" Damien answered distractedly, then cooed, "What's this one, baby?"
"Kooooo!" This was said with especial zeal and was accompanied by an excited waving of sticky hands. "Kooo!"
"That's right! That's Q! Q for Uncle Geoffrey! Here comes the Avro Lancaster!" Another spoonful zoomed in to its target.
"Damien," Stuart tried again.
This time, his friend stopped to look at him. "I know, Stuart. But regular planes don't work. Watch."
"Open wide for the airplane, Danny!" The spoon bounced against the tightly closed lips. "Open up, Danny." Danny pulled his face away from the spoon with an outraged, imperious glare.
"BAE Hawk T1?"
The toddler opened wide and allowed his father to insert the spoon with its cargo.
"Why?"
Damien shrugged and kept transporting soup from the bowl to the awaiting mouth via specialized military aircraft. "He's a genius...Stop looking at me like that."
Stuart wasn't aware that he was looking at his friend in any particular way. "Like what?"
"Like I've become one of those parents." Damien paused here to scrape a bit of carrot that had ended up on his son's chin up with an exaggerated 'oummm oummm' sound. "Q agrees with me. How many one-year-olds can you name who know their letters and numbers?"
Stuart had to concede that he didn't know any, if only for the reason that he didn't know any other babies, period. He didn't mention the last part, however, because the last thing he needed right now was to argue with a proud papa who was also a former assassin.
Damien gave him a look that said that he knew what he was thinking, but he let it slide in favor of feeding his hungry child.
"Finished? Alright," Damien said, scooping the last of the soup in the plastic bowl into his own mouth. He mopped up the stray splashes of soup with a wet cloth, then pulled the baby out of his high chair.
Then he said, "Why don't you keep Uncle Stuart company while I eat?" The mischievous grin on his face was extremely familiar to Stuart. He associated it with the look Damien had right before he was about to blow something to kingdom come.
"What? Oh, no, no, no." Stuart shied away from the baby-toting man.
The grin turned sharklike. "What, is 005 afraid of a baby?"
"Not afraid of him," Stuart protested, "but afraid that he'll start crying and his father will declare a vendetta on me."
Damien rolled his eyes. "Just hold him, will you? He's not that fragile or easily spooked."
Stuart held very still while the baby was placed gently in his lap and his stiff arms were manipulated to encase the tiny child.
"Drake, if anything happens, it's on you."
Damien snorted while pouring himself a bowl of soup. "If he makes a mess of his nappy, I think you'll find that it's on you."
"Drake," Stuart hissed through gritted teeth.
"Relax, it's not time for that yet. He's quite regular," Damien said, setting his bowl down, as though talking about a baby's digestive schedule at the table was perfectly normal.
"Deo. Un. Un. Too. Tee." Stuart realized that the baby was counting. Little Danny held out his hands up in front of his face, counting off on chubby fingers.
"Pife." Five?
"Pretty good," Stuart said, impressed, "but you missed a number, kid."
"No," Damien smiled around a bite of bread, "he didn't."
Stuart frowned at his friend. What did that mean?
"Aeee."
"Mmhm."
"Un tee."
"Thirteen."
"Ter teen," the baby repeated dutifully, "Tu un."
"Twenty-one."
"Tuen un. Tee po."
"Thirty-four." This seemed to be a familiar routine with the two of them.
"Tertee po. Pifee pife."
"Good, Danny. Fifty-five."
Stuart finally burst out: "What?"
Damien chuckled and responded with a satisfied grin. "Fibonacci sequence. He figured it out on his own. Took me a while to catch on that it wasn't a series of random numbers."
"Did Q feed him super serum or something?"
Damien shrugged and answered thoughtfully. "He comes by it honestly, actually. I never told you, but my mother worked on breaking codes at Bletchley Park during the war. She was a clever woman."
Stuart would have tugged a hand through his hair, but both hands were occupied in carefully making sure that the child didn't fall out of his lap. "But could she do this?"
"By all accounts she was quite good at the work. But no, like I said, Danny's a genius." There was the proud, secret smile again.
"Aeee nie. Aeee nie!" the baby repeated, trying to recapture his father's attention. "Daddy!"
"Eighty-nine," Damien praised. "Beautiful, Danny."
Stuart let out a slow breath and reviewed the available information. "Okay, I believe you. He's a genius."
"Q's very excited."
"Un po po! Daddy!" Danny shrieked and waved his hands, frustrated at the lack of attention.
"Danny, I know," Damien said calmly, "but we have to be patient, okay? One four four is one hundred forty-four."
"Un unner potee po."
"How far can he go?"
Damien laughed softly and shrugged. "No idea. We got to fourteen million something yesterday."
Stuart cursed.
"Please watch your language. As you can see, he's very impressionable and incredibly quick on the uptake."
"Puck, Daddy," Danny announced proudly, as though he knew exactly what he had just done. Actually, it was very likely that he knew what he had done. The baby had a mischievous streak a mile wide.
Damien glared at Stuart.
"No, Danny. We don't say that word. It's a bad word."
"Bad. No puck."
"That's right. What's the next number, Danny, luv?"
. . . . .
Later, that night, after Damien had put his son to bed and he and Stuart were sitting up over glasses of scotch, Stuart brought up the thing that neither of them had mentioned.
"There's a new 007."
Damien didn't appear surprised in the least. It had, after all, been a year. "Oh?" he said instead, "What's he like? Or she?"
Stuart shrugged. "He's young." 'Not you,' went unsaid. "Eager to prove himself."
Damien nodded. "Do you think he'll last?" In their business, either they survived for years like Damien and Stuart had, or they went out quickly.
Stuart considered the new 007, trying not to allow his regard for his old friend to color his opinion. "I think this one might," he said slowly.
They lapsed into a comfortable silence, neither of them feeling the need to fill it.
"You've done well for yourself, Day," Stuart said at last, gesturing at the home his friend had made for himself.
Damien shrugged modestly. "I've had help. Q, Ponsonby. Ivar too, when he's in the country. They were here for Christmas."
Q had always had a soft spot for Damien - there was something about the designation 007 that the old man viewed with fondness - so his help was not unexpected.
Nor was Ponsonby's. Miss Ponsonby had been M's secretary since the early years of the double-oh program. Even now in her sixties, she was as capable and efficient as ever. The double-ohs under her care were all fond of her and loved to take every opportunity to flirt with her, as her quick wit made for entertaining banter. Truthfully, though, her relationship with them was more motherly than anything. It was quite understandable that Loelia Ponsonby would continue to be in Damien's life now that he was a civilian with an infant son.
As for the last...
"Ivar? How's our favorite American these days?"
Ivar Bryce was an old American friend of Damien's. Bryce had been a CIA agent when they had first worked together, then had moved on to the DEA. A couple of years before, he had nearly died in a shark attack, but he'd survived and had recently moved into the private investigator business.
"Business is booming," Damien said with a chuckle. "He's coming to the party, too. You can ask him for yourself then."
"That's good."
They fell into silence again. This time, it was Damien who broke it.
"It was hard at first. Danny," his voice thickened, as though remembering a particularly distressing experience, "Danny nearly didn't make it past his first week. He was so- he was so tiny and helpless."
Stuart watched his friend struggle with his emotions. It was unusual for someone with their training to allow themselves to feel so strongly about something. For Damien to choke up like this was extraordinary.
"His mother was already dead when they cut him out of her. He survived that, survived that first night, then that first day, the first week. He was in hospital for months before I could bring him home. Even then, it was a struggle to get him to eat and sleep, and stop crying."
"But it was all worth it?" Stuart asked quietly.
Damien's smile was beatific. "So worth it."
"He's a great lad, Damien."
"He's absolutely wonderful," Damien pronounced. The secret smile that lingered around his lips and the quiet wonder and pure joy in his eyes made Stuart almost envious for a moment at what he was missing.
Stuart took a sip of his scotch. "He's gonna be a handful when he gets older, Day."
Damien laughed out loud at that. "He's a handful now, Stuart," he said, sipping at his own glass. "At least now he doesn't need feeding or changing throughout the night. I've got other problems to deal with these days."
"Yeah? Like what?"
"He climbs out of his crib."
"Okay?"
"He climbs out," Damien explained, "somehow manages to get the nursery door open, then toddles down the hallway to my room. The first time he did it, I nearly shot him. Now I only make sure there's a soft landing and pick him up to sleep with me until it's actually light out. Determined little bugger. He won't stop until he's found me, no matter how tired he is."
"So this morning…?" That cry that had echoed through the house while Damien was stitching Stuart's wound had sounded rather...upset.
Damien snorted. "He woke up hungry and was angry that I wasn't there in bed with him. I caught him as he was about to tumble down the stairs. Climbed over the baby gate again, the useless thing. Might as well take it down. It took him all day to forgive me. That lad can hold quite the grudge. He's still upset that I washed his stuffed bear, and that was three weeks ago. It was filthy!"
Stuart whistled. "Don't take this the wrong way, but please make sure he doesn't grow up to be an evil genius mastermind."
Damien's laugh was happy, but quiet enough that it didn't carry up the stairs to the sleeping baby in the nursery. "I know exactly what you mean," he grinned, then fixed his friend with a look. "I suppose you'd better visit often enough to check on him."
Stuart raised his glass to his old comrade. "I suppose I'd better." He paused. "Uncle Stuart. I quite like the sound of that."
"It has a nice ring to it," Damien agreed.
. . . . .
Notes:
Loelia Ponsonby is an actual Ian Fleming character. In the books, she is the shared double-oh secretary, separate from Miss Moneypenny. Since the Moneypenny character played by Naomie Harris was introduced in the Daniel Craig films, I'm making the previous Moneypenny characters into the single separate character of Loelia Ponsonby (played by the original Miss Moneypenny, Lois Maxwell, in my mind). Anyway, this is just headcanon stuff and it doesn't matter at all for this story.
Ivar Bryce is my Felix Leiter character equivalent in Timothy Dalton's License to Kill (the one who got mauled by sharks on his wedding night, played by David Hedison). I was originally going to use David Hedison's Felix Leiter as my Felix Leiter, but the new movies with Daniel Craig have already introduced a Felix Leiter played by Jeffrey Wright, who I also like. So in this 'verse, Wright's Leiter is Felix Leiter, and Hedison's Leiter is renamed Ivar Bryce. Ivar Bryce was a friend of Ian Fleming's whose middle name he used as inspiration for the Felix character.
Anyway, I've written more baby Q stories, so I hope you like them!