No Time to Die was a beautiful end to the Bond/Daniel Craig saga. But I can't resist fixing the ending. Yes, my premise is far-fetched, but so is the Bond franchise, and after all, this is fan fiction. I'm also straying from Bond's biography as outlined in his obituary in You Only Live Twice. No violations of the copyrights of the Fleming estate, subsequent Bond novels, or the Bond movie franchise are intended. This fic begins just as No Time to Die ends.
Time to Begin Again
Four Americans in hazmat suits climbed out of the helicopter and pulled out James Bond, wrapped in a blanket and strapped to a backboard. The blanket was soaked with a rapidly widening blood stain. They hoisted him onto a waiting gurney. The helicopter's blades slowed and the wind they generated dissipated. Right on the open deck, a medical corpsman wheeled up an intravenous infusion bag hanging on a rack. With quick skill, the corpsman reached for Bond's blood-soaked, white sleeve, pushed it up, and inserted the IV in a vein.
"Too much blood," one of the Americans muttered.
"Yeah. He's bleeding out. Let's get him to sick bay." The gurney and infusion cart were pushed onto the lift with urgency. Madeleine could see Bond's battered face, his eyes closed, her beloved, alive, whom she could never get near again. She burst into tears, relieved and appalled all at once.
The first officer on deck smiled at her, smiled! "Don't worry, Dr. Swann" she said. "I don't know what the people in the Royal Navy told you, but one of our labs developed an antidote. He is getting the first dose. They tell me that one more dose, a couple other medical procedures, and Commander Bond will be no threat to you or your daughter. Right now, I think they are more worried about his injuries." Madeleine must have looked shaky because a sailor ran over to her and guided her to a piece of deck equipment to sit down.
"I don't faint…" Madeleine gasped. "How? I saw the bombs hit the island. I thought he was dead. He expected to be dead."
"Yeah. That was a textbook Seal team extraction, literally in less than a minute. You couldn't see the chopper from where you were waiting. Unfortunately, we think one missile blast caught Commander Bond before the team could get there, not a direct hit, thank God. No idea yet how badly he's hurt."
Madeleine scooped up Mathilde and settled the little girl in her lap. In the distance, near Safin's Island, helicopters and two ships were capturing Safin's workers who had fled in rafts and small boats.
"The doctor is going to see that Commander Bond gets the second dose of antidote, and whatever other procedures he needs so he's no danger to you. You should wait up here until we can transport you to a British ship. The doctor tells me it will take several hours until it's safe for you to be around Bond."
With Mathilde clutched in her arms, Madeleine stared after the doctor and Bond. A team of sailors wiped down the area and the interior of the helicopter. A cold wind blew from the ocean. Madeleine tried to shield her tired daughter from the wind.
"Commander Bond, you're safe. Your family is safe."
The man on the bed gave no sign of hearing. "Concussion," the doctor murmured, but she tried again. "Commander Bond, you are on the United States naval ship Harriet Tubman, and we have given you an antidote to the nanobots. As soon as you have had dialysis, you will no longer be a danger to your loved ones." The doctor leaned over Bond to adjust. the canula in his nose.
Bond's bloodshot eyes snapped open. "Q said… Q said it's permanent… it's eternal…" Bond's voice trailed off in exhaustion and disbelief. His hand groped toward the bandaged scratches on his face made by the jagged edges of Safin's broken vial.
"Your government, or this Q, didn't know that we developed a reversal." The American naval medical officer paused. Bond wasn't lucid enough to follow what she said. But the captain insisted that she ask an important question. "Commander Bond, do you know what happened to Safin?"
Bond took a deep breath and ground out, "I shot him. He's dead. He's dead."
"Good. OK." She walked to the in-ship phone to let the captain know.
Back at Bond's bedside, she uncovered his feet and gently ran a fingernail up the sole of his right foot. His foot jerked. "Good," she murmured, and did the same on his left foot, with the same result. "His spine seems all right so far. The team said it looked like he was shot in the back and he was blown across ten feet of bare rock. At least the SEALs got to him before a missile landed right on him."
The medical team had to contend with competing priorities after administering the second dose of antidote: the bleeding bullet wound in Bond's back amid burns and broken ribs from the missile blast. The bullet was too close to his spine to be removed in the limited resources of the ship. The doctor stopped the bleeding and stabilized him for transport with adequate medication for the pain of his wounds. They had come prepared to deal with the nanobots, including dialysis to finish the nanobot reversal procedure. Until dialysis was completed, the British agent had to be treated as a biohazard; his clothes were burned, including, oddly, a blood-soaked, knitted toy rabbit found stuffed into his clothing. When he was deemed clear of the nanobot infestation, Bond was transferred by helicopter to the British ship which would sail to Naval Air Facility Misawa in northern Japan. There Bond would be moved to a jet to be flown to London. The Americans already had transported Madeleine and Mathilde to the British ship.
Once on the British ship, Bond was the object of intense curiosity. Sailors peered into the medical unit to see the man rescued by the Americans. Rumors flew through the ship's company. It was said Commander Bond had saved the world. The sailors also were fascinated by the beautiful French woman and her little daughter who hovered near the door to the medical unit but were kept from Bond's bedside.
The shipboard doctor, a Commander Harrison, spoke to Madeleine. "The Americans said he had a soft toy when he was rescued. It was destroyed with his clothing."
"It was Mathilde's Dou Dou, her toy rabbit," she murmured. "He must have found it after she lost it." Madeleine heard a childish giggle from the hatch near the entrance to sick bay. The sailor who had been entertaining Mathilde had to go to his duties and was returning her to her mother. Madeleine got up to intercept her.
"Thank you," she told the sailor. "I think she is overwhelmed by the last few days. I know I am."
"Ma'am, she is delightful. Full of questions. We miss our own children so having her on board is wonderful. How many languages does she speak?"
A multi-lingual polyglot of French, English, and Italian was customary in their household, with French dominating. "Three," she counted. "A talent for languages – she takes after her father."
Mathilde stood off to the side of the door, a sad expression on her face "James hurt?" she asked.
Madeleine swept her into her arms and held her. "He is getting better," she said, hoping it was true. "Soon. We can go home." And there was another dilemma. Madeleine's father's house in the woods in Norway held too many memories and possibly booby traps. Where was home? She loved her flat in London, near a park. James also owned a small flat in London, but the home of his heart was a house in Jamaica near a beach. 'Children change everything,' she thought. She wondered if James was up to the problem. In the crazy events since Safin kidnapped her, no one had time to consider anything so mundane as where they would live or whether a bedroom for Mathilde could be added to James' house in Jamaica, or if the schools nearby were any good. But how much trauma had been inflicted on her daughter? And how much trauma on James?
In London, MI6 had been notified that against all expectations, an American SEAL team had rescued Bond. More unexpected was the Americans' claim that they had developed and administered a reversal procedure to the nanobots. The gravely injured British agent seemed to be unableto believe that he was cured. Moneypenny waited while Mallory took the phone call. M set the phone gently back in its cradle. "I've wondered what it would take to break Bond. We may have an answer – his family's safety."
"Broken, sir?"
"I hope not. He's too ill right now to make sense of anything. After all, Q told him the nanobot infection was incurable, and he has been cured."
"Q is on the plane with Bond. He must know the Americans gave James the antidote." She thought for a moment. "I hope James will take Q's word that the infection has been neutralized."
"By the way, I received word from the palace today - there is a knighthood in store for Bond, if he'll accept it. He turned it down once before."
"Well deserved, sir. Well deserved."
The flight to London in a military jet took a full day from across the world. Bond was sedated and unable to respond to Q's assurances that he was free of the nanobots. Nonetheless, the long trip was hard on him. When the aircraft shuddered in some turbulence, he moaned.
Although blood tests confirmed that Bond's nanobot infection was neutralized, Madeleine remained cautious, fearing to expose herself or her daughter, but desperate to assure herself that James was all right.
The hospital in London kept a discreet unit for the use of MI6. The room was swept regularly for electronic listening devices. Other, less obvious security measures were in place, cleverly designed so they did not interfere with hospital electronics. James Bond was ensconced in the fifth story room with a view of the city where he endured multiple surgeries to repair his shrapnel wounds, remove Safin's bullets, and set his broken leg. He was drugged against the pain from his injuries. The more complex surgery, to rebuild his shoulder, would take place later in the month.
When Madeleine visited Bond after surgery on his broken leg, he was asleep, the monitor attached to him beeping softly. Bond's blue eyes snapped open. She kept a cautious distance from him, standing by the door. "Don't touch me – Madeleine, please, please, it's dangerous. I'm dangerous to you, to Mathilde…" His voice was rough.
"The doctors say you are cleared of the infection. It's over. We're safe."
"Madeleine. no." Bond's face showed his confusion. He turned away from her. "How can I be sure I'm not a danger to you? How can I be sure? They should have left me on that island." He lost his battle with exhaustion and lingering effects of the anesthetic and fell asleep again.
Q was cleared to visit Bond. He had a job to do, to convince Bond that the nanobot infection had been neutralized. He arranged to have Madeleine meet him at the hospital.
"He's upset," Madeleine warned Q.
"I'm used to it," Q muttered. "He's not exactly a ray of sunshine on his best day. "Ready?"
"Ready," Madeline breathed, anxious to see him again.
They walked into Bond's room. Terrified of the threat he posed to her, he shrank back against the raised head of the bed and pushed the call button on his remote frantically. "James, it is all right. You can touch me."
"You know I can't," he said, bitterly. "You know I can't." He remembered the horror of watching SPECTRE's leaders dying in the Heracles attack, yes, even Blofeld's grisly death. It had haunted him more than any other part of a life too filled with violence.
Q cleared his throat. "007, I told you that the nanobots couldn't be removed, but I didn't know that the Americans had solved it. It's all right. You've been cured. You aren't a danger to your family. For God's sake., listen to me."
"Maybe for now. How do you know they won't come back? How can you be sure?"
It was time for Dr. Swann to assert her expertise. "James, I've seen the research. The Americans shared the documentation with MI6. It's reliable. I trust it. This is my life and Mathilde's, and we're safe with you. I would never risk her."
Finally, Bond believed. He bowed his head. Madeleine kissed him, then climbed onto the bed and lay next to him, arm around his bandaged back very gently.
"I know," she whispered to him. "It's like being cured of cancer. You never feel really safe again. I understand. We can test often to be sure. But the nanobots are tiny machines. They are not living. They can't reproduce. They can't come back."
Bond looked up to Q. "You will have to test me often, once a week for a while, as often as possible. Will you see that it's done?"
Going out on a limb but thinking MI6 would guarantee it for James Bond, Q said, "I'll see to it."
Mallory visited Bond the next day. Bond pressed the button to raise the head of the bed. He had just returned to bed after rigorous physical rehabilitation. He winced and glared at M with suspicion. "Visiting the sick or are you going to find another way to get me killed?" he asked.
Refusing to rise to Bond's jibe, Mallory pulled up a chair near the bed and sat down. "How are you feeling?"
"Honestly, I'm amazed I'm alive and grateful my family is safe here in London."
"First, I came to back up Q's promise to you. We will set up regular testing and if necessary, treatment to be sure your nanobot infection stays neutralized. And second, the palace rang me up. You're going to be offered a knighthood again."
"Very kind of them, but it makes me too conspicuous. And as I've said before, I'm a Scottish peasant and I can't see myself as 'Sir James.' Please allow me to decline, humbly, etc. Can Moneypenny draft an appropriate response when it's offered?"
"That's what I expected you'd say. Yes, she can, and has done for other agents. But besides visiting you and wishing you well, I have news and a job offer, one safely in the office."
"Thank you, but more pushing paper? I had my fill of that while I was on active service. Besides, once I can get around on my own, my family and I are fleeing London for the warm and friendly shores of Jamaica. If I can get tested for nanobots in Jamaica, that is. Let's see if I can make retirement stick, this time."
"Of course, you have pushed paper, as you put it, plenty of times as part of your job. You know as well as I that a skilled, insightful analyst is at least as vital as a field agent. You can work in Jamaica, too, online, part-time, if you like. James, hear me out. I have submitted my letter of resignation to the Foreign Secretary. The Heracles Project should never have been funded. It's my error. When you tried to retire five years ago, you were my most capable field agent. You have more expertise than most of the staff in MI6. My replacement should have access to that."
"You're not offering me the job, are you/?"
"Dear God, no. You'd blow the place up. I'm hoping you would help out occasionally as a consultant."
Bond looked out the window at the view without really seeing it. "You're still the best man to lead MI6, Mallory, but Heracles was a catastrophic mistake. Anyway, I don't want to live in spook world anymore. I have a child to raise."
"Thank you for the kind words, I think. But what we do keeps people like Madeleine and Mathilde safe."
"What Madeleine does keeps us all safe. Give her credit. She worked for MI6 while I was fishing in Jamaica."
"True. But think about it. You wouldn't have to be involved in anything that would be likely to spill over."
Bond barked a short laugh. "I've just run a marathon. The finish line is in sight, and you're asking me if I want to run another one. On a broken leg."
Mallory was unfazed. "Not really. Maybe I'm asking you to be a referee."
Bond sighed, loudly. "Please, you can ask me once I've gotten out of here. I can't even think about it now."
Madeleine noticed how a harried nurse looked away from her as she left the elevator in the hospital that afternoon. "Don't tell me I can't walk on it," he was nearly snarling at the nurse in his room. "I did already."
"Aren't you a treat," she said. "Walking on that simple break is why the surgery to set it was complicated, besides removing the bullet, of course. Relax, mon cher, and let your leg heal." The nurse retreated from the room diplomatically.
Bond was sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, knuckles white as he gripped the bed rail right-handed to stay upright. The hospital gown gapped around his neck. A sling supported his left arm. His legs dangled over the side of the high bed, the left in a fiberglass cast. He looked like an angry toddler in the midst of a tantrum, mouth clenched, eyes squinting. Madeleine had seen that anger over five years before, when he severed their relationship and put her on a train, but he rarely was irrational. She suspected that this time it arose from his pain and discomfort and the endless boredom from being stuck in hospital. It would be hard to reason with him, but she tried anyway. "Complaining won't work. You won't get a walking cast for four more weeks. Your shoulder can't bear a crutch. There's a ten-centimeter incision on your back where they dug out the bullet. You have broken ribs. Until the wounds heal, you can barely sit up."
"I can recuperate at home."
"You can't climb the stairs to your flat." He looked stricken and she relented. "There's a lift in my building, when the doctors say you're ready." She sat next to him on the bed and slid an arm gently around his bandaged back. "For so long, you have tried to take care of everyone around you. Let us care for you for a while."
He deflated and looked away, not meeting her eyes. "You'll let me come home with you?" He looked around. "No Mathilde today?"
Madeleine bent over to kiss his forehead, but he turned his head so she kissed his mouth. "She is at her pre-school. That's how crazy these last few weeks have been. We never had time to discuss her schooling. I wanted to talk to you."
"Talk to me about what?" suspicious again.
"Anger. Rage. Post-traumatic stress."
"What?"
Madeleine, the therapist, had come prepared and would not be roused. "Darling James, your approach to many things is what you did just now. And that won't work, if… no, when, we live together again."
"Are you saying we can't… we can't?" That break in his iron self-confidence was new. Safin's threat to her and Mathilde had done that to him.
"No. I'm saying we must work on finding a way to rid you of that great, angry monster riding your back. And calm the horrors that you survived and are pretending don't bother you."
"I told you, long ago on the train in Morocco, that what I'd done didn't bother me."
"Did you believe yourself when you said that?"
"Of course. Of course."
"I didn't. And what you've seen, what you've done, what you've lost, you can't stop seeing it in your mind, any more than I can stop knowing what I know about my father, or seeing my mother killed by Safin, or being trapped on Safin's island of horrors. We are not the Road Runner in a cartoon, darling James. We can't run off a thousand-foot cliff and bounce up and run some more."
He thought for a long minute, gazing at the view from the window but not really seeing it. "Madeleine, I think anger is how I've survived all these years, doing a job no one should do. Anger and love of country, love of country – please don't ignore that – I never did. You know, in those last few minutes on the island, watching the missiles, knowing I was going to die and not infect you or Mathilde, I wasn't angry that I was out of time. I was happy that you had all the time in the world. When you said that Matilde is my daughter, I felt peace."
"I know. I heard it in your voice."
"Well, it's inconvenient that I survived…" testy again. "So, Doctor Swann, what is the remedy?"
"After coming so close to dying, after being so close to evil people, anyone, everyone, would be disturbed. What did my father call you – 'a kite dancing in a hurricane'? James, give yourself room to heal. I am so glad that I will not have to live with only the memory of you. I am so glad Mathilde will know her father." She sweetened that with a quick kiss on his lips.
"Then, how do I excise that angry part of me?" Madeleine saw the tears well up in those beautiful blue eyes, so like the eyes of their daughter. Her breath caught. This was a man who never wept. "I'll do it, for you and Mathilde, but I don't know how. I don't know how." He looked away toward the window. "What if it's all of me?"
"You love Mathilde. You love me. You love your country. There is so much love in you." Madeleine took his hand. "I can't and won't be your therapist, but we'll find one you can trust. We will find a way." -
But that fine mind had been working on other things. "You know," he began, then cleared his throat. "I never expected to have a child. I was an orphan with a homicidal brother. Agents in the double-0 section, we expect to die in the field. The way Leiter died. How do I learn how to be a father all at once? Do I take a class? Are there instruction manuals?"
Madeleine wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him again. "Did I tell you how wonderful you are? Yes, I'll bring you a book or two that I have given to new adoptive parents. Mind you, you've had a concussion – you won't be able to read too much right now. I can read to you when your eyes get tired. But you are being very wise. Love is a big part of it, but there are times when no matter how much you love her, Mathilde will drive you crazy."
"She will, huh? Well, her mother has made me crazy in all the good ways…."
She kissed him again. "More unfinished business for us. We will have to learn how to live with each other, too, better than our last time. Grown-up time…"
The memory of that awful parting, when he put Madeleine on the train, shook him. "You're right." He shoved himself back to the head of the bed, away from her. "You're right, of course. Of course. How can you stand to look at me?"
"Because I love you and I don't want to live without you anymore. You saved me and our daughter from Safin. I never stopped loving you. Let's make a new beginning, together."
Physical therapy came first. Bond tried to return to the rigorous exercise routine he had always followed. He was moving too fast for his injuries, especially the damaged shoulder and the surgical scars from the serious bullet wound on his back, but the effort allowed him to leave the hospital and live with Madeline and Mathilde in their London flat. That's when the nightmares started. Madeleine was startled awake as his mutterings turned into a yell.
She clicked on the bedside lamp. "Bad dream?" she asked.
"I don't remember. Did I wake you?"
Mathilde, clutching her replaced Dou Dou, this time a little violet knit dog with floppy ears, walked into their bedroom. "Papa," she said, with a very subdued voice. He was elated every time she called him that.
He turned on his side. "Did I scare you? I'm sorry."
"Can I sleep here? My little Dou Dou wants to sleep here."
"Well, I can't argue with Dou Dou." He patted the bed next to him and helped her climb up. "Let's go back to sleep." She snuggled into the duvet and fell asleep.
"Now you've done it," Madeleine muttered into his ear. "Mathilde will expect to sleep here every time she has a bad dream, or says she had one!" She kissed him, rolled over, and fell asleep again too. Bond lay awake, listening to the soft sleep sounds of his two ladies.
But as the weeks passed, the nightmares did not stop. Books piled up around the flat as he tried to read but could not concentrate for more than a few pages at a time. He did not give way to tightly leashed rage, but Madeleine could see it in his face. She recognized the devastating case of post-traumatic stress as it kept him up at night and haunted his days. She had been seeing a therapist, herself, knowing the events of the last months had rattled her deeply. She watched Mathilde carefully for signs of disturbance. So far, the little girl seemed to have come through without damage, but would that dark, cavernous island haunt her as she grew? Madeleine began to look for a therapist skilled in childhood trauma. "MI6 has therapists cleared to treat their people. They are used to spies who have seen or done things no one should have to see or do. Shall I make an appointment for you?" she asked, after Bond had had another sleepless night.
"I'm sleeping next to a beautiful therapist," he deflected.
"You haven't been sleeping, and you know I can't treat you." She saw him take a deep breath and cut him off. "Don't shout. It won't help."
His jaw snapped shut. She watched him struggle with his temper, face and ears flushing red. And she watched as he mastered himself. "You will be all right," she told him. "There is nothing wrong about needing help. My therapist is a miracle worker."
He rested his forehead on her shoulder. "I could use a miracle, a miracle. Is she still available/'
"She shouldn't treat both of us but I'll ask her."
"Of course," he muttered. "Madeleine, if you're sure you can make your practice work from Jamaica, as soon as I've had my shoulder fixed, I want to go home. It's sunny and warm there. You can help me find a therapist there, or maybe one online. We can teach Mathilde to swim and to sail. We can buy books for her and toys and crayons and anything else she needs. We can find her children to play with – she shouldn't grow up mostly alone like…like me, like you too."
Bond looked toward the far corner of the bedroom without seeing it. "When Felix Leiter was dying, he said to me, "'Make it worth it.' His family has to go on without him, but I got lucky, luckier than I could have hoped or deserved. I have you and our daughter. I want a lifetime with you. I want to hear Mathilde laugh. I want to make it worth it. I want to make it worth it."
"So do I. Yes, we will find her a school with friendly children, on your island home in the warm sun. I can't go back to my father's house in Norway, to the cold and the snow and too many secrets. London is noisy and gloomy. I want to see your lovely house in Jamaica and the beach and the sparkling sea and the green forest. I want to live in bright sunlight near bright water and listen to the waves break. I want Mathilde to wear brightly colored soft play clothes. We can bargain with farmers in the market for wonderful fruits and vegetables in a place with flowers and music everywhere. My practice can be online there or anywhere. We've been sad for too long, James. I think it's time to love and to laugh."
"There's one other thing… Can I have my jumper back? I'm used to it."
Madeleine couldn't help the gentle laugh. "No. You gave it to Mathilde and she won't let go of it. You have seen how I have trouble keeping her from wearing it to school."
"It's enormous on her. Besides, little girls don't usually run around in pieces of Royal Navy uniforms."
"She says her papa gave it to her to keep her warm."
Bond couldn't help his slightly sappy smile as he reached for her and held her close. Then he recalled the other question he wanted to ask her. "When we get to Jamaica, on our beach, I have to light a good Cuban cigar in Leiter's memory. Be with me, then."
"Of course, darling James. He was your brother. I wish I had known him."
The next day, Madeleine asked, "Tell me about Blofeld."
"Blofeld? Why? You treated him."
"He was so strange, so deliberately evil. He was quite mad when he died. But you knew him as a child."
"He was older than me, but yes. His family took me in after my parents died. They lived in Austria. His father and my father were friends. I called his father 'Uncle Franz.' He taught me to ski, to shoot, to sail. It seemed like magic, at first, while I was still grieving."
She understood quickly. "Ah, Blofeld was jealous."
"More than jealous. He was frenzied. You know, of course, that his real name was Franz Oberhauser, after his father? But there was more to it than jealousy. I think his parents had gotten afraid of him. There may have been something wrong about him from the beginning. I think they hoped having a younger brother would straighten him out."
"It didn't work."
Bond snorted. "He tried to kill me. I ended up in hospital. His parents hoped it was an accident the first time. After the second, I was sent to live with an elderly distant cousin, in the Moors, when I wasn't at boarding school. Eventually, Blofeld killed his parents. That 'skiing accident'? He staged it."
Madeleine touched his arm. "How awful. You were just a child. You were lucky you survived."
"Yes. I was lucky he hadn't gotten good at murder yet. And it turned out well for me, despite Blofeld. My cousin's name was Marguerite Chapman. She loved jazz and books. She told bad jokes and had a jolly, elderly hunting dog and her housekeeper baked outrageous puddings. She wore tweed trousers and big hats and she kept a car she'd had since 1957, and somehow her mechanic kept it running. I learned to drive in it. We took long walks on the moor and visited fascinating old graveyards until she got too frail. Then we watched birds and clouds and grew wildflowers in her garden.
"But during the war she had worked for SIS. And I think she saw potential in me for that kind of life. She would teach me how to observe and recall what I had seen perfectly. MI6 recruited me while I was still in the Royal Navy after university and I think she had suggested me to them. But I lived with Marguerite on holidays from public school. She would have adored you and Mathilde."
"I wish I had known her."
The therapist MI6 sent to Bond was the same Doctor Hall who had tried to administer a psychological test to Bond. Bond entered the small office at MI6 headquarters, recognized him, and was instantly on his guard. "You've got to be joking," he muttered. He stood by the door, leaning on his cane to ease the pressure on his aching leg in the walking cast.
The doctor, nearly a stereotype of a psychiatrist in beard and glasses, rose to his feet. "Commander Bond," Hall greeted him. "I understand you're having a normal reaction to extreme stress."
"If it's normal, why am I here?" Bond may have admitted he needed help, but he still was not reconciled to it.
"Normal doesn't mean it's comfortable. I'd like to give you a few techniques to help you deal with it. No head shrinking, or whatever you expected. I just have some suggestions for you. Commander Bond, these are tools. Use them as you would any tool, to make your life function better. And like any tool, using them improves with practice."
Still skeptical, Bond settled himself in the chair at Doctor Hall's desk. "Well then," he said, "What have you got?"
Commander James Bond, formerly of the British Royal Naval Reserve and the Secret Service, tied the small red sail boat to the dock. He furled the sail, tied it off, and hopped out. The boat's name, the Marguerite, was painted in white script on the bow.
A light breeze moved the dense trees at the back of the beach. The beach beneath the dock was a sandy crescent nearly yellow against the blue water, sparkling in the Jamaican sunlight. Under his orange life jacket James wore a tan tee-shirt casually untucked outside his light blue bathing trunks. He was hatless and his wheat-colored hair was sun-bleached to gold on top, but graying at the temples. There was a hitch, not quite a limp, to his stride as he walked to the stern of the craft.
With practiced ease, Bond lifted the little girl to the dock. She was enveloped in a yellow life jacket over her lavender swim suit, her hair blowing around her face, blue eyes alight. Her mother rose from the beach, lap-top in its case, strap slung over her shoulder. "Mathilde, did you have fun?" Madeleine asked.
Mathilde broke out in excited babble in French. "Maman, I caught a fish!" she said. Bond reached into the boat and pulled up a sea bass on a line.
"Dinner," he said. He'd wait to clean it out of Mathilde's sight.
"James, the duty-free shop called. Those children's books we ordered came today. We'll get them when we drive into town tomorrow for Mathilde's play date."
"Who is she playing with again?"
"Emilie, the grocer's daughter."
"Oh, that's right. She's a nice little girl. Good manners. Remind me, when is Leiter's family due at the airport?
"Next week."
"I'm glad they can visit us. I think I told you, the first time I met Felix, he said to me, 'I'm your brother from Langley.' That's what I told his wife. We are making our own family, aren't we?"
"We grew up with too little family. Nomi is coming in September, a sister from MI6. Of course, she has family here, too."
Bond grimaced, then grinned. "At least Q hates to leave his cats. We have become the Caribbean home away from home for MI6. Why do Englishmen dream of warm, sunny places?"
Madeleine walked up to him and kissed him on the cheek. "Because the places are warm and sunny. After all, you dreamt it. And Mathilde has friends here and aunts and uncles in England and America. She is a lucky girl."
"Please tell me that Mallory doesn't want to visit, now that his letter of resignation was accepted."
"He texted me. Actually, he's getting a promotion to a position in the Ministry. He said that Moneypenny will be appointed the next director of MI6, once the paperwork is settled."
"Well, that is good news. She is ready. It's harder for a woman, of course. The MP's will try to ignore her or talk over her in hearings. But she can handle them. You'll forgive me if I don't want little big ears here to meet those furless cats of Q's. So far, we've been able to talk her out of having a pet. If we're going to have a cat, well, I'd prefer one with fur."
Madeleine laughed. "Don't tell Q - so do I. Come on, Monsieur Grumpy. It's time for Mathilde's nap." Taking Mathilde's hand., she waited for Bond. Holding the fish on the line, he reached for Mathilde with his free hand. Swinging her between them, accompanied by her delighted giggles, they walked up the beach to their house.