[A/N - I wrote this story for a friend of mine, so it is rather specific in many ways, rather than "for general public consumption." I don't mind other people reading it. Just keep in mind the intended audience.]
James Bond stopped just outside of the entrance of MI6. He'd been given a couple of weeks off, "to rest" M had said, and his mandatory holiday was finally over. He'd never been the type to actually rest, though. He'd spent the first week on a beach in southern France with some woman who's name he'd made no real effort to learn and had already forgotten. Alcohol, sex, sea air. All very idyllic. He tried to conjure an image of the woman's face in his imagination. She'd had suntanned skin, shoulder-length hair expertly dyed chestnut-brown, with a slight curl. Her round, open brown eyes had been just slightly too far apart, by his reckoning. This fact combined with her thin frame and the many freckles scattered across her cheeks had given her an almost comically childish appearance despite being (in his expert estimation) somewhere just past the age of thirty. He smirked at the thought of the sounds she'd made in bed. All very pleasant, naturally. The week had ended and they'd parted ways amicably. She'd gone back to her husband, whoever he was, and he'd gone back to his flat in Chelsea for the first time since his disastrous mission to North Korea.
He hadn't planned on staying any longer than necessary. One night spent in a bed he'd not slept in for over a year, and then a few hours the next morning to re-arrange his suitcase a bit and pack fresh clothing, but things hadn't gone as he'd planned.
Sweat beaded on the back of his neck despite the cool morning air as he stood outside a door he'd passed through countless times over many years, and he tried but failed not to shiver slightly. A sensation of pinpricks crackled on his skin, beginning at the base of his skull and running down his spine, spreading over his back and shoulders in a wave, followed by the visceral memory of needle-like pain and burning that raced through his veins. It had started the last evening in France, almost a week ago now. The woman had woken him, shaking him by the shoulder, her round eyes narrowed in the dim streetlight filtering in through a window of the hotel. He'd managed to stop himself from throttling her, but just barely. "A nightmare?" she'd asked, in her thick Parisian accent. He'd shrugged at her and rolled over. She'd fallen asleep again quickly; he had not.
It was hardly the first nightmare he'd ever had. One doesn't do the sort of work he does and not occasionally have a nocturnal recap of the various acts of violence one has witnessed, suffered, or perpetrated. It was part of the job description, more or less. Usually a shot of something from the liquor cabinet and a reminder that he ultimately served a greater purpose than himself was enough to let him return to sleep soundly. So he'd shrugged it off and gone home after France, giving it no further thought.
He had been obliged to pick the lock, having lost the key some time ago and made a mental note to call a locksmith later. Someone had paid up the lease over the past year-and-change and, although M claimed not to know who had done it, clearly no one had actually set foot in the place. The fridge had been cleared of anything perishable as usual before he left for a long mission, but he'd doubted anything still in the freezer would be worth salvaging. He wasn't above ordering takeaway for a few days, or wandering out into London to seek company over dinner. He wouldn't starve, at any rate.
Just answer the question, and maybe we'll even feed you today.
Upon entering, he'd glanced over the thick dust laying atop every flat surface, and despite a rising uneasy feeling with no discernible cause, he had made it all the way to the hallway heading toward the bedroom before feeling a vice-like grip in the center of his chest as he suddenly struggled to breathe. For several minutes he'd feared his heart was finally giving out, nearly laughing at the irony of it happening weeks after the torture had ceased, but as he continually failed to actually die, he eventually he recognized the involuntary reaction for what it was – a bloody panic attack. He'd slumped to the floor, taking measured, controlled breaths until he had his heart rate back under control and the pain in his chest eased. It had taken longer than he'd ever care to admit.
Even under torture?
The sky is blue, gravity's pull is directed inexorably toward the center of the Earth, and James Bond does not have panic attacks. Of course, James Bond doesn't get captured, especially in North Korea. James Bond is clever, he always has a plan, he always escapes. James Bond doesn't get tortured for fourteen months by a devil from the pit of hell wrapped in a petite Korean woman's body and her sneering rotation of demon lackeys while the world spins on without him, as wholly and completely forgotten as an amiable French adulteress's name.
Terrorists had destroyed the World Trade Center in New York while he'd been so thoroughly occupied, and new wars had bloomed in his absence. Old alliances had been cemented, new ones had been created. Lines on the map redrawn. M had told him the world had changed, and he'd scoffed at the time – nothing could change that much. Humanity certainly couldn't change that much, he was still certain of that. He'd been too busy to care, anyway, determined despite M's declared lack of faith in him (although if he were really so useless, why did she let him escape from that ship? It had been too easy, far too easy). He would ferret out the turncoat who had betrayed him, who had betrayed MI6, who had betrayed his - her - own country, come hell or high treason. And he did.
Revenge had kept him busy for a few weeks, at least, but his To-Do list had eventually run dry. Jinx had thanked him for the fun, bid him adieu, and returned to her own life in America. M had told him in so many words to go home and rest. And look at what that had gotten him – a fucking nervous breakdown, apparently. He could have called a maid service to tidy up his flat, but instead had chosen to spend the rest of the week attacking every mundane household chore himself that he could think of during daylight hours, waging war on a year's worth of dust and domestic decay with the same fervor as any enemy, and his evenings and nights were spent with his liquor cabinet, more or less all thoughts of further travel abandoned. The thought of anyone being a witness to whatever the hell was happening to him was a bit galling, naturally. He could only hope it would pass quickly, that it was just a delayed reaction to stress and drugs and venom and evil that would fade with the passage of time.
He'd certainly been through all manner of shit before, after all. He'd been betrayed before. All these years, and I still don't know quite what the hell happened to Alec. Pain, physical and otherwise, was nothing novel. Well, the scorpions were a new one... At least the bottles of scotch and vodka didn't judge too harshly when he awoke in the middle of the night thrashing against something that wasn't there.
Bond took a deep breath, letting it escape slowly before finally entering. Glancing around, MI6 hadn't changed much, apparently. The halls were the same dull colors, the security the same collection of dull off-the-peg suits and military haircuts. He nodded at a few familiar faces and surreptitiously took note of a few unfamiliar ones. Detouring to Q Branch, he stopped for a moment to watch R - no, Q now, he reminded himself.
Major Boothroyd had finally made good on his threats and retired a few years ago and had been spending his time fishing in various locales, when Bond had left for Korea. His old friend had died peacefully in his sleep, surrounded by family, M had recently told him, passing away a few months after Bond was captured. He had missed the funeral, of course. Couldn't be helped, after all. Bond had been too busy having his head shoved into a bucket of ice-cold water at the time, or maybe he was being electrocuted, or maybe that was one of those nights the woman was standing over him while her brainless goons burned him with hot irons for the sheer hell of it, not even bothering to question him. Maybe it had been one of the scorpion days, in which case he really couldn't be blamed at all. Major Boothroyd's replacement was competent enough, Bond supposed, but he'd never really had the time to get to know him all that well.
"I know you're there, 007. It is still 007?"
Q – the current one - turned around and pierced him with a glare. Bond held up his hands in surrender, conjuring his usual charming, lopsided smile. "I haven't been told otherwise. Not yet, anyhow. The day is young, of course."
"The eternal optimist, as usual. I suppose you're on your way to see M, then? You ought to hurry up, you know she doesn't like to be kept waiting and I'm told she's been in a mood this morning."
"I'm running a bit early, actually, thought I'd stop by and see what I've missed." He picked up what looked like an ordinary umbrella, turning it over. Just before he was able to open it, Q snatched it out of his hands.
"Do stop touching things, 007. You're worse than a child. Apparently even the bloody North Koreans couldn't beat that out of you..."
The sharp scent of fresh blood hit him suddenly, then vanished just as quickly. He bit the inside of his lip to avoid reacting, but something must have slipped past to show up in his expression, as Q's eyes narrowed at him. The Quartermaster set the offending umbrella down on the table behind him without turning, keeping his eyes trained on Bond's face. A tense silence filled the space between them and Bond stepped back before he even realized he'd done so, as a feeling of shame flooded him, nearly making him step back again in its unexpected intensity. Where the bloody hell did that come from? He bit at the inside of his lip again, trying not to lose his grip completely.
Movement off to the side caught his attention and distracted him, breaking the trance of whatever was going on between himself and Q. A female figure retreated down a nearby hallway, turning slightly to glance over her shoulder as she went. There was something terribly familiar about her...
"Bond, if you need something, just file the bloody request and I'll get it put together. Otherwise, I really do have work to be doing."
Bond blinked at the figure disappearing around a corner at the end of the hallway, and then turned back to Q. He simply nodded and turned to leave. He paused again when a hand on his elbow stopped him.
"I don't suppose they've had medical look at you again since you returned? I know they went over you after Korea, but... Well, you seem a bit off, today, if you don't mind my being a bit, ah..."
"I'm fine, Q. But you were right, I'd better go before I'm late."
Q's eyes narrowed again at James Bond's departure. He hadn't known the man all that long, not as long as his predecessor by a long shot. Q was, as his grandchildren so often reminded him, "a tech geek," but he liked to think he was decent at reading people, even someone as generally indecipherable as 007.
There had been a look in the man's eyes, for just a moment, that he'd never seen on him before. 007 was constantly swanning in and out of Q Branch like he owned the damn place, largely acting like a spoiled adolescent who couldn't keep his hands to himself or follow a single simple rule for his own benefit. And, superficially, this visit had been no different. The same smirk, the same sticky fingers. Q rubbed at his chin for a moment. Maybe he shouldn't have mentioned North Korea? Bond being upset by... anything, really... was a very odd concept. Well, next time he'd leave Korea alone, perhaps. 007 was M's problem, anyway.
Q went back to his desk, logging into his computer to look over the latest batch of e-mails from his underlings, mostly a collection of petty complaints. He glanced upward in the general direction of M's office several floors above, and tried to ignore a momentary frisson of worry over something that was, frankly, none of his business.
Moneypenny had her head in one of the filing drawers when Bond let himself into the office. He leaned against the door frame, content to watch her working for a moment. She looked the same as she had the last time he'd seen her, a lifetime ago. Even her haircut hadn't changed much. He wondered if the last boyfriend was still around, Tom or Tim or whatever his name was. She seemed to swap them out about every four or six months, whenever they finally got on her last nerve.
Moneypenny knew, of course, that someone had entered, but she wasn't the sort to be easily distracted when she was on a mission of her own. The stacks of folders and papers dropped haphazardly on the desk spoke to a morning spent searching for something that wasn't where she'd left it. For once, he couldn't be blamed, given that he hadn't set foot in this office in ages. She finally stood with a huff, her efforts fruitless, and turned around with a scowl that quickly transformed into something else entirely as she laid eyes on him.
"James! I knew you'd returned, but, ah..." The woman blinked away the odd expression, smiling at him instead. "It's good to have you back, James."
Crossing the room to lean over the desk, he pressed himself into her space, almost but not quite touching. "Well, I simply couldn't stand the thought of another day without the sight of you, my dear..."
He nearly froze in shock when she broke the unspoken rule, and breached the remaining distance between them to wrap her arms around him, pressing her face into his neck. His senses caught up to him a few seconds later and he held her somewhat awkwardly, the barrier of the desk between them. If her embrace soon grew a bit damp against his shoulder, he'd never tell anyone. Giving into a temptation he'd probably regret later, he pressed a swift kiss against her temple before he moved away, withdrawing to let her pull herself together. She turned aside, her blush reaching the tips of her ears as she fussed with the mess on her desk and smoothed down her blouse.
"M told me to send you in whenever you arrived, James, so off you go."
Bond smiled at Moneypenny, although she'd already turned back to her filing drawers and wouldn't see it. At least one woman missed me.
Glancing at his watch, he was still running about ten minutes early, despite his detour to Q-branch. Why had he come so damned early? He never arrived early. He'd woken abruptly from another night of shitty, fragmented sleep, a few hours achieved with the aid of his old girlfriend Vodka, which had not stopped the nightmares of scorpions and fire and ice and hard eyes in a woman's face, but had at least blunted his ability to remember them upon waking. He'd scrubbed himself in the shower until his skin felt raw, not wanting risk retaining any scent of the sweat that clung to him at night. He'd shaved and dressed in record time, practically fleeing his flat as though it were on fire. And now, he was here, a solid ten minutes early for the first time in his career.
M's office was M's office. Another thing that hadn't changed in his absence, but given that it had little changed since its last occupant, he wouldn't have expected otherwise. She nodded at his premature arrival, and gestured for him to sit, which he did. She was typing something at the computer, and clearly intended to finish before dealing with him.
Bond's eyes flicked to the cabinet behind M where a bottle of expensive Kentucky bourbon currently lived, and wondered if she'd offer any. He briefly considered raising the notion, casually, then dismissed it out of hand. It was early – too early, really, to contemplate drinking, even if he suddenly had a craving for it. He'd had a craving for liquor quite frequently lately, if he were honest with himself. It had the potential, he knew, to turn into something troublesome, if he let it, but he was finding it difficult to give a damn in the short term, at least. Things would improve with time, he was certain. It was a temporary fix for a temporary problem, but it was certainly in his best interest not to say or do anything to raise M's suspicions. It wasn't any of her damned business.
M continued to work at the computer, and Bond... sat. Minutes passed and M's head snapped up, an eyebrow raised at him, like a teacher giving a nonverbal warning to a student who was on thin ice. Bond blinked in confusion. M glanced down at his lap, and his eyes followed her gaze. Bond finally ceased a movement he hadn't been aware of. He wasn't the sort to fidget, and especially not to sit there jogging a knee in impatience.
"Bored, 007?"
Still so defiant! Is this all simply amusing to you? Are all westerners so idiotically stubborn?
He shrugged, feigning nonchalance. The back of his neck tingled slightly and he fought back a growing desire to squirm against it. He didn't need another "bad turn" in front of his damned boss, but like the predictability of night following day, the prickling grew and passed in successive waves down his spine and across the skin of his neck and back until all he could think of were the needle-like legs of scorpions crawling over him. It took all his willpower to hold still. M's expression shifted from annoyance to... something else. She stared across the desk at him, but Bond didn't have the mental space to devote much attention to her, focused at the moment on keeping his own wretched, traitorous body from betraying him further.
A faint noise of dripping water hitting concrete, the scent of blood and urine, and a younger, rounder, crueler face superimposing itself over M's blossomed around him. Suddenly he was nowhere near MI6 anymore. A detached part of his mind vaguely fed him script he'd read out of an academic textbook years ago back at university about stress reactions, PTSD, and a million other psycho-babble terms that were utterly useless and meaningless as he was caught up in the moment. A voice called his name frantically, somewhere in the distance. He laughed giddily at the absurdity of it all as blackness ate at the edges of the illusion that gripped his useless, cracked mind.
M stood in alarm as her oldest and hitherto most reliable agent slid from the guest chair in her office to the floor. The door opened as Moneypenny burst in, no doubt alarmed at the sudden thump of a full-grown man landing face-first onto her floor. Her secretary's eyes darted around the room to land on Bond. Both women reached him simultaneously and between the two of them, they managed to turn him over on his back despite his repeated attempts to curl in on himself. M loosened Bond's tie as his eyes darted around the room, seemingly seeing nothing. M checked his pulse at his wrist, which was rapid but regular, and took in the sweat now pouring off of him.
M sighed. She wasn't stupid and could hazard a guess at what was happening. Bond's body slowly relaxed as he stared blankly at the ceiling, but he did not speak or yet seem to quite know where he was.
"What's wrong with him?"
M hummed to herself and debated on how much to say. "Call medical and tell them to expect Bond soon. He seemed fine, if understandably angry, all things considered, but... well, perhaps it was too much to expect, even from him."
Moneypenny stared at her, more questions on the tip of her tongue, but reluctantly left, returning to her own desk to pick up the phone and do as she'd been told.
Bond scowled at Dr. Molly Warmflash. Normally he could charm the woman easily, give her a delightful afternoon tumble and get out of her office and on his way, the both of them satisfied with the results of her examinations, but she simply wasn't having it today. She kept shooting him looks that were suspiciously close to pity when she thought he wasn't watching her, and it made him want to smash something. At the moment she was sitting behind a laptop computer, no doubt scrolling through his entire medical history, spending an inordinate amount of time on the most recent entries.
He supposed the medical crew on the ship he'd been locked up in after North Korea had traded him had made a few notes of their own. He could imagine the descriptions in dry, medical terms. Lacerations in various stages of healing, abrasions, burns, contusions, concussions, various nutritional deficiencies, dear old sodium pentathol and God-knew-what-else from the local chemist, and the venom of a particular species of scorpion (listed in binomial nomenclature, naturally). One must be specific in these things. There were likely photographs to catalog his injuries, external as well as the various medical scans, taken when he was under sedation. He wondered if they'd gotten a decent snapshot of his cock, which hadn't been damaged permanently (he'd already put that to the test, of course), but he'd definitely taken a few humiliating blows not terribly long before the prisoner swap. The bruises had already begun to fade by the time they picked him up, so perhaps not. He gripped the flimsy hospital gown, fighting back an urge to rip it completely.
Bond briefly amused himself with the thought of bending the good doctor over the exam table and taking her roughly from behind, maybe leaving a few bites and bruises in places that couldn't simply be covered with a turtleneck. Bile rose in his throat, the entertainment of the fantasy dying rapidly. Warmflash wasn't the one he really wanted to hurt in the moment, even if she was rapidly getting on his nerves. He wondered, sometimes, what became of the woman who had directed his torture. She was still in North Korea, no doubt. He wondered if his prison cell now contained some other hapless fool, a political prisoner perhaps. He couldn't imagine the woman wanting to go long without exercising her skills. They might go rusty, after all. She'd always kept her tools lovingly cleaned and oiled.
"Hmm." Warmflash finally looked up at him from her studies, then came to stand over him. He reached out to take her by the waist, wondering if her opinion had changed in the meantime. Pity was annoying, but he wasn't above using it to his advantage. Warmflash caught hold of his hands in her own, squeezing them momentarily before gently pushing them away. No luck there.
The (regretfully male) nurse had taken his vitals already before the doctor had arrived, but Warmflash checked his pulse again. "Well, that's finally back to normal, at least." She spent a few minutes giving him the standard examination. If he flinched occasionally at her touch, she didn't make comment. Maybe she shouldn't have such cold hands, anyway, it certainly wasn't his fault.
"Anything hurting you, particularly?"
His left knee, constantly. His delightful hosts in North Korea had managed to twist the joint badly at one point and even though they hadn't targeted it specifically again, it certainly hadn't healed quite right. His back. His ribs. His wrists, which now had a tendency to swell occasionally; apparently dangling from them for hours at a time hadn't done them any favors. His back and shoulders, the muscles of which had taken on the habit of cramping up at times. Everything in general when the weather was cold and damp. That ice palace had been an absolute bitch, and he wasn't looking forward to winter in London, if he couldn't manage to get away to some warmer climate.
"I'm fine."
Bond sat outside of M's office while Moneypenny worked, feeling like a misbehaving child in time-out while his mother spoke to the headmaster. He'd re-dressed himself in the clothes he'd arrived in, and the dampness of cold sweat still clinging to the shirt was making him itch. He had kept a spare change of clothes in a locker at MI6, but the locker had apparently been reassigned in his absence, and the clothing removed. He wondered idly if the person removing the tailored suit had any clue what it had cost. No doubt it had ended up in someone else's closet, if not dumped in a charity shop collection bin somewhere. Checking his watch, he noted that M had been speaking to Warmflash for at least thirty minutes. That he should be the subject of such intense discussion did not bode well for his future, but his options consisted of getting up and leaving, or going in and interrupting, and neither seemed wise at the moment. He fought back a rising sense of foreboding, lest he have another "episode" in front of his superior.
He'd chatted with Moneypenny for a few minutes, meaningless words over meaningless subjects, watching her face twist slightly as she bit back the questions she clearly wanted to ask but felt she couldn't. Moneypenny genuinely did have a massive backlog of paperwork and filing to finish though, and eventually guilt won out and he'd fallen silent and left her to it. At least watching her flit about the room from one drawer to another gave him something to focus on other than his own rapidly shrinking future.
"Strictly speaking, the mandatory retirement age for double-o's is forty-five, Bond, and it's set at that age for several very logical reasons, it isn't merely arbitrary."
"I'm fully aware of-"
"You're forty-eight years old and exceptions were made due to your unique skills, but at this point I don't have much choice but to rescind those exceptions."
"This will pass, M. Apparently a fortnight off wasn't sufficient time, but I'm sure in another month I'll have this under control, it's nothing so serious that I can't-"
"You had a flashback on the floor of my office, Bond! What the hell do you call serious, if not that? Post-traumatic stress disorder aside, your physical condition is hardly stellar either. You'll need surgery on that knee within the next few years if you want to keep walking on it, according to Dr. Warmflash, and you have the beginnings of osteoarthritis in basically every joint you possess. And believe me, I know something about arthritis, it's a bloody nuisance. And that's not even mentioning the state of your liver, although you only have yourself to blame for that, you really ought to lay off the booze for a while. You're not a young man anymore, and the double-o program is very much a young man's game."
Bitch. Bitch bitch bitch bitch. He wanted to hit her, or worse. He grit his teeth to avoid spitting all the epithets he wanted to at her, or just plain spitting at her. It would do no good, the stubborn old cow never would budge an inch when she'd dug her heels in. Her predecessor would have at least granted him the dignity of allowing him one last mission to go out and die in the field, as was proper for a double-o. Swallowing back the rage that was threatening to take him over, he managed to at least school his features into something like mere disdain. He hadn't had this much trouble keeping his emotions in check since he was a teenager going through puberty, and the frustration of that fact alone was making it even harder.
"We're back to 'no use to anyone' is it? Thank you for your service, don't let the door hit you? I'm not the one who let a bloody mole into MI6, but I sure as hell had to clean up her mess! Your mess!"
M squeezed her eyes shut, pressing at a spot just between her eyes. If he'd given her a headache, he'd consider it a job well done.
"Bond, this isn't about your performance and it isn't a punishment, even if you insist on treating it as such. Most don't even make it to the age of forty-five. Roughly a third are injured and reassigned long before that, and another third are killed in action. That you've gone three years past that age, if anything, is something of an accomplishment. Hell, I only made it to forty-two myself before a shattered femur and a pierced lung put me in hospital for weeks and left me unable to pass the damned physical again."
Bond blinked stupidly, sheer shock momentarily throwing him out of his rage. He knew very little about M, although he'd managed to dig up a few bits of information over the years. He knew her real name, and her husband's and three children's names, he knew where she lived, and he knew that she'd worked for MI6 as a field agent of some sort in the distant past, although he'd had no idea she'd been a double-o at one point. He stared across the table at the older woman facing him. She wasn't really the type and it was difficult to imagine her doing anything too strenuous. Even for a woman, she could be most generously described as "petite" in height and build. There had been other women in the double-o program, that much he was aware of. There had been one, a 004, for a few years just before his own promotion, but that woman had been much taller than M. She'd been killed somewhere in South America years ago. He even tried to picture himself in M's position – spending his time arguing with bureaucrats and politicians, trying to wrangle a stable of spies & assassins, and he just couldn't quite stretch his imagination that far.
Bond scrubbed a hand over his face and rubbed at his eyes as fatigue crept in. A week's worth of poor sleep wasn't really helping his case; he knew he looked like shit. He flinched badly when a hand landed on his shoulder, and was mortified to discover M had moved around her desk without him noticing. Hell, maybe she had a point – maybe he was just too fucked up now to keep going. He opened his eyes and stared balefully at M. He was, for once, out of quips and comebacks. Her own expression was more or less inscrutable.
"Bond, I know it's hard to believe, but your life isn't actually over. But I'm afraid you'll have to find some other way of living it. You've got more unused leave than just about anyone else in this bloody place, I suggest you use some of it. We can discuss your future with MI6 - or elsewhere – later. Do at least attempt to take care of yourself in the meantime."
James Bond left M's office with a face like a thunderstorm, the door slamming behind him, in full sulk like the permanent fourteen year old boy he'd frankly always been. She doubted he even stopped to flirt with Moneypenny. She clearly hadn't got through to him, but there was nothing to be done about it. It would likely be some time before his position was officially reclassified, but practically speaking, the man was done with 007, and he'd have to learn to live with it. A multitude of misgivings buzzed in the back of her head about letting him leave in his current state, but she also reminded herself sharply that she wasn't the man's mother and even if she had been, he was not a child. That had been a major point of the conversation, in fact, that the blind and uncaring passage of time had done what it does to everyone in the end, and to him in particular in a physically and emotionally unforgiving profession.
He'd managed to live through to the end, at least. Plenty of them didn't, and a flash of faces and names flitted through her mind. Others survived but in such poor shape that death might've been more merciful. She herself had got off lucky, relatively speaking, even if her leg did ache like mad in the winter. He was tattered, certainly, but hardly destroyed beyond all use. If only she could make him realize that fact. He still had skills and knowledge that were useful to MI6, or could be useful elsewhere in a multitude of ways if he didn't want to stay. The thought of a desk or training job no doubt rankled his massive ego, but she thought he might eventually accept reality. She couldn't stop him from leaving if that's what he chose to do. He'd always be part of the "family" to a degree, subject to the scrutiny of MI6 til the day he died, given who and what he was, but if he decided to spend the rest of his days doing nothing at all (which his inherited fortune would easily make feasible), she could hardly stop him. Somehow, she didn't think he'd be able to stay idle forever.
M pulled his personnel file out of her desk, thick with a multitude of additions and notes stuffed into the folder and held together with paperclips and staples and, finally, a large rubber band. The oldest layers of it consisted of paper that had been done up on a typewriter, not a computer, and had begun to yellow with age. Flipping through the geologic layers, she found an old headshot of a much younger man with longer hair falling rakishly over an unlined forehead. A twenty-six year old James Bond, only recently recruited out of the Royal Navy and not yet 007, stared up at her with wry smirk and the sharp eyes of something carnivorous, still full of energy and potential like every other bright young thing that had ever passed through the doors of MI6. She could recognize that he was still physically quite attractive even now, but as a young man, he'd had the kind of looks that turned every single head in a room. Beautiful, even, in a masculine sort of way. Doing a rough calculation in her head, she concluded he'd been with MI6 for over twenty years, and had been 007 for most of it. She'd seen him about the place before she was M, and he'd seen her, but their paths had never directly crossed. By the time she was designated M, he'd been a double-o for several years. She had been familiar with him through this file long before she'd known him as one of her own.
M pulled a notepad toward herself and scratched down the date and a few brief notes by hand from the day's "meeting" and shoved it in the folder. She wrenched open the drawer and found a much slimmer folder had been left underneath Bond's. Miranda Frost's career at MI6 had been short and disastrous. A cuckoo's egg in the nest. Regret was unprofessional, but that didn't mean she wasn't angry about what had happened. Espionage was, at its root, about possessing more facts than your opponents. Knowledge really is power and overlooking details because they seemed "unimportant" or trivial could be absolutely fatal. Like who was on a fencing team together with whom in school. Frost's interference had ultimately cost M her best field agent. She'd expected him to possibly last until fifty and present a compelling argument for extending that mandatory retirement age, barring any major injury. Well, he'd suffered that major injury now, in spades. She'd been told the American NSA agent had dispatched Frost, had stabbed the cuckoo-bird through the heart. Regret was unprofessional, but M now regretted that she hadn't been the one to thrust the knife into Frost herself.
James Bond had stormed out of M's office without even glancing at her, and if she were honest with herself, Jane Moneypenny was a little miffed. It was the first day she'd laid eyes on him in nearly a year and a half, and he'd seemed happy to see her at first, even if she had made something of an ass out of herself suddenly grabbing him like that and crying on him. She could still feel the brief pressure of his lips against her skin if she thought about it. It had been entirely innocent - a friendly, affectionate gesture and nothing more, but she'd take friendly affection over nearly being trampled as he shoved past her with a murderous expression and practically ran through the door.
Well, it was Friday afternoon and nearly time to pack up and leave, anyway. She had plans for the evening. She wasn't seeing anyone at the moment, having given up on her last boyfriend after catching him cheating on her for the second time. That one had lasted a full year and she'd had hopes for something more permanent, but her luck in love never seemed to run too high. That didn't mean she couldn't enjoy herself.
Natalya Simonova had been a bit of a surprise over the last year. The Russian woman (originally, though now a British citizen) had been recruited a few years after that "Goldeneye" incident, at some point deciding that remaining in Russia wasn't in her best interests. She'd been working down in Q branch doing something with computers for a while now, mostly out of sight. Moneypenny had caught a glimpse of her in the corridors occasionally, but hadn't made the connection. It was after James's capture that Moneypenny had been sent down to Q Branch to fetch a full, detailed inventory and schematics of exactly what sort of tech 007 had had on him that the North Koreans might now be in possession of that she'd run into her. She hadn't known who Natalya was, but Natalya had apparently known her by sight and name, at least. Natalya had approached her, asking about James, in fact, assuming perhaps that someone so close to M might be in possession of greater detail. Moneypenny had wanted to hate the woman, who had been intimate with James in the past, but Natalya had been too open and friendly to despise easily. Especially with James gone, possibly forever, it had seemed petty, anyway. It wasn't like the two had ever picked the relationship back up, and eventually Moneypenny realized that James had not, in fact, noticed that Natalya was even there – a fact that the two women had had a good laugh over, given that the man was at least nominally a spy.
So, they'd made a habit of grabbing lunch together occasionally, or spending a Friday night out over drinks when they had nothing better to do. They'd planned to try a new club tonight, in fact. Moneypenny hadn't changed those plans and didn't intend to. If James Bond wanted to sulk somewhere on his own, it's not like she could stop him, anyhow.
Bond returned to his flat, having nowhere else in particular to be at the moment. He considered heading to the airport and buying a one-way ticket to wherever the soonest flight was going regardless of destination, but even that felt like too much effort at the moment. He was tired. He was so bloody tired. He was also annoyed that he was tired. He'd gone without sleep before, after all, sometimes running on only an hour or three a night for weeks at a time.
He pulled off his tie and jacket and slumped onto the sofa. The liquor cabinet nearby had rather less in it now than a week ago. That fact ought to be troubling, but at the moment he could only drag himself back to his feet to go and pour himself another shot of whatever before kicking off his shoes and stretching himself out on the sofa. He gulped down the alcohol, letting the familiar burn of it distract him for a moment.
What the fuck did M expect him to do, exactly? Go sit in the park with the pensioners and feed pigeons? Take up gardening? He wasn't the kind of man who could happily idle away hours in some forgotten corner. Retirement was a sham, he thought, a terrible fate forced upon those unfortunate enough to outlive their purpose in life. Q (his Q, not that newer one) had avoided it almost until he'd had no choice. Golden years, my arse. Forty-eight might be deemed too old for a double-o, but it was certainly too damned young to be put out to pasture like some worn out old nag. He'd rather have the knacker's yard than this. I should have died in the field. It was my right to die in the line of duty. M had made certain, now, that he'd have no such opportunity.
Maybe he should have kept that cyanide pill.
An image of Alec Trevelyan smiling up at him rose in his mind. For England, James? Maybe he'd done his old friend a favor, in the end. He'd let Alec go. Despite all the suffering and death Alec had wrought, James had at least let him die with dignity, die as a man, and not left him to be discarded as a still-living body rotting away somewhere.
Bond leaned his head back on a sofa cushion and closed his eyes against the headache rapidly building behind them. He could hear one of the neighbors above him shuffling about, and a radio or television on, mumbling away next door. It was funny in a way, really. He'd had this flat for over two decades, but barely knew anyone else in the building, other than by sight and habit. He'd kept tabs on names as leases changed hands, naturally, needing to know who was around for security purposes, but in reality he spent very little time in a place that was, nominally at least, his home. The elderly couple upstairs had been there before him and still remained. The woman in the unit to the left had moved in sometime after he'd been captured, replacing a young couple that he'd been vaguely aware was expecting their first child when he'd departed. They'd probably wanted more room after the baby was born. He couldn't say he wasn't pleased they'd moved, as a screaming kid would have done his nerves no favors. He'd yet to lay eyes on the occupant in the flat to the right since his return. It might still be the dull little accountant who had lived there before, it might not be.
He'd meant to ask M, again, who had paid the rent while he was gone. She'd said before she didn't know, and that it wasn't worth MI6's resources to find out who his anonymous benefactor was. She'd also quipped that he ought to be able to manage a small mystery like that himself, and if he didn't even know who his own friends were, that wasn't her problem.
Jane Moneypenny fetched their drinks from the bar, some sort of fruity concoction with a sexual pun for a name, skirting around the dance floor and returning to Natalya at the small corner table they'd managed to snag. The music was the usual bleeping and buzzing electronic sort, all of it blending from one track to the next almost seamlessly as the DJ in the corner plied his trade.
The place was mostly packed with twenty-somethings hopped up on various illicit substances, making Jane feel both older and younger than herself. Jane had just recently turned forty, but the number still felt abstract to her. Her mother, of course, was in absolute despair over her eldest daughter reaching such an age without a husband or children, but she couldn't be bothered to waste her time feeling sorry over it. At any rate, her older brother's and baby sister's kids were always there if she felt the need to mother somebody, and as of last Christmas, she was still holding the title of Favourite Auntie.
She and Natalya had already spent an hour dancing among the flashing lights and smoke and gaggle of hormonal children. It was fun, but her knees, apparently, had no trouble understanding that they were, in fact, forty years old.
That, of course, is what the cocktails were for. The night was still young, after all, and she and Natalya didn't intend on going home before the first hint of dawn began creeping over London.
The sound of shattering glass and a feeling of falling jolted Bond out of yet another murky nightmare. He instinctively reached for a gun that he didn't have on him, then made to roll to his feet, only to instantly regret it. Now fully conscious, Bond carefully pulled himself upright using the sofa and coffee table, his bad left knee creaking ominously. The tumbler he'd used earlier was in multiple shards, some of them now located in his elbow.
He skirted around the far side of the coffee table to avoid any more glass and stumbled into the bathroom. A pair of tweezers and some peroxide took care of the glass, at least. The cuts weren't deep and after a few minutes the bleeding stopped.
Stupid. He glanced at his watch. He must have drifted off on the sofa, because it was now just before 11. He hadn't had lunch, busy as he was being poked at by the good doctor and then tossed out like yesterday's rubbish by M at MI6 all day, and he'd just slept through dinner. He wasn't particularly hungry, regardless, but he was also suddenly wide awake and desperately wanted to be anywhere else but sitting in his flat picking glass out of his skin.
A shower and shave, and then he was digging through his wardrobe for something stylish but casual. He hoped fashions hadn't changed too much in the year he'd lost, but some things never went out of fashion anyhow. A pair of dark denim jeans that had been tight-fitting before were now slightly loose, and a solid black jumper proved to be the same. Maybe I should grab something to eat while I'm out.
Of course, alcohol is also calories.
The pounding music at the dance club grew tiresome after a while, and Natalya grabbed Jane's arm, pulling her back out into the street to hail a cab somewhere else. There was a pub that stayed open til 1 AM that had half-price drinks for ladies on Fridays not too far away that Jane knew of, and it had been long enough for the buzz from the sexy-whatever-thing to wear off. It was barely past midnight, after all – far too early to head home.
It seemed rather unmatched, Jane thought, three against one, but the one whose back was to her was certainly holding his own well enough, although he'd been favoring one leg from the very beginning. All four of them were very definitely very drunk. It was just after last call at this point, and sometimes tempers frayed as inebriated fools spilled out into the night. How the argument began was anyone's guess. Sometimes they didn't even need an argument, it just happened because it happened. Tch. Men.
Jane stood at the edge of the crowd, holding close to Natalya in case the fracas spread and they needed to make a quick exit. Someone would probably be along soon enough to break it up. The singleton side of the fistfight managed to knock one of the three out cold, but the other two, bloodied as they were, suddenly got the upper hand, pinning him to the pavement and making quick work of him with several sharp blows to the face and chest.
The sound of a police siren in the distance ended the match swiftly, the two standing combatants scraping their still-dazed companion off his back and dragging him away half-conscious as the crowd began to disperse. The night's loser groaned and manged to pull himself to a sitting position, but couldn't quite stand.
The sirens began to recede into the distance, their destination clearly elsewhere, but the party was over. Jane began to move away as well, but something about the profile of the man sitting on the pavement in the jaundiced light of a streetlamp stopped her. Moments later, recognition hit her and she rushed toward him to confirm her suspicions. "James?"
Natalya caught her up as the man in question peered up at both of the women with a profusely bleeding nose and one blackened eye already swelling shut.
Natalya's flat proved to be the closest. The cabbie hadn't been pleased about picking them up, given James' messy state, but Jane had given the man an extra tip and got the three of them home more or less in one piece, at least. Jane had wanted to stop by A&E at the closest hospital to have him checked for a concussion, but James had been so vociferous in his (slurred) protest over the idea, she'd finally given in. She'd checked his eyes, and the pupils were staying equal sizes, at least. The slurring could probably be put down to drink. She intended to keep a close eye on him for the next several hours, though.
James was currently on the sofa while Natalya pinched his nose with a flannel, trying to stem the bleeding that had started up again. It wasn't broken, but much of his face was going to be a multitude of interesting colors for a while. Jane filled a bag with ice and wrapped it in a tea towel before returning to her friends to sit down next to James. She glanced at him and rolled her eyes as she handed him the ice. "Aren't you getting a bit old to be starting fights with a pack of twenty year old boys over nothing, James?" He didn't answer, but Natalya gave her a knowing look, cocking and eyebrow and quirking a lip. Tch. Men.
Jane had intended to stay awake, and keep James awake, but all three of them had, at some point, drifted off while sitting on the sofa. Nothing dire seemed to have come of it, at least. James stirring slightly beside her woke her. He'd slumped over against her at some point, his head coming to rest on her shoulder, the lifting of which being what woke her as the mess of his hair brushed against the side of her face.
James blinked owlishly with his one usable eye. The bag of ice had fallen into his lap at some point, but had melted while they slept anyway. Jane didn't shift, but looked over at the man next to her as he stared at some indeterminate point in the distance. A glance at the clock up on the wall showed it was just past 8 in the morning. Six hours or so – not exactly a full night's sleep, but it would do. She herself felt decently well if a bit stiff from sleeping in a sitting position – she'd had enough sense not to drink too much, or on an empty stomach, but she knew James was currently suffering the consequences of his poor judgment on multiple levels. She tried to drum up a bit of sympathy, but it was a struggle.
James tilted his head the other direction, where Natalya was still asleep against his shoulder. He made a small noise in the back of his throat while he stared at her. "Those boys must've hit me harder than I thought, if I'm seeing things."
"Seeing things, James?"
James flinched beside her, turning, as though he just noticed she were there. "Definitely hallucinating. Well, I'm sure M will visit me in the asylum, to gloat if nothing else."
Jane rolled her eyes and shoved James off of her where he was still pressed against her side, and stood up. "You're not hallucinating, James. Natalya and I had to scrape you off the pavement last night, and you're damn lucky it was us who found you and not a policeman. I mean, honestly, James, you're forty-eight, not eighteen! First you storm out of M's office like a teenager who'd just been told he was grounded, then you go out and get shitfaced and beaten half to death!"
The man stared up at her, his mouth opening slightly, then shutting again without saying anything. Good, she thought. You just stay that way. "I'll make breakfast. You want tea or coffee?"
"Coffee. Just coffee."
"Coffee and toast it is. You've lost too much weight, you know. Those clothes are about to fall right off of you."
"Yes, mother."
"Hmph." Jane scowled at him as she left for Natalya's small kitchen, hoping her friend had gone shopping recently. She knew James had a petulant side, but had never been the direct target of it, and it was rapidly bringing out her own petulant side. She was starting to understand some of M's frustration with him.
Natalya woke moments later, standing and stretching herself like a cat in the morning light spilling in through the window. James managed to pull himself to his feet, a bit wobbly still but upright nonetheless. He grabbed her by the waist from behind on a whim and began kissing and nipping at her neck, only to be promptly shoved off, practically bouncing off the sofa cushions as he landed awkwardly.
"Oh, do knock it off, James. You have the worst sense of timing in the world, I swear."
It had been years since he'd heard that particular slavic inflection, but Natalya had scarcely changed at all. He wondered when she'd come to London, as last he'd heard she'd returned to Russia ages ago. Her hair had grown out a bit and was dyed a lighter shade, and even with her makeup smudged from sleep, she still looked stunning. So what if he was a bit of a mess? It hadn't bothered her before. James shrugged and pulled himself back to his feet. He tried for a grin, but the current state of his face didn't quite allow for it. Natalya huffed and began walking away from him, and something disturbingly like rage bubbled up from somewhere in the recesses of his brain, cutting through pain and the mind-dulling fog of a hangover both. He couldn't quite stop himself from making a second bid for her attention, catching up to her and blocking her path with an arm before grabbing her roughly and going in for a bruising kiss that was more like a bite.
The slap left him slightly stunned, his already aching head practically ringing like a bell. Regaining his senses, he stepped back from her, conceding the round to Natalya. "I earned that, I suppose."
"Yes, James, you did. I need to wash up, and frankly you look like shit and don't smell much better at the moment. There's a small bathroom at the end of the hall, there." She stepped back slightly, against the wall, to make room for him to pass. "Go on."
A hand grasping the material of his jumper at his elbow stopped him just before he was out of her reach. "I understand that things are difficult right now, but that's no excuse to take it out on me. I have done nothing to you and I won't put up with abuse. Are we clear?"
James stared at a one-time lover, seeing her clearly through his one good eye, perhaps, for the first time. "Crystal."
The rest of the weekend passed in a fog. After getting him fed and somewhat cleaned up, James was deposited back home in ill-fitting clothing that had no doubt belonged to a current or former boyfriend of Natalya's at some point. She'd clearly moved on in the intervening years. That she'd been working down in Q branch for over five years with him being none the wiser was another revelation that stung almost as badly as the slap she'd given him.
She could have at least said hello to him, he thought. Maybe dropped in for a weekend here or there. He'd thought they'd parted on decent terms when she'd left to return to Russia, but maybe she'd thought otherwise. She'd chosen, instead, to live her life in London and work just a few floors down without him knowing anything about it. She had her reasons, surely, but hadn't deigned to share them, and he hadn't had the energy to press too much over breakfast. Given her earlier reaction to his overstepping her boundaries, that was probably for the best anyhow.
Bond spent the rest of the weekend slowly draining more of the contents of his liquor cabinet, smoking his way through a fair portion of his collection of cigars, flipping through the newspapers, and doing nothing in particular. He really ought to make plans to do something, he thought. He could go back to France and find another bored wife to entertain for a week, or maybe somewhere tropical.
If only he could get the bloody nightmares to stop. Even bored wives had no use for that sort of shit. Friday night had been the first in recent memory he hadn't woken up flailing. Perhaps he just needed enough alcohol to silence them; he'd had quite a lot.
Monday rolled around and Jane Moneypenny returned to M's office as though nothing had happened, but the events of Friday night and Saturday morning still occupied her mind. M arrived an hour after her, as was customary. In her defense, Moneypenny managed to wait an entire hour before knocking on M's door.
"Three of them? Good lord, he really is getting stupider by the day, isn't he?"
"Well, I think there was quite a lot of drink involved."
"Of course there was, isn't there always? Not that Bond necessarily needs an excuse for a bit of mindless violence. But I don't normally get involved in the personal lives of my employees so long as it doesn't affect security or their work, Moneypenny, and for good reason."
Jane fidgeted in her seat, giving a long probing look at her boss, whose patience was not proving to be in great supply this morning, but when was it ever? "I really don't think he's doing well at all, ma'am."
"I know that already, but there isn't a great deal to be done about it, quite frankly. It may not seem like it, but I am not wholly unsympathetic to his situation. But if he wants to get better, he'll have to make an effort himself, and at the moment I doubt even those bastards in North Korea could get him to admit he has a problem."
Jane paused for a moment, a bit taken aback. "Not a great deal to be done about it? Doesn't MI6 have a dozen or so psychologists on staff?"
M rearranged a few folders on her desk, then opened a drawer to put away about half of them, delaying an answer she no doubt thought Jane would dislike. "Yes, we have a psychiatrist and several psychologists. But they are employed to evaluate agents and to keep them functional for field work, and little else. Agents in Bond's situation generally do as they were instructed and take the damned cyanide pill they were given for such emergencies. So, frankly, our psychologists have little experience with putting them back together after it's all over, as it were. I suppose one of them might be capable of addressing this, but I'm not convinced any of them could avoid falling into habit and doing more harm than good. And that's if Bond would even consent to speaking to one of them, which I highly doubt considering his absolute disdain for them and their entire profession."
"So find somewhere to send him outside of the agency."
M scowled at her. "Really, Moneypenny? The man's head is absolutely crammed full of state secrets. That alone would make such a plan a security nightmare. No, it simply isn't possible."
"So truly not a single one of those psychologists could be trusted not to 'fall into habit' at all? M, I don't think he's going to last that long if something doesn't give soon."
Monday morning and already a crisis was being dropped into M's lap. A typical week, then. Although this particular crisis, for once, didn't involve national security at least. Moneypenny had been inherited from her predecessor, but the woman had proved to be dependable and meticulous in her work, and M had never been tempted to transfer or replace her.
The secretary's one weakness had always been James Bond, though, and that much clearly hadn't changed. Theirs was an odd friendship, M thought. Moneypenny's girlish crush on the double-o had never entirely gone by the wayside, but much of it over the years had transformed into a simple affection between them, a game of innuendo and humor that never demanded anything more from either of them. Given Bond's habits with women, it was probably the longest relationship he'd ever had with a woman, and as far as M knew (and M knew a lot), it had never actually involved sex.
M had no reason to doubt the sincerity of the tears threatening at the corners of Moneypenny's eyes at the moment. "So you think he's going to kill himself? Is it at that point already?"
"Is he going to put a bullet through his own head? I... I honestly don't know. I should hope not. More likely he's going to drink himself to death, or get himself killed in some other risky stunt. He hasn't swanned off to some island full of women somewhere, which is what I would have expected. He's just holed himself up in his flat. I don't really know what he's doing, to be honest. I don't think he has a lot of, um, coping skills, exactly. He's always kept moving, if you know what I mean. But now, he's just... stopped."
M really hasn't been giving her secretary enough credit, she thought. The woman's occasional moments of perspicacity really shouldn't surprise her so much. "He isn't a child and there's a distinct limit to what I can force upon him. But I'll keep tabs on the matter. That's the most I can promise."
Moneypenny looked anything but mollified, but nodded and retreated back to her own desk. M returned to her laptop and the latest minor international emergency demanding her attention, trying to put all thoughts of James Bond and his inability to behave like a rational adult out of her mind for the rest of the day.
There were a lot of things M didn't do, and house calls were on the absolute top of that list, as she generally had no desire to know about her employees' personal lives beyond the descriptions in their personnel files. She'd seen far too much of James Bond over the years as it stood, occasionally catching a glimpse of his more questionable behaviors during missions (not to mention his personal anatomy). She was currently second-guessing this particular decision. Moneypenny's concerns were what brought her out here, and perhaps she should have told her secretary to do this herself if Moneypenny were truly convinced Bond was a threat to his own life. Bond liked Moneypenny, and at the moment did not very much like M at all.
Getting a key wasn't a problem; MI6 had access to the homes of all of their field agents, in case it was needed to retrieve necessary or sensitive items when an agent was unavailable or incapacitated. The lock on the door to Bond's flat showed signs of being picked, but M doubted a burglar was the culprit. Well of course he'd lost the key, the North Koreans were hardly going to return his personal property before trading him. It was possible one of their people might eventually attempt to come after Bond at some point, for vengeance or some other reason, but unlikely. The matter with Zao and Graves had been an embarrassment to the regime and was probably swept under the carpet as swiftly as possible.
Still, she made a mental note to press him into calling a locksmith and changing the lock. She wasn't a savage, though, and tried knocking on the door first. She waited for some sort of response, and tried again, and then a third time. Either he wasn't in, wasn't in the mood for company, or wasn't in a physical state to answer the door. The third possibility is what had her finally jamming the key into the lock and opening the door.
A variety of liquor bottles were on the coffee table, emptied of their contents despite the relatively early hour. Bond himself was laid out on his back on the sofa, one arm dangling to the floor. His face was still swollen and discolored from his pub brawl over the weekend, and as M stared at the pathetic sight, she began to notice that he was very, very still indeed.
