Bond woke in slow measures. Physical sensations seeped back in first. He was freezing cold. His body ached, almost in its entirety. The sheets around him were stiff and rough. Something was taped to his left arm. An IV drip, his sluggish mind provided, eventually. Sound filtered in soon after, the usual beeps and noises that surrounded a hospital bed. Voices, indistinct, somewhere just outside of whatever room he was in.

The last thing he remembered was his own home. Had he gone out, gotten into another fight? He couldn't rule it out. He couldn't really be bothered to care at the moment, either. Whoever had intervened this time should have saved themselves the effort, frankly. He was past giving a damn anymore.

He managed to crack his right eye open. The left wasn't as swollen as it had been a couple days ago, but it wasn't worth the effort. A face, blurry, swam in front of him.

"Finally deigned to return to us again, Bond?"

M. Why did it have to be M? Bloody hell. He shut his eye again and willed himself back into oblivion.


Bond woke again with a jolt, fleeing a man with a mutilated face and arms that had transformed into glowing hot irons in his sleep. Slim hands gripped his shoulders, pressing him back to the bed before he could dislodge something. This time it was Dr. Warmflash standing over him, although M was again present, he eventually noticed, this time standing with her arms crossed in a corner of the room and an inscrutable expression. So, they'd removed him from the hospital and brought him back to MI6 medical at some point. Warmflash was writing something on a chart, fiddling with the various wires and tubes connected to him, and prodding at him here and there. He screwed his eyes shut again, wanting no part of what was going on with either his body or his mind at the moment.

"Don't play possum, Mister Bond, I'm not stupid."

Fingers pressed into his abdomen, just over his liver and pancreas. He almost but not quite managed to suppress the resulting groan.

"Tender, is it? It's certainly not past the point of no return, but you're going to have to dry out soon if you want to keep it."

Bond opened his eyes again, looking past the doctor at M, whose expression remained impassive and unreadable. Turning back to the doctor, Bond forced himself to sit up and at least make a show of not being a complete invalid. "Duly noted. When can I leave?"

M emerged from the corner, staring at her wayward agent. "Oh, you're not going anywhere on your own, Mister Bond. Not until you prove you can be trusted with government property."

M's eyes raked over his body and Bond had never felt more naked in his life. Rather than ashamed, though, it simply pissed him off. "You made it quite clear the government had no more use for this 'property' last week, M, so quite frankly, you can bu-"

"That is not what I said, and you damn well know it. You haven't actually been dismissed at this point, although that may well change in the future if you continue acting like this. I certainly have no intention to 'bugger off' either."

M turned on her heel and exited the room before he could form another retort, followed by the doctor, leaving Bond with nothing but a young nurse (male, again, alas) to glare at.


"Well, care to explain yourself?"

Bond stared at M across the table. The table in M's fucking kitchen, which of all the locations in the world, was the last place Bond ever expected to be. He knew of the existence of the place, of course, he'd managed to dig up her home address years ago, out of spite. Not that he had ever intended to make use of the knowledge; simply having it alone was prize enough. He also knew the name of the man standing off to the side just behind her. He wondered if any of their neighbors had the slightest clue who Olivia, wife of Lionel Mansfield, actually was. He highly doubted it.

"You've asked me that three times, now. I already told you, I simply lost track."

"James Bond never loses track of anything. You knew exactly how much you were drinking, you just didn't give a damn. I want to know why."

"Fine. I couldn't sleep."

"And you couldn't sleep because..?"

Bond schooled his features into his best poker face. He wouldn't scowl like a teenager, not this time. He wanted to cross the room and break the woman's jaw, but there were a thousand reasons that would be an imminently foolish idea.

Lionel Mansfield had spent the entire interrogation propped against the wall behind his wife, staring at a neutral point on the floor. His head tilted up, slightly, and he shifted his balance on his feet. M – Olivia – turned at the subtle movement, their eyes meeting. Some unspoken conversation occurred in a matter of moments between them. M's face scrunched up in that manner it always did when she was frustrated with something before she glanced back where Bond was sitting with a cup of tea Lionel had deposited before him upon his arrival, and which he hadn't yet touched.

"Oh, very well, we can have this discussion later."

M left the room, and Lionel Mansfield sat down across from James Bond, dropping a newspaper on the table. He pulled the teapot toward himself and filled his own cup before taking a sip, reading his paper and saying nothing. The silence spread between them for over half an hour before the man finally looked up for a few moments. Bond met the pensive stare passively, regarding his silent companion. He decided he didn't hate the man.

After another half hour, Lionel folded up the finished newspaper and began clearing away the tea. Glancing askance at Bond he finally spoke. "Don't take Olivia's bluster too personally, Mister Bond, she always gets angry whenever she's afraid."

Bond cocked an eyebrow in skepticism. "You expect me to believe she's afraid of me?"

"Of you? Hardly. For you? Positively terrified." Lionel finished loading up the tea tray with Bond's untouched cup and decamped to the sink to begin washing up. Bond honestly didn't know what to make of that statement. It was too outlandish to even contemplate.

Upon returning after completing the chore, Lionel dropped a notepad and a pen in front of him. "Make a list of whatever you want from your flat. I don't think you'll be going back there for a while..."

Bond picked up the pen and hastily scratched down a few items. He honestly didn't care in the least. It was ridiculous to think he could be kept hostage here, in a nondescript suburban home. It had taken chains, bars, and guards with automatic rifles to keep him North Korea, after all. MI6 kept a rotation of security around the property in deference to its occupant, out of sight, but as shitty as Bond felt at the moment, he didn't doubt his ability to slip past all of them, unseen. He passed the list back to Lionel.

Lionel glanced over the list and tucked it into his shirt pocket. "...not if you have a stitch of sense, at any rate."


Lionel had departed a little over an hour ago, after clearing up the supper table with his wife, taking with him a cardboard box filled up with everything even vaguely alcoholic that had been in the house. M – Olivia, here, Bond reminded himself – had holed herself up in her home office, which she'd informed him succinctly was off-limits and to keep his sticky fingers out of.

Bond wondered idly if this was what it had been like for her children growing up. He wondered if any of them even spoke to her anymore, or if they'd tired of her controlling nature and cut ties. Glancing around the living room, a plethora of photos, some recent and including grandchildren, put paid to that notion. The Mansfields were clearly still involved in the lives of their offspring and their offspring's offspring.

Sometimes, if he tried hard enough, Bond could almost picture the faces of his parents. They'd died when he was eleven, but he'd already been spending most of his days in various boarding schools even before that age. His mother had habitually worn one particular perfume, and the scent of it was stronger in his memory than her face or voice had ever been.

The door opened as Lionel let himself back in, pulling luggage behind him that Bond recognized as his own. "I'll put your things in Stephen's old room upstairs at the end of the hall. He took anything he particularly cared about with him after he married, so consider it yours for the duration I suppose. I picked up your post too, by the way, I'll leave it on Stephen's desk for you."

Olivia emerged from her office to join her husband on the sofa in front of the evening news on the television. After enduring a few minutes of blatant lies from BBC's news anchor, Bond retreated to their eldest child's abandoned bedroom. There were still posters on the wall, mostly of football players, and a few abandoned shirts long out of fashion hanging in the wardrobe. In boxes on a shelf above the shirts were various colorful toys, long forgotten. The detritus of a surprisingly normal-seeming childhood for someone with that sort of mother. The air of familial warmth about the place had plainly shocked him, and shifted the foundations of everything he knew about M, and it left him feeling even more off-balance than before, which was an accomplishment.

Stretching out on the narrow bed and staring at the ceiling, the crawling sensation on Bond's skin returned, and played out the usual pattern, ending with him struggling to breathe. He rolled to his side and breathed in slowly through his nose, counting off seconds before slowly releasing it again. Wash, rinse, repeat, until his heart rate was beaten back into submission. Eventually he sat up, only to be greeted with the sight of Lionel peering at him from the doorway.

"Everything alright?"

"Yes."

"Hmm. Well, you know where to find us."

The man's face disappeared from the door, which James got up and shut, which upon hindsight he should have done before. What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean? They might have put him their child's room, but he wasn't one of their children. Did they expect him to come running to them in the middle of the night because there was a monster under the bed? The monsters that stalked him weren't the sort that could be sent off with a bedtime story and a kiss goodnight, that was for damned sure.


Bond didn't even bother trying to sleep that night. He'd picked through the contents of a child's bookshelf, and the best he had come up with was a battered old paperback copy of Robinson Crusoe. He'd read it before, probably at the same age that Stephen Mansfield had.

It had a certain appeal, he supposed, disappearing to some island inhabited only by beasts and hostile natives, where nobody knew who you were, and certainly didn't care.


He hadn't tried to sleep, but at some point past about 3 AM, he must have drifted off, the bedside table lamp still on and the paperback falling to land on the floor between the bed and the wall. It wasn't long before strange, half-naked men were pursuing him through a North Korean forest with spears and flaming brands. He had misplaced his gun, somewhere, and could do nothing but run, his legs carrying him between thick tree trunks and malicious, preternaturally sharp branches that seemed to come out of nowhere to lacerate his suddenly bare chest and face, cutting him to ribbons.

He could feel the rivulets of blood seeping down his neck and torso, but he knew as sure as he was born that if he stopped running, he'd die. Finally, he reached some sort of derelict building, and ducked inside, hoping the wild men would pass by.

She was there, of course, waiting for him, whip in hand.

Just talk, and this can all be over.


Intellectually, she'd expected this. The reality of it was, if she were honest, more dramatic than she had anticipated. Even in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts and halfway out of his damned mind, especially halfway out of his damned mind, James Bond was an incredibly dangerous man. "Don't get any closer, Lionel."

"But, love, he's-"

"-quite literally a trained assassin. He'll have to come out of it on his own."

The broken lamp didn't matter, it was old and had been cheap to begin with. Bond had cut his foot stepping on part of it, but it didn't seem to be serious as the amount of blood appeared trivial. In any case, neither she nor her husband were anything remotely resembling young anymore, and despite Bond's overall poor condition, he was still stronger than the both of them put together.

He'd been screaming at them at first – not them, really, and she could hazard a guess who his addled mind had substituted for them – but the head of steam he'd built up seemed to be slipping away, now, as he slumped to the floor in the corner of the room. Lionel moved to approach him, but upon noting Bond's still glazed, darting eyes, Olivia thrust an arm out in front of her husband to stall his progress. "Not yet. He still doesn't know where he is."

Suddenly going slack like a puppet whose strings had been dropped, Bond's eyes closed and his breathing evened out. He might even be asleep again, but Olivia doubted it. If she happened to notice a solitary tear slip down the side of his face, she'd keep it to herself. He'd be humiliated enough already once he snapped out if it. It was going to be a long night. She suspected as long as she kept Bond in her home, every night for the foreseeable future was potentially going to be a long night. Olivia wasn't a patient woman despite her efforts, and still wasn't sure this was going to work.

She just wasn't sure what else to do.


The next morning, no one made mention of any nocturnal drama, for which Bond was embarrassingly grateful. He balanced awkwardly on one foot while digging another small chunk of glass out of the bottom of his foot in the shower, briefly staining the water swirling in the bottom of the tub. He'd told Lionel over breakfast he'd buy them another lamp later, and the man had simply shrugged at him. Olivia had already put M back on and left, telling him not to give her husband any grief on the way out of the door as though he were a misbehaving child.

He needed to leave, he just hadn't decided yet where he would go. Back to his own flat was out of the question. He had no desire to return there, anyhow. It was too quiet. Too quiet, too empty, and too easy for his mutinous imagination to fill up. He'd come up with something, sooner or later. Nightmares be damned, he might go to France or the Bahamas anyway, and if the first woman took offense, he could simply find another. Enough alcohol and sex and he'd probably sleep like a baby regardless.

Cutting off the tap and stepping out of the shower on his uninjured foot, he managed to maneuver himself onto the toilet without setting the bleeding one down on the mat, and flicked the tiny glass shard into the bin nearby. He'd ruined enough of the Mansfields' possessions as it was. He pressed a wad of tissues onto the cut until it stopped bleeding. It wasn't that deep but it was the second time in so many days he'd ended up with broken glass embedded in him. It was becoming a habit, apparently, and he was already bored of it.

Bleeding finally ceased, he stood gingerly in front of the mirror. His eyes were still bruised and bloodshot, his damp hair stuck out at odd angles, and his jaw was rough. In short, he still more or less looked like dog shit. Well, he could fix two out of three, at least, and set about doing so.


Tanner had been sent to pick someone up from the airport, but before he could even get that far, he spotted him at a distance. He'd know that profile anywhere. M had already given him the gist of Bond's situation. He didn't know what, exactly, was being done about it, but he was pretty damned sure it didn't involve an international flight. Hurrying over to the desk just as Bond reached the front of the queue, he stepped up beside the wayward double-o.

"Bond."

Furtive eyes flickered toward Tanner, then back ahead. Bond's posture changed so subtly anyone who didn't know him wouldn't have noticed, but Bond clearly knew he'd been rumbled. "Tanner."

"Going somewhere interesting?"

The woman behind the desk looked back and forth between the two men. Bond looked up at the board, as though contemplating a restaurant menu. An older man behind them harrumphed and tapped his foot. Finally, Bond stepped to the side and let the impatient man take his place. "M sent you, I suppose?"

"Yes, although not for you."

"I don't suppose I could bribe you into silence."

"No, you really couldn't. And I'd prefer it if you didn't murder me, either, I have a rather busy schedule today and it would be a terrible inconvenience. You wouldn't get too far anyhow, as despite appearances, I am not on my own. I've got someone to pick up just now, so you might as well come along. There'll be enough room in the car, he's not the sort who packs a great deal of luggage."


Bond leaned over Moneypenny while she worked at her desk. She had glared daggers at him when he walked in, and barely greeted him. "Still angry about the other night? How about I make it up to you over dinner?" He gave her his best smile, which granted was less effective when he still mostly looked like something the dog had been chewing on, despite his efforts to clean up.

"You know, there was a time when I couldn't have refused such an offer, but for the moment, I think I'll simply have to pass."

M had apparently told her what had happened. You'd think he could evoke at least a little pity, if not actual affection, but Moneypenny was simply annoyed with him. How irritating.

"You could have died, James. It's one thing to get shot to bits in service for your country, but to bloody drink yourself into an early grave for any reason is just plain stupid, you know."

He leaned closer to her, close enough that the loose strands of hair behind her ear fluttered in his breath.

Before he could do anything else, she roughly elbowed him aside. "I could have you written up for sexual harassment, you know."

Bond stepped back, scowling. First Natalya, now Moneypenny. What the hell had happened? They'd never so bluntly refused his advances in the past, but now they were treating him like something contagious. It could just about do a man's ego in. Bond retreated to a chair on the other side of the room, wondering if he could slip away long enough to go pester Q downstairs, anything to distract him from whatever all this shit was.

A few minutes passed, and eventually Moneypenny sighed and crossed the room to stand beside him. She stared down at him oddly, and in a baffling gesture, suddenly ran her fingers through his hair, just once, before withdrawing awkwardly. "James, I..."

Bond slipped an arm around her waist loosely, simply leaning his head into her side and saying nothing, wondering if this would be the last time he'd ever see her. Words had never been his strong suit anyhow.


"I know this may be lost on you, Bond, but I do actually have a job to do, and this is not what I had scheduled for today. Would it really have killed you to just stay put for once?"

"You could have told Tanner to let me go. I don't see any point in continuing this absurd charade, regardless. Whether I'm here, or my own flat, or your quaint little home, or bloody Timbuktu, nothing particularly changes. I don't need anyone mothering me, particularly not you."

"If Miss Moneypenny hadn't raised concerns to me, you'd be dead from alcohol poisoning right now. Do you have any clue how close you actually were to dying when I found you? You barely had a pulse. And last night, you trod on broken glass barefoot, didn't noticed, and didn't even know where the hell you were for several minutes. And you really have the cheek to sit there and tell me you're a perfectly healthy man?"

Bond met M's stare, daring her to blink first. Whether he was perfectly healthy or not was irrelevant, really, and he still wasn't sure why M insisted it was. It wasn't her business. It wasn't her responsibility. Bond hauled himself onto his feet. "Fine. I officially resign. I'm no longer your problem, one way or another."

"If you step out of that door, I'll have everyone in this building sit on top you if I have to, and as for your 'resignation,' if you mention it again, I'll tell you where you can put it. You accused me earlier of throwing you away, but as far as I can tell, you're the one determined to throw yourself into the nearest rubbish bin regardless of anyone's efforts to keep you out of it. Did it ever even occur to you that someone else might give a damn if you die like this?"

Bond blinked first.

M gestured to the chair and Bond remained standing, holding stubbornly onto the last shred of control he seemed to possess over his own life. Shaking her head, M spoke to Moneypenny briefly over the intercom, telling her to postpone her next meeting, before standing herself. She paced the floor behind her desk a few turns before looking at him again. "This situation is at something of an impasse, it seems."

"I told you before, I'll be fine if you just give me enough damned time. I've come back from worse."

M lifted an eyebrow at him. "Have you? Because I know your work history intimately and I'm quite certain you haven't. I know you have a very high opinion of yourself, but fourteen months of solitary confinement, torture, and interrogation aren't something anyone just 'comes back from' in a month or two. Anyone else would have taken the damned cyanide pill, but up until recently, you've always been rather good at stubbornly holding onto life. That said, drowning yourself in liquor and pretending nothing is wrong isn't going to make this go away. I know plowing your way through life like a wild bull has worked well enough until now, but machismo can only take you so far, no one is indestructible, not even the great James Bond. Asking for help won't actually kill you, but refusing to accept help very well might."


Bond, very reluctantly it must be said, and only after Moneypenny had all but begged him while obviously on the verge of bursting into actual tears, agreed to leave with M at the end of the day. Running again might eventually be an option, but not at MI6, as there were cameras throughout the entire place (barring a few sensitive areas, none of which were anywhere near exits) and he wouldn't put it past M to have already informed security to tell her immediately if he were seen leaving the building. In the meantime, he had nothing to do for several hours.

Technically, he had a small office with a desk and a few filing drawers assigned to him, although over the years, he'd rarely used it. He did up most of his reports on a laptop computer in a hotel somewhere, or occasionally at home. He wandered down a few floors to take stock of the glorified broom closet, having not laid eyes on the place since before Korea.

The janitorial staff had kept the place dusted, and, after picking the lock with a paperclip, he found his old laptop in the drawer where he'd last left it. Everything on it was certainly out of date. Well, it gave him something to do. He tucked the old Toshiba under one arm after wrapping the power cord around it and headed to the lifts. Technically, staff computers were handled by internal IT, not Q branch, but he wanted to pester Natalya a bit anyway, and it gave him some pretense to do so, albeit flimsy. He still hadn't entirely forgiven her for ignoring him for the better part of five years.


"007? I'd heard you'd been taken off the active duty roster, ill health or somesuch-"

Bond stopped where Q had stepped back from a workbench to greet him. The man's eyes were scanning over him, lingering on the fading bruising still visible around his left eye, cheekbone, and nose. Convenient, for once – let Q think he got knocked around a bit too much in a fistfight, it was certainly less humiliating than the truth. "'Somesuch,' yes. Just dropping in, as it were."

Q's gaze flicked to the laptop in Bond's elbow. "One of those old things? They were taken out of service six months ago, why do you still have..? Oh, right, of course... well, never mind. You're on the wrong floor, though, if you're looking for the new model... which you ought to know, of course." Q's eyes narrowed in suspicion at him, guessing Bond had some ulterior motive for being there. Not that Q was wrong, exactly. Bond stared past Q down the hallway behind him. Natalya was somewhere in that general direction. He didn't know exactly where she was tucked away, but he could find out easily enough.

Q turned to follow his gaze and harrumphed to himself, rolling his eyes. "Some girl down here caught your eye, then, is it? Can't you go find a date elsewhere? We still have actual work to do, after all."

"I won't be long, Q, just a quick chat and I'll be gone before you know it."

Bond ducked around Q but was stopped when the other man grabbed his sleeve. "One moment, please, I've just remembered something I was meant to give you. Slipped my mind earlier... It won't be but a moment."

Q went to his desk, rifling through multiple drawers and shuffling a volume of paper that seemed to exceed the capacity of the drawers holding it, and finally came up with a rather ordinary looking envelope. Q handed it to Bond without ceremony before returning to his workbench, having no further interest in him.

The envelope had a printed return address for some solicitor he'd never heard of. The recipient address, by contrast, was hand-written, to his name in care of the MI6 Quartermaster. The handwriting was terribly familiar somehow, but Bond couldn't quite place it. He should probably deal with it later, but curiosity got the best of him and he set the obsolete laptop down on Q's desk for a moment to rip open the envelope immediately.


Dear James,

If you are receiving this letter, then I am dead, and you are not. I had hoped to live long enough to see your triumphant return, but the declining state of my health makes such a reunion unlikely, in this world at least. I can only imagine what they are doing to you, and it pains me to think of it. I certainly cannot undo whatever they have done, nor is it within my power to end it. That, I suppose, is – or was – up to your own considerable skill & determination, and perhaps a bit of sheer dumb luck, which you have always possessed in absurd abundance.

What little I can do, however, is ensure that you still have a home to return to. I know you aren't fond of anything which smells of charity, but tough luck! You will have it this time, whether you like it or not. You never did quite know what was good for you. The payments will continue until you return to end them, or are officially declared dead, in which case I suppose we may argue over the matter in the hereafter.

Your friend,

Q

P.S. - When I told you to never let them see you bleed, I meant your enemies, not your friends. When I told you to always have an escape plan, however, that applies to just about everything in life!

P.P.S. - If M is still about, I've no doubt she's been giving you nothing but grief. You realize as well as I do that her hands were tied in this situation, but don't be fooled – she's been fretting over you for weeks. You've always been her favourite. Confidentially, you were always mine as well, even if you never could behave yourself.


"Oh, not again, James."

Q was standing off to the side, mostly confused at the moment. He'd turned away from 007 for only a few minutes, only to turn back around and find the man wedged into the corner between the wall behind his desk and a filing cabinet, apparently struggling somewhat to breathe correctly.

"Not sure what happened, exactly. I can call medical if-"

"It's nothing dangerous, but I'm sure he'd appreciate it if you gave us a moment of privacy."

Jane had told Natalya about this earlier. She herself had had panic attacks somewhat regularly for a few years as a teenager, but had thankfully grown out of it. He seemed to be handling it well enough, taking measured breaths from the diaphragm, rather than hyperventilating, but she knew it would be best to get him out of sight. The office rumor mill down in Q Branch was bad enough already - the fact that the notorious James Bond was off the active duty roster indefinitely had already bloomed into a general topic of discussion in the breakroom. Natalya had kept the truth to herself, staying well out of it, although in one moment of weakness, she had told off a couple of her colleagues who had decided to share around their "theory" that James Bond must certainly have terminal cancer.

"Do you think you can move without making it worse?"

His eyes snapped open, meeting hers. He didn't respond, but gamely levered himself upright. She knew he was mortified, but there wasn't much to be done about it now other than damage control. He snatched the old laptop off the desk and followed her down the hallway into her office, which was even smaller than his own. She had an elaborate computer set up with multiple monitors and entirely too many wires going in many directions, but he still wasn't quite certain what she did, exactly.

Natalya pushed an empty mug out of the way and perched herself on the corner of her desk, letting Bond take the chair, leaning his elbows against the desk to stare down at her keyboard as though it were an object of fascination. Bond flinched slightly when her hand made contact with the crown of his head, but after pausing a moment to see if he would react further, she began running her fingers through his hair slowly for a few minutes. "It can take a while to really settle down. Back then, I would never feel quite right afterward for the rest of the day, sometimes even the next day."

"Back then? So, it stopped."

"Eventually, yes. It started just after my mother's death, when I was sixteen. They were frequent at first, then less often over time. By the time I was nineteen, they had stopped completely."

"Hmm."

"I know it feels quite stupid at the moment, the most idiotic things seem to trigger them. There was one song that would come on the radio, this stupid little pop song, and I'd lose it completely, simply because it had been playing when my brother got the phone call from the hospital."

"Hmm."

"Still pretending to have a heart carved of ice, then? Working well for you, is it?"

James shifted toward her, somewhat hesitantly, and she had a good idea what he was angling for. At least he was giving her the option to refuse him with more subtlety this time, but she found she didn't want to. He was nothing but trouble, he'd been nothing but trouble seven years ago, and was still nothing but trouble now. And now as it had been then, there could be no future in it. He was a good man underneath all of the nonsense, but he wasn't the sort who stuck around. Somehow, though, she was still terribly fond of him, against all her better judgment. He'd rolled the office chair directly in front of her so he could kiss her once again, and this time it was more like what she remembered from years before, not the puerile aggression of Saturday morning. After a moment, though, she leaned back, breaking contact. "The walls are quite thin, James."

"So we'll just have to be quiet."

He kissed her again, moving from her lips down to a spot just below her ear that had always made her squirm pleasurably. His memory wasn't damaged, at least.

"Someone could walk in."

He'd already managed to get her blouse mostly unbuttoned.

"So we'll ask them to leave."

"You really are more trouble than you're worth, Mister Bond." She could feel him smirk against her skin.

"That's why you like me."

Well, she couldn't argue with that. Reaching to the side, she moved a few key pieces of government-issued electronics out of range of immediate danger.


Moneypenny's eyes narrowed at Bond in suspicion when he returned to her office, just before the time M customarily left for the day. He'd stopped by the lavatory on the way and cleaned up, there was no tell-tale lipstick or clothing out of place and he'd even managed to smooth his hair down adequately, so he knew she could prove nothing.

Moments later, M stepped out of her office and she stopped mid-stride, looking over him swiftly, and rolling her eyes. "Really? Just who-you know what, I absolutely don't want to know, although I really ought to be disciplining somebody for fraternizing on company time. You might be on leave, but certainly no one else in this building is. Well, come along then, before you cause any more trouble."


Jane put everything away and fished her purse out of the desk drawer. She'd had her suspicions when James showed up looking like the cat who'd got the cream, but M had absolutely confirmed it, somehow. Sometimes she forgot M had once been a field agent herself, many years ago. Her senses, apparently, had not dulled in the slightest, and she could apparently read Bond, in particular, like an open book. Well, maybe it would improve the man's mood a bit, she thought, at least temporarily. She knew he slept around, he was absolutely notorious for it after all, but he generally wasn't doing it right under her nose. It's not like he was ever yours to begin with, is it? Shaking her head, Jane dispelled the entire line of thought. They were friends, that was all – she had no actual claim over him and no real cause to care in the slightest.

Heading out, she went to meet Natalya to walk to the underground station nearby together. Even before Natalya spoke, Jane didn't have to ask. Her friend took in Jane's knowing expression and at least had enough shame to blush slightly, but then smiled and shrugged. Well, at least it wasn't someone from accounting, Jane thought. Jane reached out and used her fingers to comb down a bit of Natalya's hair that was still sticking out awkwardly at the back, then began walking.

After a couple minutes of silence, Natalya reached out to take hold of Jane's elbow. "You aren't, ah, annoyed with me, are you?"

Jane stopped in her tracks and was jostled by several strangers crowding past her, but paid no attention to them. "Why should I be annoyed with you? I already knew the two of you had a history. Frankly I'm just glad he wasn't off with some stuck-up bitch down in accounting, they're already insufferable enough, thinking they practically own everyone else." Jane suddenly laughed, mostly at herself. She'd been half-pining after James for years, but most of the appeal had always been the knowledge that it was mostly just a game in the end, that there was no real risk in it because he would never go anywhere with it. It had bothered her when she was younger, that she couldn't compete with all those girls he favored, most of whom looked like some Hollywood casting director's wet dream. She wasn't twenty anymore, though, and you couldn't have paid her good money to live through that awkward age again.

Natalya's arm on her elbow pulled her toward a nearby coffee shop, dragging her to a table tucked into a corner inside. Natalya's face went through several expressions in rapid succession, finally settling on something a bit pensive. Jane lifted an eyebrow before getting up to go order something while Natalya figured out whatever her problem was. Jane returned with a couple of coffees, regular for her friend (who always seemed absolutely immune to the effects of caffeine no matter the hour) and decaf for herself. She knew how her friend took hers – cream but no sugar – and set the paper cup in front of Natalya, who stared at it as though it might explode.

"Alright, spill it already. Watching your face contort is starting to make my head hurt."

Natalya finally picked up the cup and sipped at her coffee. "Fourteen months is a long time. Or can be, at least."

"James again, is it?"

"He had scars years ago, but they were the interesting sort you could ask for some wild story about if you didn't mind listening to him boast, but nothing like now. I suppose not all of them must be from North Korea, but I think most of them are. This afternoon nearly didn't happen, because I was so startled by it all at first sight, but I mostly managed to pretend I didn't notice them. He wasn't fooled, of course, but I don't think he cared much in the moment as long as I didn't make a big deal out of it. I know he's getting fed up of women's pity, but men generally don't care much for it, so that's no surprise. It was a terrible risk given where we were, but I think he just wanted something that felt... normal, for him." Natalya drank more of her coffee, glancing around the shop, which was mostly empty. At this hour, most people tended to favor pubs, and the place was fairly empty, so they could speak in relative privacy at least. "He'd just had another panic attack after talking to Q. He's not accustomed to feeling so out of control of himself."

"Don't suppose you know what set it off?"

"Not really, but sometimes just about anything can do it – a random object laying somewhere, a smell, a noise, just being overwhelmed or stressed in general – it doesn't always follow logic."

"You seem to know quite a lot about it."

"I know I've told you before that my mother was killed by a drunk driver when I was sixteen. I don't know if I ever mentioned that she didn't die immediately. They took her to hospital, and we all rushed over there while she was in surgery, but they couldn't save her. They allowed my family to see her after she died, before they took her body away, and looking back, I wish they hadn't. She was hardly recognizable and I had regular nightmares for weeks. The panic attacks started soon after, and while some things made sense, a lot of what triggered them had nothing to do with her, or what had happened. Thankfully over the next several years, the panic attacks slowly faded away. Though sometimes I still have nightmares about it, usually if I've been stressed out or worried about something else."

Jane reached out to grasp her friend's hand for a moment. "You know you can always call me. I don't even care if it's three in the morning." Natalya squeezed her hand before letting go. Jane stared for a moment over her friend's shoulder at the foot traffic outside the window. "Have you told him it might eventually go away?"

"Briefly, yes. But it in my case, it started with one horrible day, not after enduring an entire year of deliberate cruelty. I'm not sure our situations can be compared much at all."

"He's been through terrible situations before. Maybe not for so long, but often. He's not made of glass, that's for certain."

"True, but anything can break, if put under enough force. You can even shatter a diamond, if you hit it just right."

Natalya could be blunt at times, Jane knew, but that was just her personality – direct, practical, and honest sometimes to a fault. She wasn't the sort of person you went to if you wanted sugarcoating or empty but comforting platitudes. Jane sighed and drained the rest of her coffee cup, glancing at her watch. She needed to make it to the station if she wanted to get home at a decent hour, having missed her first chance. Natalya had a little more time than she did at the moment. "I'd better get going, I think. Lunch tomorrow?"

"I was planning on packing something the rest of this week, but if you want to join me in the break room down in Q Branch?"

"Sounds good. See you tomorrow, then." Jane gave her friend a quick hug, then disappeared back into the rushing crowd.


Bond found himself back in Stephen Mansfield's old bedroom, absolutely bored out of his damned mind. He'd had nightmares overnight, naturally, but at least he hadn't woken up smashing things and hallucinating for once. Olivia had packed up and left that morning, and her husband had spent the entire day puttering about in the back garden, where he could now be heard through the window Bond had cracked open for some air trimming the hedgerow below.

It was all so utterly banal, he nearly wanted to rip his hair out. Did people really just live like this? Clearly plenty of them did, but he couldn't imagine how. He'd fished Robinson Crusoe out from under the bed and finished reading it within a few hours that morning, had emerged to eat bland sandwiches with Lionel at noon, then retreated back into the bedroom to stare at the ceiling and contemplate his existence. He was 48 years old but felt like a grounded teenager. Well, a grounded teenager with a bad knee and a back that ached.

I should have kept the damned cyanide pill.

He'd leave again, eventually, but clearly he needed to plan ahead better if he wanted to disappear more thoroughly, and without being caught or followed. It was one of the drawbacks of working in intelligence, though – your coworkers and boss were all literally spies.


By mid-afternoon, Lionel had returned indoors, and James could hear him moving about downstairs, probably tidying up as he went along. The man was extremely... domestic. Bond was starting to get the impression that Olivia's three children had mostly been raised by Lionel, not her. Some might have assumed the man was "whipped" or in some way controlled or emasculated, especially in light of Olivia's forceful personality, but having watched the two of them interact, that didn't seem to be an entirely accurate description of the situation. What would be an accurate description, though, Bond hadn't quite figured out. The whole thing was simply strange. Normally he didn't give much thought to other people's personal relationships, unless it pertained to his work, but he had little else to ponder at the moment.

Bond had looked him up at the same time he'd been snooping into the rest of M's personal life, years ago, when M had pissed him off enough to feel petty. Her husband had been in the RAF as a young man, then worked as a mechanic on commercial aircraft for a few years. After marrying, he'd soon taken a desk job of no great interest. There was nothing exceptional or remarkable about him, on paper, other than the simple fact that he married a spy who would eventually become the head of MI6 and, apparently, was content to raise her children while she was mostly occupied with other matters. And he was clearly aware of what his wife did for a living, even if he didn't know the exact details of day-to-day business.

This house was beginning to make him itch, in more ways than one. Everything, indeed, that had happened since he'd been dragged out of North Korea and finished mopping up the Graves mess was making him itch. He'd been angry after Korea, there had been moments he'd struggled to control his temper – speaking to M on the ship, the fencing match with Graves (in particular, where he'd nearly killed the man before he'd had any chance to get information out of him and hadn't yet known what he was) – but he'd held it together well enough as long as he was working, as long as he was chasing a goal, as long as he was chasing an enemy. If anything, the fear and tension had seemed to bleed out of him as he rocketed along, following one thread to the next, and remained in motion. It was, ironically, when the dust began to settle, when the danger had passed, that everything was suddenly and completely wrong. He felt like he'd stepped through a crack in the pavement and slipped into some odd, parallel universe, and just couldn't make the pieces fit together. He barely recognized the man in his own reflection. His clothing didn't fit anymore. His own skin didn't fit anymore.

I should have kept the cyanide pill. He'd felt insulted when they'd given it to him as a freshly-minted double-o. He'd thrown it out almost immediately, with the thought that anyone who used it must be either incompetent or a coward, or more likely both.

I should have kept the cyanide pill.


Footsteps proceeding up the stairs and down the hallway pulled Bond out of a light doze, his head snapping up and his heart suddenly hammering in his chest as the irrational part of his mind, for half a moment, believed that She or her lackeys were approaching his cell. A moment later, he snapped back into his own body, feeling not concrete under his back, but a mattress and a well-worn duvet. He let his head fall back against the soft bedding, closing his eyes and slowing his heartbeat by force of will.

A knock at the door made him flinch, but he refused to have another panic attack. He didn't answer, but Lionel opened the door a crack anyway, sticking his head in to peer at him. Bond pushed his hair back where it had stuck to his sweating forehead and looked back at the old man.

Lionel stepped through the door despite his lack of verbal response. "Sorry to bother you, but I found something you dropped, thought you might want it back. Seemed a bit personal."

Bond stared at the hand thrust toward him, clasping a sheet of folded paper he recognized as the letter that had provoked his last panic attack. "Mm. Thanks." He reached out and took it, hastily folding it over and jamming it into a pocket, just to get it out of sight, then rolled over to face away from Lionel, hoping the man would take a hint.

"Your friend was a wise man. He clearly cared a great deal about you, wanted you to live. You ought to keep that letter, anyhow."

Bond felt a bit childish feigning sleep, but at the moment, it seemed like the easiest course of action. A hand grasped his shoulder briefly, making him flinch badly, then footsteps receded out of the room and back down the hallway.


Bond had oozed his way downstairs and draped himself over the sofa, for a change of scenery, by the time Olivia arrived home. She swept into the living room and deposited a laptop computer onto his chest.

"The current model; Q mentioned you'd been toting around an old one. It's been set up and is ready to go. You can use it to make yourself useful tomorrow, some sort of flu has been going around down in data analysis and you can help with the backlog."

Bond scowled at her as he tilted himself back upright, putting the laptop down on the coffee table as he went. She had to be kidding. He hadn't had anything to do with data analysis since his earliest days at MI6. He'd started there, but within four months he'd been moved into training for field work.

"This is truly the best use of my time you can think of?"

Olivia left the room without answering.


Bond joined them for supper, but did not join their conversation, which mostly surrounded discussion of various acquaintances and family members that he had no connection to, and by the time the dishes were cleared away, the mood in the house had grown oddly tense. Bond's skin crawled, but instead of instantly blooming into a full-blown panic attack, a kind of free-floating bodily anxiety just hummed along for a while, making him shift uncomfortably as he tried not to acknowledge that he suddenly felt like live scorpions were, once again, crawling over him.

Olivia had already gone to the living room, but Lionel remained behind to finish up a few last chores. As the old man looked over where Bond sat, watching him with an expression of faint concern, the crawling sensation grew more intense under his scrutiny. Bond scratched at his neck, briefly. The muscles over his back and shoulders begin to twitch slightly, and he leaned over the table with his eyes closed, his hands dropping to his lap and concentrating on his breathing, trying to quell whatever the hell his body was currently doing without his permission.

Bond's eyes snapped open and his head shot up, his entire body going stiff almost immediately as hands landed lightly on his shoulder, thumbs pressing gently into the spasming muscle.

The contact ceased instantly as Lionel stepped away. "My apologies, I should have asked first, but in my defense, you look terribly uncomfortable."

"You ought to just let him, Bond, he's quite good at it, I can assure you."

He blinked and his eyes darted around the room, taking in everything as the universe outside of his own head suddenly flooded back into his senses. Olivia was standing in the doorway, looking at him. He managed not to turn red but it was a close thing. "I'm fine. I don't need coddling."

"Suit yourself, Tigger." Lionel shrugged and headed around the table toward his wife.

The childish epithet, however incomprehensible, was too petty to be worth even acknowledging, but lack of restful sleep and stress was making James even shorter-tempered than usual. "'Tigger?'" Of all the odd things - "Why, exactly, are you calling me that now?"

Olivia glanced over at her husband. "Yes, do stop calling him that, dear, it's a terrible insult to Tigger's memory. Tigger had far more good sense."

James sighed in a mixture of exhaustion and annoyance, leaning his elbows on the table to prevent himself from falling face-first onto it and trying to ignore the repetitive muscle twitch still going at it over his right shoulder blade. "What the bloody hell are you talking about?"

Lionel returned to the table and sat down. Bond tilted his head enough to look up at the strange old man, who was growing stranger by the day, it seemed. "Hmm. Our youngest was eight years old when she found a stray cat behind the garden shed. And I don't mean someone's pet that had got lost, but a massive feral tomcat with a scarred face and notched ears and about a third of a tail remaining. Judith was instantly in love with the wretched animal, of course, named it Tigger, insisted on leaving food and water out for it. Went on for weeks til somehow she gained Tigger's trust. He'd let her pat him and even tolerated being picked up occasionally, but if anyone else was foolish enough to approach him, he'd growl and spit and scratch you bloody. He might've decided our daughter was acceptable, but he wasn't remotely tame, not for anyone else. But a couple of years later, he limped back to the house one weekend with a badly broken leg, while Judith was away staying with her grandparents. He found me out front washing the car and I still remember him collapsing on the driveway and just staring up at me with those yellow eyes. It was the only time he ever allowed anyone who wasn't Judith to pick him up. He spat at everyone in that veterinary surgery until they sedated him, but kept his claws to himself that day. Never let me touch him again afterward, but he did on that day. That's what Olivia's talking about – you clearly haven't even got the sense God gave a feral cat."

Bond rolled his eyes heavenward. Good lord, now they were comparing him to a literal animal. And a muscle in his shoulder was still twitching. Lionel stood and moved behind him again, using firm thumbs to press at his shoulder until he hit a particularly sore spot. Bond flinched, but to his credit, he remained silent as Lionel pressed down even harder into it, rubbing small circles over the point until the spasm suddenly stopped entirely, as though a switch had been flipped. Fingers searched across his shoulders and around the base of his neck, finding further knots here and there, and giving them same treatment. He hadn't realized just how painful it had all been until it was suddenly gone.

"I told you he was good at it. You never do listen the first time, do you?" Olivia was still staring at him across the room.

"I suppose I'm learning the error of my ways."

"Took you long enough." Olivia glanced at her husband as he walked past her toward the living room, then watched Bond for another moment before turning away to join Lionel.

"Indeed. Should've kept the bloody cyanide pill..."