Should've kept the bloody cyanide pill...
Olivia glanced back over her shoulder, unsure if she was meant to hear that last comment or if he was talking to himself. The first option might simply be sarcasm or gallows humor meant to provoke her; the second was somewhat more troubling. She shelved her worries for the moment, joining her husband in the living room until it was time for bed, then following him upstairs to go through their usual routine. She tried to put the entire thing out of mind, as ruminating over it accomplished nothing, but had utterly failed to do so by the time she climbed under the duvet next to Lionel. She picked up the book she'd been reading but could not focus on what was printed on the page.
That James Bond was meant to have died via self-administered cyanide poisoning upon capture by a hostile government was an undeniable fact; it was a standing order that anyone taken in such a manner had a duty to do so, that's why they were furnished with the damned things to begin with. Indeed, part of the recruiting process involved signing a statement that the prospective new employee understood they may some day be obligated to die for their country – it's one of the reasons they tended to recruit directly from active and recently discharged military personnel, as they were generally already familiar with the concept. But as usual, Bond had flouted orders and insisted on doing things his own way. There was little use in being angry at him for it now, as he was no longer in the hands of North Korea, and he'd certainly suffered extensively for his defiance. She ought to be pleased that he'd finally learned a lesson about disobedience, but found that she was not. He was meant to have died, but he had not. He was here now, and despite all the trouble he caused, she didn't care for the idea of him killing himself in the least.
"I can hear you thinking over there. Any louder and the neighbors will hear it. I thought he made a bit of progress tonight, he finally accepted some small measure of aid, isn't that a good thing?"
Olivia closed the book and dropped it on the nightstand, giving up. She'd barely read a single paragraph anyhow. "I don't suppose you heard the last thing he said, did you? Just as I was walking away, 'Should've kept the bloody cyanide pill.' I don't know if he meant for me to hear it and was just being his usual adolescent self, or if he was talking to himself, in which case it could indicate something else entirely."
"Cyanide pill? Do you really give them those things? I thought that was something out of the cinema, to be truthful."
"Oh, they're quite real, and standard kit for every field agent, in the event they're taken alive by an enemy."
"And Bond was given one?"
"Apparently he threw it away at some point. I don't think he ever expected to be captured, always thought himself far too clever, that one."
Lionel rolled toward her, scooping her into his arms. "But you won't admit you're just a little pleased you got him back? I always got the impression you were a bit fond of him. Enough to bring him here to try and keep him alive a bit longer, at least."
"I can't afford to be fond of my field agents, Lionel, I'd be eaten alive. The amount of absolute screeching in all corners of MI6 when I was promoted... All I need is for them to see the slightest hint of sentimentality or anything they could interpret as feminine weakness, and it would be the end of me. Frankly I've managed to keep his presence here out of general knowledge, and while I realize I can't hide him forever, I'm hoping it takes them a while to figure it out."
"The good-old-boys' club, yes, you've mentioned them. He's not a field agent anymore, though, is he?"
Olivia sighed, pressing herself into Lionel's shoulder further. "Technically he hasn't been reclassified yet, but I'm afraid those days are very likely in the past for him. At least in the double-o program. If he could develop a shred of real patience, he's always been good at intelligence gathering when he could bother with it, but playing agent provocateur and assassin again is out of the question. All it would take would be for that bad knee to go out on him at the wrong moment... We got him back alive, if barely. Seems a pity to waste over twenty years of experience on some foolhardy venture, even if he is absolutely determined to see this as a punishment."
He made it all the way to 4 AM before another night terror episode, this time. Olivia wasn't sure if that was progress or not. At least Bond snapped out of it more swiftly this time, coming back to his senses within a couple of minutes, and nothing was broken.
The muscle spasms were getting worse, though, and she stood in the doorway trying not to yawn while her husband went to work on the visibly disgruntled former spy's deeply scarred back and shoulders. He would have preferred a young woman touching him, she knew, but beggars couldn't be choosers. Even Bond couldn't deny that Lionel had a distinct knack for it, which she herself had long been the beneficiary of, especially on those days she came home after having been bent over a computer for hours.
Dr. Warmflash had relayed certain misgivings about Bond's long-term prognosis earlier. The North Koreans had used a particular species of scorpion to torment him. They'd determined the most likely candidate to be Androctonus bicolor, or the black fat-tailed scorpion, or something closely related to it. They'd let the creatures sting him, watch him suffer for a while, and eventually administer an antivenom before he succumbed to the effects of the neurotoxic venom. The antivenom kept him alive, but that didn't mean repeated exposure was harmless. Warmflash thought he might have some level of nerve damage as a result, despite his insistence that he felt fine. Olivia didn't have the medical background to surmise whether these muscle spasms were a result of the venom or some other abuse, but it hardly mattered from a functional standpoint.
From an objective point of view, it was a curious thing to witness. Bond would be perfectly fine one moment, then all of a sudden go from fine to distinctly uncomfortable, practically squirming as though something were crawling over his skin, and, at least that one morning in her office, ending with a panic attack. Bond, naturally, was mum on the subject, saying nothing about the specifics of his subjective experience of it, although the twitching and pulling of the muscles in his back was severe enough to be plainly visible to the naked eye, and no amount of recalcitrance could hide it. Oh, how that must annoy him! To be seen in any state other than perfect, confident control.
She left Lionel to his unenviable task and went back to bed, unable to fight off the desire to return to sleep any longer. The frequent nocturnal interruptions lately were becoming rather apparent and reminded her ironically of when the children were still young, more years ago than she cared to contemplate. She made a mental note to speak to Warmflash in the morning to see if anything could be done, then drifted off, and did not wake again even when her husband returned to their bed.
When Olivia returned, she was unsurprised to find the laptop she'd given Bond untouched and still sitting precisely where he'd left it on the coffee table the evening before. She was also unsurprised but nonetheless disappointed not to find Bond himself anywhere in sight. Well, off course he'd done a runner again. She'd have other agents begin tracking him down in the morning. He was clever, but she knew his habits and methods intimately. She just hoped he hadn't done anything truly, permanently stupid.
After changing her clothing, she went downstairs, looking for Lionel. She'd assumed he was in the back garden, but apparently her husband wasn't home either. A quick look in the garage showed his car gone also. Well, now. That was interesting.
Lionel had suggested it on a whim and had expected to be turned down flat, but apparently boredom was a strong enough motivator even for someone as stubborn and contrary as James Bond. Lionel hadn't exactly been astounded that his wife had brought the man home with her earlier in the week, she'd certainly done stranger things over the years. She'd couched her justification in dry, practical terms of having no better options, but he wasn't stupid and he knew his wife – she wouldn't have brought just anyone into their home and none of her other agents would have garnered such efforts even in a similar state.
This one was clearly special to her, in some way. He supposed some men would suspect an affair was going on. He had never been interested in other men in that way, but he wasn't blind either – Bond was, objectively speaking, an attractive man. But he knew Olivia too well. He also rather suspected Bond's taste in women ran rather younger than it rightly ought to, as such egos generally did.
No, it was something else entirely. The fact that Bond wasn't much older than their eldest son, by maybe three or four years at most, might have something to do with it. Perhaps his wife felt responsible for his current state somehow, or maybe it wasn't even something that even needed detailed explanation. Bond was important to Olivia, and Olivia was important to Lionel, so he'd do what little he could.
The fishing spot was just over an hour outside of London, one he hadn't visited in a few years, but which he'd frequented much more often in the past. He'd brought the children frequently during summer breaks from school. Maybe he'd start coming back here with the grandkids next year. There was a bait shop conveniently on the way too.
When they had stopped there, he got what should have been his first clue that maybe this hadn't been a spectacular idea, but he hadn't given it much thought. Trout liked grasshoppers, and Lionel liked trout. There were other fish, and he'd picked up a few other sorts of bait, but it was the live grasshoppers that proved to be a problem. Bond had stopped near the cage they were kept in, staring for just a heartbeat too long before wandering off to the other end of the shop. It hadn't meant anything to him at the time.
They'd started with the nightcrawlers, and after a few hours, hadn't caught anything. He'd pulled out the grasshoppers and baited his own hook before handing the container over to his silent companion. He'd already cast his line when he realized Bond hadn't joined him.
Bond had one grasshopper held fast in his right hand, but another had jumped out of the container onto his bare arm, his sleeves having been rolled up to the elbow a while ago. The man was standing stock-still, just staring at the creature as it walked up his arm.
Lionel left his fishing rod jammed upright between river stones to step closer. Bond wasn't as still as he'd thought at first, he was positively vibrating, and sweating bullets, his breath coming in short pants as the insect slowly moved over his skin.
"D-don't move."
"They don't sting, Tigger. They can't even bite all that hard." Lionel watched Bond's adam's apple bob up and down as he swallowed nervously. Lionel slowly reached out, ready to jump back if necessary, and could hear his wife's admonishment in the back of his mind that this man was a trained and experienced killer who could snap his old neck if he wanted, but at the moment all Lionel saw was someone who was deathly afraid, and that he might be able to do something about it.
"I'm going to take it away, Tigger, just hold still." Lionel held his breath as his hand approached the offending insect, slowly plucking it off his companion's arm with slow, measured movements. The moment it was gone, Bond swiftly threw the other one as hard as he could. The grasshopper tumbled through the air in a high arc until it was less than a foot from the water's surface before spreading its wings and buzzing off in an uneven path to freedom.
"Maybe let's stick with the nightcrawlers for now."
Lionel picked up the container of grasshoppers and put it back into his tackle box, out of sight, then picked up his rod. "Don't supposed you'd tell me what that was all about?" Several minutes of silence passed between them. Nothing was biting today, despite the change in bait. Maybe the weather was still too warm.
"I don't like bugs."
Lionel was snapped out of his rumination by the delayed answer. "Fair enough, I suppose."
Several more minutes of silence passed.
"They were rather fond of scorpions."
Lionel blinked at the non-sequitur, not seeing the connection, exactly. "Scorpions?"
"In North Korea."
"I... see." He didn't, exactly, but a rather nasty picture was forming in the back of his head, even without further elaboration. Olivia hadn't shared the details of the man's captivity, and Lionel couldn't claim any knowledge of North Korean interrogation methods, but he'd seen the state of Bond's back early that morning. The divots and lines across his skin had told their own story. And, apparently, scorpions. Well, he'd remember to skip the arthropod section of the bait shop next time. Glancing at Bond again, Lionel wondered what it had cost the man to offer up even that small confession, to someone he barely knew.
Lionel reeled in his line, giving up. It was getting late anyhow, and they should have left already. Olivia was going to worry if she got home before he did and found the house empty. In hindsight, he probably should have left a note. Maybe one of these days, he might take his kids' advice and get a mobile, it would come in handy at times like this.
Bond handed over his borrowed fishing rod when Lionel reached for it, but continued staring out over the river at something or perhaps nothing in the distance. Lionel thought of his own grandfather, who had come back from the first world war a changed man, according to other family members. He, too, had turned to drink to silence his demons, and Lionel had been fairly young, maybe six or seven, when the man had died. His few memories of his grandfather had been of someone stern and mostly silent sitting in a corner of the room by himself, taking little interest in the rest of the family. He'd learned to be very quiet when Grandfather was visiting, as he found noise irritating and had been short-tempered. He'd thought his grandfather was just a mean old man as a young child. He'd learned better as he grew older.
Olivia bit her tongue when her husband returned, just relieved he didn't return alone, and let the evening proceed as normal. She could talk to Lionel in private, later, after all, as she didn't want to involve their current house guest. She certainly had no interest in Bond's opinions on relationships, given that the man hadn't had a single romance that lasted more than a month or two at the longest.
Bond had other matters to consider anyway. She'd stopped by medical during the day and discussed Bond's current issue with Dr. Warmflash, and had come back with a bottle of something he'd no doubt be offended by, but she was going to give it to him anyhow. After supper, she dropped the item on him as he sat down in the upholstered chair in her living room as Lionel turned on the evening news.
The paper bag landed in Bond's lap without explanation as Olivia walked behind him on her way to the sofa to join her husband. "Dare I ask?"
"Just open it, Bond. Dr. Warmflash thought it might be beneficial."
"If it's prozac, you can tell her where to-"
"It's not prozac. Look for yourself if you don't believe me."
Bond ripped open the paper bag and pulled out the bottle. His name was printed on the label like any ordinary prescription, along with Warmflash as the prescribing doctor. He rarely ever needed prescription medication, other than the occasional antibiotic if he suffered a serious injury in the field. "Gabapentin? That's an epilepsy medication. I'll admit I've had some odd moments lately, but I'm not having seizures, last I checked."
"It's used to treat neuropathy as well, and she thinks some of your problems might be less purely psychogenic and more the result of actual nerve damage, at least as far as the muscle spasms and odd skin sensations go. She also thought it might help you sleep better. Anyway, I gave you a bloody laptop, research it for yourself if you want. I can't force it down your throat, after all, but the doctor seemed to think it was worth trying. She said if the side effects troubled you, she had something else she could add to it to counteract some of it, but it might not be necessary. There are instructions on the leaflet if you decide to act like an adult about it."
Bond pulled the pill bottle out of his pocket before undressing for bed, staring at it for several minutes. On the one hand, it might relieve some of his physical suffering. On the other hand, it felt far too much like conceding yet another piece of himself, of his autonomy, of his soul. She had always smiled at him, blandly, as she enacted her wishes upon him, had spoken to him softly and gently, in some corrupted parody of a caring mother or sister. They'd given him a variety of drugs, most often with a hypodermic needle, but there had been others that were tablets, literally shoved into the back of his mouth as he was held down by multiple guards, covering his nose and mouth and not allowing him to breathe again until he swallowed it.
Part of him knew it wasn't a rational decision. The rest of him didn't give a shit and wanted to flush the lot down the toilet. In the end, he shoved it in the drawer of the bedside table.
Bond spent Friday and most of the weekend faffing about on the laptop, mostly picking away at the trivial tasks Olivia had sent to his inbox earlier. It was dreadfully boring work, and his mind refused to focus half the time regardless of however much coffee he drank. He was still waking up in a panic at night. His skin still crawled at times, the muscles in his back and neck where his captor had most frequently enjoyed dropping the scorpions on him cramped and spasmed at random intervals. And while Lionel didn't seem to mind helping, Bond was getting tired of that too.
He could tell his hosts were getting fed up of the poor sleep as well after the passing of an entire week, and resolved to leave soon. He'd given up on the notion of going overseas – he could finally concede that he was still too fucked up to deal with it at this point, that he needed to get his head screwed back on straight first, and stop being sent into hysterics by mundane things like bloody grasshoppers. He could stay inside the country and deal with his own shit like an adult, though. Maybe head back up to the old place in Scotland, that he hadn't set eyes on since he was a child but technically owned. He was tired of feeling like an interloper in other people's lives. He was tired of being treated like a child. He was tired of feeling like he'd completely lost control of himself, and if he couldn't get some measure of control back somehow... well, there was one thing he could easily control. I really should've kept the bloody cyanide pill. But a bullet would do the job too, if it came down to it.
Why the hell M ever thought this was a good idea, Bond would never know. Why he had gone along with it even this long, he definitely didn't know. He could shrug and say he wasn't given a choice, but when had he ever stayed where he was told to stay if he didn't want to be there before? Other than the prison in North Korea, of course.
Another tense supper passed between three exhausted people on Sunday, sliding into another monotonous suburban evening. Olivia pinned him with a glare as he got up to head toward bed. "You still haven't even tried the gabapentin, have you? I found it in the nightstand, still containing exactly thirty pills." She pulled out the offending bottle and set it on the table, its contents undiminished.
Bond returned her accusatory stare but didn't answer. She already knew, anyhow, so why bother?
Olivia narrowed her eyes at him. "Let me guess, you looked up the details of the drug on the internet, saw 'sexual dysfunction' on the list of potential side effects, and, however rare it may be, decided not to even try it lest it put a slight dent in your much-vaunted performance in the bedroom? I already told you Dr. Warmflash said she could do something about the side effects, including that particular one, if it came about, but you can't get over your massive ego and just take the bloody medication already? Your dedication to needless suffering is astounding, I swear."
Lionel leaned back, peering at him with something more like concern than his wife's clear sleep-deprived exasperation, but said nothing. Bond met his gaze momentarily, then looked away. He said nothing in his own defense, honestly preferring her interpretation of the situation to the much more humiliating reality.
He already felt beyond foolish, without her scolding. It was just a fucking pill, after all, and he knew, intellectually, that it might do him some good. It might not, but it might. He snatched the pill bottle off the table, forced his leaden feet to the kitchen sink, forced himself to fill a cup with water, forced himself to tip a pill into his hand, forced himself to throw it into his mouth.
He gagged, badly, and spit it out in the sink before he could even lift the water to his lips, and heaved. He managed not to vomit up his dinner, bringing up only a small amount of something that he immediately swallowed back down, but it was a very close thing. He was sweating, again, his heart up in his throat pounding away, yet another fucking panic attack overtaking him because apparently that was just his life now. He leaned against the kitchen counter, forcing his heart to slow back down.
"It's not the particular medication that bothers you, is it?" Lionel had appeared behind him, but Bond couldn't bring himself to turn around yet.
Bond shook his head, then laughed until it become something more like a moan. When did I completely lose control of my entire life? He finally turned around once he'd manged to get himself back to some semblance of normality, to find Lionel standing at the entrance to the kitchen, with his wife behind him, looking vaguely apologetic just for a brief moment. He scrubbed a hand over his face, still feeling slightly nauseous.
"We're going to have hide it in cheese like we used to do for the old dog, aren't we?"
Bond shot a look that could kill at Olivia. Normally he didn't mind black humor, even at his own expense, but at the moment all he could think of was Her, shoving bitter white tablets into his mouth as her underlings dogpiled on top of his body, grasping his head and neck, wrenching open his jaw for her sharp little fingers to invade him.
"Well, you could always just force them down my throat and smother me until I swallow them, I suppose. Works magnificently, I can say that much from experience." Bond shoved his way past them, jostling Olivia sharply (which was unintentional but he did not feel the least bit guilty about it), and retreated to the bedroom upstairs, even if it did risk making him look like a sulky teenager.
He needed to get the hell out of this house.
"You were a bit hard on him today, love."
Olivia sighed. "Yes, I know, Lionel. It's easy to forget sometimes he isn't just being... well, to be blunt, he's always had a tendency to be a bit spiteful and childish whenever he was told to do anything he didn't like, before. I always trusted him to get the job done, but his methods were often problematic, to say the least. You wouldn't believe the property damage bills that man left in his wake. And, yes, I know the equation has changed, but..."
"But it's easy to fall into old habits. He's going to leave again, you know. If not in the middle of the night, possibly sometime tomorrow or the next day at the latest, I'd wager good money on it."
"Well I can hardly stop him, it's what he's trained to do. He can be tracked down of course. I know his methods, all his habits and haunts, well enough."
"You can't keep hounding after him forever, though, can you? He's not a prisoner, right? I should hope not, anyway."
Olivia sighed, closing the book she had been reading and setting it aside. "No, he isn't a prisoner, but when you work in intelligence, you're never quite your own person again, even if you leave the business. He can't be cut loose entirely, quite bluntly he knows too much. Even if none of this had happened, that would still be true. MI6 will be keeping tabs on him until the day he dies."
Hopefully not too soon, she thought to herself. Miranda Frost's face suddenly appeared in her mind, and she had to swallow against the sudden rage building in her throat lest she scream aloud. The little Judas was dead, and no more could be done about it, other than continue trying to repair what she'd broken. Why didn't I see what was right in front of me? She could blame Frost, she could blame the Americans, but in the end, she knew she had her own collection of failures in this mess. She'd made a dog's breakfast of it all, and now she was making a dog's breakfast of fixing what broke. Of fixing James Bond. She had half a mind to hand in her resignation first thing in the morning, but knew it wouldn't do anything but satisfy all the wrong people if she simply ran off with her tail between her legs instead of taking responsibility for her mistakes.
"I know that look. You're blaming yourself for this, aren't you? You're not the one that tortured him."
"No, I didn't. But I looked that little bitch right in the eyes and saw nothing. She was at MI6 for months. There was always something off about her, but I didn't pursue it. I trusted the people who'd vouched for her, instead of following my own instincts. I should've dug deeper the moment I'd had my first misgivings about her."
"'Her?'"
"The woman who betrayed us. Who betrayed James, right into the hands of our enemies. There was... there was a window of time in which I could have prevented all of it."
Lionel reached out and took her hand, giving it a squeeze on top of the duvet. "Well, if that's truly what happened, what else can you do but learn from your mistake and move forward? You've done your best for Tigger, but it's on him to do his part as well. If he won't stop clawing everyone who tries to help him, there's nothing else anyone can do. You've said it yourself, he's too well trained to confine without force, and force isn't what he needs right now."
"I just wish I knew what the hell he needed right now, because clearly this isn't it."
"For starters, maybe lay off yelling at him, it just makes both of you more tetchy. And you seriously need to find something for him to do, and I don't mean whatever he's been up to on that laptop the last couple of days. Half his problem is that he's just plain bored out of his mind. He's like one of those high energy working dogs that people buy thinking they can keep it in their one bedroom flat and then wonder why everything gets chewed up. "
"I've talked to the psychiatrist and psychologists at MI6, useless as are, Lionel. The one thing they all agree on is that he needs rest, away from high stress and constant danger. He needs to take the time to heal if he's ever going to have a chance at being anything like normal again. Believe me, I know he's bored, but if I send him back out into the field, he'll be dead within a month."
"I didn't say throw him to the wolves, love, I just said find something else for him to do. That doesn't necessarily mean shipping him off somewhere to chase after people who want to kill him. Just get his hands busy, somehow, something that engages his mind."
"Oh, you're right as usual, Lionel. I'll see what I can come up with."
