The psychiatrist was an archetypal representation of his profession. With
his weak, blurry eyes behind thick glasses, and a straggly thin beard
attempting to cover his rather undeveloped jaw, he was the last person
Ashleigh felt like opening up to. Instead she watched fascinated as his
pen travelled to his mouth once more, which opened willingly to receive its
biro offering, revealing slightly yellowing teeth, and a very pink fleshy
tongue.
'So, Agent Kain,' the biro was removed from the mouth once more, leaving a long trail of saliva between his rubbery lip and the tip of the pen. The fragile silvery stream broke, and fell, settling somewhere unseen on the dark suit jacket. Ashleigh shuddered. 'I understand this was a very difficult assignment for you.'
'I suppose so.' She shifted on the deliberately uncomfortable chair. It was the last place she wanted to be. Called into this mission against her wishes, she was preparing herself to be deliberately uncooperative.
In went the pen again. He spoke around it, causing his already whiny voice to become muffled. 'Would you care to elaborate upon that?'
'In what way exactly?'
'Well, tell me how you feel the assignment went for you? What do you feel you achieved from this particular assignment?' He was speaking as if he were explaining matters to a slightly slow child.
'I – I'm not sure. Obviously, it was successful, surely that is all that matters?'
'If you think so, Agent Kain.'
The questioning continued in this painful manner. Ashleigh had dealt with these sessions for as long as she had been a member of MI6. There was only one way to get through them, answering the questions as quickly and as briefly as possible, before getting the hell out of there. They covered the usual questions, her childhood, her parents' deaths while she was still young, ('Yes, I believe I was rather upset, my parents were both dead.') and her suitability for 00 status. She answered them all with a practised tongue, and watched impatiently as he jotted down notes on the omnipresent clipboard.
Ashleigh frowned, and glanced at the long mirror that lined one side of the wall. She had an uneasy feeling about it. Outside this room, the temporary HQ set up by MI6 was mysteriously disappearing as quickly as it had appeared. Ashleigh wondered if there was another team of psychiatrists sitting on the other side of the mirrored glass. She resisted the urge to glare at them.
*
On the other side of the glass, M watched as one of her youngest agents was interrogated. She glanced at the tall man standing next to her, watching with cold eyes.
'Tell me, Bond, how did she really do?' M said briskly, folding her arms. It had been the question she hadn't wanted to ask for some time.
'She was good,' Bond admitted grudgingly. 'She was coolheaded when she needed to be, and she seems to be quite professional.'
Professional in the sense that she knew what she was doing when it came to the rules, that her training has certainly been completed to a high level. But on the other hand...
M nodded slowly. She wanted James's guidance, but whether she followed it or not was another matter. 'In your professional opinion, could she ever make 00 status?'
James paused, and an almost guilty look flashed across his handsome features. 'No. She's far too emotional, and too vulnerable to outside influences.'
The dark look that crossed Bond's face left M in no doubt who exactly he meant. The old resentment would always be there, burning beneath the surface. 'I seem to remember a few 'outside influences' crossing your path once or twice, 007,' she said with a wry smile, immediately lightening the situation dragging it away from the thoughts of scarred men.
James conceded the point graciously. 'She's too young, and she gets too involved. It'll destroy her.'
M's head shot up. Once more, she suspected that Bond wasn't entirely referring to Ashleigh's suitability for promotion. Silently, she turned back to the glass, waiting for the next question.
* There had been rather a long pause. Ashleigh felt the palms of her hands dampen with sweat. There was something almost predatory in the psychiatrist's face, and Ashleigh sensed an attack coming. She tensed.
'Tell me about your relationship with the man they call 'Janus'. I understand it was of a sexual nature.'
Ashleigh had been expecting something like this, but she hadn't expected it to be so blunt. She stared coldly at him. 'What?'
'Your sexual relationship with Janus, or I believe you know him by his real name, Alec Trevelyan.'
'That is none of your business.' How easy it was to sum it up, how easy to make it sound so trivial when in fact she felt as if she'd been thumped in the stomach over and over again.
'I only ask the questions I've been told to ask, Agent Kain, so in your own time, please.'
Ashleigh's eyes narrowed. She could sense M's hand in this. Rather than confront Ashleigh herself, M had gone through the official channels, and orchestrated this analysis. Ashleigh fumed. 'I really don't see how this is relevant.'
'As I said before, Agent Kain, I just ask the questions your superiors wish to know the answers to.'
'My relationship with Janus is not important. Or rather, was not important. And I'm not prepared to talk about it.'
'So there was a relationship?'
Ashleigh sighed, and glanced back at the glass once more. Perhaps it would be easier to backtrack and admit defeat. She could just answer quickly, and get this over and done with. 'Yes, there was,' she said shortly, crossing her arms defensively across her chest.
'Of a sexual nature?'
'Yes.' She resisted the urge to revert to sarcasm.
'Were you attracted to Janus?'
She had been. There was no denying it. From the moment she had seen him, she had felt those first flushes of attraction. There was something in his eyes that made her heartbeat faster and her skin tingle at the thought of his touch. She only just managed to control her temper at the stupidity of his question. 'I tend not to bed men I'm not attracted to.'
He ignored the snide comment, but a note was scribbled onto the clipboard with the chewed pen. 'I understand that while Alec Trevelyan was an agent for this organisation, he was a friend of your father's. Your father was...' he flicked the paper over, and Ashleigh scowled. As if he didn't already know. '009 at the time.'
'Yes,' Ashleigh was wary when they started to move into discussing her father. Too many times she had heard the same spiel; too many times her personality had been completely dissected in relation to the 'traumatic' death of her father. And now it was being applied to this. The last thing she needed was a Freudian examination of her childhood again. She felt her hands moving to grip the edge of her chair, but stopped herself, fearing that the nervous action would be read into.
'Is it possible that your attraction for Janus stems from a desire to find a father figure?' The weak blue eyes stared at her. 'And if so, isn't a friend of your late father's the perfect candidate?'
'Oh for God's sake!' Ashleigh suddenly exploded, her frayed temper finally coming to breaking point. 'I'm sorry, but I do not choose my lovers because they fit some subconscious Oedipal criteria to replace my father! I slept with Janus because I wanted to, he's an attractive man, and I was attracted to him enough to go to bed with him. There is no deeper reason than that!'
'Agent Kain, if you will just sit down, we can continue with this,'
Ashleigh found herself breathing heavily and somehow on her feet. It was as if the man had been rubbing salt into open wounds. 'No. I will not discuss this matter with you.'
With that, she turned on her heel, and stormed out of the door.
M and Bond, on the other side of the glass, exchanged a grim look. The door slammed viciously, and at the end of the narrow corridor, a furious looking Ashleigh appeared. She stopped as she saw them both.
'I expected you to be here, sir,' Ashleigh spat, ignoring the fact she was talking to a superior, 'But you,' she scowled at her godfather, 'You are most definitely a surprise. If you were so desperate to know what happened between Alec and I, why didn't you ask? Well? But you should be relieved, because nothing will ever happen again! He's gone; he's made it perfectly clear he doesn't want anything to do with me ever again, so he's gone. Where? I have no idea! Which, I'm guessing, is probably his intention!' Her voice that had been rising suddenly dropped, and a desolate tone crept over her. 'He's gone, James. I hope you're happy. I really hope you're enjoying every moment of my humiliation...'
She suddenly looked very young, and very hurt. With a final defiant toss of her head, a small gesture, she stalked off.
James started after her; not knowing if he was going to comfort her, or rip into her, but going all the same, a hand on his arm stopped him.
'Let her go, Bond,' M said quietly. 'She's in pain, and she needs to be alone.'
Bond nodded, but he couldn't help feeling slightly unnerved by the rather thoughtful expression that had appeared on M's face.
*
Returning to the hotel, Bond discovered from the apologetic concierge that Ashleigh had checked out an hour previously. The news worried James somewhat. Their flight was scheduled for their return to England in only a few hours time. The only logical course of action was to head for the airport, and see if she turned up there. For a second he wondered if she was upset enough to deliberately miss the flight to spite him.
Now seated in the departure lounge, sipping on a mineral water, Bond finally had time to reflect on the mission, and the events since. It had gone well, he had decided. Regrettably there had been causalities, Dmitrov being the notable one. He had been a good man, honest, and hardworking, he hadn't deserved the cruel death he had received. Unfortunately though, these things happened. If he could have prevented the man's death, he would have.
But like Ashleigh, Bond's thoughts kept coming back to one man, and with a sudden jolt of fury, he crashed the glass of mineral water down onto the table on front of him. He was still furious at having been forced into co- operating with such a man as Janus. What had M been thinking? Bond still suspected that Janus hadn't entirely been helping for Queen and Country, there had to be some personal gain for him but Bond wasn't sure what. He refused to think it might have been personal. It was beyond belief that that M could possibly trust him. For too long Bond had tried to push the memories of Goldeneye away, forget the man he once called friend, but for a second time Alec had risen from the grave to mock him. Without Alec, it would have been unlikely that they would have succeeded. And that infuriated James. This silly infatuation of Ashleigh's hadn't helped matters in the least. Alec had known how much it would irritate James, the way he had deliberately flaunted their ... their... what did they have anyway? A few one night stands hardly constituted a relationship. James knew one thing - the sooner they were back in England, the better. She would come to her senses then, and things could go back to some vague sense of normality. He glanced round once more, where the hell was she? If she was trying to make a point, it had been well and truly made.
The doors swept open, and Bond looked up, half expecting to see Ashleigh come through them. Instead he saw a rather attractive red head, with rather startling green eyes. She caught the close scrutiny of the dark Englishman, and gave a shy, but warm smile in return. Bond smirked as she sat nearby, and pointedly crossed her shapely legs. It was the distraction he needed.
Opening up his newspaper, he made sure he glanced frequently in her direction. She really was quite pretty he thought, dainty, delicate, and almost fragile in appearance. She was dressed smartly, but not for business he noted, the novel she was reading was in Russian. He was so focused in trying to analyse her that he didn't notice the woman that stepped up to him. The red head on the other hand took one look at the dark faced brunette that had just arrived and decided to focus her attentions somewhere else.
Bond finally looked up. With neat precision, refusing to show how irked he was, he folded up the newspaper, and put it down carefully. 'You're here then.'
'Don't start, James.' Ashleigh collapsed into the chair next to him, ignoring the ice-cold tone. She looked tired, he noticed with a small pang of guilt, but refused to be moved by it. 'I was hardly going to miss my flight home.'
They sat in silence, until the flight was called, and once boarded, still Ashleigh sat in silence. As the plane leapt from the run way into the grey clouds above, Ashleigh had one final glance at the city below her, the beautiful city she had been so excited about seeing, which had only caused her confusion and pain. There was time for one last look at the way the islands merged into the sea, and then the clouds swallowed the plane up.
*
It wasn't until they were almost ready for landing that Bond risked talking to his goddaughter. A half filled out crossword sat in front of her, but for the last half-hour or so she hadn't attempted any answers, she simply made mindless scribbles and seemed lost in thought. Placing a hand on top of hers, he caught her attention.
'Are you alright?' he asked hesitantly, uncomfortable with the forced intimacy.
She startled slightly; having been deep in thought, but quickly smiled at him. It didn't reach her eyes. 'Of course I am,' she said lightly, her tone revealing nothing.
'What you said earlier,'
She cut him off immediately. 'I'm fine. Really, I'm fine.'
The barrier had come crashing down. Like so many times before, she had retreated into herself, defending herself against getting too close to anything. Or anyone. She sat back into the straight-backed, almost comfortable chair, and refused to let herself think of anything. Russia was in the past. Below her London was waking up to another damp, drizzly morning, commuters hurrying past the bright Christmas decorations that reflected brightly on the slick pavements, the roads already packed solid with early morning traffic, and soon she would be fighting her way among them to get home.
She was home. It was a relief.
'So, Agent Kain,' the biro was removed from the mouth once more, leaving a long trail of saliva between his rubbery lip and the tip of the pen. The fragile silvery stream broke, and fell, settling somewhere unseen on the dark suit jacket. Ashleigh shuddered. 'I understand this was a very difficult assignment for you.'
'I suppose so.' She shifted on the deliberately uncomfortable chair. It was the last place she wanted to be. Called into this mission against her wishes, she was preparing herself to be deliberately uncooperative.
In went the pen again. He spoke around it, causing his already whiny voice to become muffled. 'Would you care to elaborate upon that?'
'In what way exactly?'
'Well, tell me how you feel the assignment went for you? What do you feel you achieved from this particular assignment?' He was speaking as if he were explaining matters to a slightly slow child.
'I – I'm not sure. Obviously, it was successful, surely that is all that matters?'
'If you think so, Agent Kain.'
The questioning continued in this painful manner. Ashleigh had dealt with these sessions for as long as she had been a member of MI6. There was only one way to get through them, answering the questions as quickly and as briefly as possible, before getting the hell out of there. They covered the usual questions, her childhood, her parents' deaths while she was still young, ('Yes, I believe I was rather upset, my parents were both dead.') and her suitability for 00 status. She answered them all with a practised tongue, and watched impatiently as he jotted down notes on the omnipresent clipboard.
Ashleigh frowned, and glanced at the long mirror that lined one side of the wall. She had an uneasy feeling about it. Outside this room, the temporary HQ set up by MI6 was mysteriously disappearing as quickly as it had appeared. Ashleigh wondered if there was another team of psychiatrists sitting on the other side of the mirrored glass. She resisted the urge to glare at them.
*
On the other side of the glass, M watched as one of her youngest agents was interrogated. She glanced at the tall man standing next to her, watching with cold eyes.
'Tell me, Bond, how did she really do?' M said briskly, folding her arms. It had been the question she hadn't wanted to ask for some time.
'She was good,' Bond admitted grudgingly. 'She was coolheaded when she needed to be, and she seems to be quite professional.'
Professional in the sense that she knew what she was doing when it came to the rules, that her training has certainly been completed to a high level. But on the other hand...
M nodded slowly. She wanted James's guidance, but whether she followed it or not was another matter. 'In your professional opinion, could she ever make 00 status?'
James paused, and an almost guilty look flashed across his handsome features. 'No. She's far too emotional, and too vulnerable to outside influences.'
The dark look that crossed Bond's face left M in no doubt who exactly he meant. The old resentment would always be there, burning beneath the surface. 'I seem to remember a few 'outside influences' crossing your path once or twice, 007,' she said with a wry smile, immediately lightening the situation dragging it away from the thoughts of scarred men.
James conceded the point graciously. 'She's too young, and she gets too involved. It'll destroy her.'
M's head shot up. Once more, she suspected that Bond wasn't entirely referring to Ashleigh's suitability for promotion. Silently, she turned back to the glass, waiting for the next question.
* There had been rather a long pause. Ashleigh felt the palms of her hands dampen with sweat. There was something almost predatory in the psychiatrist's face, and Ashleigh sensed an attack coming. She tensed.
'Tell me about your relationship with the man they call 'Janus'. I understand it was of a sexual nature.'
Ashleigh had been expecting something like this, but she hadn't expected it to be so blunt. She stared coldly at him. 'What?'
'Your sexual relationship with Janus, or I believe you know him by his real name, Alec Trevelyan.'
'That is none of your business.' How easy it was to sum it up, how easy to make it sound so trivial when in fact she felt as if she'd been thumped in the stomach over and over again.
'I only ask the questions I've been told to ask, Agent Kain, so in your own time, please.'
Ashleigh's eyes narrowed. She could sense M's hand in this. Rather than confront Ashleigh herself, M had gone through the official channels, and orchestrated this analysis. Ashleigh fumed. 'I really don't see how this is relevant.'
'As I said before, Agent Kain, I just ask the questions your superiors wish to know the answers to.'
'My relationship with Janus is not important. Or rather, was not important. And I'm not prepared to talk about it.'
'So there was a relationship?'
Ashleigh sighed, and glanced back at the glass once more. Perhaps it would be easier to backtrack and admit defeat. She could just answer quickly, and get this over and done with. 'Yes, there was,' she said shortly, crossing her arms defensively across her chest.
'Of a sexual nature?'
'Yes.' She resisted the urge to revert to sarcasm.
'Were you attracted to Janus?'
She had been. There was no denying it. From the moment she had seen him, she had felt those first flushes of attraction. There was something in his eyes that made her heartbeat faster and her skin tingle at the thought of his touch. She only just managed to control her temper at the stupidity of his question. 'I tend not to bed men I'm not attracted to.'
He ignored the snide comment, but a note was scribbled onto the clipboard with the chewed pen. 'I understand that while Alec Trevelyan was an agent for this organisation, he was a friend of your father's. Your father was...' he flicked the paper over, and Ashleigh scowled. As if he didn't already know. '009 at the time.'
'Yes,' Ashleigh was wary when they started to move into discussing her father. Too many times she had heard the same spiel; too many times her personality had been completely dissected in relation to the 'traumatic' death of her father. And now it was being applied to this. The last thing she needed was a Freudian examination of her childhood again. She felt her hands moving to grip the edge of her chair, but stopped herself, fearing that the nervous action would be read into.
'Is it possible that your attraction for Janus stems from a desire to find a father figure?' The weak blue eyes stared at her. 'And if so, isn't a friend of your late father's the perfect candidate?'
'Oh for God's sake!' Ashleigh suddenly exploded, her frayed temper finally coming to breaking point. 'I'm sorry, but I do not choose my lovers because they fit some subconscious Oedipal criteria to replace my father! I slept with Janus because I wanted to, he's an attractive man, and I was attracted to him enough to go to bed with him. There is no deeper reason than that!'
'Agent Kain, if you will just sit down, we can continue with this,'
Ashleigh found herself breathing heavily and somehow on her feet. It was as if the man had been rubbing salt into open wounds. 'No. I will not discuss this matter with you.'
With that, she turned on her heel, and stormed out of the door.
M and Bond, on the other side of the glass, exchanged a grim look. The door slammed viciously, and at the end of the narrow corridor, a furious looking Ashleigh appeared. She stopped as she saw them both.
'I expected you to be here, sir,' Ashleigh spat, ignoring the fact she was talking to a superior, 'But you,' she scowled at her godfather, 'You are most definitely a surprise. If you were so desperate to know what happened between Alec and I, why didn't you ask? Well? But you should be relieved, because nothing will ever happen again! He's gone; he's made it perfectly clear he doesn't want anything to do with me ever again, so he's gone. Where? I have no idea! Which, I'm guessing, is probably his intention!' Her voice that had been rising suddenly dropped, and a desolate tone crept over her. 'He's gone, James. I hope you're happy. I really hope you're enjoying every moment of my humiliation...'
She suddenly looked very young, and very hurt. With a final defiant toss of her head, a small gesture, she stalked off.
James started after her; not knowing if he was going to comfort her, or rip into her, but going all the same, a hand on his arm stopped him.
'Let her go, Bond,' M said quietly. 'She's in pain, and she needs to be alone.'
Bond nodded, but he couldn't help feeling slightly unnerved by the rather thoughtful expression that had appeared on M's face.
*
Returning to the hotel, Bond discovered from the apologetic concierge that Ashleigh had checked out an hour previously. The news worried James somewhat. Their flight was scheduled for their return to England in only a few hours time. The only logical course of action was to head for the airport, and see if she turned up there. For a second he wondered if she was upset enough to deliberately miss the flight to spite him.
Now seated in the departure lounge, sipping on a mineral water, Bond finally had time to reflect on the mission, and the events since. It had gone well, he had decided. Regrettably there had been causalities, Dmitrov being the notable one. He had been a good man, honest, and hardworking, he hadn't deserved the cruel death he had received. Unfortunately though, these things happened. If he could have prevented the man's death, he would have.
But like Ashleigh, Bond's thoughts kept coming back to one man, and with a sudden jolt of fury, he crashed the glass of mineral water down onto the table on front of him. He was still furious at having been forced into co- operating with such a man as Janus. What had M been thinking? Bond still suspected that Janus hadn't entirely been helping for Queen and Country, there had to be some personal gain for him but Bond wasn't sure what. He refused to think it might have been personal. It was beyond belief that that M could possibly trust him. For too long Bond had tried to push the memories of Goldeneye away, forget the man he once called friend, but for a second time Alec had risen from the grave to mock him. Without Alec, it would have been unlikely that they would have succeeded. And that infuriated James. This silly infatuation of Ashleigh's hadn't helped matters in the least. Alec had known how much it would irritate James, the way he had deliberately flaunted their ... their... what did they have anyway? A few one night stands hardly constituted a relationship. James knew one thing - the sooner they were back in England, the better. She would come to her senses then, and things could go back to some vague sense of normality. He glanced round once more, where the hell was she? If she was trying to make a point, it had been well and truly made.
The doors swept open, and Bond looked up, half expecting to see Ashleigh come through them. Instead he saw a rather attractive red head, with rather startling green eyes. She caught the close scrutiny of the dark Englishman, and gave a shy, but warm smile in return. Bond smirked as she sat nearby, and pointedly crossed her shapely legs. It was the distraction he needed.
Opening up his newspaper, he made sure he glanced frequently in her direction. She really was quite pretty he thought, dainty, delicate, and almost fragile in appearance. She was dressed smartly, but not for business he noted, the novel she was reading was in Russian. He was so focused in trying to analyse her that he didn't notice the woman that stepped up to him. The red head on the other hand took one look at the dark faced brunette that had just arrived and decided to focus her attentions somewhere else.
Bond finally looked up. With neat precision, refusing to show how irked he was, he folded up the newspaper, and put it down carefully. 'You're here then.'
'Don't start, James.' Ashleigh collapsed into the chair next to him, ignoring the ice-cold tone. She looked tired, he noticed with a small pang of guilt, but refused to be moved by it. 'I was hardly going to miss my flight home.'
They sat in silence, until the flight was called, and once boarded, still Ashleigh sat in silence. As the plane leapt from the run way into the grey clouds above, Ashleigh had one final glance at the city below her, the beautiful city she had been so excited about seeing, which had only caused her confusion and pain. There was time for one last look at the way the islands merged into the sea, and then the clouds swallowed the plane up.
*
It wasn't until they were almost ready for landing that Bond risked talking to his goddaughter. A half filled out crossword sat in front of her, but for the last half-hour or so she hadn't attempted any answers, she simply made mindless scribbles and seemed lost in thought. Placing a hand on top of hers, he caught her attention.
'Are you alright?' he asked hesitantly, uncomfortable with the forced intimacy.
She startled slightly; having been deep in thought, but quickly smiled at him. It didn't reach her eyes. 'Of course I am,' she said lightly, her tone revealing nothing.
'What you said earlier,'
She cut him off immediately. 'I'm fine. Really, I'm fine.'
The barrier had come crashing down. Like so many times before, she had retreated into herself, defending herself against getting too close to anything. Or anyone. She sat back into the straight-backed, almost comfortable chair, and refused to let herself think of anything. Russia was in the past. Below her London was waking up to another damp, drizzly morning, commuters hurrying past the bright Christmas decorations that reflected brightly on the slick pavements, the roads already packed solid with early morning traffic, and soon she would be fighting her way among them to get home.
She was home. It was a relief.