OpalescentGold: I do not own James Bond or Q.
James has always been the classy type.
He likes to think it might be bred into his bones, woven into his DNA. His father was the consummate businessman, ever in suits and ties, all perfectly ironed and impeccable in their fit. His mother was a woman of fashion and the latest trends, colourful jewellery and a ready smile.
Lounging about as a secret agent, years of service under his belt, James shrugs and indulges when he hears that he will be shipped off to Rome as Senior Adviser and Ops Specialist. Might as well look the part, right?
Despite his wealth, he's never exactly been a materialistic man, so he doesn't go and buy out the whole bloody island. Quality over quantity, after all. Instead, he finds tuxedos and tailors, cufflinks and watches, cologne and martinis. He spends his last few days in Kingston flirting with pretty creatures with dark eyes and knowing smiles.
Rome, now...Rome is magnificent where Jamaica was lovely, breathtaking rather than relaxing, built on years and years of civilisation and emperors and the hubris and skill of mankind.
It takes him a little by surprise, having gotten used to the lulling, free-spirited life of the Jamaicans. Here, it's the wild bustle in the streets, excited tourists and spices in the air, the mingled song of different tongues and fire in his blood. There's a gun in his shoulder holster, knives tucked in his boots, and a smile on his face.
James takes a deep breath and fiddles with the black pen hidden in his pocket.
He was no artist as a child, and that hasn't changed, for all that he now routinely draws blueprints and escape routes, but in the end, he thinks that his sketch of the Colosseum isn't so bad. The dimensions are correct, at least, even if the more intricate details look like squiggles.
A day passes. Then, another, as he runs around, trying to merge the scattered pieces of information he has in his grip into a complete picture.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
James chuckles as the words, elegant and curlicue, appear around his Colosseum in a near perfect circle. He wonders how old his soulmate is now. They have moved on from Java and C++ to more obscure types of computer coding, far surpassing his meagre knowledge of technology.
He knows better but feels a warm glow of pride anyway.
Recently, they have been concentrating more on riddles than quotes. James is rather more straightforward, for all that he's a secret spy, but he does like a challenge so he takes it with nothing more than an exasperated and mildly indulgent sigh.
What can travel around the world while staying in a corner?
He wonders at that for a bit. His soulmate is ridiculously smart, so he isn't so surprised that they have figured out that James travels constantly, especially with the little souvenirs that he leaves on his skin for them.
A stamp.
Not five hours later:
Who makes it, has no need of it.
Who buys it, has no use for it.
Who uses it, can neither see or hear it.
What is it?
James needs only think over this one for two minutes before snorting and writing the answer below, right in the crease of his elbow. He has more than enough experience in this area to find the morbid humour in it.
A coffin.
And then, because he can't help himself:
If you have me, you want to share me. If you share me, you haven't gotten me. What am I?
An hour passes. Two. Are they busy? Or merely stumped? Too hard?
A secret.
James smiles. Good, they're clever. He likes that.
What is always coming but never arrives?
He leaves that one alone for a week, first preoccupied with a disaster in Vietnam and then at a loss for an answer. It comes to him as the sun rises, and he's absently doodling the Trevi Fountain over his knee.
Tomorrow.
The first year passes in a blur of white hot lightning and dull aches. On his birthday, he visits the Pantheon and spends an hour sitting nearby, carefully, meticulously drawing the building in a sketchbook he bought on a whim. Later, in the privacy of his apartment and the glow of stars and streetlamps, he recreates it on his chest.
There is no definite response, but he expects none. They may be able to fire riddles back and forth, but their answers are for themselves, not each other. It's an abstract ideal, not something concrete, and so, gratitude or thanks will never appear on his skin.
However, James does get this in the middle of a truly dreadful day with two agents on the run, another requiring medical evac, and a magnificent screw-up in Afghanistan:
"We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude." - Cynthia Ozick
He smiles when he sees it, mood lightening for just a moment. The slight reprieve gives him the objectivity to step back and take a look at the big picture. He manoeuvres the information around into something useful and gets the agents out.
The second year he spends rushing about in Pakistan and Lebanon, chasing after terrorists and practising his Urdu and Arabic. He charms three women, two of whom are already married, shags the brunette, and gets the info that England needs.
On his thirty-fifth birthday, he sits at a bar and requests a martini: three measures of gin, one of vodka, one-half of kina lillet, with a thin slice of lemon peel - twist.
"Shaken, not stirred," James includes as an afterthought. He experienced the concoction at a fancy bar that all but cleared out his wallet two weeks ago, and he may have gotten addicted. The bartender he seduced the recipe from wasn't at all bad either.
Shaking his head slightly, he rolls up his sleeve to find out what his soulmate has for him today.
What is greater than God,
more evil than the devil,
the poor have it,
the rich need it,
and if you eat it, you'll die?
They seem to have a never-ending supply of riddles, but James finds it an entertaining distraction from the half tedium, half exhilaration of his work. Sometimes, the riddles are too much for his addled brain to grasp after too much paperwork or too many gunshots (or too many martinis), but they never leave him hanging or give him flak for his lack of response.
For tonight, he considers the prompt while languidly sipping at his martini. After twenty minutes, he writes down with the black pen that remains perpetually in his pocket:
Nothing.
And then, because it's his birthday, and he's an active field agent, and he's thirty-five today, and it's becoming increasingly unlikely that he will never even know what his soulmate looks like before the world fucks him over, he adds:
What gets broken without being held?
The answer comes not two minutes later.
A promise.
James sighs and feels a decade older than he is. For once, he falls asleep on a cold and empty bed. As always, he dreams of a silhouette he cannot touch, a figure always running, running ahead of him, unreachable, but he wants, needs -
James wakes up.
On one pleasing day with full sunshine and a mild wind, when he's in the United States, working back-channel sources to soothe the hissy fit China's throwing, James sits down in front of a computer and searches up drug addiction, the drug in particular being cocaine.
The reason being the wobbly words on his right arm.
Sy mptom s: dilated pupils, energetic... fast heart beat, euphoria, hallucination s, agitation, excitement...
Rehab: C BT... TC s ... MI...
Sherlock is a bloody w anker. Told him to get clean. Told him. Now he's high again. Stupid fucking co...caine.
James has no doubt that his soulmate was drunk last night. Which, if they're not doing so illegally, means that they're older than sixteen, which is something to celebrate, however bittersweetly. That their brother is apparently a drug addict? Not so much.
He cannot help but wonder how long this has been going on. Considering they only let it spill when intoxicated, it's probably been weighing on their minds for quite a while, not that he can blame them.
"Bloody hell," he mutters when he comes across how wearing an addiction can be on a family member. He has had some experience with drugs before, mostly when disrupting the channel, but it's never been personal. Not like this.
Over sixteen or not, James knows that his soulmate, clever and witty, doesn't deserve this. He knows it. Still, he doesn't even know what gender they are, much less their appearance or name, not their address or number. There's nothing he can do to help them deal with their addict brother.
His grip nearly splinters the cheap desk. He hates feeling helpless.
James scowls when he notices it's time for him to get going again. Quickly scribbling down some rehab centres in England should his soulmate need it - though, with their intellect, he doubts it - he grabs his gun and keys and shuts the computer down.
Just before he leaves, he adds something that might help their hangover:
I can only live where there is light, but I die if the light shines on me. What am I?
He receives an answer a mere hour later and smiles gently.
A shadow.
In China, as he sketches the Great Wall:
What kind of room has no doors or windows?
A mushroom.
In France, whilst he savours sweet macaroons:
Give me food, and I will live; give me water, and I will die. What am I?
Fire.
In Spain, where he shoots a man in the face:
He has married many women but has never been married. Who is he?
A preacher.
In Afghanistan, when the memories are overwhelming him and he can't breathe:
I have keys but no locks. I have a space but no room. You can enter but can't go outside. What am I?
A keyboard.
In Iran, right before he blows up a building and barely escapes with his life:
I'm always there, some distance away. Somewhere between land or sea and sky, I lay. You may move towards me, yet distant I stay.
The horizon.
And back in Rome, after he collapses in the hotel bed with an exhausted groan:
What occurs once in every minute, twice in every moment, yet never in a thousand years?
M.
Bond comes into his own as an agent by thirty-six, flirting as easy as stealing, lying as easy as running, tracking as easy as shooting. He cajoles and steals and grins and fires. Callouses litter his skin, and blood stains his hands. This is the glamorous life of a secret agent.
He misses England. He knows England does not miss him, cannot miss him.
Where is my home?
"Home is where the heart is." - Pliny the Elder
James laughs, a tad bitterly. His soulmate is a romantic. Who knew? They'll be disappointed if they ever get around to meeting James.
He takes a beautiful thing with devastating curves and sparkling green eyes to his bed that night. When he wakes up in the morning, he throws up in the toilet and leaves her without a word.
Be careful what you wish for .
James gets reassigned to London, MI6 Headquarters. He's still a Mission Specialist, only now he's within the Black Ops.
It's not so bad. It doesn't make much difference. Within a month, he's off to Cuba. The only difference now is that he's required to go back to London to report and debrief.
"Bond," Bill Tanner greets when he returns five months later, nodding respectfully. "She'll see you now."
M has not changed much in the seven or so years since he last saw her. Still regal, still striking, if with more lines around her eyes and a harsher mouth. She takes him in with a single glance, and he has the unnerving feeling she can see right through his bullshit although he's still at the door.
"James Bond reporting for duty." He saunters in confidently and sits down, completely relaxed if also aware and watchful as befits a field agent, a fantastic one, in his humble opinion. He doesn't back down any more than he did when they first met, and after a moment, she nods.
"Your record for following orders is abysmal," she says.
He shrugs. "I got the job done, didn't I?"
"If you hadn't, we would have fired you a long time ago."
He smirks, spreads his hands. "And here I am."
Four hours later, Bond is on a plane to Austria. He rolls his shoulders and takes a sip of scotch. He's developing a taste for the stuff. Luckily, his job is both high-risk and high-paying.
The slap of paper on desk is muted but still enough to make the boffin jump. He stammers, head snapping up fast enough to give him whiplash. Big, frightened eyes stare at Bond, who has recently returned from Russia and is in a spectacularly bad mood.
"Tell me what this means," he orders and walks away.
Over the past year, James' soulmate has turned their interest from riddles to increasingly exotic and indecipherable coding. Not that it ever really stopped, but it used to be just the random line of numbers and letters, clearly just a reminder for later.
Now, it's getting as bad as it was when they first discovered the world of technology at their fingertips. Black ink covers a very questionable amount of James' skin, and he's getting exasperated at having to go through cans of mark concealer like bullets.
He knows they're brilliant, but do they really need to write everything down? And on rather uncomfortable places as well? He doesn't need fucking code on his arse. Christ, how old are they now? It would be just his luck for his soulmate to have a coding kink.
To keep his mind off of increasingly strange thoughts, James goes out and drinks two martinis and one glass of scotch. Then, he smiles at a pretty blonde, she smiles back, and he spends a rather enjoyable night making her scream.
The morning after, he stands in the bathroom and scowls at the neat lines of characters on his neck. How can they even read that themselves? Are they writing in front of a mirror? Jesus Christ. He escapes with his clothes and the lady's scarf before any awkward questions can be posed.
After a quick stop at his flat to hide the ink and yet another note to buy some more of the mark concealer before he runs out, Bond heads back to MI6 for a mission. Hopefully not a discrete one, seeing as his soulmate can't be trusted to behave at the moment.
"M-Mr. Bond?" The quiet, timid voice comes from his right as Bond waits for the elevator, and he turns with a raised eyebrow. The boffin from before is fidgeting restlessly, but his hands cling to the wrinkled paper, and there's an odd excitement surrounding him.
Bond smiles, carefully trying to appear less threatening, and nods towards the paper. "What do you have for me?"
"I - where did you get this? Uhh, sir?"
He fights his first instinct which is to start planning out how to make this particular boffin disappear and the smaller details of how to gently encourage his soulmate away from the megalomaniac cyber terrorist route. He doesn't try to prevent himself from narrowing his eyes, however. "Why? Something wrong?"
The boffin hesitates before shaking his head vigorously. "No, no! It's just...this is amazing!"
...well. That isn't what he was expecting, although maybe he should have. He's had years to familiarize himself with how smart his soulmate is. "Amazing, huh?"
"It's like nothing I've ever seen, and I'm a senior member of Q-Branch!" the boffin gushes, all but bobbing up and down on his toes. "From the looks of it, it's a very small piece of a fail-safe protocol, a safeguard for secure information, if you would, but God, this is revolutionary! Do you have any more?"
Bond considers for a moment before smiling and reaching out to take the paper. "No, sorry. It's good though?"
He looks crestfallen but nods glumly. "Yeah. If we had that sort of coding, our information would be so much more secure."
"MI6 will keep, and so will Q-Branch." Bond pats the boffin on the shoulder in reassurance and steps into the elevator. "Thanks."
"Y-You're welcome!"
When Bond turns thirty-eight, he kills a man with his bare hands and shoots another. He is given a license to kill, and a new moniker, '007', the youngest Double-Oh agent in history. Being a Double-Oh is not all that different from being a field agent, only with more blood and more sex and more injuries.
But. There is one vast difference that James finds hard to accept.
"Not a single thing?"
"Nothing," M says, stern, although there is a hint of compassion in her eyes. "You're the elite of the Secret Intelligence Service now, 007. Your very existence is a government secret. We do not know who your soulmate is, and any communication is a security risk.
"I'm not going to - "
She overrides him mercilessly. "You may have chosen to keep your name, but make no mistake, your life belongs to MI6 now. You knew the consequences of this life, so there will be no contact whatsoever between you two, am I clear? Set off the ink detector and you're done."
Bond was surprised when that machinery first appeared in his Double-Oh tests. An ink detector only activates when real ink is on his skin, not the "echo" that appears from his soulmate. It's also, he knows, going to be a repeating and utterly unpredictable evaluation from here on out.
Theoretically, M can hold that hoop up whenever she wants and order him to jump through however many times she wants. The smallest indulgence could cost him his career, and honestly, that's a risk even a gambling man like him won't take.
Which means he's actually going to have to go through with this.
Bond's fingers clench involuntarily. His love of country has demanded many things of him over the years. Trust, for one. Honesty, for another. Innocence, naivety, a nice, peaceful life. Hands free of murder, relevant relationships without the stress of betrayal or secrecy.
But this -
This -
Bond is no fool. He knows that M's feeding him propaganda at best and bullshit at worst. She's not lying in that the Double-Ohs are the elite, and like all elite, must be kept uncompromised and stronger than steel.
Soulmates are nature's most efficient compromisers.
Not only do soulmates come with an ingrained set of instincts that not even the most trained agents can fight, one of the most important ones happens to be trust . Even soulmates who meet on the street as strangers can't help but trust each other implicitly from the very start.
Needless to say, in the business of espionage, soulmates are the number one reason for treason, betrayal, and death. There's no helping it when an unknown can bring every last wall crashing down, render an agent utterly defenceless with no effort.
Now that Bond is a Double-Oh agent, MI6 can't risk him finding his soulmate, either purposefully or not; they'll simply too much of a vulnerability, a living, breathing chink in his armor. He has no doubt that his new peers are single as well.
He knows, yes, he understands, but that doesn't mean he's at all happy about it.
"Crystal, ma'am," 007 grits out and stalks out to get himself blind drunk, resentment burning in his veins and something worse, colder, aching in his heart.
It's hell at first. This is a habit of nearly two decades; this is a cheeky, intelligent soulmate; this is one of the few constants of his life.
England is a cruel mistress, indeed.
Bond entertains himself with three women and one man over the course of the first two days. After that, when he finds himself fiddling with a black pen and a half-written letter on the back of his hand, he goes through his belongings and throws away every single one of the pens. He knows how he is with temptation.
Then, he smokes through a whole pack of cigarettes and drinks a bottle of good scotch. He curls up on his bed and shakes uncontrollably, wanting, wanting .
When he's sober once more, he stocks up on concealer cans and does the only thing he can. He throws himself into his work as the new 007 and ignores the way his fingers twitch for something other than a gun.
Dryden wasn't wrong. His third, deliberate, unauthorized kill is much easier than the first. His hand trembles afterward, longing to write just a quote or maybe a riddle or even just some lines like those early days in the Navy, but Bond digs his short fingernails into his palms and seduces an ambassador's wife instead.
It takes a while for his soulmate to notice. While it's not uncommon for several messages to go back and forth between them in the span of a single day, sometimes James will be busy and not write anything down for weeks at a time.
His soulmate's always been relatively consistent, though. Something every two days, one if they're thrilled. He stares at the string of numbers and letters on his arm on the plane back to London for an inordinate amount of time, a bitter taste in his mouth.
There's a gaping maw in his chest now, the ache from before transforming into something deeper, crueler. When he doesn't suffer from nightmares of a vulnerable neck in his grasp, he drowns in darkness, endless and cold. In his dreams, he doesn't understand, searches for someone he can't find, lonely and confused and lost, until he wakes up, gasping and shuddering.
Bond smokes constantly, the smooth feel of the cigarette rolling between his fingers an unsatisfactory substitute, but the best one he can find. Alcohol helps numb the compulsion, too. The worst times are the nights, when he knows no one is watching him, when he knows even sleep will bring no oblivion, but he gets over those by occupying himself with warm bodies and hollow pleasure.
When, three weeks in, he finds himself snapping at everyone who attempts to talk to him, temper balanced on a knife point and lungs constricted with pointless longing, he takes a mission that'll require all of his attention and leaves before he shoots an ally.
God, he never quite knew just how bad this... thing ...was.
By the fourth week, his soulmate knows something's up. They can't ask him directly, and he's thankful for that, not sure he could stop himself from writing back if they could, but he wakes up one day covered in zeros and ones. Binary code.
Bond is no boffin, but he's been in intelligence for years. He can see the patterns in the numbers, repeating over and over. Like that first message, written so many times, it became meaningless for them, meaningless enough to bypass the rules.
He knows he shouldn't. He writes down the sequence anyway.
This is for him, he knows instinctively. Personal, as much as it can be. Like hell he's going to Q-Branch for this.
Bond has always been a quick learner. Between two missions, four seductions, three murders, and one attempted drugging, he learns binary code in ASCII scheme. When he finally has the translated version in front of him, he nearly bites through his bottom lip and ends up getting drunk again.
Are you okay?
He doesn't reply, can't reply. A week goes by in a daze of alcohol, smoke, and sex. Nothing quite manages to numb the misery. Then, another series of numbers. He gives in to his masochistic desires and translates that, too.
Did something happen?
Yes. Something happened. James became 007. James decided his country was more important than his soulmate. James is an idiot and screwed the fuck up, and damn it, James is sorry. He doesn't write back a thing but clenches his teeth and carries on with his day.
His soulmate doesn't stop. The messages come faster and faster, the digits skewed as if by panic.
Are you mad at me?
Please write something.
I'm sorry.
Are you hurt?
Write something, damn it.
Please don't be dead.
It's the last one that firms his desperately wavering resolve, despite how much it makes him hurt. The thing about soulmates who have never met is that it's near impossible to know if they're still alive or not, especially if there was little communication in the first place.
Not that it lessens the anguish if there is an abrupt disconnect, as James can certainly testify now, but there's no loose ends to be tied up, no definite finale.
Bond means what he said to M. Double-Ohs don't live long. Better to let his soulmate believe him dead now rather than lead them on and truly devastate them later. And he knows he has enemies, will make even more in however much time he has left.
He punches a hole in his living room wall and spends the night in a drunken miasma, knuckles still bleeding. God, James really does hate himself sometimes.
The notes come slower after that, as if his soulmate is resigned now and merely persisting because of routine and stubbornness. No more binary code, but pieces of poems, quiet and somber. He should be disappointed they're not giving up but is instead selfishly glad.
(Up until now, it's only been James who has refrained from contact, and that's been difficult enough. He doesn't want to know what it'll do to him if they go completely quiet, despite knowing full well how fucking hypocritical that is.)
In the silence of his apartment, James clings to whatever his soulmate gives him and traces the letters on his skin for as long as he can.
"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
- Dylan Thomas
Then, he meets Vesper Lynd.
Vesper, Vesper, Vesper. Beautiful, glorious Vesper with her dark hair and dark eyes and dark passion.
Bond falls fast and hard over poker games and banter and fire and rejoices in the new lack of pain in his chest. He is happy, oh so very happy for the first time since he became a Double-Oh, and he is sincere when he resigns from the service to travel with her to Venice.
England and MI6 have taken so much from him, and James will not allow them to take Vesper as well.
At first, he wants desperately to believe she is his soulmate. But no, the age does not work out, and her expertise is in money, not computers. Still, he loves her, and she loves him, and so that is enough. That must be enough, and it isenough, at least for a short while.
"Your soulmate?" she asks him, tracing nonsensical designs on his bare chest.
He holds her close, knowing she sees nothing of the ink that still occasionally appears on his chest. He doesn't read the excerpts anymore before concealing them. The present needs to be better than what-ifs. "Dead," he lies, and it's almost the truth. "Yours?"
Her red lips twist. "I don't believe in soulmates," she says, and there's something in the cadence of her voice, as if she is repeating something someone else told her.
He is confused - soulmates are acknowledged worldwide - but accepts it, contented with knowing that their circumstances allow them to be together. It is not uncommon for a couple to fall apart because of a soulmate-related issue.
They spend her birthday in Venice under the sunlight, laughing and smiling and so, so in love. He procures a cake for her, she blows out the candle and makes a wish with a glorious smile and obscured eyes, and they kiss under the moonlight.
When they tumble into bed again, he worships her body and presses an adoring kiss to her lips. For once, he doesn't think about his soulmate at all.
James gives Vesper his trust, his faith, his love.
And Vesper betrays it all.
In hindsight, he wonders why he ever thought his bloody cursed luck would let up.
Bond names his favorite drink after the women he loves and captures the man she loved, the one who told her soulmates don't matter. White gets away despite his best attempts, and James takes back his resignation and drops Vesper's necklace in the snow.
Then, he returns to England and breaks down in his apartment.
Everything that can be smashed is smashed. He smokes through three packs of cigarettes and bloodies his knuckles. The bar is emptied, and he has never been so grateful for the limits of his body, for the numbness of black oblivion as tears run down his face.
He cannot blame her, cannot hate her. She saved him, deceived him, but she was just as much of a victim of love as he.
When Bond wakes up, it's noon, he's naked, a hangover is attempting to kill him, and her name is written all over his skin in his own distinct handwriting.
"Shit," he mutters. He doesn't remember writing a single thing down last night, which probably means that something went through to his soulmate. His soulmate, who has been under the impression that he is dead and now has an unknown woman's name inked lovingly upon their skin.
And here Bond was thinking he couldn't despise himself any more. Good to know he can still surprise himself.
He drags himself up and swallows three paracetamol before throwing himself in the shower. Luckily, he used a regular pen, seeing as the special ones have already been dumped in an incinerator, and the accusing words wash off with a bit of scrubbing.
He doesn't try and delude himself into thinking they didn't see it.
Now, more than ever, Bond hates that his own name is too relevant to get through while the name of the woman he loves isn't. He fully understands the burning rants he's heard all too often about the utter stupidity of the soulmate rules, opens the wound on his hand again when he strikes the bathroom tiles, leaving a streak of red that soon washes away.
Maybe Psych was onto something when they labeled him "self-destructive".
He takes two days to sober up and look acceptable. He has to practice for half an hour the confident stride that came so easily to him before, the arrogant smirk that is his signature as much as his name, before he can make it to MI6.
007 goes on a mission to Japan because he can. Because he needs to. There has been nothing from his soulmate since he fucked up, and he doesn't delude himself into thinking they will give him another chance no matter how much he wants to.
James wouldn't want himself either.
Perhaps if he had stayed, he would have heard the rumors of the cute new boffin in Q-Branch with rumpled hair and sad eyes.
Bond's skin stays clear for two months. He does his job, drinks, smokes, shags, and does it all again, empty on the inside and cold on the outside. On his seventh mission after Vesper, he gets himself captured, tortured, and breaks out to destroy the building with an explosion.
When he wakes up in Medical, he's thirty-nine, and there's ink on his chest in painfully familiar handwriting:
"Drink from the well of your self and begin again." - Charles Bukowski
He stares at the words for the longest time, the heart monitor beeping faster and faster. The relief that crashes through his meticulously built defences and rubs his heart raw is enough to make his eyes sting.
James closes his eyes to keep from embarrassing himself and sighs through his nose. "Stubborn bugger," he murmurs but a smile pulls at his lips, and he can breathe easier, the numbness receding just a bit to be replaced with gentle warmth.
Thank you, he wants to write, but even if he could, they wouldn't be able to see it.
James doesn't deserve his soulmate. And his soulmate definitely doesn't deserve James.
But damn it all if he isn't happy for the first time since Vesper.
Agent Bond is 007. In many ways, 007 isn't James Bond.
That doesn't change. Might not ever change. It's a miracle he hasn't kicked the bucket yet.
Without parents, without friends, without lovers, 007 has only his loyalty to Queen and Country, his loyalty to M, to sustain him. He's the supreme spy he's meant to be, the killer and the torturer, the affair and the betrayal, the chaser and the chased, the secrets and the cruelty.
007 does what he needs to and returns home to England with blood on his suits, lies on his lips, and hidden ink on his skin.
Sometimes, Bond wishes that his soulmate would just give up already and leave him be, go out and find happiness for themselves without the burden of an unresponsive secret agent. Sometimes, James hopes that his soulmate will stay with him until he's six feet under.
What he has now is nothing like what was between them before, the easy back and forth, the innocence and the playfulness. And he misses it, can't help but miss it, the desire to write, to touch his soulmate through words, still hovering in the back of his mind. Still, he has something even though he's a Double-Oh, and he's pathetically glad for it.
His soulmate is silent most of the time, occasionally long enough for James to panic that they might be dead, but somehow, when James needs them after a long mission or a ghastly kill or an agonizing torture session, they're there with anything from a short line of code to a paragraph-long poem on his skin.
James doesn't know how they know or if it's just coincidence or if this is yet another thing that soulmates can do, but with all of the crap in his life, he's fine with just letting this one comfort be, lest it disappear as well.
(He thinks he just might completely go to pieces if that were to occur.)
He spends his fortieth birthday taking down a terrorist organisation, seducing and then watching a blonde widow die, trashing a motorcycle, and keeping himself afloat in a lake for three hours before a helicopter arrives to get him out. When he collapses on the hotel bed, he finds:
"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." - Roald Dahl
It's a nice sentiment, although he's fairly certain that the secrets he's tasked with finding aren't nearly that innocent. Nonetheless, when he falls asleep after a shower, he's smiling faintly.
007 accidentally destroys another Aston Martin during the following year. He continues to explode something once every two missions and gains a reputation for poker and stunts and one-liners. When his birthday comes around again, he's given three very nice gadgets from Q-Branch.
Boothroyd enthuses about one of his subordinates, claiming extraordinary talent and ingenuity, but Bond tunes him out within moments, more interested in the repaired car behind him, shiny and lovely.
A thought occurs to him, and 007 interrupts Q to ask, "Have there been any changes in protocol lately?" He hasn't heard of any, but it's becoming clearer and clearer that his normal handlers are conversing with an outside source during his missions, especially during tough spots.
Bond isn't complaining. The new intel is more thorough, the directions more concise, the support more all-encompassing. He can relax more easily nowadays, though he still gets shot at every other day. Still, it's in a spy's nature to be curious.
Boothroyd gives him a confused look and tells him no, nothing's changed since the last time he was here. 007 frowns slightly but gets distracted by a set of keys being pressed into his hand.
"Live in the sunshine. Swim in the sea. Drink in the wild air." - Emerson
With the windows down, the breeze in his face, and the car purring sweetly, James grins.
When he turns forty-two, M gives him leave for a day and Tanner brings him out for a drink. Bond gets a martini and watches Tanner steadily grow drunk with amusement, the man complaining about his wife all the while. He returns to headquarters the next day and is given an exploding pen, to his delight.
"Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure." - Rumi
On his forty-third birthday, Bond nearly bumps into a boffin in glasses and the most hideous cardigan. He gets a mumbled apology, and the boffin runs off before Bond can even get a word in. James eyes the retreating boy in amusement but when he returns to his cold, empty flat, he feels oddly more settled. Content.
"But groundless hope, like unconditional love, is the only kind worth having." - John Perry Barlow Read
"I said take the bloody shot!"
Bond spends his time on a small island near Turkey recovering from two bullet wounds and yet another betrayal.
He drinks his days away, spends the nights with a woman he barely acknowledges otherwise, and carries on with the help of painkillers from the black market and quiet, simmering resentment and agony.
All these years of service, and M has him shot by a green agent with shitty aim, throws him away with barely a second of hesitation, and for what? If Moneypenny nearly killed him, then their target got away with the information they needed.
Bond knows he's been getting on in age as one of the oldest of the Double-Ohs, nearing mandatory retirement age, but the stab in the back from someone he trusted was still a torturous surprise, even though he's seen it happen over and over.
Oh, he knows the cost of being MI6 all right.
James first woke up with ink on his chest and a strange look on the local doctor's face.
"The woods are lovely,
dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
and miles to go before I sleep,
and miles to go before I sleep."
- Robert Frost
James turns the words around and around in his head as he heals, slowly and painstakingly. It sounds disturbingly like the closest his soulmate's ever gotten to depression, and it pricks at him, even as M's order continues to haunt him in his dreams.
They can't possibly know how close he came to death...can they?
"Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets." - Paul Tournier
James isn't sure of anything anymore. Not M, not MI6, not even his soulmate. Because, vague as they're being, as vague as they've been for the past five years, now that he thinks about it, it's looking more and more like they're privy to who he is, or at least, very close.
With their technological prowess, he has to admit that there's a high possibility they could have hacked their way into MI6's network. But if that's true, then...they think he's dead.
"Damn," James says.
He manages to hold out for another three days before borrowing a pen from one of the natives. He's not 007, not Agent Bond; he'll bloody well communicate with his soulmate if he wants to. When he finally has the tip hovering a centimetre from his arm, he hesitates, and suddenly, it's like he's twenty again, trying to ease the imagined desolation of a young child.
James settles for sketching the shoddy hut he's staying in and hopes that it's innocuous enough to actually get through. He makes to put the pen down and finds he can't.
This, he decides, must be how recovering addicts feel. He's kept himself away from the temptation for so long, but a single hit, and abruptly, he wants more, needs more. The craving slips through his walls, sleek and innocuous, only to dig into his heart until it's stuttering and exposed.
Momentarily, he recalls 'Sherlock' and his cocaine obsession. Has the bastard gotten over it yet?
Because he can, he writes the question down, right beneath his knee. When he falls asleep, it's with ink all over him and satisfaction thrumming in his heart. For once, he dreams of clever quips and entertaining puzzles and confusing code instead of Istanbul.
To James' surprise and disappointment, there's no response for the next five days. Helplessly, he wonders if they have had enough of him, if this final indication that he is alive after nearly five years of silence is enough to make them turn away from him, give him a taste of his own medicine.
It's an agonising thought, and the what-ifs only compile from there, his years of experience a valuable resource for picturing every possible way this can go wrong. As a last resort, he distracts himself with alcohol and a scorpion, as if he finds joy in flirting with death. And then:
"Emergency crews are still attempting to assess the damage as investigators hunt for leads in what now appears to be a major terrorist attack in the heart of London. No one has yet claimed responsibility for what sources are calling a possible cyber-terrorist assault' on the British Secret Service..."
A thirty-year-old man with bright eyes and messy hair stands in the heart of Q-Branch as squads run around facilitating the move from their old headquarters to the new underground base, fingers typing rapidly and brilliant mind occupied with the notes on his skin from a so-called "dead" agent.
OpalescentGold: Thanks so much to gunshyvw and Linorien for their mad betaing skills. Next chapter's probably going to take a while, courtesy of exams I am trying to avoid studying for.
yuumuki: Oh, really? Welcome then! So glad you enjoyed this, hun, thanks for the wonderful review!
Guest: Lolz, I appreciate it. XD.
chibianimefan26: Oh, darling, come on over to this side, we have cookies :3. I'm so happy you like my story, and thanks for the review!
AzureLazuli: Aww, thank you so much! *blushes*
1sunfun: ^-^
ShoshonaTheRose: Lolz, here you go then, sweetie. As for those questions, all shall be answered soon. Except for the perspective one, whoops. Redamancy will be mostly in James' POV but I do have a WIP with Q's POV. Thanks for the review!
ladytoyko: It is! My poor soulmate would have to deal with my pathetic drawing skills, though. Hope you enjoyed this chapter!
Guest: XD, of course. Here you go!
OpalescentGold: Many, many thanks to all of my reviewers and readers; you guys are awesome. Until my exams are over~