Chapter 11

M & Silva

M woke in a small cottage that felt...somehow...like a memory from childhood that fluttered within the memory...like an old dream.

M stood and noticed that she was not aching and a glance in the mirror told her that she was still young...in her twenties. She looked about the small cottage and smelt fresh baked bread as she helped herself and to the pot of still warm tea.

What was going on here now?

Everything she wanted was somehow here before her. Her clothing was casual and comfortable like she was on a long forgotten cherished holiday. A holiday, like...back in the late sixties. Wait if in this was a dream and she got whatever she wanted? That meant…

M ran out of the cottage and headed over the hill and down the lane. As she ran...she noticed that the air was crisp and cool, indicating spring or fall. The sounds of waves crashing against the shore became closer and closer.

M instinctively took the path along the coast to the right of the road and continued at a jog. Around the next bend she saw two chairs in the distance, a blanket and a picnic basket.

M could only see the back of a tall man down on the beach as she made it to the chairs on the rise.

M began to cry and run as fast as she could to the man in the distance, but as she ran she heard another call out to her.

"M!" That made her stop and turned to her left. The air around her began to heat up and she looked at herself. Her clothing had changed, she was now dressed for work. The man coming up to her was familiar. The warm sun beat down on his blond hair and the bruises and marks on his face from his latest battle made her frown.

"Bond? What are you doing here?"

"What are you talking about M? You came to the Bahamas after the Skyfleet disaster."

"No...I...I don't want this! Where is Nigel? I have to find him!" M felt beyond desperate and panicked. How did it go from England in Autumn to the Bahamas? This was all still just a bloody stupid confusing dream.

Enough with the self pity! How can she use this dream to find Nigel. She lost him...twice...and it hurt so much that she could still feel it within this shadow of reality.

M was trapped in this bloody dream just at Tanner, Eve and Bond are. Each of them trapped in the swirling memories that inspire them.

"M...I'm sorry for being a prat but I was on a lead and there is something major going on here."

"I know Bond. I know that there is always something major going on...why do you think I work so late and never get home on...time." M realised that Nigel must still be on the beach, so she turned away from Bond and walked back towards the beach but Bond kept after her.

"You know that even if I disregard your orders it is only for the greater mission. I don't mean to piss you off but I want to win...for you." He reached out to gently caress her face.

M's eyes went wide in shock at his action and turned suddenly to storm away from him. How dare he! Standing there bruised and beaten, sun kissed like a Greek Adonis and...and...flirting! With her! He was at once everything she wanted and detested at the same time!

"Only you could be so bold!" She mumbled as she hurried away from him onto the beach. A beach...that's where she was going...to find...wait...who...what. Olivia paused on the beach as the sea changed and she was no longer in the islands but back home along the British coastline and back again. Switching back between sun and clouds her vision was hazy.

She caught movement in the corner of her eye but she trudged along beginning her search once more.

Bond was following her along the beach. Olivia sensed him as if she had become attuned to his body...his scent and definitely his behaviour. This was what he was trained to do...his modus operandi where a female target is concerned. Not once in all these years had she ever thought...hoped that his focus would be turned towards her.

Dreams tell a truth that the rational mind would like to ignore. Olivia's hidden desire for one she should not...is one such truth.

Olivia continued on as she searched this beach for what she man she had lost through time and disloyalty.

Bond grabbed her arm and she turned to let him have it!

M's heart broke a little at what he said...suddenly it sounded as if at a distance, as if this were all a conversation over the phone. The Casino Royale case...Vesper.

"The bitch is dead." He said over the phone after he lost Vesper...oh my god the pain!

Nigel...

M felt the crushing weight around her heart just as Bond must have, to have see her drown before him. The loss...the finality...can he not have what she had with…Nigel, someone young enough to share a proper life with.

Suddenly the memory of the hospital smell. Nigel lying cold on the bed...NO! NO!

M shook out of Bond's grasp and ran from him down the beach. Nigel! She needed to find Nigel! He can't be gone...not now...not again. Not like Bond's lost love.

All she wanted to do was hold him and say goodbye. He never regained consciousness in the hospital before he died. She'd never had the chance to say she was sorry...she loved him...and a final goodbye.

Bond's first love...M's first love. The parallels strike her in her desperation to search for some kind of life in all this death and destruction.

She feels a weight bearing down on her that makes her feel tired. The horizon changes, muted as if through a hazed lens like in old film close ups of female characters. The world was changing again to cold from the heat of the Bahamas and it seemed to stop moving.

Bond had stopped trying to delay her from finding...

Nigel...she knew she saw him on the beach getting ready to share the sunset with her. That time so long ago...where they made love on the grass of the embankment in the glow of the setting sun.

Just as she was about to reach out and grab him...

M woke yet again with a sense of calm for a moment. It was if she died. Then she realized that she was on a ship and was still trapped in this bloody dream. A dream within a dream, although she felt somewhat rested now.

There was a stomping on the deck above and she could hear a voice that brought horror to her waking and dreaming hours. The sudden lurch of the ship seemed to echo the feeling in her stomach.

"No...he's dead...Bond killed him...Scotland…it's just a dream...just a dream."

M pulled her knees up to her chest as she sat in the corner of the bed with the blanket pulled up around her. She wanted to hide under the covers like a child but it was all just a dream. One from which she couldn't wake.

What would happen to anyone who died when dreaming? Would it be like dying in your sleep? Was it time for her to go?

M looked at her hand and noticed that it was wrinkled again. She was no longer young. Her memory had expired and now she was just Olivia. Too old continue to be M much longer and too bloody old fight Silva off. Not that he would want her in that way...now.

Old and wrinkled was perhaps her self preservation kicking in. Silva had wanted her years ago when she was younger but he couldn't possibly now. And Bond...he was the same. He needed her as a mother figure until he saw her young. His eyes had nearly popped out of his head, but that was all just in her dream.

Bond was a fantasy to her. Having a young handsome man desire you at her age was all just part of her dreamscape. Even if it had become a bit more coherent since they all met on that ship.

M looked down at the clothing she was wearing and it was still the same but her hair was short again, just like she liked it. She felt a little more rested and it must have something to do with Q. He must have had them sleep and actually get some almost dreamless rest.

There was a thumping on the stairs, M shuffled out of the bed and over to the small table, quickly scanning the area for anything that she could use as a weapon.

The door was casually opened as Silva looked in. "Ah...you are finally awake."

"What do you want Silva. This is all just a dream and you're dead!"

Silva crossed the room to hover above her like a predator.

"You would like to believe that wouldn't you. It is true that you left me for dead but I will never be dead in here." Silva pointed to his head as he smiled maliciously at her.

"Once I wake up you will be gone."

Silva stretched out his hand to touch her face. M moved back against the cabin wall as far as she could. His touch was cold and shivers crept up her spine. She wanted to be brave...but the fear and revulsion began to gurgle and come up.

M began retching. He couldn't possibly…want...

"I don't care how you make yourself look or act in my presence M...I still want you. You are my creator and my death. My mother and father. Like the sun and the moon chasing each other through the sky endlessly throughout time. I killed your husband and I will kill your lover. You will belong only to me."

"NO! I have no lover and my husband has been dead over a year."

"Yet you are still trapped here with me...you cannot leave me. I reside in part of you that you can never purge. Bond cannot knife me in the back in here. Or are we really here? You could be bleeding out on that cold church floor after being shot by one of my mercenaries in the fight."

"Enough! That did not happen!"

"I told them not to touch you. They were all warned just to shoot Bond." Tiago shook his head in remorse. "I held that gun to your head but you were there you saw the doubt in my eyes. The frustration...even in that courtroom I killed may without thought but when I aimed my gun at you…"

"You pulled the trigger."

"I was aiming for your shoulder when I did and I had the opportunity to kill you then and there. In fact I had the ability to kill you for months. I knew where you lived and I know that Bond does too. Very unprofessional to allow an agent to know where you live M. I would have thought that you had learned from Hong Kong...but no."

Tiago was playing at innocent but M knew that he was anything but that. "Let me go…please." M began to panic.

He was so close to her. The madness in his eyes. Death might be better than was may come to pass. I the deepest recesses of her memory she knew deep down that he was gone but that he wanted this from her. Her death was not enough. He wanted to consummate the desire he had for her all those years ago in Hong Kong.

In the past whenever an individual was attracted to M she would try to casually brush the flirtation aside and remain professional. That always tainted the relationship, once that line was crossed. Tiago was that way with her. The way his eyes lingered had made her feel uncomfortable then and that was the same now.

"I've never wanted you that way and you know it Tiago!"

"Yes and it never stopped me from wanting you. That husband! Blah...he was not enough man for a woman like you. No! The passion we could have had...can have now...would be so much more than what that old man could give you."

"He wasn't always old and you know it. I'm old now...don't you see it?" M tried to rationalize with a mad man in her own insane dream.

"No...I see you as a middle aged if not a younger woman...as you remember yourself in your dreams. Even if you're old I would still want this."

"No this is absurd!"

"Don't you see M...you and I are tied together. I have thought of little but you for all the years we were apart. I held your image in my head as the Chinese tortured me. You and you alone gave me the strength to survive. It took me years to build up to it and to find out what had happened to Olivia Mansfield. Once I uncovered that you had traded me and traded up to a letter M...then my path was clear."

Was this inevitable? The price she was to pay for giving him up all those years ago? Then there was Skyfall. She almost died. If it hadn't been for Bond...

"I've always loved you M." Tiago said with a look caught between lust and anger.

Tiago...Silva would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life. He bloody well destroyed the very building that commemorated his loss as an agent. He almost destroyed her career and after this incident with the orb...she would be forced out. He had taken everything she had worked for and destroyed it! The only thing he never managed to take was her husband...until now.

Nigel died a natural death, thank god. M wouldn't have been able to bare having him see her become such a failure...brought down by a distant past mistake. She was thankful he didn't live to see her humiliated like this.

"Why are you doing this...why am I doing this to myself?"

M put her arms out to hold him away from her but he pushed her up against the cabin wall. Pinning her body with his. His massive head coming closer...ducking down to kiss her.

Silva's mouth covered hers and prevented her now silenced scream. M's solitary screams of panic echoed in her own head.

Tanner and Bond stood on either side of the ship looking out with spy glasses trying to see any sign of the pirate ship.

Bond wouldn't stop pacing and occasionally pounded his fist on the wooden rail, or door or whatever was handy.

"Try to relax James. I don't think anything bad will happen to her in her own dream." Tanner said.

"How do you know? What if she felt such guilt over turning him over...such grief over her husband that she decides to consciously let her self die in here?"

"I don't doubt M. She would never take the easy way out. Give in...let herself go into the unknown when she knows we're still here. Not really, at least I hope she doesn't." Tanner said confused.

"We need to hurry." Bond said in response.

"Then again she has recently been kidnapped twice and watched her father and husband die. No...I'm sure M will push through regardless of what happens in her dreams." Tanner added cautiously.

A crewman suddenly called out and Tanner and Bond pulled the spyglass up to their eyes.

"The ship!"

"All hands make ready and catch that bloody ship!" Bond screamed.

"Aye...Aye captain!" They shouted.

Eve left the cabin and came to join them on the deck. "We found them?!"

"Yes. Get the crew armed and ready. We go save the damsel in distress and then touch the orb. Tanner you try to get directly to M while Eve and I fight the rest of the crew and Silva. Keep a good grip on that bloody orb so we can finally get home."

"I promise to do my best." Tanner said very serious suddenly. "We need to get out of here and to do that. We have to save M...from the ghosts of her past."

To be continued...