Summary: An ex-007 reunites with an old flame…and her cello. Bright Star 'verse. Reading at least some of the rest of the series is advised.
Note: I liked Timothy Dalton's Bond with Maryam d'Abo's cellist Kara Milovy in The Living Daylights (1987). That's why I'm putting them back together in this fic. I've already had Damien Drake (my version of Dalton's 007) be a huge fan of Kara's cello music in previous stories in this 'verse, so I've been leading up to this for a while. Romance stuff (PG) is in the second chapter. First chapter is just general family fun and teasing from Scarlett Papava's POV, since we haven't had much to do with her yet.
Lady with a Cello
Chapter 1
27 June 2018
Q looked more harried than usual, Scarlett Papava (MI6 agent 004) thought, surveying the drama playing out at Q-Branch with a deceptively languid gaze.
The Quartermaster was directing 003 Jack Mason around the city in a run-of-the-mill car chase while his minions typed furiously, taking orders from their overlord between his terse directions to Jack.
Q, Scarlett mused, was like an orchestra conductor. Or perhaps a puppet master who held all the strings and pulled this one and that in an intricate pattern to make the puppet move smoothly like a living thing.
"003, that's left, not right. I told you to turn right. Oh, never mind. Turn left at the next intersection, then right…Enemy vehicle coming up the street on your right at the next intersection. Good. Angela, helicopter to these coordinates…"
Amid the flurry of activity around him, Q paused, sighed, and checked his watch, frowning at the time.
Scarlett tilted her head. Definitely late for something, she thought. Something special; he had taken more care than usual in his appearance. His normally wild hair was smoothed down…as far as it could be tamed, at least. He was wearing a crisply-ironed shirt under a maroon jacket (velvet, Scarlett mentally moaned; their resident quartermaster was not known for his good taste…but only when dressing himself, as he thankfully stuck to conventional fashions when outfitting his agents), and his trousers were creased especially neatly down the front and back.
Date? Mmm, no, not nervous enough. Q tended towards anxiety when it came to social interactions outside of the safety of the lab and Six.
"Planning on going somewhere?" she purred into his ear, stealing up behind him on silent feet, despite her five-inch stiletto heels.
To his credit, he didn't jump. He never did, which was something she – and all of the other agents – liked about their Quartermaster.
"I was, but I definitely can't now," he sighed despondently. "This is going to take all afternoon and probably all evening to wrap up, and then I'll be too late to make it today."
That was the way of things at MI6. Things were always blowing up (mostly literally) and one had to be flexible and able to change at a moment's notice in order to be comfortable and successful there.
Q was definitely an expert at this; despite his mutterings about the inconvenience, they all knew that he'd drop everything in a heartbeat to help his agents, even if it was to do something that wasn't completely…official, or even legal. They knew it and loved him for it.
"What's the occasion?"
"Birthday. I guess I'll just have to courier his gift out to make it. I hate giving gifts late if it's not absolutely necessary, especially something like this." His lips pursed with displeasure, but he shook it off with a shrug. "C'est la vie."
"Want me to deliver it for you?" she asked. It wasn't something she'd do for just anybody, but Q was special, and he seemed so damned disappointed, like a sad little kitten, that she wanted to cheer him up.
He brightened immediately, right on cue. "Would you? It would be a bit of a drive. A couple of hours out."
Scarlett gave him an unimpressed look. "Q, darling. I travel to foreign countries for work. Driving a couple of hours is something I do for fun."
The younger man smiled gratefully at her. It was a shy little thing and made her want to pat him on the head. She resisted. "Thank you. Let me go and get it."
He hurried to his office and came back, a hastily-scribbled sticky note stuck to the top of a large cellophane-wrapped basket.
"Bollinger RD, foie gras, and caviar?" she asked, eyeing the champagne approvingly. "Must be a very good friend." The look she gave him would be called a leer had it been from anyone else, but Scarlett Papava didn't leer.
Q's smile quirked up mischievously. "Oh yes. Knows me better than anyone."
Well. Now that was a mystery that Scarlett wouldn't be able to resist, and Q knew it.
"A very good friend with a terrible name," she commented, glancing at the sticky note. "Hartley Winterbottom?"
"Yes," Q said sympathetically, "Horrible, isn't it? But he's a lovely chap, nevertheless. Thanks for doing this, Scarlett."
"You're very welcome, Q dear."
One of the minions hailed Q over, so she slipped out to make her delivery to a man with a ridiculous name in a town she'd never even heard of.
. . . . .
Scarlett pulled her bright red (scarlet – Q loved a good pun, and that was an easy one) Bugatti to a stop next to a silver Lamborghini. There were three other vehicles parked on the gravel lane next to the cozy-looking house. One was a big shiny truck – American, Scarlett thought. Definitely an American.
The address Q had given her had been on the outskirts of a tiny village almost two hours out of London. The village, Scarlett had seen, had a single one-pump petrol station, one grocer's market, and a tiny post office. It was very quaint.
She walked up the stone path to the front door and pressed the doorbell. She spotted a tiny camera disguised as the peephole and recognized Q's work. Another glance at the doorbell button made her suspect that it was a fingerprint scanner.
Interesting.
A distinguished-looking older man with graying hair and a pleasant smile opened the door. A golden retriever peeked out at her from behind his leg, a curious expression on its face.
"Scarlett, what a pleasant surprise," Damien Drake – ex-007 and Q's father – said.
They'd first met during Q's convalescence after he had been injured in what had become known around MI6 as the 'Bond's Epic Sibling Rivalry Affair' back in 2015.
She held up the basket with an impish grin. "Delivery for a Hartley Winterbottom?" She now understood Q's comments and the twinkle in his eye when he'd handed it to her.
Drake took the basket, shaking his head with exasperation – the gesture and expression were eerily similar to Q's when dealing with his agents. "Winterbottom Jr. thinks he's a comedian. Come in, Scarlett. Let me get you a drink."
"Happy birthday, Mr. Winterbottom. Hullo Horatio." She bent down to offer her hand to the dog to sniff and gave him proper pets. She liked dogs, and this one was an especially friendly one, although he was apparently a complete coward; Q's cats Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing terrorized him every time they met.
The usual suspects filled the sitting room: former 005 Stuart Thomas, former 003 Victoria Winslow (Scarlett had kept in touch with her after meeting her at the Drakes' Christmas party in 2015), former 007 Sam Carmichael (whose reign was between Drake and Bond's), and former CIA and DEA agent Ivar Bryce. The truck, Scarlett surmised, must be his.
"Winterbottom?" Bryce laughed. "Danny sure is gonna be sorry when he gets here."
"Perhaps I should have named him Chrétien after all," Drake mused, pouring Scarlett's drink into the shaker.
"Bloody hell, don't tell me that was actually in the running," Thomas said, making a face.
"Not my idea," Drake answered, amusement lurking about the corner of his lips. He knew exactly what he was setting his son up for when he did eventually get here. "Roland was also on his mother's list. Heloise and Hildegard, too."
"That's awful," Carmichael said, shaking his head. "What was she thinking?"
"He's put an envelope in here for you," Victoria said, taking a peek at the basket. "Aren't you going to open it?"
"Hold your horses, woman," Drake grumbled, handing Scarlett her drink. "You can open that champagne, like I know you're itching to do."
Victoria sent him a sideways glance and smiled, doing exactly just that. She handed him the envelope. "Hartley."
He glared at her while the others snorted and snickered.
"What did he write?" Bryce asked, while Carmichael slipped into the kitchen to grab the glasses for the champagne.
"None of your business," Drake grumbled, slipping his reading glasses on.
Quick as lightning, Thomas pilfered the envelope right out of his hand, flipped the flap open and slid the contents out, dancing out of Drake's reach as he did so.
"Ooh, tickets."
Drake put his hands on his hips, again looking very much like his son when he was put out. "Stuart, you bloody arsehole."
"He's sending you to Vienna, first class. And oooohhhh…" He looked mischievously over the edge of the paper at Drake. "He got you Kara Milovy tickets. They're for tomorrow night."
"That boy gets it right every time," Bryce chuckled. "You and your cello girl."
Muttering under his breath, Drake snatched the envelope and tickets back, only for Thomas to slide the letter out of his grasp and pass it over to Carmichael, who had returned with the glasses.
"Greetings to my venerable parent. Allow me to offer my most sincere felicitations on adding another pearl to your string of glistening years…'" Carmichael pretended to read out loud in an overly dramatic and extremely pretentious voice, rolling his 'r' and enunciating each syllable, but that was as far as Drake let him get before the letter made its way back into the hands of its intended reader.
"Assholes, all of you," Drake grumbled and settled down to read his letter.
Victoria leaned over the back of his chair to read over his shoulder, but he shoved her off lightly with a glare. She chuckled and went to sit next to Scarlett, who was highly amused at their antics.
"How are things, Scarlett?" Victoria asked.
"Business as usual," she replied. "And you? How's the writing going?"
Victoria was an author of spy/suspense novels, following in the footsteps of many a professional spook before her. She wrote under an alias, of course, as it would be incredibly imprudent to use her real name, and Victoria Winslow was not an imprudent woman.
She had evidently penned her first volume as a challenge that had been laid by Bryce, who relished in writing rather bad romance novels in his spare time. She had once made a pointed comment about the quality of his work, so he had grumbled and challenged her to do better. Her first novel had been a success, and had ended up on the New York Times Best Sellers List. Bryce had thrown his hands up and committed himself to being her number two fan (the number one spot was already taken by their nephew, Danny Drake, of course).
"It's going well. I'm halfway through my next one."
They chatted for a while, Scarlett sharing the current (non-classified) MI6 gossip and the two of them exchanging funny little stories of things that had happened on their travels – Scarlett, of course, having done much more traveling since they'd last spoken than Victoria – with the others joining in every once in a while.
It was possibly the most laid-back and relaxed party Scarlett had been to in a long time, both for work or in her personal life.
"So is this how parties are after retirement?" she teased lightly, "Nothing wild, no bar-hopping, shootouts…?"
The older men and woman in the room traded amused looks and hidden smiles.
"Our lives are incredibly boring now, I'm afraid," Carmichael said with a deadpan expression on his face. "Definitely no shootouts."
"Speak for yourself," Thomas said, emptying his glass. He was still living the adventurous life on his boat, the Francis, which many a pirate had learned to fear.
"Except for him," Carmichael amended, then thought again. "And her," he said, tilting his head at Victoria, who smiled mysteriously. "She had what one might call an adventure a few years ago."
Bryce whistled and waved a hand. He consulted for the American government at times when they needed his vast expertise.
"And him." Carmichael paused. "Is it just me," he said, looking at Drake, "or have the two of us gotten very boring?"
"Didn't you have an adventure a few years ago, too?" Drake pointed out.
"Right, I did." Evidently, his emergency rescue of Bond, who had gotten himself into a scrape, wasn't exciting enough to count.
"So I'm the only one who's a good, retired civilian," Drake said with affected dignity.
"Yeah," Thomas agreed, "But you raised the Chaos Child, so I'm not sure if you qualify."
Drake conceded the point with a quirk of his lips. "There you have it," he told Scarlett, who was grinning over Q's nickname, "We're not quite as boring as you think we are. I have definitely earned a quiet birthday party, I should think."
"Don't tempt fate, Day," Bryce teased.
"Don't make me kick you out, Ivar," Drake threw back in the same tone.
Suddenly, Horatio sat up and his ears twitched forward, heralding the crunch of car tires on gravel outside.
"Danny?" Thomas asked hopefully. "Or trouble?"
In fact, the atmosphere of the entire room had brightened up considerably. Scarlett had the feeling that even if their mystery visitor had malicious intentions, they would still be more excited than worried.
"Must be Danny," Drake responded, pulling his phone out to check something on it. "Didn't set off any alarms on the way in."
"It's him," Bryce said from the window, where he'd pulled the curtain back a half-inch to check. "Must have wrapped up ahead of schedule."
Scarlett found it rather endearing how such illustrious, greatly-revered retired spies crowded out of the room and into the front hallway, bickering and shoving each other playfully, so eager were they to meet their nephew (or son, in Drake's case) at the door. The dog, being smaller than the humans and quicker on its feet, won. Scarlett lingered in the back, since she had just left Q and had no urgent need to greet him with such enthusiasm.
"Whoa," she heard Q say, "Okay, okay, I'm here. I'm not too late, am I? Bill said he would help R and Eve cover for me and shooed me out."
"Of course not, Chrétien Winterbottom," Thomas said, which was met with laughter from Q's family.
Q squinted at him, pushing his glasses up his nose. "What?"
Bryce chuckled. "Yeah, call it revenge from your old man. You should know better than that by now, Roland."
"Heloise, you mean," Carmichael cut in impishly.
"What?" Q's voice squeaked comically.
"Yeah, evidently you should be glad that your dad had the sense not to name you Hildegard."
Q glowered ineffectually at Drake, who smiled angelically. The younger man shook it off. "I suppose I'll let you have this one, since it's your birthday," he allowed with a displeased wrinkle of his nose and a prim purse of his lips.
He squeezed past his aunt and uncles and hugged his father tightly. "Did you open it?" he asked quietly.
"I did. Thank you."
A silent conversation passed between them, then Q let go with a light pat, a satisfied smile spreading across his face.
Scarlett always liked watching Q and his father interact; it was blatantly obvious that they loved and respected each other greatly. She might have been envious, having had nothing like that in her own life, but she liked Q too much to feel anything approaching resentment. He had his life and she had hers, and that was that. She was content with these brief glimpses of a happy home life that Q allowed her to see.
And maybe…maybe in the far distant future…She quickly shut that thought down; that was no way for someone like her to think.
"I'm sorry to have sent you all the way out here for nothing, Scarlett," Q said, finally turning to her. "I hope you at least got a drink out of it."
She grinned at him. "And blackmail fodder galore, Chrétien."
Q groaned. "What will it take for you to not tell anyone, especially Alec?"
"What are you offering?"
Q narrowed his eyes and worked his lips thoughtfully. "No snow or desert jobs for the next two months."
"Six."
"Four."
"Done."
"And how are you going to manage that?" Sam wanted to know.
"Change the code in the analysts' program. I wrote it, after all." He said it with that little tilt of the chin and sniff of his slightly lumpy nose that meant that what he proposed was child's play to him, though it might be challenging to others. "And if all else fails, I know things, and they know I know things."
"Of course."
. . . . .
Scarlett had been stepping carefully, metaphorically, being amongst people who were like her, but who weren't at the same time. They were completely at ease with each other, having been friends – or rather, a family – for much of Q's life. They were, however, slightly on their guard with her, and she knew that they weren't sharing all of the points of their personal lives that they might have had she not been there.
Danny – she had to stop thinking of him as 'Q' when he was with his family – had relaxed and was laughing at his uncles' anecdotes and enduring his father's fussing with only a token grumble. He checked on her often, sending her glances as though making sure that she was comfortable. She smiled back at him; she liked being with his family; they were solid proof that even double-ohs were normal human beings capable of love, and could have a life after retirement…if they made it that long.
The quiet murmur of conversation was interrupted by the buzz of Danny's phone.
He pulled it out, deflating as he read the caller ID, and answered it, seeming to magically metamorphose into the Quartermaster as he did so.
"Yes, sir," he said crisply, his spine ramrod straight. "I've got my laptop. I can coordinate it from here. Yes, sir, right away."
He hung up and made a face. "Sorry, Dad," he said, gathering his omnipresent laptop bag and heading for the door.
"That engine you were working on is still on the desk in your room," Damien reminded him, "and the air conditioning is out in your lab. You took it apart for parts, remember?"
"Damn," Q muttered.
"You can use my study."
Q brightened and rushed out of the room, throwing a "Thanks, Dad!" over his shoulder.
Thomas snorted. "Frankly, I'm impressed that you refrained from telling him to clean his space."
"Oh, he's not leaving this house without doing it, barring an international emergency," Drake said, sipping at his martini. "He's nearly thirty; I'm not picking up after him anymore."
"Lies," Bryce coughed into his fist.
"No, no," Thomas disagreed, "His gadgets are off-limits. Damien won't touch those; never know when one might blow up. Anything else is fair game, though."
Drake threw a cushion at his head. "I'm neat. What's wrong with liking things to be clean? Some people might like living in a literal minefield, but I happen to feel more comfortable without explosives underfoot."
"Really? Explosives on the floor?" Scarlett asked. The man had to be exaggerating.
"All over," Drake said, completely serious. "And if it wasn't my son, then it was the dog."
Scarlett looked over at the golden retriever sitting with its head on Bryce's prosthetic knee.
"Not this one," the American said, patting the yellow head. "The one before him, Puck. And then there was the raven. Now it was an absolute menace when it came to stealing things and hiding them."
Drake groaned. "Quoth the raven. Hated that bird."
"Smart, though," Carmichael commented.
"Hated it. And the dog."
Victoria leaned over to Scarlett and said softly – but not softly enough to not be overheard, as was her intention – "He did not. He moped around the place when they died until Danny got him Horatio."
Drake glared at her and would have responded, but the sound of Q's raised voice in the next room, muffled by the walls, drew their attention.
"Turner, you'd better not be thinking of blowing that building up!"
"Isn't karma a beautiful thing?" Thomas snickered.
"Dammit, Caleb! What did I tell you? Caleb? If you're dead, I will not be attending your funeral!"
"So much for that quiet birthday, eh, Damien?"
. . . . .
Notes:
27 June - UK premiere date of The Living Daylights (1987). I was going to use Timothy Dalton's birthday (21 March) but it's a week after Danny's, so I didn't think that would work.
Hartley Winterbottom is one of the names for Timothy Dalton's character on Chuck. I highly recommend watching Season 4, just to see the magnificence of Dalton hamming it up.
Victoria writing spy novels is a reference to Ian Fleming (wrote the James Bond novels), John le Carré, and Graham Greene, who were all spies who wrote spy novels.