Three weeks he's in a secure recovery ward after a surgeon stitches up the tear in his lung.
Allegedly he's a 'flight risk'.
It doesn't help that he accidentally strangles a nurse while in the throws of a particularly vivid hallucination when they try first tried to restrain him. After that he's heavily sedated so the passage of time is a non-issue.
When the doctors finally clear him he's processed by MI6, and the agents are significantly less accommodating this time around.
He's strip searched, hosed down and thrown unceremoniously into an improvised holding cell. All brick and mortar with heavy locks and even heavier implications.
There's nothing modern about this place.
It reminds him of Guangdong. No windows. No air. No hope.
They tell him M is dead. He asks about James.
They take his implant.
He folds himself into the lotus position and waits for MI6 to put a bullet in his brain.
That night he dreams.
He can see his grandmother's island, lush and beautiful once more. Untouched by ungrateful hands or diseased vermin.
His mother is there, her dark hair fanning around her shoulders like a halo and she's more beautiful than anything he can remember. She speaks softly in his native tongue and strokes his damaged cheek like nothing in the world has ever hurt him.
She calls him Raoul. She calls him Silva.
He tries to ask her why she won't call him by his name, his real name.
She is confused and asks him what he means.
He tries to call himself Tiago, but the name won't come; the word dying on his lips like a last breath.
Mother shushes him and smiles knowingly, her dark eyes glowing red in the evening sun. She tells him she understands.
She tells him he's home, and home is no place for rats.
There's a commotion outside the cell. He stretches his arms above his head and savors the sensation of his joints loosening.
This must be it.
He welcomes whatever destiny the fates have chosen for him.
The locks slide open, the harsh sound reverberating through the small room and suddenly there is light, blinding and deistic.
When his eyes adjust, he sees James.
He tries to smile but his face will not cooperate.
He must be dead already.
Bond hauls him bodily off the cot and uses a zip tie to restrain his arms behind his back. The plastic cuts into his wrists, but he doesn't struggle, even if the double-0 acts like he's resisting.
James leads him quickly out of the cell, in the process stepping over two unconscious guards.
"You will do exactly as I say, understood?" Bond says, not making eye contact and leading him through corridor after winding corridor. "You will answer my questions or I will hand you over to Mallory and he won't hesitate to kill you."
The statement implies that James does not intend to kill him. It's something he didn't know he needed to hear.
Bond bundles him into a town car with blacked out windows and they're flying through the London underground, past armed guards and MI6 checkpoints, onto busy London streets. They're both silent and instinctively Silva maps their progress in his head, even though he can see exactly where they are.
Four minutes southwest, right turn, twenty-six seconds, left turn, bridge - he closes his eyes and rests his head against the window.
He doesn't know where they're going, but the uncertainty doesn't concern him; he trusts his driver.
At a traffic light James leans over and cuts the tie.
His hands burn as blood flow is restored.
They drive in silence for what feels like an eternity before James pulls into a private car-park off a residential building. Silva wants to snark at the man, say something witty like, "You didn't even offer to buy me dinner first", but the words won't come.
It's for the best.
"Sit."
He does as instructed and Bond pulls a small metal case out of nowhere and places it squarely in Silva's hands. It's the implant. Silva doesn't hesitate to put it back in, relishing the feel of his face reforming around the antiseptic tasting plastic.
Bond watches in silence.
"James-" He starts, not entirely certain of what he intends to say, when 007 cuts him off abruptly.
"Shut it."
He falls silent again and time passes slowly. One beat. Then two.
"You're blonde."
"And you've aged terribly. We all have our crosses to bear."
"You're psychotic."
"Perhaps."
"It's a minute detail, but I want to understand. Help me understand what happened to you." Bond relents, eyes dark.
He hums softly.
"It was the only feasible option."
In two steps, James is beside him, using a firm hand to turn Silva's head to examine behind his ear.
"Skin grafts." Bond replies as he traces a finger along the nearly imperceptible scars Silva has hidden for so long under his hairline.
"Surely you don't think a compound that can burn through bone would leave flesh unharmed? I was not a pretty sight, my love."
He reaches up to lightly clasp James' hand, and guides the man's fingers from the left side of his face down the column of his throat to feel the ropey scar tissue beneath unnatural skin.
"Torture does leave it's mark."
"One sympathizes." James says and pulls his hand away, falling into the seat opposite Silva.
"So I've heard. Montenegro?"
"How did you -?"
"A debriefing report said Le Chiffre interrogated you. I do not want to dwell on the number of poor souls who can no longer reproduce thanks to his quaint little obsession with male genitalia. For a money man he was very, shall we say, hands on."
"How do you know that?"
"The criminal underworld leaks like a sieve if you know where to look. Warlords and dictators are always gossiping - in this economy you have to know what you're getting when it comes to hired help."
"And MI6?"
"Clearly does not know where to look."
007 takes a breath and exhales slowly, assessing Silva's calm state.
"You're nothing like I remember."
Silva laughs and tosses his head in dismissal. He wants to stop this discussion. He doesn't want to rehash the past.
"Obviously." He says smoothly, with an edge of finality to signal this particular line of questioning is over.
Something flashes in Bond's eyes, and the man is immediately on his feet, stalking toward Silva. The reaction is not anticipated by either of them.
This James does not handle teasing like he used to. Perhaps that was to be expected.
"I don't 'remember' you at all." Bond says, face unreadable and voice raw. "Because there was nothing left to remember you by. No photos. No notes. No tokens of affection. We were so thorough that there was nothing left of us when you died. And you did die, Tiago," He puts a hard emphasis on the name, almost spitting.
"Because I mourned you. MI6 burned everything until you were nothing but a name on a wall that thousands of people passed, uncaring, every damn day. So yes, I forgot what you looked like, but I forgot everything. What your voice sounded like, how you smelled, how you tasted - I had nothing left but a name that no one would speak aloud and I. Mourned. You." James' voice becomes progressively tight as he speaks, words choked with emotion Silva can't quite identify.
"So yes, you are not the man I remember, but I can't remember anything. For all your genius you forgot the one thing you have no control over," James leans in and presses his lips to Silva's ear roughly, hissing sharply, "You forgot about time."
The agent pulls away, breathing heavily and Silva can barely hold eye contact.
"James,"
"Don't. Do not placate me. Do not coddle me, and do not bloody well play me. Just tell me what I want to know."
He eyes Bond warily and slumps his shoulders in mock defeat before steel creeps into his voice.
"Fine."
If James wants a reason, wants to understand, he'll tell him everything; but this will be done on his terms.
"I don't know what world you live in, Mr. Bond, but I assure you it is not the same one I inhabit. If you think that after everything I endured, after my country abandoned me, that I should be the same man I was all those years ago, you are beyond the pale."
"You broke, Tiago. I didn't. Neither of us are the same men we were a decade ago."
"Oh, no, no, no, no, James. You are broken, too. You just haven't realized it yet, because you are held together by your misplaced loyalty and 'pathetic love of country'. Not to worry. Soon those little cracks are going to spread, and everything you know will shatter beneath you. There will be nothing left but you and your insanity, because that is what they have bred in us. Double-0s aren't supposed to live this long, James. You know it, Mallory knows it, even the Prime Minister knows it. Because after enough time we evolve into something they can't control, something they fear. You can already feel it, can't you? Bubbling up inside you like a sickness. That is what doubt feels like, Corazón, and it will eat you alive."
He stops speaking and looks pointedly at James, lips pursed.
"Are you still attracted to me?"
"No." Bond responds, without a beat of hesitation.
"Then questions about my appearance are not an issue, not now. Did you think you were alone in your grief? To you I simply died, but my life was stolen from me. Everything I had ever done, poof, gone. Wiped away to cover up for her mistakes. She took my face, my home, my name. She even took you."
"And now she's dead."
"And now she is dead; but you are not, James, you are here and her presence lingers on because you still doubt me."
"You purged our operatives. Bombed MI6."
"I have killed a great number of people, James. A few dead agents are nothing to a man who has lost everything."
"You killed M and blew up my car, my house. I don't want to understand you."
"Oh, but you do, because you still love me."
"Tiago-"
"I think it would be best for your sanity if you started calling me by my other name."
"Silva? Did you pick that yourself?"
"Call me sentimental."
"Pardon me if I want to address my partners by their given name and not something they picked out of an erotic novella."
"That would certainly be a first for you, then."
James balks at the comment, but comes back enraged.
"You killed Sévérine, why?"
"Don't get testy, you fucked her once, only after she relayed the information she was supposed to. As per my instruction. As to your question: we had an agreement and she failed to uphold her end of the bargain."
"You shot her."
"That was the agreement. Her task was to get you to me, preferably without spreading her legs. How naive are you, James? To really think a woman so easily identifiable as a former sex slave would readily jump into bed with a mysterious foreigner willing to whisk her away? Hmm? Nothing about that struck you as odd?"
Bond's gaze is cold in response, and Silva huffs a breath, flippantly waiving away the unwanted look.
"I will let you in on a little secret," He motions for Bond to move closer, but the man doesn't budge. "Sévérine, her little tell?"
He shakes his hand lightly, mimicking the woman's tremors.
"It was not me she was afraid of, Corazón. In you, she saw her end."
Bond furrows his brow but does not reply, so Silva continues on; sensing an opportunity.
"You are as I was, James. Little by little a double-0 loses their soul, until all the darkness of humanity can be compartmentalized. And that is where you've locked me away, in a tiny corner of your mind with all the others you've lost. I can see it in your eyes. I'm right there next to Vesper Lynd, the only difference is that I truly loved you. Them? The used you and yet they claim your loyalty? It's sick, and quite honestly a disgrace to my memory that you give the dead such power over you."
Bond doesn't respond, but his stoic expression is belayed by the manner in which his eyes glisten with unshed tears.
He simply retreats to a room off the main hallway that Silva suspects is an office, and returns with a duffel bag overflowing with clothes. Silva doesn't need to look to know there's a passport and falsified documentation tucked away somewhere inside.
Bond holds the bag out like an offering.
"If you still have any respect for what we had, you'll walk away."
Silva can't process what is happening quickly enough and feels the all too familiar sensation of revulsion curling in his gut.
"I love you, James, I do, but I will rip the skin from your skull if you take this away from me."
James looks more intent, if anything.
"There's nothing left for you here."
"You should have left me to drown in my own blood. Better yet, put a bullet in my brain and be done with me. Would that ease your pain, darling? Make this parting of the ways a bit easier?"
007 doesn't move, he just drops the duffle.
Silva doesn't know what possesses him to take the bag and slip into the night like a common criminal. He thinks later that it might have been love.
Regardless, death would have hurt less than this.
Six months pass. Raoul Silva rebuilds everything MI6 destroyed. He gains back his funds, his properties, his men, everything.
There is a glaring difference, however, between then and now.
He is without purpose or direction.
He's empty.
"What the hell is that?"
"I believe it's a sugar skull, Sir."
Mallory eyes the garish bauble resting neatly on his desk. Bond has difficulty placing where he's seen the item before.
"How quaint. Someone get rid of it."
When Bond returns to his flat that evening he walks right past his dining room table, where a similar confectionary skull sits deftly beside a bottle of Dalmore Trinitas.
When James backpedals, recognizing the out of place items, he finds a short note, written in elegant sprawling script.
We have grown strong together, Corazón. For that I will never be sorry.
James grabs a glass from the wet bar and falls into a leather armchair, reaching to pry the stopper from the bottle when he freezes. The name clicks and the silver stag's head on the bottle glints dully.
"Fuck you, Tiago."
He doesn't open the bottle, no matter how badly he wants to. He simply can't.
The lead crystal tumbler ends up in pieces on the floor.
His eyes burn.