Summary: How to Retire 101: Spy Edition. Bond doesn't know how to make retirement stick, so he asks Q, who knows a few retired spies and might know the secret formula. Bright Star 'verse.
Story number 50 in this 'verse! Woo-hoo!
Bright Star 'verse notes if you haven't read it: Basically, this 'verse is about Whishaw!Q, who is the son of Timothy Dalton's version of 007 (I've named him Damien Drake to avoid confusion by having multiple James Bonds in my series), and the rest of his family, which is made up of a bevy of retired spies.
Reminder: AU in that Bond sticks around after Spectre instead of leaving with Madeleine. For this one, I basically borrowed the bits of No Time to Die that I liked and ditched the rest.
End-of-Career Counseling for Spies
Chapter 1
2016
"007, please either stop making my techs nervous or vacate the premises."
James Bond had been milling around Q-Branch, sneaking behind the minions and whipping them up into a nervous tizzy in an uncharacteristically absentminded manner for the last two hours.
"Q," he said, finally sauntering over and leaning against the quartermaster's desk with his most nonchalant air, making the young man eye him suspiciously, "You're acquainted with several retired spies. How does one go about…quitting effectively?"
The reason he had been loitering (and lurking) about the place was that he was trying to work up the…courage? No, not courage. Trying to make up his mind about whether to ask for this kind of help. Personal help. Something that had nothing to do with what Q as the Quartermaster of MI6 could give him, but what Danny Drake, the son of a retired double-oh agent and nephew to even more ex-spies, could provide.
Q sighed softly. "You're finally ready then, you old shipwreck?" he asked, tilting his head and crossing his arms in a pensive attitude.
Seeing something in Bond's face, he nodded and stood up, leading the way to his office, where they would be able to discuss things in a more private setting.
"To be honest with you, I don't know," Q said thoughtfully, sitting back in his chair in that careful way he had that was almost dainty. "I'm sure there isn't one specific formula. Everyone I know has gone about it in a different way. You know my father's story. Rather abrupt, but I kept him extremely busy and distracted for a dozen years until I left for school. He had to learn how to deal with the boredom then, but I believe he's content with his life as it is now. He's got plenty of little projects around the house to keep him somewhat entertained."
'Like knitting,' Bond silently inserted with a mental grimace. He didn't think he wanted to come to that.
Q smirked at him, knowing what had gone through his mind. "He participates in community activities, and every once in a while he'll go sailing with Stuart or visit one of the others." He moved on. "Sam…didn't have much of a choice, really."
Bond had read all about his predecessor's final days in the position, which had been hastened by fourteen months in a North Korean prison as a captured spy. The less said about it, the better.
"He pottered around a bit uselessly for a while after he was done, had his ups and downs—more downs than ups, unfortunately. But he's in a good place now. Victoria…went about it sensibly. She's always sensible, you know. She chose her time and did it. It took her a while to find something she wanted to do, but as usual, she excelled at it when she found it. She writes spy thrillers. Stuart, obviously, had to retire when he got sick, as it took him a while to get back on his feet. These days, he's still sailing and having moderately less strenuous adventures. Just for fun, rather than as a job. Ivar – same story when he lost his legs, but kept up as a PI until he retired completely…mostly. Then he went mad with boredom and started writing extremely bad bodice-rippers—"
"Are you pulling my leg?"
Q grinned at him, knowing just how absurd the last words that had poured out of his mouth had sounded. "Under a pseudonym, of course. He knows they're shit, but he thinks it's funny, and if it keeps him from going off the deep end, then why not?"
Bond found himself closing his eyes slowly and fighting the urge to rub his temples. "Your family is…"
"Extremely unconventional? Yes, we're aware." Q turned to his computer and clattered away at his keyboard for a moment. "Here. I've programmed my father's address into your car's GPS. He gives end-of-career counseling."
Bond raised a brow.
"He was the first of them to stop completely," Q explained, his jade green eyes soft with deep understanding.
Inexplicably, the younger man's expression made something inside Bond's chest twist. He wasn't used to people understanding him like this. But his quartermaster was special, and always had been. He had practically been bred for the job, and didn't balk at providing even unconventional assistance to his agents, such as emotional support and, apparently, referrals to a personalized retirement counselor. Of course, he often sighed and melodramatically mourned his allegedly soon-to-end career in espionage, but he always came through. Always.
"You're not the only one who's struggled with this," the younger man said gently, "It's difficult to give up a life like yours, especially after so long. Ultimately, it's up to you to figure out how to stop, but it helps to talk to someone who knows exactly what you're leaving behind and what you're facing. You've already tried quitting cold turkey, so to speak, a couple of times. You might want to try the gradual route. Ease into it. Er, or out of it. You know what I mean," he finished with endearing awkwardness.
Bond nodded, his brow furrowed, and left as silently as he came.
Q texted his father:
'Incoming: Brooding, angst-filled agent at loose ends. Prepare end-of-career lecture and PowerPoint slides.'
'Bond?'
'Obviously.'
'I'm sure the sarcasm helps with the brooding and the angst.'
'I don't know what you're talking about. Of course it helps. He even cracked a smile. I'll admit that it was possibly an involuntary facial spasm, but I'm classifying it as a smile.'
. . . . .
It was mid-afternoon when Bond found himself driving up a gravel one-lane road that was more like a path than a roadway. He wondered briefly if Q had played a joke on him by sending him to the middle of nowhere, but dismissed it immediately, as Q didn't have a cruel bone in his skinny, waifish body. Besides, this place had nothing on the isolation of rural Scotland, which was definitely not on the list of places he'd want to spend his retirement.
'Destination on your left in one kilometer,' the tinny electronic voice told him and he shook off the unease that thinking of Skyfall still brought him.
Soon enough, a small but respectable house appeared. It was surrounded by a well-tended garden with what looked like both flowers and vegetables, and a greenhouse could be seen beyond a large oak. A gnarled apple tree reached its branches over a garden table and chairs, and a bench was placed nearby. Bond could imagine a young Q stretched out under the shade with a book on a nice, breezy day. Or perhaps not; Q tended to burn horribly if he spent more than a few minutes in the sun, a fact that garnered him copious amounts of teasing from the double-ohs.
He recalled that Q had mentioned that his father did a fair amount of woodworking, and cast an approving eye over the elegance of the carved wooden furniture as he walked up the stone path to the door. They had been cleverly constructed out of single large pieces of wood, leaving the bark and knots for a natural, rustic feel. The asymmetrical rings and curves had been polished smooth into pieces with unique beauty. He suspected that they had been made in the building that had been erected nearby, large but very obviously not a living space. Perhaps that was where young Q's first projects had been created, too.
It didn't seem at all like the sort of place a retired double-oh agent would set up for himself, but then again, perhaps the man had wanted a simple life after all of his adrenaline-charged jet-setting years as 007 back in the eighties. Bond had certainly passed enough fields of cows and sheep to know that there were likely no adventures and very few surprises in the man's life now.
That is, save for those provided by his son, of course. Apparently, a couple of Q's nicknames growing up had been 'disaster spawn' and 'chaos child,' and he had more than lived up to the monikers over the years.
The retired agent greeted him with a warm smile and thanked him graciously for the hamper of champagne and caviar that Bond had hastily picked up at Harrods before setting out on his pilgrimage to the alleged guru of assassin retirement.
"Biscuits and coffee?" Drake asked him pleasantly as he ushered him through to the sitting room. The biscuits were freshly-baked, judging by the warm vanilla scent that wafted through the house.
The ex-spy was dressed casually in denim jeans and a soft button-down with the sleeves rolled up, and Bond suddenly felt much too overdressed for the situation. It wasn't a common feeling for Bond, who wore his Tom Ford suits like armor, but he felt that perhaps in this case, he didn't particularly need to be wearing the jacket and tie. After all, he had come to the man's home for the express purpose of asking for advice, not to attack him.
"I didn't think you were a coffee man," Bond said while he took in the evidence of what was definitely, indubitably, and beyond a doubt, a home. Not a place where an agent slept and ate and abandoned as quickly as he'd come. Not a safe house, which was never a home, or a set piece made to look like a home. It was a place infused with years' worth of memories, of laughter and tears, of countless meals shared with loved ones…
He could imagine a tiny Q toddling about in the hallway, baking with his father and treating it like a chemistry experiment, and the teenage tantrums that would have shaken the walls of the small house, childish giggles and goodnight kisses…
"Not generally," Drake said, knowing exactly what Bond was seeing in his home, "but you are."
Bond, despite having spent several weeks with the man during Q's convalescence after the Spectre spectacle, had drunk only tea in his presence to keep company with both Drakes, who were immoderate tea-lovers. He gave Drake a look that conveyed his appreciation of the man's skills.
Drake smirked and disappeared into the kitchen. "Not rusty yet," he called back. "Make yourself at home, Bond."
. . . . .
Bond crumbled a perfectly-golden biscuit on his plate, not quite certain how to begin. Uncertainty was a strange sensation for him, as he had always known what to do, or if he didn't know, thought of something on the fly and did it like he'd meant to do it all along.
His companion was examining him closely without seeming to, in the way all seasoned agents knew how to do. Bond wondered if it was a skill that continued to come easily and naturally even after one no longer needed it to survive.
"This isn't the first time you've considered retirement."
Bond remained silent.
"Whatever you say will stay between us. I won't tell anyone, including my son."
Bond shrugged. "He knows." Q knew everything, after all. At least, if it was in digital form, he had, without a doubt, poked his inquisitive nose into it like one of his curious cats.
"Only the bare bones of it. What's in the files and what you've told him."
Of course, having raised the 'chaos child,' Drake knew exactly what his son was likely to have seen and what he probably hadn't.
"He's smart enough to read between the lines," Bond countered. It was true; while Q was a little lacking in people skills and was sometimes rather oblivious, he did possess an odd mish-mash of insightfulness and a near-psychic ability of prediction.
"He doesn't know everything."
"Doesn't he?"
It was Drake's turn to be silent, but his look told Bond that the older man still had secrets his son hadn't uncovered. Despite the Q-Branch minions' insistence that their Overlord had superpowers, the Overlord's father knew quite well that he had raised a very human child, who, despite his undeniable genius, did not possess the ability to read minds.
Bond wondered how much to reveal. After all, he'd read Drake's files, but Drake hadn't read his. The world of espionage relied on a system of tit for tat (in which one endeavored to give as little as possible to receive more than the other side was willing to share in a never-ending cycle), and Bond was here to get something from Drake. As far as spy etiquette went, he ought to give a little to start the process. It wouldn't cost him (or the nation) anything to tell the man something vague but also personal.
"A few years ago, before Six was attacked, I was injured," he started. "Presumed dead. M gave the order to the agent to take the shot. She missed and got me instead. It wasn't surprising. She said she didn't have a clear shot. But M insisted."
"You felt betrayed."
Bond didn't bother to verify it; they both knew that Drake's assessment was correct. "I didn't go back. I wasn't planning on going back."
"Until the attack."
Bond nodded. "After that mess" (understatement) "was cleared up, I thought about leaving again."
"Why didn't you?"
"I didn't want to go back to that…limbo."
Alcohol, pills, sex, and repeat…
"And then there was Q," he continued slowly. "He- he was…different from the rest of them. He was ready to throw his whole career away for a man he'd only just met. He didn't do it halfway. He did all that for someone whom everyone considered past his prime. And after, he came to see me, even though there were more important things that needed his immediate attention. He treated me like a person, a person who'd gone through shit, instead of a- a robot who'd take everything thrown at him and keep going. I'd forgotten what that was like. Now that I know his background, I understand why he'd done it. Why it was important for him to check up on me, to show that there was someone out there who cared. But at the time, it was…" He trailed off.
"A bit of a novelty, wasn't it?" Drake's expression was a mixture of knowing and pride.
"More than a bit. Your doing, I suppose," Bond said gratefully.
Drake shrugged. "Nurture, nature, who knows? He's always had a good heart."
"His strays?" Everyone knew about Q and his strays by now. He gravitated towards saving the most ornery of creatures with the sharpest (only sometimes metaphorical) claws and teeth.
"Never could pass by any creature in need, whether it was a flea-ridden bag of bones or a rabid beast foaming at the mouth," the father said with exasperation that didn't hide the pride accentuated by a touch of resignation. "Gave him plenty of heartbreak when they didn't live or had to be put down, as was often the case."
"I suppose he's had better luck with his human strays."
"Much better."
"He hasn't lost one of us yet."
"Chances are, he will someday." The ex-agent looked tired.
"Yes," Bond agreed quietly. And the fallout would not be pretty. He suddenly felt a surge of determination to do this right, to retire properly this time. He would not be the one to break Q's spirit by dying on the job.
. . . . .
The shadows grew longer and Bond found himself sharing more than he'd ever told his agency-mandated therapists. Those doctors all were at the top of their field, but they didn't know the way this ex-agent did.
There was something in the way he spoke, or in his presence, that put Bond at ease. It was odd how much the man reminded him of his son, despite the vast differences in nearly everything about them. He was firmly out of the game, so there was no reason for him to use anything Bond shared against him, even if he could. He believed Drake when he said that nothing would leave the room.
They weren't state secrets, of course, and there were no names or places mentioned – nothing concrete – but they were things he'd never really expressed, or gotten around to saying out loud.
It felt…good to get it all off of his chest.
"That wasn't the first time I tried to leave. When I first made double-oh, on my first mission, I met a woman."
Bond watched his listener, almost waiting for him to make the face everyone always made when it came to him and women, but Drake merely raised a brow at the pause, signaling for him to continue. Bond took a breath and released it slowly.
"I fell in love with her. Enough that I wanted to resign. Maybe if things hadn't already been set in motion, I would have stayed gone, stayed with her." He stopped. It still hurt, even after all these years. The could-have-been and the reality of what happened both. "She betrayed me. There was blackmail involved. Something bigger, much bigger. She died."
"I'm sorry." The green eyes were sincere, again reminding him of the quiet guilelessness of the son that played at such odds against their chosen career.
"She was a traitor." He spit it out; it had become a habit by now.
"You loved her. You've forgiven her for what she did to you."
Bond gave his listener a sharp look. Oh, he was good. That was something they'd never picked up on. They'd taken his words at face value. It was only M, the old M, who'd known and understood. And now Drake.
Drake gave him the same cocky smirk Q had when he knew he had him. Or rather, maybe Q had picked it up from his father.
"Any loose ends that need tying?"
Drake, was, of course, not Q. Q wouldn't have been aware of the end of that conversation and the need to start a new topic. Q would have stalled and stuttered and Bond would have been the one to move on. Drake, however, knew that it was nearing the end of Bond's visit. Bond, despite not knowing exactly what he'd come for, had what he needed, whatever that was.
"No ends I need to tie myself." He had the closure he needed, didn't he?
Drake nodded. "Good. Then what's stopping you?"
"Fear of being useless. Boredom."
"Find a hobby."
"Knitting and baking?" Bond said with a humorous twist of his lips, recalling his abject horror upon learning that Drake was apparently so bored in his retirement as to take up knitting.
Drake laughed. "Don't knock it until you've tried it." Green eyes danced.
Bond sighed. "A hobby."
"Or ten. Mix it up. Booze, drugs, and sex don't count, despite how much fun they might be."
"You say that like you tried it."
"Haven't we all?" Drake said, reminding Bond that there was darkness in all their lives, especially when one had the kind of jobs they had.
The older man leaned forward. "My advice? Keep my son in your life. That's the common denominator here, among all of us. Of course, he'll keep an eye on you regardless — you're still one of his people, after all — but contact can go both ways. Cut the anchor line too soon and you'll go adrift." Of course the man had surmised that Bond was a navy man without even being told. That was easy; Bond could do it too, at a glance.
"That's the secret? Stay friends with Q?"
"Not exactly," Drake said, shaking his head. "It's more…You have to keep connections active, not for the sake of having an escape plan, but as a reminder of what you fought and bled for, and what you have to continue to live for, now that the work is all over and done with."
"I wasn't exactly fighting for him," Bond said drolly.
"Weren't you?"
And damn, those green eyes were piercing and knowing, and Bond suddenly understood why Q had never really learned how to lie convincingly. It was nigh impossible to lie to those eyes.
Bond looked away, sighing softly in acknowledgement. "He was someone to come home to. He was sometimes the only person in the world really, honestly glad to see us come home in one piece, and not in a body bag or an urn. So we kept coming home to him, even when we should have given up. It's a kind of enchantment, isn't it? No idea how he does it."
"Don't ask me," Drake said over the rim of his mug before he took a sip. "I was his first victim."
Bond laughed. "You don't seem to mind."
"Nor do you."
"No, I don't. I was fit for the junkyard the first time I met him. But he got me started up again like the brilliant mechanic he is and kept me going instead of throwing me out for scraps like everyone thought I deserved."
"Not scraps."
Bond thought about his predecessor abandoned and tortured in a cold, dark prison for over a year, and corrected himself. "No, not scraps. I've had a good run, overall. But it's time."
"Any ideas for what you want to do?"
"That's why I'm here, isn't it?"
Drake smiled knowingly, mysteriously. "No, it's not. You've had plans laid out since you realized that you might actually survive the job. Some of them are feasible; some are ridiculous dreams. But there's one you always keep going back to."
"I've always liked Jamaica."
"Send me a postcard."
. . . . .