"Love and other moments are just
chemical reactions in your brain
in your brain
and feelings of aggression are the
absence of the love drug in your veins
in your veins"

- Savage Garden, Gunning Down Romance

The Kiss of Death

Passing between the carriages of the train, James speaks to test the earpiece.

"Q, are you there?"

He is met by total silence.

"Q?"

Perhaps Q hasn't turned on his earpiece yet.

"HQ? Does anyone copy?"

Nothing. Very well; it won't be the first time he goes in blind.

00Q00Q00Q00

He walks through three carriages, checking every face he passes, without a sign of Jeunet. If he were even a little unsure that it was Jeunet he had seen, he would give up and turn back. He is sure, so he keeps going.

It was a mistake to count Jeunet as captured as soon as he was sighted. He must have made the connection between the two men on the conference and the sudden attack on his organisation, and now here he is.

The train jerks slightly as it begins to slow down, and then James sees Jeunet, standing at the train's café, surrounded by people. Jeunet catches sight of James, raises his hand and waves a phone.

"Monsieur McEwan!" he calls out with a grin. Now everyone is looking at them, and James can't shoot the man without finding himself in the middle of pandemonium on a moving train with at least twenty eye witnesses. Shit.

He moves closer, all senses on guard, and Jeunet smiles at him. This close, James can see that the smile is strained, plastered on Jeunet's face like a bad mask.

"Well, that is not your name, is it," Jeunet says when they're face to face, "but I must call you something, n'est-ce pas?"

"You lost the game, Monsieur Jeunet," James says. "It's over."

The other man's demeanour puts him on edge.

"Yes, you were very clever," Jeunet admits. "I lost a very important contract and almost all my storages were found. The people you work for will have the market all to themselves. At least for a moment, eh? At least for a moment."

James notes with some satisfaction that Jeunet clearly doesn't know who they're working for. Then the fake smile slips of Jeunet's face and his expression turns grave.

"I should say I am very angry with you and your friend, Mr McEwan. It was a very cruel trick you played on me. You forced me to kill my sweet Marie. She knew so much, and you turned her against me. I couldn't let her run. I'm hurt, monsieur. You broke my heart."

James freezes. He remembers Chabrier's worried expression the previous morning, as Q sat down by Jeunet's laptop. He remembers both of them reassuring her.

One more dead young woman to add to the tally, James.

He focuses. Jeunet is speaking to someone on the phone. Suddenly he hands the device to James.

"Here," he says with a grim smile. "Your heart, monsieur."

The sinking feeling is there before James' fingers even touch the phone. He puts it to his ear, never taking his eyes off Jeunet.

"Hello?"

First he thinks there's only silence on the other side, and wonders what kind of sick joke this is. Then he hears the ragged breath of someone, and a voice in the background orders: "Parlez!" The sinking feeling in James' stomach intensifies, until it is a black hole.

Q's voice comes over the line, as soft and professional as ever, if somewhat strained. He speaks very slowly.

"I am so very, very sorr..."

Q is cut off, and James hears the unmistakable muffled sound of a gun with a silencer, followed by a thud that is most likely the sound of a head hitting a hard surface. With a final click, the line is dead.

00Q00Q00Q00

For a moment, everything stops. Every person in the carriage seems to have frozen. The noise around them turns into a crushing silence. Everything in James' line of vision except Jeunet blurs to a grey fog. James' heart stops for one single beat. The train stops.

The next second, the spell is broken. The people around them head towards the doors, blind to everything but the way off the train where they've spent the last two hours. Jeunet has a grin on his face and a hand inside his jacket. He has no idea what he is getting himself into.

Someone usually dies. But someone is usually foreign, civilian, female and, from MI6' point of view, expendable. Q is none of those things. Out of the two of them, James is the expendable one. He was here to keep something like this from happening. Now he doesn't know whether Q is dead or alive. It's the worst kind of failure. Not three hours ago, he held Q in his arms. Now that beautiful body is somewhere on this train, slumped on a floor, bleeding out, because James left him alone to run after some mad hacker. It's as if fate has decided to show James how little he has learned.

Jeunet's gun is aimed at James much faster than James can draw, but he can throw himself at Jeunet. Guns are mainly good for long distance killings, anyway – this close James is the one with the real advantage, because he has both hands free.

They fall to the floor and block the isle, to the indignant protests of their fellow travellers. James sees Jeunet's gun getting knocked out of his hand, but the victory barely has time to register before someone screams: "Gun!"

The pandemonium he feared earlier breaks out. Someone kicks at James, catching him off guard, and Jeunet twists out of his grip. As he struggles to get up from the floor and away from the panicking crowd, James sees Jeunet's hand grab the gun. When he's back on his feet Jeunet is at the door of the carriage, looking back at him. James reaches for his Walther, anticipating the shot from Jeunet, but then a woman outside points at the Frenchman and shouts: "That man has a gun!" Suddenly there are guards approaching the carriage and Jeunet turns to run away instead.

Cursing, James follows.