High in the Alps, the headlights lit up the crystals of the frozen snow, making the bleak landscape almost beautiful. The moment James Bond noticed this, he turned them off with a vicious twist. The car's heaters made feeble attempts to warm the interior of the car, but still Bond's breath came in clouds of fog that steamed up the windows and blocked his view through the windscreen.
Stepping out of the car, he shivered against the biting cold. Autumn was rapidly approaching and nowhere more than here. A few feeble flakes of snow drifted idly onto his dark hair, in a month or two's time the entire area would be covered in a dense layer of snow, but now it was only about two inches deep, just enough to cover the soles and part of his shoes. With a touch of impatience, he brushed the snow from his hair, although it had already melted leaving a cold dampness that irritated him further. He folded up the collar of his heavy, lined black leather jacket and scowled into the night.
Bond had never longed for a cigarette more. He had quit, on doctor's orders, some years before. She had told him that the habit was causing him to show his age. He had had to work hard to prove to her otherwise. A sudden image of unpinned dark blonde hair falling onto the shoulders of a crisp white jacket came to mind, the hazel eyes peering amusedly over the rim of her glasses. He thought he had acquitted himself well. Now his fingers twitched towards a non existent pack, and cursing the doctor quietly under his breath, he shoved his hands into his pockets instead.
It was bloody ridiculous. He shouldn't be here. He was on leave for Christ's sake. M's specific orders. 'Take a holiday, 007. Or I'll be forced to have you shot.'
He wasn't entirely sure if she had been joking, or not. After all, this was the same boss who had had him abandoned in a Korean torture camp for several months. One became slightly suspicious after something like that. He hadn't tried to argue, much, and had stomped out of her office in decidedly bad grace.
Compassionate leave.
M might has well have come out and said it. 'Terribly sorry your lover was brutally killed, 007. Take three weeks off. That ought to make it all better.'
Jasmin.
The name was a knife in his heart. Grief? Or something more complicated than that? He didn't dare examine his feelings too closely. What it all boiled down to was that yet another of Bond's lovers had died on his watch. There had been too many, too many lovers and too many deaths. Bond may have a license to kill in cold blood, but that didn't mean that he didn't regret the women who had died because of him.
Tracy. Tracy, his beautiful wife had been one of the first to die. It was one of Bond's favourite things to do, and also the thing he did to punish himself, to think about what might have been with Tracy. Moments before she had been killed, they had been discussing how many children they would have had together. Tracy's children would have been beautiful. He could never bring himself to think of them as 'their' children, somehow he could never see his own genetics being replicated.
He wondered if it would have ever have worked out. Would he have been able to continue as a spy? Would he have quit his career for Tracy and their family? Having children changed everything. Would he still have been able to kill, knowing he would have to return to his children?
He thought back to a day several weeks ago. Seeing Ashleigh for the first time again, knowing that in the time that had passed since they had seen each other she had become a mother. A mother? She was barely an adult herself, how on earth could she be a mother? And not to a baby either, a child, five years old and the image of Ashleigh at that age. Bond has always felt something towards Ashleigh, not fatherly exactly, but a responsibility. He could remember holding her at her christening, in the beautiful church near to the family home in Islington, a small white lace bundle in his arms, staring up at him with total trust as he promised to protect her always. It had seemed to him then that she had understood what he was saying and she was certainly going to hold him to it.
He hadn't stayed for long after the christening, making his excuses early and going to meet Alec in a small club in Jermyn Street. Alec had already been at the bar, and spotting James arriving, had signalled the barman for a very large vodka. They had spent the rest of the evening getting steadily drunk and referring to James as 'The Godfather' and humming the same few bars of music again and again, increasingly tunelessly as the night progressed.
How they had both been so relieved that it hadn't happened to them. Fatherhood was not something a spy should ever enter into. David Kain has been insane for even thinking he could raise a child while being in his chosen career.
As the years had passed, Alec and David's executions had only confirmed that idea for James. When Alec had returned, not once, but twice, James had been forced to confront his own mortality, not to mention his age. Whenever James looked at Ashleigh, he saw David. He saw his looks, his mannerisms, even the way they both nervously chewed at the edge of their thumbnail when anxious. Finally James has understood one of the reasons why people had children. While Ashleigh lived, David was remembered, he could never truly die.
If James died, who would remember him? Moneypenny? M? Charles? A few devastated women, weeping and wailing into their black lace trimmed handkerchiefs? Alec had dragged those images into the forefront of his mind and they had never truly left.
Swamped in self pity, James almost failed to notice the car headlights appearing in the distance, slowly making its way across the perilous terrain.
In that moment, he realised that he was once more jealous of Alec Trevelyan. It infuriated him. James was alone. There were no children to carry on the Bond genes, to remember their father, the great spy, the Naval Commander. No comfort to him in his old age. Yet in the effortless manner that Alec always had, Alec has swanned in under his nose and taken a young wife and fathered a child on her. The insult was direct, pointed and venomous. Alec, despite his scarring, was still an attractive men and had no shortage of women wanting to warm his bed. Instead he had chosen the one woman that James couldn't, and wouldn't have. His goddaughter.
Bloody Ashleigh. She had fallen in love with the one man that James truly hated. Sitting in their house, their home, watching the way Alec touched her, and the way Ashleigh responded to that touch, as if she wanted him, loved him. The intimacy had been the final straw, and in that moment, envy had consumed him completely, utterly, and his only solution to the problem had been to get blindingly drunk.
As for Natasha, well, he felt sorry for Ashleigh that she had lost her daughter, but for Alec? Well, what did the bastard expect? From the moment of her birth that child had been at risk, it had only been a matter of time before one of Alec's enemies decided to use Alec's daughter against him.
The child was a nonentity to him. She was merely a target, her rescue something to aim for, even though the trail had gone severely cold. James suspected that M was planning something, but M was always planning something. Contact with Charles had been equally hazy, and Charles was fighting his own bitterness towards Alec. James suspected it was more because of the wound he had received at Alec's hands rather than any lingering feelings for Ashleigh Kain. James was just waiting for something to happen and he somehow felt that tonight something would happen.
M had contacted him, asking him to pick up a parcel that was travelling by unofficial means. At first James has refused, pointing out that he was on leave thanks to her orders, and petulantly adding that he wasn't her errand boy. M had been her usually snippy self, pointing out that he was on leave by her grace and that the Columbian mission was still available if he preferred to do that. Or if he preferred a third option, he could always defect.
James had chosen the first option and so it was that he was standing on the side of a mountain in the Alps musing on life, love and the Universe in general.
Only one good thing had come from this assignment and that had been Jasmin. In Jasmin he had found someone passionate and as dedicated to her career as him. She had been young, sexy and superb in bed, and James knew that part of her attraction had been sticking two fingers up at Alec and showing that he could still bed the beauties. His competitive spirit had even started considering that perhaps he could have had a future with Van Dien. Perhaps settle down with her, perhaps even children.
The logical part of his brain had screamed its displeasure at this idea, but something inside Bond was tired. If he was truly honest, he was getting too old for this. His reactions were getting slower, it was barely noticeable, but he noticed it. It was taking longer to recover from injury and his joints ached when he woke up. He would catch a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and note the deep crevasses around his eyes, the slight sagging of the jowls, the way his skin creped slightly over his muscles. He was still an attractive man, but the silver hairs at his temples told him he was getting older. And again, his thoughts came back to the same thing. What do I have to show for my life?
Medals. High ranking kills. A reputation of being one of the most lethal men in the world, a worthy adversary and a born survivor.
With a shuddering sigh he buried his face into his hands, rubbing his fingers over his eyes, feeling the skin drag under his fingertips. He slid them under his jaw, barely noticing the stubble there before cupping them around the back of his neck, stretching with his elbows thrust out.
Jasmin.
Brutally murdered on duty. K.I.A - Killed in Action. The acronym infuriated him. How casual it made it all seem. 'Van Dien? Oh yes, K.I.A, I'm afraid.' He could easily imagine some whey faced civil servant in MI6's records department making the note of the agent's sudden demise. Jasmin would have her own plaque of course, on the ubiquitous MI6 Memorial Wall. The Hall of Fame, so to speak.
So much life cut so short.
He breathed out slowly, his breath frosting into thin streams of steam. He needed to gain control again and quickly, the car had almost reached him.
It stopped in a vicious jerk, throwing the back end round violently. A non descript black saloon car, Bond could have guessed that was what it would be, he'd seen too many of these cars before. Inside the car, the two men were already removing seatbelts and out of habit, Bond fingered the weapon tucked inside his jacket. No harm in being prepared.
'You? You waiting for us?' The driver shouted as he clambered from the car. He had a thick accent, and Bond struggled to place it. Polish perhaps, but certainly not local.
'You see anyone else here?' Bond's tone was as cold as the night.
'She sent us,' the man ignored the frosty reception. There was no doubt who 'she' was, only one woman commanded that sort of respect and mistrust in one single word.
'What have you got? Some sort of package?'
The man snorted. 'You could say that.' He translated the sentence to his companion who laughed loudly. 'In the boot,' he gestured towards the back of the car.
Bond fumbled with the catch of the boot lid, his fingers feeling numb with the cold. He finally popped it free and it sprang open.
He stepped backwards in surprise before he could stop himself.
Ashleigh smiled darkly up at him, her head resting on a dark holdall. She held her hand out to him, and he grabbed it, helping to pull her out of the cramped space.
'Special delivery, James.'
