Bond did not talk about the day he broke down.

He tried to not think about holding the cooling body of M in his freezing fingers. It hurt, and this kind of hurt Bond was not used to. He wasn't used to waking up at midnight to hear the echoed choking gasps of Silva and to smell the water drying on his arms. He wasn't used to stepping carefully around his memories as he would a minefield. Never before had death left pits deep in his heart. Never before had he lost a lover that mattered…or a mother.

But sometimes he did think. Sometimes he had more than a day between missions. Other times medical left him alone to rest with his thoughts and bullet-free bullet holes, bottle-less. Some days London-gray skies and slim girls in backless dresses weren't enough to free him from the nightmares.

On one such day, a Thursday he remembers, he found Q.

Thursdays were difficult in the Quartermaster's opinion. To begin with, it looked nasty on the calendar, long and difficult to spell but without the friendlier sound of a Wednesday. Thursdays were close enough to the weekend for Q's underlings to be sluggish and heavy-handed in their work but not close enough to provide the finish line burst of morale that a Friday did. The technician sighed from behind his desk and stood to peer out his office and into the workshop.

To his surprise, not only were his interns and employees bent to their work, not a single one had taken an early lunch or even a whole afternoon as they were prone to when ideas weren't flowing smoothly. He glanced around to find the source of their sudden motivation when he saw 007 leaning carelessly against a far wall. The spy had one ankle crossed over the other and a lazy predator's scowl decorated his day-old stubble.

Q told himself that he was not at all interested in rubbing a hand against the grain of such stubble. What a ridiculous notion.

Heaving another sigh, Q pushed out of his office and did his best to look disapprovingly at Bond. He was most likely there to requisition yet another Walther or to start up the old fight about exploding pens. He did neither, only stared balefully at his Quartermaster's crossed arms.

The two men faced off for a few moments. Q was sure that it might have permanently frightened a few of the more submissive interns. Then, without any sort of warning, the subtle power play shifted and then snapped altogether as 007 hauled the hacker bodily out of the main office.

As he was pulled by a hand on his wrist and an arm around his skinny waist through the halls of MI6, Q glanced behind him to meet and reassure the alarmed gazes of his staff. He did his best to give them what he hoped was an encouraging smile as he was swept around a corner and out of their sight.

Bond finally halted in a deserted corridor under what felt like miles of crushing earth. The new (and improved) MI6 building had come with its own freshly unearthed bunkers, more of Churchill's left over from war days. They were kept stocked with everything needed to run the entire British Secret Service from beneath the ground, including supplies to house and feed most of the employees if absolutely necessary. It was hoped that the reinforcements would come to nothing, but after Silva's devastating attack, the Prime Minister hadn't spared a thing.

The Quartermaster turned to the larger man hulking in front of him. The technician was so close to the agent that he could feel each puff of breath on his cheeks but the cool stone wall against his back kept him where he was. Q had never seen Bond the way he looked in that moment. The aging spy was missing the flirtatious charm that seemed to follow at his heels like a small animal, entrancing those he came in contact with. Nothing in his physical appearance hinted at dishevelment; Bond even found a way to make his prickling stubble appear polished and clean-cut. But something in his ice eyes was cracking.

Like cracks in the statue of an old war hero, Q thought out of the blue.

Q had learned over time and through necessity when it was best to speak, and when it was best to hold words. He silently flicked his brown eyes between the painfully blue ones that captured him like a silent snake with a songbird.

Bond, no this man could be called James, the man behind the mask. James must have found what he was looking for in his Quartermaster because he quickly bent and gathered Q's long limbs into his chest before crushing the smaller torso to his. It was as if he wanted to consume the smaller man, absorb him and keep him, the way he wrapped his arms so far around Q that his elbows overlapped.

007 didn't know what had possessed him. One minute he was sitting quietly at his assigned desk, staring at a blinking cursor on his mission report. Like a chained hound, his thoughts growled at him. The next, he was shoving away and out of his chair, nearly taking the desk over with him. It had just appeared so pointless to him, the paperwork, the bloody desk, the way his back ached in all the most difficult places, his life.

(Really? What good did it do for him to put holes in the heads of one terrorist group just to take out the next in a week's time? Did it make any difference if it was him or the next agent that lost their mind? Would he be anything more than an inaccurate obituary and a single stone with a name when the demons at his heels caught up to him? Would they even find him to bury him?)

It took all of his careful discipline not to sprint like a man mad down the endless corridors. He didn't even have a destination until he found his feet in Q branch.

The interns that crowded the desks had seen the haunted look in his eyes more than once and knew better than to speak. They all mutely went about their various tasks as the cat amongst the mice leaned against a wall.

Not that he could have told you why, but the restless clawed thing in him settled at the sight of the agent's Quartermaster tinkering on a laptop. He was prim, if a bit rumpled, in navy cardigan and slacks reminiscent of an older era. And he set Bond at ease. Whether it was the practiced way he moved, careful and comfortable with his technology as a mother would be with a child or the way that James could here echoes of clipped commands in his ear that never failed him, James felt safe and comforted and the technician hadn't even seen the agent yet.

Really, he could not be held for his decisions after a revelation like that.