It was probably a sign of the torment he had gone through, the trauma to his body and soul, that Bond had lost his cool and control when Q had asked him about his very first mission as a Double-Oh agent.
He knew why his partner had done it. It was how far his regeneration had let him regress on the outside; his appearance from six years ago. A few less lines, but with all his memories of then till now very much intact.
It wasn't so much the mention of Vesper; more the emotions roiling through him that had triggered his loss of control.
Betrayal. Anger. Fury. So much rage. So much pain. Watching her die. Feeling the emptiness inside. Feeling the monster hiss and snap and want to break free, want to break something, someone. It had been the first time he had been ready to release the phoenix from all shackles, to just lose himself. He had wanted to take a life and not continue his own like that; without her.
Back then he had thought she would be the one. Back then he had hoped she could be the stabilizing influence the phoenix needed to survive. He hadn't really listened to his instincts or he might have seen it sooner: Vesper Lynd hadn't been a possible mate. She had been a plaything for his darker nature, a way to while away time and soothe the hunger and need for stability.
And she hadn't been able to give that to him either. James Bond had been ready to give up everything for her, to be with her, and she had felt good and warm in his arms, she had been passionate and full of energy.
But she had been playing him.
It had never been real. Not for a moment.
Bond stared out over the Thames.
She had been the wrong one. She hadn't been his balance. She hadn't even been close. She had been wishful thinking on his part, a fantasy, not for him to have and hold.
Bond gritted his teeth as the darkness rose once more, the phoenix reacting quite strongly to Vesper's death, though not because of remorse or grief.
He hadn't lost those memories. Everything was still there. From his childhood to today. He recalled his missions, his kills, his losses and gains. His emotions were accordingly. He might look like he had just joined the ranks of the Double-Oh section, but inside he hadn't lost a single day.
He knew he should be thankful for it. If he had regressed as far as his first Double-Oh mission, Q would be a stranger to him.
Bond couldn't imagine not knowing his bonded partner. He couldn't think of being without the steady presence next to him, physically as well as mentally. Q was what he had hoped Vesper might be. He had looked and longed for the balance, but his own search had been fruitless, had been met with failure. He had turned colder after her death, harder, more ruthless, and with no remorse left. He had been the perfect killing machine, the perfect tool, and he hadn't given it all a second thought. Bond remembered the look in the old M's eyes, her regret at his loss, her hope that he might just connect to someone.
Back then he had pushed it all away. It had been broken glass and sharp edges, painful and slicing into him again and again. It had been unbearable torture if he let it rise.
Until Q.
Bond stood in front of the building the flat was in, staring at the door, then finally walked back inside.
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The technopath was still there when he returned. Brown eyes behind oversized glasses, watching him, not judging, open and warm. Q's expression was neutral. He looked composed, far from angry or hurt. This was his handler facing him, distanced if he had to be, ready to battle whatever his agent was throwing at him.
He didn't deserve this, Bond knew. Really, he didn't. He had never thought to find his balance, to live past that last mission, but he had. And Q didn't deserve the crap he was being given.
Acceptance, unquestioning loyalty, and this absolute trust. It was what Q had for him.
James just stood there, the phoenix watching like the bird of prey it was, and Q tilted his head a little.
"I have all my past memories," Bond only said roughly. "All my missions, everything. My life up until Kazakhstan is there. I know why I went there. I know how I died. My latest… demise. None of that was destroyed."
"And I'm actually quite glad that you do. I apologize for triggering a bad one, though," Q said evenly, slightly adjusting his glasses.
"Don't."
Q watched him, careful, though not afraid. It was more of an assessment how far Bond had been pushed.
Not too far, the agent knew. Not too badly. He could easily work with the dark memories. It was nothing that he hadn't had to live through before.
"I need you," he said roughly.
Q's expression didn't change, but his eyes grew warm, reflecting the emotions.
"I never needed her," James went on. "And if I could I would remove those memories. All of them."
"They are still there," the quartermaster stated calmly.
"Yes."
"They are part of you. I'm glad no part of that was destroyed."
"I could live with a few missing pieces."
Q quirked a brief smile.
"And the rest is coming back."
"James."
He came closer, pulling Q to him, taking his lips in a kiss that hadn't been with the intent to claim but turned into one anyway. It was hard not to give in to the more primal need at the moment, like after every energy-sapping resurrection. It was even harder not to hand over his thinking to the creature and let it take what it wanted. He would never harm his partner, but to surrender and have the feral side take what it needed was an unnerving thought.
"You can let go," Q murmured.
Bond regarded him with sharp eyes. The phoenix was a roiling thing underneath the human surface, snarling to be let go. For the first time since he had found back home, had found Q, did he feel the need for more than touch and nearness.
He wanted so, so much more.
"I don't have to read your mind, which I can't, to understand what you want, James," his partner went on. "I know you. I know the phoenix. You have been holding back so far. I can feel the energy. I know it needs a release. Your body has taken all it needed. It's time to let go."
"Q…"
He was silenced by a hard kiss that involved teeth biting his lower lip, and he reacted accordingly.
His partner had once told him that each recovery generated an incredible amount of energy. The phoenix tapped into its very soul to come back, to defy death against all odds, and the energy had to go somewhere when physical recovery was completed.
For a man like Bond it was sex and the thrill of a dangerous game. The added booze was just for kicks, too. He had to get rid of the excess and he had chosen this way.
"Coming up with a new theory, Q?" Bond had teased him back then.
It had gotten him a stern look through the oversized glasses. "Only theory. To prove it I would have to kill you. Hardly an option."
Bond had chuckled. "It wouldn't be the first time."
"It would be a first for me, and it's a first I can live without. Proving anything connected to your innate abilities requires your death, someone with the right equipment, and a long time of measuring what's happening while you come back. Like I said, not an option."
No, it wasn't. Bond wouldn't set a step into Medical voluntarily when he was bleeding to death, so going there to be killed and have someone watch him while he revived? Bloody hell no!
"So it remains a theory?"
The smile had been slightly mocking. "With your track record in women and booze and thrill-seeker games? Most of it is fact. I don't need charts filled with energy measurement to tell me that. Knowing just how much the phoenix's revival generates will get us nowhere."
He understood the theory. He also knew Q was correct in his assumptions. James Bond needed release after dying. He needed the fast, hard sex. He needed the fast, dangerous game. He needed the thrill, the spark of near-death, the reminder that he was alive, screaming it at the world as a challenge. It was a game between Life and Death.
Death had never won; and never would. He had beat it again and again, and the last time had taken everything out of him.
Giving in to instinct was life affirmation in a way, feeling his partner's body, feeling the heat, listening to the groans and pants and encouragement, spilling into the willing form.
It had always been part of himself; it would always be. On a mission he took who he wanted, mostly to get what he needed, to take what he had come to steal. It was a quick, fleeting satisfaction.
Bond looked at the narrow face, the glasses hiding the brown eyes, protecting Q from flashing involuntarily into the web. He took in the pale skin, the red lips, the mess of dark hair. He felt the lean body, slender and stronger than he looked. Clean-shaven, looking so young, so much the geek, so little like the technopath who could command a Double-Oh, who had the respect of all of them, who was head of a whole department and was doing such a swell job.
"Stop thinking, Bond," his handler now ordered, voice deceptively soft and low.
"Yes, sir," he rumbled, grinning.
He removed the glasses, slowly, carefully, giving Q a last moment to intercept.
He didn't.
Bond leaned down and kissed the long, pale column of Q's neck, biting harder where the neck met the shoulder.
Strong fingers clawed at his shoulders.
He took that as permission.
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James woke to the feeling of absolute warmth. Loose muscles, laziness, not a care in the world. He kept his eyes closed, savoring the feeling of warmth, of safety, a sensation he rarely had when he woke up anywhere. Aside from waking up at home. He heard soft breathing and smiled.
Home.
After a long time of simply lying there Bond cracked his eyes open. His gaze fell on the pale, slender form with him in bed. Naked. Very pleasing to look at.
His smile grew. The memories of last night were quite vivid in his mind.
He was still tired, but pleasantly so. His fingers played with the dark hair, sliding through the longish strands. There had been the rush at first, the claim, the need to finally let go with the one he loved, then just long, sensuous hours of being together.
And things were sliding back into place. Like scenes in a play, like pages in a book, it all became one again.
With Q's little memory game, things had started to happen in his brain. It had been like a jumpstart for a recalcitrant engine and now it was running with some hiccups that would soon smooth out. Bond's emotional reaction and outburst because of those questions had done their own little magic.
Apparently the brain took a little longer to recover from such a shock to the system. But it recovered. It was like the gates were slowly opening. Not the flood gates, just a door that was allowing small peeks, that dropped something inside his mind now and then.
Bond remembered the mission. He remembered catching up to the target. He remembered the trap, killing several armed men, and he remembered the capture. There had been his interrogation and torture. That was a rather explicit memory, but it sparked no adrenaline rush, no echoed fear or traumatic reactions. It never had.
His ability to put something like torture and pain into a drawer and lock it away, deal with it and not react according to the psychology text books, had stumped more than one psychologist at MI6. He had never conformed to the norm. He had never been the mental wreck they tried to make him. Post traumatic stress disorder just didn't happen.
His decline had been of a different kind. It had been the slow loss of his humanity, the phoenix taking over, because he had lost himself piece by piece with every rebirth. No psychologist could diagnose a raving phoenix. They didn't know who James Bond really was. All his deficiencies had been because of his preternatural nature suffering more and more.
Bond grimaced a little when he recalled how his Kazakh captors had killed him execution style. Bullet to the brain. Fast, effective.
Then there had been darkness.
The darkness had been there for a long time. Sometimes he caught faint flashes of something violent and ruthless and angry. He caught hunger and need and fury. He recalled the endless fury best. The rage at death trying to take him. The nightmare rising to fight back and to return.
Return home.
Not England, not MI6. Q. Home to the one he needed, his balance, his anchor, and the person he was an anchor to as well. He remembered that the most. The urge, the drive, the single-minded determination that nothing would deter him from his goal. He would find his partner and be with him.
He remembered the guiding presence, the spark in the darkness, the light that wasn't light. It was life. It was his counterpart. It drew him in and he crawled ever-closer, needing to be there, needing to live.
Bond wasn't very clear on when he had regained true consciousness and had no longer trusted in his instinct alone, but it had been somewhere close to the Polish-German border. In a truck loaded with spare parts. He had slipped off the truck at an overnight stop and had gone on from there.
Looking at the dark head of his partner, he tried to delve deeper into his fractured mind, tried to discover how he had managed to get so far.
Nothing. There was absolutely nothing. He had not a single clue and it should frighten him, but it didn't anymore. The phoenix had operated on instinct, had done what was necessary to sneak out of Kazakhstan. He must have made it all the way across Belarus somehow, then into Poland, and then he was almost in Germany.
The next clear memory was of Berlin. It was where he had tapped into MI6 accounts, had moved into a hotel suite, and recovered. There had been no questions asked. He had been given complete privacy and his records had been in another guest's name.
Total anonymity.
He wasn't the only guest assured of that status.
About forty hours in Berlin, becoming more and more human, looking at a face that was him but which looked alien in so many ways, he had taken a night train to Amsterdam. There he had spent a few hours, then he had gone on to cross the channel by ferry.
It was the Double-Oh's instinct, not the preternatural's, to obscure his trail.
Bond had masked his appearance, his injuries. He had only moved at night and the few times he had had to stand up to a ticket inspection on the train or ferry, the night operators hadn't looked twice.
He had been exhausted by the time he arrived at the flat, barely able to uphold his control, shields frayed and splintering, the strain on his healing soul too much.
Even as a special agent, a Double-Oh, a trained killer and assassin, there was only so much James Bond could take.
Looking at Q, seeing his partner healthy and whole, feeling the bond slide back into place, had been like a warm blanket wrapping around his mind. He had been unable to voice what he wanted to say, had felt only the instinct to be close, and he had given the phoenix free reign.
Too tired, too old all of a sudden, too needy, and he had surrendered.
He would always surrender to Q. No one else.
I love him, he thought. I crave him, I want him, I need him. I won't let him go.
tbc...