The call came early afternoon the next day. Q was surprised to see the number and he picked it up.
"Mrs. Macivrae," he greeted the caller politely.
It got him a soft chuckle. "Hello, Kieran."
"Moira," he corrected himself. "Do what do I owe the pleasure?"
"I thought you might want to have some information I was given about the only time one of my kind met someone who was like your partner."
Q froze, eyes widening. "When?" he managed.
"Quite some time ago. Actually, almost two hundred years. It wouldn't let me go… seeing and meeting such a dark creature, seeing it up close, feeling the vortex of raw power that is his soul. Knowing he is maybe the first to find a counter-balance and beat the inevitable decline."
Yes, she was still straight-forward and didn't beat around the bush in any way.
"I had to dig around a little and it wasn't easy to track down the hecate's heirs. I've sent you an email with the attachment."
"Thank you," Q said, touched. "For looking."
"You might not like what you read."
"Believe me, Moira, nothing written on paper can change what I feel, what I know. I've touched the phoenix, all of it, and I know the darkness."
"Yes, you do," she said. "I have to remind me of that fact. Reading what one of my kind noticed… I'm glad I'm not bound to one."
"If you were, you wouldn't feel like that. It would be perfect."
She chuckled. "I have to take your word for it."
Yes, she would have. Q was aware that an outsider wouldn't be able to see what he did, feel what he felt. That miasma of primal surges the phoenix experienced, that ability to deal with violence and death, its own death over and over, was something only the counter-balance could understand. And deal with perfectly fine.
That was why it was him and no one else.
That was the reason he hadn't gone insane.
He was the perfect match, the one who filled that empty slot in a phoenix's soul and pulled it back from the brink to live.
"Thank you for the copies," Q told her. "I very much appreciate it."
"There is so little on what your partner is, I thought you might be interested to know what his kind was seen as two hundred years ago."
Q smiled humorlessly, even though he knew she couldn't see him. He wasn't so sure he wanted to know what kind of monster they had called a phoenix back then.
Nevertheless he downloaded the file attachment the moment he had said good-bye to Moira, took the tablet, and walked over to the couch.
xx X xx X x XX
The pages were hand-written, sometimes close to illegible, and the wording was… old. Old-fashioned. It made it hard to read fluidly, but Q had a few programs that took care of that. They were his own coding and he had them on the MI6 servers as well. They were an immense help sometimes.
Moira had added that she suspected the author of the text she had found might have been as receptive to the phoenix's energies as she was; that this would explain some of her words.
What the hecate by the name of Kenna MacNeill had written down was like a nightmarish horror tale about something that shouldn't possibly be able to exist in this world. She called the phoenix a creature of the abyss, a primeval, mindless thing that hungered for blood and the kill, that took no prisoners and had no mercy on anyone's soul. She suspected it was a parasitic entity, a preternatural abomination that shouldn't be allowed to live.
Q stopped reading after a while, disgusted by her observations. He suspected that Moira had been correct: Kenna had been highly sensitive to the energy of the phoenix, had let that guide her thoughts. Since she was an elementary witch, she primarily reacted to energies, not the person it belonged to. She had most likely never made an effort to get to know the preternatural, only taken a look at the darkness and drawn her conclusions from there.
The technopath grimaced.
He knew about facades and masks and pretense. He knew there was so much more, especially considering what line of work he was in. Take the Double-Ohs, for example. He knew them all, had dealt with them on missions or throughout briefings, had equipped them with weapons and other gear, and he knew there were a lot of angles to them all. Not just James Bond. All of them.
And he knew Bond best of them. He knew everything there was about his agent and partner. The others were operatives; he handled them, but he didn't know them intimately.
Kenna hadn't even gone that far in trying to discover who and what the phoenix truly had been. He had judged it within minutes and that had been enough for her.
He skimmed over the rest and found a few interesting observations near the end. Apparently the phoenix, who was never named, but who had been a man, had been close to the edge when he had first arrived in Kenna's little town. He had been looking for death, wanting to end it, but there hadn't been relief. There had only ever been the resurrection.
Throughout the pages, Kenna's tone changed a little. Apparently the months in close proximity to the dark preternatural had given her moments of insight, pushing away her instinctive reactions to the vortex of energy inside the man.
"He hungers for the darkness, oblivion," Kenna had written. "He cannot go on, but his nature won't let him stop either. I can feel his intense pain and I suspect he has lost much. The darkness is always there now, on his mind, swallowing what is left of his humanity. I fear for the day he finally gets his wish. I fear to see the monster unleashed."
Her fears turned to reality a year later when the unfortunate phoenix died one last time. Kenna had jumper over her own shadow and gotten to know the man, maybe had even started to sympathize with him, and sometimes she called him 'Finn'. Whether that was his real name or not, it was never mentioned.
And then he died. That was the part Q read quite closely, the description of what happened to a phoenix who came back one last time, as the monstrous thing it really was, without a human guise. The man had still looked human, but he hadn't been.
For the short amount of time it took the phoenix to finally perish, it had been freed of the humanity it lived with, had stared at Kenna with inhuman eyes, 'the color of gold and fire', as she had put it, and she wrote of distinctly inhuman features rising.
Like claws.
Like fangs.
Like the skin changing color from human paleness to 'the black of night, of its very soul'.
And then the man had died.
Looking human again after death; finally free.
Q had read over that part again and again.
"Dear god," he murmured.
Kenna went on about the burial, which had been swift and in an unmarked grave, and her fear that the phoenix was now looking for a new host. Q scoffed a little. As if the phoenix was a sentient, or semi-sentient, parasite to jump from human host to human host. The phoenix was a rare form of a preternatual, extremely violent in its nature, and it was very, very powerful because of the energy it pulled to resurrect.
But it wasn't an abomination.
James wasn't an abomination.
"Interesting read?"
He turned his head, not the least bit startled by the appearance of the man in question behind him. It was hard to sneak up on Q within his own four walls. There was enough electronic surveillance equipment in here to make it an impossibility. Q was always logged into his own network while at home. There was no danger of losing himself in it. He knew everything inside out. It was also a good work-out for his brain.
He had known Bond was back in the flat the moment the man had walked through the main door on the ground floor.
"In a way," the technopath said. "Mrs. Macivrae sent me something one of her kind had written down about an encounter with a phoenix over two hundred years ago."
"Thrilling," Bond muttered, reading over what he could see, bending over the back of the couch a little.
Blond brows rose and Q knew just what he had read about.
"Seems like I was spared that fate."
"Seems like it."
"Claws and fangs?"
Q smiled a little. He felt a gentle caress against his neck. "Claws and fangs," he confirmed. "I'm not sure how much is truth and how much is the fear Kenna MacNeill felt when confronted with the phoenix. I'm not even sure if the man was truly that terrifying. She was probably as sensitive to the phoenix's energies as Moira is when it comes to you. That tends to blur the lines of reality and fantasy."
"She called it a separate entity as well."
Q scoffed. "Really, 007? You believe that? You have been a phoenix for close to two decades. When did you ever feel like you were hosting a parasite?"
It got Q a little smirk.
"Please," he muttered, rolling his eyes, exasperation in his voice. "I'm your bonded counter-balance and I've had the pleasure of looking at what you are up close and personal several times already. Nothing about it is a parasite or a creature of darkness or whatever else they call it. You are a preternatural. Like I am. You have an amazing ability."
"Like you?" Bond murmured, lips moving against his ear.
"Like me," he agreed, not the least bit shy about it. "And while your very nature makes you more primal, more prone to violence, and extremely adept at killing, it's nothing a werewolf, a hellhound or a baezil or many more aren't either."
"Baezil?"
Q waved a hand. "Basilisk. You encountered one in Chile."
Bond grimaced. "The goon who looked like he was on a steroid trip."
"Yes. Very simple-minded, very strong, very ferocious, and hard to stop. Extremely violent creature."
"I noticed."
"What it means, James, is that whether you are a supernatural or a preternatural, your nature leads you. You are instinctual. Nothing bad about it."
Bond chuckled, dropping a kiss against Q's temple. "No, nothing bad about instincts."
The technopath closed the file, storing it in a safe place. "Moira might try to understand what you are, what we are, but she is nothing but instinctual either. Her reactions to you are without thought. She doesn't use her brain."
"Neither do you," the Double-Oh purred. "I know you tried to analyze this, between us, all of us, in the beginning, but you never came up with an answer. You react instinctually, too."
Q leaned back his head, looking at his partner upside down. The wintery blue eyes were alive with mirth and humor. The crinkle around Bond's eyes was tell-tale and the handsome face, with its light beard shadow, looked relaxed and open.
No, this wasn't an abomination. A cold-blooded assassin, yes. A trained killer, yes. Lethal, highly dangerous, very effective and one of the best field agents of MI6.
But that was who he had been trained to be, following his natural traits, giving in to the blood-lust and the violence barely shackled inside. But never a monster.
Q reached up, pulling him down into a kiss. It was sloppy and far from suave.
"You're a nightmare, James Bond," he said when they parted. "But you are my nightmare. It won't stop me from trying to understand as much as I can about it means to be a phoenix, but I never was and never will be scared of you."
Bond slid over the back of the couch, all sinewy grace and smooth moves. Q let himself get pushed back and straddled, the tablet landing on the floor in a controlled slide.
Then those lips were back. Hungry and powerful, teeth nipping at his own lips, demanding entrance, and he kissed back, refusing to be dominated or surrender just like that. Stubble rubbed against Q's smooth-shaven skin.
The phoenix was there, looking through human eyes, cold and controlled, fiery and hot in its nature and wants and needs. It was looking at Q, the ravenous hunger clear to see, and he smiled at it. He touched the handsome face, fingers sliding through the short hair, pulling James closer again.
"I love you," he whispered against the slick lips, nipping at them.
The answer was a hard kiss, hips grinding down against his, the tremor passing through the powerful frame tell-tale.
James' face was open, reflecting emotions Q had seen often before. Emotions he could name. Emotions Bond had expressed in words once or twice.
The kiss grew more affectionate, more exploring, soft and deep.
Making out on the couch.
Q almost laughed.
It felt so good, so relaxing, so wonderfully them.
Blunt, strong fingers buried themselves in the longish, dark hair and Q smiled against the hungry lips.
Bond relaxed more against him, heavy but not too heavy in his arms, and they lay together, breathing together. This – them - it was about more than just the hunger that needed to be sated. It was about more had primordial power. It was about closeness, balance, calming the fierce, ferocious nature of the phoenix, and taking what Q needed in turn.
Without fear.
Without apology.
"I love you," James said into the silence.
Q ran a calming caress over the strong neck, smiling a little more. He pressed a kiss against the blond head.
His phoenix.
Who wouldn't end up consuming itself. James Bond was his and he was the phoenix's counter-balance. He had saved this very special man for a pre-destined end. Maybe one of the few of his kind who had found that person.
Q made a mental note to look into who Finn had been. There might be more notes somewhere, in obscure libraries or in private collections. A lot had already been digitalized, scanned, stored, saved for generations. He would also ask Finch if he had someone on hand who might know where to look.
Finn hadn't been one of the lucky ones. Like so many.
But James wouldn't perish like that. Not as long as there was the counter-balance.
tbc...