Chapter Text
As Q stood in front of the glass walled medical bay the next morning before heading to Q branch watching an unconscious 004, he felt that he had won at least one important battle the day before. R was a good handler. She was decisive, calm under pressure and nearly chomping at the bit to work with 007, just as he had been a few months back.
Although Q had held the title for barely a month, his predecessor had been grooming him for nearly a year to take over his job. The shrewd old man had known that M was being pressurised to step down and he had every intention of throwing in his lot with her. He had decided that Q would succeed him, the day he had rescued the ex-dropout junkie from being incarcerated for life.
Skyfall had taught Q that training could only prepare you so much for the real thing. When he had plugged Silva’s drive into the system, he could almost hear the old man tutting at his shoulder. “What was rule no. 1, boy? Did I teach you nothing?”
TRUST NO ONE. It was the one golden rule, the rule of thumb. Had his old teacher not been blown to smithereens by Silva, he would have been turning over in his grave at Q’s blunders.
“Only machines cannot lie, m’ boy. The rest of the world is going to fuck you left, right and centre. Don’t trust anyone, sometimes not even yourself.” He had gestured at the shining consoles surrounding them at the old HQ. “Meet your new best friends. We are in the business of uncovering the truth and there’s only one absolute. Numbers don’t lie.”
Q had always been ‘boy’ to his mentor, the old Q. He had had a name once but it had faded away into obscurity just like his old self. The letters R and now Q had earned him his place in the world. He had been so tired at the ripe old age of twenty, fighting the innate human need to be accepted, not by imbeciles like his Uni classmates, but by someone…anyone who could comprehend what true genius was.
Drugs had made the clamour inside his head easier to handle and routine jobs like hacking into the system to change his fellow students’ grades had kept him in enough cash for his daily hits.
But the drugs only took the edge off. One day, they simply weren’t enough. As a final cry of protest against the clamour of constant boredom, he took a dose double his usual and then hacked into the M16 mainframe. He had assumed he would not be sticking around to face the consequences.
He had woken up to bright lights in a state of the art medical centre within the bowels of M16 with clean, masked faces hovering above his own. The horror of impending withdrawal was completely obscured by the terrifying uncertainty of what was going to happen to him.
When the old Q had visited, his future teacher’s first words to him had been, “Boy, there is nothing you could’ve done that would’ve been more criminal than destroying that magnificent brain. The code you used was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Q had held on to these words like a talisman as he went through withdrawal followed by training under the watchful eye of his old mentor. M had fully expected him to relapse. He defied expectations as he simply rose from strength to strength. She did not understand. The drugs had been necessary to hold him back. There was no need to hold himself back anymore.
He was pitted against the finest hackers in the world. His offensive tactical strategies were already formidable and he slowly became skilled at defensive coding as well. R knew he was doing something right when he underwent a ‘friendly’ abduction in the fourth month of his appointment, where the CIA made him a counter offer he would’ve been insane to refuse.
But refuse he did, which was when he realised that he was more patriotic than he would’ve ever given himself credit for.
When he had returned to Q Branch after the supposedly covert ‘kidnapping’, the old Q had handed him his first assignment as a handler for 005. He loved the new facet of his job, though admittedly there were a few side-effects of working with human beings again. Q had shrugged off the few failures. There were new lessons to learn everyday. He revelled in the forbidden knowledge.
Everything about the missions slowly became routine. The life or death stakes were a part of the job for the double o’s, but losing or letting down an agent Q was personally handling never became old. As he completed handling one successful mission after another, he had his eyes on the prize.
Agent James Bond, code 007, was always handled by the erstwhile Q and no one else. When he had enquired the reason why, the old Q had eyed him appraisingly, “You’ll get your turn, boy. There will come a time when you’ll fondly remember the days when you weren’t affected by his existence and at the same time you’ll crave handling his next assignment.” Q couldn’t wait to prove that he was up to the task.
But the man had gone and ‘died’. Bond’s funeral was the only time Q had seen the old man cry.
And now recently learned painfully, exactly what the old man had meant as he watched the footage of the flames at Skyfall attempting to lick the sky on his computer screen. He had loved every minute of working with the maverick (oh who was he kidding!), borderline insane agent, had loved bending the rules to ensure the survival of his charge. It took more than just skill to handle 007. It took an incredible level of adaptability, of being prepared to expect disasters (in plural) at every turn.
What it definitely did not need was the presence of an unconscious attraction for James bloody Bond.
Which was what had shocked Q – his own reaction, the feeling of intense relief as the M16 evac team first to reach Skyfall had reported that M had died, but Bond had survived against all odds. Well, relief had been his first reaction. The second had been ‘What the fuck!’
Q took a deep breath as he turned away from the med centre. He had made the right call of passing Bond on to someone else. He had already made the mistake of getting involved with an agent once. And Q was a man who learned from his mistakes.
***
R’s meeting with M and Bond had been scheduled for 10.00 a.m. Q was in his office, coding a Trojan to be inserted within a communication meant for an extremist Middle Eastern cartel. He was so engrossed in the task that he did not even notice R standing outside waiting, which wasn’t surprising in itself. No one interrupted Q when he was coding. When he did notice her, he was unpleasantly shocked. It was 1 p.m. Bond’s flight for Israel was supposed to leave at 1. What the hell was his handler doing here?
Only when he had muted his screen, did he notice the red rimmed eyes and the smudged mascara. She dropped a neatly typed sheet on his desk with shaky hands, but her voice was alarmingly steady, “I’m sorry Q. But I’m here to give my resignation.”
***
“What the fuck did you say to her?” It had been his turn to slam doors on the way to 007’s office.
…who had the gall to tip his chair back a few more inches and smirk at him nonchalantly, before turning his attention back to the keyboard nestled in his lap, which he was using to play bleeding Solitaire of all things.
“It was your fault,” he implied in a slow and taunting voice. The smirk had a taunting edge now.
Q had sworn that he would never deal with Bond with his masks down. He was quivering with suppressed rage, his own rule broken. M’s office had been his first stop, but Mallory had been equally consternated. Apparently in M’s presence, Bond had accepted the change quite amicably. Whatever he had said to R later was about to cost Q a very good programmer.
“Listen, you arrogant arse, I don’t care if M thinks that the sun rises and sets on you. You are going to march down to Q Branch this instant and apologise to R or I’ll ensure that you’ll regret it.”
Bond set the keyboard back on the desk and got up in one smooth motion, reaching for his coat draped on the back of the chair. “Lead the way,” he announced, slipping on the coat in one smooth motion.
Q had just built up steam, and this response stopped him in his tracks. He blinked owlishly at 007. “You are willing to apologise.”
“If you are the one handling my assignments henceforth, I’ll even throw in a bouquet with a dozen red roses.” The grin he threw Q was charming, like a swaying cobra.
Q took a step back, feeling completely wrong-footed. “Excuse me!”
“Well, if you’re intending to make me ‘regret’ my actions, it can only be when you are overseeing me in the field, and not some greenhorn do-gooder with daddy issues. As that’s decided and that was exactly what I wanted to happen, I have no qualms whatsoever making up to your minion. But just to lay boundaries, am I allowed to sleep with her? It will make the apology a whole lot easier for me.”
Q experienced a jolt of intense loathing as he imagined tearing the man to tiny pieces and running them through the paper shredder. He stalked out of the office. This time he was sure the glass on the office door had cracked on impact.
***
It was late evening, not that you had any way to tell that inside the ‘new’ Q branch. Q was nursing a pounding headache as he cradled his cup of Earl Grey, looking for all intents and purposes like he was staring at the screen with intent concentration. But all he was thinking about was how easily Bond had got under his skin. His musings were interrupted by a polite knock on the door.
He looked up to see 007 standing at the threshold with both arms raised in a gesture of universal surrender. “I come in peace,” he said, one eyebrow raised sardonically.
When Q said nothing, he simply walked in seating himself on the corner of his desk. “R is not leaving any longer. You’ll be happy to know that she received an effusive apology from my end with no sexual overtures whatsoever.” There was a loaded pause, “Q, I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot at the museum and I’ll concede to my share of the blame for the same if you accept yours.”
Q laughed as he rubbed his hands over his eyes tiredly, “I’m too exhausted for games, 007. So do me a favour and lay your cards on the table. If I remember correctly, it was you who had insinuated that I was a spotty kid with dubious competence. An opinion I must have cemented in stone with Skyfall. I thought, quite rationally I’m afraid that you’d welcome any opportunity to not work with me. Now suddenly you want me? What made you change your mind?”
In answer, Bond placed and old fashioned recorder on his desk and switched it on. Q found himself staring into the cool blue eyes as his own voice echoed in the room.
"We were too slow. I…was too- We need 007 back in the field, M. He would have found her sooner…..What you cannot do is treat a racehorse like a pack mule. He needs missions worthy of his level of insanity.”
This was the point, where Q should have been incoherent with rage. But he managed a strangled whisper, “You…you had the gall to bug my work-station!”
“What did you expect? That I should’ve waited for your permission before going after 004? I needed data. If hadn’t found her when you did, I was already enroute to Heathrow to board the next flight to Beirut.
Q forgot to be angry as he slumped over his desk, massaging his forehead with both hands, “Jesus, Bond! You spied on me. You’re as good as telling me that you never believed that I could extract Swenson. Yet you want me to be the voice in your ear? Is it an ego issue? That no one other than the erstwhile quartermaster would do for the great James Bond? I’ll ask M to demote me if that’s the-”
“Q, in all of my time here, do you know how many people within this organization have shown blind faith in me? There have only been three and I’ve had to watch them all die one after another.”
Q slowly lowered the hand covering his eyes. Bond wasn’t even looking at him. Instead he was concentrating at a point above his shoulder with a faraway look in his eyes. “And somehow, you remind me of all three of them. You’re idealistic and surprisingly innocent like Mathis, tough and shrewdly brilliant like Boothroyd and stupidly stubborn like M.”
The twin ice-blue chips within the weathered brown face pinned him again and Q felt a shiver tingle down his spine. “The first time you flouted protocol to let me leave with M could have been… misplaced hero-worship, a rookie mistake by someone who hadn’t worked with me before. But this… a ringing endorsement from the last person I had ever expected to receive it from.” He leaned forward, looming over Q, fixing him with that arctic blue gaze. “I need that faith from my handler when I’m out in the field. I need my guide to trust me, to believe that I’m doing the right thing, even if it may not look like that in that moment.”
Q swallowed as he realised that Bond was echoing the ‘ringing endorsement’ with respect to his still spotty quartermaster.
Bond took a deep breath before dropping his gaze and getting off the desk. He paused at the door but didn’t turn around. “I do not presume to force anyone to be my handler, Q. I’m leaving for Tel Aviv at oh two hundred in the morning and I would really appreciate it, if you would handle the mission. If you still don’t want to, I’ll manage on my own. I usually have to.”
The silence in his wake was loud.