Chapter Text
Q’s head hurt.
He lay still on the ground for a few minutes, grimacing as he felt a twinge of pain in his ribs—how far did he fall?—before he reached around for his glasses, which had fallen off at some point. Rolling onto his side, he rubbed his temples before feeling around in the dark, the last few memories before the unexpected fall coming back to mind as he scraped his palm on loose gravel. He distinctly remembered being in the bowls of MI6 with R and Marcela, the three of them planning to tackle the hard copy archives and digitize them on an isolated server at M’s request. He and R had been discussing budget adjustments when he thought he’d heard his partner’s voice among the stacks, and told R and Marcela to start without him so he could go ward off a potential prank. Calling softly for James Bond, he swore it was him he heard, he’d instead tripped on something in the dark, and then fell.
Where he landed here.
He didn’t even know that MI6 had a basement lower than the archival rooms.
Q’s fingers closed around one of the lenses, and he was relieved to find that his glasses were intact. Sitting up, he gingerly rubbed the lenses clean with the edge of his cardigan and then slipped them on, silently cursing James and the darkness. “R! Marcela! Can you two hear me?” he shouted, looking up and seeing nothing.
Unnerved, he glanced around as his eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. “James! James, are you down here? I heard you earlier…” he shouted, only for his words to taper to an end when he realized that they were echoing around him as though he were in a tunnel. Shaking his head, he sighed and rolled his shoulders back, instantly regretting the action when his ribs protested the movement.
Medical first. James second.
Gingerly stepping forward, he walked slowly, keeping his hands out to stop himself from walking into something harmful. It didn’t take long for him to notice a sliver of what looked like navy, a shade lighter than the black he was surrounded by.
“James, I swear to God, if this is your idea of a joke, M’s idea of mercy is going to be hilariously tame compared to what I’m going to do to you!” he muttered to himself as he hurried towards the color, feeling a breath of fresh air as he placed his hands against what felt like rotting wood. He gritted his teeth and pushed, nearly stumbling forward as the wood immediately gave way and pitched him forward into the night air.
Confusion growing, he shivered as he looked around the foreign city, feeling like he’d stepped out into an episode of the Twilight Zone. Studying the spires and the surrounding buildings, he got the sense that he was somewhere in Russia, but that made no sense as he was damn sure he woke up that morning in London. Glancing back, he found that the tunnel he’d just stepped out of was apparently nothing but a solid rock wall with Cyrillic graffiti.
Definitely Russia.
Wishing he’d spent more time learning Russian, Q turned and walked slowly forward, keeping his shoulders hunched forward and head down. He had no concept of the time or date, and knew that his best bet of safety would be a hotel, which would have a phone and a medical kit because he needed paracetamol for his ribs.
Keeping a hand close to his side, Q gingerly pushed open the door to the nearest building, exhaustion and the dull pain keeping him from full-out panicking. The lobby seemed hotel-like, and he prayed that he was somewhere that could at least offer shelter for the evening, long enough for Q to gather his wits and figure out what the hell was going on.
The hotel lobby was quiet and mostly deserted when he entered, a man behind the front desk looking up with little interest as Q approached him. He raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his seat as Q stopped in front of the desk, and Q knew pretty well what he most likely appeared to the man as. “Excuse me, I’m looking for someone, I don’t know if you’ve seen him, but perhaps you’ve heard of him?” he said carefully as to not jar his ribs further.
“What’s the name?” the man asked in a thick accent, pulling open a book.
Q hedged his bet here. “James Bond,” he said, figuring that there had to be reason why he was in Russia. “Which city is this?”
The man paused, arching an eyebrow at him. “Drink much already?” he asked finally.
“No, got jumped in the street,” Q said, gesturing to his ribs. “I, uh, hit my head pretty hard upon impact.”
The man nodded absently as he turned through the pages of the book. “Is Mr. Bond expecting you?” he asked, finally looking up at Q, who tried to conceal his surprise.
“Uh, yes, he is. Tell him that it has to do with his trip here, he’ll understand,” Q said, hoping his lying wasn’t as bad as it sounded to him as he watched the man reach for a phone behind him. “Thank you.”
The man nodded as he dialed. “And who should I tell him is here?” he asked, glancing warily back at Q.
“His cousin,” Q promptly replied.
The man nodded. “I can see the family resemblance,” he said before going back to the phone, causing Q to furrow his brow in confusion. He looked up when there was a sound of a door opening, and then promptly set the phone back into the cradle. “Ah, just the man I wanted to see,” he said as a dark-haired unfamiliar man entered the lobby, blue eyes darting between the two of them. “Mr. Bond, this gentleman says he’s your cousin and has something to do with your trip here to St. Petersburg,” he said as the dark-haired man paused, brow furrowing as he studied Q with a confused expression that Q knew mirrored the one on his face.
Wait, what? This isn’t James Bond.
“Well, thank you for hanging onto him for me, he always does wander off,” the man—Bond, Q could never think of this stranger as ‘James’—said amiably before gesturing for Q to follow him. “Where did you find him?” he asked, pausing to look back at the man behind the desk.
“Said he got jumped in the street and fell. Can’t even remember what city he’s in,” the man said, shaking his head in dismay. “Better keep a better eye on him.”
“Of course.” Bond gently nudged Q ahead of him, guiding him through a door and into a narrow, dimly lit corridor. Q relaxed infinitesimally as Bond directed him towards the nearby lift at the end of the hall. He still had no idea what was going on, still suspected that his James was attempting an extremely elaborate prank, and when Q caught him there was going to be-
Slam!
“Fuck, what the hell was that for?” Q nearly screeched when Bond unexpectedly slammed him against the corridor. He nearly froze instinctively when the gun was pressed against his temple, but indignation won over and he scowled at Bond.
“Did Janus send you?” Bond asked coldly, keeping firm pressure on the gun. “Who sent you?”
This isn’t James, this isn’t James. Gritting his teeth, Q squirmed in Bond’s grip even as his heart rate skyrocketed with the ominous click of the hammer. “No one sent me,” he blurted out, eyes pressing closed as he desperately wished himself out of this nightmare. “Oh God, nobody sent me, I just heard your name somewhere and thought you could help me get medical treatment,” he said, trying to rein in his terror long enough to lie convincingly and get out of this godforsaken mess alive.
“Where did you hear my name?”
Q swallowed, an idea coming to him. “In an alley, I was looking for something to eat when I heard two people talking about you… that they had to keep something from you,” he said, drawing back on what he could remember of his James’ missions. Hoping that Bond would mistake his pounding heart for fear of death instead of lying, he added, “I thought…I thought, you know, enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that.”
Bond silently regarded him. “What did you used to do?” he asked finally.
Showtime. “Low-level programming for Janus’ organization,” Q lied, heart thudding into overtime as he used the name Bond had mentioned earlier. He forced himself to meet Bond’s gaze. “Janus did not send me, I left voluntarily because pay was horrible and they were killing people…”
“Does that mean you’ll be able to track down the missing Russian satellite, Goldeneye?” Bond asked, looking interested for the first time since their meeting.
No, of course not. Who the fuck loses a satellite? “Yeah, I’m fairly confident that I can,” he said, sounding more sure of himself than he certainly felt.
For one horrible moment, he genuinely thought that Bond would shoot him anyway; the agent’s expression hadn’t changed throughout Q’s ‘confession’. Then he felt the gun move away from his head as the agent released his shoulder and let him go. “You’re lucky that I’ve been looking for a way into Janus’ organization, or we wouldn’t be here discussing this,” he said, slipping the gun back into the holster. He stepped back and gestured for Q to follow him. “Shall we?”
Q nodded mutely, wondering what the hell he’d just gotten himself into. He hoped he could keep up the act of the terrified low-level programmer long enough for some kind of rescue.