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Chapter Text

The lights on the plane flicker on and off before fizzing out with finality, and when Bond slams the hatch open Q has a split second to stare out into the darkness beyond before the wind rips into him and he has grab the sides of the plane to keep his feet.

Amidst the chaos there is one solid, unmovable touch, and Q glances down at Bond's hand wrapped tightly around his arm. They pull towards each other, Q sacrificing his grip on the plane to snag onto Bond's suit jacket. The Double-O's tie whips in the wind, but in the pale starlight Bond's eyes gleam with determination, and Q stares back, the panic held temporarily at bay.

"Don't scream," Bond shouts over the roaring wind and the buzz of the propellers. His arms shift, clench tightly around Q's waist, and he pushes both of them out of the plane, into darkness and starlight and the inexorable grip of gravity.

---

Q will be the very first to admit that he's not cut out to be a field agent, but if he had to, if he really, really had to - he could survive out in the field.

He knows that many agents look at his youthful, pristine appearance and his cozy sweaters and scholarly glasses, and simply slot him under the category of support – useful, maybe even critical, but hardly one to risk his life for the mission. They don't see the electrical burns and the many, many cuts that come hand-in-hand with building systems from the ground up; they don't realize that before the finalized weapons and the explosives they draw so easily from their kits there must necessarily be prototypes – experimental, unstable, and very, very volatile – and that the mortality rate in Q Branch is at an all-time low only because Riley had championed safety and safeguards as a priority in the labs, and Q had continued that policy when he took the quartermaster position.

Q has come close to death several times over without ever stepping in the field and he's been shot at numerous times since Spectre came on the scene, but no amount of electric shocks or gunshots or the kickback of a car engine roaring under his fingers can ever prepare Q for the sensation of falling.

Humans were never meant to fly, after all.

---

They don't fall far. Any higher, and the impact with the water would kill them.

It still feels like absolutely forever.

The first seconds are the longest. There's no room for conscious thought; Q grabs hold of don't scream, keeps his mouth shut and his tongue safely behind his teeth, and clenches onto any part of Bond he can reach. The world whirls around them, shadows and silhouettes, the softer dark of the sky blurring into the absolute inkiness of the ocean, over and over and over—

—and then they slice into the water.

The transition from yielding air into the fluid solidity of water is shocking, forceful enough to tear Q apart from Bond, and Q sinks for long, long seconds before his thrashing stills his momentum. He's lost all the air in his lungs, but Bond's imperative to don't scream is lodged like an undeletable command in his head and so Q doesn't open his mouth, doesn't end up swallowing the ocean in a mindless bid for a gulp of air.

There is absolutely no bearing for up or down in the water, and Q splays his limbs, stretches his hands outwards into the unknown. His chest burns from the lack of air and his pounding heart is loud in his ears, but his flailing efforts are finally rewarded by the brush of questing fingers, followed almost instantly by a vicelike grip around his wrist and a violent yank—

—and Q breaks the surface of the water with a sharp gasp, the first mouthful of air painful in his lungs. He kicks his legs to keep his head above water, panting heavily, and doesn't find the task as hard as it should be; when he twists around, Bond is treading water next to him, one hand gripped tight in the collar of Q's sweater as if he intends to forcibly lift Q's shoulders above water if he has to.

"What—" The word rasps in Q's throat.

"Brace yourself," Bond cuts him off.

Why, Q almost asks, but then he notices that Bond isn't looking at him, is looking instead past his shoulder.

Somewhere behind them, the plane they'd leapt from just mere moments ago smashes into the ocean. The sound of it is thunderous and deafening, and Q knows at once that although they're safe from the immediate crash, they're not far away enough to avoid the consequences of it.

He catches Bond's gaze, and the Double-O has the gall to grin at him.

"Take a deep breath," Bond advises, and catches Q in yet another embrace before the concussion of waves from the plane hits them, pulling them back underwater and sweeping them along with jarring force.

They crash heavily into something hard and unyielding, Q feeling the shock of the abrupt stop but not the injuring force of impact. The waves drag around them before finally dying, Bond's arms falling away at the same time. Q kicks, breaking the water surface and surprised that his feet brush solid if slippery ground, even though his chin barely manages to clear the water when he stands upright, the currents constantly threatening to pull his feet back from under him.

The rocky outcropping they'd slammed into juts out of the water like a miniature island, but beyond it Q can see the shadows of tall trees, coconut palms with their tall narrow trunks and long fronds.

"Bond," Q shouts instinctively. He isn't quite able to look away from the sign of blessed solid land just a short distance away, but when he doesn't get a response, he tears his gaze away, glancing around him frantically. "Bond?"

Under the faint moonlight, Q catches a glimpse of blond just below the surface of the water, and pushes in that direction, half wading and half clawing at the rocks to pull himself along. Bond doesn't move, limbs slack, drifting—

No, sinking down into the water.

Q grabs for any part of Bond he can reach, forces Bond's head up above water. When the Double-O doesn't react, Q's heart spikes up into his throat and he scrambles, turns the Double-O onto his back and locks his arms under Bond's arms and pulls, making for the shore. Even in the buoyancy of the water Bond feels oddly heavy, and Q struggles, especially when the sand and stone beneath his feet begin sloping upward. In an effort to keep his hold, he digs his fingers deeper into Bond's jacket—

—Bond's Q Branch-issued, Kevlar-lined suit jacket, as light as Q can design it but still a sinking weight in the water—

"Why the hell," Q rasps, and doesn't bother articulating the rest, adrenaline ensuring that his mind remains razor sharp and quick: Bond had kept his suit jacket on despite the weight of it dragging him down to protect himself from jagged rocks and knife-like coral, and then wrapped himself around Q to protect his quartermaster from harm.

That realization gives Q enough of a burst of energy that he manages to heave Bond from the water and onto the beach, far up enough that the waves won't lap at their feet. Q collapses onto his knees a moment later, damp clumps of sand scattering at the impact.

"Shit," he gasps – is he still catching his breath, or is he hyperventilating? Neither is helpful right now, and Q forces himself to move, pushes Bond's suit jacket out of the way. His hands brush against something within the inner pocket—

"You think too much," Bond said, drawing away with Q's glasses held neatly between his fingers, careful so he doesn't smudge the lenses.

Q wanted to snatch them back, but he's frozen in his seat, the safety belts sharp lines across his chest. He kept his eyes on Bond's hands, because if he acknowledged the rest of the plane, or heaven forbid, the dark skyline beyond them, he might just lose the tenuous calm he'd dredged up.

"I'll stop thinking so much if you keep your hands on the bloody controls," Q spared enough breath to say, and then went back to counting his breaths, spaced them out at even intervals.

Bond set one hand back on the control yoke, and then tucked Q's glasses into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. He patted at it once, as if to say he'll keep them safe.

"Fair enough."

—and Q's fingers move without his conscious command, draws out the glasses and slips them on. They don’t make much of a difference – Q's eyesight isn't terrible, and the darkness mutes all details, nullifies the clarity the glasses normally afford him – but Q will take any resemblance of control at this point.

He forces himself to lean over, pressing his ear near Bond's mouth and nose to listen for his breathing, two fingers fitted to Bond's throat, hunting.

He's almost expecting the silence, spends another moment watching Bond's chest for a rise and fall that doesn't come, and—

—things are easier, all of a sudden.

Q sits up, and gently but resolutely tilts Bond's head back, any possible head injury a distant third consideration to not breathing and cardiac arrest. He pinches Bond's nose shut, seals his mouth over his and blows five times, and then he rises on his knees, locks his elbows straight, and bears his weight down, palms compressing Bond's chest in quick intervals.

Rinse. Repeat. Like a program with a loop command.

He’s on his fourth repetition when Bond jerks under him, violently enough that he thumps back onto the sand audibly, and Q shoves him onto his side so he doesn’t choke himself coughing up seawater and bile. Bond rolls with the movement, seemingly aware enough that he doesn’t fight Q’s help – self-preservation is second nature to the Double-Os, Q thinks distantly – but when he slumps back on his back, Bond’s eyes are closed, and he doesn’t respond when Q calls his name.

Still unconscious, then.  But Bond is breathing properly now; Q counts the breaths to thirty just to make sure they don’t stop, all of a sudden, and when Q hunts for a heartbeat at Bond’s carotid, he finds it, faint but steady.

Q breathes out. He sits down next to Bond, and then allows himself the next few minutes to just be hysterical.

The hem of his sweater, torn and damp, tears further apart under Q’s fingers. It’s either that or risk his hands on the sand, punching at the surface of it or scrambling at stones or shells, and Q has enough self-awareness to know he’s going to need his hands in decent enough condition to survive this. He lets his fingers clench deep into thick wool and hunches his entire body around his core; he’s long past the urge to hyperventilate, but his breathing still sounds shrill in his ears.

He's suddenly very aware of every hurt and ache he's sustained, on top of the strain of the mission before and his battle against his fear of flying.

Slowly, Q licks at the cut he can feel at the bottom of his lip, and then carefully bites down. The tiny sharp pain does wonders to clear his mind, and he catalogues his injuries, which mostly consist of scrapes and cuts, stinging from the saltwater, and the deeper ache of bruises and pulled muscles. The worst of it is his wrist, from when Bond had pulled him from the depths of the ocean towards the surface; Q knows he’ll have a ring of dark bruises come the morning, but it’s nowhere as serious as it could have been.

He has no open wounds, no fractures or broken bones. He’s lucky.

No, Q corrects himself a moment later. He has a very competent Double-O watching over him.

Carefully, Q studies the other man. The moon had risen enough while he was scrambling to resuscitate Bond that the entire beach is now washed in light, painting everything in grey scale. Q cups Bond’s jaw, enjoys the thump of his heartbeat for a moment before he cards his fingers through blond hair, following the curve of his skull until he hits a bump.

Well, that confirms Q’s suspicions. Bond had survived falling vast heights into a river with a bullet in his shoulder; Q doubts he would drown from anything short of a blow to the head knocking him unconscious.

He lifts one hand and sniffs – no metallic tang of blood, just the gritty musk of damp sand and the brine of the ocean. There’s not much else Q can do for the swelling; he’s seen the Double-Os bounce back from concussions and poisonings and beatings, and hopes it’s the same this round. Sighing, Q pulls Bond up against his shoulder and does his best to pull the suit jacket free without jostling Bond too much; under his arm is the holster with Bond’s favoured Walther PPK/S, and on the other side is a sheath housing a long knife.

Q pauses, and then draws out the blade. Moonlight catches on the metal, highlighting the double edges; 004 handles the maintenance of her weapons, but the contents of all the Double-O’s kits are designed or deployed by Q, and he’s more than familiar with the weight of 004’s knives. Lightweight but incredibly strong, in 004’s hands the blade shears right through muscle and bones, and she could throw them at a target with enough accuracy to rival her skills with the gun.

Guns are incredibly useful in their line of work, but right now, on a desert island, a knife seems a much better choice.

Q takes them both, the harness and all, and adjusts the straps and buckles until they sling comfortably around his hips, the gun and knife both within easy reach. Done, he levels Bond back down to the sand and drapes the jacket over him for warmth, tucking one jacket arm under Bond’s head as a makeshift pillow against the sand.

Injuries taken care of for the moment and feeling a little better now that he’s armed, Q composes a list of needs, prioritizes it as best he can:

Water. Food. Fire. Shelter. Other weapons, tools he can salvage. The mission—

Q cuts off the mental list, shortens it to the first four, and reassesses.

Water and food they can do without in the immediate short term, and although a fire would be amazing, for the warmth and the protection and as a literal ray of hope, there's no way Q is going to traipse through an unknown tropical island in the dead of the night looking for dry kindling. He's not entirely sure he could even start a fire; he's used to lighters and blow-torches, not two pieces of wood and a lot of friction. 

Shelter though. As much as it seems a lower priority than the others, Q knows he needs to get them away from the shoreline, beyond the reach of the insidious tide and into the tree lines. It doesn’t feel safe to stay out in the open like this, and – Q glances nervously down at Bond’s prone body – he’s not sure how long Bond’s going to stay unconscious.

“This,” Q says, and the volume of his own voice startles him, even though he’d barely spoken loud enough to be heard above the sound of the waves. He clears his throat, and lowers his voice further. “This would be a wonderful time for you to wake up and wreck your usual chaos, Bond.”

Bond stays silent, of course, and Q brushes one hand across his temple, sweeping errant sand away. It’s probably best for Bond to remain unconscious, to heal as much as he can.

Q forces himself upright, swearing softly under his breath when the sand gives way, makes each step just that more treacherous. The tree line isn’t far away, and this close to the shore it mostly consists of coconut palms. Q hunts, squinting in the darkness, until he finds a likely spot – a mostly clear area under two leafy trees, far away enough from any palms that they won’t risk coconuts falling on them. Q has a clear view of the ocean from here, can see the dark shape that is Bond.

Good enough. Q doesn’t have the energy to search for anything better.

He’d found a number of smaller palms, growing low enough to the ground that Q is able to reach the long leaves; he attacks them now, 004’s blade gleaming in the moonlight as he shears off entire fronds, arranges piles of them in the clearing he’d found for bedding. Q wishes he had some sort of fabric or blanket to cover them so the leaf edges don’t cut him, but he’ll take an uncomfortable mat of spiny leaves than the hard ground and a million tropical insects.

Q stays upright simply because he knows if he sits down now he’ll never get back up, and goes to collect Bond from the beach. They’re both worse for the wear after that, because Q isn’t strong enough to just pick up the man, and by the end of it Bond is considerably sandier and likely more bruised than before, but at least they get to the clearing in one piece.

He checks Bond's breathing, pleased that it doesn't sound laboured or raspy, and then looks down at the jacket in his hands. The Kevlar lining makes it perfect protection from both the spiny palm leaves and critters, but in the end Q settles the jacket back over Bond. He's learned a lot about drowning and how to treat someone recovering from it from Moneypenny, back when she'd been pulled from the field for shooting 007 off the Varda Viaduct. It had been one of her ways of coping, to investigate all the ways she could have enacted a rescue.

For the next assignment, the next operative, of course. Field agents are nothing but brutally realistic.

Q takes the time to tuck in the jacket edges to lock in as much heat as possible, and finally, finally, lets himself slump down beside Bond, falling back against the rough bark of the tree trunk. The gun holster digs into his hip but Q doesn't bother shifting, just stares out at the beach, the ocean a sheet of darkness beyond it and the sky dotted with stars above them all. There's a dark shape standing out against the horizon, jutting out of the water like a rising sea dragon, heat and steam warping the air around it, and Q realizes with a start that it's their plane.

He watches it for long minutes, his fingers twisting together restlessly, his mind lulled into numbed silence for once.

It's cold. Q hadn't realized just how cold it can get in the tropics at night, especially when he's still a damp mess of sweater and trousers and half-dried hair, sweat cooling tackily on his skin. The wind moans above the susurrations of the waves, and Q tries not to think about the temptation of the sunbaked sands, still radiating heat – just curls himself into a tighter ball and twitches his fingers under the jacket to grab a hold of Bond's hand.

Warm. Not a feverish heat, and not the clammy cool of impending hypothermia. Q's shoulders collapse, tension draining from his spine until all that's left is exhaustion, his eyes stinging from salt and fatigue. Q breathes out, and tilts his head back, letting his tired eyes fall shut.

The wave of vertigo hits him so strongly that his eyes snap immediately open, his body physically pitching forward. His hand snatches instinctively around Bond's wrist, the other shooting out to brace himself, spiny leaves biting into his palm. His head spins with the memory, that split second of weightlessness before gravity catches him, his heart and his stomach in his throat, an endless plummeting—

"Shit," Q whispers, his voice sounding distant in his own ears. "Shit."

He keeps his eyes wide open, fixed on the plane wreck, until his breathing slows and he becomes aware of a rhythmic beat under his fingertips. Wincing, Q uncurls his fingers from around Bond's wrist, his joints aching from how tightly he'd been squeezing. He doesn't quite let go though – not when the stolen warmth and that pulse is the only evidence Q has that he isn't alone.

Q stares out into the ocean, the steady thump of Bond’s heartbeat under his fingers a metronome to pass the night by.

---

M's office in Whitehall was light and airy, a world away from the fortified underground bunkers that now made MI6’s temporary headquarters. Behind the oaken writing table, M rose to his feet, his eyes sweeping across the neat stacks of documents one last time before cutting back up. He looked visibly tired – every single person associated with MI6 was weary, after Spectre and the dissolution of the Joint Intelligence Service – but there was something in M's eyes, in the way he stood, that called to mind the regality of a falcon, soaring high and observing the lay of the land for prey. His stint back in the field and actively taking down Denbigh had marked a subtle divergence in the way M operated; Q was just as likely to find him wrangling the higher authorities as to track him out in London, hunting leads with Moneypenny a constant shadow at his side.

On this occasion, however, M was firmly back in the role of the falconer.

"Is there anything either of you would like to add?"

Q stayed silent. He had plenty to say, but not regarding the mission.

Beside him, Bond was a conspicuous presence; his expression was neutral, but Q couldn’t help but feel his attention constantly drawn back to the—

Former Double-O? MI6 field agent? Part-time operative?

Q wasn’t sure what deal M had brokered with Bond to bring the man back within MI6’s fold once more. Was retirement even a legal option for the ultra-confidential special ops team? No other Double-O had survived long enough for it to become a possibility. Then again, Bond had slipped MI6’s leash frequently enough that it was almost a pattern.

To be honest, Q had been surprised to see the Double-O – for simplicity’s sake, Q settled on maintaining the status quo until someone told him otherwise – in M’s office.

The silence that fell between the three of them dragged on a little too long for Q’s comfort. Q resisted the urge to fidget, and curled his fingers firmly around the laptop he was never without nowadays. M was waiting for something; he’d glanced once at Q before fixing his gaze on Bond, and he hadn’t looked away since.

M doesn't have to state it out loud. The official joint mission was for Bond and Q to root out and shut down as many Spectre operations as possible, with a priority on disabling information centres like the one Bond blew up in the deserts of Morocco, but Q could read between the lines. Before Bond’s return, Q had expected 004, who specialised in flawless disguises and swift knife work and silent, inconspicuous mission completions, to be assigned to the mission. He didn't mind that M had chosen Bond instead - Bond was deadly and efficient - but Q would be confident with any of the other Double-Os at his side. After all, regardless of who received that assignment, their primary objective would be the same: keep Q alive.

As the person who took down the Nine Eyes program, Q would be Spectre's main target. M valued his Double-Os, but in this cybertechnology war, Q was the more valuable asset.

Finally, Bond moved - just a subtle tilt of his head, but it shifted his attention squarely to Q, and Q felt his spine straighten in response.

"When do we leave?"

Q blinked at him, and flicked the quickest of glances at M. When M didn’t intervene, Q’s fingers tapped out a quiet rhythm against the surface of his laptop, calculating, before they went still.

“I’ll need to debrief with Q Branch first; I refuse to leave MI6 unprotected in my absence. The new protocols—” at this point, Q kneaded at the side of his head; his headaches never seemed to quite go away, not with all the problems he has to unravel and the constant lack of sleep, “—we haven’t established enough of them, so we’ll have to improvise. I hope you don’t expect timely updates, sir.”

“I’m quite used to radio silences, yes,” M said dryly, and didn’t point out that that’s the reason why he has his quartermaster track his most intractable agents. After Spectre, very few of them dared to keep to their usual procedures.

Before Spectre and After Spectre. Like the denotations of distinct eras.

Q gave a small shake of his head, and addressed Bond once more. “I’d say... any time after midnight. Unless you need to make arrangements of your own.”

“No,” Bond said.

Q held his stare for a long moment, and then, as one they looked back at M.

M didn’t hesitate. “Dismissed.”

Q stood immediately – time was scarce, and he needed to catch as many of his senior staff as possible before the shifts switched. To his surprise, Bond waited for Q to move past him to stand, and then he slipped easily behind Q, shadowing him.

Q swallowed, the reality of their mission just hitting him. They’ll be out in the field for months on end, Q armed primarily with the brilliance and intuitive leaps of his mind and whatever technology he could get his hands on. But London was the heart of his territory; Q had defended it time and again, against Spectre and numerous other threats, and he had thought they would be secure enough until they’d stepped beyond the United Kingdom’s borders.

Bond clearly thought otherwise, and his duty, it seemed, began immediately.

“Gentlemen.”

Q pushed the doubts aside and turned; Bond barely glanced over his shoulder.

M’s voice was mild, but the hardness of his gaze made his words an order. “Keep each other alive.”

Chapter Text

Bond was very quiet when he slipped in and out of their chosen residences, a sentinel that dispatched their opponents before they became overt threats, so silent and ghostlike that Q felt like he was back in the safety and privacy of his home office, with only the hum of his systems around him for company. Q might be used to the murmur and bustle of life that were the Q Branch labs, but he never had stakes quite like these before, and so he appreciated Bond’s efforts to stay inconspicuous.

It was a testament to Bond’s skill that Q didn’t notice for a very long time. They'd been following the links of MI6's supply chain abroad to mask their movements. It was a win-win situation in Q's eyes: they got a secure, MI6-associated platform to find their feet on as he and Bond worked their way through this partnership, with a variety of resources to pick and choose from, and Q was able to check on a number of the Secret Service's safe houses himself. MI6 agents would likely need more frequent use of those facilities in the months to come, and Q had wanted them free of any possible Spectre tampering.

Now, they’ve struck out on their own, flitting from city to city like migrating birds and it was only when Q was forced to take stock of their own supplies, now that they no longer have the safe houses to fall back on, that he noticed the discrepancies. 

Like how their medical kit was always fully stocked, but occasionally housed different supplies, the texture of the bandages subtly altered, the number of pills in the medication bottles varying from location to location as they were used up and refilled.

Bond, for all the chaos he can wreck, was very, very good at covert operations, but most people forget: so was Q. He made a living off hiding in the shadows while exposing other’s secrets, their dark vices, and it wasn’t difficult to figure out Bond’s pattern; after all, Bond had moulded all his activities around Q’s schedule.

This time, Q was waiting when Bond slipped back into their rental apartment, before he could disappear into the bathroom to clean up the evidence of his deadly encounters.

Q didn’t mind them – he’s the Quartermaster, he knew better than any other support personnel alive what the Double-Os were required to do on their missions.

He watched how Bond detected him immediately, watched how Bond’s posture straightened as he shut the door behind him, and said into the silence between them, “How injured are you this time?”

No, Q only minded when Bond came back injured, even more when he hid his injuries, and minded the most when he went back out with little regard for them – all in the name of Q’s safety.

Bond met his eyes unflinchingly, but didn’t move. “We should be fine for another two or three days; I was very thorough when I dispatched that cell group. I don’t think Spectre’s gotten to them, but they’ve been getting curious, and the last thing we need is for them to alert any of the major players in this city.”

"Sit down," Q bit out. "Shirt off. And if any word that comes out of your mouth for the next half hour is innuendo or making light of your injuries, I will taze you."

Bond looked at him, gaze placid, and Q glared right back, because he knew the Double-Os – they were at their most capricious when they were this calm.

"Try me," Q said to that look, not even bothering to keep it implied and unsaid, as they usually did. Handlers did their very best to aid and advise and corral their operatives from afar, but the agents will always decide their own paths out in the field, no matter how much Q did or didn’t yell at them. He's learned to save his breath and swoop in with directions and resources and in the worst cases, extraction, but this was hardly a traditional mission, even in the broadest Double-O sense, and Q refused to adhere to unspoken rules when the entire playing field has changed.

After a moment, Bond reached for the hem of his shirt. His every movement was purposeful, almost elegant in their brevity, and Q was momentarily distracted from the seriousness of the situation until Bond pulled the shirt off.

Q was on his feet in an instant. Bond’s entire torso was littered with bruises, a mix of recent and weeks old from the varying splotches of colour. There was the old scar from when Bond dug out a bullet with a knife – Medical had plenty to say about that, after Q received the still-bloodied bullet for analysis and had wandered down to the wards in the misguided hope of finding the Double-O there – but now, there was neat bandaging over the opposite shoulder too.

“Just a graze,” Bond said, when he noticed Q’s stare.

“Oh, just a graze,” Q echoed, and continued his circuit around Bond – goodness knew what his back looked like.

Bond’s back was possibly even worse, because the lacerations were fresh and still oozing blood, and Q glanced down at the fallen shirt – bloodied, of course. Q went immediately for the medical kit, and he’s skirting back around Bond when he noticed the dark, dark bruise stretched over Bond’s left side, placed that and Bond’s shallow breathing together to the logical conclusion.

"Cracked ribs?" Oh, did Q hope they were just cracked, because if Bond had been running around with broken ribs and risking puncturing a lung Q was going to murder him first.

"They’re fine.”

Q had to take a deep breath, count to five. "I can see you struggling to breathe deeply," he gritted out.

Bond’s eyes flickered; Q could almost see him making the calculation, whether it was worth the pain to breathe normally instead, to hide the symptoms to throw Q off the scent.

The calm, cool way Bond approached the decision made Q flush with anger, and he struggled to rein in his temper. Getting angry at the Double-Os never worked. Bond, in particular, took every sharp word and strong reprimand as a challenge to quip right back, and for once Q couldn’t stomach that, not when the anger was mixing with the worry to produce a sickly pressure in his stomach.

It took Q a long moment to identify that feeling as fear – fear, after the adrenaline high of it has faded away, after it's had time to ferment and stew and settle in his bones like a rot.

There were only the two of them now.   

“What’s changed?” The words came out involuntarily, and Q bit his tongue immediately after; in the quiet between them, Q could hear the wavering note in his own voice.

Bond’s head tipped the barest inch to the side. “What do you mean?”

“What’s changed since we ran around London trying to shut the Nine Eyes program down? You trusted me then. You had the utmost faith in my capabilities, and now—”

It’d meant a lot to Q, that faith, and more than Bond likely realized; in a tight-knit, secretive world where Q was often judged for his youth and his role as a support staff, having the Double-Os' unwavering regard was an incredibly precious thing. Q closed his eyes, gave himself a mental shake – he hadn't realized how tightly he had clung to that fact, possibly to the detriment of them both.

“That hasn’t changed.”

Q’s eyes snapped open, startled; Bond’s voice was firm, and his eyes, when Q met them, were a steely blue grey. Hard. Angry, almost.

Q has miscalculated. That wasn’t as rare as most of Q Branch thinks – Q was simply very quick to correct himself, and his mind raced now, because—

Ah.

“That hasn’t changed,” Q said. “But I have, haven’t I? I’m not just your handler or your support unit anymore. I’m the primary asset of this mission. You think that you’re my back up now.”

The side of Bond’s mouth went up in a lopsided smile; it’s aggravating and oddly endearing at the same time, which was the very definition of the Double-Os. “There’s no thinking involved, Q. It’s a fact. You’ve never had a protective detail on this level before, but I assure you, my actions are not uncommon. You focus on taking down Spectre’s operations on the cybertechnological level. I’ll handle everything else.”

“Even at the cost of your own health?”

“I don’t plan on dying,” Bond said. “I’m tasked with keeping you safe, and I can’t do that if I’m dead. But I can’t control everything. If someone needs to take the fall, I’ll do it.”

“Of course.” Q carefully tamped down on the urge to just yell at Bond until some sort of self-preservation gets through the man’s skull – both Medical and the Psych department had tried that, and it clearly hadn’t worked. Wasn’t the whole point of Bond going away so he can live out the rest of his life in peace? Wasn’t he supposed to be over his nihilistic streak?

Maybe some things were just too deeply ingrained to ever get scrubbed out, no matter anyone’s intentions.

Q kneeled by the low coffee table, unpacked the medical kit for the iodine and antiseptic wash, the swabs and dressing and bandages and tape. "You're a Double-O. You perform best when you have free reign, as a solo operative unbound by orders. I respect that. You’ll always do as you think best.”

He went to their tiny kitchenette to fill a bowl with water; Bond hadn’t moved a single step since they started this conversation, but Q could feel Bond’s eyes on his back, constant.

Q moved back, set the bowl down on the table with the rest of the medical supplies, and lifted his head to look at Bond again. “I’ll do as I think best, too. If you get detained or incapacitated, I won't leave you here. I’ll fight to bring you back."

Bond's expression wiped clean instantly, his eyes flashing with ire. "The mission—"

"Requires both of us," Q said. "I can destroy entire systems before my first cup of tea in the morning, and you can accomplish plenty with a gun in your hand and possibly a bullet in someone's head. We're both very good at our jobs, but Bond – we're off the grid now. Even you didn't hare off to Italy and the Vatican on the former M’s last order without having Moneypenny on the line as back up, and we don’t have that anymore.”

Q set his hands on the table, laid his palms flat so his fingers splayed out. “I’m used to having the resources of the British government at my fingertips. Even before I worked with MI6, I had dozens of assets, aliases I could pick up and discard as I needed. I still have access to all of them, but with Spectre – I have to be careful. After Nine Eyes, they know my reputation as the Quartermaster. Silva knew me – and some of my former aliases – well enough to circumvent the security protocols I created. I can’t be sure what is secure and what’s been compromised, and none of that matters if it comes down to your life, but—”

There’s a reason why he’d set his hands out on the flat on the table, because Q was absolutely itching to grab at something, anything to occupy his hands, and he didn’t want to end up ripping their medical supplies to shreds.

Bond was silent. His stare was a physical thing but he didn’t say a word, and normally that would annoy Q but now he was grateful for it, because Q wasn’t sure he could start again if he’s interrupted.

“I might be MI6’s only chance at shutting down Spectre’s operations properly. But I can’t do it on my own.” Q swallowed; even the thought of failing MI6, of putting all of Q Branch and his agents and Moneypenny and Tanner and M in danger because of his own failures made his stomach tighten. “I mean – I would, I will, if I had to. But I don’t want to.”

Q glanced away, stared down at his hands instead. The problem was that neither of them were used to long-term, close-contact partnerships. The Double-Os were the Double-Os – singular and so efficient that they often outstrip any fellow agents they partner with, and in a way, Q was similar to them. Q made leaps of intuition so far beyond anyone’s understanding that he’d invented protocols only a handful of people in the world could crack when he was barely out of his teens; he’d fared better in Q Branch, which took the crème de la crème, but even Riley left Q to his own devices at times, gave Q space to go wild until he resurfaced and could translate his thoughts into a form that the others could follow along.

But over the weeks Bond has become familiar; Q learned things about the other man that were inevitable after living so long in close proximity, and Bond has become important in ways Q had never imagined before they started on this journey, and not just for Q’s security and mental sanity.

Q was startled out of his thoughts when Bond sat down beside him.

“I forget, sometimes, that you’ve never really worked out in the field before this,” Bond said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means...” Bond trailed off uncharacteristically. “You lack that ruthlessness.”

Q thought of the many lives he’s ruined with a single click of a button, the way he could change someone’s fate with just a tweak to a code. He didn’t need to physically pull a trigger to have a kill count, and that was before he considered all the kills the Double-Os have made using his weapons, his technology.

“It’s not the same,” Bond said, like he could read Q’s mind. “And if it comes down to it, I believe you could. Harm someone in cold blood, if it meant saving one of your agents. But only if you absolutely had to.”

He picked up some dressing and started peeling the bandage covering his shoulder, turning his back towards Q as he worked. Q followed his cue, and began cleaning the lacerations on Bond’s back. He must have hit the edge of something hard enough to tear the skin open and Q scowled, because if Bond had been wearing his suit jacket with its protective Kevlar layer that wouldn’t have happened.

“You’ve really taken M’s words to heart.” Bond doesn’t look up from where he’s patching up the bullet graze.

“He’s my superior,” Q said honestly. “Which ones?” 

“The last thing he said to us before we left. ‘Keep each other alive.’”

Q worked silently for the next minutes, cleaning the wounds thoroughly before swiping salve into them and taping them all up. None of them were deep enough for stitches, thankfully, but Q hasn’t forgotten about Bond’s problematic ribs. Bond didn’t seem to be in undue pain, but with the Double-O’s incredible pain tolerances Q couldn’t be sure that they weren’t broken.

“It’s good advice,” Q said at last. “We cover each other’s gaps that way. We should work together more – not just me shut up with my systems all the time, and you constantly out there on your own.” He thought of that day in Altaussee, when he and Bond and Swann finally made the connection between Oberhauser and Spectre, of that night in London when all of them – M, Bond, Tanner and Moneypenny – worked in tandem to take down Oberhauser and the Nine Eyes program. “We’ve always accomplished so much more when we work together.”

“All right.”

Q’s hand slipped; Bond didn’t make a sound but his muscles twitched under Q’s hand, and Q winced, hurried to murmur an apology. “I’m s—”

Bond turned to face him. “I’ll be more careful from now on. And I’ll keep you informed about my activities. But the mission comes first, which means you remain the priority.”

He watched Q carefully, as if he expected Q to protest. Part of Q wanted to, but he knew Bond quite well now, and this was more than Q ever expected to get. Something in Q loosened, and he took a deep breath, the first one since he came across the medical kit that felt calm, clean.

“I wouldn’t expect otherwise. I’m going to watch over you too, after all.”

Q picked up the roll of bandages. He’d taken a first-aid course as part of his mandatory MI6 training, but Q has never had to tape up ribs before, especially since Bond’s been hiding his injuries for weeks. He made a grim note to download a crash course on critical first-aid.

“It’s just the one cracked rib,” Bond said. “It’ll heal on its own.”

“What did I say earlier about brushing off your injuries?”

“That you’ll taze me,” Bond said. “I know the pain even from just a cracked rib is crippling for others. But this isn’t the worst that I’ve experienced, and it will do better healing on its own.” He paused. “But I will take some painkillers, to help with my breathing.” 

Q smiled then, and it seemed to surprise Bond, who blinked once before his gaze sharpened, his head going the barest inch to the side again. 

“All right,” Q said. He drew in a deep breath, and then let that breath and his reservations go. “All right, I’ll trust you to know your own limits.”

---

The sound of waves breaking over sand drags Q from unconsciousness.

He makes a quiet, plaintive noise, tucking his head towards his shoulder to escape the noise, but the sound is all encompassing and, now that he's aware of it, completely impossible to ignore.

Other discomforts slip in now that Q's awake enough to care – the hoarseness of his throat, an itchy dryness on his exposed skin that Q suspects is from the briny air, and how much he aches, beneath the stiffness of his joints. When his eyes slit open, there is the faintest inking of light on the horizon that heralds the rising sun.

For the longest time, Q just stays slumped against his chosen tree, feeling an uncharacteristic resistance in all his limbs, his heart like a lump of lead in his chest. It's been a very long time since Q's felt the urge to hide from his responsibilities, and he mulls in the feeling until the sky gains a little more colour, lightening from dark into a deep purple.

Q lets out a heavy sigh, and finally sits up. It's no longer just national security at stake but his survival, and it isn’t in Q’s nature to give up; he’s certainly not going to do so when it’s his own life at stake.

His life, and that of his Double-O.

Some things don’t change.

The sky is brightening slowly but steadily, and Q studies Bond in the faint pre-dawn light. It seems silly to continue worrying when Bond’s survived far more dire circumstances; Bond has been likened to a phoenix more times than Q can remember, but Q only has experience with more mundane creatures. He reckons that Bond is a cat with nine lives, numerous but finite, and Q has no idea which life he's currently burning up at this moment.  

Q reaches forward—

Bond's hand strikes out, the jacket flinging wide with his movement and almost hitting Q in the face, and catches Q's wrist. They both freeze, Bond tense, Q startled, and then Q says calmly, "It's me. We made it to the island and we're taking shelter within the tree line. We're secure enough for now."

Bond seems to consider that for a few moments, his eyes flickering under his eyelids.

Q gently twists his hand. The Double-O’s grip goes loose, but it’s the same wrist Bond had yanked him out of the ocean with, and the bruises circling Q’s wrist are tender. "How do you feel?"

"Concussed," Bond says shortly, which explains why he's keeping his eyes closed. A moment later, his eyes slit open, not quite catching Q's gaze correctly in the dim pre-dawn. Q pushes down his concern, because anyone else would still be incapacitated. Double-Os and their bloody inhuman pain tolerances. "Did I go into cardiac arrest again?"

Again. Like they're talking about the weather. Q swallows back a sigh. "Yes, you did."

Bond’s eyes narrow, but other than that he doesn’t react. “Status.”

Q can’t help the sharp bark of laughter, more out of black humour than anything else. “That’s usually my line, you know. Well, you’re alive, and I’m in one piece. Just scrapes and bruises, nothing major.”

He scans the area around them more attentively this time, cataloguing things with an eye for detail now that there’s more light. They’d lucked out with the clearing – in the darkness, Q had only noted that it was an open space wide enough to fit the both of them, but now he can see that they have sheltered under two trees whose combined foliage are dense enough to keep the morning mist from dripping on them. The palm fronds Q had used as makeshift bedding are somewhat haphazardly placed, but the ground beneath them is a mix of compact soil, covered by scruffy tough shoots hardy enough to survive this close to the brine of the ocean.

It’s a decent enough place to set up camp, and they have two overt weapons – the gun and 004’s knife – although arguably, Bond on his own counts as a whole repertoire of offensive power.

"You're calculating probabilities, aren't you?"

Q starts. "I am," he says after a moment.

"What are our odds for survival?" Bond says; it would sound like one of his subtle teases if his tone wasn’t so flat.

"Much higher now that you’re awake,” Q says back bluntly. He lets a beat go by. “Well, it’s Q Branch’s job to defy statistical probabilities, and you hardly adhere to any rules. I don’t expect you to begin now.”

One side of Bond’s mouth goes up in a wry smile. He seems, for the moment, content to actually lie still for once, and Q takes a deep breath; lets it out.

“I’m going to look around now that the sun’s coming up. There might be something to salvage back on the beach.”

There’s a noticeable pause before Bond’s predictable, “No, I’ll go,” which is a beat too long – Double-Os do have ridiculously high pain tolerances, which means Bond must be in significant amounts of pain or discomfort for it to show.

“You’re not,” Q says firmly, and continues on before Bond can cut in. “Look, it was your decision to take us down before the plane could burst into flames. It was a good decision, and we’re fine for at least another twenty-four hours or so. But this is hardly an ideal situation, and the last thing we need is for your condition to get worse. For once, please stay put and rest. Let me handle things.”  

The silence this time is charged. Bond’s eyes are still narrowed, but they look less foggy and more calculative.

“I’m lying on coconut leaves,” he finally says, and Q blinks.

“Yes?”

“We need water, and even if we find a fresh water source we’ll need to sterilize it. Cut down some coconuts from the trees; the water will more than sustain us.”

“Oh,” Q says, blinking even more, because more than just giving useful and potentially life-saving information, this is a concession on Bond’s part. “Yes, I’ll do that.”

“And if you’re going to explore around, take my jacket.”

Q considers giving in, but it takes just one memory of Bond’s dead weight for him to strike that consideration out. “I’m not the one who almost drowned, went into cardiac arrest and is suffering from a concussion in addition to other things I’m sure you’re not telling me.”  

Bond lets out an aggrieved breath. And rather than argue with Q, he just sits up, propping himself up with one hand and unbuttoning his dress shirt with the other, ignoring Q’s protests. When all the buttons are undone, he shrugs off the shirt, leaving just his thin undershirt. Then he lies back down, pulling the jacket back over himself.

“You’ll suffocate under that sweater once the sun rises, and you’ll burn if you don’t wear something. I’ll keep the jacket, at your insistence. Take the shirt.”

Q takes the shirt.

The tails of it hang almost to mid-thigh on him, and the fabric is certainly airier than Q’s woollen sweater. Q fastens the second and third buttons, and rolls back the sleeves. He checks on the holster-turned-makeshift tool belt for the gun and the knife – knowing Bond, he’ll insist Q take those too, so Q doesn’t bother mentioning them – and finally, clambers to his feet.

He catches himself against the tree trunk, waiting for the black spots in his vision to clear, for the blood in his body to circulate properly now that he’s upright. Q shifts from foot to foot until his muscles feel less stiff, and then glances towards the ocean, where lighter colours are gathering on the horizon.

“I better go before the sun rises in full,” he says.

“You should. Don’t go too far inland, and if you get lost, head for the sound of the waves, and circle along the beaches until you get back.”

“I understand.”

“And Q.”

There’s something in Bond’s voice that makes Q turn back; Bond’s eyes are almost silvery in the in-between space of light and dark.

“I’ve always trusted you to handle the situation,” Bond says, and then he closes his eyes, his breathing going slower and deeper almost immediately.

Q stares for a long minute, his heart suddenly quite loud in his ears, before the crashing of the waves calls him back to his task.

---

If Q isn’t preoccupied with thoughts of survival, the beach they’d landed on is really quite lovely, especially in the cool of the early morning. The waves sound much quieter now, as if respecting the pensive mood Q finds himself in, and the water laps against near pristine sand, unmarred by pollution or human debris – just a scattered line of sea shells and sea weed to mark how high the tide usually rises.

Q is a little disappointed not to find anything from their plane, but he’s not surprised, not with how intact the plane had seemed the night before. He glances out at the ocean – the plane had sunk further overnight, with just the tail rising above the waves, and then puts it out of his mind. The ocean bed where the plane had crashed might be shallow enough that the plane wasn’t fully covered, but it was deep enough and far away enough that there’s no way for Q to get at his attaché kits.

No matter how much his fingers itch for his equipment, his technology, any form of connectivity.

Q carefully curls his fingers into themselves, and turns his back on the ocean to study the tree line. Above the tide line Q can see a mess of disturbed sand – footprints from Q’s frantic search the night before, and deep trenches from where he’d been forced to drag Bond along. He can probably find the smaller palms he’d harvested fronds from by the disturbed ground around them; a minor blessing, because there’s no way he’ll be able to climb their taller brethren to get at the fruit.

There are a set of prints that stand out from the rest, going diagonally across a stretch of sand instead of heading straight into the trees. Q stares at them for a long moment, but the night before had been chaotic and dark and full of adrenaline-fueled franticness, and Q isn’t going to try to make sense of it, except to decide not head in that direction. He couldn’t have found anything important there, if he’d only headed that way once.

A beam of light bursts into existence behind him, casting his shadow across the sand, long and disproportional. Q whirls around and has to immediately squint; there’s a golden glow in the centre of the horizon, and it almost seems like it’s setting the sky around it on fire.

Q watches the rising sun until he has to look away, his eyes watering from the glare. The entire beach is lit like a stage for a performance, and Q can feel his skin heat up, even under the protective layer of the dress shirt.

He basks in the warmth for a while, a welcomed sensation after the chill of the night, but the sunlight turns scorching very quickly, and Q goes inland instead, stepping into the cool air preserved by the canopy of leaves with a quiet sigh of relief.

He’s not entirely sure where he’s going, or what he’s doing, but Q searches anyway. His head aches from a lack of sleep, but moving helps stretch out his stiff muscles, and when he finds the small stream, trickling clear over smooth rock, the track seems entirely worth the effort.

Q knows better than to drink from the stream, although if absolutely necessary it wasn’t a bad option. Untreated moving river water wasn’t quite safe enough for drinking but it was certainly good enough to clean with. Q doesn’t go as far as to dunk himself in it, but he does get to wash the salt and the sand off his face and skin, leaving him feeling refreshed and clearer-minded. He follows the stream until it eventually flows over a low ledge to trickle into the ocean, and Q raises a hand to shade his eyes, stares down the length of the beach – there are his footprints, crisscrossing the sand from earlier that morning.

Q takes out 004’s knife and cuts a mark across the nearest tree to mark the end of the small river, so they can follow it back upstream enough so the water won’t be tainted by the sea.

He checks in on Bond when he gets back to their stretch of the beach. The Double-O had pushed the jacket aside, although he appears to be still asleep. With the temperature rising over the course of the day, Q isn’t too worried about Bond needing the jacket to help regulate his internal temperature, and he backs quietly away, leaving Bond to his rest.

There are a few coconuts that he has to harvest.

Q chooses his target by the simple expediency of picking the closest short palm tree that bears fruit; he knows next to nothing about selecting a good coconut, except that the green ones look younger than the yellowing ones, and that’s probably better. They’re all equally hard; Q gives a hard tap to his chosen coconut with the edge of 004’s knife – it hardly makes a dent, although it does produce a dull hollow sound.

Hollow hopefully meaning that it’s filled with water, and not hollow like it’s completely empty.

Q stares helplessly at the coconut – he knows how to open up a coconut even less than choosing one, and tempted though he is to go wake Bond up, there’s nothing less than a life and death emergency that could move Q to disturb the Double-O when he’s deigned to slow down and rest for once. He wracks his brain, and eventually decides to approach the coconut like he would a pineapple: carve away the tough skin to unearth the edible fruit within.

Two things become apparent very quickly: one, 004’s knife is made from a titanium alloy that makes it lightweight but incredibly strong, the edges staying sharp even through repeated use, but all those strengths are pointless if Q can’t wield it correctly, and two, coconuts are really, incredibly hard. There’s no such thing as carving when it comes to a coconut; Q eventually figures out how to swing the knife with the strength of his back and shoulders behind it to hack away chunks of the tough skin.

Q gets so lost in the labour of it – if still conscious enough to attempt to hack off one side of the coconut – that when one swing cuts too deep and releases a spray of liquid, he just freezes.

A moment later, he’s scrambling to grab the coconut before all the water can drain away. Fortunately, the cut he’d made was deep but narrow, and Q presses his lips to that notch, lifting the coconut and tilting his head back to let the water pour into his mouth.

There’s more in that coconut than Q expects, and each mouthful he swallows is sweet and refreshing, although it might be the dehydration that makes him appreciate the coconut more. When he’s drank the last drop, he sets the coconut back down on the sand and leans back, blinking, feeling oddly tired yet energized at the same time. He eyes the cut in the coconut, thinks of the tender white meat clinging to the coconut’s hollow, and goes for the knife again.

In the end, Q tests his budding knife skills against three coconuts; he’s gauged how deep to hack by the third one, and brings it back still sealed and ready to crack open with one simple blow to their makeshift shelter. The heat of the day is almost too much now, the sun rising high in the sky, and although Bond rests under the shadow of the trees he’ll likely awaken thirsty.

Q studies Bond again, although he doesn’t risk touching him to check for a fever – stubborn Double-Os with their mission-trained stoicism and ridiculously alert senses. Q lets out a sigh and settles down in the little nook formed between tree roots that he’d slept in the night before, glad to be out of the sun.

And then boredom sets in.

It’s not that Q’s mind isn’t constantly ticking, working over the priorities of their survival and drifting to consider the logistics of their mission, now thrown terribly off schedule. It’s just that there’s nothing he can do about any of it at the moment, not at the height of the scorching midday sun and stranded on a deserted island, and so while Q’s mind whirls and turns over problems and makes lists in the background, there’s nothing to occupy him right now, in the present.

He’d nap off the hottest part of the day, if not for the flashbacks and the terrible vertigo that hits him every time he closes his eyes for too long. He doesn’t bother testing his nerves, since Q has only recently hydrated himself, and he’d rather not cough it all up in a fit of nausea.

Q is so used to being occupied almost every waking minute that the boredom is almost worse than the oppressive heat. It’s probably why he literally starts playing with fire.

He’d noticed, when it first grew light enough, that there’s a clear crack across one of the lenses of his glasses, and he’s fiddling with it in a bid to occupy his hands when it occurs to Q that the lenses are basically miniature magnifying glasses that should be capable of channelling the sun’s light into a concentrated beam hot enough to burn.

How’s that for a fire starter?

Q starts gathering possible kindling from within their shelter – dead leaves, twigs and branches – before venturing a little further, gathering dried out coconut husks and other hopefully flammable bits and bobs. He braves the sun long enough to run down to the water’s edge to gather some sea water in one of the empty coconut halves that he’d split open to get at the meat, and then he sets himself to digging a firepit in the sand, because the last thing Q wants to do is to light a fire and then have it accidentally spread.

He makes a little nest of dried husk fibres and the smallest, most brittle dead leaves, and stacks the larger branches and chunks of husk to one side. He’d dug the firepit a short distance from the treeline, where an overhanging tree provides ample shade for Q to hide in while still leaving the firepit out in the open sun, and Q glances at the sky before dipping his fingers in the coconut bowl and allowing seawater to drip from his fingertips onto the flat of the left glasses lens, the one without the crack.

And then Q holds his glasses up so the sun shines through it, focuses the resultant concentrated beam of light over his kindling, and waits.

It feels like his hand will burn faster than the kindling will, but then a curl of smoke drifts from the centre of the bundle, followed by another, and another, and then one dead leaf catches a spark and begins slowly burning away.

Incredulous, Q pulls the glasses away and leans down to gently blow on the spark, until some of the other kindling catches on fire. Carefully, he reaches for the larger twigs and feeds those into the flames, gradually working his way up to the larger branches and husks.

And suddenly, Q is sitting before a small fire, merrily burning away.

He stares at it for a long while, before wiping off the glasses on one tail of the dress shirt and pushing it back on, to stare at the fire some more.

It’s surprisingly uplifting, to watch the flames leap into the air – plasma, the purest form of energy.

Q had found fresh water, and he’d lit a fire to boil it with. Now Q just needs to find a receptacle to put the water in, and maybe a fish or two to char in the flames.

The heat radiating from the small fire is almost too much to bear in the warmth of the day, but Q can’t help smiling at it anyway.

---

By the late afternoon, Q's head is throbbing enough from the heat that he decides to head back to his little stream to cool down. It's almost blinding out on the beach, the sands aglow from the sun and glinting diamonds of light flickering over the water; Q has never quite seen the need for sunglasses in London, not when he spent the majority of his day indoors, but he longs desperately for a pair now.

He longs for a great many things, both practical and impractical.

For now, Q has to settle for a large leaf to fan himself with and soaking the shirt in the stream, before wringing it out and draping it back over his shoulders, the damp fabric providing a little relief from the oppressive heat. He moves slowly, trying to conserve energy, when he comes across a palm-sized green fruit, noticeable only because it's hanging right at Q's eye-height.

He stares at it for a long moment before glancing at the fauna around him, a sudden awareness of the possible treasures hidden amongst the trees.

By the time Q makes it back Bond is conscious. He hasn't been awake for long; Q had left the PPK/S with Bond when he went on his second track, and it's now in pieces, spread out neatly on the ground. Bond glances at Q, and then puts it all back together with swift movements, testing the weight of it in his hand before flipping it around to offer it to Q.

"Trade," he says.

Q's arms are filled; he'd buttoned up the dress shirt and pulled up the tails to carry his bounty of fruit like a kangaroo's pouch. He scowls at Bond for a moment and finally kneels down, lets the fruit roll out on top of the coconut frond bedding before reaching for the gun, handing over 004's knife in return.

Bond doesn't even have to stand; he takes up the coconut Q had set aside for him and strikes one quick blow, embedding the edge of the blade into the tough husk. He twists the blade and the entire top of the coconut coming off cleanly, barely spilling any of the water inside.

"Right," Q says; sometimes he forgets just how efficient the Double-Os are, that they are just as likely to pursue their targets over oceans and across deserts as to hunt them within the confines of cities.

Bond watches him over the coconut. "You've been busy," he says after a moment, tilting his head to indicate the firepit before his eyes come back to Q.

"It's in my nature to experiment," Q says, sorting out the fruit.

"I certainly hope you weren't planning to experiment eating potentially poisonous fruit."

Q catches himself before he can roll his eyes, and then remembers that he's no longer ensconced in Q Branch leading his merry band of hackers, engineers and handlers. "Yes, Bond, I planned to save myself from a slow death via heat stroke by poisoning myself.”

The corner of Bond’s mouth ticks up in a wry smile. He looks almost proud, and Q narrows his eyes at him.

It clicks, after a moment. 

Gallows humour, one of the most common go-to defence mechanisms the field agents turn to. Q has always been sharp-tongued, but he was never quite comfortable returning morbid sentiments when his agents banter with him on their missions, since he’s not the one putting his life on the line.

Q supposes he can consider himself qualified to make such comments now.

He looks down to hide his expression. “I tried to pick fruit that I saw signs of birds or animals eating. I also know about the universal edibility test, but I figured I could just ask you, worldly and experienced agent that you are. I do believe you’ve had several naval postings in tropical regions before you came to MI6.”

“You have good instincts,” Bond says easily. He eyes the spread of fruits, and then nods at them one at a time, starting with a smooth-skinned, bell-shaped red fruit. “Those are—” he pauses, quite uncharacteristic of him, and Q realizes that he’s taking a moment to translate the word from whatever native language he’s more familiar referring to that fruit with, “—rose apples, I believe they’re called. You’d like them; they’re full of the nutrients you’re so fond of.”

He wipes off the knife and reaches for a rough and green-skinned fruit, the heaviest of the lot Q had gathered. “Guava.” Bond doesn’t elaborate further, just sinks the knife into it with an audible crunch, and cuts out a wedge.

He holds out the slice to Q, who takes it curiously. The flesh is off-white but crunchy, and Q nibbles his way through it, careful to avoid the tough green rind. It doesn’t really taste like anything, really. Just—fresh.

Belatedly, Q remembers to glance up, and Bond’s studying him unobtrusively, as usual. Q might watch the entire world through his technology, but Bond can be quite single-minded when it comes to his missions, and so watches Q constantly.

He’s obvious when they’re moving their base of operations, openly stands guard when Q is occupied with his computer systems, but Q only realized a few weeks in that Bond watches him in other ways too – how much Q eats, whether Q gets enough rest – but very, very discreetly.

Q would mind the constant scrutiny more, except he does the same with his surveillance. He and Bond are partners now, after all.

Bond gestures at the last fruit. “I trust you know what that one is.”

“I can guess from its obvious shape,” Q says. “Star fruit.”

“As long as you don’t have kidney disease, you’ll be fine,” Bond tells him. “You can have it all. Enjoy.”

Q’s head jerks up. “You’ve suffered plenty of injuries over your career but I’ve seen your medical reports, and your kidney was fine.”

"I've been shot, stabbed, poisoned and altogether damaged myself enough times that I won't take that risk."

Q just stares at him. "At the rate you drink, the alcohol will kill you faster than any star fruit will."

"That's different."

"So slowly marinating your liver to death is different from acute kidney poisoning,” Q grumbles, although he leaves the edge out of his voice. More medically-inclined professionals – the MI6 medics – and fiercer people – Moneypenny – than Q have taken this up with Bond before; Q hasn’t given up, but he’s learned to choose his battles. “Good to know."

He picks up a rose apple and bites carefully into it – mildly sweet and a little mushier than the guava, although the pale white skin within is still firm.

The tropical fruits Q has come across are surprisingly mild.

"You're not panicking," Bond says.

Q’s eyes flick automatically towards Bond, who’s staring at him openly now. It’s an observation, made in the most neutral of tones, and Q smiles, because if he starts laughing hysterically it won't help either of them.

"You should have heard me when I dragged you up the beach."

“Does that watch do anything other than tell the time, then?”

Startled, Q glances down at the watch still strapped around his wrist, half covered by the billowing sleeves of Bond’s dress shirt. He swallows the last of the rose apple and curls his hand around the watch, the soft tick-tick-tick like a heartbeat under his fingers.

“I don’t particularly fancy carrying an explosive around with me the way you do, and no, it does not contain a tracker.” Q smoothes light fingers over the crystal surface; unlike Q’s glasses, it remains pristine. “I meant it when I said we’re completely off the grid. MI6 has no way of tracking us, and they know nothing of our movements save what I choose to send back to them.”

Bond turns fully to face Q at that, his stare suddenly weighty when earlier it had been unobtrusive. “By your own words, the Smart Blood was supposed to be the ultimate tracker.”

Q goes still. He licks at his lips; the cut at the bottom of his lip has healed overnight, but it still stings.

“Yes, we can track you anywhere in the world through the Smart Blood. However, I am the only one who can access that information. The nanites in your veins chains you quite effectively to MI6, and if I’m going to do that to anyone, I’m going to damn well make sure no one can abuse that information or that power but myself.”

Bond doesn’t say a word. The wind rustles through the trees, and the ever-present crash of the waves is still too novel to fade completely into white noise.

Finally, Q clears his throat. “So no, no one in Q Branch is going to use the Smart Blood to find out we’re stuck on a deserted island, or track us to it.”

“All right,” Bond says evenly. “But you do have a plan. Because I’ve plotted the flight route myself and we’re inconveniently far from civilized land, if you wanted to risk it all on a raft.”

Q lets out a quiet sigh, and laces his fingers together to stop himself from latching onto something else and fraying it to pieces. “I do have one failsafe – a thirty-six-hour countdown system that I have to constantly reset. When it hits zero, Q Branch will receive an alert. You know how I am with my technology,” he tries to say lightly. “It’ll take something catastrophic for me not to have any access for such a long period of time. They can’t track either of us, but they can track my equipment. All of that happens to be stuck in the plane, which thankfully for us remains quite intact.”

He glances automatically towards the ocean, Bond following his gaze, where the tail of their downed plane still rises stubbornly above the waves. It must have gotten wedged amongst the rocks to stay that way.

A flash of movement pulls Q’s attention back towards Bond, who is holding the last of the guava in Q’s direction.

“And how will your Communications team fare against your safeguards?” Bond says, after Q’s finally taken the guava slice.

“Quite well,” Q says, nibbling at the hard fruit. “Since I left Riley my key codes. They’ll need to work on it, but if it takes them more than a week I’ll be disappointed. They should have gotten the alert by now, so my best estimate is five more days, to track us and prepare the logistics to extract us.”

“Five days, maybe a week.” Bond says. “We can handle that.”

Q sighs, especially since he’s finished the guava and his hands are restless again, with absolutely nothing to occupy them. At the back of his mind Q’s list of priorities constantly looms, and with Bond awake and absolute survival dealt with for now the mission has suddenly appeared back on the list. “I really wish I have my technology on hand.”

Bond wipes off 004’s knife and sets it safely aside, and then rolls forward, although his usual liquidly graceful movements are stiff from his injuries. Q doesn’t startle, too used to Bond’s antics over months of travelling together, although his breath does hitch when Bond sweeps his fingers under Q's glasses, brushing lightly against the dark bruises Q knows are still there.

"Think of this as a vacation,” Bond says. “You haven't stopped at all since we left London."

"A vacation," Q says incredulously. "With the scorching sun and questionable water and unreliable food supplies and a heightened chance of tropical water-borne diseases, and all my equipment sunk in the ocean."

“With the briny air and an abundance of wild and sea life and limitless possibilities, without alerts or surveillance or the need to stare at a glowing screen for hours on end.”

“I like staring at a glowing screen for hours on end.”

“I noticed.” Bond leans back. “You berate me about my health, constantly; surely the medics have reprimanded you about your tendency to hide indoors.”

“So, a dose of ocean air will do me good?” Q smiles. “Not exactly a glowing portrait of the stereotypic tropical retreat, is it?”

Without the women, the cocktails and the sun-tanning, he means.

“I was an officer with the Royal Navy first,” Bond says. “It’s all business there, and one of the lessons we learnt early on was to always be alert, because the sea and the weather can kill you far easier than any enemy can.”

He tips his head towards the horizon, where wisps of clouds chase each other across the open sky. “We’ll be fine for tonight, but we should find alternate shelter further inland. This spot is strategic since it puts us near the ocean and the coconut palms, but the beach is not the best place to be when a thunderstorm hits – and we’ll see plenty of storms. A deep cave would work well.”

“Don’t caves often contain animals?”

Bond’s eyes flick towards Q’s hip, where Q had holstered the Walther PPK/S. “Yes, even an island this size will have its fair share of predators. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few monsters wandering about this island.”

Q huffs out an amused sigh. He sweeps away the remnants of their fruit meal, and then moves to lie back on the coconut leaves. They’re not the most comfortable surface Q has ever slept on, but just getting to lie down is a blessing. He lets his eyes fall half-shut, not willing to risk the flashbacks, but he draws in a deep breath – finally relaxes.

What a difference it makes, just to have someone alive and awake to talk to, much less someone so confident and competent as Bond.

“Some vacation this is,” Q murmurs, only half-joking. “Now I have to add monstrous animals to my list of grievances.”

Bond laughs, short and low; when Q glances at him, he’s staring inland, as if he can track those animals, and doesn’t care at all that they might bite him.

“You don’t have to worry about it. You have a Double-O watching your back, after all.” Bond’s smile is secretive, closed around a grinful of teeth. “And we’re the biggest predators of them all.”

Chapter Text

The first call went something like this:

The days immediately following Oberhauser’s arrest were chaotic. The last time MI6 had featured so publicly had been when Olivia Mansfield – the then M – was pulled into an official hearing to explain MI6’s actions after Silva bombed the Vauxhall headquarters. Things had been hectic then, but it’s nothing compared to the uproar that was the dissolution of the Nine Eyes pact.

Q stuck to the isolation that were the underground bunkers, Q Branch’s latest hideout, and grimly executed order after order for M.

For once, the labs were quiet, broken only once when Bond returned to pick up the DB5.

When Q’s phone rang with the dedicated ringtone he devoted to the Double-O’s comms devices, he didn’t even glance at the caller ID before flicking his headset on, picking up the call.

The silence dragged on for so long that Q wondered if the call had dropped. Each Double-O had their identifier codes for when they called Q; Q never gave his voice away first. Silent alarms tripped at the back of Q’s mind, and he glanced immediately at his phone—

007 – Periphery 

—which couldn't be right, because Bond didn't have any Q Branch equipment, no peripheral communication devices, except—

“Am I speaking to Lovelace?” a calm, faintly accented alto voice said.

Q stared at his phone for long seconds, before all the clues tumbled into place: the DB5, which came with its own call connection straight to Q as the Double-O’s primary back up, a person travelling with Bond with a feminine voice, and someone who knew Q enough to reference Ada Lovelace, widely known as the world’s first computer programmer.

Dr. Madeleine Swann.

“Doctor,” Q said, and pushed away from his workstation. The entire system there was set up to intercept suspected Spectre communications, and Q wouldn't divert any of it, not even for a former Double-O. “Do you or anyone you know require assistance?”

“Interesting. He told me that he’d left your organization, and here you are, still offering to help,” Swann said, and Q remembered abruptly that Dr. Swann’s medical speciality is in psychiatry, and that despite being a civilian she possessed an edge to her that was quite similar to Bond. “And no, there’s no emergency. We’re quite well.”

Q stared out at the empty expanse of the bunker. He’d vetted the entire Communications team himself after Nine Eye’s fall, and scattered them across the city to safeguard them against Spectre’s retaliation. Q had no official budget to speak of and so the workshops and labs lay empty; the other Q Branch teams operated under Riley’s direction, and Q didn’t track them to give them the barest amount of plausible deniability.

Q could think of a hundred things he would rather do – and considering the urgency of his work, should do – than talk to Madeleine Swann outside of an emergency, but he supposed he could spare a few minutes.

“Why have you contacted me?”

“I didn’t have a chance to speak to you before we left London. You’re the reason I feel safe walking these British streets without constantly wondering who is watching behind the surveillance cameras. Thank you.”

For the second time that day, Q was struck speechless. The line was utterly silent, without the faintest buzz of interference; Swann was, after all, using a communications device Q built and calibrated himself.

“You thought I called because of our mutual friend, didn’t you?” The way Swann worded her question should come off challenging, but her voice was coolly neutral – factual.

“That was my first assumption, yes.”

“I met you because of him and it’s an interesting experience, travelling with him, but I do have an entire life, and motivations, of my own.”

For the first time in a long while, Q felt his lips quirk in a smile. “I understand.”

The third call went something like this:

This time, Q didn’t even pause when he picked up the call, and Swann spoke first when the line connected.

“Good morning, Hamming.”

“Twice is coincidence, Doctor. Three times is a pattern.”

“Do you believe that?”

“It’s one way of interpreting the circumstances.”

“I see. Can you spare me a few minutes?”

Q considered his work, but in the end, curiosity won. “I can.”

“This time, I’m truly calling about our mutual friend. To be more concise, about some things he’s told me.”

Q’s fingers went still over his keyboard. Bond knew better than to give away MI6’s secrets, but Swann was a grey area – a civilian who had ties to both Spectre and to MI6, although she’s formally associated with neither.

To be fair, Bond’s status was greyer still, now that he’s walked away from MI6.  

“What did he tell you?”

“Quite a few things. I was considering the possibility of returning to Austria. He advised me otherwise, at least for now. You and yours may have exorcised the ghosts from this kingdom, but they still lurk beyond these shores.”

“You don’t believe him?”

“I want a second opinion. And you don’t think like him. Between the two of you, I’m sure you’ll cover most scenarios.”

Q took a moment to consider his answer, but it didn't change his initial assessment.

“You’ve hidden for years, Doctor. I’m sure you could do it again, especially since the link that connected you to your ghosts has since passed from this world, and the man who pursued you and our mutual friend is very, very securely behind bars.”

“However,” Swann said expectantly.

“However,” Q agreed. “You won’t be able to take up your old identity without painting yourself a target once more. Your near-abduction was too visible, and too many ghosts were involved in the attempt. They’ll find you, if only to eliminate loose ends.”

“But if I wanted to disappear, to make a new life elsewhere.”

“You could. You did it before. And people like us, we don’t forget those lessons, the skills that kept us anonymous and alive.” Q leaned back against his chair and pulled off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose. “But I thought you didn’t want to live a life in the shadows.”

“Different shadows,” Swann said, her voice calm and steady.  

“Perhaps. I’ve lived most of my life behind my aliases. It works very well for me, and I thrive in it. You’ve had to live your life behind a cover you’ve tried to make as genuine as possible – it worked, but that’s been shattered now. Doctor,” Q said, and he wasn’t sure why he’s suddenly invested, except there was something about shared experience, wasn’t there? He and Swann knew pieces of each other that they couldn’t show the greater world, they shared a mutual friend, and they’ve survived abduction attempts from the same shadowy terrorist organization. “This whole mess – we’re working on it. This country is as safe as I and my colleagues can ever guarantee, but my agency has always been foreign-inclined. I doubt we can fully exorcise the ghosts from the world, but we’re going to damn well do our best.’

“You could go back now. Or you can hedge your bets in this country a little longer, and move at a more opportune moment.”

The line went silent, but this time Q knew better. It’s a silence of consideration, of deep thinking.

“It’s fascinating that you and he both gave the same answer, but in different ways and for very different reasons. I appreciate your honesty.”

Q couldn’t help a breathy sigh of amusement. “I hide and obscure and interfere, Doctor. That’s hardly the definition of honesty.”

“Your disbelief in it doesn’t make it less true.”

“Well, I can’t argue with the logic behind that statement, just the assumptions that led you to making it.”

“I’m glad you recognize the difference.”

When Q disconnected the call a while later, he changed the name on his contact list from 007 – Periphery to Patisserie Altaussee.

The seventh call went something like this:

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything important, Turing.”

“It’s only a true emergency if I don’t pick up the call. If that ever happens, get rid of the comms unit and go dark immediately.”

“… all right.”

“Although I am a little busy at the moment. If you’d like to, call me back in an hour; I’ll have a lull then.”

“You could always call me. I’m staying up with a few folders, but the clients I work with these days are less high maintenance than what was common at the clinic.”

“… best not to, under the circumstances. My lines are secure, but they are still tied to one location.”

“And this phone isn’t? I’m working full time now. Travels are only for the weekends.”

“That device was meant to remain secure and connected no matter where it is in the world. Yes, it’s safer if you call me.”

“I see. I’ll keep this device safe and sound, then.”

If only, Q found himself wishing, all his field agents were as considerate as Swann. He’d save a substantial portion of his branch’s budget from the equipment replacements alone.

The last call – at least for the foreseeable future – goes something like this:

“It’s a rarity for you to call me, Eckert.”

“I should have known that he would leave the DB5 with you,” Q said.

Q has become familiar enough with Swann that he could hear the smile in her voice. “What makes you think I gave him any choice about it? I know how prone he is to disappearing, so I needed leverage.”

“Of course. You chose well.”

“It was entirely his own idea to go back to your agency,” Swann said, and Q went still, his eyes flicking to the time on his workstation – a little over an hour before midnight, after which he and Bond were set to depart.

“I didn’t—” Q began, and then he stopped. The thing about Swann was that she never cut anyone off, always allowed them to speak their minds fully, even if it was the most foolish or self-delusional statement. She was never condescending, but Q was sharp enough that he could catch himself in his own dissembling.

It was more impactful when someone realized how pointless their excuses were, rather than to have a therapist tell them so.

After a moment, Swann spoke. “You must be busy.”

“I’m going with him,” Q said. “All my communication lines will go dormant until I return.”

There’s just a breathy sound of surprise, and then a long silence as Swann gathered her thoughts.

“I’m glad you told me. But that’s not the only reason why you called.”

Sharp, sharp, sharp – Q was going to miss having someone so quiet and analytical to verbally spar with. Most MI6 agents were cunning and intelligent, but they tended to bring all their expertise to bear, whether it was stealing Q’s equipment or attempting to break into his systems. With Swann, it’s all verbal wit and codes hidden in words and the unsaid.

“I have a proposal.” Q took a deep breath. They had been speaking in partial code and vagueness as a matter of practice, but Q trusted his own technology. His lines to the Double-Os and to M were some of the most secure in the world, and for all that Q specialized in ciphers there was always a time when it was important to speak clearly. “The Secret Service exists. We have not gone public that MI5 and MI6 are operating separately once more, but once Nine Eyes fell, M worked hard to reverse the decision regarding the Joint Intelligent Service. All MI6 branches are up and operational – including the Medical department. You’re a medical professional, and your credentials as a psychiatrist are top notched.”

Swann inhaled sharply; for the first time, she sounded noticeably shocked.  “Are you—” she began, before cutting herself off; she too was self-aware enough to ask questions she already knew the answer to. “Why?”

“We’ve flushed out all Spectre moles from within the government and we’ve worked very hard to take down all Spectre cells within the United Kingdom. But Spectre as an organization is difficult to destroy. That’s our assignment now, Bond and I, but in the meantime, I’ve been given leave to invite you into MI6’s fold as an officially-sanctioned doctor in our psych department.”

“You argued for this proposal, didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question, and Swann didn’t wait for a response. “James gave me the keys to several of his safehouses, but he took me at my word when I said I didn’t want protection.”

“It’s an option,” Q said. “That’s all it is. Spectre forced our hands in so many ways; I refuse to play by their rules. Joining MI6 as a support staff would ensure your safety and gives you contacts to call upon, since both Bond and I will be off the grid entirely. And you’ll be a credit to our Medical department. I really mean that – if you can handle Bond, you can definitely handle our most intractable agents. And we have a lot of those, nowadays.”

“Very logical. Very sound reasons,” Swann said. “Now, tell me why you argued for this.”

Sharp. And utterly ruthless.

“I used to think you and Bond were similar, and you are, in many ways. But – you’re quite like me as well. We may both hide, but it doesn’t mean we’re quiescent. You were the Hoffler Klinik’s top psychiatrist, but you were always prepared for the worst to happen. You may live a normal life now, but shadows – this entire hidden world – will always lurk beneath your feet. And the truth is that you’re well suited for it. If you want to, the position I mentioned is the perfect bridge between the two.”

Swann was quiet for a long while.

“I told James before that it’s always possible to change,” she finally said, and Q blinked, thrown for a brief second at the segue. “I said that just because he’d worked in the shadows for most of his life doesn’t mean he has to continue that way. So, he decided to give it a try. To see if another life worked for him.”

Q was there, on the bridge with Tanner and Moneypenny and a handful of first responders, when Bond chose to walk away from Oberhauser and from M. Of course Bond would take Swann’s words to heart, the only therapist or mental health specialist he’d deigned to listen to, possibly because Swann had befriended him first.

“But he came back to MI6, in the end,” Q said.

“He did. But not as a return to his old ways. If you’re like me, then the curiosity of James’s actions and his motivations is a puzzle you want to solve. I can’t speak for him, but I can say that he isn’t doing it because it’s his duty or because it’s the work he’s used to and that he excels at. At least, those are not the only reasons why he went back. If it’s you, I think he’ll even let you pry it out of him, if you don’t eventually put the clues together yourself.”

Q’s first instinct is to deny it all, but Swann’s right. Q’s greatest fault is his insatiable need to figure out everything, sometimes at the expense of safety or common sense.

“You’re very good at this.”

“Of course I am,” Swann said. “That’s why MI6 wants to hire me. It’s always possible to change. I’ll consider your proposal. It’s… not a bad one.”

“And that’s all I wanted to say. I’ll send you a number immediately after this call. It goes to the MI6 medic I’m closest to. If you want to pursue this option, she’ll manage things the rest of the way.”

“I understand,” Swann said.  

And right on cue, Bond ghosted into view on Q’s surveillance feed. It’s intentional, because Bond has broken into Q Branch plenty of times before without being detected.

“I have to go,” Q said.

“I understand,” Swann said, and her tone makes that statement completely different from before. There was no hint that she worried, none of her own emotions bleeding into her voice. She’s steely determination now, calm and cool and in control, and utterly accepting that other people’s choices and actions were their own.

She would make an excellent handler.  

“Take care, Q,” was the last thing she said to him.

“I’ll do my best, Dr. Swann,” was the last thing he said to her.

---

Q knows Bond is feeling better when he wakes up to something being draped over his head, blocking out the ambient light.

“What,” he just mumbles, because after weeks and weeks of travelling with Bond, he’s almost used to the Double-O’s many quirks. Why wake someone with a touch or a call when you can stare at them until they twitch awake? Bond claims that it’s training, that Q needs to be more aware of his surroundings, but the lopsided smile Q sometimes catches says otherwise.

“Just a gift for all you’ve gone through the past few days. I’m surprised you didn’t combust into flames – you have the stereotypic pale English skin, after all, and we’re not in the right region for the aloe plant to grow.”

Q wakes up enough to reach up, and his fingers skitter across a familiar fibrous material, arranged in a neat criss-crossing hatch pattern. He marvels at how tightly the long coconut leaves have been woven, and it takes a while before he notes the whole instead of fixating on the details – the bowl-like shape, with a flat brim.

This is interesting enough that Q tilts the item away from his eyes to stare at Bond. “You wove me a hat.”

Bond grins, and ghosts a finger across the bridge of Q’s nose, along the arc of one cheekbone. “You already have freckles here. I assure you, sunburns are less aesthetically pleasing and much more painful.”

Q lifts the hat and squints at it. It’s tightly woven and unlikely to unravel, and the brim is wide enough that it’ll protect his eyes from the sun and shade the back of his neck.

“Thank you,” he says after a moment, feeling off-kilter. Q is usually the one arming his agents, creating and building and developing weapons and equipment for the scenarios they are likely to encounter on their missions – and here is Bond, doing the same.

Bond doesn’t respond to the thanks, just takes the hat from Q’s hands and drapes it over Q’s head again. “I’m going scout further inland. Your glasses are on the rock over there, and here’s my gun.” He tucks the gun, unholstered, by Q’s side, within easy reach. “Now, go back to sleep.”

As if Q hadn’t come completely wide awake the moment Bond put a weapon near his hand. “Why you’re not taking your gun, and why are you leaving it with me?”

The smile flashes across Bond’s face, lopsided and fleeting. “I’m not taking it because a gunshot is guaranteed to scare off anything worth hunting, and this island is small enough that you will likely hear it going off from here. I have 004’s knife, that’s good enough. And I’m leaving it with you because we might not have seen any dangerous wildlife yet but this is still the wilderness, and I won’t leave you undefended.”

After a moment, Q concedes the point by settling back down.

“It’s just shortly after dawn,” Bond says. “I don’t actually expect anything to attack now that it’s light out, so you should sleep a while longer. You haven’t had much rest, and what you got seemed restless.”

Trust Bond to be that observant even when concussed and out of it himself.

Q closes his eyes. It’s much more comfortable under the shade of the hat, and having just talked to Bond the wave of vertigo doesn’t hit him as badly. He lets himself drift with the sensation; it’s vaguely nausea-inducing, but if Q tries to imagine that he’s standing on a boat that keeps drifting in the waves – and they’d did that, somewhere in Vietnam – it doesn’t make him panic. He can at least rest his eyes, even if he can’t fall back asleep.

“I’m taking your advice,” Q says after a moment, when he remembers that Bond is still there. “You can go now.”

“All right,” Bond says, but Q doesn’t hear him move away before he falls back asleep.

---

When Q next wakes up, there’s a dead animal of some kind lying three feet away on a woven mat of coconut leaves, laid out neatly like an offering.

Cat. Bond is definitely a cat, with the contrary moods and nine lives and disregard for rules and the dead bodies as gifts.

“What the hell is that,” Q croaks, because the sun is high in the sky and he’s parched and there are dead things lying next to him. Q isn’t squeamish, but it’s one thing to watch his agents commit unspeakable violence through a camera feed and sometimes in person, and another thing to have a carcass just – lying there.

Q’s priorities are quite skewed compared to the normal population, but he’s always been aware of that.

“Drink this first,” Bond says, coming up behind him.

Q takes the coconut shell from him automatically. Instead of the light sweetness he’s come to expect the water tastes almost bland, and he slants a curious look at Bond.

“It’s water from that stream you found, boiled in the coconut shells. It won’t do to completely deplete all the coconuts near us, although I did mix in some coconut water with the fresh water, just for the extra electrolytes.”

The water is lukewarm but it does its job; Q feels marginally better when he’s finished the bowl-full. He lets out a quiet sigh and scrubs at his face, digging his heels into his eye sockets – he’s scruffy and his hair is stiff from the salt in the air and his whole body still feels heavy from exhaustion, but at least Q won’t die from dehydration.

When Q finally lets his hands drop into his lap, Bond is openly studying him. After a moment, his head tilts the barest inch to the side, and he takes a seat next to Q, reaching over to pull the dead animal thing towards them.

“You’ll feel better with a proper meal in your stomach,” Bond says, unsheathing 004’s knife. “Did I hear you ask what this is?”

“I’ve decided I don’t want to know,” Q says, pinching hard at the bridge of his nose. “It has fur, it’s mammalian, and it doesn’t look diseased; I’ll just pretend it’s game meat and I’ll be fine.”

“Technically, the flesh of any wild animal is game—”

“Thank you, Bond, that’s incredibly helpful.”

Q stands, and wobbles on his feet. Bond eyes him like he’s thinking of grabbing Q to stabilize him. He finally decides not to, and Q is grateful for that tiny preservation of his pride. He knows the meat he buys from the store comes from a carcass, that they don’t miraculously come in pre-packaged cuts and perfect portions, but Q is tired – it’s only really hitting him now, now that Bond is there to take control for a while, now that Q has time to slow down and react.

He’s going to react disproportionately towards seemingly inconsequential things for a while, and Q hates it.

“All right?” Bond asks evenly.

Q lets out a breath, tries to centre himself the way he always could during emergencies. “The situation could be better,” he says. “But I do feel better than yesterday, so that’s something. How are your injuries?”

“Manageable,” Bond says, and Q leaves it at that. He does trust Bond to know his own limits, especially when Q’s wellbeing hinges on Bond’s own now. Bond won’t risk him – Q knows that too well. “I found a likely cave. It’s a distance from here, higher up amongst the hills, but it’ll be a good shelter from storms. I’ll show you after we eat.”

Q nods. “I need to wash up,” he mutters, scratching at his chin, where after a few days without a razor he’s well on his way to a decent beard.

Bond’s mouth quirks up on one side, but he mercifully lets Q’s statement go. He’d suggested Q grow out his facial hair once, to disguise his features a bit better, but Q’s fond of being clean-shaven.

Well, it looks like Bond will finally get his wish.

Q settles for giving Bond a nod before picking up his glasses and setting out towards the stream.

---

The day gets gradually better, after that.

The meat, after a long roast in the fire, is greasy and gamey, sating Q’s hunger in a way the fruits the day before hadn’t quite managed. He caps off the meal with two more bowls of fresh water, and it’s such a novelty not to worry about water or food supplies that Q actually relaxes. They tidy up their camp site afterwards, and even in this he and Bond work seamlessly – Bond gets rid of the bony remains while Q fetches more water, and after they’d boiled their share of water for the day and banked the fire they’d set out for the cave.

It’s a marked difference from Q’s impromptu trip through the undergrowth the day before, where he’d wandered almost aimlessly. This time, Bond leads, pointing out distinct rock formations or tree growths as landmarks to mark the way, and as they travel they both watch for edibles – Bond had somehow found the time to weave a coconut leaf basket, which Q holds in both arms, savouring the increasing weight as they find and add more fruit to it.

The cave itself is nothing spectacular, more of a rocky shelter that tapers off into narrow animal passageways than a full tunnel network, but it’s deep enough that they can hide and not be seen from the cave entrance, and set at a slight incline so they won’t be flooded by water when it rains.  

“Would it be better if we moved here?” Q says.

“Staying by the beach gives us easy access to both the forest and the ocean,” Bond says. “And I’d like to keep an eye on our plane. Any MI6 team worth their salt should notice that if they come within range. They'd likely make a landing on the shoreline nearby.”

“Fair enough,” Q concedes.

The only hitch in the day is when they split up for a while, exploring the area around the cave. Q carries the fruit basket with him automatically, and he has it wedged against one hip when he pushes through some bushes into a clearing.

It’s not a natural clearing, Q can tell immediately.

Q inhales sharply and backs away, dropping the basket and pulling out the PPK/S, holding the gun tightly with two hands, arms locked.

The entire area is wrecked, broken branches and tamped down undergrowth and deep groove marks in the soil – all the signs of a fight, or a struggle. Q’s eyes dart all around the clearing, but he doesn’t know how to read the subtler signs, on who or what caused this and how long ago that was, and he freezes there, alert but uncertain what else to do.

A whistling birdcall warbles through clearing, distinct and unique. It’s the only reason why Q doesn’t shoot Bond in a fit of startled nerves when hands grip his shoulders and carefully pulls him back.  

Bond doesn’t look at Q, just steps defensively in front of him, knife out and held low. Q engages the safety on the gun, and then turns to cover Bond’s back, watching the way they came.

After a moment, Bond calls back towards him. “You can stand down. Whatever caused this is long gone.”

Relieved, Q turns, letting his arms relax. Bond is couched near the centre of the clearing, knife still out but held loose, and Q follows his cue, tucking the gun back into its holster.

“I don’t suppose this is where you killed our lunch,” Q tries, his heart still pounding from the adrenaline of the moment.

Bond shoots Q an amused half-grin. “No, but you’re not off the mark.” He points at an indent in a softer part of the ground, a hoof-mark nearly half the size of a horse’s. “Could be a wild boar. That would make good eating.”

“No,” Q says. “You’re not catching any boars in snares, and you’re certainly not going to hunt one armed with just a knife. We’re still preserving bullets, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” Bond says, standing up and dusting off the knees of his trousers. “For emergencies.” He looks around the clearing once more, eyes lingering on a part of a bush that looks particularly worse than the rest of the broken foliage.

“Is this too near the cave? Should we find another shelter?” Q wonders out loud, kneeling to pick up the basket and gather up the fallen fruit.

Bond pauses, and then says, “There will always be animals around, no matter where we are on the island. If we need to, we can build a fire by the cave entrance.”

“And if anything isn’t deterred by the fire, I suppose there’s always you.” Q says. “‘The biggest predator of them all.’”

“Exactly.” Sheathing the knife, Bond steps over and holds out a hand to Q. “Let’s head back. We might not have a wild boar for dinner, but sunrise and sunset are the best times to fish. I don’t plan to go hungry tonight.”

“Sounds good.” Q tucks the last rose apple into the basket, and grasps Bond’s hand.

Bond pulls him upright with barely any effort, his grip firm and steady – reassuring.

--

They keep their cooking fire burning into the deepening night. It’s not like they lack dry firewood to feed it with, Bond points out, and Q doesn’t protest. The flickering circle of illumination the fire casts feels like a talisman of hope, something Q can focus on to ignore the darkness around them. It’s similar to how Q prefers to work with a single, brightly lit lamp in his personal office, a pool of isolated light within which he does his best work.

It hasn’t been a bad day. Q tests the thought cautiously – he’s never been superstitious, approaches each situation with as much calm and reasoning that he can muster, but there’s something about being out in the middle of absolutely nowhere, with Bond a lurking shadow flitting about their fire and the treeline doing Bond-like things and the fire throwing out varicolored sparks from the salt amongst the stone and wood, that makes Q wary of jinxing their short streak of peace.

They’re hydrated and fed, they have a decent camp site with more substantial shelter elsewhere in case of a storm, and forthcoming rescue in a few days. Q puts all the what ifs firmly in a corner of his mind and seals them off – MI6 might be in pieces, but Q Branch is his. He’ll put his trust in his team time and time again, and he won’t worry otherwise until a week and more goes by.

On Q’s list of priorities, rescue or escape doesn’t come anywhere near close to the top.

There’s something else that shouldn’t come anywhere near that list at all.

“I would do unspeakable things for a cup of tea right now,” Q says out loud.

“You make it sound like tea is a universal panacea.” Bond steps back into view, dropping a last armful of firewood. Q is sitting atop the Kevlar jacket; Bond settles on the beach itself like he has no fear of sand in awkward places.

“It is, for me.”

Q drinks tea for the caffeine but also for the ritual of it – it calms him, occupies his hands, something warm and comforting when the day stretches into the night and sleep is a distant second to the work he needs to finish. Making a proper cup of tea imposes a necessary break in his rhythm, and the scent of it is uplifting, the taste of it soothing, the hit of caffeine a balm.

Bond glances towards the ocean at the plane tail, just barely visible in the moonlight. “It’s a shame I lost the tin of tea, then. It’s keeping your laptop and attaché kit good company.”

Q pauses, and then he raises his head completely, staring at Bond. “You’ve been carrying tea everywhere we go?”

“You haven’t noticed?” Bond stacks up the firewood, and feeds a long stick into the fire. “0010 told me you’d recognize your favorite blend of Earl Grey.”

“I did, but—” Q cuts himself off, thinking back. Bond has a knack of acquiring tea wherever they go – either purchased from a café or made from a teabag, from whatever local brand is available. But there’d been a few times when Q is sunk so deep in his work that he doesn’t speak, his thoughts transposed entirely to code, and he’d only briefly resurfaced to the familiar, calming scent of his favorite Earl Grey, a mug set in a corner of his work area so Q doesn’t accidentally knock it off, with no teabag in sight. “Wait, 0010 gave you tea? Loose leaf? For me?”

Bond’s eyes look amused in the flickering firelight. “Yes, Quartermaster, he did. Said it was time he gave you something instead of the opposite.” He brushes a hand over the knife, now strapped to Bond’s thigh in its sheath. “004 opted for something more practical, for your defense rather than your comfort.”

Q knows a pattern when he sees one. “And 0011?”

“He knew we have to travel light, and 0010 already gave me something nonessential to carry with us. 0011 bought toys to entertain your cats instead. He and Tanner were quite zealous about the cat-sitting schedule.”

Q knows he must look ridiculous, his eyes wide and mouth slightly agape, but he can’t help it. Outside of Q’s MI6 identity his cats are the most important beings in his life. He’d given the care of his cats to Q Branch in general so the responsibility is shared across multiple people, with Riley having final attorney power over Kitty and Tabby, so to speak. He hadn’t expected other MI6 personnel to get involved.

Bond laughs at him – low and quiet, but laughter nonetheless. “You’re important, and not just because you’re MI6’s best asset in the cybersecurity war. Double-Os don’t dote on just anyone, after all.”

“But—why?”

“We know how you are about your responsibilities, and that’s when you’re safely ensconced back at headquarters. Being out in the field has its own stresses. The nature of your specialities mean you never really switch off. The other Double-Os simply wish to make things easier for you. 0010’s gift is the most direct: take a break, and breathe for a bit.” Bond tilts his head. “We don’t have the tea anymore, but I meant what I said about the vacation. You have time to breathe, Q.”

Q stares at him for a while longer, but that seems to be all Bond has to say on the matter. Q takes a deep breath, lets it out, and lets his thoughts turn inward.

Bond isn’t wrong. Q doesn’t ever stop, not really. He is, after all, the Secret Service’s living firewall. The world doesn’t stop scheming and technology never rests and when Q is on down time he’s never quite entirely offline. Even on the go Q is always connected in some way – he just watches everyone else more than they’re able to watch him.

He doesn’t stop, not until a plane crash put all of Q’s technology out of his reach.

Even right now he’s complete abuzz with inactivity; his hands are restless, and so Q busies them with the long coconut fronds, attempting to replicate Bond’s tight and seamless weaving, the simple coconut leaf mat set in front of Q as a sample to follow. There’s a pattern to it, interlacing and folding and tucking, but Q hasn’t quite mastered the knack of it, and the puzzle of it is enough to keep both his mind and his fingers occupied.

Q weaves coconut leaves together for a few quiet minutes, before stealing a glance at Bond.

Bond, Q realizes, is someone who excels in pauses. Like all the other Double-Os, he thrives best in the middle of action, and the lulls between missions are necessary only so he doesn’t burn himself out. Bond approaches down time like it’s another mission, where he rests and drinks and sleeps around not quite out of pleasure but as something to occupy himself with. Bond stores up potential energy so well that it’s practically an art form, and right now he’s leaned back comfortably in the sand, watching the sky, although occasionally his eyes flick around them in a habitual and almost absent-minded perimeter check.

“Why did you come back to MI6?”

Bond’s eyes flick up, sharpening, and Q bites at his lower lip – just a few days away from the larger world, and he’s completely lost all tact.

Bond watches him for long moments. “Why ask now?”

Q lets his fingers sift through the pile of long leaves in his lap. Why now indeed.

“We were always too busy before,” he says at last. “Busy with work, busy investigating, with moving, with staying alive. But now we’ve stopped, and it isn’t a distraction to ask.”

“I thought you enjoyed piecing clues together.”

“If there’s one thing I know about you, Bond, it’s that you’re only predictable in your sheer unpredictability,” Q says. “I don’t pretend to understand your motivations, just as I didn’t understand your intentions for stealing the DB10 and chasing the ghost of a dead man. That time, I went all the way up to Altaussee to talk to you in person, and – you were right. Since that went so successfully, it seems sensible to replicate the method.”

“Indulge me. Why do you think I came back?”

Q narrows his eyes at Bond. Beneath Bond’s blithe tone, there’s a hint of consideration, of challenge. It’s not overt, but it’s entirely possible that Q’s answer matters to Bond in a way Q doesn’t understand.

Par for the course, for this Double-O in particular.

“I’ll be honest, I didn’t think you would return.”

“No?”

“It doesn’t fit the pattern. When you came back from the dead, after Moneypenny shot you – you returned because Silva bombed the Vauxhall headquarters and M needed another Double-O on hand. After what happened at Skyfall Lodge, Moneypenny told me that M – Mansfield – recorded a tape that was sent directly to you after her death. You went to Mexico City on her directive. Both times, you came back to MI6 because you thought it was your duty. There was still work to do.”

“There is always work to do.”

“But it doesn’t have to be done by you, specifically. If you wanted to return because it was your duty to do so, you would have stayed when you came for the DB5. For a second, I really believed you might.”

He doesn’t mean for that last part to come out faintly accusatory, and Q drops his gaze to the half-formed coconut mat, weaving the next two rows so tightly that it bests all his previous efforts. Q doesn’t hold Bond’s leaving against him, but it’d rankled at the time that Bond only returned for the DB5, when Q Branch lay silent and MI6 in pieces and M and Moneypenny and Tanner and Q himself had been scrambling to hold the agency together. Q had let it go very quickly after, because Bond had already given up far too many pieces of himself to MI6’s service, but—

They’d made a good team, the five of them, that night in London.

“You didn’t stay for duty then, so I was sure you’d never return to MI6’s fold after that. I suppose I was wrong both times.” Q should have known better. Bond is predictable only in his sheer unpredictability, after all. And—

“It’s always possible to change,” Q murmurs to himself.

The fire crackles, a sharp staccato sound that breaks into Q’s awareness the way the rhythmic sound of the waves no longer does, and Q shakes his head, as if to physically clear his mind.

On the other side of the fire, Bond just watches him.

“You went straight on this assignment when you returned,” Q continues. “I can only guess that your reasons are personal. Oberhauser made this war personal, after all. He targeted people important to you, specifically.”

“You’ve met my wayward foster brother, then,” Bond says.

“Only through a one-way mirror, in observation capacity. No direct contact. M didn’t want him to learn anything about me.” Q lets out a sigh, and tucks the last free leaf ends into the weave to finish off the small mat. He turns it around in his hands – not the prettiest or most perfect, but a good start, at least. “Of course, the chances of Spectre not knowing anything about me are almost nil. I steered clear of Denbigh as much as possible, but I do report directly to M, and Denbigh was very fond of interfering with anyone involved with M. I managed to hide enough that he was surprised when I took Nine Eyes down, however.”

“Our good friend C.” The firelight gleams off Bond’s normally piercing blue eyes, turning them much darker, washing out the colours. “What was your impression of Oberhauser?”

“A rational genius with psychopathic obsessions,” Q says. “The most lethal combination. I’ll be happy to never meet him in person.”

“Perhaps I’ve returned to put the remnants of his organization to rest. Much of his focus on MI6 is because of me.”  

“To be frank, Bond, Oberhauser’s fixation on you makes you a liability. Spectre’s top tier must know who you are. Whether they choose to further Oberhauser’s agenda on you is one thing, but you did destroy one of their major surveillance centres. What a nice pair of targets we make.”

Bond gazes at him steadily. “You didn’t object when M partnered us for this mission.”

“I don’t mind working with you,” Q says. “If I did, I wouldn’t keep defying orders for you. And I’m confident in my ability to keep us both hidden. You came back to MI6 and made arrangements with M; I wouldn’t stand in the way of that.” He stretches out his arms in front of him, fingers splayed, rotating his wrists to loosen them. “Which brings me back to my original question.”

“You aren’t wrong,” Bond says. “About what my motivations aren’t. The few MI6 personnel who are aware I’m on this assignment have their own theories for why I returned. You’re closer to the truth than any of them.”

Q stares at Bond expectantly.

“How about this? I’ll tell you when we leave this island, if you don’t figure it out by then.”

Q knows Bond would never give him a straight answer if he can help it – this is the man who would rather steal a seven-figure automobile instead of asking for help, after all. “And what’s wrong with just telling me now?”

“Incentive. For you to stay alive until back up arrives. I believe escaping death to satisfy your curiosity is a stronger drive than just simple self-preservation. I know what you’re like with mysteries, after all.”

“I don’t even know where to begin with that statement,” Q says. “The implication that our odds for survival are chancy enough that I need additional incentive to keep alive, or that you think I’m as reckless as you are when it comes to my life.”

“You can think about it and berate me tomorrow.” Bond rolls smoothly to his feet; the flickering shadows obscured the mottled bruises scattered across his torso, and if Q hadn’t pressed his palms to Bond’s chest and forced air into his lungs himself, it would be hard to remember that Bond was injured at all. “We should sleep. Head back first; I’ll bank the fire.”

“Fine.” Q clambers less gracefully to his feet, the sand giving under him. He shakes out the Kevlar jacket and collects the little coconut mats. “I’ll let it go.” He lets the for now go unsaid.

“Of course.”

Q walks slowly to keep more sand from falling into his shoes – and thank goodness for Q Branch-grade shoes, sturdy footwear in the wilderness is a godsend – and so his eyes can adjust to the darkness away from the fire’s light. His footsteps drag the closer he gets to the treeline; there’s something gnawing at his heart, a heavy weight in his chest, and it takes Q a moment to identify it as apprehension – in recent months, he hasn’t had time to worry, too caught up in the moment to let it simmer or the situation extreme enough that he jumps straight to outright fear and adrenaline-fueled action.

Q has dealt with flashbacks before, but not when he’s trapped in the middle of nowhere with absolutely nothing to distract him with.

Behind him, the firelight dims as Bond rakes through the burning logs to spread out the embers. Q hurriedly puts his glasses and the mats atop a rock, and makes sure he’s safely curled up amongst the roots of his favoured tree, leaning back against the trunk, before the fire goes entirely out.

Q keeps his eyes open, but even with the stars out he doesn’t notice Bond until a hand settles lightly against the back of Q’s head – strategically placed, since Q startles so violently that he would have cracked his head against the tree without it there.

“You’re not going to get very restful sleep sitting up like that,” Bond says.

It’s nothing Q doesn’t already know. He can’t refute that statement and he isn’t in the mood to deflect, to point out that Bond spends most of his time sleeping in chairs and against walls during their travels, so in the end he doesn’t say anything at all. 

Bond presses his hand harder against Q’s head – not to move him, certainly not enough to hurt, but just an insistent pressure, as if to remind Q that he’s there. “What’s wrong?”

Q sighs. He’s asked Bond not to brush off his injuries, so he can’t very well downplay the situation now. “Flashbacks. Whenever I close my eyes.”

Bond is quiet for a long, long while. “Flashbacks of?”

Q curls his fingers into the jacket – it’s a little touch of Q Branch, of normalcy, nothing to do with plane flights or the terrifying plummet into the ocean, or those frantic moments when he fought to keep Bond alive.

“Falling. The plane ride was—” the words stick in Q’s throat, and he swallows. “And hitting the water was a shock, but mainly, it’s the falling.”

Bond is quiet for much longer this time, his hand very still on the back of Q’s head, and then he strokes his fingers against Q’s hair, once. 

“Come,” he says, and Q lets Bond pull him to his feet, lets Bond settle on the coconut frond bedding and pull Q down after, lets him tuck Q into the circle of his arm, Q’s head pillowed naturally against Bond’s chest.

Then, Bond’s hand closes firmly over Q’s eyes, blocking his sight, and Q goes immediately rigid—

“Fair enough.” Bond patted once at his jacket, over the inner pocket where he’d tucked Q’s glasses.

Q didn’t bother answering him this time. He hated flying, there were a dozen rational reasons why but the frantic, scrambling panic in his chest made no sense – planes have flown for decades without incidence, aviation safety has come a long way, and even the small propeller plane Bond had hijacked was safe enough, especially with a skilled pilot like Bond at the wheel, but when they’d taken off the terror had set in and this time the flight was short and illegal enough that Q couldn’t afford to knock himself out with sleeping pills, not when he needed to be aware and alert when they landed.

Q was holding onto the edge of calm through sheer willpower, and he didn’t have energy to exchange barbs with Bond.

“Q.” There was enough of a command in Bond’s voice that Q turned his head automatically in his direction, and Bond met his gaze for a long moment before closing his hand firmly over Q’s eyes, blocking his sight.

Q tried to jerk away, panic lighting up his every flight instinct, but he was firmly strapped into his seat and his hands were clenched tight against the arm rests and he can’t see—

“Focus on me,” Bond said. “Focus on my hand, on my touch.”

It was like the words tripped a line – Q was suddenly aware of that tactile sensation, poured his singular focus on that touch – Bond’s hand was large enough that his palm and fingers covered Q’s eyes entirely; his skin was warm, his fingertips light pressure points against Q’s temple—

“Good,” Bond said. “Now, take a breath.”

Q did.

“Hold it. Then let it out.”

He followed Bond's instructions, breathed in, breathed out when Bond told him to do so, and slowly, Q’s body begun to unwind, unlocking enough that it was easier to take the next breath, and the next, and the next, until his breathing no longer rasped in his ears.

—and Q takes a calming breath, and then another, relaxing in incrementals, and it feels just like before except more, Bond a solid line of warmth all down Q’s side, although it’s still easiest to focus on his hand over Q’s eyes.

It doesn’t stop that tugging feeling in his stomach, that sensation of endlessly tumbling, the world spinning around him, but Bond had calmed him during that flight, and kept hold of him the entire time they were falling, had protected Q all the way down and in the water until he’d been knocked out.

Q is safe. All the cues are there. He might be in complete freefall, but he’s safe.

When Bond speaks, it’s like a rumbling purr under Q’s ear, reverberating through his chest. Faintly, Q thinks he can hear Bond’s heartbeat. “Go to sleep, Q.”

Q does.

Chapter Text

It was very, very difficult to concentrate when someone was watching you unwaveringly; Q felt Bond’s stare like a physical mark on his back.

“You always took me to task for being reckless.”

Q smothered a sigh. “It’s not reckless if I have a plan. An actual strategy, I mean, that I planned for days in advance and have taken steps to pull into place, not something made up on the go.”

“A plan that involves you walking into a syndicate’s hideout to trade for resources.”

“I have access to money,” Q hefted the attaché case; who knew stacks of paper bills could be so heavy? Not Q, who prefers the contactless anonymity of online transactions. “And I can transfer more to any account in the world. What I don’t have access to are the types of weapons and munition you use to keep us safe, and the specialized equipment and components I need to build the systems required to stay ahead of Spectre. You have the Walther PPK/S and I have my laptop, but we do need more than that.”

“It’s not actually your own money,” Bond said.

“Of course not. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have a mortgage, would I?”

It’s not entirely true, but the most fruitful of Q’s assets were quite illegal, which was why he hasn’t touched them after he joined the Secret Service. So far, he hasn’t had to dig into his own cache of resources. Somewhere out there several cartels have lost access to their assets with signs pointing to each other as the culprit; if they wipe each other out in the process, Q figured that’s one less headache for the next MI6 agent coming through.

“I’m very good at sourcing the supplies a mission requires,” Bond said. “We can’t always have Q Branch on speed dial.”

Q had to smile – it’s quite patient of Bond to try to convince him otherwise, when he could easily knock Q out and make the exchange on his own.

“Any other time, Bond, and I’d be happy to pass the reins to you. But some of the components I need are quite particular, and even with all the money in the world these syndicates will hesitate to sell them on unless you have certain credentials.” Q smoothed one hand across the attaché case. "I have a reputation, on the dark web." He tilted his head. "I'm going to use it."

Bond's eyes narrowed.

Q's vices are quite typical of the common populace, if a little subtler than the norm. Caffeine is a drug, and even though it is the stereotypic drug of choice for the average Briton Q knows there are days where he subsists on the substance alone, green tea in the morning to sooth, a stronger black tea in the afternoons to carry him through the day, and a fragrant white tea to end the night – if there is a definitive end to his night.

He doesn't drink enough hard liquor for it to count, smoking never appealed to him, and intimate relations a little hard to come by when he lived under a cover and refused to get involved with anyone Q Branch-related, but gambling—

Oh, how Q gambled.

He’s the head of Q Branch, after all, which existed to defy the odds in favour of their agents, and what was gambling but risking it all despite what probability and statistics may tell you?

“If I didn’t work for MI6, I could very well be a criminal mastermind, you know,” Q said. “The modern world is so heavily reliant on technology – manipulate that, and I could have the world in my hands.” He glanced down at his laptop. “A little like Spectre, but with different priorities.”

“Except you don’t like guns. Physical violence is still one of the easiest ways to control and intimidate people.”

“I could change the traffic system, turn the traffic lights at a critical moment. Or I could disable the safety features in the elevator you were riding in. And if you survive, I could change the medicines the doctor orders for you at the hospital, switch it out for something that would be lethal in your condition, or perhaps just a dosage too high for your broken body to handle.” Q laced his fingers together. “I could do many things – if I really wanted to.”

He raised his eyes to meet Bond’s gaze – he could barely feel the contact lenses although it’s been months since he last wore them, but Q found himself missing the subtle weight of his glasses.

“But no, those don’t really pose the immediate visceral threat that a gun does, do they?” Q said. “Iota was my most infamous alias on the dark web. Very little is known about that persona beyond their work, but it wouldn’t be out of place for Iota to acquire a partner now that their transactions have crossed over into the physical world. A partner to pull the trigger, while I enjoyed a cup of Earl Grey before my next technological conquest.”

Bond’s mouth spread in a slow grin. “You’re starting to switch your designations around. Should I start calling you Iota?”

“Only during the exchange, and even then, rarely. You’d have to defer to me; they’ll expect Iota to be in control.” Q slanted him a look. “If you’re coming along.”

“Of course,” Bond said simply, as if it was a given. “I never planned otherwise.”

--

It’s not really a vacation, but over the next few days Q finds himself letting go, just a little.

Regimented time loses meaning. As long as they hit all the checkpoints to ensure their basic necessities are fulfilled – getting enough food and water, and regulating the effects of the oppressive heat – then Q is free to do exactly as he pleases, even if he can’t occupy himself with his usual doings. His sleeping habits fluctuate even more than usual; Q finds himself getting drowsy earlier each day, his sleep cycle attempting to synch to the rise and fall of the sun, but with all his issues falling asleep and constantly waking up from insect bites or shifts in temperature, he ends up sleeping in more often than not. Eventually, Q just takes a leaf from Bond’s book, and makes peace with numerous short cat naps.

Longing for something more than fruit and fish and the occasional game? Put the craving off with a short nap. Suffering a headache and feeling irritable from the heat? Sleep it off. Feeling listless and restless at the same time?  

Sometimes Q does doze off, but most of the time, he watches Bond instead.

Q, as a matter of course, spends an inordinate amount of time keeping track of Bond during their extended mission, but it’s different when he’s forced to keep an eye on Bond – well, with his own two eyes. It starts off mainly with Q looking to Bond for cues; having a Double-O around is a boon when surviving the wilderness, and Q would be a fool not to take advantage of Bond’s knowledge and experience.

He gets tutorials on dozens of subtle skills – testing the ripeness of a guava, a crash course on the tides and its effect on marine life, and the most efficient way to wade amongst the shallows without getting his shoes sucked into the wet sand. He learns how to start a fire without needing to rely on his glasses. He’ll never have the knifework skills that Bond and 004 do, but Q can gut and descale a fish expertly now.

He spends a whole afternoon learning the most common sailing knots, and by necessity, how to harvest vines and other substitutes for rope. Bond doesn’t just show him the steps to knot off the rope; he explains the purpose and physics behind each variation – how the rolling hitch helps move tension from one line or object to another line, or how the round turn and two half hitches is a constrictor knot will never tangle or slip. Q’s an engineer and an innovator, and he learns the knots quickly enough that he can practice tying two lines together through touch alone, which is especially handy when he wakes in the middle of the night wide-eyed and his heart racing, when sleep eludes him and the tension only occupying Q for so long before boredom sets in.

Bond stares at Q’s hands critically the next morning, somehow aware of how Q’s been occupying himself, even though Q had only knotted and unknotted the same few vines over and over again, unlike his brief spate of coconut leaf weaving, which resulted in small, unevenly woven mats all over the place come daytime.

“At least you’re not cutting your fingers to shreds on spiny fronds anymore,” Bond says at last. “For someone whose primary weapons are his keyboard and phone, you’re not very careful with your hands.”

“You have no idea how many electrical burns and scrapes I get building a test rack from scratch or trying to wire up all the peripherals to an automobile’s computer system,” Q says, knotting off two vines to get a longer line, and then tying both ends to his hat to make a strap so he’d stop losing his portable sunshade to the wind.

Bond concedes the point mainly by tipping the front brim of the hat further over Q’s eyes, before sauntering off to check their traps.

It’s not the same as having his laptop at his fingertips, a gateway to the vast cyberworld – Q glances reflexively at where their plane had crashed, tail still marking the spot – but it’s enough. The skills Q picks up are different enough from what he’s used to to be challenging, and when he’s finally learned the knack of them, Bond is there, easily executing a variation of something he’s shown Q before, so used to automatically doing things the most efficient way it’s never really a show.

Q watches anyway, since Bond is a veritable puzzle of his own, and is currently the only major one in Q’s vicinity.

The Double-Os are sleekly adept on missions, as confident as a well-adapted predator stalking through familiar territory, and Bond is just as at home standing in the surf at dusk with a spear – a long staff of wood, with barbed and sharpened points lashed on – in hand. Stripped to his waist, Bond doesn’t seem to mind either the waves or the last rays of the sun; he stays perfectly still, only his eyes tracking the water until his arm flicks, and the spear comes back up with a fish skewered at its end. He frees the fish from his spear and throws it at a coconut leaf basket wedged securely between some rocks.

He looks comfortable amongst the sea and salt, the fading sun lighting up his hair like a halo, in a way that Q will never be. The basket filled with enough fish for their dinner, Bond sets the spear aside, and wades deeper into the water. The waves crash into his thighs, swirl high enough to drench Bond up to his waist, and then he dives, disappearing so quickly beneath the water that Q blinks.

Further up the beach, where he stays watching over leaf-wrapped packages of roots and tubers baking amongst the hot stone of their fire pit, Q pushes his hat back, letting it dangle from his neck by the vine straps. He scrubs a hand through his hair, loosening the matted curls, and waits for Bond to resurface.

The dying glow of the sun turns the surface of the water golden, and when Bond breaks through the water, Q shouldn’t notice him as quickly as he does – after all, blonde hair and bronzed skin should be the perfect camouflage amongst molten-edged waves. But Bond moves with a power and grace that is immediately noticeable, swimming effortlessly until he hits the shallows; even on foot, wading through the shallows and collecting the spear and basket, the drag of the water doesn’t seem to affect him much.

Q doesn’t bother hiding his gaze – Bond is utterly unself-conscious his physicality, and Q follows his lead. It's not that Q hasn't seen Bond in various stages of undress before this – privacy is hard to come by on a long-term mission where one member of the team is an operative whose mission is to keep his agency's most critical asset alive, and the other is a man for whom surveillance is second nature.

Q isn’t blind; he works in an agency where most personnel use their appearance as a weapon as much as the physical equipment in their hands. Even Moneypenny wears her makeup and attire the way a warrior would face paint and armour; at M’s side, she can switch from ornamental to lethal in a split second. What Q values more is the intangible – power, recognition, respect, and charisma, which Bond possesses in devastating amounts.

Of course, it doesn’t detract from anything to have those qualities wrapped up in an appealing physical package, even though, shirtless and under the play of the dying light, it’s obvious just how many scars Bond carries beyond the most obvious snarled one on his shoulder.

Q has mixed feelings about those scars – on the one hand, they demonstrate just how many times Bond has brushed up against death; on the other, they’re clear evidence that Bond was strong or shrewd enough to always survive, that nothing has yet to best him. Physically, Bond is in excellent condition – the newest scars are months old, and under those silvery scar lines is firm muscle. If it isn’t for the faint bruising right over his heart from Q’s frantic chest compressions, no one would ever guess that just days earlier Bond had nearly died.

Bond stalks up the beach now, languid, and Q nudges the leaf-wrapped food to the edges of the fire pit. He looks up expectantly when Bond stops beside him, but instead of handing Q the basket, Bond sets something hard in Q’s hand instead.

It’s a scallop, the shells still firmly sealed together, brightly coloured and fan-shaped. It’s almost the size of Q’s palm.

“A pearl for your thoughts,” Bond quips, stealing 004’s knife from Q, and Q rolls his eyes, hands the scallop back.

“I’d prefer the meat to any pearl.” Q says; he has yet to find any scientific use for a pearl, and although some claim that pearl powder has medicinal properties, Q prefers not to experiment in a field he has little expertise in.

Bond chuckles at him, as if he’d followed Q’s thoughts, and unpacks the basket, the fish and half a dozen other scallops. “The ocean is our larder, even if it doesn’t give you other resources you’d prefer.”

Q glances at the ocean, at the setting sun, the tail of their plane. “I’ll get those other resources soon enough, when the extraction team picks us up. Right now, food is good enough for me.”

Bond picks up a scallop, slides the tip of the blade between the shells and twists so they pop apart. “As you wish.”

Still, when Q finds a cleaned scallop shell next to his glasses when he comes back from washing up, he doesn’t throw it away. He picks up the small scallop pearl, a dull white and more an uneven oval than a perfect sphere, and rolls it between his fingers, smiling.  

Vacations should come with souvenirs, after all. Q may not have a use for the pearl, but it doesn’t mean it’s not nice to have.

---

Q has always been a quick study, but he’s never considered before just how much he’s picked up through osmosis, from his agents and his teams and numerous late night trawlings on the web.

He’s aware that there’s a danger zone in any mid- to long-term assignment, the indefinite period of time after the initial adrenaline-fuelled hypervigilance of a new mission fades but before the objective is completed, when it’s tempting to succumb to the rhythm and routine of it all, to let complacency creep in. No one can sustain constant vigilance for long, and that’s when Q steps in, with technology and surveillance and back up to supplement the agent’s own attentiveness.

On the island, however, Q didn’t think about that danger zone, not with his technology out of reach and his focus mainly on making it through each day – at least not until he comes across the small fire pit.

It’s an unobtrusive hollow in an unremarkable little clearing. Q was wandering idly, picking the easiest path in search of more fruit beyond their usual main routes, and he’d only noticed the fire pit because the cluster of stones bore distinct scorch marks, familiar from long days and nights of seeing to their own fire pit.  

There’s no other clear sign of human life, the pit cleared of ash and no flattened areas to indicate a place where someone bedded down to sleep. Q hefts his fruit basket onto one hip and drops carefully to his heels, putting out one hand directly over the stone.

No, Q isn’t mistaken. Under the canopy of leaves, in the shade, nothing else could scorch stone so much that they continued radiating heat without an external source. And it can’t be too long since the fire was lit.

Someone else is on the island with them.

Just as carefully, Q rises to his feet, the back of his neck prickling with tension. His shoulders want to stiffen, but Q forces himself step away calmly. He doesn’t know what an experience tracker can see, whether it’s already obvious that someone else has stepped into the clearing, but he’s not going to make it easy for whoever it is to know by leaving them broken branches or distinct footprints as a sign.

When he gets far away enough from the clearing that his skin stops crawling, Q throws caution to the wind and runs.

The undergrowth is dim, lacking even the occasional bursts of sunlight streaming through the heavy foliage. There’s an electrical charge in the air, a pregnant silence to it all, even the ever-present background noises of the wildlife muted, and Q wonders if what he perceives is real or whether his mind is playing tricks on him, his heart working overtime in his chest. He’s in trouble the moment he can no longer trust his mind’s judgements, and this time Q doesn’t have any of his technology on hand to verify—

The trill of birdsong warbles through the silence, cuts right through the franticness of Q’s thoughts, and he switches directions with a swiftness that would make Moneypenny proud.

Bond has to catch him before Q careens headlong into him, is just barely able to check Q’s momentum so they don’t go sprawling to the ground.

Q pants limply in Bond’s hold, all the adrenaline in his veins grounded to a violent stop, his head spinning as he gasps for air. He’s still holding onto the basket, Q realizes a heartbeat or twenty later – it must be that instinct Q has drilled into his body years before he ever joined MI6.

Keep hold of your laptop, keep hold of your equipment, and you can disappear. You can do anything as long as they don’t catch you.

Q has to will his fingers loose, the basket finally slipping free, and closes his hands instead onto Bond’s jacket.

The jacket, a heat trap in the daytime tropical weather. Bond hasn’t put it on since recovering, lets Q fold it into his lap in a vain attempt at comfort or drape it over his shoulders to keep the night chill away. 

“The jacket?” Q asks, temporarily distracted.

“And your sweater.” Bond bundles the woolly clothing into Q’s arms. “You have the PPK/S, I have 004’s knife – nothing else is worth taking with us. It’s high tide, so the storm will likely flood our beachside clearing, but the trees have taken the brunt of the elements for decades. They’ll survive, and so will we.”

“The storm,” Q echoes, and then he looks around them. At the dim undergrowth, the overcast sky, at the cloud-swollen horizon, dark and stormy; he’d run almost all the way back to the coast.

He wasn’t imagining it after all. Bond must have thought he’d seen the signs and ran back to meet him rather than head straight to the cave.

“Q,” Q hears Bond say, and then firm but light fingers grasp hold of his chin, tilts Q’s head slightly so Bond can meet his eyes squarely.

“What is it.” Bond’s voice is eerily even, his gaze like a spotlight focusing solely on Q. Q feels his spine straighten, his thoughts going still water calm, a comet that’s been pulled into Bond’s orbit, forced into a steadier trajectory. 

“There’s someone else on this island,” Q says, and feels his heart settle in his chest – still beating hard, but steady. Unpanicked. “We haven’t hidden ourselves, and considering they’ve made no effort to contact us, I imagine they have ambiguous intentions at best.”

Bond’s eyes go dark, but he doesn’t look surprised. There’s barely a flicker in his expression, but Q knows him too well now; Bond is reassessing the situation, slotting in this new – or perhaps, going by Bond’s non-reaction, confirmed is more accurate – threat in together with the complication of the brewing storm.

When it rains, it pours, the thought intrudes, and Q laughs, quiet and only a little hysteric.

Bond looks at him, a little startled this time, and Q smiles. Gallows humour.

Q is adapting more to life in the field every day.

“Cave?” he says.

“Cave,” Bond confirms, still watching him closely.

Q kneels to scoop up the basket, ignoring the fruit that had spilled out. He understands Bond’s rationale to leave behind things that they can easily replace, but it doesn’t hurt to bring the basket of fruits along, just in case. Q is the man with all the contingencies when the Double-O’s backups fail, after all.

He can do this.

---

The first thing Bond does when they reach the cave is to put the Kevlar jacket on Q.

In the relative safety of the cave, Q bundles himself back into his sweater – the air pressure is dropping and there’s an ozone-charged chill in the air – and Bond takes back his dress shirt, torn and wrinkled from days of wear. When they’re done, they look like themselves again – ragged, scruffy, worn versions of themselves, yes, but the Quartermaster and 007 once more. Each fold in Bond’s shirt sleeves is perfectly crisp and the tails are tucked neatly into his trousers, and the shadows and the stubble on his face do nothing to detract from the dangerous alertness in his eyes.

He holds the jacket open for Q to slip on, and Q doesn’t bother fighting him on this; he just unholsters the Walther PPK/S and stays put, the gun in his lap, while Bond goes out to secure their perimeter.

It’s been some time since Q feels the need to look at his watch, to mark the passage of time by anything under than the rising and setting of the sun, but Q makes note of the time now. It’s their sixth full day on the island, near when Q estimated they’d be picked up by an MI6 team. It’s midday, and barely twenty minutes goes by before the first patter of rain begins, gradually building to a thundering crescendo. The sound echoes deep in the cave, reverberates against the stone and the hard-packed ground, and Q fixes his gaze straight ahead even as he sets his mind to work.

As much as Q wants to flinch away from the memory, he forces himself to go through every detail he can remember from just before he and Bond jumped from the plane, starting from the sudden stutter in the propellers and the sickening dive the plane took, when Bond ripped his hand away to steady their flight, leaving Q startled and disorientated in his seat, abruptly jolted from his near meditative state. It comes back to him in snapshots more than any real linear recollection, but Q distinctly remembers unbuckling his own seatbelt, because Bond had said—

“‘There’s a leak in the fuel tank. We can’t stay in flight, or we’ll risk a fire.’” Q’s voice should be barely audible above the constant wash of the rain, but Bond’s head tilts as he steps under the shelter of the cave – he’s listening. Q speaks, gives instructions and directions, and Bond may often choose not to follow those words, but he always listens.

“We were nowhere near the mainland, so you took the plane down near an island you saw on the navigation system.” Q looks up at Bond. It’s dark, and the storm is so loud, the hollow of the cave catching each rumble of thunder and resounds it threefold. “Do you think they caused the leak? Forced us to crash?”

“It’s a possibility, yes,” Bond says. “We didn’t plan our leaving in advance, but it’s possible that Spectre anticipated our hit on their information centre and compromised the most likely escape routes. We don’t leave much of a pattern, but we’ve been at this long enough. They can analyse our movements as much as we do theirs.”

Q thought as much, but it’s always good to get a second opinion. He pats at the space next to him.

Bond pauses for a long moment, and then slinks into motion, moving through the shadows with lethal grace. He falls into a crouch, keeps his heels under him.

“Did you find anything out there?” Q asks.

“I believe they know that we now know. I found the fire pit you told me about.” Bond is drenched, the dress shirt practically translucent against his skin, but the knife glints steadily in his hand, armed and ready. “I also found more obvious signs. A pretty little ring, adorned with an eight-armed cephalopod.”

“Conspicuous.” Q’s fingers itch to fidget, but restless hands and a gun held between them is a terrible combination, even if the safety is engaged. “Why now? Why not come after us earlier? I didn’t hear another crash after our plane went down, and you were unconscious for hours that first day. We were at our most vulnerable then.”

“Perhaps, like us, they were waiting for back up to arrive.” Bond says. “Six days. More than enough time for a Spectre contact to round up a crew.”

“They want us alive, then.”

“Not us,” Bond says with absolute certainty. “You.”

The roar of the storm is nothing compared to the white noise ringing in Q’s ears. He remembers being cornered and chased by Spectre agents in Altaussee, the way Denbigh had looked at him the night Q and M shut down Nine Eyes. He remembers Oberhauser in the interrogation room, and the way his skin had crawled when Oberhauser’s mismatched eyes somehow met Q’s gaze, even through the one-way mirror.

Q has always been aware that he’s become Spectre’s target, but it’s one thing to realize it and another thing altogether to confront the physical reality of it.

Bond’s unarmed hand curls lightly around Q’s wrist, the same wrist that bore a faint ringlet of bruises from when Bond had yanked him up from the depths of the ocean.

Q draws in a deep breath, feels the situation settle solidly on his shoulders. “Well, that’s good news for me. You though, you’ll have to make sure you don’t give them the opportunity to kill you.”

Bond’s grip tightens just the barest degree. “I’m quite invested in staying alive. And I won’t let them take you.”

Q breathes in again, twists his hand in a move to grasp back at Bond, and then he turns his head suddenly, an instinctive jerk to chase the scent of— “Smoke?”

He doesn’t get a chance to witness Bond’s expression; Bond grabs him by the arm and shoves him to his feet; standing, the acrid scent of burning is much stronger.

“They’re trying to smoke us out,” Bond murmurs in Q’s ear. “The cave traps the smoke, and the rain outside impairs any natural ventilation. We have to make a run for it. Head immediately for the trees. If you find a secure place, hide. If not, don’t turn back; I’ll find you.” 

Q nods, all his words caught in the tightness of his throat. He knows the procedure: if they ever lose contact and can’t re-establish a connection, wait two hours, and then head to the pre-established rendezvous point, which is never the place they were staying at. Even here on the island, Bond had marked out a few safe locations, just in case either of them got injured and couldn’t make it back to their beachside camp or to the cave. 

Bond moulds his body close to the cave side, glancing around a corner at the cave entrance. Q follows suit, across from him – the rain outside comes down in sheets, drowning out visibility almost completely. Bond’s expression doesn’t change, but he flicks Q a questioning look.

There’s no point waiting further. Q can barely make out the dark ceiling of the cave, but he imagines the grey billows of smoke curling amongst the shadows, insidious and suffocating. He pulls off his glasses – in the rain, they’re more of a hindrance than anything else – thumbs the safety off the PPK/S, and nods again.

Bond flashes him a quick smile, and then he’s gone, slipping around the corner, knife leading. Q follows him immediately, trying his best to stay close, and then they’re out in the rain.

It’s utterly torrential, soaking Q through almost instantly, the roar of it incredible now that he’s in the middle of it. Q can’t see a thing with water continuously streaming down his face and he ducks his head, unwilling to sacrifice his grip on the gun to shade his eyes. Bond disappears, doubling back to hunt their hunter, and Q runs for the trees.

It’s a battle each step of the way – no time for thought or consideration – and it’s almost a shock when Q stumbles under the cover of the trees, the leafy canopy catching some of the rain and muffling the rumble of it. He keeps running, no plan in place except for a vague awareness that the higher ground is safer, and Q nearly trips more than once on slippery rock and treacherous roots before he finally thumbs the safety back on and shoves the gun back into its holster, just so he can have both hands free.

His rhythm falters at that smallest of breaks, and Q switches a slower but steady march, going as cautiously as he can afford to. His pulse pounds in his ears, each breath of air a drum beat in his chest, the storm is a constant swell of cacophony around him, and Q lets himself disappear into it.

He keeps going until he realizes the storm has faded, the staccato drip of pooling rainwater loud in the sudden quiet.

It’s almost peaceful, the breath of calmness after a storm, but the back of his neck prickles and his hands are restless, so terribly restless, even as Q grasps at branches and tree bark to pull himself forward.

Q is not the most attentive when it comes to his personal safety – it’s something Bond has warned him about more than once. Q sinks into his work, his mind operating in leaps and bounds instead of linear lines; he’s able to concentrate in the most critical of circumstances, making connections and reeling out a plan in a fraction of the time another handler would, but at the expanse of everything else.

He’s not very good at avoiding danger when at times he doesn’t even perceive it approaching. But he’s very good at running and avoiding attention, of disappearing into the ether.

Once Q breaks his concentration, resurfaces from the depths of his work, he can tell when someone is watching him. It makes sense that an observer would easily realize that he’s being observed, after all.

Q doesn’t turn back, just looks further up the incline where the trees end, merging into the open sky. He’s tired of running in the dark.

The rain had lightened into a drizzle, more fine mist than anything else, when Q emerges onto the cliff. The trees fall away to leave a ledge covered only by tuffs of wild grass, and the sky beyond is heavy with clouds, pale and grey instead of violently dark. There’s a line of brightness along the horizon, sunlight shining weakly through – it lights up the crest of the waves in silver, even if the ocean itself is still a sullen swath of steel-blue.

It’s quite stunning, in a stark, visceral way. Q wipes his wet bangs off his face, and lets himself answer the siren call of the cliff edge, to look down instead of far and beyond, to confront a possible reality.

More osmosis-absorbed facts: it’s easier to skydive from nearly twelve thousand feet in the air than it is to leap off the side of a hundred-foot cliff, because the mind plays tricks. So very high up in the sky where no human was ever meant to be, all the evolutionary instincts of the landbound primate are directionless. His rational brain would tell Q he’s thousands of feet in the air; his hindbrain just sees a picture with no conclusions, unable to process the miniaturized details and the unfathomable height and translate it into danger.

Here, on this seaside island cliff, Q isn’t anywhere high enough to trick his hindbrain into obliviousness, and all his instincts are screaming at him to get back, scramble for purchase, away away away from the edge.

Falling will kill you.

Q takes two large steps away from the edge, but fixes the mental image of the fall in his mind: the utter emptiness just immediately before him, the dizzying drop, the rough chaos of the ocean below, waves shattering against the cliff wall. 

He draws in a deep breath and the PPK/S at the same time, disengages the safety. Behind him, a branch snaps, the step deliberate, ominous.

This time, there is no birdcall.

She emerges from the treeline, graceful, lithe. She isn’t visibly armed, but Q keeps the gun trained on her; she looks well-rested, put together, and she stops far away enough that she doesn’t trigger a panicked instinct to shoot.

They stay like that, a silent tableau, until Q can’t stand it any longer.

“You must be very confident,” he says, testing, “to confront someone with a gun in their hands without any weapon of your own.”

She inclines her head at him, her expression serene, like a ghost, a spectre – how fitting. She’s neither hasty nor egoistic. If she won’t be goaded into action, or have her pride needled until she speaks, then Q can only appeal to her intelligence.

“You want me alive for a reason – maybe several of them. I don’t know if I can turn a gun on myself and pull the trigger, but I think I can manage enough of a run that the momentum will carry me off this cliff even if I regret it halfway.”

Her voice, when she speaks, is melodic but rusty, as if she hadn’t spoken for days. “It’s not the flying that scares you – it’s the fall, if something goes wrong. You’re afraid of falling. More afraid, now.” She smiles. “I can catch you before you move.”  

Q pulls the trigger. The gunshot is deafening, and it hasn’t finished echoing across the heights when she slams into him, hand pushing his arm up and out and wrestling the gun from his grasp. She’s fast, faster than anyone Q has ever seen; she slams the side of the gun into his temple, and Q’s vision bursts into sparks, the pain overwhelming. When he comes back to his senses, she’s zip-tied his hands together and has the barrel of the PPK/S pressed to the vulnerable skin under Q’s jaw, pointed upwards towards his brain stem.

No Kevlar there, to protect him. No way to miss; the bullet will kill him instantly.

Q closes his eyes and breathes and breathes and breathes. He missed, knew he likely wouldn’t hit somewhere lethal even if he did manage to hit her, but there’s no way Bond wouldn’t hear that gunshot, not if he was hunting her hunting him.

“There are differing opinions on whether we should simply kill you, or keep you alive so we can use what’s in your head,” the Spectre agent says. “I preferred the former until I found out that MI6’s pet hacker is the dark web’s Iota.”

Q makes an involuntary noise, because he’d covered his tracks, and even though he knew he would lose some battles to Spectre he hadn’t expected them to make that particular connection.

“It’s a toss-up who is more invaluable to our community – the infamous Iota, the author of some of the most successful viruses we’ve seen in the past decade, or MI6’s Quartermaster, the one who shut down the Nine Eyes program.”

She spins him around and Q’s eyes snap open, unable to catch his balance without his arms free. She grabs him by the collar of the Kevlar jacket. The barrel stays firmly pressed against Q’s jaw. “Discovering that the two is actually one entity makes you exponentially more valuable. Are you sure you aren’t better suited to working for us?”

Q laughs, copper bursting over his tongue, cloying. Something more viscous than rainwater is dripping down the side of his face, but he can’t feel a thing – adrenaline is a tremendous substance. “You’d trust me?”

“No.” She smiles. “But everyone has a pressure point.”

She pulls Q closer to the edge, keeps him off balance by dragging his head down, and nods towards one side of the island. “You stare at the ocean, but not at the horizon.”

“I don’t—”

“What out there keeps pulling your attention?”

Q tries to focus – his heartbeat throbs at his temple, pounds within his chest, and even if the pain doesn’t fully register, the workings of his body is a distraction. He sees the plumes of clouds, the silvered waves, and—

“I’ve seen you with your pretty little cases, with your equipment and drives and memory banks. Your battered and dearly beloved laptop, with its cracks and its breaks. Why keep such a broken unit, so seemingly outdated? Is it a fit of sentimentality?”

—the tail of their downed plane, still there despite the storm, just barely rising above the surface of the water.

Q goes very, very still.

“Not for someone like you,” the Spectre agent says. “Someone like you loves his creations, physical or abstract, and demonstrates that love by making them continuously better, faster, more powerful. Someone like you can design attaché cases capable of withstanding tremendous force and pressure, to protect what’s within from fire or water or shrapnel. What’s on that laptop, I wonder. What do you carry with you, now that you’re free from your government’s scrutiny and the laws of your country?”

She releases Q’s collar, grabs a handful of Q’s hair instead, jerks his head towards her to stare into his eyes. The hand pressing the gun against Q never wavers.

“Looks like I have two unfathomable black boxes to crack. And breaking one would undoubtedly help me break the other.” She flashes Q a soft smile, and raises her voice, tilting her head the barest inch so she can speak over Q’s shoulder. “Or I could just kill him, make sure no one else ever gets their hands on one of the most brilliant minds in cyberwarfare. Make sure this particular black box is sealed forever.”

Q breathes in, deep, feels his lungs expand, his wet clothes chafing against his skin.

“You can do whatever you like,” Bond says. His voice matches her expression, pleasant, calm, but the silent I’m going to kill you first is obvious.

The Spectre agent spins Q around, drags him back into her as a physical shield, the gun never quite lifting from his skin. Q leans into her grip in his hair, partly to ease the sharp tug of it, and partly to stop the blood from dripping into his eyes.

004’s knife gleams in Bond’s hand, and Q twists his. His wrists are tied together over the jacket sleeves, but Q doesn’t need to get at bare skin.

The Spectre agent leans in to speak into Q’s ear, although her voice is pitched to carry. “You stare at the ocean, but he watches you, constantly. On the plane, with his hand over your eyes to keep you calm, when you can’t see the way he looks at you. You’re one of his pressure points.”

“He’s one of yours,” Bond says, ignoring her implications all together. His eyes are locked on the PPK/S, the way it’s jammed under Q’s jaw. “You either need him alive, or you need his equipment. Both is better, which is why you’ve waited so long to engage us. But it’s quite a gamble. An extraction crew capable of digging up a small case from a plane wreck is quite conspicuous. And Spectre doesn’t tolerate failure.”

Q laughs, swallowing another mouthful of blood, to disguise the way he’s twisting his wrists around the cable tie.

“I could give them you,” she says. “But it isn’t worth it. I won’t go up against a Double-O.” She smiles at Bond. “But you’d do much to keep your Quartermaster safe.”

“Quite a lot, yes,” Bond says, and he lifts his eyes from the gun to meet Q’s.

Q stares back, and he can’t trust his perception right now, not with the way his vision keeps defocusing, blurring in and out. But it doesn’t matter what Bond’s gaze tells him, because the past six days, those last few months travelling together, rebuilding their partnership from the ground up—

Q can’t say he understands why Bond came back to MI6, but he does know that he’s one of the reasons why Bond will stay. 

“As would I, to keep you alive,” Q tells Bond, and snaps the trigger on his watch.

An explosion booms through the air, the ocean water not quite able to muffle the sheer magnitude of the blast that rips the wrecked plane apart. The Spectre agent pulls the PPK/S’s trigger; it clicks under Q’s jaw, the gun disabled by the palm-print technology, and Q drops like a stone, ripping his head from her grasp, crashing to the ground and staying there to avoid getting accidentally shoved over the edge as Bond darts forward, knife leading.

Q gasps against damp soil and grass for long seconds, all his bones jarred from the heavy impact, unable to catch himself on his bound hands. When he raises his head, the Spectre agent is holding a futile hand to her throat, blood spilling through her fingers, and Bond has backed away, hovering defensively between her and Q.

Q’s skin should want to crawl – despite seeing his fair share of deaths in person while travelling with Bond, he’s mostly been spared from the more gruesome murders. But the entire situation doesn’t seem real, the impact of it muted, and with the way his vision is, the bright bloom of red could be a very pretty scarf wrapped around the agent’s neck.

She’s no longer smiling, no longer serene, her eyes wide with denial.

He can’t smell a thing beyond the blood in his own mouth.

Q pushes himself upright, his wrists throbbing. He isn’t engaging fully with reality, but he does know this: “No one is getting their hands on my technology. And you’re dying.”

I’m alive.

The agent’s eyes trip from denial into something manic, a last act of defiance. She’s fast, faster than anyone Q has ever seen, faster than even Bond, ducking past him, and even if her body fails her halfway her momentum is enough to crash into Q and send them both tumbling over the edge—

a glimpse of the clouds, a flash of an outstretched hand, so, so close and yet too far, that familiar dragging sensation

—and into complete freefall.

Chapter Text

He received the alert on his phone, not on his Q Branch systems, because Double-O activities after Spectre were classified to the extreme, and Q refused to expose anything critical to the systems he used to hunt and track Spectre, just in case they tracked him back. He was almost certain that 004 allowed herself to be logged in the immigration system on purpose; after all, all Double-Os had multiple official documents on hand, and the majority of them, Q made sure himself, were designed to be never be flagged by any database.

It took just seconds for him to secure his workstation. MI6’s latest headquarters was as locked down as it would ever get, but even without the threat of Spectre looming constantly in the shadows, Q knew Tanner would appreciate this conversation in person. He had always brought the most critical news directly to Q when possible, face to face where he could easily gauge Q’s body language and intervene – assist – if needed.

It was far past time Q returned the favour.

Q spoke the moment he stepped through the doorway to Tanner’s office. “M has called the Double-Os back.”

There was a split second when pleasure warred with resignation in Tanner’s expression, before he sighed and hooked one foot around the leg of a chair, pulling it out. Q took the silent request, and slid into the seat without comment.

The pleasure was because Tanner cared for and appreciated each and every one of his agents, the Double-Os in particular, and it’d been long weeks since any of them had set foot in the United Kingdom, M having scattered them far and wide beyond the nation’s borders to protect them when MI6 had been dissolved, and kept them out there hunting while he fought parliament to bring the agency back into official service.

The resignation was because Tanner knew M, and could read between the lines: M would only call the Double-Os back if there was a greater mission than their current ones, and the most important assignment coming up was—

“So he’s finally ready to send you out,” Tanner said.

Q didn’t bother responding – they both knew the answer. MI6 was back on its feet, the bunker headquarters finally occupied as the field agents and the support teams returned to their jobs. Q had been preparing for this as soon as his best Comms teams members made it back.

Tanner stood, disappearing out the door, and Q turned his attention back to his phone. 004 had always been the fastest to respond, the quickest to slip in and out of her missions without consequences, but Q wagered that this time 0010 and 0011 would be right on her heels. He typed away, setting down safeguards for their return, folding them into his new security protocols, and only resurfaced when Tanner set the mug of tea and a tin of biscuits on the table in front of Q.

Q breathed in instinctively, the familiar scent of his favourite Earl Grey blend calming. He wavered, torn between the soothing heat of the tea and continuing with his efforts on his phone; Tanner just picked up the mug and held it out to Q, patiently waiting.

With a quiet laugh, Q reached for the mug; Tanner pulled it back just out of reach, inclining his head at the tin of biscuits, and Q gave in, setting his phone down completely.

It wasn’t that Tanner cared for all of MI6 because he was the Chief of Staff; he made an excellent Chief of Staff because of that care, tempering M’s necessary ruthlessness with a kindness that was so incredibly rare in their line of work. Q didn’t really stop – couldn’t afford to, when lately he’s been the one sure firewall between Spectre’s mechanism and the bulk of the government’s classified information – but every so often, Tanner would come by, and through the unmoving resoluteness of his presence, made Q take breaks.

“004 made herself visible for a reason – she’ll likely be here within the hour,” Q said, nibbling at his biscuit.  

Tanner smiled, and Q felt a little curl of satisfaction, that at least they’d have this. Everyone who came in regular contact with the Double-Os knew that 004 was fondest of Tanner; she was more likely to listen to his directives than anyone else save M, and purely out of friendship than any nod to the chain of command. And Tanner might care for all of MI6, but he too had his favourites.

004 was one, closer to a kindred spirit than anything else.

Tanner rooted around in the storage drawers under his workstation, coming up with another tin – butterscotch drops, 004’s favourite. “Scarlet’s the one going out with you, isn’t she?” he asked easily, nudging the biscuit tin closer to Q.

And Q knew he was another, had been ever since they both defied orders and hid out down in Q Branch’s observation lab, helping Bond lay down a trap for Silva.

Q took another biscuit. “I think so. Of our remaining Double-O’s, she has the best record for long-term undercover missions, which makes her the best fit.” He shook his head. “0010 and 0011 will be stretched thin in her absence; Spectre might be our biggest concern at the moment, but there are plenty of parties out there just waiting to take advantage of our weakened position.”

“You’ll have your hands full taking down Spectre,” Tanner said almost gently, “without shouldering responsibility for everything else.” He snapped off a piece of his own biscuit. “We’ll take care of any other threats. That’s why MI6 has as many personnel as it does, you know.”

Q wrapped his hands around the mug of tea so he wouldn’t go for his phone, and allowed the heat to soak into his fingers. “I know,” he finally said, although it was hard to choke back how protective he felt about it all.

Tanner watched him knowingly; after all, he felt the same.

“I’ll miss Scarlet, but she’ll be on other missions even if it isn’t this one. I’ll miss you,” Tanner added, and Q’s head snapped up, “and it’ll be harder not to worry about you, since you were never intended to go out into the field. Not something as extensive and dangerous as this. But we’ll adapt. And—” he leaned forward, caught Q’s gaze firmly, “—we’ll hold the fort, I can promise you that. If you require support, or when either of you needs to come back. We’ll be right here.”

Q felt something unclench in his chest, an intangible tension slowly loosening its grip on him. He’d wondered, sometimes, how the field agents did this time and again, flying out unceasingly into the storm where there was no complete guarantee of safety or success.

It must make a difference, to know that the lighthouse was always there, shining out a guiding light, a place where they could come to roost and be protected from the elements.

Tanner watched him for a moment longer, and then leaned back, appeased. “I know you like holding onto the mugs because of the heat, but you’ll feel better drinking the tea.”

Q tapped his fingers against the surface of his mug, feeling warm. “You’re probably right,” he said, and lifted the mug, drinking deeply.

---

He resurfaces, a few times, but never quite breaks through into full consciousness.

Details flit past him like fish in a fast-flowing stream – a scattering of words that barely make sense, touches distinct enough to cut through the pain, soothing warmth, and then the cold sterility of metal; dozens of sensations, incoherent and unfathomable. 

Control slips through his fingers like water; it makes something nauseous and sickly spike through him, that lack, and so he sinks gratefully into the oblivion of unconsciousness.

When he comes back to himself, wholly, it’s to a voice that is vaguely familiar, a puzzle that pulls him from his sleep as he tries to identify it.

The murmur of the voice pauses; when it next speaks, it comes from beside him, calm and clear.

"Welcome back, Lovelace."

It’s that particular designation that finally prompts Q to drag his eyes open; he doesn’t realize how tense he’d been until his muscles unwind, loosening from their previously defensive posture. His head feels cloudy, and his body aches in a distant, muffled way that tells Q he should really be in more pain, only temporarily held at bay with anaesthetics. He blinks up at the creamy white ceiling, and then tips his head to the side.

Swann meets his eyes squarely. She studies him for a long moment, and then offers, “Water?”

Q swallows once, his throat dry and that swallow aching all the way down, and nods.

He takes her help sitting up, an endeavour that is more tiring than he ever thought possible, his shoulder spiking with pain when he moves a little too much. By the time he sinks back into the pillows, he’s exhausted all over again, and only the thought of quenching his parched throat keeps him from just closing his eyes and going back to sleep.

Swann gives him a small smile like she can read his mind, and offers him a plastic cup of water with a straw in it.

He takes small careful sips, and even though the inside of his mouth stings, his head clears, just a little. He studies the room, his mind blessedly quiet for once. He recognizes the MI6 medical ward, and Swann is here, which means—

“You took the job?” His voice is hoarse, but at least the words come out coherent.

“I did.” Swann takes the water away from him, and immediately flashes a penlight in his eyes. Q flinches, but she’s sits back after that, taking up Q’s chart and making a careful note at the bottom.

It’s not the longest chart Q has seen, but it’s not the shortest either. There’s a pinch in his left hand – he raises it, and twitches at the needle embedded in it, attached to an IV drip.

Right. What else has he missed?

He swallows a few times, and settles for, “Status?”

Swann arcs an eyebrow at him over the chart. Q stares back – he’s in that blank state of calm where past events and future worries haven’t crowded his mind yet, and he thinks he can maintain that state until he falls back asleep.

After a moment, Swann sits back, setting the chart down on her lap. “It’s been two days since your rescue and you’re currently in MI6’s secure medical ward in London. You have moderate injuries, the most serious of which are the cut above your right eyebrow and the shoulder you partially dislocated when you hit the water. Your shoulder will heal fine, but you’ll spot quite a scar from the cut – it wasn’t clean, and the emergency crew had to put quite a few stitches in. Other than that, you have bruising all over your body – the Kevlar jacket might protect you from cuts, but impact is impact, whether you’re hitting water or concrete.’

“We were worried about head injuries you might have sustained from that blow and from your fall, but the scans came back fine, so we decided to let you sleep it off and wake up naturally. You sound coherent enough and your eyes are contracting fine, so overall, you should make a full recovery.”

Q lets the words wash over him. For once, he doesn’t have to parse through the details to read between the lines; Swann is clear and concise, and all Q needed was that final assessment of his health. He lets out a soft sigh, and clears his throat several times before he feels ready to speak.

“What happened?”

“You’ll have to ask the team that extracted you. I just know what’s on your medical chart.” Swann gives him a smile. “I may be a medical doctor, but my speciality is in psychiatry. You’re important, so they had the best looking after you.”

Q can’t help smiling back, even if it makes his head throb. “Cecelia.”

"Yes. For now, they’ve designated that only your medical team have direct access to you. Dr. Chang stepped out to scare off the agents and personnel who keep trying to sneak into the secure ward to see you. She's widely known as your favourite medic in the Medical department, and they're scared of her."

"As they should be," Q says, and his words come out smoother now. "How did you get in here, then?"

"Doctor privileges," Swann says. "Dr. Chang is your attending physician, but I do have access to your medical history and your status report, which is more than anyone out there knows." She checks her watch. "More than forty-eight hours, and they've yet to crack anything beyond that you're alive and stable."

"I did the security system for the secure ward myself – no surveillance except for the suicide watch and intensive care rooms, and even those are on a closed system. My comms team must be frustrated."

"Not just your team."

He'd noticed, of course. After spending months travelling together in close proximity, it would take something monumental to keep Bond from his side when Q has been injured.

"Ah," Q says. "You're keeping watch because you're the only person in Medical capable of throwing Bond out."

Swann gives him a look.

"How many drugs do you have me on?" Q asks belatedly.

"Not as many as you think. You’re suffering from mild dehydration, exhaustion – but your overall health is decent enough considering the conditions you were stranded in, and what happened at the end. We caught the infection early, and your fever broke soon enough that it was never a serious risk. You're on day three of a course of antibiotics, and we've dosed you for everything else we can think of, as well as painkillers for your shoulder.”

“That... sounds like a lot,” Q says. He considers the thought for a long moment. “Is Bond being treated for the same?”

“James’s reputation precedes him; even I know that he avoids the Medical department unless ordered for an assessment by M. But yes. He’s in good condition compared to you, but he’s on mandatory leave to make sure he rests, and I caught him and took a look at his injuries with the promise that I’ll update him when your status changes.” Swann looks at Q squarely. “With your consent, of course.”

Q stares at her blankly for a few seconds, before it clicks. Medical proxies and confidentiality of his medical history – of course Swann would adhere to those precepts. 

“Yes,” Q says softly. “You may share with him whatever you feel is important.”

Swann’s expression doesn’t change, but there’s something charged in the way she looks at him, something aware and acknowledged, rather than hidden under codes and allusions. She doesn’t call him out on it, however, just glances at her watch in an obvious sign that she’s changing the subject.

“I’ve been recording observations of my sessions since this room is one of the most secure in the building, but I can’t in good conscience do that now that you’re awake. Dr. Chang will be back soon. You should rest.”

Q would protest – he’s been asleep for days, and if he’s back in London and under MI6’s watch it means he has access to his technology – but exhaustion pulls at him, and this time, Q thinks someone else can handle the situation, just for a little while.

“All right.”

Swann reaches over to adjust his IV. “Take care, Lovelace. The most important thing you can do right now is to heal.”

The name catches at him – it’s not Q’s usual designation, and while it’s one that Swann has used before, she has never repeated the names she addresses him by each time she calls him.

But this isn’t the time to ask. Swann is right; he needs to rest and recover before he even considers his next step, and if they’re back in London, the heart of Q’s territory, then they’re safe. He can afford the time.

The drugs pull him under, and for once, Q doesn’t dream of falling.

--

The next time Q wakes up, the lights are dimmed in an approximation of evening, and Moneypenny is reading through a stack of paperwork, her eyes flitting across the text swiftly.

"You're going to ruin your eyes reading in the dark."

This time, his voice doesn’t come out as a croak, and when Q shifts his hands to push himself upright, careful to keep his shoulder straight, his left hand just has a bandage taped over it, the needle gone.

Moneypenny doesn’t lift her head from the paperwork, but she does flick her hand out so he can see the little reading light she holds between her fingers. “I’m not quite as reckless as the field agents; if I want to work at my most efficient, I have to take care of myself first.”

“You were a field agent,” Q can’t help pointing out, “and you happily threw yourself into car chases at a moment’s notice.”

“And given an opportunity, I’d do so again.” A smile creeps over her mouth. “But only if the opportunity arises – I won’t go looking for it.”

Q leans back and watches her read swiftly through the paperwork. Anything in hardcopy and without an electronic trail means it is branch-leader classified and above, but Q knows his file goes straight to M. Double-O files, then.

He spies the cup of water, a straw thrown into it, and reaches for it, just to give himself something to hold onto.

"I thought they were barring visitors." Q takes a sip of the water, and this time his mouth doesn’t sting as badly. When he swallows, however, it’s with a hint of metallic tang, and Q pushes the thought firmly away, and drinks down more water as if he could wash down the memory of mouthfuls of blood that way.

"They are, and Cecelia is less than impressed by all the break-in attempts. But I'm M's secretary, and that comes with perks.” Moneypenny finally looks up, her pen stilling over the papers. “That, and M wants a report."

Of course. Work before the personal. Q wonders what time it is, whether Moneypenny had stalled M’s orders or whether M himself had granted Q that grace period – if the head of MI6 wanted a status report out of Q immediately, Moneypenny would have been the one he’d first woken up to, not Swann.

Q sets his cup to one side and scrubs a hand down his face – he doesn’t dare imagine what he looks like; he can’t wait to get his hands on a razor – and finally tangles his fingers in the sheets, just to stop fidgeting. “What would you like to know?”

Moneypenny signs off the last of the paperwork, and flips all the pages together, straightening the edges. She sets her pen atop the stack, and although it doesn’t make a sound it still feels conclusive, like the thump of a gavel.

“We’ve received a full debriefing from 007, and he’s filled in the gaps between your last message and the recent events. We’ve followed your recommendations as closely as possible and all signs have pointed to the Secret Service gaining the upper hand over Spectre.”

She pauses, and lets out a slow breath, and in that moment, Q knows she’s slipped from M’s secretary to Moneypenny, a high-ranked MI6 staff who cares about the small circle of colleagues she’s grown close to and is too fond of.

“Q Branch received an alert from your system nearly a week ago, a sign your second-in-command took that you needed back up or extraction. No one could track you, but Riley said you’d given him a keycode that would allow the Q Branch communications team to track your equipment. We scrambled an extraction team as quickly as we could, and waited for your team to trace you. The signals were distorted, somehow; they pinpointed your location to a stretch of ocean, but it was a vast area to cover, while trying to stay off Spectre and the local authority’s radar.’

“But then, the signal abruptly disappeared. Fortunately, they were already looking in the right area, and the disappearance of that signal was a flare obvious enough that the team could track it right to its origin. And of course, when they got close enough they could see the signs of the explosion – the concussions in the water, the billows of smoke.”

Moneypenny stops then, and just looks at Q, her gaze unreadable.

“The Double-Os occasionally carry explosives with them,” Q says quietly. “I prefer to use them only to defend myself. Yes, I embedded a high explosive in my attaché case, and set the trigger in my watch. The watch is also capable of monitoring my vitals, and if it doesn’t detect a heartbeat for more than three minutes, it will trigger an EMP that will wipe all data from the equipment within the case.”

“Your priority was to destroy all the information you carry before the enemy can take hold of it.”

“Knowledge is power. And if I can’t bring that knowledge safely back to MI6, somewhere I can securely study it, then I will bring it with me to my grave.”

The silence that falls between them is loud with the unspoken. Moneypenny doesn’t move an inch, but her eyes are shadowed, the MI6 agent warring with the friend. 

Finally, her spin straightens, her posture going rigid, as if she’s standing at attention. “What kind of knowledge?”

Q tries to tally them off in his head. “When we hit a Spectre information centre, our ultimate goal was a clean wipe – destroy all information they’d gathered, destroy the mechanisms they use to gather that information, ensure they have no way to rebuild. But if I came across something unique, I’d try to get a copy of it. Codes. Databases and plans – those I tried to send back to Q Branch whenever I could, so the team here could work with an agent on them. They have quite a few experts in cyberwarfare, and I’d steal whatever I came across – find ways to neutralize the viruses when I could. Those were far too sensitive and dangerous to send anywhere, so I kept the copies with me.’

“Then, there’s my own technology. I tried not to use anything that I’d designed when I was in Q Branch unless I absolutely needed to, which meant I leaned heavily on my former aliases.” Q gives a short bark of laughter. “So there I was, travelling with an attaché case whose contents had ties to a terrorist organization, a government agency and the dark web. When there was a chance, no matter how slight, that Spectre could access that case, I chose to detonate the explosive.”

Q meets Moneypenny’s gaze straight on. “No one is getting their hands on my technology. You can tell M that there is no chance of a leak on that front.”

The silence holds for another second, and then she gives a single sharp nod.

Q lets out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, and sinks back against the pillows.

“James said that you were tackled off the side of a cliff by the Spectre agent hunting you. You hit the water from a height of about a hundred feet.”

Q’s eyes snap up, his hand clenching involuntarily in the sheets. He’d blanked out the memory of that fall as much as possible; it helps that he was disorientated and half passed out at the time, the pain from his head wound overwhelming everything else, and he has absolutely no memory of hitting the water this time – nothing until he woke up safe and mostly in one piece in MI6’s medical ward.

But he’s never going to forget that terrible, terrible sensation of falling.

“You were lucky that that ledge hung over water, not the beach, and that the water was deep enough that you didn’t shatter yourself to pieces on rock. You were both lucky, because James went immediately after you, and I’m quite sure he didn’t stop to think about rocks under the water either.”

Moneypenny doesn’t look at him, just speaks as if she’s dictating a report to a voice recorder. He wants to know, always thirsts to know the truth, sometimes to his own detriment, but it doesn’t mean he wants others to witness his reaction to that truth, and Q is so grateful he’s almost light-headed – or perhaps that’s because of the way he’s breathing, too quick and stuttery.

“He dragged you from the water, but it was borderline for a while there. You swallowed a lot of water, and you were already injured before – you weren’t responding the way you should.” Moneypenny doesn’t pause, her every word calm and even, and Q wonders how many times she’s sanitized the narrative in her head, because Q is quite sure she would have pried the details from Bond – not all of it, not how Bond must have felt in that moment – but the minutiae of his every action, if only so they could give the Medical department a complete report on Q’s condition.

Q had nearly drowned, hadn’t he? He’s pretty sure that at least he hadn’t gone into cardiac arrest the way Bond had, because Swann would have mentioned that as part of his medical status, but—

Q is aware of Bond’s history with people drowning.

“Fortunately,” Moneypenny continues, “the extraction team was nearby, and your explosion led them right to you. The team found the two of you within the hour, you received immediate medical care, and they left a presence on the island to ensure that no other Spectre agents were around. They made a stopover at an overseas MI6 facility to ensure you were stable, and then it was a straight shot back to London.” She turns to give Q a tiny smile. “Everyone wanted you safely back within the UK’s borders, where we could keep an eye on you while you recovered.”

“And here I am,” Q says, untangling his hand from the sheets. He deals with stress mainly by burying it under work and responsibility; in absence of those options, he presses the fingers of his uninjured hand to the wrist of the other, and counts his heartbeat until it slows from its hectic pace.

Moneypenny sits quietly, the reading light resting in the palm of her hand like a little orb of faerie light. She looks tired, Q realizes with a jolt. Not in any obvious way, but Q knows her – knows she sits sharper and straighter the more worried she is, that past a certain point she will take off all her jewellery, even the ones her boyfriend gifted her, with a single exception: the simple silver bracelet she wears around her left wrist, because it contains an emergency comms unit.  

She’s the one who pulls them together. When Bond hared off on one of his mad-hatter personal missions, she’s the one he called, the one he trusts with his secrets. She worked hand in hand with Q, building cases from the ground up, and she’s the one to bring their findings before M, Tanner and Q working as her back up.

They are a team, never mind which branch they belong to or what job role they took on, and they’d kept each other sane and safe in the chaotic days after Nine Eyes went down. Q and Bond have had their share of difficult days out in the field, hunting Spectre, but it must have been hard for Moneypenny and Tanner to hold the lines back home, to keep MI6 running smoothly so M can focus on the cutthroat arena of governmental politics.

Q clears his throat, swallows hard so he can say the words well. “Thank you for telling me.”

Moneypenny’s head lifts, and she gives him a wry smile. “I expect the ‘nearly-dying’ scenarios from James. I hope it won’t become a habit for you.”

“I rather enjoy not being in mortal peril, but I’m afraid I’m in the wrong line of work if I want to escape it entirely.” Q sighs. “Don’t worry; Bond shares your sentiments. He’s only reckless with his own life, although he’s getting better at that as well.” 

“Yes.” Moneypenny’s voice comes out thoughtful. “Based on the progress reports you sent back every few weeks, you two have done exceptionally well.”

She gives him a smile. This time it looks genuine, chases the shadows from her eyes, and then she leans over to pick up a paper bag from beside her chair.

“Tanner asked me to pass this on to you, although he had help with the gift.” She gestures at Q, and Q dutifully holds one hand out to her. She sets a small cloth sachet in the centre of his palm, and when Q draws it close, the familiar smell of black tea and citrus wafts out.

Q goes still, breathing in the comforting scent of his favourite blend of Earl Grey, and raises wide eyes to Moneypenny.

“There was some debate on whether we should have gone with sage and lavender, for a good night’s sleep, but the consensus was that you’d probably enjoy a scent bag of tea more than anything else.” Moneypenny picks up her stack of paperwork, flicks off the reading light, and tucks it all into the paper bag. “I hear you’re restricted from caffeine until you heal up a bit more, so hopefully this will tide you over until then. Don’t try to drink it, all right? The medics would have my head.”

“I would never throw the person who supplies me with tea under the bus,” Q says, still clutching the scent bag close.

“Well, there’ll be more where that came from,” Moneypenny says with a soft laugh. “I’ll give the preliminary report to M. You shouldn’t be here for much longer, but he’ll wait until you’re better for a full debrief.”

“Understood.” He waits until she’s cracked the door open to speak again. “Thank you. Truly.”

Moneypenny pauses on the threshold. She lifts her hand to tuck her hair behind one ear, and the silver bracelet, the one Q had custom-made and that he personally programmed just for her, dangles delicately around her wrist.

“You’re welcome,” she simply says, and steps out.

---

Three times is a charm; the next time Q awakens, he doesn’t need to open his eyes to know that Bond is in the room.

“For a room that is supposed to be accessible only to the relevant medical team, I seem to be getting an awful lot of visitors.”

“All Double-O credentials work on the secure medical ward security system. The assumption is that we’re so unlikely to ever check ourselves into Medical that any attempt to step within its boundaries should be encouraged.” Bond’s voice draws closer, and finally two fingers press against Q’s wrist, as if reading his pulse. “In fact, I believe you programmed that loophole into the system.”

Q smiles – his pillow is fragrant with the faint scent of Earl Grey, and his Double-O is safe and sound and present. “I did. But you should have access only into the ward; each room is further secured against unauthorized entry.”

“I have my ways.” Bond sweeps his fingers across Q’s hand as he moves away, and then there’s a soft click of the door disengaging. “Hold that thought.”

Q blinks his eyes open in surprise, and catches a glimpse of Bond backlit by the corridor lights before the door whispers shut behind him. The room is dark save for the floor illuminations to light a medic’s way without disturbing a sleeping patient, and Q lies there for a moment, wondering if he’d dreamed up the whole encounter.

Q isn’t exactly sure of his mind’s judgments, nowadays.

The lack of windows or any other time piece – deliberate, Q is sure – throws off his frame of references, and Q has no idea how long it takes before the door clicks open once more. Bond comes through with something wide and boxy in his arms, and Q pushes himself up on his elbows – a spike of pain going down his injured shoulder – as Bond comes up to his bed.

“Be careful with your shoulder,” Bond says. “The medics will be angry enough at me without you exacerbating your injuries.”

Q would ask what he’s done this time, but even in the dimness of the room the box in Bond’s arms looks terribly familiar, and the loud meows that come from it the moment Bond sets the carrier down at the end of Q’s bed puts all his doubts to rest.

Bond releases the front of the carrier, and a white and grey streak leaps out, eyes fixed right on Q.

Q makes a quiet noise at the back of his throat and Tabby pads swiftly forward, head crocked, before settling lightly into Q’s lap. She noses gently at Q’s injured shoulder, licking at Q’s hand when he runs fingers down the back of her head, her green eyes closing in pleasure. After a few moments, she curls herself up neatly and begins purring like rusty engine.

Q sets a hand lightly over her, a living, vibrating ball of comfort, and then lifts his head to look at the cat carrier again.

Kitty steps out of the carrier with all the grace of a queen. Her coat is so dark that she practically disappears into the shadows, only her eyes gleaming in the faint light. She turns to consider Bond, her ears pulled back, tail swishing threateningly; Bond doesn’t move, just stares back coolly, and finally Kitty turns away, picking her way delicately over Q’s feet and legs. She leaps up at the headboard, putting her almost at eye-height with Q, and begins licking at Q’s face.

Q lifts his other hand, ignoring the twinge in his shoulder, to stroke at Kitty, but she bats irritably at him. Q takes the hint, and lets her do as she pleases. Her tongue rasps against Q’s skin, but she’s careful to avoid the taped up head wound; she turns her head every few licks to stare at Bond, her golden eyes distrustful.

Q’s heart is full almost to the bursting, and he has to clear his throat a few times before he can speak clearly.  

“I’m positively spoiled, with the thoughtful gifts and deeds you all pile on me.”

“You ply us with supplies and equipment all the time.”

“It’s only the definition of my title,” Q says, and then sighs, letting himself sink into the moment, of having his beloved cats and his Double-O close.

What does one say to someone to whom you trust your very life to, someone who would dive off the side of a cliff to rescue you?

“I would have thought a cat named Tabby would be a stripped tabby cat, not a calico.”

The answer is: in their line of work, they don’t need to talk about it at all.

“Riley told you about them?” Q strokes the back of Tabby’s ears.

“Not particularly. Your second said that if I wanted to smuggle your cats to you, I have to prove I’m trustworthy, and that means coaxing the cats into the carrier without threats or excessive force.”

“How did you convince Kitty?” Q turns his head to eye his wild, wayward cat; Kitty eyes him right back, the tip of her tail flicking.

Bond takes a seat at the corner of the bed, body turned towards Q. “We came to a mutual understanding. That the only way she’d get to see you is if she cooperates; she might not like me, but the ends justifies the means. She’ll tolerate anything to see you sooner.”

“She doesn’t like anyone else, really. Even Riley takes to wearing gloves around her.” Q scratches Kitty under the chin; she growls low in her throat, a counterpoint to Tabby’s unceasing purrs. “Katherine and Tabitha. Tabby is only Tabby because it’s a nickname.”

“An alias,” Bond says, sounding amused. “I know how you are with aliases.”

The quiet the lapses between them is peaceful. They’ve spent enough nights like this – in the dark with only the moonlight and each other for company, even before they were stranded on a desert island; now, Tabby’s loud purrs are almost a substitute for the constant susurration of the waves.

Q smiles at the thought, and from all the unspoken words and sentiments in his head, picks out the one he most wants an answer to.

“You said that when we left the island, you’d tell why you came back to MI6.”

“So I did.” Bond shifts to face Q more squarely; near Q’s shoulder, Kitty gathers herself, her hind legs coiled to leap if Bond comes an inch too near. “You did stay alive until back up arrived, after all.”

Q draws in a breath – perhaps they are going to talk about it, after all. “Bond—”

“The way my career went,” Bond says, not letting Q even begin the thought, “I suppose I was always on a trajectory to work for the Secret Intelligence Service. M – Mansfield, that is – she was the one to transfer me into MI6, and of course, she’s the one who made me a Double-O.”

It’s a rare day when Bond is willing to give a straight answer. Q doesn’t interrupt; just gives Bond the space to speak.

“She also told me, more than once, than orphans make the best recruits.”

Q’s eyes flick up, and he has to bite his tongue not to react.

“I had the skills and experience and aptitude she wanted, as well as the type of background that made me a good asset for MI6. After all, I was an orphan twice over, after the avalanche killed Hannes and Franz Oberhauser.” Bond’s grin is sharp; in the dimness of the room, it looks particularly sardonic. “Or so I thought. Either way, it meant I had little sentimental ties to anyone outside the agency, people who might compromise my cover or become emotional liabilities.”

He tilts his head, as if ceding the floor to Q, and Q sweeps his fingers lightly over Tabby’s back, thinking hard.

“It’s cold and calculative,” he says slowly. “But I can’t say I blame her. It makes sense.”

Bond nods, a barely visible movement in the dark. “You mentioned before that you could easily be a criminal mastermind, if you wanted to. Why did you choose to join MI6?”

“You say that as if I had a choice about being recruited,” Q answers easily. His files are likely as redacted as the Double-Os’, but with all the hints that have cropped up during their travels together, Iota and the dark web and a reputation infamous enough to arouse Spectre’s interest, Q is sure Bond has pieced some of his history together.

“Point taken.” Bond leans forward, and the ambient light from the floor lamps shifts across his face, illuminating his eyes like sunlight streaming through glacier ice. “But why did you stay? Why become the Quartermaster? And why follow M even after MI6 had been dissolved by the Joint Intelligence Service, risking censure and possible arrest by our own government?”

Q’s hand goes still over Tabby, suddenly stunned by the question. He hadn’t really thought about it, at the time and all the days afterwards – all he knew was that there was a threat to MI6, to their country, and MI6 might have been disbanded but he still had a responsibility to Q Branch and all his field agents, and why wouldn’t he rally to M’s side?

It’s not like Q ever needed duty to tell him what was right, one of the reasons why he kept breaking every damn rule under the sun for Bond, and it’d been the same then, because—

“It was important,” Q says, haltingly, for once cautious with his words. “It is important. Q Branch, and you Double-Os, Moneypenny and Tanner and M – I care for them, for all of you, and I don’t need a title or a job to want to protect and defend you all.”

He shifts his hand away from Tabby; he doubts she’ll appreciate it if he ends up clenching his fingers into her fur. “I might not be an orphan, but this,” he makes a sweeping motion, no longer quite sure to whom he’s referring to, how many people he’s encompassing in that one gesture, “is the closest thing I have to – well, a family of sorts, I suppose.”

“And that’s your answer,” Bond says, and Q’s eyes snap up to him. “You were right, when you said my reasons for returning were personal.”

Any other thoughts Q had wanted to voice withers away, and he stares at Bond, surprised.

“I think,” Bond says slowly, “I’ve been looking for reasons not to return for a long time.” He taps at his shoulder. “I was wearing a vest when Eve shot me. It might not be up to your standards of discreet body armour, but the bullet didn’t pierce through. But when I didn’t resurface, I suppose the assumption was that whatever wounds I sustained knocked me out and I drowned. I knew M wouldn’t believe that I’d actually died, but I took the chance. Plausible deniability. I went on with life.”

Tabby has gone quiet, as if sensing the changing atmosphere, but she kneads lightly at Q’s legs, as if to remind him that she’s there. “You came back, then,” Q says.

“I owed a great deal to Mansfield. She died, however, and I would have been done, if not for her final order. It’s a terrible thing, to ignore your superior’s final wishes; I rather not be haunted by it, so off I went to Mexico City.”

Gallows humour. Q doesn’t make the mistake of falling for it, and he doesn’t make Bond detail the rest of it. “And then Spectre came to light, and you learned that your foster brother had made ruining every possible aspect of your life one of his primary goals, at the expense of everyone you ever cared for, and when you finally took him down, you were done. Truly done, for good this time.”

Bond holds out a hand to Tabby, and ever sweet-tempered, she edges forward, nudging her head into his palm. 

“I enjoyed travelling with Madeleine. We both wanted to escape – near-death experiences and striking revelations have a way of doing that. But it was never going to be a long-term affair. Madeleine would never lie or mislead her patients, and she could only ignore the realities of her situation for so long. She reassessed her options, made decisions about her future.” He smiles, that lopsided grin that Bond only ever reveals for people he’s fond of. “Of course, she wouldn’t let her travelling companion do any less.” 

“Of course,” Q says, because he does know what Swann is like: sharp, utterly ruthless, but ultimately compassionate beneath the cool. He runs through the threads of fact and the assumptions that Bond has just affirmed, and comes to the logical conclusion. “MI6 – at least, aspects of it – are our families of sort. Franz Oberhauser specifically targeted people that you cared for, and many of them have died since, but the rest of us—” Q’s voice goes quiet, but this is the point he’s surest about “—we’re still here. So, you came back.”

“I did.”

This time, Bond’s candidness doesn’t surprise Q at all, and when Q thinks back to their history together, from their first meeting at the National Gallery and that final bid to lure Silva into a trap, to the joint efforts with Moneypenny and Tanner and M to take down Oberhauser and the Nine Eyes program, to the months of close partnership on this long-term mission against Spectre – it seems obvious.

Q reaches forward to stroke Tabby, and if the tips of his fingers happen to tangle with Bond’s as they lavish attention on the gently purring cat, well.

“You don’t get to see much of the others, going straight on this assignment with me,” Q says. “I didn’t realize you’d returned until that day in M’s office.”

“My arrangement with M gives me the flexibility to choose or decline assignments, and I chose this mission,” Bond says. “Tanner is Chief of Staff – he'll never leave MI6 for too long. Eve is more than capable; she has the perfect mix of skills to assist M as his secretary and to protect his back as his bodyguard. I’ve known the both of them for a long time; they can take care of themselves.”

“And I can't?”

Bond smiles. "You can. Just not in the same way I can. You focus on safeguarding MI6 and the world. I'll take care of you."

"In more ways than one."

"If you'd like."

Q considers the thought, and the words slip out before he quite gets a hold on it. “Thing is, you already do.”

Bond stares at him, and Q stares back, feeling oddly unpanicked about it. After all, he has evidence and logic on his side.

There’s the camaraderie born from shared goals and experiences, a trusting ease that comes from living hand-in-pocket for months that allows them to work so seamlessly together, the deep-seated loyalty that drives them to sacrifice so much of themselves to protect the other. And then there’s that unspoken intimacy in the way Bond always watches Q, watches over Q, without ever undermining his abilities or his need to watch over Bond in turn.

“So I do.” The familiar lopsided smile that spreads over Bond’s lips is another intimate detail only a handful of people are graced with. “I’d prefer if you think about it more when you’re not drugged up, however.”

“I’m not on as many drugs as you think,” Q quips, thinking of his earlier conversation with Swann. 

“Perhaps. You’ve been quite alert for the duration of this conversation.”

“I rallied for Kitty and Tabby. It’s been months since I’ve seen them.”

Bond gives Tabby one last scratch, and then turns the full force of his attention on Q. He reaches forward – ignoring Kitty’s low growl of warning – and carefully sweeps Q’s hair from his forehead, his fingers ghosting over the bandages.

“Sleeping well?” he asks quietly, and Q smiles, because he’s calm and he’s safe, and he’ll take any measure of peace he can get right now.

Is it possible to be too weary to be traumatized? Apparently, the answer is yes, because he’s in that in-between limbo state where he’s out of acute danger but he isn’t quite out of the woods, and he’s on enough medication that reality is blurred at the edges, where his mind continues ticking on but his emotions aren’t fully engaging. A few days from now, Q suspects, the full impact of his final hours on the island is going to hit him, what the Spectre agent had done and threatened him with, the fall and the fear—

But until then, Q is content to sit here in the darkness with his cats, and slip back into unconsciousness when his eyes grow too heavy.

“I’ll let you know when I’m no longer on painkillers that make me drowsy.”

Bond’s smile edges upward in amusement, shadows playing over his face. He slides light fingers down Q’s cheek to stroke over the bruise under Q’s chin, where the Spectre agent had jammed the PPK/S, and – when Q doesn’t react – leans forward to press a kiss to the corner of Q’s mouth.

Kitty hisses and swipes at Bond’s face, claws unsheathed.

Bond sways back, utterly nonchalant that he was a hairsbreadth away from a nasty scratch, and his fingers uncurl from Q’s face like smoke, soft and lingering.  

Kitty’s entire body reverberates from the force of her low growls, and Q reaches up, shoulder protesting, to grab the infuriated cat around the middle. He hugs her to his chest, pressing his face to the top of her head.

“You live dangerously, 007,” Q says.

“Formidable as Kitty is, she doesn’t have influence in MI6 the way Dr. Chang does,” Bond says, and rises smoothly to his feet. “And she’ll want my head for breaking in, much less for bringing your cats to you.”

“They’re part of my therapy,” Q declares, his thoughts running away from his tongue again. He pauses a moment later, going over that statement again, because – it’s not really an excuse, is it? Bond had brought Kitty and Tabby to him, because Q had trouble sleeping, because of the flashbacks, and this time, Bond can’t stay with him.

He looks up at Bond, Kitty twisting discontentedly in his arms, Tabby a soft warm weight against his thigh, and realizes that it’s the first time in months that he doesn’t have any idea when he’ll next see Bond.

“I’ll see you soon,” Q says, softly.

Bond looks back at him, his expression unfathomable in the dark. “Take care, Quartermaster,” he says, and slips out of the room.

Chapter Text

The medics wean Q off the stronger painkillers as the days go by, and together with the returning pain is the clarity of his thoughts, the restless awareness that he’s edging towards some sort of recovery, that he’s ready to actively engage with the rest of the world again.

Shaving with one arm strapped into a sling is an interesting experience, but Q enjoys being clean-shaven enough that he doesn’t want to wait, craves privacy to the extent where he won’t ask anyone else for help, and is fearful enough of the medics that he doesn’t dare take his arm out of its sling and risk aggravating his shoulder – they’d threatened Q with a longer stay if he didn’t keep still and stop wrenching his shoulder further.

He knicks himself more than once and it isn’t the cleanest shave in the world, but Q stares at his reflection in the fogged-up mirror afterwards, and it’s enough.

He’s himself again, with subtle changes. Enough time has gone by that the medics have done away with most of the bandages. They had put in fine stitches in the cut above his eyebrow, but it’s a jagged injury and right now it’s terribly conspicuous, the bruising around it a colourful riot of purplish-yellow. He has freckles over the bridge of his nose, and the skin on his cheeks is darker than his jaw, the sun on the island scorching enough to darken his skin even with the woven hat Bond had gifted him. His cheekbones are more prominent in his face, and his body is littered with bruises, from stumbling around in the rain and clashing with the Spectre agent, and of course, from when he hit the water.

Q’s quite glad he isn’t knowledgeable enough to read the details of those yellowing bruises, because he’s sure they tell quite a story. 

The sling and his sore shoulder means button-down shirts, and Q has to smile at the memory of Bond’s dress shirt, finely-woven and far too large for Q’s frame. He tucks his parka over his shoulders, and slips on his spare pair of glasses, and finally, finally, takes up his phone.

He doesn’t do anything with it, just holds it in his hand for long minutes, and then he goes to find Cecelia to confirm his discharge.

The bunker headquarters has changed while Q was away, but Q had mapped out the entire area when he moved Q Branch in ahead of the Joint Intelligence Service’s creation, too wary of the merger to trust stepping into the Centre for National Security, and he slips easily through the corridors and walkways now. The observation labs, unlike the workshops, are open-plan but lined with glass walls for confidentiality, and Q watches his team from a distance, lingering at a corner to observe them without attracting their notice.

Riley is there, expanding his focus to all the sections in Q’s absence instead of staying close to the BioSci labs, his area of specialty, and so are the rest of the Communications team. There are staff from the other teams as well, delivering material or equipment or requesting a consultation, a constant intermingling between the different Q Branch sections; they look busy but at ease, and Q feels a mix of melancholy and pride swell in his chest.

Before Q took the position, Q Branch had operated for a time without a formal quartermaster holding the reins. He and Riley had further structured Q Branch that way afterwards, clear lines of command so that the division would never be incapacitated if Q or Riley or any of the section leaders are indisposed; this stance had served them well during the Nine Eyes fiasco and the days after, and it’s clear they’ve continued in the same vein in Q’s extended absence.

The younger Comms team members are chattering amongst themselves, faces animated; Riley watches on, a silent overseer who only steps in when absolutely necessary. He’s taken up one of the peripheral stations, preferring to keep watch from the sidelines, and Q’s eyes skip to the centre of the room, the central workstation that sits on its own but is observable by every other unit in the room, the nucleus around which the observation lab revolves.

It’s neatly set up, screens shut down but ready, waiting for its administrator – Q – to return.

Just because Q Branch can operate without a quartermaster doesn’t mean it should, Riley had told Q once, shortly before Mansfield had summoned Q to her office and made him the head of Q Branch. We’re efficient, yes, but it’s easy to fall into complacency, to forget to innovate because the existing processes or equipment or systems aren’t broken. We may not need a dedicated leader, but we do need someone to drive us, inspire us – a catalyst.

Q watches them now, the team he defied all disapprovals about his youth and his inexperience to lead, the team he fights so fiercely to protect, the team that always rises above and beyond his expectations – who had found him and Bond on that island when Q absolutely needed them to.

Beyond the glass walls, Corrine – one of the younger team leads – laughs, lifting her head to throw a retort back at her team mates. Her eyes almost skip past Q before they flick back, her gaze locking with Q’s, and there’s a long moment of stillness before her eyes widen.

She leaps to her feet, her mouth opening in an exclamation Q can’t hear through the glass, and the observation lab collapses into chaos a second later, heads whipping around to stare in Q’s direction, nearly half of them rising and stampeding for the entrance the instance after that. Riley is on his feet, a pillar of calmness amongst the cacophony, but he too is looking at Q, a small smile on his face.

Q shakes his head to chase away the quiet laughter bubbling in his throat. Catalyst indeed.

He slips his phone into his hand, curls his fingers securely around the device as the glass doors swing open with force, Corrine leading, and steps forward to greet his team.

---

It’s a moment of déjà vu when Q finally slips behind his desk in his private office, the systems there waking up when he sets his hand lightly on the keyboard. He feels off-kilter, out of synch, but that’s happened often enough that it’s almost familiar now. When Mansfield had died, after MI6 had been dissolved and Oberhauser taken into custody – all those times, Q had returned to his workstation in his office to take a moment to himself before leaping back into the fray, processing data and pushing through preliminary safeguards while his agency breathed in between active duty, and the hum of his systems around Q now is comforting.

This time, there is no emergency – the rest of MI6 had made sure to take those concerns out of Q’s hands – but it doesn’t mean Q is content to idle. He slips on his comms device, nearly dialling a familiar number before he catches himself, and looks up the MI6 internal directory instead.

The call picks up after two rings.

“Dr. Madeleine Swann.”

“You kept your name,” Q says.

There’s a minute pause. “Someone once told me that taking this job is a perfect bridge between who I was and who I could be. I like being Madeleine Swann. I won’t give up that life if I don’t absolutely have to.”

Q takes a moment of his own. “I’m quite sure I didn’t word it that way.”

“I read between the lines. Besides,” Swann’s voice lifts from her professional calm into something more animated, more challenging, “joining this governmental agency gives me a measure of protection, doesn’t it? Spectre can only target me if they come all the way here, to the heart of the British government’s territory. And if they do decide to attack MI6 again, we have more serious problems on our hands.”

“They could target you technologically.” Q resists the urge to pull up Swann’s MI6 file. He knows Cecelia liaised with the Comms team to build Swann’s MI6 identity, and Q trusts his team with his agents’ lives as well as his own, but he knows better than to underestimate Spectre.

“They could,” Swann agrees. “But I know one of the most brilliant persons in cybersecurity. I don’t mind if you want to work further on the details of my cover.”

Actually, that’s exactly what Q wants, and he feels something in him ease.

“I do, and I will,” Q warns her, because Swann may have given him permission but she might not realize that it means Q will revamp her cover identity from top to bottom within the next twenty-four hours. “Any specific instructions?”

“No. You know me better than anyone else here, save James.”

“All right.” Q keys in a few commands into his system, one-handed, and then shuts off the screens before he gets distracted. “May I ask you a rude question?”

“You’ve asked that question very politely,” Swann says, amused. “Go ahead.”

“You and Bond. You were together for a time. But at Altaussee, when I first met you, you didn’t have a very high regard for him. What changed?”

If the question surprises Swann, she doesn’t express it. The line goes silent for a time as she gathers her thoughts, and when she speaks, her voice is thoughtful.

“When someone saves your life twice in so many days, it’s difficult not to react viscerally. Whatever my first impressions of James were, it was hard not to let those rescue efforts colour my opinion of him after that.”

Q looks down at his hand, at the near-faded ring of bruises around his wrist, the one Bond grabbed to pull him out of the ocean the first time around. Because of the Kevlar jacket Bond made Q wear, he doesn’t have any lingering marks from the Spectre agent’s zip ties.

“I understand.”

“As for why I first fell into bed with him, well, we all make bad decisions. Not that I consider James a bad decision. Just an impulsive one." Swann gives a soft laugh. "It's what I needed at the time. For all his supposed flippancies, he's very good at being an anchor."

Q stares at his shadowy reflection on the unlit screens. “I sometimes wonder if he’s always had that, that unshakeable foundation, or if being a Double-O made him that way.”

"Whichever it is, foundations can still crack under immense strain. But yes, for all the fault lines, it's quite a solid structure. He's honest about the way he lives. There are worse things to be."

"You, Doctor, have a rather unique view about what being honest is like."

"Your belief in it isn't necessary to make it true. I believe I've said something to that effect before."

"You did," Q agrees.

Swann isn’t wrong. Some MI6 personnel stride the dual lives very well, like Moneypenny, who nurtures a happy, healthy relationship within her public life while just as confidently cutting down anyone who would dare to attack M when she’s on duty. Others, like Swann and many of the support personnel, live their lives as any other civilian would, just with odder job hours and a layer of secrecy to their identities to safeguard MI6’s secrets.

And then there are the ones like Bond and Q himself, who maintain covers simply so they can blend into society when necessary, and live almost entirely for their agency.

Some might call that way of living – where they have no illusions about their priorities in life – honest, Q supposes.

“He told me you were the reason why he reassessed his options. That you could only ignore the realities of your situation for so long, and that when you started looking at your long-term plans, you made him look at his too.”

“The interlude was enjoyable while it lasted,” Swann says. “But I walked away from him the first time for a reason. We understand each other and might even want the same things for a while, but we weren’t necessarily compatible, or good for each other the way we were together. In the end, we had different priorities. We work very well as friends, however.”

“I can see that,” Q says. “And Bond certainly thinks so.”

“He’s been quite open with you,” Swann says. “So, I was right. Did you figure out why he returned, or did he tell you?”

“He told me. And he gave me enough clues during that conversation that I could have pieced it together even if he didn’t say it directly.”

“But he did tell you.” Swann’s voice is warm. “MI6 is important to him; some of you more than others. And he’s always had such faith in you.”

Q ducks his head, even though he’s in his office and there’s no way Swann can see him.

“Take care with him,” Swann continues, her voice so soft that Q almost misses it.

He swallows, because he might not be in tuned to the nuance of words the way Swann is, deriving swathes of information from how her patients express themselves, in speech and body language and their reactions, but even Q has caught the way she said with him, not of him.

Bond hardly needs protection, but as Swann said, even the strongest foundations can still crack under unfathomable pressure.

“I will.”

“Good.” Swann’s tone reverts back to her usual cool calm. “As nice as it is to hear from you like this again, I do have work to do. And you have therapy in about twenty minutes.”

“I do,” Q says. “Mandatory counselling three times a week until your department clears me.”

He can’t complain about being grounded – logistically, he isn’t anywhere near ready to go back in the field again, not after blowing up all his equipment and all the attention he and Bond must have drawn to themselves over the past months. Q needs to regroup, reassess their position in relation to Spectre and determine how to move forward with his previous aliases compromised, and he needs time to revamp their kits from the ground up.

And mentally, emotionally – it would be nice to sleep the night through, and to take the elevator without being triggered; going up isn’t a problem, but going down—

Well.

“Lovelace?”

Q blinks rapidly, coming back abruptly to himself. He’s been silent for too long. “I’m here,” he says, because I’m fine isn’t really true at that moment, and outright lying to a psychiatrist, even if she isn’t his psychiatrist, seems like a poor idea.

“Yes, you are,” Swann says. “I’m glad you came back safely. You and James both.”

Q ducks his head again, and his reflections on the unlit screens around him catches his attention. The light from the desk lamp highlights the sharper features of his face, and the jagged line of stitches across his forehead stands out in stark relief. Q stares at it for a long moment.

He picks up plenty of scrapes and minor injuries building and testing things in his workshop, but this cut will scar. He’ll make sure his fringe covers it – the scar would likely be distinct enough to let others recognize or remember him by – but Q will forever carry the reminder of how closely he has brushed up against death.

And more importantly, that he survived the encounter.

“I am glad as well,” Q says at last. “Doctor.”

“Yes?”

“Why are you calling me Lovelace? You’ve never repeated names during our calls before.”

Swann laughs. “Maybe I’m too busy now to look up famous people in computer science and cryptanalysis. And you’re not really the Quartermaster to me, are you?”

“I’m not?”

“We might both be employed by MI6 now, but I knew you before I came to work here. I won’t interact very much with you in any official capacity, since Dr. Chang represents the Medical department’s interest when working with other divisions and I will never be involved in your counselling due to our prior association with each other. The friend I spent hours talking to on the phone to just happens to be Q Branch’s Quartermaster, that’s all. Since all of MI6 delights in code names, Lovelace is mine for you.’

“I’m fine with my official title, so you can continue calling me ‘Doctor,’” Swann adds. “Or just Madeleine, if you’d like.”

Q smiles, unbidden, and his shadowy reflections smile with him.

“Yes,” he says. “I’d like that.”

---

In addition to his private office and workshop, Q has a workstation in most Q Branch labs, and he finds himself gravitating to those communal spaces. Q values his privacy and there will always be projects and assignments too sensitive to work on in the open, but he’s become habituated to having company when he works, no matter how unobtrusive Bond can be when he puts his mind to it, and he can only work for so long in the near-quiet of his office before he’s itching for a human presence of some kind. It isn’t the same nagging sensation as when he’s out of reach of his technology, cut off from the rest of the world; this one is more absentminded, a subconscious thought that lingers at the back of his mind like the soft pressure of wind on his skin.

Nothing tangible, but present all the same.

The main observation lab is Q’s preferred spot to work at, even late in the night when the space is on half-lights and most of the staff have left work or ensconced themselves in more private spaces. Even though Q can be just as alone in the observation lab as in his office, the possibility of connection makes all the difference, and it is there that Riley finds him.

“You should be asleep,” his second-in-command says, slipping easily into the chair opposite Q. He drapes an Inventories garment bag on the last clear spaces of the workstation. “Or at least resting at home.”

Q smiles. There is no surveillance of any sort in the space where Q Branch’s Communications team does their surveillance, but of course his team – and Riley in particular – would find ways to keep track of Q. 

“I had erratic sleeping hours long before I went out in the field and was stranded on an island. For now, I get more restful sleep just taking shorter cat naps during the day when more people are around.” Q gives a one-shouldered shrug. “I’m healing at my own pace.”

Riley eyes Q’s other shoulder, his arm strapped securely in its sling, and then glances at the mug of tea by his keyboard. Work and keeping himself busy is, for Q, a method of coping, and unless it shifts to the other extreme and causes more harm than good, Riley lets him get away with it. After a moment, his second turns to the garment bag.

“You’re not going back in the field any time soon.” Riley flips the front of the garment bag aside, revealing the fishtail parka within, sleek and beautifully tailored. “But you’ll make the entire division happy if you wear this even here in London.” 

Q reaches out and skims light fingers down the front of the parka, and then unzips it to check the lining. This time, when he meets Riley’s gaze, his smile is more wry than anything else.

“The Comms team must have been quick, if they read the report of my and Bond’s extraction before Moneypenny sealed it.”

“Many of the team were distressed and disgruntled when no one could get any indication of your status after you were brought back to London. In an effort to distract them, I set them on a personal project. This was what they settled on.”

Q fingers the jacket sleeves, noting the hefty weight that spoke of the protective layer of Kevlar that lay under the cotton shell. “A Kevlar jacket of my own to protect me from gunshots, knife stabbings and impromptu falls from great heights.”

“007 removed his suit jacket from you when he resuscitated you, and it was left behind when the medical team reached you. The extraction team disposed of it after they confirmed the island cleared of Spectre presence.” Riley reaches over and flicks the front of the parka open, the polished silver buckles glinting in the lab lights. “The Double-O’s suits and jackets have a finer and lighter mesh of Kevlar to allow for the manoeuvrability and speed they need in their line of work. Yours is more lightweight than overt body armour, but it’s been reinforced for protection more than anything else.”

He slants a glance up at Q. “It may have been 007’s duty to safeguard you, but many of our staff are taking your injuries personally, that they haven’t been able to support you the way Q Branch supports the rest of MI6’s field agents. You’re going to have plenty of shadows underfoot for the next several weeks.”

Q shakes his head, but there’s no point denying it; he’s well aware of Q Branch’s protective tendencies, and he suspects it’s only their respect for Q and his privacy that they haven’t left someone to accompany him in the lab, no matter how late it is.

“Although,” Riley says, and there’s a velvet note in his voice that makes Q straighten, “I’m surprised I haven’t seen your most obvious shadow at all.”

And right at that very moment, as if to prove how contrary and eerily serendipitous Bond can be, Q’s phone pings with an incoming message.

It’s the expression on Q’s face that must give him away; Riley doesn’t say a word, but his eyes crinkle in amusement. Q may be MI6’s expert in cybertechnology, but Riley is capable of reading people like a book, and always with an air of infinite calm that belies how sharp he can be.

Since there’s no point dissembling, Q reaches for his phone. Instead of text, the message consists of a single photo, shot from the interior of an automobile from the driver’s perspective; beyond the windscreen, there’s a view of an empty highway, streetlamps glowing warmly in the distance. Q recognizes the DB5’s dashboard, and at least Bond had pulled over before snapping the image, although that’s no guarantee Bond won’t wreak his usual brand of chaos out in the city afterwards.   

Please don’t provoke the newly reformed Home Office, Q sends back. Relations between our agencies are still rather frosty.

Riley waits until Q puts down his phone to speak. “It’s quite a change for 007 to keep his distance rather than to stride right in and rile up the masses.”

Q lets his fingers linger over his phone – it’s still a novelty to be connected to the greater world, and having his technology close at hand is a comfort. “Everything’s different, after Spectre.”

“007 is the exception to most rules,” Riley points out.

Q inclines his head, ceding the point, and doesn’t mention that it had taken Q a while to realize that the messages are Bond’s way giving him space without going completely off the grid. He remembers what Swann – Madeleine – said, about how it’s difficult not to react viscerally when someone saves your life so many times over, and as much as it feels strange not to have Bond constantly by his side anymore, it’s better in the long run for them to spend some time apart.

Q doesn’t think it’ll change anything, however.

He gives one last tap to his phone. “What do you know of 007’s status?”

Riley smiles. “Very little. Before your return, I was the only person in Q Branch who knew 007 had returned to MI6, and that’s only because you told me before you left with him on the Spectre assignment. You hid your trails leaving London very well.”

“It was a good cover for me to operate with someone who, in the greater eyes of the world, was no longer affiliated with the Secret Service. And it helps prevent inadvertent leaks if fewer people here knew who I was travelling with.”

“You succeeded,” Riley says. “Your communications with Q Branch during your journey, indirect and infrequent as they were, never indicated who you were traveling with.”

Q stares thoughtfully around the observation lab. “What are the leading rumours?”

“007 isn’t on the books. Double-O records are often physical, and their digital files are amongst the most secure—” Q would know, he put the encryptions in place himself, “—and anything that’s remotely accessible within MI6 is heavily redacted. Even so, no one could find any of 007’s files, even after you both returned.”

It isn’t uncommon for an agent’s records to become inaccessible, particularly if they’re on a long-term undercover assignment. But upon their return, their files are restored, if only so the support branches – logistics, HR, or medical – can access the information they need to do their jobs.

For an agent’s files to remain sealed—

Riley tilts his head, considering. He lifts one hand, and counts off the points on his fingers. “So, four main theories. Files are permanently sealed when an agent has betrayed the agency, 007 might really be retired, he’s working on something so confidential that M has pulled his files completely, or there’s some other agreement in place, one MI6 doesn’t commonly employ.” Riley pauses, and then counts backwards, folding his fingers down as he strikes off the theories. “The idea that 007 would betray MI6 is laughable for anyone who has even an inkling of his history. He has ignored mission parameters, defied orders and returned from the dead too many times for most people to believe he’s truly gone, into retirement or otherwise. You were on the same assignment as him, and your files are intact. Which just leaves the last scenario.”

“And the team found nothing,” Q says.

“And the team found nothing,” Riley agrees. He gives a low laugh. “But whatever 007’s motives are, he pulled through when it mattered the most. You came back safely, and mostly in one piece. Q Branch will forgive a lot for that. Whatever happens amongst the ranks of the field agents is beyond our purview, but you’ll find that 007 will receive a warm welcome here whether he’s still officially affiliated with MI6 or not.”

Q winces. “I try my best, but I’m already quite biased when it comes to the Double-Os. I need our staff to be more impartial than I am.”

“It’s more that you quite obviously trust him, and we in turn trust your judgment. And being fond of someone doesn’t mean your judgment is compromised.” Leaning forward, Riley carefully tucks the fishtail parka back into the garment bag. “I assume you know more than the rest of us do.”

“I know why he came back, but not what deal he brokered with M. When I went to Whitehall to meet M, he was already there.” Q drums his fingers atop his workstation surface. “Well, there’s one last place to look.”

Riley slants him a look. His hands don’t falter in their steady movements. “After Spectre, I suppose it’s commonplace to hack your own superior.”

Q lets out a startled laugh before he can quite choke it back. “Did you know, M was once convinced you were a mitigating influence on my unconventional ways.”

“Just like he thought you and Tanner and Moneypenny could rein 007 in?” On anyone else, Q would call Riley’s smile a smirk. “M risked everything to go after Max Denbigh, and all of you joined him that night, regardless of the possible repercussions. I can only conclude that M is quite forgiving of justified rule-breaking.”

“Do you think breaking into M’s servers is justified?” Q asks, curious.

“Does it matter what I think?” Riley zips up the garment bag, and sets one hand lightly on it. “Now that you’re back on your feet, I’ll take a well-deserved day off tomorrow.”

Q smiles. “What happened to insisting that I get more rest?”

“I’d push more if I thought you would listen. And it does the team good to have you around.” Riley slips easily to his feet. He meets Q’s gaze. “Welcome back, Quartermaster.”

Riley is owed favours from personnel across all of MI6’s divisions, but he rarely collects his due from Q; Riley is the methodical engineer to Q’s genius, and all he ever expects is for Q to do his best as Q Branch’s quartermaster.

Dipping his head, Q says, “Have a good evening, Riley.”

---

M’s office in Whitehall is light and airy, and it is here, sitting in front of the oaken writing table once more, that Q feels like he’s come full circle.

M appears to feel the same. He doesn’t tell Q that he’s done with his assignment, but neither does he set any expectations on how – or when – to move forward on it. Even without orders Q’s top priority is always to safeguard MI6’s interests, and whether Q is out in the field with a field agent actively taking out Spectre bases or sitting in his office coding layer after layer of security over their systems, the Secret Service will be protected.

Q’s work is never done, but he can finally close the file on this leg of his field-active duty.

The silence that falls over M’s office is peaceful. M reads through Q’s report, eyes skimming to the most pertinent details on the second read-through, and Q leans back in his seat, not quite relaxed, but secure enough in the heart of Her Majesty’s government to let his guard down.

“We’ll implement your recommendations,” M says, and Q straightens, nodding. “You’ve involved several of your Q Branch staff in this.”

“Yes. They’ve taken good care of the Secret Service during my absence. Now that I’ve returned, however, I’ll personally upgrade the security in your and Tanner’s offices, as well as Double-O spaces.”

M doesn’t make a sound, but his eyes are piercing, and he shuffles the papers of Q’s report back into a neat stack without ever looking down at what his hands are doing. Q straightens even further, and tries to will his shoulders back from where they’d started to fold forward in tension.

The growing strain in his injured shoulder, the pain going from low-level ache to a more pronounced throb, tells Q he isn’t quite succeeding. After all, even if he knows what this is about, M is still one of the very few who are able to discomfit Q with a single glance.

Unlike Q, M appears relaxed, even though his gaze is anything but. “You’re already responsible for the security of most of my archives. Further securing this office won’t give you any access to the files that are off-limits to you.” The pause is infinitesimal, but poignant. “Such as the Double-O files.”

Q instinctively ducks his head. He isn’t a fool; there’s giving into his nature and satisfying his insatiable curiosity, and there’s sheer arrogant stupidity by thinking he can deceive M or hide his actions from him. The first is forgivable, by MI6’s chaotic standards; the other is borderline treasonous.

So, Q had broken into restricted files he isn’t quite authorized to access and looked into areas that aren’t under his purview as the quartermaster, and he’d left clear signs that he’d been by. After all, he’d learned from Bond that it’s much easier to ask for forgiveness after the fact than it is to ask for permission upfront.

“I can’t imagine why you thought it was worth breaking into those servers,” M continues. “After all, the Double-O’s most critical and updated files are always on paper.” He meets Q’s eyes squarely. “As are yours.”

The rebuke that Q should know better is expected, and Q worries at the edge of his sling, his usual restless habit. He could agree with M and they’ll both let the acknowledgment of Q’s transgression fall to the wayside, like so many situations in MI6 do. Or Q could take a risk, and dig himself even deeper.

Q opens his mouth to speak, and the words fall out before he can quite catch himself. “But Bond is no longer a Double-O. Not officially, at any rate.” 

This time, M’s pointed stare contains quite a bit more exasperation.

“I should have expected when I sent both of you on such a long-term assignment that you’ll pick up the worst of each other’s habits.” He narrows his eyes. “All that time on-duty together, and you didn’t pry the answer from him yourself.”

“Bond enjoys being cryptic when he doesn’t have to be.” Q pauses, and then admits, “I do know he has the flexibility to choose or decline assignments, and he’s not on the MI6 books.”  

Is Q imagining it, or is there a shadow of amusement under M’s stern gaze? “So hacking my servers is the obvious solution.”

“He still reports to you. And follows some MI6 rules.” Q shakes his head. “Although the rules have always been rather fluid for Double-Os.”

“As they seem to have become for you,” M says easily. He watches Q, weighing his options, and finally sets Q’s report to one side. “As you’ve noted, Bond is not on the MI6 books. Currently, he is serving on a contractual basis, reporting solely and directly to me. He is no longer an official Double-O, and he has no obligations to serve our agency. It is his choice when and how long he wants to remain working for me, but since his contract is with me and not the government, MI6 is not responsible for his actions and nor are we obliged to assist him if he digs himself too deep.”

Q stares at him, eyes wide, at a loss for words. His immediate reaction is incredulity, followed by understanding – because with cold calculation, M’s decision makes plenty of sense – and then a vague sense of affront – because M is making use of Bond, and even though MI6 does that to their personnel all the time, Q is biased.

Finally, he settles on a reaction that’s at least rooted in professional concerns.

“Bond is very resourceful, but not giving him official access to MI6 logistics and support may hamper the work you have him doing for us,” Q says carefully, which is a much better statement than so if I wasn’t stranded with Bond on that island, you wouldn’t spare the manpower and means to extract him.

“Will it.” M says silkily; Q gets the sense he knows exactly what Q is thinking. “I seem to recall many of you defying my orders to go to Bond’s aid, or lying to me directly to cover his tracks. Chelsea, that’s what you told me when I asked you to track Bond’s location through the Smart Blood. And the next thing I knew, my quartermaster was in Austria with my rogue Double-O.”

Q sits back, because there’s absolutely nothing he can say to counter that, but he holds M’s gaze, because, well, it wasn’t the wrong course of action to take.

“Bond gets the freedom to do whatever he wants, and what he currently wants is to assist MI6 with our nation’s security and to safeguard the people who are important to him here. As long as that is his priority, I get an agent who is personally invested and whose position is undefined enough that I can use him in all sorts of grey situations without needing to be accountable to the ISC or our government.” M gives Q an arched look. “And I never have to worry about Bond getting into too much trouble, because regardless of whatever orders I give them, my secretary and my quartermaster would be amongst the first to rally to his side.”

Now that Q’s had some time to process, the arrangement isn’t very different from how Bond had operated during the Nine Eyes situation, and implies a great level of trust, both in Bond’s integrity and in his skills.

Slowly, Q nods. “As you say, sir.”

“Good,” M says. “And you may secure and monitor my servers, but do stay out of the contents.”

Q flushes – he’d almost forgotten about that. “Yes sir.”

This time, there’s no mistaking the wry amusement in M’s expression as he picks up Q’s report once more, continuing with the debriefing.

---

It’s a mild day, closer to spring than winter, but after days of scorching sands and the unceasing sun, the cold here in London is both soothing and biting. Q shivers even as he turns his face towards the open sky; the wind, when Q steps out beyond the shelter of the stairwell and onto the roof proper, sneaks its way under Q’s parka and curls beneath the wool of his sweater, not helped at all by the way Q is only partially wearing the parka, one arm worn properly through the jacket sleeve and the other half of the jacket draped over his shoulder to accommodate his arm in the sling.

He can see why Bond likes this place, the rooftop above M’s office in Whitehall with its expansive view of Westminster, the sky a steel grey above them. True to form, Bond is standing as close to the edge as he can get without someone easily noticing him from street level, and Q watches him, now wary enough of high spaces that his heart is already beating a quick cadence in his chest.

To go close to Bond, to stand at his side means pushing aside his fear and placing himself near danger, and it’s such an apt metaphor for their – partnership, relationship, whatever they choose to call it – that Q almost laughs.

“I received an item that Mansfield bequeathed to me in her will on this rooftop,” Bond says, his voice carrying back to where Q is standing by the wind.

Q pauses for a long moment, and takes a few steps closer so he doesn’t have to raise his voice too much to answer back. “What did she give you?”

“A bulldog statue with the Union Jack that she kept constantly on her desk.” Bond turns to face Q, his topcoat fluttering in the wind. “It should have been destroyed when Silva blew up headquarters, but it survived in one piece.”

“Is it still in one piece, now that it belongs to you?” Q asks, bemused at the conversation but willing to go with it.

“It is,” Bond says, and there’s a note in his voice that makes Q think that bulldog statue signifies much more than Bond is letting on, as is the whole topic itself. Bond doesn’t give him time to dwell on it, however. “You’ve debriefed with M.”

Q doesn’t bother confirming so; there’s only ever one reason why any of them come to Whitehall. Instead, he takes another two steps forward and says, “Rather than an agent, I suppose it’s more accurate to call you a mercenary now.”

Bond laughs, soft and low, not at all bothered that Q knows – that Q must have found out by attempting to break into his files. “It’s an arrangement that lets me do exactly what I want and still get paid for it.”

Q’s eyes dip to the concrete beneath his feet, as if he can see through them to M’s office two floors down. “Even without the overt connection to MI6?” 

There’s a whisper of noise, fabric moving against fabric, and Q startles; he knows he isn’t back to a hundred percent, but it’s still shocking to find Bond standing before him, moving quickly enough that Q hadn’t quite registered the action until it’s already completed. Abruptly aware of where he’s standing, Q glances nervously towards the edge of the roof – he’s not close enough to look over, to stare down instead of outwards, but he’s much closer than before – and then Bond settles a gloved hand on Q’s hip, pulling Q into a half embrace.

Q’s eyes snap up, meets Bond’s, and he’s suddenly very grounded in the present, all his focus on the solidity of Bond’s touch, the warmth he radiates.

“Spectre exploits every perceived weak point we might have. I rather not make it easy for them,” Bond says. “This works for me.”

He falls silent after that, and Q breathes in deeply, the clean bite of cold air and the barest hint of cologne, which Bond only ever wears when off-duty and secure within London’s boundaries. He shifts closer to Bond, lets his mind drift back to a late-night conversation made in the dark.

“It works for me as well,” Q says quietly, and lifts his uninjured arm to tangle his fingers in Bond’s topcoat.

Q, above all else, is a realist. His confidence in himself is founded purely on fact, and no matter how intangible and unfathomable others may find cyberspace, to Q it is the most concrete thing in his life. At its very base, the cyberworld can be stripped down to numbers and code, manipulable, and Q is one of the very best at it.

Feelings, on the other hand, are far more abstract.

Q may not have had much of a choice about his recruitment into MI6, but he's long since chosen the life – fought tooth and nail for his position and his right to lead Q Branch. The identity and all the work it encompasses has come to define him, and in exchange Q knows he has made what others call sacrifices and what Q simply defines as compromises.

He and Bond are never going to be a normal couple, with simple sweet wants and a love that is deep and enduring without being tainted by greedy possessiveness or the cold edge of ruthlessness. After all, people like Q and the Double-Os don't have the luxury to fall in love.

That's fine with Q – he's sick of falling.

More than any romantic sentiment, it's the trust that matters the most. He and Bond have developed a routine that is natural and intimate and synergetic, where the sum of their parts and their skills is infinitely greater than them apart, and Q is absolutely willing to take the risk, to prowl as close as he can to the edge, because he knows Bond will always find a way to catch him out of freefall, or to anchor him in the aftermath if he can’t.

Perhaps for them, a relationship is a warm hand folded over his eyes and a calm voice instructing him to breathe, and Q surviving, beyond all odds.

Q pushes slightly away so he can meet Bond’s gaze, who simply stares back calmly. Q takes a further step away, lifting his chin in partial challenge, because it’s nice, to acknowledge those quiet, peaceful moments they’ve found with each other, but in the meantime—

“We’ve got work to do,” Q says, because they’re never going to be a normal couple, and duty is a too intrinsic part of their identities for it to ever go away.

Bond smiles that familiar lopsided smile, his eyes going sharp with anticipation – for the adrenaline of the hunt or for the time he’s going to spend with Q, it doesn’t quite matter.

“Lead the way, Quartermaster,” Bond says, and Q – Q smiles back.

---

There was no way of objectively knowing when they would pass from English territories into French waters, traveling far underwater along the Channel Tunnel as they are, but Q stared out the window all the same. It wasn’t the first time he’s left the United Kingdom’s borders, but it was the first time Q took on an active assignment with no concrete end date in sight, and it seemed important, somehow, to hold onto any piece of their nation for as long as possible.

In the darkness of the tunnel, the glass of the window reflected the interior of the train like a perfectly polished mirror. Bond sat across the aisle from Q, the day new enough that the compartment was only partially filled with drowsy commuters, and he looked relaxed, although Q suspected he was anything but.

Q knew Bond would have much preferred to drive, but the point was for the two of them to leave London quickly and discreetly, without bringing anything as visible and traceable as an automobile along with them. They’d come to an agreement on a few pertinent points when they met at Q Branch, but longer-term plans would have to wait until they made it to the first safe house and Q established covers and contingencies for the both of them.

Bond flicked his gaze along the compartment casually, and it took Q a moment to realize he was using the windows to scope people and angles out of his field of vision. His eyes, alert despite the very early – or more accurately for them, since they hadn’t gotten any sleep, the very late – hour, caught Q’s in the window’s reflection, and they stared at each other for a long moment before Bond went back to his covert checks.

Spectre was their primary target, making this assignment a perilous one, but despite the odds stacked against them, Q felt strangely confident. There was a certain freedom to being cut loose like this, to have the independence to act only according to their own judgments;  Q could understand why Bond constantly challenged authority.

There was a wealth of the unsaid weighing down the space between them, a plethora of questions stacking up on Q’s tongue, but Q kept his lips sealed. There was a time and a place, and knowing Bond, a mood to have such discussions, and Q knew it would be a long time coming before he could corner Bond into revealing his secrets. But unlike the last time Bond came to Q Branch, collecting the DB5 before leaving MI6 for good, this silence didn’t feel strained, the quiet end of a short-lived if rather successful partnership.

This time, the silence was full of potential, the hush of the audience before the curtains rose.

Q turned away from the windows, and looked across the aisle at Bond. Ever vigilant, Bond turned towards him. This time, their eyes locked directly, and this time, Bond held it. 

They've always worked well as a team, and Q is sure that they'll just be as effective and deadly moving forward. But as they hurtled down the Channel Tunnel, the train taking them further and further away from the heart of Q’s territory and the bastion Bond always fought so hard to protect, Q had a feeling that they were standing on the precipice of something new. 

However it ended up playing out, Q was looking forward to it.