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He remembered the day his parents died - the day his mother died. It was a memory he had, many times, attempted to erase, to little avail. He remembered his first thought: Impossible. And the second: The tunnel.
He didn't say a word to anyone, just went to the secret door, opened it, then shut himself in the damp darkness beyond.
He had played along the tunnel to the chapel, of course, as any boy would do, given the chance. He knew the length and breadth of it by heart - but only in the light. This time, he didn't switch the light on. He shut himself in with the dark-loving monsters.
The man he became knew there were no monsters—or thought he knew. The boy had known differently. Sitting on the damp stone, knees to his chest, he could hear the monster breathing, waiting for him to move, to try to run, to cry. He had seen its winking eyes between snatches of shadow; he had heard its venom dripping onto the ground, pooling at its feet.
"I'm not afraid of you," the boy said. "I will defeat you."
And so he had, in the dark tunnel. He never shed a tear and returned to the surface-world stoney and resolved.
But defeating a monster and slaying it were two different things. He had thought the monster gone, but it would visit him again, rising from the dark pit where it had made its home. It had visited him on the roof of a sunken building in Venice. It had sunk its talons into his chest and threatened to tear his heart loose. And here it was, again, in the chapel at Skyfall, vomited up from the depths it was born in. The monster crouched over him, venom from its gaping maw dripping down his face.
James Bond had only ever wept for two women. The woman he had loved, and the woman who had been more a mother than his own had ever been.