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James woke to the sound of boots stomping into his cell. He didn't react. He knew what would be coming. Another day of torture. The scorpion, the water, the beatings. It didn’t frighten him anymore. Fear had left a long time ago, and now everything was a daze of pain and emptiness.
But this time, something was different. A new voice gave orders in Korean, and James lifted his head and distantly realized that the man in his cell was new. The guards dragged him to his feet and cuffed him. That was part of the routine, but this time, they chained his feet too. James couldn’t muster the energy to wonder why.
A blindfold came down over his eyes, and James's shoulders slumped. So there was to be some new mind game today. He felt nothing more than exhaustion.
"This is your lucky day, Mr James," his captor announced, in English. "You're being transferred."
"Oh, you know how it is," James said, tiredly. "After the first few months, all these torture camps start to look the same."
"Not a camp, Mr James. You're being - what is the word?" His captor exchanged words with the guards in Korean, laughing. "Privatized. You're being privatized."
"What the hell does that mean?" James said, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.
"Just what it sounds like. You're being sold off to private interests." The man barked orders in Korean, and James was seized and dragged out of his cell, down the hallway. He didn't resist. He had stopped resisting a long time ago.
He was dragged into the back of a truck and dumped there, like a bag of potatoes. He lay there and distantly wished he could see. It might be pleasant to finally see something other than the inside of his cell.
He did not know how long he was in the truck. Time had become meaningless for him. But he was aware of a certain soreness, when the truck finally came to a halt and he was dragged out.
"I brought the goods," James heard his captor saying in English. "You have my payment?"
"As promised, eight million won in cash," said a British accented voice. "More than enough to buy you passage across the border to China, and from there - well, the world’s your oyster."
That voice. It was familiar, and yet it felt like it came from another world, another life. Behind the blindfold, James shut his eyes. He felt like he was drifting. Was any of this real?
“Now leave us,” the familiar voice commanded. “Mr. Bond and I have unfinished business.”
James listened to the sound of footsteps, of the prisoner transport van driving away. He wondered how his “escape” would be taken by the North Korean authorities. Would they believe he’d been rescued by MI6?
He felt calloused hands on his head, gently undoing the blindfold, and the cloth fell away from his eyes. James blinked in the suddenly-bright light, and for a moment he was blinded. But slowly, his eyes focused on the man standing over him. The blond hair, blue eyes, square jaw, the tracing of cruel scars on his face.
Alec, James thought, indescribable emotion swelling in his chest. Alec!
Thoughts and emotions tangled in his head, one after the other, too many to ever put to words. Alec was dead, James had seen him fall and die. And then: He’s going to kill me. That’s why he paid for me to be ‘rescued.’ Revenge. It was always about revenge. And with that last thought came a flood of relief. Because it was over now, finally. There would be no more torture. Alec would give him a good clean end. And he wouldn’t even be alone when it happened, lost in a foreign country with no familiar faces - because Alec was here.
Alec smirked down at him. “Surprised to see me? Yes, I thought you would be. It’s taken me a long time to recover from what you did to me. But you didn’t think it would be that easy to get rid of me, did you? After all, I was always MI6’s best.” He drew his pistol from its holster, checked it, and flicked off the safety. “Imagine my disappointment when I found out the North Koreans had gotten to you before I did. What a shame, what a shame . . . but I intend to be the one to send you to your final rest.” He cocked the gun, and aimed it at James’s head. “Any last words, James?”
“Yes,” James said, looking up at Alec. He shut his eyes, waiting for the end. “Thank you, Alec.”
James heard the gun go off, and his whole body jerked back with the sound of it. For a moment, he thought he really had been shot - but there was no pain, no impact, just his heart pounding in his chest. He blinked his eyes open, and looked around him.
Alec was pointing the gun over James’ shoulder, and there was a bullet lying on the concrete floor behind James. James looked up at Alec, and Alec looked down at him. For a moment, he seemed as surprised by his actions as James did.
“Fuck,” Alec said. He looked away, his teeth bared, and his hand dropped to his side. For a moment, his scarred face was unguarded, self-disgust and bitterness showing on his face.
James looked up at him, shaking. “Why?” he demanded.
Alec scowled, and whipped around to face his henchmen. The glimpse of vulnerability was gone. “Get him into the car,” he ordered. “We’ll be bringing him back across the border with us.”
The journey to China was a long car ride and a short ferry ride. James was conscious of the fact that, despite the secrecy and the handcuffs, this was the most comfortable he’d been in a long time. The car was warm, with soft seats, and whatever was coming next, no one was hurting him right now. He didn’t try to talk to Alec, or to escape. He told himself it would be wiser to wait until they were in China for any escape attempts - but in truth, he simply didn’t have the energy.
He spent the car ride staring blankly out the window, simply enjoying the sight of the outside world, after so long in his cell. He was half-convinced that he would wake up back in the camp again. The world seemed like a dream to him.
And then they were across the river, Alec paying the ferryman for the dangers involved, and in China. There was another long drive, and James fell asleep in the car. He had learned to grab his sleep where he could.
When he woke up, the car was stopped, and Alec was gazing thoughtfully at him. James looked back, tired and defiant.
“We’re here,” Alec said, quietly.
“What now?” James asked, equally quiet. “What happens to me?”
Alec studied James’ face. James wondered what he saw there. Did Alec even recognize him, under the scraggly beard, the long hair, the ragged clothes and bruised, dirty skin? There were new lines on Alec’s face - creases left by a lifetime of hard living and simmering anger. Back when they had been partners, closer than blood, they had never dreamed they would live this long.
“They broke you, didn’t they, James?” Alec said, softly.
“No,” James said, immediately. “I didn’t talk. I didn’t talk.”
“There’s more than one way to break.” A bitter little smile toyed at Alec’s lips. “Believe me.”
He reached out, as if to put his hand on James’ shoulder, and James flinched away instinctively, his heart pounding. The last hundred or so times someone had touched him, it had been to beat him.
Alec pulled his hand back, looking unsurprised, and shook his head. “You’re not yourself, James. Killing you like this would give me no satisfaction. So I’m going to give you a chance to recuperate, and then I’m going to kill you.”
James didn’t say anything. He thought, He’s lying to himself. What Alec was saying made no sense, and James knew Alec too well, even after all these years, to think he was insane. But you didn’t get far in MI6 if you didn’t know how to lie to yourself.
Alec shook his head again, opened the car door, and stood. He turned to his men. “Bring him to my quarters. I’ll be there shortly; I have to make arrangements.”
There was a pause. A voice asked, in a Chinese accent, “Your - your quarters, sir?”
“Did I stutter?” Alec snapped. “My quarters. I don’t pay you to ask questions.” And his footsteps retreated off out of James’ hearing.
James was carried like a bag of potatoes out of the car into the base. From the outside, it looked like any office building. It was completely unremarkable, except for two things: its presence out in rural China, and the logo on its front door. It was the Janus logo, a two-sided face outlined in red and black.
James thought: Janus. He’s really back. And yet he was too tired to feel afraid.
Inside, it looked like a military base, with armed guards clad in black combat gear manning security checkpoints. Alec’s rooms were in the basement of the building, a sort of underground bunker decked out with lavish living quarters. Alec had always had a taste for the luxurious.
The guards settled Bond on the ground, unchained his feet, and left him there. James lay there like a dead weight, staring at the bottom of Alec’s bed. Slowly, he became aware that he was desperately hungry and thirsty, and that Alec almost certainly had running water somewhere in his rooms. He rolled over onto his back to survey the room, and glimpsed a bathroom through a half-open door.
Slowly, every muscle in his body protesting, he stood, swaying - was the scorpion poison still in his system? - and staggered towards the bathroom. He braced himself against the sink, and caught his first glimpse of himself in the mirror.
He didn’t recognize himself. His normally immaculate hair hung in lank, matted strands down to his shoulders, his face was dirty and bruised, and a messy, untrimmed beard grew over his face. Through the ripped, filthy t-shirt, he glimpsed a body grown pale and skinny from long captivity. Even his eyes were different. There was something dead and apathetic in them that he didn’t recognize.
There was an empty cup sitting by the bathroom sink. James filled it with shaking hands, and drank, and filled it again, and drank. When it was empty, he hurled it at the bathroom mirror, and felt a spark of satisfaction at the crash of breaking glass. His reflection vanished behind a spiderweb of cracks.
The water sat uneasily in his stomach. He swayed on his feet, a wave of exhaustion overwhelming him, and sank to the bathroom floor. Just a little nap, he thought to himself. And then he would get up and think about escaping.
Darkness took him again.
“Well, well, James, your standards for accommodations certainly have fallen.”
James jolted awake, and for a moment, lying on the cold, hard floor, he was certain he was back in his cell. It had all been a dream. Of course it had been.
And then he saw the bright bathroom light, the white tile, and Alec’s expensive boots. He looked up. “I’ll have to have a word with the hotel manager,” he said, blearily. “This bed is as hard as a rock. Disgraceful.”
Alec smirked, and knelt down next to him. “I ought to bill you for repairs. I quite liked that mirror, you know.”
“Should’ve thought about that before you let an imprisoned 00 agent into your bedroom,” James muttered. His eyes slipped shut again.
“Ah, no,” Alec said. “Stay with me, James. We need to get you cleaned up . . . I can’t have you stinking up my bedchambers like this.” He reached out to help James to his feet, and this time, James didn’t flinch away. Alec’s arms were warm around him, and James thought how long it had been since anyone had touched him gently. Since he had seen a friendly face.
Stop that, he warned himself. Alec wasn’t his friend. Alec was Janus, the man he thought he’d killed years ago. The man who would kill him someday soon, if he wasn’t careful. He pushed Alec away, and stood on his own.
“Get in the shower, James,” Alec said. “I’ll sweep up the glass.” He paused. “You can stand in the shower on your own, can’t you?”
“Yes,” James said. He was determined to make that true.
“Get on with it, then,” Alec said.
James glanced down at himself, and then, still clothed, stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain between himself and Alec. Only then did he strip off the ragged t-shirt and filthy pants.
Alec had seen him naked many times. Changing from stealth gear to enemy uniforms, stripping down clothing contaminated by chemical weapons, bathing naked in streams. Even, once or twice, sexually, the two of them entertwined with the same woman. Nudity had never been a big deal between them. But now James’ body was pale and weak and scarred, and he hated the thought of Alec seeing him like this.
He had been allowed to shower once or twice in North Korea, shoved under cold water with his clothes still on. But this bore no resemblance to a cold prison shower. James luxuriated under the hot water, lathering his long hair and letting the hot water wash the dirt of prison off of his skin. How long had it been, since he’d had a hot shower? Not since before the mission to North Korea. Not since England. It was strange, how much more human it made him feel. Not an animal in a pen, being hosed off for the convenience of his captors, but a man again.
He only realized how long he had been standing under the shower, gazing at the wall, when the water began to run cold. He quickly finished washing, and stepped out of the shower.
Alec was gone, along with the shattered remains of the mirror and the cup, but there was a pair of thick, fluffy towels - monogrammed A. T. - and a set of clothes, black slacks and a military green dress shirt. Alec’s clothes, James realized. As if James was a friend crashing on Alec’s couch, and not a prisoner who had been brought here in chains.
James dried himself and dressed. With the weight he’d lost, the shirt fit fine, although the pants were a bit short around the ankles. It hardly mattered. James doubted he’d be attending any cocktail parties during his stay here anyway.
Alec knocked on the door. “Are you decent, James?” Evidently he had noticed James’ new shyness.
“Am I ever?” James called back. “Come in.”
Alec entered the bathroom, and looked James up and down. “Well, you clean up nicely,” he commented.
“Do you have a razor?” James asked. “I could use a shave.” He ran a hand over his scraggly beard.
“Well, yes, I do, but I seem to be short a mirror just now,” Alec said, drily. He reached into his bathroom cabinet, and pulled out a straight razor. He considered it for a moment, and then his eyes flickered to James, and he pocketed the razor.
“Afraid I’ll slit your throat, Alec?” James asked, with a tired smirk.
“Always, James.” Alec reached back into the cabinet again, and found an electric razor, the blade guarded. “Sit on the sink.”
James swallowed, and stepped past Alec to sit on the sink, a little unsteadily. He didn’t break eye contact with Alec as the shorter man approached him, the razor in hand.
James’s eyes flicked to the pocket where Alec had hidden the straight razor. “Should I be afraid that you’re going to slit my throat?” James asked.
Alec found a can of shaving foam in the bathroom cabinet, and sprayed some into his hands. His hands came up to cup James’ jaw, spreading the foam over his beard, and James shivered, his eyes sliding shut at the unfamiliarly gentle touch.
“If I did,” Alec asked, softly, “Would you thank me again?”
James didn’t answer for a moment. He sat there in silence as Alec lathered up his face, and set the electric razor against James’ skin. He flinched, a little, as the razor started up, and Alec put a damp hand on his shoulder, steadying him. James leaned into the touch.
“Alec,” he breathed. “I’m tired.”
The razor paused in its path, and then continued to brush gently over James’ skin. “I know,” Alec said, softly. “After this, you can rest. We’ve shared a bed before, after all.”
“I threw away my suicide pill a long time ago,” James said, his eyes still closed. “Not my style. I don’t believe in giving up.”
The soft whirr of the razor brushed across James’ face. “But you’ve never been one to turn down an opportunity when it presents himself,” Alec said, softly. “Not even this one.”
James breathed in. “I didn’t tell the North Koreans anything,” he said, quietly. “You should know that I won’t tell you anything either. No matter what you do to me.”
The razor paused in its path for a moment, and then resumed. “I’m not going to torture you, James,” Alec said. “Not really my style.” A hand cupped James’ jaw, and tipped his head up to shave down his neck. “I don’t need your intel. By this point, yours is almost as outdated as mine. And my needs are different than North Korea’s.”
“And what exactly are your needs, Alec?” James asked. The razor traced down his neck.
Alec was silent for a moment. James listened to the whir of the razor.
“Did you ever regret it?” Alec breathed. “That moment, on the radio tower . . . did you ever regret letting go?”
Alec’s hands were soft on James’s face, and the warm shower vapor and the whir of the razor were lulling him back to sleep. “No,” he said, quietly. “I didn’t.”
“But?” Alec prompted, as if he could hear the word hovering in the air.
James breathed out. His eyes were still shut. “I missed you,” he said, very, very softly.
A warm, wet towel brushed gently over James’ face, wiping away the shaving cream. “Who knew the great James Bond had a heart,” Alec said.
“Not for long,” James said. “If you’re going to kill me.”
It was a test. They both knew Alec wasn’t going to kill him. If he had wanted to, he would have done it the moment James got here.
Alec chuckled. A hand came up and stroked down James’ face, wiping away a bit of extra shaving cream. “No,” he said, softly. “Not for long.” His hands rested on James’ shoulders. “Come to bed with me,” he said.
Sleeping with the enemy . . . well, Alec was right. They had shared a bed before. But not like this. It had always been a matter of convenience, making use of the space and the money they had available. James knew for a fact that Alec had more than enough space now. There was no reason for the two of them to share a bed - except for the fact that Alec wanted him here. And that had never happened before. They had never been . . . intimate in that way before. Not because they had to be, or because they were chasing the same woman, or as a joke or a convenience - but because they wanted to be.
“If I asked you to get me my own room - or my own cell, or whatever,” James said, opening his eyes, “Would you do it?”
Alec studied his face. “Yes,” he said, simply.
James shut his eyes again, and stood, leaning into Alec’s touch. “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s go to bed.”
They walked out into the bedroom, arm in arm, and Alec helped James into bed. James wasn’t sure he needed the help - but he didn’t resist. He lay there in the silken sheets, and felt as if he was floating. The cozy luxury of Alec’s rooms was as unlike his cell as it was possible to get, and it was hard to believe in this reality.
Alec slipped into the bed alongside him, and James wondered if Alec planned to come on to him now. He wondered, distantly, what he would do if that happened.
Instead, Alec turned on his side, and pulled James into his arms. James let his head rest on Alec’s chest. This close, he could hear Alec’s heartbeat. Alec reached over, and flicked off the lights, leaving the two of them alone in warm darkness.
“Why did you save me?” James asked, into the darkness.
Alec was silent for a moment. “Revenge, my dear James,” he said. “Isn’t that what it’s always about?”
James shut his eyes. “Liar,” he whispered. “Try again.”
Alec chuckled. His hand came up, and carded through James’ too-long hair. “Perhaps,” he said, sounding resigned, “I just got into the habit of having your back.” His hand was steady and soothing, and James felt himself drifting off to sleep again. “Can’t seem to get out of it, even if you can.”
“One of us ought to have a heart, after all,” James said, softly.
Alec’s arms came to rest around James’ shoulders, holding him close. “Who would have thought it would be me, eh?”
James smiled. As his thoughts faded away into blackness, he said, “I would.”
And then he was asleep.