Chapter Text
It was one of the few quiet days in Q-Branch. Most agents were in the country and on downtime. The few that were out were in the reconnaissance stage of their missions, sitting still and staking out hotels, things that the agents could do with very little oversight required of the TSS of MI6.
And no action made TSS some very bored birdies. As such, Q-Branch had started a cross room discussion on weapons, and more importantly, what was the best one. Asking a bunch of weaponsmiths that question is, indubitably, a terrible idea. It was all-out warfare, some minions arguing ardently for their weapon of choice, other minions offering nothing but shooting down anyone else's, and another group dedicated to solely insulting anyone’s choice, also insulting the minion who made the choice themselves.
It was brutal.
All the while, the Quartermaster himself stood off to the side, at his desk, in deep conversation with 007 who sat across from him, perched on the edge of his desk. Discussing how Bond’s weapon of choice, his dear biometric palm-coded Walther PPK, built by Q himself, ranks among the variety of answers the minions throw out. Other senior agents mingle throughout, throwing around progressively more worrying weapon choices. A mix of some of the previous Q’s rather eccentric creations such as a wrist dart gun, a particular favourite of 008 when he is performing infiltrations. Some rather insane historical pieces were also being added to the conversation, such as the harmonica gun and a lipstick gun known as the Kiss of Death. 004, Scarlett Papava, on overhearing this suggestion, broke from her conversation and made it very clear she wanted that to be in her next mission kit, sending some engineers skittering to one of the project tables to begin production.
Because you do not say no to a Double O agent, not unless you’re Q and you are way too used to their wiles and ploys to the point of becoming immune to them. Why Q was so immune to the Double O allure had once been a major discussion point in Q branch, but it had become very apparent why, after watching Bond and Q interact with one another for longer than 5 minutes in a non-mission setting. They were enamoured with one another, at times rather cloying, though they thought they did a good job of hiding it from MI6.
They didn’t.
Therefore, no one was surprised when Bond took his seat on Q’s desk a few hours before, or when Q put aside what he was probably meant to be focused on, and instead started tinkering with the exploding pen that Bond was famous for wanting.
Their quiet discussion was halted by a yell across the room - “Hey, Tom! You’ve been quiet, what’s your favourite weapon?”.
The whole room quietened, and turned towards the voice that projected so clearly across the space. The only sounds in the now silent underground tunnels was the whirring of the servers and the odd creak of the bunker’s stone. The speaker, one of the tall bulky mechanics from the shop floor, who spent his time tinkering with the security cars that MI6 sent their executive level of staff home in, was looking directly at the far corner of the room and soon after the other staff also turned that way.
Towards the aforementioned Tom.
It was a rather dickish question. Tom was a new member of TSS, a recent transfer entering Q-Branch from the previously separate Agent Services. After the bombing of the old building and the ascension of Q as the new Quartermaster, TSS had taken a much closer watch on agents’ missions and postings as they had previously. As such, they worked a very similar job to the now defunct Agent Services, which had been decommissioned and its staff spread across the relevant departments, with some being absorbed into TSS. This allowed for agents, handlers and technicians to all work in much closer proximity and become much more efficient. Handlers knowing how the technology their agents use because they watch it get built and have to listen to technicians complain about it makes for much better response times when an agent misuses it to an explosive degree.
Tom, Thomas Watson, was plucked from his original posting in admin by R, Q’s second in command, after a night shift in which they watched him expose an informant meeting with 002 for giving fake information. Watson had been down in TSS to drop of some paperwork, and when seeing what was occurring at the screen banks, he had taken over, swatting the handler attached to 002 away and told him clear as day that he needed to “shoot the lying fuck in the head before he tries to give you some more bullcrap information, like seriously, the man has a lying twitch a mile wide, use your fuckin’ eyes.”
The handler was in shock from getting spun away from the desk in his wheely chair, the agent took all of three seconds to evaluate the informant and then put a bullet through his head, and R immediately got onto Moneypenny for a transfer, because they weren’t about to lose this guy to admin of all people. And after telling the story to Q, and then to the other senior members of Q-Branch, he was accepted for transfer immediately. TSS is always in need of people to boss agents around, especially ones that agents actually listen to. Also, no one wanted to have to tell 002, when he got back from the mission, that the “gobby little shit” that told him what to do doesn’t technically work in the branch and should have been nowhere near the mission. If Watson hadn’t been near the mission, hadn’t tipped off 002 to the rat, then it could have ended much differently. 002 in a wooden box, instead of waltzing into Whitehall a few days after.
But with Tom coming from Agent Services, in fact he was a new hire in the AS department as well, before its dissolution, Tom hadn’t had time to learn his weaponry yet. Tom was Q’s secretary, performing Q’s administrative roles for him, such as filling out and filing his paperwork, and that combined with the knowledge that Tom had previously headed to Admin, it was pretty easy for Q-Branch to figure out that Watson had had a paper pusher role within AS, not getting near the agents or their gear, unless it was to pass off After Action forms. Tom wouldn’t be able to tell his Walther from his Sauer even if both were pointed at his face.
After hearing the detailed conversations on weaponry and now being forced to answer, with little actual technical knowledge, in a new environment, with multiple genius weaponsmiths and agents watching, it is a humiliation waiting to happen. Already, the mechanic who asked was getting dirty looks from some other minions, and was looking rather sheepish. Right when he went to pipe up again, to hopefully distract and bring the attention away from Tom, Tom himself beat him to the punch.
“Axe”. He replied, and deafening silence followed.
An axe? That’s… an irregular choice. Definitely not the answer anyone had in mind for dear newbie civilian Tom Watson. While a civilian may not know specific specifications, is not a gun the first weapon on people’s tongues? And even then, if Tom was just slightly eccentric, enjoying his older weaponry, would a sword or bow not be earlier in his thought process than an axe.
Unless Tom thought the conversation was about weapons Q-Branchers could find and use in an emergency? It was unlikely, the argument had been clear, so Tom must have had to have not been listening very closely to misunderstand to such an extent. That must be it then. But when a minion asked him to specify they were shot down solidly, Tom meant what he said.
Tom Watson’s favourite weapon is an axe.
“A two-handed single blade battle axe, to be precise” he clearly announced.
Not as an emergency weapon, not a fireman’s axe as a makeshift weapon, but an actual fighting weapon.
Q-Branch was in shock.
Here is this young man (Q-Branch has never actually had Tom’s age confirmed, but all they can hope is that MI6 hasn’t started hiring minors to its service), who they have all read as quite plainly civilian, speaking of bladed weaponry, and the way he speaks makes it clear he isn’t just pulling from fiction. The deadpan voice and lack of even a twitch shows more of his cards then he probably realises, and those who specify in people reading, specifically the 00 agents scattered through the branch and the first line of handlers who also see what their agents do, can read the ease of which he speaks of the archaic weapon.
“...Alright then”, stated the mechanic who had started this whole palaver. “So, have you, like, used one before? No wait, that’s a stupid question, no one just has one of those lying about, so you must have seen it in a museum or something. Unless you’re one of those re-enactment people, but then again their weapons are props, health and safety risk and all that, so that can’t be it...”
The mechanic, with his nervous rambling, had dragged the attention back to him, his fellow minions looking at him with a mixture of embarrassment and pity for making an idiot out of himself in front of agents and his senior boss, but also appreciation for taking the attention away from Tom.
This did not last long.
A huge thud reverberated round Q-Branch, echoing down the long tunnels that TSS hadn’t fully moved into yet. All eyes swivelled back to Tom, at his desk. His little wooden desk that was sparsely decorated because he had been so busy he hadn’t had the time to fully move in and get comfortable. His little wooden desk, l-shaped, and crammed into the corner of the shop floor.
His little wooden desk that a 3, almost 4ft axe now rested on top of.
An actual battle axe.
Murmurings picked up, “what the fuck”’s and “huh”’s abounded as the whole of Q-Branch and a fair few of MI6’s best tried to figure out where the fuck Tom had just pulled this archaic weapon from.
“How did you get that into Vauxhall?” Q seemed to be one of the first to regain his bearings, way too used to the 00s shenanigans, but his questions were still tinged with a slight amount of hysteria. “Which security guards let you walk into this building with an axe?! An unregistered axe at that. Security doesn’t even let the engineers into the building with unregistered multi-tools or Swiss army knives. And yet, here you are, clearly having waltzed in with it, and no one stopped you. No one?!”
Q was getting louder and more agitated as he went, and he was soon to reach a point where not even Bond would be able to soothe him into a calmer state. Once Q started and got on a roll, there was no stopping him. One of the things Q hated most was something not making sense, something being left unexplained and being out of sorts. Out of pattern. MI6’s security had stepped up since the bombing, Q usually trusted them to do their searches and didn’t put up a fuss when they started badgering his minions to register their blades, no matter how small.
But this, this annoyed him. More than that, it confused him. And worst of all, it worried him. If security had missed this, what else had they missed?
Tom seemed sheepish, scratching the back of his neck and flicking his eyes around the room, making eye contact with everyone but the fuming Quartermaster.
“Well, the axe is mine. And it is meant to be in the building. It just, maybe, wasn’t meant to be in such close reach for me. I may have shifted its residing place during the move over to the tunnels. It should, possibly, be residing in the personnel lockers, in the archives. The lockers from when people get, um, brought into the service.” His tone was shifty and, oh, Q knew the lockers he was referring to, and he also knew why his tone was so unusual when he spoke of being brought in. Many of Q-Branch, including Q himself had been “brought” in, over the years.
When someone was caught lawbreaking, but the government thought their skills may be useful, they would bring said individual in, and give them an ultimatum. Either enter a contract with the service, or be sentenced. For those who performed more serious crimes, and were a danger to everyone if left to their own business, they were extradited to countries where their crimes would almost certainly end in the death penalty. That would have been the fate for Q himself if he had not signed that contract almost 10 years ago. Extradited to some random country he had hacked and stole the information of and sold on to make the money he would need for his engineering. But he had never hacked the British and as such, they felt his loyalty strong enough to offer a job.
“So, if I may, your record isn’t very detailed, what exactly were you brought in for?” Q asked, relaxing a bit, realising there wasn’t an outside security issue. Those lockers were never normally kept very secure, the stuff in there is normally returned to the person, or the person in question soon enough doesn’t need what they had. If Tom has kept stuff in there, it’s slightly inconvenient but nothing too serious, and as such Q decided to move on from it and into a more entertaining subject, what people did before they become part of the service, or more importantly, what were they doing that got them caught by the service.
(What Q and none of the other personnel in Q-Branch realised that day is that Tom’s locker should have been on lockdown and he should never have had unrestricted access to its contents. But unfortunately, as is true of many things in relation to Tom, the previous M, Olivia Mansfield, did not have the time to write or pass down the information and rules on Tom’s existence in the service, before she was killed. And as such, many of the pre-decided rules between those in the know about Tom’s situation were being unknowingly broken.
From Tom having access to his locker, to Tom even being in Q-Branch as a minion. Because, while R may have thought they had found an undiscovered diamond on that night they listened to Tom order 002 around, Tom’s skills and knowledge were known by those higher up, and as such he was placed in the unassuming administrative role, with the expectation he would never get near the danger and weaponry of the TSS. But with the quick succession of removals from office during the hearings, M’s death and the rest of the clearing that occurred when Mallory took over, there was simply no one left over to notice that the rules they had put into place were not being followed.)
“It’s… it’s complicated” Tommy finally shuffled out, after much thought. It got huffs and laughter and many murmurs of “hear hear”. The energy in the room, which had already been on its way to getting more comfortable, had now fully diffused with this familiar response, heard many times before. When newbies entered the service, they never wanted to speak on their previous misdeeds, thinking they would be looked down on for their past criminality, not fully realising the extent of crimes their co-workers covered.
“Alright, but we’ll get the story out of you at some point.” Q announced across the room, clearly heard over the building din of voices, “Now, we’ve had our fun, but we do actually have some work to be doing today, so let’s get on with that people, chop chop!” Accompanied by two claps of his hand, Q-Branch returned to full action, with people running about and shuttling items across the workshop floor.
Before returning to his own work, or trying to while being distracted by Bond being Bond, Q walked over to Tom and leant against the desk, running his fingers along the desk, right next to the axe.
“Tom, you can work on that here, if you ever have some free time. The fact you own it and it seems to be well worn but well-loved shows me that you know what you’re doing with it, so I’m not gonna confiscate it. Also, I’m not a teacher, I can’t really confiscate your stuff unless it's a true danger to everyone. If I had to take anything dangerous that the minions had on them, then… god I would have so much stuff I wouldn’t have the storage.” Q huffs. “But seriously, you don’t need to hide it. Just be prepared for people to be nosy and ask you all kinds of questions. It’s not exactly a common weapon around anymore and both my minions and the agents are gonna want to know if there's any modern usage for it. I hope you know you’re about to become our mediaeval weaponry expert. Do you have knowledge on any other weapons too?.” He asked sarcastically. When Tom turned red and started to open his mouth and instead just opened and closed it repeatedly like a fish, Q took point once again. “Huh, you don’t need to answer. I can see it clearly on your face. Right, well, you’re definitely becoming the expert after that.” He patted Tom on the shoulder and then U-turned back to his desk, leaving Tom to his axe and new found popularity.
If Q had noticed the wear and tear on the axe as he ran his hands along the desk, and saw the bloodstains on both the handle and the blade, then he said nothing. It was only expected for a weapon such as that to have caused some accidental injury. Whatever weird HEMA Tom used to participate in that had him using an axe must have been a health and safety nightmare. But, that was over now, Tom clearly didn’t remove the axe from the building, so he must have stopped going. Q went back to his desk and was quickly drawn into a battle of wits with Bond, the slightly worrisome details of Watson’s axe going to the back of his mind.
Because seriously, what other reason could Tom have for being able to wield a weapon like that, it’s not like people go around using mediaeval weaponry as their main form of defence anymore.
Tom was just eccentric, there was nothing to worry about.