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Tanner smiling was usually a good thing. It meant work was done, paperwork complete, impending doom postponed until next Tuesday at least.
Q and Eve recoil from the monitor. M winces.
Impending doom has never seemed more likely.
“I should give in now.” The Chief of Staff’s voice crackles through the speakers, sharp yet conversational.
“Relying on backup?” His assailant spits. “They'll never make it in time.”
Tanner shrugs. “Oh, but when they do.” He hasn't stopped grinning, like a cat who has the cream. No, Q thinks, a shark who has found a whole shoal of blind, stupid and really tasty fish. “And I must confess to being slightly insulted.”
She looks down on him. “I don't see why. Tied to a chair, disarmed, heart of your enemy's base, and wholly powerless. Even for a desk jockey, pencil pusher like you.” Tanner doesn't respond, just grins. “Stop that,” she says, with a flash of irritation.
“007, ETA 10 minutes,” Eve mutters.
“Hurry the fuck up,” M says, barely audible. Q nibbles his fingernails in agitation.
Back on the screen, after a minute of silent grinning from Tanner, she steps into his personal space, screaming “Stop grinning!”
As soon as she gets close enough, Tanner smacks his forehead against her nose with a crack and a spray of blood. He rocks forwards onto his toes as she recoils, spinning and smashing his chair against her side. She falls, unconscious, and Tanner turns to deal with the guards who arrived at the noise. Bill has splintered chair legs attached to his arms with cable ties, blood over his face - none his own - and he's still grinning.
The guards find reason to pause.
A guard fires at him and the spell is broken. Tanner lifts his forearm and the oak leg catches the bullet for him. Keeping it raised over his face, he advances like a gladiator of old, lashing out with a flick of his wrist to send the splintered end an inch into the nearest guard’s belly and rip it out again. He slams the solid wood into one's temple, using the other to trap the gun and snatch it from his hand with a crack of breaking fingers. The last is fleeing into the corridor, having grabbed Tanner's bag from the table and Bill gives chase. More assailants appear and Q, Eve and M watch in somewhat horrified silence as Tanner calmly and effectively uses no more than two blunt objects to hold off eight attackers loosely ringed around him.
Silence reigns in the corridor. Tanner is surrounded by prone forms. He collects his bag from one. James whirls around the corner and gives a rare, genuine smile.
“Good to see you well, Bill.”
“Bond-” M manages.
He looks at the camera. “You've not read his file. Failed his double-oh tests for asthma alone." His grin vanishes. "Shit, where’s your inhaler?”
Bill, doubled over and wheezing, gives a flailing gesture at his bag with a chair leg. James fishes out a blue plastic tube and pats Bill's back while he relearns how to breathe. Other agents clear up Tanner's mess and Bill sits against the wall so that James can cut him free of the bloody chair legs.
“Sir,” Bill says shakily. “They were after the case files which I still have. The girl said that-”
“Never mind that.” M breaks out of his shocked reverie. “Are you all right?”
“...fine, sir. But she said-”
“Jesus, Bill,” Eve says.
James puts his arm around Bill. “Wait until we get back.”
“Bill!”
Bill feels the air rush out of him as Eve wraps her arms around him suddenly, partially as a braking system. He returns the hug out of habit.
“Oh my god, are you okay?” She cradles his face, looking terrified.
Bill shakes his head. “Nope. Look, cable ties are a bitch.” He holds up his wrists for inspection with a small smile. Eve huffs a laugh, hugging him again.
“Q, I think I lost my gun. You may have to move me down the leaderboard,” Bill says over Eve's shoulder.
“Extenuating circumstances,” Q says instantly, and it means I'm glad you're okay.
M pats him on the back and disappears with the case files. There's a glass of brandy on his desk later - Bill's favourite, which he can't afford - his favourite cake, his gun and a note.
The glass was already here, but Q’s working on a better inhaler, Eve has gone to get you cake and I'd like to return your gun. Not heartless, but don't tell anyone.
J.B.