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This hadn’t been the way it was supposed to go. He was to simply slip in and slip out and the target wasn’t supposed to react this way. James Bond had never been upset before about his job being unpredictable but now with Q hanging in the balance he wished more than anything things went according to plan.
“Don’t worry he’s still showing up on the radar, his tracker isn’t broken.” M’s voice in his ear was meant to provide reassurance but it didn’t. There were so many other things that could be done to him. Images of the wiry man on the floor in a bloody lump flashed across his mind and it made him step on the gas harder in his car so it zipped along the motorway.
The targets were using him as bait, they knew that he would come for him. Once again his private affairs had been uncovered and were being used against him, the enemy had a funny way of doing that, twisting things to try to break you. His gun felt cool against his skin as he pulled it out and set it on the passenger seat, he was nearing the townhouse they were keeping him.
Q’s microphone had since been broken but James soothed himself by imagining the breathing that would be coming from the other end, of course he was breathing, there was no other alternative. However this was work and there was no room for feelings, parking on the other side of the street he took a moment to collect himself, letting the mask slide into place as he casually got out, retrieving another gun from the dashboard and leaving the first on the passenger’s side.
The townhouse was rather beautiful, French architecture and marble on the outside. He stopped before walking up the steps to the door to admire it. He had been looking at a similar model, but the location had been far too crowded for his tastes. Pressing a hand to his ear he spoke quietly. “M do we have an idea of how many are inside?”
The reply wasn’t immediate but it came. “I’d say five, Q is on the top level.”
“Right.” This was all the confirmation he needed before lightly jaunting up to the front door and knocking on the sturdy wood, leaning back on his heels.
There was some heavy footsteps and then the sound of a clip being pushed into a gun as the door cracked open a tad bit to reveal a wary man, his eyes beady. He was just muscle, Bond could tell in the way his unknowing eyes flickered over 007, he had no idea who he was or what he had taken from him. It was a shame that an ignorant had to die but he was in fact guilty by association.
“What do you want.” The man sneered, eyes disappearing further into his face.
James moved fast.
He charged the door, left foot digging into the concrete as hard as he could so the man behind the door would stagger and let him slide in. It worked; the man however had a semiautomatic rifle and no knowledge of how to use it. He began blindly firing and a bullet narrowly dodged Bond as he raised his handgun and calmly struck him between the eyes and slammed the door shut with the heel of his expensive shoe.
The game was on, shouting upstairs was heard and Bond quickly stripped the body of its weapons before getting a map of the place. Kitchen to the left, sitting room to the right, dining room in the back. Silently he stepped over the corpse and moved to the dining room, back to the wall so he was behind the stairwell.
007 was a little disappointed, they were far too easy to pick off, the first one came down and he shot the man before he reached the bottom step. He was slammed backwards with the force of the bullet and lay still once he hit the ground. The second one came down the stairs out of his line of vision and for several tense moments he waited until he realized that the idiot was coming around through the kitchen to sneak up on him and James got down on his stomach under the table to shoot out his kneecaps when he walked in. After that it made no sense to leave him in pain especially when he was no use to him and so with a simply mercy killing he was on his way.
There were three levels in the house, M had told him Q was on the top, he had killed three cronies which meant two remained and it seemed they were smarter than the useless goons they had hired. On the second story no sounds presented themselves, no people but he heard the creek of floorboards above his head.
Stepping carefully into the room immediately to his right he turned to see a wall covered in photographs. “M,”
“007,”
“You have to see this.”
Photographs of agents at MI6 lined up against the wall, all of them with red strings leading off to people he didn’t know or had possibly no connection to MI6 at all. His eyes wandered over them, he fell on 005’s photograph. She was a kind woman, a young thing with a playful streak but a deadly shot. The red string trailing off of her photograph led to a blown up photo of a boy playing in what looked like a sandbox. A piece of paper tacked to him told Bond that it was his daycare. Another piece of string led off to a photo snapped of a man while grocery shopping, 005 was in this photo, holding his hand and laughing.
Something dreadful began to creep into his stomach as he looked over more of them. Eve’s photo, the strings leading off to two blank documents with a simple question mark scribbled in. He put a hand to his ear. “Weaknesses.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“They have been tracking the 00s, they are monitoring us to find our weaknesses. They’re trying to neutralize us by destroying people we’re close to.” He explained what he saw with 005’s set but his voice faltered when he saw his.
It was a photo of him on a mission in Cairo, his aviators on surveying the scene. His eyes traced the string and his throat closed when he saw Vesper. A red X was drawn over her face to mark her unavailability for capture and in place from that string there was Q.
Bond was in his photo, they were at a coffee shop, the one they had been in last week. Q was snickering about a joke he had made at Bond’s expense and the agent was scowling at him. James was going to be sick. There was a small post-it note over Bond’s head and he plucked it from the wall, squinting at it.
Ease of access: Relative
007 is sent away on field assignments at regular predictable intervals, arrange pick up date while he is out.
They were right of course. Q wasn’t protected; they hadn’t thought he didn’t need to be. Of course anyone involved with Bond was at risk, the Quartermaster had waved him off and now he was probably strapped to a chair somewhere upstairs with a bashed in head. He had done this, this was his fault. Bond looked over this information with new eyes, each 00 and their children or spouses, all things that would break them. Some weren’t strong enough to carry on once shaken that hard.
He fumbled with a camera he had taken along and snapped five or six photos of his own to take back to MI6 with him before moving out of the room. The rest of the rooms were empty, barren except for some paintings or bits of furniture here or there, he cleared them in no time at all before beginning the final ascent upstairs.
The stairs gave him away first but when he reached the top he wasn’t greeted by anyone. There were only two rooms on this level. One of them held Q and that was the only one he had interest in. Gun at ready he picked a door, leaning to the side so they wouldn’t see his shadow and pressed an ear to the hardwood. He closed his eyes and listened.
There were whispers, but he didn’t hear much of anything else. A ghoul preparing to ambush him perhaps? Bond would never know because with nimble fingers he opened the door, let it lazily swing open and then he shot the man in the head before shutting the door once more and stepping quickly to the other.
Fractured breathing hit him first when he saw the scene before him. This awful sound of lung being sucked in by failing lungs, almost like a balloon with a hole in it that you were trying to pump full again. Q was in a dentist chair, it had been ripped from its original stand and so they had pitted it against the wall to keep it from falling over, leather bindings were around his arms and legs.
There was a man in the far corner of the room, his arms crossed as he looked at Bond. This man belonged to no major terrorist organization, he had no ties, no reason to be doing what he was doing and he was completely inexperienced as far as villainy went. Bond cocked his head at him as he opened his mouth to speak. “The thing about weakness-,” James had no time for monologues.
The man never got to finish, all he got was a bullet in his heart and he dropped relatively gracelessly to the ground with a dull thud. 007 kicked him aside to get to the man in the chair.
Q was in a bad way to put it mildly. He was naked except for a pair of pants that were too big for him strapped onto his skinny form, there were minor cuts and bruises this way and that in places that bled heavily. Dark red oozed out of several and his face was coated in dirt and grime, infecting the tender wounds. One side of his chest was oddly caved in and it looked like they had broken several ribs and punctured his lung. However the most shocking change was that Q had no hair.
They had shaved his head.
“Q,” 007 said gently, trying to sound unaffected. “Q can you hear me?”
“Bond…?” came the faint reply, he didn’t open his eyes as James fiddled with the leather bindings. “How lovely for you to drop in. I wasn’t cleaned up for company.”
Bond’s stomach felt heavy at the attempted banter. “I’m so-.”
“Ugh you idiot.” Even in a weakened state it seemed he had time to berate the agent. “Don’t apologize.” He cracked his eyes open just a bit to look at him. “I also wouldn’t mind if you cooked dinner tonight.”
“I don’t know if I can find time in my busy schedule between rescuing you and filing damage reports.” It was hard to talk around the lump in his throat.
“Get… Moneypenny to do them.” Pain crossed Q’s face as his breathing faltered for a second. Bond freed his legs and set his gun in the Quartermaster’s lap before scooping him up in his arms easily. It bothered him that he was lighter than usual.
He cleared the first flight of stairs and was going to make his way down to the first level and leave the house but he walked by the room with all the photographs and paused. He hesitated despite M’s voice in his ear providing instructions to leave it be. He thought about that photo of him and Q together, how the man in his arms’ only crime was being involved with him. He thought about 005 and her son and husband, that if this information got into the wrong hands she might have to come and get a bloody mess of a child from someone’s clutches.
Q’s head was resting on his shoulder, his eyes trailed off in the direction he was looking. “What is it?” he asked, Bond was reminded he was also blind without his glasses.
“Nothing.” He replied gently, shifting Q’s weight momentarily to dig into his pocket for a lighter. M was shouting something about intel gathering but Bond calmly flicked the flint and watched the flame appear, holding it under the photo of them at the coffee shop, watching it smoke and the flames distort and curl around the base, engulfing then igniting the string and demolishing Vesper’s as well. He waited a few moments until he was sure the entire thing would be destroyed before reshouldering Q and heading back down the flight of steps.
“I have to say… I wouldn’t recommend this torture business to anyone.” The Quatermaster wheezed against Bond’s chest.
007 gave a noncommittal grunt, pausing as he heard movement.
The weight in his arms didn’t give him enough time to respond and it seemed to happen in slow motion. The man he had shot in the dining room was apparently still clinging to life like the rat he was, blood pouring out of his chest wound as he had dragged himself forward, Bond’s gun in his hands that he had dropped in favor of the automatic rifle. The shot would’ve hit Q and he made a call, he dropped the man in his arms it would seem right as the bullet was fired and he was struck in the chest plate dead center, the force making him stagger back. His return fire wasn’t aimed at all and he wondered if it hit him.
The thump of his body hitting the ground made him wince and the feeling of something being yanked out of his ear was the last one before he lulled off.
--
The hospital was very cold and crisp, Bond was well acquainted with St. Bart’s. He shifted slightly in his gown and opened his eyes to the grey dingy London morning that was upon them. Someone was standing beside his bed on the other side and he winced as he turned his head to look up.
Q was a strange sight with no hair, even if he was dressed like normal. His cardigan hung looser than preferred around his shoulders and a band-aid was over one particularly deep cut on his cheek but other than that he looked as if he had been heavily clawed by his cat. The Quartermaster smiled tightly down at him. “Welcome to the waking world.” He said.
“How long was I out?”
“Oh not long, maybe twelve hours. Just enough time for me to clean up and get dressed.” He replied. “The doctors said you should be fine, the bullet at close range caved your chest in pretty bad, they were sorting you out. You’ll be good to go tonight.”
Bond nodded slowly, extending a hand which Q took, dragging a chair over to sit down. “Are you alright?” he asked.
Q readjusted his glasses before nodding. “I’m always alright, far worse has happened to me.”
007 frowned. “Hardly.”
“Seeing you get carted back from missions a bloody mess or having to stitch you up at the flat is a far worse fate for me than a few papercuts and a haircut.” The Quartermaster responded, staring at Bond’s callused hands against his pale white ones. “I’ll be okay, M’s given me the week off, I’ll be terribly bored.”
James tried to suppress his grin. “Well I suppose I’ll have to keep you entertained then.” He sighed. Exhaustion overtook him once more and his hold on Q’s hand went limp as a pair of familiar lips pressed themselves against his forehead before taking leave.