Chapter Text
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Three days before he is supposed to be cleared for active duty, Bond gets a phone call at six in the morning, moments before his own alarm is set.
“What?” he says briskly.
“You need to come in. Now.”
Bond is awake and dressed in a matter of moments, and when he asks what’s the trouble, Eve simply says, “It’s Q.”
There are six red lights on the way to MI6. Bond bypasses them all by running every single one with his hand on the horn.
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Q is not a field agent. His laugh had veered on the hysterical when Bond casually inquired whether or not he'd ever considered it, even as a child.
“I’m perfectly content to destroy things from the safety of my desk, thank you,” he’d said.
It's a good thing, too. Without Q's smart-arse comments, the occasional hotel recommendation, and even the helpful warnings about someone standing behind him with a machete, Bond's job would be exceedingly dull—apart from the danger and murder and international crises, of course.
Sometimes, Q even gives some vague directions about the missions, but Bond typically ignores those, if only to hear Q raise his voice—a rare, invigorating occurrence.
That’s Bond’s theory about why they work so well together: they don’t listen to each other, ever. It’s a wonderful working relationship based entirely on endless frustration.
Bond is accustomed to Q, and he'd like to keep it that way.
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As he breaks multiple traffic laws, Bond easily registers that Q might be dying. He swallows the fact with barely a ripple in his temperament. Q might be dead. Q might be dead. He chants it to himself. Q might be dead.
The moment he enters the building, a secretary falls in with his stride and begins explaining things (and the fact that it isn’t Eve or Tanner is a very, very bad sign). Four days ago, Q was sent off for a meeting with Mr. Gee, a recently defected computer genius hiding out in Brussels to avoid imprisonment. It wasn’t even real field work, this stranger assured Bond, only a brief meeting. Q was the only one with the training, confidence, and skill to do what Gee requested: for safety in London, he was willing to trade a few secrets, a few names, that might get Britain ahead of the game. So Q was sent out to securely connect Gee’s information through to MI6’s network.
“Naturally, he was the only one for the job, it was simpler, and he wasn’t supposed to be in any danger. The Chinese still think Gee’s en route to Ulan Bator.”
“How did you manage to get him on a plane?” Bond asks, remembering the look of deep loathing Q had shot him when Bond suggested he accompany him to New York for a clean pick-up assignment.
“We didn’t. He took the Eurostar.”
“Of course he did.” Bond quickens his step, because he still doesn’t really know what’s going on—and Q might be dead.
The man in tow catches up, slightly out of breath with the speed of his recap. “Everything was going according to plan, and the information was successfully transferred from Gee’s computer, but somebody slid under our radar—”
“That’s happening too often lately,” Bond notes.
“—and they shot Gee, and now they’re after Q, and—”
“He has no fucking idea what he’s doing,” Bond finishes. “And why isn’t there proper evac?”
“There is, ETA twenty-four minutes. But….”
The secretary looks terrified that if Bond doesn’t like what he hears, he might send him sprawling to the floor.
“But?”
“He’s underground. They chased him to the sewers. He fell. And there are two men on his tail. He hasn’t got twenty-four minutes. M wanted you here because you’re the only double-0 agent on hand.”
If Bond was the sort of person who panicked, or who didn’t know how to keep his heart rate level while awaking in an unknown hospital or while hooked up to a lie detector machine, he would need to close his eyes and count backwards from ten. As it is, he is an agent, and even this level of inadequacy in so delicate a situation does not faze him.
“Why do we even have a bloody retrieval crew if they can’t retrieve anything? Don’t answer that. Where the hell is M?”
“Here, commander, they’re—”
Bond nearly hits him with the edge of the door in his haste and jogs the rest of the way to the control room.
(Q might be dead.)
The blinds are drawn around the wide windows overlooking the city, casting the whole room in an eery darkness. There is a full crew working overtime at the back computers, most of them ashen-faced underlings from Q branch, but at the main screen, Eve, M, Tanner, and several low-ranking operatives are nervously gathered. Eve’s fingers clench the edge of the table. On the screen, a heart rate monitor beeps swiftly and with consistent figures.
(Q is not dead.)
“007,” M greets calmly.
“What’s happening?”
Onscreen is a spider’s web of jagged red lines, with one stationary blue spot near the northeast tangle.
“He’s stuck,” Eve says.
Then, curiously, Q speaks. His voice comes from everywhere all at once, but in the smallest whisper that barely carries over the sound of rushing water. “I am not stuck,” he says indignantly. “I am hiding. Those are two entirely different situations.”
“He’s also wounded,” Eve says.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Q says, voice echoing, “I’ve jostled my knee, I’m not dying, Miss Moneypenny.”
Eve gives Bond a darkly significant look. A short-tempered, swearing Q is a Q at the end of his rope.
“Why aren’t you directing him out?”
“007?” Q says. “Is that you? My God, it took you long enough.”
“We’re trying,” Tanner hisses, “but he isn’t responding well.”
“He’s stuck,” Eve says again.
Bond doesn’t know what the hell that means, but Q still isn’t moving, and that’s a problem if he’d like to stay alive.
“Where’s the fucking rescue?”
“At least somebody’s on my side,” Q says.
“ETA twenty minutes,” one of the underlings say. Bond wants to throttle him, even though it isn’t his fault. Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes. That’s nothing for a field agent, but for somebody who’s never seen real combat, or even fired a gun outside training, twenty minutes is the difference between survival and a hole in the head.
“Q,” Bond says, “you have to move.”
“Oh, on the contrary, I think I’m perfectly fine here.”
“Q, listen to me. There are two men after you, and the faster you get yourself up into a crowd, the safer you’ll be. You need to move. The nearest exit is forty meters down to your right.”
There’s a long, strained silence. Q’s voice grows, if possible, even smaller.
“I can’t.”
Bond scowls, irritated. “What do you mean, you can’t? I thought it was only your knee.”
“Listen. I can’t. I really—I can’t seem to—make myself move, actually. It’s silly, but—” and his voice goes very high, almost air-thin “—you see, I killed one of those men a moment ago and now there are only two bullets left in my gun and there is—there is blood all over my favorite trousers. And it is exceedingly dark in this fucking sewer and it smells like—exactly like you imagine, and I am not stuck, I am hiding.”
Bond clenches his fist tight enough to crack knuckles.
They don’t train for this. They can never articulate the frightening thrill of murder, or simulate the explosion of a bullet through skin and skull and brain. The screams are always so much louder in real life. The blood is always hotter, the shock of imminent death crippling.
Q is twenty-six next October and has never so much as run over a cat with his car.
“Was he about to kill you?” Bond asks.
“Yes, if the Beretta was any indication. It was a girl gun, 007, you would have been appalled.”
“Oi,” Eve says, not smiling, but making herself sound amused. It’s all in the game play, now.
“I’ll buy you a new pair of trousers,” Bond says. “I’ll have them made special, in France. And you’ll never have to choose between an airplane or the disaster of human transportation that is Eurostar ever again.”
“Good,” Q says. His breath trembles. “Good, because somebody brought a ukulele and treated the entire carriage to a horrible rendition of ‘What’s New Pussycat’ until a terrifying Frenchman cut the strings with a pair of nail clippers.”
Tanner opens his mouth to speak, but Eve actually swats his shoulder to shut him up, then encourages Bond with a single nod.
“Appalling,” Bond says to Q.
“Nobody properly appreciates Tom Jones anymore,” Q laments.
Bond keeps his eye on the heart monitor—slowing down, evening out. So this is what it feels like, keeping an agent under control. Being the voice in somebody else’s head. How does Q do it every day? Bond is utterly useless, unable to do anything but give direction and encouragement from hundreds of miles away. Standing by makes him furious with the helplessness of it.
“Q, it’s all right,” Bond says. “Get up. You have to move.”
“I may have left out the part where I can’t put any weight on my leg.”
“Move anyway. You said it yourself, you’re not dying.”
“Easy for you to say, Monsieur Feel No Pain.” But there’s the slide of gravel, a huff of breath, and he adds, “Okay. Where am I going?”
Bond directs him carefully. At a painstakingly slow pace, the little blue dot begins meandering down one of the veins, pausing at every corner as Q leans against the wall and check around the edge to check for threats. It goes according to plan. Almost.
“Ah,” Q says—not the ah of discovery, rather a tone of sheer terror that only those familiar with Q would recognize. His heart rate spikes. The atmosphere changes again.
“What?” M says. “Report, Q.”
“He found me,” Q says faintly.
Pow. The gunshot sounds tinny and fake through the speakers, but the shouts are real. There is suddenly nothing but the pulse of Q’s unsteady breathing, and a myriad of crashes, hand brushing stone or a heavy foot dragging behind him—
And Bond sees everything clearly, because he knows these situations like he knows his own history: The only light reflects on the sewer water from far above. The guiding glow from his small torch gave momentary comfort, but perhaps Q lost it in a tussle, or as he fell from the bottom of a ladder and cracked his kneecap. Now, his eyes have adjusted, but the danger is closer, a man trained for combat coming around the corner with a gun held level. Q runs, of course, but with his bad knee, he doesn’t get anywhere quickly. The water from the sewers rushes all around him. Two bullets left, because his first murder was messy and unprofessional; two seconds left before he’s shot in the head; two eyes that cannot see in the darkness.
Another bang, an echoing shout, a heavy splash.
“Right,” Q says loudly, and he pulls the trigger.
“Q. Report, Q!” M urges, the first to break the abrupt silence.
There is only the sound of another slide of heel against stone, a small thump, like a thin body falling to the ground, and the erratic, elevated beeping of his heart from the vitals onscreen. It is fast and strong. Bond keeps his eyes wide open, but his teeth grind together.
“I killed him too,” Q says. He takes a shaky breath. “Oh, Christ. I've killed them both.”
“Go,” Bond says. “Get up. Go now, Q.”
He goes without complaint. His panting is loud and heavy and glorious proof that he will resurface completely intact.
“There should be a door on your immediate left,” Bond says, beating Eve to the punch.
“It won’t open,” Q says faintly. “If you tell me to put my back into it, I will unapologetically poison your next martini.”
Bond smirks, almost dizzy with relief. “Put your back into it.”
“Fuck you,” Q says, but he heaves once, twice, curses again, and he’s through, saying flatly, “Lovely, a ladder.”
“ETA 6 minutes until rescue,” Tanner supplies quietly.
“Yes, they aren’t at all tardy,” Q says. He sounds exhausted, like every word is an exercise in maintaining his cheek, and Bond isn’t surprised when he says, “You know, I think I’ll just stay here. Let them carry me up like the hero I am.”
Bond can picture this, too: Q leaning against the wall, or perhaps slipping to the stone floor, hand gripping his thigh just above his injured knee, glasses askew and dusty, hands shaking, the blood on his trousers not yet browning. He is a hero, after all, isn’t he?
"Just so you know, I want a parade when I get back," Q says. "Perhaps a statue erected in my honor. My name on a marquee above MI6 sounds delightful. What do you say?"
Q is not dead.
"You can have anything you want," Bond says. “But only because I’m impressed you even know how to fire a gun.”
“Well, every now and then…”
“…a trigger has to be pulled.”
Bond tips his head forward and mentally steadies himself, closing his eyes.
Q is not dead.
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