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~*~
He didn’t talk about her at work. Not even with old M, though she had known. His adoption of Soun had been very quick and very hushed, thanks to a mutual friend who had worked in personal at the time.
Soun’s mother, Ami, had been a hell of a field agent. She spoke seven languages and was the best shot Bond had ever seen. And the woman had legs for miles. Not that he’d ever have told her, he valued his genitals too much for that kind of stupidity. She’d been killed because Bond let a man get away. It was a death that had rocked him like nothing before, one for which he still held himself responsible.
It was Martha who helped the adoption go through. She’d worked in personnel and had been a good friend of Soun’s. James took legal guardianship, had promised to pay for all of Soun’s needs. But they all knew it wasn’t practical to have a toddler living under his roof. Martha and her husband had a daughter Soun’s age, Cara, so he named them her god parents.
Martha was a good women and a good mother, even to people who weren’t her children. Short and stout Irish woman, with fire red hair and a kind smile, people took to trusting her. But Martha was known to be fierce as a grizzly when prompted, a none nonsense type even at the best of times. Her husband was welsh, a thin reedy man named Daniel, who taught elementary school music classes. He’d known Soun was good as gold in their capable hands.
At first he had regretted the decision. Not to be financially responsible for her, that she deserved at least, but to be a part of her life. Sure he could come for holidays, make plans to see her when she could get away from school. But why not just give her a single cohesive family, without tacking on the baggage of a dead mother and an absentee adopted father?
Because he was selfish, that’s why. He liked the normality that Soun brought to his life. She made it easier to remember he was human, to remember that he was capable of love even if he didn’t deserve it. There was nothing in the world he wouldn’t give her.
At sixteen, she was a bouncing, shining ray of pleasantry, there to help soothe the ache of M’s loss, just as she had done with Vesper’s. She didn’t know about either of course. She thought he worked for the British Museum, acquiring works from all over the world.
When she say him at Heathrow, her first day of Summer holiday, she let out an earth shattering squeal, tearing across the baggage claim towards him. She hit him like a freight train, even as he lifted her off her feet.
“I missed you so much, Daddy,” she said into his neck, arms wrapped around him in a death grip.
“I missed you too, darling.”
~*~
He loves times like these. She knows he’d that he can take her anywhere, at the drop of a hat. They’ve gone to Italy, India, Japan, the Virgin Islands, Morocco, France, Germany, among other places. But for the two weeks she spends in the summer, she’s asked to stay in London this year. She never gets to see London, she says. He supposes she’s right. She spends the school year in Dublin with her godparents and her god sister. She doesn’t seem to mind as much as he worries she would. She and Cara are thick as thieves, Martha says.
Bond finds a careful peace in all this. They laze about the flat the first few days, making grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches( Cara taught her to make them. She says they found it on something called tumblr? He’s not sure he wants to know. ) They watch films full of superheroes and thoroughly American humor he will simply never understand. But Soun likes them. They make her laugh and she tells him the name of every handsome actor on the screen.
They’re half way through the Avengers (Soun is half way through her pint of strawberry ice-cream as well) when his phone rings.
“This is Bond,” he says, taking the call to the kitchen.
“Where is my gun?”
Bond can’t help a smile. Q sounds thoroughly unamused.
“You’ll have to be a bit more specific Q, as that question has several possible answers. Which part of it you are looking for?”
There is an exasperated sigh.
“When you return from your holiday, 007, we are going to have a very long chat about the destruction of government property.”
“Indeed. Now may I get back to my holiday now Q?”
The line cuts off and Bond gives an indignant snort of laugher.
“Who was that,” Soun asked from the doorway. She has a knowing little smile on her lips and it strikes him for the first time how much she looks like her mother. Bond never knew the girl’s father but he’s willing to guess she has more of Ami in her. Ami always had a sense about her.
“Someone from work,” he said.
“Q?”
Bond raises and eyebrow.
“Eavesdropping were you?”
She smiles innocently.
“I was only coming to get a drink. I can’t help it that that smile gives you away.”
Bond rolls his eyes, fetching her a glass.
“Is it a man or a woman,” she asked, and it strikes James again just how well adjusted his little girl has become.
“Man, as if it’s any of your business.”
She giggles, hoping up onto the counter.
“Is his real name Q?”
“No, it’s just a nick name. But it’s everyone calls him.”
She nods, looking thoughtful.
“I like to meet him,” she says, giving her father the eye.
Because they both know that he would give her the world if he could and this is no different. Still he turns over the idea.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
~*~