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The men at the training base give him a number, and just like that Bond, formerly of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, is Number 57 out of five hundred other youngsters trying for the ranks of the special forces.
After the usual admin work’s been completed, Number 57 is herded with the rest of the hopefuls to some big conference room within the base. A faceless man in a suit gets up. He jabbers on and on about patriotism and loyalty and how we very much appreciate your service to our country . Bond tunes him out three sentences in.
Number 57, of course, listens attentively to every word.
The next guy up on the stage is more interesting. The man’s from the special forces, and looks as if someone stretched skin over a piece of baling wire. He’s rough and not particularly interested in platitudes, and Bond decides to pay attention somewhat when he realizes that this is the important part.
The schedule seems simple enough. Two days for basic physical testing, four weeks of SF specific training, a couple weeks of “extreme scenario” testing (which is apparently going to happen somewhere in the wilds of Central America, oh joy), four weeks of combat survival tests, and if he gets that far without dying or getting pulled aside for a little chat, he’s passed joint selection.
When his talk draws to an end, the man smiles. It’s a little too sharp for Bond’s liking.
“Good luck. You’re going to need it.”
--
The first two days are fairly easy—basic tests for physical competence, can you tread water for so and so a time, and so on. It’s almost surprising, how much the pack of hopefuls has shrunk when the time is up.
Then their minders truck them out to Wales, and the endurance portion starts.
He’s pretty sure someone has written about the wonders of the Welsh mountains. He’s doubly sure said someone never was trained on them.
His head hurts. His legs hurt. Everything hurts. The trainers are harsh and ruthless when it comes to expectations, and Bond watches more than one man get pulled aside after a particularly rough march.
But Bond signed up for this, and Bond has not turned back from a fight since he was a boy fighting for his books at boarding school. So he shoulders his pack and runs on blistered feet, and somehow, Number 57 is still Number 57 at the end of the long drag.
--
As it turns out, “the wilds of Central America” is deep within Belize jungle. The bugs are almost as unbearable as the minders assigned to them.
The instructors chuck them into training almost as soon as they touch jungle soil. Bond dodges patrols, patches flesh wounds on a dummy, rows canoes up progressively muddier rivers. He watches and does and when it comes time he replicates what he has seen, because he might not have Marine training like most of this lot but he’s not going to let them cull him for not picking up things fast enough.
He isn’t pulled aside.
Then they’re off to the tests, slogging through the jungle and trying not to die.
--
Bond hates the jungle.
--
He’s currently somewhere in Belize and Bond has no idea where else beyond that. The inspector’s told him and the rest of his group that they’ve got four hours to track down this cache hidden somewhere by following the coordinates given on this suspiciously blurred map or else. First one to the cache wins all.
And maybe he technically ignores the directions the coordinates are giving him, but they did say the mission objective was to find the cache, and Bond’s learned enough about this whole navigation thing to know there’s no way the coordinates are accurate when the map and the suspiciously narrow trail in front of him say otherwise.
He finds the cache half buried in mud, and he could almost kiss that can except he’s pretty sure whatever they vaccinate soldiers against doesn’t include whatever is currently stuck on it. He jogs back to camp and the way his boots squelch from the mud that got stuck in them doesn’t even bother him so much.
The instructor he reports to doesn’t look surprised when he sees Bond come in before anyone else.
“Did you follow the instructions, 57?” the man asks. Hard eyes stare into his.
“The mission was accomplished, sir.” His voice does not waver.
Silence.
“Understood. Dismissed.”
He’s stuck on latrine duty for the next three days. He isn’t culled, either.
--
They release them into the wild for the last training session. It’s some twisted version of a combat scenario, except instead of any sort of military orders it’s “run until you get caught by the nice Marines sent to bring you in and beat you up for information”. (Said Marines look way too enthusiastic about hunting people for sport. Not that he can blame them.)
By now, Bond knows that the pack of hopefuls’ narrowed down to only about a hundred men, maybe a hundred and a half. He also knows that the instructors are more than happy to report to their superiors that no one passed their standards of selection.
He’s survived half of joint selection. He’s not about to fold now.
So he dodges the Marine patrols with every shred of skill he kept from the war. He runs deeper and deeper into the jungle, and then runs some more.
Because this might be a game, but Bond still wants to win.
--
He’s caught eventually, of course. He likes to think that he gave them a tough time.
--
They toss him into a cell with fourteen other unfortunate souls, and they get treated to the finest comforts English war prisons have to offer. Bond can deal with the lack of sleep. He can deal with the starvation and dehydration. He can even cope with the stress positions.
The noise is a different matter altogether.
--
Intellectually, he knows this is a dummy capture, training and testing wrapped into one fell swoop of pain and questions. He has not been captured—not by any real enemy. He will be fine.
He should be fine.
--
Name. Rank. Date of birth. Serial number.
Four pieces of intel. Five, if you count first and last name separately. That’s all Number 57 gives them. That’s all he knows. He knows nothing else. He is nothing else.
(Bond is something else.)
--
When Bond was serving in Iraq, his ship once rescued a lifeboat. There were two men aboard when the ship was spotted. (Later, he found out there were five when the boat escaped its sinking ship.)
One of the castaways had already gone mad from seawater—he slid off the boat and drowned before they were able to catch him. He was screaming about rabbits when he died.
The other man wasn’t in much better shape. “I’m not going to fold now,” he snapped when he saw Bond’s fellow sailors approaching him warily.
He tried to smile after saying that. It looked like he was baring his teeth.
(Bond wondered, then, what type of madness makes a man stay sane.)
And now he’s in the basement of an Army warehouse, and he’s being interrogated by people who supposedly want him as part of the forces, and he doesn’t want to die but he doesn’t want to lose his head either.
Number 57 bares his teeth at the men who are supposedly just testing him and does not fold.
--
He’s not sure he feels the pain anymore; it’s more a detached sensation than anything else. The spots in his vision dance. He feels light. Airy. Is this what flying feels like?
When the men with the clubs come back, Bond doesn’t feel the next strikes.
--
He wakes up in whatever passes for a hospital in these parts. He goes back to sleep.
Next time he wakes up, he’s slightly more lucid. And maybe they’ve been watching him this whole time, because some five minutes later, a nice faceless suit man comes in with paperwork and calls him “Mr. Bond”, not “Number 57”.
Apparently, he passed joint selection.
--
He could have stopped there. Joined the SAS, gone off to train harder while still having a place amongst the special forces.
But Bond isn’t one to wash, so as soon as he’s healed up enough from the bruising and the scars, he’s rechristened Number 57 and sent off to SC3 to finish out his training.
They assign him to a group—technically speaking, he is part of the special forces now, it would be amiss if he didn’t have a new leader. The sergeant for his new unit looks like the one that stood before him and the rest of the hopefuls three months and a lifetime ago.
The training is hard. Bond gets used to feeling damp at all times of the day, despite his best efforts. There isn’t as much mud, though, so that’s that.
And then there’s more tests, and he passes these tests. And the ones after them, and the ones after them. After the jungle, it seems…not tame, but less threatening, perhaps. At least he’s not bleeding from a club some other government worker just whacked over his head.
It’s almost six months to the day when he gets his green beret, and Bond is finally James Bond of the SBS, Squadron C, Troop 2.
--
He takes to the work like a duck takes to water. He takes to the men he works with less. They are seasoned old-dogs of the trade, and for them the new recruit with the chip on his shoulder is a fine target for hazing. It takes less than a day before he becomes the target of every single insult a bunch of soldiers can think of. Two days, before those get backed up with some ‘friendly’ wrestling matches when the superiors aren’t looking.
Bond knows a fight when he sees one. He bites back with words first, then fists behind the outhouses when those don’t seem to drive home the point. He wants to win, no matter if winning means passing a test or beating his older, more experienced colleagues.
Sergeant Hendrics does not find his fighting entertaining.
–
They knock him down. He gets back up. So the cycle repeats.
Eventually someone from the powers that be gets involved, and the physical fights stop. The reminders continue, though, little things that tell him exactly where he stands–a jibe in the mess hall, a small shove during a march.
Bond knows full well that’s enough to make his life hell if he lets it.
So he bides his time, and when the time is right he strikes back, with a sharp retort here or a quiet insult just loud enough for the right ears to hear. He learns what exactly will Hendrics turn a blind eye to, and what he will interfere in.
There are more ways to fight than with fists, and Bond is and has always been a quick study.
–
The others do not fight with him when they’re sent on missions, at least. Bond does not start fights either. The work must be done, after all.
This truce must satisfy Hendrics, because he stops trying to put himself between Bond and the other men whenever they exchange more than two words with each other.
–
Five months after Bond earns his beret, Bond Squadron C deploys to Bosnia.
They’re somewhere outside of Sarajevo for a mission that is definitely not officially sanctioned. Whatever enemy they’re fighting this time doesn’t care that it’s UN humanitarian forces on their soil, and Troop 2 doesn’t care either. Snipers are snipers, and it turns out humanitarian efforts are quite difficult to carry out when you’re being shot at by a bunch of hidden crackshots.
They’ve split to cover the city. Bond’s team is sweeping the north side of the city outskirts. He climbs up what used to be a house, and carefully lifts his head up to scan the surrounding area.
It’s pure chance that he sees the sniper hiding on one of the other buildings. The man is lying on the rooftop of another building, and he’s just in the right spot so Bond doesn’t have a clear shot..
So Bond watches and waits.
The sniper begins to move. Bond moves with him. Then the sniper breaks cover, and Bond freezes.
He’s got a clear shot now. It’s a far shot but he thinks he can make it. He has to make it.
His hands pick up his gun with the ease born of practicing to perfection, and when he raises to aim he does not tremble. The world narrows to the crosshairs of his sight and the heavy feeling of the gun in his arms.
Click.
It’s a beautiful shot.
He watches through the sight as the sniper staggers, then falls out of sight. He lowers the gun—slowly, no need to rush—and continues his onward creep. There is no chatter from the earpiece he wears–he assumes this means that his shot has not jeopardized the mission.
He schools his breathing. This is no time to panic. He puts his gun away with hands that do not shake, and slinks into the night. One sniper down. Who knows how many more to go.
--
The sun’s starting to come out when there’s a crackle over comms. Hendrics is speaking now, something about protocol and return to base. It barely registers.
Bond has shot three snipers. Some of his older colleagues have shot more.
No one mentions the work they did that night, even when they’re hitching a ride on a truck going back to Sarajevo. For that, he’s grateful.
–
They stick around for several more months, before England deems the situation sufficiently rectified and recalls them.
With one mission under his belt, Bond has apparently reached the point where the men of Troop 2 will call truce on their war. Bond drops it when they do. It is very hard to hate someone who you crawled through rubble with.
That does not mean he forgets their little war.
He trains. He fights, first the men of his troop, then the rest of the men in his squadron, until he can put the fear of the little blonde in nearly every common trooper in Squadron C.
He carves himself a place in Troop 2 with every spat he wins and every exercise he completes without bringing down the entire team. Slowly, the mocking insults become–not kind, but something close to banter. Give it time, they might even be ready to work as a true team next time England calls for their services.
–
They’re in the Falklands because apparently missions that were going on in the eighties are still going because this is England. Bond would very much like to file a complaint with England. In person, of course. Paperwork is so bothersome, after all.
They’re hunting mines or something of the like when someone sets something off and Bond barely has time to react before he’s running on instinct and then there’s a boom.
Bond stands, ears ringing from the explosion, and doesn’t flinch.
–
It’s a week after they’ve returned to base that Bond figures out that he’s been dubbed “that lucky bastard”. The way some of his colleagues say it, it sounds almost like an honor. That, and the fact that the banter about him is most definitely banter.
He still is decidedly at the bottom of his troop’s pecking order, though, so it’s probably no more of a honor than “that young bastard” was.
–
One mission blurs into another, one season to the next. The world does not end. Neither does Squadron C.
Bond survives too (whether by skill or luck is up to debate). He remains with Squadron C, because the paperwork is too bothersome to warrant a switch and besides, he’s not all that discontent. Hendrics stays too, breaking in the new recruits and disciplining the older members (and he probably counts as an older member, and doesn’t that seem strange?) when their own methods of breaking in go too far.
Some men die, some retire—whichever way it goes, they’re gone. New men, fresh men out of the hopefuls, come to replace them almost as soon as they leave. They are the same as SBS men have always been: stoic, efficient, and ruthless. After the third or so man that comes, Bond stops paying much mind. He works with whoever happens to be dressed in Troop 2’s colors, and when they’re gone he puts their cocky replacements in their place the way his first team put him in his.
Bond talks and fights his way up the ranks to lance corporal, then corporal proper. He is not the highest power in Troop 2—more like third in line—and he has no desire to dethrone Hendrics or his second-in-command anyways. Having some level of presence in the hierarchy proper is enough.
He leads the men below him, because it’s his job. He is the first in after the sergeants when they go to save the world (or, more frequently, some unfortunate member of the regular forces), and he is the last one out when they leave. He is content.
The years go by in gunshots and classified documents.
--
The current Team 2 is a nice little ragtag band—there’s Davis, the next in line for corporal when he inevitably leaves like the rest, and there’s the typical tough Marine types, but there’s also Carlos, a Navy brat who apparently survived selection on a cocktail of spite and something else. Probably more spite.
Bond, despite his attempts, recognizes the resemblance.
--
They’re playing poker in a ratty cargo plane, because there’s five more hours until they’re in Sierra Leone and apparently Carlos keeps a pack of cards somewhere in his bag. (Hendrics hasn’t disciplined him; the rest of the men think that’s because if he’d had the idea he would have brought cards too.) None of them have any sort of cash to speak of, so dessert rations it is. Congrats, cheap manufacturer of cheap chocolate bars, you’ve officially made England’s finest willing to kill for your goods.
Bond is not playing, because that would be undignified. He has, however, offered to play the winner for the pot, which consists solely of chocolate bars grainier than beach sand. He doesn’t even want chocolate bars—he’ll probably slip them to Davis when no one is looking.
In five hours they will land, commit some sort of impossible task in the name of national security, and disappear by the time anyone has wind of them. Right now, it doesn’t seem to matter.
Carlos says something wrong. Within seconds, Riley’s cussing him out as he chases him around the plane. Davis is right at his heels, and poker is really not quite as interesting as watching two of England’s finest hunt down their companion.
(This isn’t a real fight. There’d be blood all over the plane if it was. This is a slap fight, deliberately loud, obnoxious, and did he mention the noise? Good grief, Carlos.)
(In five hours, they’ll fight for real.)
Bond sits and watches as Carlos’s dramatic screams of terror drown out the noises of the plane.
He does let out a bark of surprise when Carlos bites Davis’s hand two minutes later.
--
The Sierra Leone mission is simple in the way that any SBS mission is simple. They’re tracking down a base somewhere in the wildlands. Rescue hostages, retrieve gear, it’s a fairly simple little operation, all things considered.
That is, if Bond doesn’t factor in the small guerrilla army currently surrounding said hostages and gear.
They charge the base with a combined team of SAS men and paras. Things get complicated fast, and before he knows it the fight’s started in earnest, and the world boils down to win and survive and there’s bullets and shooting and this is it, his body sings, this is the moment that all the training has been for.
And then the fighting gets particularly fierce for a moment and he realizes too late that he’s gotten separated in the fighting from his troop and is now a lone soldier in a still very much occupied enemy base.
Bond runs.
Bond runs, because he wants to live. He wants to live with the type of desperation that makes boys crawl out of São Paulo alleyways and soldiers survive wars. And right now, living means taking on whatever stands in his way and winning.
He knows the general area they were supposed to infiltrate, so he works his way through the area, dodging enemy bands and hiding behind any sort of cover he can get. He fights the soldiers that find him, and hides from those hunting him and the other special forces. He gets caught once, but luckily there’s the sounds of a scuffle and the soldier that would have shot him looks up long enough for Bond to get him, instead, and he lets out a breath he knew he was holding but didn’t want to acknowledge.
His gun is beginning to run out of ammo. He moves quicker, and a few enemy soldiers get their weapons stolen by a blonde wearing the British uniform.
And then he’s limping into an open area of the base and there’s no cover—
“Bond!”
The shout’s hoarse and panicked—it’s closer to a scream than anything else. But it sounds like music to his ears and he’s running towards the noise and oh look, it’s Carlos at the other side of the open area, eyes wider than he’s ever seen them before. Then Hendrics is back and he says that the mission is accomplished; the hostages and equipment are out, and it’s time for them to get out as well.
He doesn’t really remember what happens after that, except that there’s a lot of shouting and shooting and running.
–
There’s something sticky on his head and he’s not sure if that’s sweat or blood but either way he’s too tired to try to wipe it off. His body feels like one big mass of pain and bruises.
He’s a soldier, though, and the job comes first. He doesn’t let his composure slip until he’s back at base and slumping into a cheap chair in medical, waiting while the others get checked over.
Despite himself, he feels his eyelids drooping. He’s so bloody tired.
He thinks he hears some shouting above him. That should be worrying, he thinks. But he’s tired. There are higher ranking officers here, Davis can be a perfectly good substitute corporal for Team 2, and he is tired.
He’s just going to take a nap right now. A very well deserved nap, thank you very much.
--
When he surfaces, it takes him two seconds before he realizes his hands have been tied, and three seconds to start fighting the restraints. It takes a good ten minutes before he registers that the hands preventing him from working out of the ties wear gloves, and that the faces above him are not covered by helmets.
They tell him he’s in a Freetown hospital, that he punched two nurses and gave the attending doctor a black eye. That the restraints are for his own safety, because right now the less said about his injuries the better.
He’s too tired to care.
--
According to the government, the mission was wildly successful. Apparently, only one man died.
Of course, the reports didn’t mention anything that his team did. They didn’t even mention the injuries. National security reasons, of course. He’s pretty sure that mentioning that would make the civilians back in England drool just a bit too much over the combined heroics for their own good, and he’s not sure if that makes them the great soldiers Hendrics used to call the old Troop 2 or just plain madmen.
Not that it matters, anyways. They get the job done. They do the impossible, they survive the impossible, they accomplish the impossible. For England, of course. And if they go a little mad while doing it? Well, it’s not a problem so long as the mission is finished.
(Maybe that’s what this job has always been about: who goes mad, and who stays useful when they’ve gone mad).
--
He’s never remembered his dreams; this mission doesn’t change that. Small mercies.
(He wakes up yelling in five different languages, and he can’t remember why.)
--
Hendrics comes to visit him as he recuperates. He does not comment on Bond’s current…state, or mention the reason why he’s currently laid up in medical. He tells Bond what exactly will happen, now that his “appropriately dramatic heroics” have caught the attention of those higher than them.
Her Majesty’s forces must take some interest in their soldier’s well being, because Bond’s put on leave. For the next month, he’s supposed to dally around the base, and isn’t that fine, that currently Davis is taking his job while he gets to laze around.
They’ll reassign him after that.
It’s a nice, short conversation, which is good because Bond doesn’t particularly have the energy to continue the niceties. Hendrics seems to pick up on this, because he leaves before the silence gets awkward.
--
Davis corners him one time as he’s limping around base, and Bond is treated to a tongue-lashing about risks and protocol and when you get bloody separated from the troop you foot it out of there, you don’t GO STRAIGHT BACK INTO THE ACTIVE FIGHTING ALONE YOU IDIOT. Davis probably thinks the scolding is quite thorough, but it doesn’t hold a candle to his mother’s, so Bond doesn’t actually pay attention to it. (It is rather unfair to compare Davis to Mum, though, Bond will concede that.)
Then Carlos charges around the corner with the rest of Troop 2 on his heels, the fury of a thousand Spanish ancestors burning in his eyes, and Bond realizes that they sent Davis in first to go easy on him.
--
They return to England. There’s a nice lack of paparazzi; the SAS is once again taking the medals and the media glory for them.
On base, though, it’s a different story. And sooner or later the rumors around him morph from terrifying little spitfire back to that lucky bastard and finally settle somewhere between madman and immortal .
Bond looks at the way the people stare at him when he walks around base, and he realizes that he enjoys respect but he doesn’t very much like attention.
He drills. He works with his team, even goes out for drinks on a whim with Carlos. (He would like to state for the record that he regrets this. Very much.) He does his best to keep his head down.
(And if he wakes up and fumbles for a gun that isn’t there before he realizes he’s not on a mission, well, that’s normal for soldiers, right?)
--
“Mr. Bond? There’s someone here to see you.”
Bond looks up with some surprise from the form that some faceless servant of the army chained him to for the time being. Hendrics is out, and there’s no way he wouldn’t be recognized on this base anyways.
He’s led to a dull little conference room, empty except for the person that he supposes must have asked to see him. Bond looks him over; he’s a short unassuming man with dull eyes and dull clothes and an utterly dull face, typical faceless suit man. Not a military man, then. Still, he doesn’t quite think this man is a civilian.
The man looks up at him. “Mr. Bond. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“I don’t believe we’ve met?”
“Stuart Thomas, of Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” The man smiles at him, perfectly polite in a way that has the hairs on Bond’s neck standing up and his hindbrain screaming danger . “My employers seem to have taken quite the interest in you.”