Work Text:
Q comes across it in the detritus from Skyfall; it’s one of the things they pull out of the rescue helicopter they sent for Bond. He nearly throws it out, so distracted is he with the appalling state of the DB5. It’s the feel of it that stops him: fine cashmere, brown and checked and very soft, but stained freshly with blood. Spots of it soil the label, marring the name of an Edinburgh-based department store which — as Q finds out after a bit of searching — has long since gone out of business. With latex gloves on, he folds the scarf neatly, wondering whose blood it is.
No matter. It’s none of his business. His business is to fix things. This might be a tricky fix, but it is at least possible. More possible than the car, which Q can’t bring himself to look at. All that charming old technology. Her leather, the fine wood grain. Awful to think about her burning.
“Evans,” he calls.
“Sir?”
Q bags up the scarf and hands it over. “See if you can get our usual launderer to work her magic on this. And tell her to be careful.”
“Of course, Sir.”
It’s weeks before Bond reappears in Q’s lab, dressed well for the start of a new mission. It’s very late, and Q has dimmed the lights for his own sanity. There isn’t much for Bond to look at in the lab these days — no exploding pens or x-ray specs. Just screens upon screens of maps and code. If that rankles, he doesn’t show it. But then, he doesn’t seem a man inclined to show much of anything. He’s as stony faced as ever, even as Q hands over the scarf. It’s clean and dry. Utterly bloodless.
“I assumed they’d binned this,” says Bond. His gnarled thumb traces the line of the check pattern.
“It seemed worth a salvage attempt. It’s older than even you, after all.”
Bond doesn’t laugh at his funny little joke. The timing, perhaps, Q thinks. He must get better with his timing.
“I thought you were all about the brave new world, Q. In with the new. No more exploding pens.”
Behind him, a screen of code flashes, and Q feels a lick of childish embarrassment. He’s spent the last few weeks disgusted with himself. What was it that had stopped Silva in the end? Certainly not the latest and greatest in cybersecurity. No, it’d been a few sticks of dynamite, a hunting knife and a fifty-year-old car.
“Perhaps I’ve learned it’s not always necessary to reinvent the wheel.” That draws a trace of a smile from Bond. Lovely. Q had thought so at the gallery, too. “Seems you have, too. I didn’t know you went in for vintage shopping.”
“I don’t. It was my mother’s.”
“Oh.”
All the breath leaves Q’s body at once. It’s the last answer he expected. That soft but ultimately utilitarian brown garment belonging to a woman with the name of a bonafide sophisticate. Swiss, Q remembers from Bond’s file. Wealthy.
“I’m very glad not to have binned it, then,” he manages.
Bond tucks the scarf away in his coat and gives Q a real smile this time, warm and sincere. Q finds himself quite immobile in the face of it, in the face of everything. His mother’s scarf from Skyfall. Good God.
“Thank you.”
A little too long passes before Q realises why Bond is still standing there, feet shoulder-width apart, looking every bit the soldier. He has a mission to get to.
“Right.” Q clears his throat. “Follow me, 007.”
“Gladly.”