Chapter Text
He is just barely twenty when his sister dies, seven hundred miles away from where she takes her last breath. He isn’t Q yet, won’t be for some time, but neither Kellan nor R nor Q, nor whoever else he has been or will be, believes it when he hears the news.
The news comes like this: a man with a thick Italian accent tells him over the phone that Vesper is dead. We’re sorry for your loss, he says, she drowned, he says, it was an accident, he says. The man tells Kellan not to come for the body, that she’s already been identified and it’s been taken care of.
“By whom?” he asks, his voice tight (not shaken, not yet), but the man doesn’t have an answer for that.
Kellan doesn’t remember how the call ends, doesn’t know if he even says anything more. All he knows is somehow it’s past midnight and there are five empty Heinekens and a half finished bottle of wine next to him, and he’s taken out the letter he’d received not two weeks ago.
Dearest,
I’m not coming home, at least not anytime soon. To put it simply, I’ve fallen in love. And at the risk of sounding hopelessly naive, we’re running away together. It’s all terribly romantic.
Don’t fret: I’ve transferred enough money into your account for you to feed yourself through the rest of uni, though I’m sure you could handle yourself just fine without my help.
Don’t be too cross with me, darling. One day, you’ll fall in love, and perhaps then you will understand. I’ll write to you soon, and tell you all about the spy who loved me.
It’s quite a story: you’ll eat it up.
All my love,
Vesper
It isn’t until the wine is gone, until he’s opened a bottle of her favorite cranberry vodka and swathed under a mountain of blankets sitting on her bed (untouched for over a month, this time), that Kellan begins to grow suspicious.
He glances back at the letter, runs his fingers over the odd phrase she’d used: the spy who loved me.
He’d thought nothing of it at the time; Vesper was prone to dramatics. Part of her charm, he’s always thought. He’d been sure there was simply a silly, romantic story or joke that led to her calling this new man a spy. But he is tired, and drunk, and willing to suspend his disbelief if it means that his sister might not be dead, if it means that she really has run off with a spy somewhere, in secret.
It’s the kind of desperate, fanciful thinking that often comes with grief.
He nearly drops the laptop when he picks it up, and it takes two tries for him to remember which password he uses for this particular computer. It takes his drunken mind a few minutes to think of where to look, but when he does figure it out he feels a reckless smile spread across his face. An English woman dying in a foreign country, accompanied by a possible spy, whose body is taken care of within a day?
So Kellan goes to work.
He’s too drunk to properly cover his tracks, despite his best efforts. He’s trying, of course, but his energy is more focused on getting through the firewalls and finding information than being subtle.
He doesn’t care much if he’s caught. If Vesper’s alive, staying under the radar with her beloved spy, then it will be worth being arrested just to know that she’s out there somewhere, safe. If she isn’t alive, if she really is dead, then Kellan supposes that spending the rest of his days alone in a dark cell somewhere wouldn’t be all that different to a life without his sister.
He’s been in the system for three hours - nearly tearing his hair out in frustration as he sifts through page after page of redacted files and half-blacked out pieces of paper scanned into the database -when there are two loud knocks at his door. It’s nearly four in the morning: there’s no question of who it might be. Kellan knows he’ll soon be whisked off to an undisclosed location and either tortured or shot or both, so he takes every second he has left to keep looking. He realizes mid keystroke, though, that the redacted information in the web files isn’t simply more heavily protected but rather deleted . There is nothing else for him to learn in these precious moments that he hasn’t already: Vesper was in Montenegro; Vesper was involved in some sort of MI6 operation; and her spy’s codename was 007.
He leans back with a sigh, shutting his laptop and taking another swig of vodka as he hears the door get kicked off its hinges and crash onto the floor of their flat. He doesn’t bother trying to run, just watches curiously as two tall, brawny men in suits burst into Vesper’s room. Kellan can’t help the snort he lets out at the expressions on their faces as they get a good look at him. He can’t be a very impressive sight: a scrawny kid with red-rimmed eyes behind thick old glasses, wrapped up under three quilts and clutching a half-empty bottle of vodka and a beat-up laptop. The men exchange confused looks before one of them - the older, more seasoned-looking one - simply shrugs and moves toward him. He takes a brief moment to note that the man is disgustingly handsome: dirty blonde hair; dark green eyes; a strong nose; and built like a brick wall to boot. Under any other circumstances, Kellan would be trying to get into his pants.
“Kid, we can either do this the easy way or the hard way, but no matter which you choose you’re coming with us.”
Kellan decides almost instantly that the easy way would be preferable, thank you very much, and can he bring the vodka with him, since he’s probably about to die?
The man actually laughs when Kellan makes his request, and this of course completely ruins the mental image he’s always held of the mythic, stoic, scary secret agent man on her majesty’s secret service. Kellan tells the man this as well, since he’s a dead man walking and definitely way too drunk to try and stop what comes out of his mouth. The blonde laughs even harder, and even his more reserved companion (who Kellan now realizes is also horrendously attractive: dark skin, warm brown eyes, light stubble, tall and lean in all the right places), lets out a chuckle as he grabs him by the arm and starts leading him out of the apartment. The blonde takes the vodka but lets Kellan keep the laptop, which he supposes is better than nothing.
“Double-oh Nine, you drive, yeah? I’ll sit in the back with Doogie Howser.”
Kellan attempts to school his expression into something other than wide-eyed disbelief. 009? Does that mean that the dark blonde man lounging next to him is Vesper’s 007? Kellan stares at the agent as the car makes its way through the dark London streets, ignoring the raised brow he gets in response. Probably not 007, he decides about midway through their journey: Vesper always gravitated toward men who were just as smart and smug and confident as her, and while this man is good-looking enough, he seems far too carefree and relaxed for his sister’s taste. Still, it isn’t a wholly wasted effort, as he quite enjoys looking at pretty men.
“Well, if I’m going to die, might as well get murdered by two fit blokes. Would you give a dying man one last request and take your shirts off while you do it?”
The undignified snort that comes from 009 in the front seat and the guffaw from the man sitting next to him let Kellan know that he absolutely said that out loud.
Ah, well.
Dignity is overrated, especially when one is drunk and about to die.
******
009 and 00-something take him to the MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross with no preamble, no fanfare. They don’t even put a bag over his head. Kellan isn’t sure if this is because they don’t see him as a threat, because he’s going to die anyways so they didn’t bother, or because MI6 simply doesn’t go in for that sort of thing anymore. At any rate, he’s mildly disappointed.
He doesn’t realize how much he’s relying on 009’s firm grip to stay upright until they reach the anteroom of the office of what is probably a very important person and the agent lets go. Kellan quite nearly crashes into the unassuming man who’s come to greet them.
“Ah, Double-oh Six, Double-oh Nine, I see you’ve - ,” the man (balding, with a plain, kind face) pauses as he watches the inebriated man struggle to maintain his balance. His professionalism slips for just a moment as he gapes at Kellan. “Is he - Are you drunk ?”
Kellan, having finally decided to lean against the empty desk outside the office doors, nods solemnly. “Off my tits, sir.”
His focus is largely on not falling on his face, but Kellan does have the presence of mind to notice the suspicious coughing fit 009 breaks into at this response, and that 006 is laughing so hard he’s had to sit down.
“Tanner, we have got to keep this one.”
Why the agent feels the need to say this, Kellan has no idea. Clearly, MI6 is going to be ‘keeping’ him for the foreseeable future, possibly until the end of time. The man, Tanner, seems to agree, ignoring the remark and instead leaving the two agents to wait while he escorts Kellan through the office doors.
Kellan supposes he ought to be surprised by the sight of the grey-haired, small women standing behind the sturdy mahogany desk, but a lifetime of watching his frail-looking, beautiful sister be underestimated has left him with a keen eye and an unwillingness to trust first impressions.
Besides, he’s standing in MI6 headquarters, the lion’s den itself, completely plastered and in a pair of ratty pajamas he’s had since he was fifteen.
He knows a thing or two about deceiving looks.
The woman gestures for him to sit, and he does, because the stern, calculating look in her eyes is like nothing he’s ever seen before: pure steel, hardened and sharp, as if she can see his every flaw and insecurity. She’s quite terrifying.
“We’d wondered why your attack was so skilled yet so sloppy,” she says, looking down at him unimpressed.
“Not my best work,” Kellan agrees, hoping his words aren’t too horribly slurred.
“Your sister was sent as a liaison for the Treasury on a high-risk operation in Montenegro. We learned some days ago that she had been in fact working for the targeted terrorist,” she says bluntly, foregoing any sort of small talk or segues.
Kellan is so shocked it takes several long moments for him to actually respond rather than gape at her.
“You're lying," he says at last, shaking his head in disbelief, "This is some trick - she'd never - "
“Your sister was a traitor, Mr. Lynd. She betrayed us all, for the sake of some extra cash,” the woman is cold and brusque as she says this, as if she doesn’t care that she’s telling a horrible lie, that she’s slandering his sister’s name.
Kellan knows he is crying, can feel the tears streaming down his face. “Vesper was good , she was loyal, she wouldn’t - ”
“Apparently she would. Would you like me to describe to you the terrorist for whom she worked or can we move on?”
Move on? Move on to what? There was nothing to move on from, nothing more important than telling this woman she was wrong , Vesper would never -
“How long do you think it took for you to hack through our firewalls?”
He pauses, his train of thought screeching to a halt. Surely none of that matters, not now that Vesper is….he shakes himself. It wouldn’t do to simply ignore this woman’s questions, no matter how angry he is. She quite literally holds his life in her hands.
“I dunno. Maybe twenty minutes? Like I said, it wasn’t my best.”
Tanner looks up from where he’s been typing on his blackberry on the sidelines. “It was fifteen and a half minutes. I shudder to think what sort of damage you’d have made fully sober.”
“I wasn’t trying to do any damage,” Kellan insists, putting on what he hopes is his best ‘I’m not a terrorist’ face. The tears probably help his cause.
“We know,” the woman answers, and when Kellan looks back the look in her eyes is warmer, somehow; less indifferent. “That’s why you’re in this office and not in shackles. Your hack was entirely focused on gathering information on your sister: not selling state secrets or endangering British lives.”
“But why am I in this office?”
“M, if I may?” Tanner steps in, gesturing for Kellan to sit while he leans against the woman’s, M’s, desk. “Breaking into MI6 servers is a capital offense. You must have known this going in. But it would be a waste of talent to throw you in a cell. You got into our servers: could you bulk them up, make it harder for people like you to get in?”
Kellan nods, looking between M and Tanner perplexedly.. “Are - Are you offering me a job?”
“It’s either that or prison,” M says, giving him a stern look. “Your sister died betraying her country, Mr. Lynd. How would you like to repay her debt?”
And that’s what does it. Kellan isn’t sure that he’s sober enough to be legally signing the papers Tanner hands him, but he doesn’t much care. It’s only as Tanner is leading him out of the room that he stops, and turns to M.
“She really is dead, then?” He says it as if it’s a question, but he knows.
She’s gone.
If he were sober, if he weren’t so tired and grief-stricken, he would curse himself for sounding so small, so pathetic in front of the head of MI6. She doesn’t answer, but he feels Tanner place a heavy hand on his shoulder. It’s the kind of gesture a stranger makes when they don’t know what else to do, when they know it’s not their place to offer any real comfort.
Tanner hands him back off to 006 and 009. Go home, get some rest, someone will pick you up Monday morning to take you to work. Kellan doesn’t say anything during the drive home, and he can tell the agents are unsettled by this shift in attitude. He thanks them when they pull up to his building, and he thinks, through the dull cloud of grief that’s taking over, he hears 009 ask if he’s alright, mate?
He isn’t, but that’s none of their business. So he leaves the car, goes into his flat, and stares numbly at the door on the floor, at the letter he’d dropped on the way out, at the empty bottles scattered on the kitchen table.
This is when Kellan snaps.
He grabs the nearest bottle and throws it at the wall, watching dispassionately as it smashes. Then he does it again, and again, and again, until he’ll surely cut his feet the next morning when he walks through the apartment.
He takes a pillow from off the couch and screams into it, over and over again until his throat is sore and he feels lightheaded. He screams for Vesper, for all the wrongs those people have done her; but more importantly he screams at Vesper, for abandoning him, for leaving him alone in the world, first by running off for the sake of some romance, then by dying without letting him say goodbye.
If he didn’t love her so much, he’d hate her.
******
Monday morning sees him sifting through his closet looking for something vaguely professional. He settles on a plain shirt and tie, then throws a nicer-looking cardigan over it because he’s pretty sure his tie is too short and his only suit jacket has a hole in the elbow.
There’s a knock at the door, or rather the wall, since the door itself is still on the floor, and when Kellan leaves his room he’s surprised to see 009 standing in his foyer. Why on earth MI6 would have sent a highly trained special agent on a simple errand, he has no idea.
The agent doesn’t even bother to say hello. “Have you seriously just had the door to your flat wide open for three days? You could have been murdered or something.”
In all honesty, Kellan hasn’t paid the door much attention. He’s been pretty busy getting drunk and breaking things.
He just shrugs. “You owe me a door, Double-oh Nine.”
“Russell. Russell Payne.”
“You owe me a door, Russell Payne.”
Payne just smiles, and as he’s led to the car Kellan finds himself inordinately grateful that MI6 has sent him a somewhat familiar face and not some nameless, scary, secret agent man.
Which isn’t to say that Payne isn’t scary. Kellan is convinced that the man could kill him with just his pinky finger. He’s also fairly sure that the agent has several guns on his person.
Terrifying.
During the drive he learns several things. The first; he hadn’t dreamed making all those inappropriate comments to the double-ohs (the other agent’s name is Alec Trevelyan, he’s told). He supposes he should be grateful that he didn’t offer to suck any cocks, although, he can’t be 100% sure. He’s not about to ask the man if he’d drunkenly demanded to perform fellatio on him. The second; M’s stooge from the other night, Bill Tanner, is actually the MI6 chief of staff and the person who essentially saved Kellan’s ass, convincing M that he was an asset rather than a threat. And third; the agent has no idea who he is, at least in relation to his sister and the operation in Montenegro. He seems to be under the impression that Kellan hacked into MI6 on a dare.
For all that Payne is friendly enough, he isn’t particularly loquacious, and Kellan is glad for the stretches of silence the man lets pass. He’s nervous enough without having to make stiff small talk for the entire forty minute drive.
They separate once inside MI6, Payne handing him wordlessly off to Tanner and exchanging cordial nods in farewell. He wonders, absently, what special agents do when they’re not on top secret murder missions. He can’t really imagine Payne or Trevelyan sitting at a desk doing paperwork. He’s quickly distracted from his pondering as Tanner leads him further into the building and - good lord, maybe he really is being sent to the dungeon.
They stop five - five - levels down, Tanner opening two glass doors and ushering Kellan into a wide, brightly lit room, with dozens of computers lined up at different stations. Further into the room, beyond the three rows of technicians sitting at their computers there stands a wide table, with two laptops and an array of screens surrounding it, all playing differing angles of the same footage: some sort of CCTV, maybe?
Standing at the table is a short woman, no older than forty, typing furiously and alternating between yelling out instructions to the staffers standing next to her and hissing directions into a headset.
She’s running a mission, Kellan realizes, and he tries desperately not to let his sudden excitement show on his face. Given the way Tanner smirks when he glances his way, he wagers that he’s unsuccessful. The older man gestures for Kellan to move off to the side, well behind all the desks and the technicians and the commotion, and together they watch unobtrusively as the woman guides the agent (004, he learns after she shouts the title rather loudly in irritation) through the streets of Morocco and away from the gaggle of men chasing them.
It is only when the set of the woman’s shoulders slumps in relief, when she replies to something the agent says with “You’re goddamn right you owe me dinner, Papava,” and tosses her headset onto the table, that Tanner approaches the woman.
Kellan stays where he is, watching their hushed conversation as he shifts from foot to foot anxiously. It doesn’t help his nerves to realize that now the excitement of the mission has ended, the other Q Branch technicians have noticed him, most looking over with unmasked curiosity. Thankfully, Tanner calls him over and he doesn’t have to focus on his possible future coworkers any longer, rather on the woman in charge.
Tanner introduces him as Kellan Jones, ignoring Kellan’s furrowed brow at the false last name. The woman, R, doesn’t seem to notice his confusion. That or she doesn’t particularly care, probably all too used to fake names and secrets. R, he learns, is not actually in charge: she’s second in command to the Quartermaster, Q.
“And people just call you R?”
“Technically, I don’t have a name anymore,” she says with a conspiratorial wink. This admittedly fairly suave statement is somewhat undermined when not ten seconds later an old man comes in from a lower level shouting for someone called Ava, who turns out to be R herself. “Of course, the Quartermaster tends to forget that some things are confidential.”
She says it with some annoyance, but it’s a fond sort of irritation, Kellan can tell.
The Quartermaster, who must be at least seventy, walks over to R, waving around what seems to be a taxidermied seagull in triumph. “It’s finally arrived! Christ, how long can it possibly take to carve a bird?”
Huh. Not taxidermied. Extremely realistic-looking wooden bird, then.
R looks as confused as Kellan feels. “You were serious about that?”
The Quartermaster puts a hand on her shoulder, his eyes grave. “I am always serious about gadgets, my dear,” He puts the bird on R’s table before turning to Kellan, his kind eyes still lit up with excitement. “And you, my boy, must be our new hacker friend!”
All the noise behind them ceases instantly. For the first time in his life, Kellan truly thinks he could hear a pin drop. It remains silent for a few more precious moments before the room practically erupts, employees shouting out questions or yelling incredulously about Kellan’s age or demanding an explanation for his being here.
The Quartermaster allows it briefly, before turning to R and quirking a brow. Immediately, she gets to work, shouting above the cacophony. “That’s quite enough, thank you. This is Mr. Jones. Yes, he’s the man that hacked us, and yes, he’s been offered a position here. It’s your own fault, really, for not doing a better job of building our firewalls,” she pauses as Tanner leans over and whispers in her ear, before letting out a disbelieving chuckle. “Apparently he was drunk as well. You lot are lucky you still have your jobs, if a shitfaced kid can break into your systems in under half an hour.”
The Quartermaster gestures for Kellan and Tanner to follow him into the small office just beyond R’s table and screens, closing the door and leaving his second in command to deal with the mass of disgruntled technicians.
“They’ll get over it,” the old man says kindly, as he leans against his desk, “It can be rather irksome, to know that someone has beaten you and is being rewarded for it.” He reaches out a hand, and Kellan takes it hesitantly. “Major Geoffrey Boothroyd, at your service.”
Tanner sighs exasperatedly. “Q…”
Boothroyd waves the other man’s complaints off. “Yes, yes, terribly sorry. I am the enigmatic and nameless Quartermaster,” he corrects himself with a chuckle.
Kellan looks over just in time to see Tanner roll his eyes in a decidedly unprofessional manner. “I’ll leave you to it, then, Quartermaster. Mr. Jones, Agent Payne will drive you to your flat at eighteen hundred hours. After today though, I’d recommend using the tube.”
With that, he leaves Kellan and Boothroyd alone in the office to go over the basics: where he’d work, what his responsibilities would be, where the break room and cafeteria were, etc.
The old man clasps his shoulder once they finish the preliminary introductions. “I am sorry about your sister, lad. If you need a few weeks before you get started, I won’t hold it against you.”
Kellan isn’t surprised that Boothroyd knows his real name. He is, however, surprised at the offer. “You’d let me do that? Even though she…”
He trails off. He still doesn’t want to think about it. It’s all too surreal.
“Worked for the baddies? Of course. She was still your sister, and you’re an employee. Ergo: bereavement.”
Kellan shakes his head. “The last thing I need is to be twiddling my thumbs and going crazy alone in our - my - flat,” he has a sudden thought, snapping his head up to look at Boothroyd. “Wait, I can’t work here! I have to finish my PhD! I’ll be graduating in a month!”
The Quartermaster just raises a brow. “Yes, I’m aware. Electrical and mechanical engineering?”
Kellan nods. He’d been so caught up with what had happened with Vesper, and this MI6 nonsense, that he’d completely forgotten about grad school. God, he’s a terrible student.
“Well, congratulations, you’ve graduated early. I don’t have a diploma for you, sadly, but I can give you a desk and health insurance.”
And that appears to be that. Boothroyd takes him to his new station and gives him a quick tour of R&D, which is apparently on the lowest level, just under Q Branch headquarters. Kellan technically isn’t meant to be let into R&D until his security clearance goes up, but he rather thinks the old man just wants an audience to listen to his ideas and watch his gizmos blow up.
“Any questions?”
“Yes, actually. What was the bird for?”
He smiles as Boothroyd’s eyes light up with an almost childlike excitement, hurriedly explaining the concept. “Imagine this: a scuba suit, but attached to the top of the head is a bird, equipped with a waterproof radio…”
And that’s how Kellan spends his first day, listening to the Quartermaster’s oddball, brilliant ideas and later being shown around the rest of MI6 (at least, the parts of MI6 he has clearance to see) by R. By the time Payne arrives in Q Branch to take him home, he’s dead on his feet.
Kellan is so tired, in fact, that he almost doesn’t notice the fact that he apparently has a door again. The only reason he notices at all is that he quite literally walks into it. Once inside, he notices two things. One: someone has cleaned up the shattered glass that had only this morning littered his apartment; and two: on his counter sits a very expensive bottle of tequila with a note taped on:
Sorry about the door, but we really did think you were a terrorist.
******
Not even two weeks have passed when Tanner comes looking for Kellan in Q Branch, grim-faced and carrying a rather thick file.
He’s been wrapped up for days in rebuilding firewalls with some of the other programmers, showing them where he’d got in, building up and breaking through again and again, testing their systems until even he would be wary. He’s not wary yet, but he thinks he’ll get there soon enough, and it’s exciting to constantly build himself new challenges. Boothroyd had been right, in the end: the other Q Branch members quickly got over their irritation at his hacking them, and have since been just as eager as him to learn and relearn and just - work, he supposes.
The point is, he’s not seen Tanner since that first day, and he hasn’t expected to since.
So when Tanner shows up, Kellan starts to panic a little. He hasn’t done anything, he’s pretty sure: he’s been walking on eggshells, and hasn’t tried to learn more about his sister, even though he feasibly could; he’s still not entirely convinced that there isn’t a dungeon waiting for him somewhere, just in case he missteps.
He plans to investigate Montenegro and Venice once he’s been here a little longer, and proved himself a little more invaluable.
He’s called into Boothroyd’s rarely used office (the old man spends almost all his time dreaming up new designs in R&D, along with about half of Q Branch), where Tanner immediately locks the door and shutters the blinds of the windows facing the branch. He’s led not to one of the chairs facing the desk, but to the couch lined up along the back wall, where he knows R sometimes naps during long nights running ops. His confusion increases tenfold when Tanner sits next to him, placing a hand on his knee in what he assumes is meant to be a comforting manner.
Tanner, it seems, takes after M when it comes to small talk, because he doesn’t hesitate or beat around the bush:
“Your sister has been exonerated.”
All of Kellan’s expectations of shouting and firings and dungeons evaporate in an instant, and he sags back against the old couch, suddenly lightheaded.
Exonerated.
He lets out a breathless giggle, clapping his hand over his mouth. He knew it. He knew it. He shouldn’t be happy, and he isn’t, not really, but his sister was good , and he’d known all along.
He turns to Tanner then, and although he isn’t sure he can speak at the moment, the man seems to understand that he wants to know more.
“She was being blackmailed,” Tanner says hesitantly, as if he’s not sure how Kellan will react to this news. Which is fair, as Kellan has no idea what to do with himself. “She was a civilian, and she was being blackmailed, and had MI6 vetted her properly, rather than simply trusting the bank, we would have caught it. We would have been able to help her. And for that, you have my sincere apology. And M’s.”
“What was she being blackmailed with?”
Tanner pauses, glancing over at the file he’d placed on the desk. “We’re still looking into it,” is what he settles on, but it’s not quite the truth. Whatever the truth is, Tanner either can’t tell or doesn’t want to tell Kellan. He honestly has no idea what it might have been, and he finds that he doesn’t really want to know what it was that drove Vesper to her death.
He can’t bear the sad look in Tanner’s eyes, the empathy there. He pulls his knees up against his chest, curling into himself, and he knows he probably looks like a child, but he doesn’t care, because he doesn’t know how he feels, because he’s so lost and his sister is gone and she wasn’t a terrorist and she wasn’t trying to hurt anyone and she died for nothing , and -
Tanner is calling his name, he realizes, and when he comes back to himself he’s not surprised that he’s been crying.
“I have some of her effects here, if you’d like to take a look.” At his nod, Tanner leans over and picks up a small bag that Kellan hadn’t noticed before.
He takes it, looking through the things Vesper had left behind. There isn’t much: a pair of sunglasses, a few seashells, some earrings, and -
He gasps as he sees the necklace. He’d given it to Vesper when he was eleven: he’d spent all his money on a graduation present for his big sister. He’d picked it because the lady at the shop had told him the Algerian knot was a symbol of love, and she’d been the only person in the whole world he loved, and who loved him too.
There isn’t anyone who loves him anymore, Kellan realizes as he holds the necklace close to his chest, tight enough that his knuckles turn white, that the knot will surely be imprinted on his palm for hours.
“I haven’t really cried about it,” he confesses, taking off his glasses and rubbing at his eyes, trying quite unsuccessfully to will away the tears. “I’ve just been so angry, with MI6, with M, with her… ”
Tanner places a hand on Kellan’s shoulder, letting the younger man lean against him, letting him cry and shake and sob. It’s a great kindness, he thinks, for this man to sit with him as he grieves, to provide a steadiness he does not feel. He supposes, in the end, given that Tanner brought him in, that he’s read the files of both Lynd siblings, that the older man would know better than anyone how alone he truly is.
******
Nine hundred miles away, James Bond hears from M the story of a young woman who would have done anything to keep her little brother safe, even if it meant betraying the man she loved.
Even if it meant sacrificing her own life for his.