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There's something terribly fragile about the limp body currently cradled in James’s arms. James has never had the opportunity to catch Q in a moment of rest or slumber, so he doesn’t know if Q always looks so utterly defenceless whenever he’s asleep, or whether he just looks that way when unconscious and beaten to within an inch of his life.
It’s not a piece of knowledge James ever wanted possession of, but he knows what the latter looks like now.
There’s one thing to be thankful for – with Q unconscious, James doesn’t have to worry about his fear of flying. He keeps an arm steady around Q the entire flight over, steering with one hand in hopes the support or that his presence would help in the event Q gain consciousness mid-flight. Instead, Q stays knocked out despite the roar of the helicopter blades, and James quite blithely does not think of what injuries Q might have that James can’t see; Q isn’t actively bleeding, and that’s all James had time to ascertain before their escape took priority.
James isn’t sure how he manages to land the helicopter discreetly, track across the city and slip back into the hotel without being seen or jostling Q awake, but he makes it somehow. The door to the hotel suite is firmly shut this time and there is no tell-tale bar of light escaping from under the door, but James still shifts the weight of Q further against his chest so he can free up one hand to take out his gun. He raps the barrel of it against the solid wood, a predetermined sequence of knocks, and hopes that he won’t be greeted by yet another trashed and bloodied room and that one Ms. Madeleine Swann hadn’t taken the opportunity to flee the moment James left.
She opens the door with the chain drawn, cracked open just enough to look out from and staying far away from the gap so an assailant can’t grab her arm or throat. James can’t read her expression in the shadows but she gasps, a quiet sound that she cuts off immediately. The door swings back shut, and reopens almost instantly. There’s a pause where her eyes are very wide before the walls slam down behind them, and she jerks her head towards the room, stepping back so James can safely carry Q through without getting caught by the doorframe.
He notices in the periphery of his vision the syringe on the table, the way Swann covers the needle with a plastic cap before she dashes past him. Warm light spills through the bedroom door, and James pauses just within the small sitting room to let his eyesight adjust to the brightness, and takes the opportunity to holster his gun. By the time he walks into the bedroom, Swann has rearranged the pillows so that when James sets Q down on the bed he’s supported on one side, leaving just enough room for Swann to perch on the corner of the mattress.
“There’s a first-aid kit in the bathroom,” she says briskly. “His injuries?”
“He’s been badly beaten,” James says, pitching his voice to carry even as he turns away to collect the first-aid kit. He doesn’t mention the extensive bruising that must cover most of Q’s body; the statement speaks for itself. “No broken bones as far as I can tell – fractures perhaps, although he could use his arms and hands. Two lacerations, one across his right forearm, the other skirting his ribs; I wrapped those wounds as best I could. His eyes were clear however – no bleeding there.”
Swann doesn’t answer – she’d been aloof and professionally distant even during James’s appointment, and infinitely more wary after the abduction attempt – but James steals a glance over his shoulder, and she’s pulling away the coat Bond had swathed Q in with very light fingers.
James ducks into the bathroom, feeling slightly off-kilter without Q’s now familiar weight after hours of keeping Q close. The medical kit lays open on the bathroom countertop, quite neatly kept, and all the sharp instruments – the scissors and the tweezers, as well as one syringe – are missing.
It only takes him a few seconds to stride back to the bedroom. “Why did you need a medical kit?”
Swann doesn’t bother looking up at him; she’s examining Q’s face now, where the prominent black eye constantly draws one’s gaze. “Being in a car crash hurts, even with a seatbelt,” she says slowly, as if speaking to a child. James does not bristle at her. “You should appreciate it. He’ll need all this and more.”
Setting the medical kit on the bedside table, James casts another scrutinizing look at Q. “Internal injuries?”
Swann gives a short shake of her head – not in negation, but in uncertainty. “Hard to tell, with all the bruising. No undue swelling, as far as I can see. If he were awake, I could question him on his symptoms. The blood loss concerns me. There was… quite a lot of it, at the other hotel room. I would like to get him to a hospital.”
It doesn’t even take a second for James to weigh the security risks, the open target they’d be in a public hospital. “No.”
Swann’s mouth thins, but she doesn’t push the issue. “Is he like you? Can I check his injuries without him lashing out?”
“He is not like me,” James says. “He deals in gadgets and technology, not guns.”
“Just another consequence of your mission, then.”
Something terrifyingly quiet clicks into place within James, smoothing out his previous uneasiness, and he asks, without any change in tone of voice, "Where are all the surgical scissors, Ms. Swann?"
She stands up so swiftly she would have slammed the top of her head into James’s chin if he hadn’t stepped back. She keeps her voice to a low whisper, but there is steel in her words. “In my coat pockets, in case someone tries to kidnap me again. And it’s Dr. Swann. One of us is a licensed physician and clinical psychiatrist, and the other is a cold-blooded assassin. If you want your colleague to get the best care he can possibly have right now, then get out of my way and watch the door. That's what you're good for, aren't you?"
James locks stares with her, and considers, for several moments, how to deal with this problem.
Q makes a quiet noise then; it scrapes in his throat, and James isn’t sure if it’s due to dehydration or damage from screaming. His eyelids flicker, and then his breathing picks up sharply – the moment he comes awake enough to register the pain and the unfamiliarity of his surroundings.
Swann turns smoothly away to kneel on the floor instead of retaking her former seat on the bed, and her voice drops into a soothing cadence, calm and commanding. “My name is Madeleine. You’re in a hotel room, a very discreet one, and the only people here are you, me, and your colleague, James. You’re hurt and dehydrated and have lost quite a bit of blood.”
Her manner seems to calm Q considerably, and his eyes slide further open, a distant sort of focus back in them.
“007?” is the first thing he rasps.
“Q,” James says immediately, and Q turns his head in James’s direction. “This is Madeleine. She’s backup.”
Swann shoots him a look, but Q just sighs in acquiescence, a slight wheeze accompanying it. Casting Swann in the role of backup helps Q put the situation into context, even if it’s misleading – Bond is the field agent, Q the handler and support, and if Swann is backup, then all the players are accounted for, the mission uncompromised for the time-being.
“I’d like to ask you some simple questions about your injuries,” Swann says. “But before that, could you drink some water for me?”
Q’s eyes drift back open. James doesn’t bother waiting for a reply; he just goes to retrieve a sealed bottle of water. His fingers itch for a drink, his eyes catching for a moment on the mini-bar. With both antiseptic and antibiotic ointment in the medical kit, James doesn’t have to worry about rationing the whisky for rudimentary disinfectant.
Besides, Swann would likely have much to say about using drinking alcohol to treat a patient. And as much as it galls James to label him so, at the moment Q is very much a patient in need of medical care.
He doesn’t retrieve a glass, turns his back deliberately on the mini-bar when he returns to Q’s bedside. Swann is watching him – James remembers telling her in her office that he drinks far too much – but she doesn’t say a word, simply takes the water bottle from him. There is a stack of medical supplies laid out atop the medical kit and James studies what Swann has taken out, mentally matching them to a particular wound or type of injury.
He’s not entirely sure what his expression reveals at the moment, but Swann tips her head and her gaze softens just enough to appear almost sympathetic. “Your hovering is distracting,” she says, slipping out a pair of surgical scissors from her coat pocket and placing them next to the gauze and the bandages and the adhesive tape. “Your colleague mentioned something about the perimeter.”
Leaning over, James meets Q’s gaze. There’s enough awareness there that James knows Q truly sees him, isn’t simply staring emptily in his direction, and Q gives a small but noticeable nod.
“So,” Swann says, keeping her voice neutral and non-combative, although she snaps an instant cold pack as if to punctuate her words. “Perimeter?”
James is well aware he’s being handled – he’s listened to enough handlers over the line to know when they’re acting in ways they think is most effective at corralling him into doing what they want – but this time James listens. He slips silently out of the room and then the suite to clear the perimeter and secure the exits because he has to trust Swann with Q. James is a competent enough at emergency first aid but he is no healer. What he is, in fact, is an extremely skilled killer and a survivalist. It’s his duty to make sure the three of them live through this.
It’s no longer just safeguarding Swann because of his promise to her father. Having her take direct responsibility for Q means she’s part of this team now, and Q—
James won’t fail him again.
---
James has an internal clock that works like a countdown timer – he can estimate with uncanny accuracy a specific span of time, although putting that range into context is something else altogether. It means jetlag is rarely an issue and that he has no idea what time it is when Swann finally peers out of the bedroom, even though he knows just a little under an hour has passed.
Swann looks unsurprised to find James seated with his chair angled towards the bedroom entrance. It isn’t as if James isn’t aware what she’s doing most of the time, since he returned from securing the area and putting some safeguards in place – the hotel suite is only so big, and Swann spoke every so often, occasionally asking Q questions, other times simply talking so her voice puts Q at ease.
“I’ve done what I can,” she says, leaning against the door frame, her hair starting to come out of its neat bun. “I gave him some acetaminophen so he’s dozing right now, although he was quite unwilling to fall asleep.”
James slips easily to his feet and goes up to the door to look in on Q. What he can mostly see are the bandages, around Q’s arm and torso and wrists, and where the bandages don’t cover are darkening bruises, staining pale skin like a painting gone mad, splotches of angry colour on white canvas. He can smell the astringent bite of antiseptic from clear across the room.
“Satisfied?” Swann says, and the word should be cutting, but it mostly comes out tired. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to wash up and then I’m going to the hotel café for dinner. It’s quite safe,” she says in response to James’s stare. “I did have to eat when you were gone.”
"Dr. Swann," James says, and then softens it to, "Madeleine. Don't leave the premises."
She looks back at him, her expression neutral. "Because you're my best chance at staying alive?" Her gaze cuts pointedly towards the bed, to the unfamiliar visage of James’s quartermaster, beaten and injured, curled up defensively on his side despite how the position must hurt.
James is sure he doesn't flinch at the pointed remark, but Swann tilts her head, and then glances away. "But you did bring him back," she says softly. "The state of the room, when we came in..." her voice trails off, and then comes back in force. "He's so young."
"Hardly younger than you are," James says, because Swann has shadowed eyes and wears detachment like a cloak of cold, jagged ice, and Q has moments where his expression goes blank and he casually mentions destroying half the world before his first cup of tea. No, physical age means little in their line of work, in the world that Swann has half crossed by simple association with her father.
Swann glances again at Q, and then steps through the doorway, closing the bedroom door almost all the way so their voices don’t disturb him.
"I want to know your real name."
“James Bond,” James says evenly. “I didn’t lie on the form.”
"And his?"
"Q."
She arcs an eyebrow. "What a strange name."
"It's one he has chosen to keep for himself."
“What else happened to him? It isn’t just the physical beatings.”
James doesn’t ask her how she knows – no doubt Swann is used to reading the subtle cues and pursuing them in an effort to diagnose and help her patients. “He killed a man today.”
Her eyes widen, although she doesn’t back away, just pushes her bangs out of her face with the heel of one hand. “I thought you said that he’s not like you.”
“He’s not. That’s the point.” James cuts off the line of conversation, because clinical psychiatrist or not, James highly doubts they train their doctors on how to deal with the psychological stress of killing a man in front of their own eyes in medical school. “Come here. I need to teach you how to defend yourself. Scissors and syringes won’t be effective against multiple attackers coming at you at once.”
Ignoring Swann’s scowl, James pulls out one of the spare guns he’d taken from the guards at the solar furnace and holds it out to Swann at an angle, handle first, ready to adjust her hold in case she ends up with the firearm pointed in a dangerous direction. “Take the gun.”
“No,” Swann says flatly.
James reminds himself that she’s a civilian, and that she had just patched Q up. “Madeleine—”
Clearly sensing that James won’t back down on this, Swann clenches her jaw, and reaches for the gun. In three swift movements, she removes the magazine and catches it in her left hand, pulls the slide back and releases it to eject the live round out of the chamber, then drops the gun and the magazine back in James’s hand. She steps back and crosses her arms as if to underscore her actions.
“A man came for my father when I was very young. They didn’t realize that he kept a gun in the bedroom, and that I was upstairs.” The detachment in Swann’s eyes tells James in no uncertain terms what she’d had to do with the weapon. “I hate guns – but I do know how to use them.”
James looks at her, already filing away the detail, his mental dossier on one Doctor Madeleine Swann suddenly much more expansive that the brief profile he'd collated on her. “I don't have to teach you very much at all, do I.”
Loading the gun again is a work of seconds, and James sets it on the table next to Swann’s syringe. He hesitates, just for a moment, because he normally doesn't give a damn about regulations, but it's not about him this time. MI6 keeps a dedicated medical team that specializes in psychological evaluations and therapy for a reason. "You should talk to him. You're qualified, and you have the relevant experience."
Swann’s eyes flick from the gun on the table to the one James wears openly in his holster; he chose to leave his jacket off in the privacy of the hotel room for quicker access. “And you don’t. Because it means little to you now, doesn’t it – the taking of a life.” She shakes her head. “I haven’t yet developed any rapport with your Q. He won’t talk to me and he certainly won’t fully relax in my presence. For something like this – for both the physical and psychological trauma – he needs someone that he trusts.”
The steady way Swann holds his gaze tells James that she means him.
James lets the smile curl over his lips. “Do you honestly think a cold-blooded assassin is the best person to talk someone through the ordeal of killing another person?”
“You’re a killer, yes,” Swann says, her voice going hard. “But if there’s to be any sanity left in my world, I have to believe that that’s not all you are.” Her tone goes subtly mocking, and James knows her next words will cut straight to the bone. It’s likely something she’s always capable of, simply honed to a knife’s edge by her profession. “I don’t trust you. Prove me wrong. If you won’t do it for him, perhaps you’d do it for your pride.”
Perversely, that only makes James smile wider even as he clamps down on the beginning flickers of anger. It isn’t often that anyone is capable of piercing the years of apathy James carries with him like a second skin. He slogs through the bottommost dredges of the underworld on a near weekly basis, and yet Swann has managed to do with a few simple words what many have failed at, and with no deaths, threats or psychotic tendencies involved.
Swann flashes him her own smile, a little too feral at the edges. It’s why she’s so reserved while at work: the detachment is armour, and her profession involves her taking others apart while remaining apart from the wreckage.
James doubts she’s ever let anyone close enough to take down her own walls, to see what shrapnel lies behind that porcelain-like face.
“I left the medical kit on the bedside table. You might want to see to your wrists,” she says, before striding right past him, heading straight for the bathroom.
James glances down at his hands. His wrists are raw from his efforts to loosen his binds at the solar furnace facility, but the pain barely registers – he feels the missing weight of the watch Q had given him more keenly.
He twists the chair so it faces the bathroom this time and takes a seat, training his eyes on the front door and keeping an ear out for any sound from the bedroom. If Swann thinks that he’ll let her leave the hotel room without a weapon – James will have to stay with Q, currently their most vulnerable link – just because she’s managed to irritate him, she’ll soon find that she’s gravely mistaken.
---
The first thing James does when he re-enters the bedroom is to consider logistics. They’ll need to move, soon; the hotel has been safe enough but James knows it’s only a matter of time before Oberhauser gets news that he and Q escaped and comes after them again. But Swann made it clear that Q needs at least the night to rest, and with that timeline in mind and the reassurance that the hotel is secure for the time being, James allows himself to set the mission temporarily aside and focus on Q himself.
Q will need a change of clothes – they all do, depending on their next destination – but James understands the utility of leaving Q’s shirt off for now. They’ll need to change the bandages for his cuts in a few hours, and Swann had turned on the heat to keep the temperature of the room at a comfortable level.
Q’s curled up position, tilted on his side to face the open side of the bed, hands tucked up protectively against his chest, over his ribs, is not because he feels cold.
James draws the sheets halfway over Q before taking Swann’s earlier cue and folding himself onto the floor by the bed. Even then, something about the movement seems to alert Q; he stirs, struggling as he fights the lethargy of the medication, throwing his uninjured arm out as if to push away an attacker. James’s first instinct is to pin him before he can injure himself further, a thought he immediately dismisses. Instead, he says, very steadily, “Q. You’re all right.”
Surprisingly, Q stills, relaxing, although his out flung hand twists against the sheets. James very lightly brushes his fingers against Q’s hand, avoiding the scrapped knuckles, and Q latches on, fingertips curling into James’s palm. The contact seems to be the thing that pulls him from the medication’s drowsy effects; Q’s eyes open to slits, his eyelashes trembling as he just barely blinks.
“You’re fine,” James says again.
Q licks at his lips, wincing, and then whispers, "My laptop."
James feels a distant pang of guilt. "Unsalvageable. I destroyed the remains before I left."
Surprisingly, Q seems to relax even more. "Good." His eyes slide further open, the usual clarity of them fogged over by a combination of pain and medication. James wonders how much he can really see – his glasses are a shattered mess, a twist of metal on the floor of the cell, and James had pocketed the frames when he'd scooped Q up – because Q’s aim had been perfect. He'd shot at the guard's torso, the larger body of mass making a better target for a rookie, and through a stroke of fortune pierced the guard's heart.
In James's eyes, it's a job well done. But to Q – it's likely just murder.
It’s very quiet, just the soft hum of the heater and the sound of their breathing. James lets that reassuring evidence of life sink into him, and waits.
"You were right," Q finally rasps. "Oberhauser is alive, the ring proves it. All of them—"
He stops, breathing heavily, before he squeezes James’s hand. “Up, please. Hard to breathe like this.”
James remembers the way Q had been slumped against a corner of cell, keeping his upper body upright even when he was unconscious. He taps Q’s hand once in a silent command to keep still, and sets about rearranging the pillows and the sheets before he manoeuvres Q into a sitting position. Q’s many injuries are not life-threatening individually, but become quite severe especially when combined on such a slender frame, and James keeps a sharp eye out for any signs of excessive pain when Q sinks against the support of the headboard and pillows.
He gives Q a minute to catch his breath and adjust to the new position, and takes a careful seat on the very edge of the bed, ready to slide off at a moment’s notice. But Q just squeezes his eyes shut for a long moment, and when he opens them it’s the most alert James has seen him since he passed out, fingers still wrapped around the gun, some form of preservative instinct stopping him from just throwing the weapon away like a hot coal burning his hand.
That hand, the uninjured one, is currently clenching restlessly at the sheets, even as Q holds the rest of his body almost unnaturally still.
A phone, his earpiece, a spare cable or two – Q has always had restless fingers, quite happy to fidget with almost everything but especially so any electronic device, and James slips his hand into Q’s, lets Q cling on again. Skin and flesh and jointed bone are much more malleable than the hard mattress.
Q’s eyes flick up to meet his, and then his entire body seems to go loose at once, even as his grip tightens around James’s hand.
“I lost your ring,” Q says, his voice thin and still a little raspy despite the water Swann had managed to coax Q into drinking.
“I blew up your watch,” James says.
“I remember.” His voice is a little louder now, more urgent. “Le Chiffre, Greene, Silva. And Oberhauser. They all worked for the same organization. But the ring is gone now.”
James wonders what motivated Oberhauser’s men to go after Q even as James was occupied chasing Swann’s abductors. Was it the brief conversation they had at the so-called bar at the clinic, or did they track him by the ring that James put into Q’s hand himself?
The one thing that links all the names Q listed out, after all, is James himself.
“It’s fine. There are other leads, other sources of information.” James very gently squeezes Q’s hand. “I know your hands are fine, but you’re not up to handling anything as heavy as a laptop right now.”
“I was lucky,” Q whispers. “They needed to keep me intact enough that I could find you, if I finally gave in. They would have shot me in the leg just to stop me from running if I hadn’t already lost so much blood.”
James doesn’t tell him that there is no such thing as luck when it comes to being tortured, that it’s merely surviving until either your body or your mind gave up, or the person inflicting the damage is removed from the equation. As it is, they both barely escaped being scorched to death by the intense heat generated by highly concentrated solar rays. “They shouldn’t have been able to do this to you in the first place.”
“But you came for me,” Q says, as if the end result is all that matters.
“Not soon enough.” Soon enough would be before Oberhauser’s men had broken into Q’s hotel room, or any time before Q was so grievously injured simply for his association with James.
Q breathes in sharply, and his eyes flick down at the bandages covering most of his torso.
“You’ll heal,” James cuts in swiftly, before Q’s panic can truly set in. It’s not a lie; Swann’s main concern had been the blood loss, and James has come back from enough shootings, stabbings and poisonings to know that the human body is a tremendously resilient thing. As long as Q is kept safe from here on, he’ll heal fully. “Besides—” James taps very lightly against Q’s temple, on the side without the black eye, “—this is the most important thing about you, and that’s clearly fully intact.”
“My sanity? Debatable. I work for MI6, after all.” It’s a pale echo of Q’s usual razor sharp wit, but it makes James smile nonetheless.
The quiet falls between them. James can be patient when given the right incentive, and Q is staring down at their entwined hands in a way that suggests he’s on the brink of something, obscured though part of his expression is by the black eye.
Of all the things James thought Q might say or do, the one that happens catches him the most off-guard.
“I owe you an apology.”
James stares at Q incredulously, and the sudden anger boiling up in his chest nearly takes him by surprise. He doesn’t let any of it affect his body language, however, keeps his hand still in Q’s, and his voice very, very neutral – if he goes for mild it will just be condescending, and allowing any of his emotions to filter through is not an option. “Whatever for?”
“For not believing you. You were right about Oberhauser.” Q’s fingers tighten around James’s, almost a death grip, and his next words are barely audible. “And you were right about pulling the trigger.”
Q’s fingers are clamped so tightly around James’s hand that it takes James a moment to notice the very fine, very quiet shivers coursing through Q’s entire body. James immediately leans in, trying to catch Q’s gaze; his irises, when James manages a good enough look, are blown wide in a combination of shock-pain-fear, his gaze fixed on some distant point far, far away, lost.
In a sudden flash of visceral sense-memory, James recalls the wash of cold water spilling over him, soaking through his formal shirt in seconds, Vesper curled up and shivering and yet still warm and alive in his arms, even as she tries to reconcile the reality of herself as an agent – or at least a participating contributor – of death.
James moves before he quite realizes it, his movements slow and exaggerated to give Q plenty of warning lest he feel trapped or caged in. But Q jerks his head up, their gazes locking, and he doesn’t move beyond that, barely blinks as if the eye contact is the only thing stopping him from falling into a complete panic attack.
Moving with the care and precision borne of years in the field, James climbs further onto the bed without jostling Q, squeezing Q’s hand once when he necessarily breaks eye contact, and slides his free arm under Q’s head and over his shoulders, making sure to rest all of his weight on the pillows while still enclosing Q within the circle of his arm. This close, Q’s involuntary shaking is even more obvious, but James doesn’t push any further, and after a moment Q slumps against his side, his hold on James’s hand not loosening one bit.
James handles things – stress, crises and personal loss – by simply carrying on; like a shark, he won’t drown as long as he keeps swimming. But that’s not an ability he can pass down to Q and so all James has to give Q are words – words and his presence, a reminder that Q isn’t alone in this.
James’s first two kills hadn’t affected him in any conscious way. He’s slept just as well the nights after and continued his duties with just an extra Double-O title to his name, so he foregoes the platitudes; they wouldn’t sound at all sincere coming from him. He strokes his thumb against Q’s hand. “Pulling the trigger doesn’t define you, unless you allow it to.”
Q makes a quiet noise of protest – it sounds too easy, except that it’s not. It involves making that same choice day to day, after every single incident that tries to prove the decision otherwise. James is an elite special operative, and his license to kill has become part of his identity. The choice he makes, every time he feels his indifference wearing thin and the rage setting in, is to not be excessively cruel simply for the sake of it. Cold-blooded assassins, the queen’s foxhounds, the crown’s executioners – there are plenty of epithets for the Double-Os, but underneath them all James is still human.
The choice that Q needs to make is whether he is willing to convince himself – or be convinced – that killing a single man doesn’t make him a murderer. James can’t make that decision for him, but he’ll put up a good argument for it.
Quietly, James says, “You had two choices. Pull the trigger, or not. What would have happened if you didn’t take that shot?”
Q doesn’t answer him. James is sitting on the same side as Q’s black eye, and the deepening bruise would be incredibly distracting if James isn’t trying his hardest to catch Q’s gaze.
“Q.”
No audible response, although the pointed way Q is trying to turn away while still staying pressed up against James’s side indicates that he’s definitely listening.
James trails his fingers lightly over Q’s arm, careful to avoid the bandages over the long cut across his forearm, and then releases Q’s hand to pull the gun, the one Q had fired back in the solar furnace facility, out of its holster.
It’s obvious the moment Q notices the gun, because his entire body recoils back, followed by a sharp hiss of pain.
James double-checks that the safety is on and then shifts to curl his body closer around Q, still mindful of his injuries, so he can aim the gun straight ahead. He drops his other hand back on top of Q’s, palm to back of palm, and then lifts them to wrap both their hands around the weapon. It leaves Q enclosed within the cage of James’s arms, unable to avoid staring at the gun -- James watches Q’s body language closely just in case he reacts badly, but until then he won’t let Q pull away.
“What would have happened if you didn’t take that shot?” James says again.
Q doesn’t bother pulling his hand back, even though James keeps his grasp loose. The rest of him is rigid now, his injured arm pulled tight against his chest, telegraphing tension with every shallow breath. He isn’t shaking anymore. “The guard would have gunned you down.”
“Yes. He’s trained, and at that range he wouldn’t have missed. I would be dead.”
Q makes another quiet, strangled noise, and he turns his head towards James, although his eyes are still locked on the gun.
“Do you regret it? Shooting that man?” James doesn’t mention that the guard had been fine with letting the two of them die horribly inside the solar furnace cell. That’s not the point, not for someone like Q.
Finally, Q drags his gaze away from the gun to meet James’s eyes, and then says, hoarsely. “No. I can’t.” His hand shifts on the gun, twisting restlessly. “You’re still alive.”
“And so are you,” James tells him. He lets their hands drop, and sets the gun to rest atop Q’s knee, angling it so the barrel points away from them. “This gun is a weapon. You handle them every time we have a mission – you design them and you customize their functionalities to match each agent. It’s the person behind the trigger that matters, and you are our Quartermaster. Always safeguarding your agents in one form or another.”
“It was so quiet.” Q tucks his head down so all James can really see are matted, unruly curls, Q’s hair rough with sweat and grit and dirt. “He fell so quickly and quietly. No one falls like that.”
Only the dead do, James thinks. The absence of life means no muscle resistance, the body’s unconscious mechanisms entirely cut off. James can recognize a falling dead body at first glance; it makes him very efficient at clearing multiple targets within a single strike.
He registers, at the periphery of his attention, the distinct set of knocks, and files it away. The predetermined sequence means Swann is fine and isn’t being coerced in any way; she has the room key to let herself in with, and so James shuffles her return to the corner of his mind, focusing back on Q.
“That’s why it takes two kills, to become a Double-O,” James says. “The second one confirms whether it’s a road you are able to walk on, and whether you are willing to.” He checks the safety on the gun, and then shifts to set it on the mattress by his knee, out of Q’s line of sight.
Q nods, and finally relaxes, letting his shoulders drop, leaning back half against the pillows and half against James.
“I still…” Q trails off, and then seems to purposefully put the thought aside. James doesn’t comment; a single conversation isn’t going to change the course of Q’s thoughts so easily, but James has done what he can for now. “What do we do now?”
He doesn’t seem to have noticed that James is entirely wrapped around him now, closer than before. James doesn’t bother moving. Q’s skin feels a little warmer than should be normal, but he doesn’t seem to be running a fever. If Q stays awake for a while more, it might be time to ice his bruises again.
“Short term – rest. We won’t move until at least tomorrow.”
Q doesn’t protest, which tells James how exhausted he must really be, even if he’s managed to rally for the duration of their conversation. Panic and adrenaline can do that.
“Medium term – that depends,” James continues. “Quantum, Le Chiffre’s operations, Silva’s cyber-terrorism. And all our recent attackers – they all belong to a much vaster organization.”
“You mentioned your lead. L’Americain,”
“L’Americain is a place,” Swann says from the room door. “And it’s in Morocco. And the organization that you are looking for, its name is Spectre.”
She doesn’t look triumphant or knowing. Her eyes sweep over them with clinical disinterest, although there’s an intentness in her gaze that suggests a slight lowering of arms, the chance for compromise.
“How do you know?” Q says, sounding both tired and wary.
“My father worked for them. I don’t know what’s at the L’Americain, but I can take you there.” Swann glances at the gun on the bed. “Should I be worried?”
James picks up the gun and holsters it as an answer. Now that the three of them are conscious and in the same room, his mind ticks right back into mission mode. They need a strategy.
“Someone from Spectre—” James keeps Oberhauser’s name to himself; he’ll tell Swann enough that she’s informed, but not knowing certain details might just end up saving her life at some point “—is looking for me, desperately enough that they captured Q to threaten him into tracking me down.”
He falls quiet, thoughtful, because Q’s captors had known about the special nanotech in James’s blood when no one outside of Q Branch and M should know that fact. Q has his team too well trained to babble, which means MI6 has a leak, or very possibly a Spectre mole. The urge to fly straight back to England is almost a physical hook in his chest – it’s the same pull that drove him to return from the dead after Eve shot him from the top of the Varda Viaduct. James is a Double-O. That identity and all it encompasses is sunk in his bones now, and if MI6 needs him, he can do nothing but heed that wordless call-to-arms.
His M – Olivia Mansfield – had sent him after Spectre’s trail, but James doubts she’d want him to do so at the Secret Service’s expense. And – James glances down at Q in his arms – he can’t willingly sacrifice Q for it, either.
Any impartiality he’d tried to maintain had been thoroughly shattered the moment James walked through the hotel room and saw the trail of blood, the wrenched off bathroom door, Q’s prized laptop, stickers and all, self-sabotaged via a watery death in the sink. If Oberhauser wants to haunt James from the grave he’ll have to do it personally, because James is done chasing down a ghost.
“They sent men after you as well.” James meets Swann’s gaze. “Perhaps together, we’ll present a tempting enough target that they’ll come all the way to London to find us instead. Will you come with us?”
“Why do you need me if you don’t want to follow the trail to L’Americain?” she throws right back.
“We’ll do this through official channels,” James says, glancing wryly at Q. M would likely love nothing more than to permanently ground both James and Q this time, but he is pragmatic enough to leave any punishments for after they have dealt with the leak in MI6 and dismantled Spectre’s operations. “Even I don’t go personally, M has other Double-Os.”
Perhaps taking over James’s mission might even stop 009 from murdering him; there’s always been an understated rivalry between the Double-Os, but poaching the DB10 might just be the last straw.
“And if I don’t trust your people?” Swann says.
“I have contacts,” James says. “American, if you prefer to get out of the continent.”
Swann laughs, a sharp-edged sound. “So I can trade one assassin for another? I think I prefer the devil I barely know to one I know nothing of at all.”
“I can give you any new identity you want.”
James and Swann both pause. Q shifts in James’s hold, and then flexes the fingers of his uninjured arm in demonstration. “They left me the mobility in my hands. I’ll need another laptop, however.”
The shift is subtle, but there’s something steadier about Q now that he has something to focus on. It’s a hint of the quartermaster James is familiar with; Q might be physically injured and under a great deal of psychological strain, but his spirit is still there, banked like the embers of a flame.
“I’m still your best chance at staying alive,” James says. “But if you rather go your own way, Q can create a new identity for you, seamless and untraceable.”
“Against Spectre’s combined resources?” There isn’t an inch of disbelief in Swann’s voice. She’s simply practical all the way to the bone; she won’t be tricked by charmed promises.
James doesn’t have time to detail all the ways Q has innovated Q Branch, or just how many times he’s changed the course of James’s missions with his skills. Swann will simply have to trust them on faith. “He’ll find a way. He always does.”
Q had chosen probable and imminent death over betraying James’s location. There is nothing James believes Q isn’t capable of now.
This time, it’s Q who settles his hand over James’s, curling his fingers into James’s palm. The steady grip is absent of fear or panic. Q doesn’t look at James; he stares steadily at Swann.
Swann’s eyes flick down, homing unerringly on their entwined hands. When she looks back up, she’s smiling – small and tight but there all the same.
“I’ve been proven wrong,” she says, “It’s not because of your pride after all. There is more to you than just a lone hunter currently being hunted.” She straightens, drawing herself up to her full height. “I’ll go with you. I want to know what my father was involved in. But I don’t have my passport.”
Q blinks, momentarily thrown.
“Neither do you,” James tells Q. He hadn’t found any ID in Q’s destroyed hotel room; the only personal effect left behind was the damaged laptop. He turns back to Swann. “It won’t be a problem.”
“I hope it will be as easy as you make it sound,” Swann says. She reaches out for something, holding onto the doorframe for balance, and then steps into the bedroom to set a bag on the table. “Here. Food, and water.”
She promptly dismisses James and focuses on Q, studying him with narrowed eyes. “There is more acetaminophen in the medical kit if the pain is coming back. If you experience excessive pain or swelling or anything out of the ordinary compared to what you’re currently feeling, wake me. I’ll be on the couch outside.”
Swann’s eyes look red-rimmed in low lights of the bedroom, and James is reminded that she has recently lost her father, estranged or not, followed by an abduction attempt and far too many brushes with unscrupulous paid mercenaries. And now there’s a terribly injured young man and a covert operative in what should be her bed, and she’s still wearing her coat despite the warmer temperature of the hotel room, undoubtedly with the other pairs of surgical scissors in the pockets.
She wouldn’t want kindness, however, not at this moment, so James gives her respect instead.
“Thank you, Dr. Swann,” James says.
She looks at him, and then dips her head. “If we’re going to travel together, you might as well call me Madeleine.”
James nods. “Good night, Madeleine.”
Her smile is like lightning, brief but real. “Good night, James, Q.”
She closes the bedroom door almost all the way this time, and James doesn’t protest. She’ll want her privacy, and she can defend herself well enough for the few seconds it takes James to get to the next room if anyone manages to break in. They’re secured for tonight.
Q sighs, and lets his eyes flutter shut. “I’m tired.”
James runs his free hand lightly through Q’s hair, a gentle reminder to not fall asleep. “Food, first.” And more painkillers – Q might hate the drowsiness that is a side effect of the acetaminophen, but it will help him rest better.
Q sighs again, but shifts his weight slightly away from James, squeezing James’s hand once before letting go. “I still hate you,” he says, and his tone is matter-of-fact, so very reminiscent of the time James had put the Spectre ring in his hand and asked him for one last favour – to trust James for a while longer.
James gazes at Q for a long moment.
“I’ll try to change that,” James says, and then slips off the bed to get the bag that Madeleine had left on the table.