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The large front door creaked open, just as it always had. So beautiful, welcoming people into the luxurious apartment, but in reality, riddled with rust and woodworm beneath the paint. Bond closed it behind him, letting out a sigh of comfort at being home.
It was dusk, and the warm sunlight streamed into the hallway through the large dining room windows. The windows were open, all the curtains drawn—they always were lately. A wisp of dust swirled beneath the light.
Cressida heard him, of course she did, but she didn't turn around. She had a book on her lap, but she hadn't paid any attention to it for a long time; she was simply staring aimlessly out the window, her gaze fixed on nothing in particular.
Her father had tried to get her to move back in with them after the accident, but faced with Cressida's stubbornness, he agreed to let her continue living there if he could visit her regularly and she was accompanied by a maid at all times.
Bond dropped his bag in the hallway and gave a few soft but lively knocks with his knuckle on the open dining room door.
“Is there anyone here who’d like some Mauritanian dates?” he asked, smiling at her and shaking a small box in his hand. Cressida turned her head to look at him, but didn’t answer. Bond approached with a smile and sat down on the sofa beside her, placing the box on the table and beginning to open it.
“I was told they were the best and sweeter around, though I suppose they say that everywhere you buy them. How’s your week been?” Bond spoke without looking at her, as if he’d only been away for a couple of hours.
“Fine,” she replied curtly. Cressida watched his hands fiddling with the plastic of the date box. “Elizabeth’s making my dinner; I didn’t tell her to make yours because I wasn’t sure if you’d be back today.” Or if he would be back.
Bond looked up with his typical lopsided smile.
“No problem, I’ll go out and buy something.” He finally managed to peel back the thin plastic that elegantly sealed the small box. “Ah, yes! Here, try one, you do the honors,” he approached and knelt beside Cressida’s wheelchair to offer her the box.
The young woman looked at it for a few moments, then looked up at Bond without saying anything.
Bond smiled.
“No? Well, I’ll leave you some in case you change your mind tomorrow.” He said, biting into one.
The agent stood up as casually as he had approached her, turned around, and went to his bag on the floor, taking some cash from it. He spoke with his back to her, bent over it.
“I think I’ll go buy dinner now, so I can have a nice shower later. Do you want me to get you anything?” he asked without looking at her, counting the bills in his hands.
Cressida’s stomach churned. Not a single comment, as if absolutely nothing were missing. She felt nauseous.
“Really?” She spoke harshly for the first time since he had arrived.
Bond looked up.
“Mh?”
The young woman was looking at him with tired, sad eyes, and a grimace of disgust.
“Is that all you have to say, James?”
The man's smile vanished for a split second before returning back there to his face. As it always did, like a shield.
"Look around!" She shouted, pointing to the room where they were.
Bond scanned the dining room quickly. While he'd been gone, someone had removed all of Monroe's things. There was no sign of his junk, the fast-food boxes he always left on the table, his camera, sketchbooks, or his stupid posters.
There was no sound, not his laughter, not the stupid video games he played every night at too high a volume without headphones. Everything was uncomfortably empty and silent.
He didn't answer.
"Aren't you going to say anything? Really?" Cressida asked incredulously, forcing a laugh.
Bond slowly folded the bills and put them in his pocket.
"I don't know what you want me to say."
She stared at him for a long moment, still in disbelief. She knew Bond was cold, sarcastic, always wearing a mask to keep everyone out. But at that moment… at that moment, it was too much.
“MI6 send someone to collect all of Monroe’s belongings to take them to his family. His parents asked to come themselves to say goodbye to what had been his last home, but it wasn’t granted to keep ‘regular people’ from key locations of the agents.”
Bond nodded as if it were completely understandable and not at all inhumane.
Cressida looked at him for a few moments in silence.
“…You didn’t cry at the funeral,” she said. “Nor before, or after.” She took a breath. “I’m not going to interfere with how you choose to grieve, but what I won’t allow is for you to act as if nothing happened.”
Bond’s lips twitched slightly, but he stood there with his hand in his pocket, saying nothing.
The woman shook her head.
“I loved him, and you know that.” He looked into her eyes, Cressida's filled with pain and resentment. "And you loved him too. You lost your best friend, James, and at some point you're going to have to face that."
Headstrong, reckless, undisciplined, and a troublemaker. Cressida had read Greenway's report, and he was right. But she had gotten to know him well enough during their months of training, and if there was one thing Bond wasn't, it was unbound. Even if he tried his hardest to appear so.
Cressida knew that what had happened in Slovakia had affected him—she could see it in his eyes, in the way his gaze had trembled when he first entered the empty living room, in the way he had searched for Monroe's books in the cabinet as he sat down, in the way he had turned his back on her several times so she wouldn't see his face.
Bond had been the one who had asked Monroe to follow the suspect to the wine cellar that day. Cressida had heard how hesitant Monroe was about that plan, how he preferred to wait for backup. Bond told him to go, and he obeyed because he trusted him. And he was murdered for that.
She had survived. Perhaps Monroe would have survived the bomb too if he hadn't followed Bond’s orders.
But she would never say that aloud.
The caretaker entered the dining room at that moment with a tray in her hands, startled slightly at the sight of the man.
“Mr. Bond, I'm sorry, I didn't hear you come in.” She nodded. “I hope your return was pleasant.”
The man lowered his gaze. Cressida sat up in her chair as Elizabeth placed the tray on a small table beside her.
Cressida spoke without looking at him.
“No, Bond. I don't need you to get me anything.”