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Entry tags:
} frozen hearts growing colder with time
It's a normal dreary day in London when Bond arrives home, latest investigation finished. The satisfaction of a job completed is distant and vague; it's the rush of the job, not its completion, that he does this for. That it serves and protects at the same time is all that lets him sleep at night in the end.
The misty coastal fog drifts over the bleak gray sameness of streets and buildings, and when he lets himself into his flat, there's not much remission. It's bare, looking half-moved in with odds and ends and an incomplete set of furniture, a sheet draped along the back of the couch, artwork propped up on the floor against the walls. Nonetheless, Bond knows right away that it's been broken into, because they hadn't been subtle-- they'd left the door unlocked, an invitation or a taunt.
Inwardly, he snaps to attention like a spring recoiling, and eases out his handgun from beneath his boxy suit jacket. He silently clears each room but doesn't yet holster it. They could be trying to get the drop on him. Then commences the thorough, methodical searching to determine what they were after. To his frustration, he doesn't immediately find anything-- he keeps nothing important here, barely even comes here if he can help it, much preferring to spend the night in a woman's warm bed.
It's not until he's starting to grate his teeth with the tension that he wrenches the icebox open with frustration and finds the severed hand laying there, perfectly preserved, on the ice. It's a woman's hand, slender and manicured, but impossible to recognize from hand alone. There's no jewelry, nothing else, not even a note. The blood has coagulated on the gory end of the stump, jarringly clean and neat at the cut.
So it was a taunt, he decides, long exhale rushing out of him.
He slips his gun back into the holster and goes to retrieve one of his discarded boxes. Time to pack it in ice and cloth and bring it into the office and see what Q can get from it.
No rest for the wicked.
The misty coastal fog drifts over the bleak gray sameness of streets and buildings, and when he lets himself into his flat, there's not much remission. It's bare, looking half-moved in with odds and ends and an incomplete set of furniture, a sheet draped along the back of the couch, artwork propped up on the floor against the walls. Nonetheless, Bond knows right away that it's been broken into, because they hadn't been subtle-- they'd left the door unlocked, an invitation or a taunt.
Inwardly, he snaps to attention like a spring recoiling, and eases out his handgun from beneath his boxy suit jacket. He silently clears each room but doesn't yet holster it. They could be trying to get the drop on him. Then commences the thorough, methodical searching to determine what they were after. To his frustration, he doesn't immediately find anything-- he keeps nothing important here, barely even comes here if he can help it, much preferring to spend the night in a woman's warm bed.
It's not until he's starting to grate his teeth with the tension that he wrenches the icebox open with frustration and finds the severed hand laying there, perfectly preserved, on the ice. It's a woman's hand, slender and manicured, but impossible to recognize from hand alone. There's no jewelry, nothing else, not even a note. The blood has coagulated on the gory end of the stump, jarringly clean and neat at the cut.
So it was a taunt, he decides, long exhale rushing out of him.
He slips his gun back into the holster and goes to retrieve one of his discarded boxes. Time to pack it in ice and cloth and bring it into the office and see what Q can get from it.
No rest for the wicked.
no subject
Just this much contact is enough. Q doesn't close his eyes, but his head dips down and his gaze unfocuses.
Fear. Pain. Not unusual for someone who'd been killed, or at least tortured. Q pushes further. More fear, surprise, confusion—and finally, a face, cast in shadow. He's wearing a gambler hat and clean-shaven. Dark hair. He says this is because of him, and immediately you know who the bastard's talking about. And so it's James' fault that your arm is tied down on a table to your right and the man starts to saw, and saw—
Withdrawing his hand, Q shakes off the chill and closes up the box again, quickly and neatly.
"The perpetrator knows who you are, and the victim knew you by first name. Her hand was removed with a surgical saw, I think—two days ago." Yes, at most. So the perpetrator knew when Bond would be returning. Q pushes the box across the table back towards Bond, already shuffling papers to try and forget the phantom pain.
no subject
His gaze sharpens as Q... communes, probably, is the word to use. Bond has no idea what it's like or what he feels, and doesn't want to. It's not an ability he's envious of. His own ability to nudge others into doing things isn't something that requires him to feel them-- it's more casting out a line and tugging them somewhere than getting inside and altering anything. Being that close to someone would be immensely distasteful for him, too personal by far.
But it's undeniably damnably useful, and his whole demeanor goes cold, shut off, at the news. Now he recognizes that hand, since he'd seen it so recently. "Liane Decoteau," he says flatly. "I knew her briefly. Last week." No attempt at pretending that euphemism means anything but what it does. She was killed for sleeping with me. "He moves fast." Which frankly says a lot about his reach, and how closely he's observing him.
Bond reaches out for the box with a sense of detachment, the only way he knows how to cope. Gently, he covers the hand with the cloth again and slides the flaps on the box shut. He can tell Q is trying to move past whatever he'd felt and doesn't blame him.
no subject
Once Bond takes the box back, Q takes a moment to make sure that the papers underneath it haven't been damaged.
"Well, you can keep that for yourself, or pass it on to morgue." He stands up, preparing to go to the bathroom to wash his hands. "I'll get back to you with any information I find. You can take some time to rest before your next job."
no subject
"Rest," he repeats in a mutter. Definitely the morgue, ta, Q. "Of course. Thank you, Q. I'll be in tomorrow." You'll have information by then, won't you? Because Bond is already feeling itchy to put a bullet in the brain of whoever did this. Very itchy.
He's going to remotely surveil his last 'date' for a few hours, then go home, pull out his bottle of scotch, and drink himself to sleep in his unfurnished apartment. Not that this is something Bond shares with anyone else. His PTSD is his own problem.
no subject
He doesn't go home that night. He does leave the office, if only to follow some tracks and talk to informants. Whenever Bond returns the next day, Q is still there, in the same clothes and looking only slightly more mussed than usual. As soon as he sees him, Q gets up from his desk with a file of collected information on Decoteau's last known movements, and a separate sheaf of people who might be behind this.
"This is tentative," he says of the latter. "But this—you can start looking into this one." Q slaps the first file into Bond's hand.
no subject
Bond accepts the file smoothly and opens it, scanning quickly. He's silent as he reads, then opens the second file to see if anything jumps out, eyes flicking over the names. "Francisco Scaramanga," he reads out loud, seeing the associated suspected kill list from his paid hits. "I've seen him before. Not sure where. The henchmen all start to run together after a while."
He snaps both files shut, but doesn't give them back. "I'll see if I can't find Mr. Scaramanga poking around anywhere."
no subject
"You're just going to go out and search for him?" Q's skepticism is obvious, and he forestalls any reply by continuing quickly; "He's not supposed in town, but I've gotten wind of an appearance by him at the bar downtown. The—let's see." He consults a scrap of paper he'd written the note on, because the name of the locale amused him and he thought it'd be nice to read again later.
(Christ, he does need a hobby. )
"The Cow At the End of Moscow. There you are." The address is also on the note that he hands to Bond.