} frozen hearts growing colder with time

[cockitup]

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.

Comments

[comm]

Q stores the name away to look into later. "He may be working backwards." That's assuming that Bond hasn't slept with anyone since last week, that is, which Q doubts (somewhat uncharitably).

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."

[cockitup]

"I'll check if he is." He'll have to track the last one down, though this time not to sleep with her-- which is too bad, because it's how he usually deals with stress he's trying to deny. But he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he intentionally put someone in danger, just in case this is a pattern. And James does, actually, manage to live with himself as he is presently. He has lines he doesn't cross.

"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.

[comm]

"Off you go, then." Q doesn't wave as Bond leaves, distracted once again by a flurry of research. He doesn't have anything on Liane Decoteau, because he doesn't keep tabs that close on their operatives.

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.

[cockitup]

He arrives in the morning, late enough not to be indecent but early enough to suggest he hasn't gotten much sleep himself. He appreciates Q being on top of this immediately, and trusts his sources. That's a big part of why Bond had brought this to him right away-- had bypassed Mallory, in fact, as a useless link in the chain. When it's personal, Bond's already low tolerance for political arse-kissing dwindles to zero.

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."

[comm]

Scaramanga is an odd piece of work, and far too flashy besides. "He was likely the one behind the loss of 002, seven years ago." That was ahead of Q's time—this Q, that is—but the files and work stay behind, even if the old Q doesn't.

"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.