cockitup: (shooting range)
[personal profile] 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.
cockitup: (skeptical)
[personal profile] cockitup
Trinidad.

A place Bond rather liked, actually. Beautiful beaches, beautiful women, and he spoke Spanish well enough to take advantage of both. As a plus, there was also a very small likelihood of having to navigate a frozen wasteland; his memories of Russia were never good ones outside of the bedroom. His memories of Trinidad, however, were quickly getting colored by the annoyance of this mission.

Bond's done his share of escort missions, but they've almost exclusively been with women he's run across that he's helping in some way. It's not difficult to be patient with them. More than that, he elected to take them along. Q's presence here... is a different story. Mandated from on high (on high being Mallory, a designation Bond hasn't quite shifted over to just M yet-- he hasn't proven himself enough) and passed down through Q himself, who to his credit seems none happier than Bond about circumstances.

He's had to ditch his aviator sunglasses with some regret in order to return fire cleanly. His light linen shirt, very casual, is getting dirty from all the sand both from ricochet bullets and from having to hit the ground a time or two. Their current sand dune is high and covered with reeds, which makes it great cover for shooting at men on a boat anchored near the stunning Caribbean shoreline.

They're trying to take off, but won't get far. Bond's made sure to hit the engine a time or two, deliberately not where it would explode but thoroughly ruining the gears.

Q, of course, is being a nuisance of a dead weight on this whole thing. A noncombatant he has to protect with no reward at the end to sweeten the deal. Bond shifts a sardonic glance to where he's huddled with his bag of tech beside the dune with him.

"If I'd known you'd attract this much attention, Q, I'd have taken you out ages ago," he drawls.

He needs Q to retrieve the information they need, something they were too smart to set up with any access to the internet. Intranet servers only. That doesn't mean Bond has to be nice about it.