Chapter Text
Find me…
Find me…
Find me…
It was repeated over and over and over in his head. He had no idea who needed finding and it was driving him mad. He searched and searched, but there was nothing. No one. For him. He tried, but no one fit. He thought he came close, but that was a mistake.
Find me…
Find me…
Find me...
James Bond was a walking, talking, festering, open wound. He had been for awhile. New recruits could smell it on him, and like chum to the sharks, it drew them in. They'd try to take a piece out of him, circling, circling, waiting for the right time to strike, but he'd just smile that toothy grin, flash his flat blue eyes and eat them, sometimes leaving nothing for M.
As he had discovered, you can’t kiss a soul better, but you can make it bleed. Flesh pressed against his, had the same effect, over and over. Emptiness. Nothing. A hole where a heart should be. At some point, he stopped seeing the blood that poured from it.
How do you put it back together?
M watched and waited. For what he wasn't sure, she was hard to read. Perhaps an ending to his time, a conclusion to his life or maybe she was surprised to see that he'd made it this far.
A misogynistic dinosaur. A Cold War relic.
Words chosen with surgical precision to slice at his ego.
He didn't understand the need for the words. He was a machine, built and forged by MI6, to get the job done, by any means necessary. So what if some of those means had soft skin and lush curves. And what if water didn’t answer him at all and other things tugged at him?
Find me…
Find me…
Find me...
Misogynistic dinosaur.
Cold War relic.
So what did that make M, if not the same product of the same machine. A witch without power.
It was always the same day in and out, over and over, full of nothing, not since Vesper. He’d made mistakes. With his job, with his heart. That horrid, wretched thing that had opened itself and then realizing how wrong it was, closed itself off. He couldn’t trust it. It almost betrayed him. If he could have killed it, he would have. Traitors must be dealt with harshly.
He had pulled himself out of that watery grave in Venice and stood, shredded and torn. Betrayal will do that, can do that. It leaves behind scars one can’t see. Water is a giving and taking element, but it can only fix so much, after you use it to destroy. And oh, how he had used it to lay waste to the men who had led Vesper to betray him. His spell got out of control, as he became out of control, the ebb, the flow, altogether prevented him from saving Vesper.
The sea wouldn’t answer his call. There was no help from it. What he had done, he could not undo and the building sank beneath him, locking Vesper away. She was trapped and he was cast out, shunned by his own kind after that first fall and when he made the second one, into a second watery grave under a bridge, no one answered. He was alone.
A sea witch on his own.
And that tasted bitter. No help, no family.
Find me…
Find me...
Find me...
Nothing there. Empty.
No one else could, or would put him together. Perhaps they didn't think themselves stupid enough to try. Perhaps Bond didn't think himself stupid enough to accept the help. He had been wrong before.
Until a powerful mage came along, and it was like a bolt of lightning to the sand, a jolt to have a fellow witch, but not a sea witch. His magic was odd, complicated. Bond’s was simple. But Q’s job was to keep them safe, protect them. It had been awhile since someone had protected Bond.
He studied the new Quartermaster with a wariness reserved for a mark, soon to be dead the minute they step into the cross-hairs.
Not even M could protect Q from what was to come.
She had tried to warn him with the same words she had stabbed into Bond.
“He’s a misogynistic dinosaur. A relic of the cold war. A blunt instrument.”
There was absolutely nothing more favorable she could have inadvertently said about Bond to trigger the new Quartermaster’s interest, other than those exact words. Dinosaur, relic, cold war and instrument. She mistook his raised eyebrows as shock when confronted bluntly with what he could expect.
But dinosaurs, the cold war, archaeology and any sort of instrument, weaponized or blunt, were things the Quartermaster truly enjoyed. He had books, upon books, upon books about those subjects.
“Magic is rare in these halls. Rare, but not uncommon. I suspect a few people lie about it, but you’re definitely our first…” M’s voice trailed off.
“Mage?” The new Q’s soft voice filled in her sentence. He was used to people fearing what he was. It was a natural response to a natural talent.
M gave a delicate snort. “I was going to say Quartermaster, who looks like they just earned their long pants. But yes, you’ll be our first, youngest Quartermaster, who is also a Mage. Don’t think that’s why you got this job. If you think that, well then, I’ve hired the wrong man...Mage.”
“I’ll do my best not to let you down.” Q said, his words firm and promising. No one had actively sought out a Mage of his level along with his other skill set before, for espionage purposes. It would either be a success or a disaster. Q was eager to see what came of it.
“See that you don’t, or I’ll be forced to eat one of my desk ornaments.”
“Yes, M.” A smile tugged at the corner of Q’s lips, he couldn’t imagine anyone forcing M to do what she didn’t want to do.
M continued to speak to him, informing him of expectations and how to make himself more comfortable in a department built on fact, science, technology and deception, rather than the more earthly arts of Magic. “You’ll have free rein, within standard working and security limits, to create your...atelier, as you would call it, however you like it. I dare say what passes for what we’ve assigned for the Quartermaster’s office down here, won’t suit you.”
“I’ve had worse.” Q said, his voice dry and crisp as he studied the walls of Churchill’s old bunker. He touched the brick. Good, he would be exposed to a bit of dust and dirt, not a completely sterile environment.
M nodded. “Haven’t we all.”
“Looks promising.” Q said, he dusted his fingers along his checked trousers.
And then Q found out what it actually meant, to put his spelled equipment in the hands of one of MI6’s many agents. And then he got to experience the joy that 007 was. It’s possible dinosaurs aren’t so stupid.
It’s also possible that Q would return to his books on dinosaurs and war tactics in order to understand his malfunctioning piece of agent.
Then one day, after Silva, there was no M, to advise and watch, and wait. There was only Mallory, and he had no experience with Bond, save for watching the agent come back broken, not necessarily repaired.
“Oh dear.” Q said, and his equipment in even worse disrepair.
Bond would return his equipment again and again. He would also return his body to MI6, again and again. Burnt and bitter as his returned equipment. Dinosaurs are especially rough on equipment, Q discovered.
At first, Bond used Q’s equipment with doubt, but they worked, until he needed them not to, so he applied his skill set of magic, to make them what he needed. Q wasn’t fond of his equipment being in Bond’s hands. Too often, the carefully crafted spells went awry.
“Dammit Bond.” Q’s voice would come over the comm line as something else was destroyed or used for another purpose than it was originally created. “Walthers are NOT for blowing up hallways!”
And Bond would smile at his trick, but he was alive, by his own means and Q’s...hijacked magic.
Q would sigh and carry away the cremated remains, those proud little soldiers had saved his agent, so he wasn’t too bothered.
Q’s magic though, was complicated and purposefully crafted to be exact. How much was the man like his spells? Curiosity entered Bond, like a hook into a fish, and he began to investigate, to poke and prod.
Find me...
Find me...
Find me...
He ignored the call and began to snoop and sneak and bother, if we’re calling a pot, a pot and a kettle, a kettle.
The Quartermaster would walk away, cradling and whispering terms of endearments to his unsalvageable equipment, said, saved agent would remain at his back, studying him.
Q would again study his books for answers to Bond and Bond would study the human factor of Q, to find his answers.