Chapter Text
The third assailant dropped with a bullet in his chest, and Bond kept moving forward, ignoring the sound of M berating him through his earpiece. It was pretty standard chastisement, revolving around not silencing every enemy operative when MI6 still had questions that needed answers, etcetera. It had been awhile since M had been in the field, obviously, so 007 didn’t bother to point out that he could answer questions on his own, thank you very much, but not if he were the one dead. “Yes, Ma'am,” he murmured back obediently at what was most likely the right time – there had been a lull in the one-sided conversation, at least – and kept moving, gun-first.
“You’re not listening, are you?”
“I’m actually trying to stay alive,” he replied back without much apparent interest. “I’ll stop shooting people when they stop trying to shoot me.”
That silenced the voices on the other end, although he heard whoever was in the room with M snicker, and then the woman using a bit of verbal laceration to tell the other to can-it.
Before Bond had to ask, another voice was passing along instructions to him, “We’ll have a harder time tracking you if you go down to the lower floors. There should be doors to your right and one to your left. The one on the right is faster, but-”
Bond went through the one on the right, finding it locked but using a well-placed kick to remedy that. Gun still leading, he stalked into the room with determined, smooth strides.
“He took the one on the right, didn’t he?” came the sound of M sighing.
The defeated voice was quiet enough to hint that the technician in charge of directing Bond had leaned back resignedly in his chair, “Yes, Ma'am.”
“It was faster,” Bond defended himself, sensibly repeating the technician’s words.
M leaned closer to the receiver again to try and get a grasp on what her best and most troublesome agent was doing, “Bond, what is your situation?”
Troublesome he was, but he was also a well-trained MI6 agent, and his pale-blue gaze was already scanning the room like ice, muscles tense but posture loose and ready. His reflexes had realized that the room was empty of enemy gunmen almost before his mind logically accepted the fact, and it was evident in his posture as it relaxed by an infinitesimal margin; only someone who had known him for years would have actually noticed the difference. Any foe who had turned up in these moments would have quickly been shown that the shift did nothing to Bond’s reflex time, though, because even a relaxed 007 was still horrifically lethal, not to mention a little trigger-happy, if M were to be believed. “Just another empty room,” his low monotone soothed M, “Table and chairs.” This building felt like a maze, and the fact that it was just one building on an island full of them wasn’t encouraging. Silently, he was deeply resentful of the fact that no rising villains seemed to feel truly complete until they’d fulfilled the stereotype of buying their own top-secret island. ‘Top-secret’ was generally overrated, and playing hide-and-go-seek with armed gunmen in unmitigated heat had probably ruined islands for Bond permanently. If he ever actually went through on his promises to take a vacation, he was going somewhere wooded, cold, and solidly landlocked.
At that moment, his muscles tensed up again and his finger put down another pound of unconscious pressure on the trigger as movement caught his eye like a hook. He’d spoken too soon in labeling the room empty, as he now found that the old, battered metal table in the center of the room was occupied. A kid no older than seven and no bigger than an undersized dog peered over the top, small enough that he’d been able to curl up in his chair and stay hidden until he’d moved.
M must have heard the way his breath subtly stopped, because she asked with tense professionalism, “007, what’s going on?”
For once, Bond was unsure exactly what to do with the situation. Eyes tracking around the room to be sure that it didn’t hold any other surprises, he answered distractedly, “There’s…there’s a kid here. Six or seven years old maybe.” Naturally his eyes took in every nuance, and the boy cowered back silently as the 00-agent inspected him. “Looks like the Westford Ring has had him here for a bit.”
“I’ll alert the necessary people. Clean-up will come in after you with the child as a priority. Continue your mission.”
Bond was already making up his own mind, however, and – as usual – the decisions he reached were decidedly different from the ones that M reached. He was already walking towards the child.
That didn’t go over well, possibly because Bond was a large man and even more possibly because he still held a gun in a half-ready position. Large brown eyes widened behind smudged spectacles, dark beneath a tangled fall of messy brown hair, and then the kid was jumping up and away like a spooked hare. That wasn’t as much of a problem as expected, however, as the hefty table gave a groan of protest and a short chain brought the boy up short by the ankle.
Amending his previous report, eyes narrowed inscrutably, Bond said, “There’s a kid here chained to a table.”
“For goodness’ sakes, Bond, you can’t do anything about it now! You have to find the shipments that Westford has been receiving and shut him down,” M tried to snap him back into being sensible. “Besides, you’re about as much a babysitter as I am…” She had a point there: the two of them were about as practiced at babysitting as born-and-bred attack-dogs were at being lap-dogs.
As per usual, Bond was ignoring her, however, or at least putting her words under advisement as he catalogued what he knew and made his own deductions silently in his head. He’d circled around the table, the muzzle of his gun now aimed at the floor even if it was still primed and ready, and the skinny boy was shuffling warily out of his way. He was a cute-looking kid, with large eyes and a delicate face, his size-too-large cargo pants and T-shirt making him look like he should have been at school, if one could ignore the dust and grime and the scrapes and bruises on him. Right now he was breathing fast and watching Bond as uncertainly as he’d watch a very large snake, clearly liking him not at all.
“Bond!” M barked again.
Bond took out the earpiece and slipped it into the pocket of his pants. There, the anger of MI6 was barely a mosquito’s whine. It wasn’t that he totally disagreed with her, it was that he disagreed with her a tiny bit but wasn’t going to change his mind. A kid this small couldn’t be left tethered to a table when there were shooters wandering around. Totally out of his element, Bond slowly crouched down, not holstering his gun but at least compromising enough to hold it at his side in just one hand as he said, slowly, “I’m not going to hurt you, so don’t do anything.” Not that the 007 agent had any idea what a seven-year-old would necessarily do in a situation like this, but he figured it would be best to cover all of his bases. After all, small things could be dangerous too, right? After all, M was just a little old lady, yet she could just about make him quiver in his boots if she really got wound up (thus the transfer of his earpiece from his ear to his pocket). This kid looked scared out of his skin, but his delicate little hands were in fists, and he looked very much like a wild animal backed into a corner.
Out of all the possible metaphorical wild animals, he probably only qualified as a squirrel, but still. Bond was determined not to ignore the diminutive size, even if the comparison between himself and the kid was like a dog to a mouse respectively.
He reached forward slowly with his free hand, and the boy jumped as the agent’s fingers closed around the near end of the chain. The kid’s calm was fracturing, and now that Bond essentially had a hold on his leash, the kid was shifting from foot to foot and breathing in fast, ragged little gasps.
‘Good grief, how am I supposed to handle this?’ Bond wondered to himself, feeling a pathetic jab of panic very unbecoming one of Britain’s best secret agents. He began to wonder if he should have just listened to M and run for the hills, because at least he knew what to do with targets and enemies. When it came down to it, his job was set up so that shooting was generally a safe answer, whereas now he was looking at a terrified, unpredictable conundrum that presented him with a million problems, none of them even remotely solved by a bullet. “Hey,” he said, getting frustrated and seeing that the kid was pulling back again, already at the very far reaches of his meter-long chain, “I said I wasn’t going to hurt you!”
If Bond had more experience with kids, he’d have known that the sharp tone was not optimal. With more speed than he’d expected, the little body exploded into panicked motion, giving the 00-agent little choice but to reflexively lunge forward and grab him. A minor struggle followed. At least knowing subconsciously that small kids were renowned for noisiness, he managed to grab the boy with one arm around his stomach and the other holding a hand firmly over his mouth. He heard a panicked squeal of outrage immediately muffled by his palm. This had necessitated dropping his gun, and that probably annoyed Bond more than everything else had this morning. Realizing that this was getting rapidly ridiculous and wasting too much time, Bond spun his new charge around while still maintaining a hand over his mouth. Frightened eyes refused to meet his, and the kid kept trying to wriggle loose of the hand over his face and the second one clamped around his upper arm, although he was clearly outmatched in the field of strength.
“Okay, I’m going to say this once more, and this time…listen!” Bond hissed, wishing he could just go back to being the taciturn, possibly-trigger-happy field agent who rarely even talked to M or his Quartermaster if he could help it. But the kid didn’t belong here or deserve to be here obviously, and as trained as Bond was to shoot in cold blood and kill without remorse, he had a heart, and that heart was telling him that keeping a child safe was easily as important as a room full of cargo. “I’m not with the men who put you here. I’m going to get you out.” There, that seemed simple enough. Unfortunately, Bond didn’t know how old a kid had to be to understand things, although he assumed that the age of seven…or maybe six…was a fairly intelligent age.
Maybe.
“Do you understand?”
For a moment, it looked like Bond was about to be disappointed, as large, watery eyes studied him through scuffed glasses, one of those eyes sadly bruised, but then miserable, hesitant acceptance took root in the dark brown gaze. Standing still now, either defeated or just silently awaiting what would happen next, the shaggy head nodded timidly in his hand. “Okay then – be quiet,” Bond commanded. Only about fifty-percent sure that he’d get his request, 007 removed his hand. He felt ridiculously pleased with himself when no screaming or shouting – or, goodness forbid, crying – ensued. Crying seemed like it was close to happening, though, and there were tracks down the generally dirtiness of the child’s face from previous sobs. Right now the kid just looked at him with a mix of fear and uncertainty and a determination not to let tears fall. Narrow shoulders were shaking despite themselves.
Still. No crying. No screaming. A definite victory. “Okay,” Bond repeated, wondering just how relieved he sounded.
Deciding to focus on what he understood, Bond leaned down to take a look at the chain keeping the boy in place again. It was a long line of fairly lightweight links between two handcuffs, one attached in such a way to the table so as to prevent it from being slipped free, even if the kid had a beggar’s chance at levering the table up. As Bond let the boy go, he stayed still, but as the 00-agent reached subconsciously for his gun to scoot it within easy reach, the bare feet standing next to him tried to make a run for it again. Fast reflexes made it easy to grab the chain for the second time in as many minutes. “Hey, if you want this off, you’re going to have to listen to me,” he gruffly informed the kid. ‘Hell, this is worse than trying to explain to Q why I need a laser-pen.’
“007, the longer you waste your time on a child, the more difficult this mission will be to complete.”
“Q,” Bond grunted, as he once again heard the sound from his removed earpiece. The boy looked towards the disembodied sound with surprise and a spark of curiosity. Apparently the old Quartermaster had managed to boost the signal or the output on the gadgetry manually. Bond had never particularly liked the old fellow, and this meddling honestly annoyed him more. But he obediently pulled the earpiece out of his pocket, murmuring, “You can turn it back to normal now.” He grinned faintly and added in a dry tone, “I’m being a good boy again.”
“Oh, stop it, you’re never good, unless perhaps you’ve had a head injury and Medical has you drugged out of your mind,” M’s voice – normal volume, mercifully – came through and made Bond wince at the memory. For any stubborn, proud 00-agent, it was stories just like that that ensured they did their level best to avoid future trips to Medical. “Now, what’s your situation? Besides the child you’ve obviously decided you have to look after.”
“Said child is almost free,” Bond grunted. “No other hostiles. I’m still on schedule.”
While M was scoffing something about his ‘bloody inconsiderate schedules’ Bond turned to the boy again. The trembling hadn’t stopped, but now the kid seemed to realize that he couldn’t get away from the fast, powerful agent, and was standing with his eyes trained on the ground and his body as still and small as he could make it. The sight made Bond many things at once: uncomfortable, sad, angry, and out of his element. It was so wrong to him somehow that he reached out and gripped the boy’s shoulder, giving as gentle a shake as he was capable of until those large, bespectacled eyes met his. “Are you going to trust me? I already said I’m not gonna shoot you.” Maybe he was a little gruff, but Bond thought he was doing remarkably well for his first time working with a child.
The reminder of the gun predictably set off twin sparks of fear in the boy’s eyes, and he moved his mouth and made the beginnings of an argument still, but then he stopped. Battered looking and scared out of his mind beneath a fragile amount of control, the kid didn’t so much agree to trust Bond as he simply gave up on running away from him.
“What’s his name?” M asked resignedly, “We may as well start looking him up on our end. Maybe it will help us track down exactly why and where from Westford is getting all of his illicit cargo.”
Bond focused on the boy and repeated the question. Suddenly, those big eyes grew stubborn and mutinous, and the answer that came out was in the sharp, clear tones of a child who will not be motivated to change his mind. “Q,” he said.
‘Why can’t I just deal with someone trying to shoot me…?’ “Um…M, we might have a problem.”
“Yes?”
Bond blamed it on Q – the old Q, the Quartermaster who was not half as smart as he thought he was but who stuck his nose into things anyway – because the Quartermaster had turned up the volume on the earpiece and forced Bond to answer him. Now the boy had found a nice title to grasp onto in place of actually answering the question. Worse, it didn’t look like ‘little-Q’ was going to change his mind for anything short of torture. “He says his name is Q.”
“Well, what the Devil kind of name is that?” the real Quartermaster responded in the background before remembering that he was also called Q on occasion.
“Unless you want me to get out the thumbscrews,” observed Bond mildly, still looking at the kid and giving him a ‘you-did-it-this-time’ look of amusement, “I think that that’s the only name we’re going to get.”
M could be heard swearing under her breath in a very unladylike manner, but at least she was sensible enough to realize that she couldn’t very well justify telling one of Britain’s top agents to torture the real name out of a seven-year-old kid. “You need to get back on point, 007,” she finally said primly, “Do whatever you deem necessary to do so.”
“Yes, Ma'am,” was his obedient answer. He did not sigh in relief as the expected lecture passed like a storm-cloud overhead without actually raining down on him. After that, he was left with the question of just how to follow those orders. Life was incalculably simply when the only things he had to factor into his equations were himself and the people who wanted to kill him. Now he had a boy who had picked up on the name/letter ‘Q’ to consider. Since the boy was not Bond and was not pointing a gun at Bond, it was becoming frustrating to decide just what to do.
“Your so-called name we’ll talk about later,” the 00-agent grunted, finding a small smile coiling up the corner of his mouth, unable to suppress amusement at the boy’s moxie.
And then the shooting started, and it wasn’t even 007 doing it.
“BOND! What in Heaven’s name are you doing?!” The voice that came squealing through the earpiece was subsequently ignored as Bond locked down on all of his emotions and just did his job. The kid had dropped down onto his haunches as the first bullet whizzed past them, arms thrown over his head and a squeak of fear coming out of him. It made it that much easier, Bond figured philosophically, to shoot through one of the chain-links himself without the kid getting any more or less afraid than he already was. The chain was lightweight so far as chains went, not even enough to tie your dog up with but enough to keep a seven-year-old contained, and one of the links gave way under the bullet’s impact. Wasting no time, Bond braced his feet and set his shoulder beneath the heavy table, overturning it even as a second and third bullet came from down the hallway toward them. There was a sharp report as the bullet hit the table instead of them. With the table in the way for now, Bond just said, “Enemy fire,” and turned to the kid.
The little boy was a pitiful sight. He’d been decently brave when facing down Bond earlier, his attempts to bolt aside. Apparently well-versed in the noises and dangers of guns, he was now huddled up on the floor with his hands over his ears and tears falling freely down his face. Acting on reflex and more than a little bit of unexpected compassion, Bond scooped him up, feeling the messy, wavy hair against his jaw and neck as he bolted for the room’s second door. At least there was one factor working in his favor: youngsters were small and therefore easy to pick up and run with. Neither of them appeared to be shot yet, but 007 cursed anyway because he had to holster his gun in order to hold the kid. He would have rather had the gun: guns he knew, and they were dependable. Kids fell into neither category in the slightest.
At least ‘Q’ didn’t squirm.
Bullets followed them as their foes began to take the table into account, and the boy whimpered against Bond’s throat. It wasn’t until 007 made it through the second door and slammed it shut behind them that he actually felt the kid breathe. For once, he was glad that the large majority of buildings on this bloody island had a derelict décor, because it was but the work of a moment to find a bit of debris to shove like a doorstop under the door, buying them time by wedging it shut. He threw the lock, too, but it looked as old and undependable as the rest of the building, so he didn’t count on it doing much good.
“Door to the right. That will take you to the stairs,” Bond’s earpiece calmly told him, impervious to the threat of bullets that were very real for 007 and his cargo. Still, it was a relief that someone in MI6 was still tracking him and finding a path to follow.
The boy was next to his ear, though, and while he jumped a little as he heard the voice emanating from the shell of the agent’s ear, little-Q was immediately filling Bond’s ear with more noise. “No! To the left is faster.”
“What?” Bond growled, turning his head and wondering if it was normal for a child with an assumed name to order around a man so much bigger than he was. Again, the choice of tone was a poor one, as his charge shrank back against his shoulder and curled his fingers into Bond’s shirt like kitten-claws. Then a thread of steel gave the kid some spine, and he scowled as well as a bespectacled seven-year-old could.
“I-It doesn’t lead to stairs, but it leads to a window. There’s a flat roof just one floor below. You’ll get out faster that way.”
As soon as M heard the word ‘faster’ coming through the earpiece, it was obvious that she grew nervous. “007, just because it is faster-” she started to caution.
But, like with the door, Bond was a man who liked efficiency. After no more than a blink in little-Q’s direction, he was pivoting to the left. He liked following orders, despite what M might think: sure, he often edited and tweaked those orders as he saw fit, but the fact remained that he liked having something solid to direct his actions. It really didn’t matter who gave those orders either, so long as they made sense, as little-Q’s did. Therefore, it was without qualm or embarrassment that 007 took the advice of a kid that was barely tall enough to come up past his belt. His trained hearing was already telling him that pursuit was close behind, and time was something that he rarely ever had the luxury of.
Therefore it was a pleasant but not altogether unexpected surprise when the boy turned out to be well-informed: the indicated room yielded a window, which Bond wasted no time in inspecting. Yep, there was a perfect landing-spot directly beneath them, one floor down and baking in the sun.
People were still yelling in his ear, but Bond hadn’t gotten as good as he was by being easily distracted. He instead frowned as he focused on his new handicap, self-named Q. Usually, the agent wouldn’t have hesitated to force the window open and take the leap, but he wondered how easily he could do it while carrying someone. ‘Think ‘fragile asset’,’ he told himself, and as easily as that, his brain started working around the stumbling block. He’d run from people while transporting precious, breakable cargo before – not very often, granted, with his track-record of getting into rough-situations and brutal fire-fights – and this was probably quite similar. Clenching his jaw in determination, he managed to shift the boy’s frame into the hook of one arm, freeing up the other to unlatch and swiftly jerk the window open. Quite immediately upon seeing the drop, little-Q began to protest – clearly, he was rethinking the wisdom of his advice. “I didn’t mean-!” the voice piped in a rising pitch as small fingers dug into his shirt and skin.
Now with two people yelling in his ear, Bond ignored everyone but himself and the increasing sound of his enemies, and jumped out the window.
There was that long, infinite moment where he was between sky and earth. No matter how many times he did this, no matter how many times he took ridiculous risks and leapt from ridiculous heights, Bond never escaped that feeling of his stomach lifting up into his throat. It was as if half of his body was fearless while the other half – mostly his innards, it felt like – struggled wildly to avoid the inevitable landing. Little-Q screamed the whole way down.
And then that inevitably landing came, and Bond bit out an involuntary curse as the new weight he was carrying nearly overbalanced him enough to send the two of them crashing down another story or two. Realizing that it was futile to fight the momentum (not if he wanted to keep his ankles and knees intact, at least), Bond tucked his body up and rolled, doing a reasonably good job of pretending that the boy screaming in his arms was actually some kind of glass vase or something. He also managed to control the duration and the direction of the roll, so no falling off the roof occurred. After three rotations, the roof biting into his back, knees, and elbows in turn, they came to a stop, Q still alive and mostly well and Bond rather proud of himself.
“There. See? Told you I’d get you out,” he said, denying that he was out of breath from the rush as he pushed himself up. He loosened his frame from the protective cage it had formed around his small comrade, a cocoon of bone and muscle and flesh that had done well at keeping the boy safe. The flash of protectiveness and quiet pride was brief but sweet as the 00-agent’s quick eyes noted no new injuries on the kid. Of course, Q still looked like he’d just had three different kinds of heart-attacks, his glasses skewed on his noise and his hair – impossibly – even more messy. He just panted and stared up at Bond as if the man were a lunatic. He very nearly started screaming again just out of principle as the agent picked him up once more.
Although he was well aware that he was strong enough to subdue any kind of struggles the kid put up, there was the awkwardness and fear of knowing that he could also break the small frame just as easily by accident – thus, Bond grimaced in a rather cowardly fashion as he pressed little-Q to his shoulder again while the boy tried to get down. “Hey, the window was your idea,” he reminded him, and received a fearful but hotly temperamental glare in return. It was a rather daunting look, despite the fact that it came from eyes red from crying behind glasses that were big and nerdy and still crooked.
And – oh yeah – the glare that was making 007 wince internally was coming from a kid under the age of ten.
M’s voice was almost a welcome reprieve, although he could tell she was sighing and shaking her head, “Why must you always take the fastest route? Do you enjoy giving the rest of us heart palpitations while we wait to see whether your luck has run out?”
Affecting an offended tone, Bond listened for sounds of pursuit – nothing yet, meaning the little jaunt out the window had thrown them off for now – and scanned over Q’s tousled head for a way off the roof, “I don’t enjoy giving you heart palpitations, Ma'am. I just like fast things.”
“You like fast things?” was the response, distinctly not amused. It held, instead, a bit of that dread curiosity that the person always secretly knows they’ll regret.
Bond wasn’t one to disappoint. Picking his way with dogged quickness and catlike agility that belied his size and musculature, Bond gave himself a small half grin and replied, “I like fast women and fast cars. Why would anything else be different?”
With the sound of MI6’s best and finest groaning and muttering imprecations a pleasant buzz in his ear, Bond began to descend to the ground, where he hoped to gain his bearings again. All the while, the self-proclaimed ‘Q’ clung to his chest, head tucked just under the side of his jaw and under his ear, and Bond couldn’t help but think that it was wrong for a child to be that good at being that quiet when he’d been screaming a minute before.