Under Better Circumstances
002
James Bond knows his life could be better. Anyone with breath in their lungs and blood in their veins could tell that his life was far from glamorous and far from fantastic.
That, of course, wasn’t nearly enough to worry him or, for that matter, make others worry about him. The heart of the problem, the steel string that hooked him around the neck and pulled him over to the edge (or at least very near the precarious lip of it) was that he was, in every sense of the phrase, getting too old for this.
It was something he would never admit out loud, something he could never let anyone but himself even brush their fingers against. Still, it was the block of ice in the pit of his stomach, the only thing pounding faster than his heart when a pellet of steel and gunpowder tore through his finely tailored suit and scar etched skin.
It all fell into place sometime too far gone to count. Sometime before Scotland, before deeper breaths, and before oncoming trains that left him behind. In fact, when he thinks about it now, it might very well have happened somewhere minuscule, somewhere 3,000 miles above ground, somewhere underwater, or somewhere on the side of an abandoned road.
Whenever it happened, whatever unaccounted for event was holding the title for Moment That Defined My Life, the real actual point was that there was a part of him that was done.
He guessed the actual realization – because realizing something happened and something happening are two different things – had come along with the jolting shot to his shoulder. It was some pounding sensation at the back of his head, clouding his ears with the rush of wind and crushing water. But he didn’t remember the idea, didn’t recollect that sensation in anything but dreams until his fifth shot of some brown tequila and his third woman, because even that was something he would rather pass up at this point in time.
M – The New M – saw it. From behind his desk, The New M saw the deep running frowns, the dulling eyes. He saw the same thing Bond saw in the mirror every morning and every night. He saw that, pretty soon, it was going to stop working.
But for now, for a few more weeks, and maybe another month, James Bond was still 007, was still the best shot MI6 owned (and, oh, did Bond know it was a matter of owning; had never felt the fact more acutely than he did after the freezing water and ice in a chapel he dully wished would burn down). He was the best in the field, and, sometimes, every so often, every other Sunday, the best outside of the field.
So he managed to avoid the desk work, managed to keep the bullet holes and blood in place of the paper cuts and ink because they could avoid it for a while. They could weave their way around and between the bubbling arguments, the ticking bombs, and the ten second timings, because that was the limit before one of them started to show what they knew. It was easy and, sometimes, on the dull Monday mornings and the restless Saturday nights, comforting to sit through briefing after briefing.
Eventually it sank in just how pissed the idea of all of this not working made him. He realized he wanted to defy this, just as he had defied multiple things in his life. He wanted, more than anything in that moment, to prove this idea wrong. To let everyone know, to remind them you were only too old when there was a grave. It didn’t happen for a while, but it did eventually happen and he thinks it happened when he was forced to stare at the inevitability of time, when he held a million things in one and he just couldn’t register it.
Life spat this goal, this implication of personal strength, back at him in a dusty chapel outside a burning house with freezing water dripping its way through cracks, cementing the feelings in a cold encasement of ice.
He was too old for this.
He was starting to want something better, something different. He kept it all on a back burner, kept the tired attitude that maybe sometimes turned into longing out of his eyes, out of the way his shoulders sank like his entire body wanted to when he stepped out of The New M’s office, file in hand, feet carrying him to the one other place where he was known.
Q Branch is something cold and something welcoming. It’s a sort of home that Bond really didn’t want to associate with, but he didn’t have time to shut that part of his brain down before it considered the blue light of the computers a signal to relax.
Usually when he enters through the glass doors, there isn’t an abundance of acknowledgement. Nobody really cares to look up from their work on security systems or communication networks or whatever else it was they liked to shut down without warning.
Q himself would often glance up when Bond walked in. Half the time Bond was aware that Q always glanced up when somebody decided to enter his workspace without permission. The other fifty percent of those entrances, he was acutely aware that Q never let his gaze linger on those other intrusions with something just short of welcome home.
Standing in front of the centered desk, a good foot longer than all the other desks in the room, was one of the only places Bond didn’t bother to disapprove of the knowing look in front of him.
Q told him multiple times when Bond would place damaged equipment – guns, radios, explosive duds, and injured hands – on his desk that he could “fix that” and Bond pretended to look confused for all of two point five seconds before Q knew and Bond let the look drown his eyes in a way he was sure 99.9% of MI6 would look at with disapproval.
He 99.9% didn’t give a shit.
Q wouldn’t look at him after he spoke, and Bond wasn’t sure what had begun to anger him; the fact that the Quartermaster dismissed his defenses, his walls of bulletproof steel, as nothing but frailly spun sugar, or the fact that he himself suddenly, all at once, didn’t care about the knowing and the double-bladed, triple-bladed words.
That, of course, wasn’t nearly enough to worry him or, for that matter, make others worry about him. The heart of the problem, the steel string that hooked him around the neck and pulled him over to the edge (or at least very near the precarious lip of it) was that he was, in every sense of the phrase, getting too old for this.
It was something he would never admit out loud, something he could never let anyone but himself even brush their fingers against. Still, it was the block of ice in the pit of his stomach, the only thing pounding faster than his heart when a pellet of steel and gunpowder tore through his finely tailored suit and scar etched skin.
It all fell into place sometime too far gone to count. Sometime before Scotland, before deeper breaths, and before oncoming trains that left him behind. In fact, when he thinks about it now, it might very well have happened somewhere minuscule, somewhere 3,000 miles above ground, somewhere underwater, or somewhere on the side of an abandoned road.
Whenever it happened, whatever unaccounted for event was holding the title for Moment That Defined My Life, the real actual point was that there was a part of him that was done.
He guessed the actual realization – because realizing something happened and something happening are two different things – had come along with the jolting shot to his shoulder. It was some pounding sensation at the back of his head, clouding his ears with the rush of wind and crushing water. But he didn’t remember the idea, didn’t recollect that sensation in anything but dreams until his fifth shot of some brown tequila and his third woman, because even that was something he would rather pass up at this point in time.
M – The New M – saw it. From behind his desk, The New M saw the deep running frowns, the dulling eyes. He saw the same thing Bond saw in the mirror every morning and every night. He saw that, pretty soon, it was going to stop working.
But for now, for a few more weeks, and maybe another month, James Bond was still 007, was still the best shot MI6 owned (and, oh, did Bond know it was a matter of owning; had never felt the fact more acutely than he did after the freezing water and ice in a chapel he dully wished would burn down). He was the best in the field, and, sometimes, every so often, every other Sunday, the best outside of the field.
So he managed to avoid the desk work, managed to keep the bullet holes and blood in place of the paper cuts and ink because they could avoid it for a while. They could weave their way around and between the bubbling arguments, the ticking bombs, and the ten second timings, because that was the limit before one of them started to show what they knew. It was easy and, sometimes, on the dull Monday mornings and the restless Saturday nights, comforting to sit through briefing after briefing.
Eventually it sank in just how pissed the idea of all of this not working made him. He realized he wanted to defy this, just as he had defied multiple things in his life. He wanted, more than anything in that moment, to prove this idea wrong. To let everyone know, to remind them you were only too old when there was a grave. It didn’t happen for a while, but it did eventually happen and he thinks it happened when he was forced to stare at the inevitability of time, when he held a million things in one and he just couldn’t register it.
Life spat this goal, this implication of personal strength, back at him in a dusty chapel outside a burning house with freezing water dripping its way through cracks, cementing the feelings in a cold encasement of ice.
He was too old for this.
He was starting to want something better, something different. He kept it all on a back burner, kept the tired attitude that maybe sometimes turned into longing out of his eyes, out of the way his shoulders sank like his entire body wanted to when he stepped out of The New M’s office, file in hand, feet carrying him to the one other place where he was known.
Q Branch is something cold and something welcoming. It’s a sort of home that Bond really didn’t want to associate with, but he didn’t have time to shut that part of his brain down before it considered the blue light of the computers a signal to relax.
Usually when he enters through the glass doors, there isn’t an abundance of acknowledgement. Nobody really cares to look up from their work on security systems or communication networks or whatever else it was they liked to shut down without warning.
Q himself would often glance up when Bond walked in. Half the time Bond was aware that Q always glanced up when somebody decided to enter his workspace without permission. The other fifty percent of those entrances, he was acutely aware that Q never let his gaze linger on those other intrusions with something just short of welcome home.
Standing in front of the centered desk, a good foot longer than all the other desks in the room, was one of the only places Bond didn’t bother to disapprove of the knowing look in front of him.
Q told him multiple times when Bond would place damaged equipment – guns, radios, explosive duds, and injured hands – on his desk that he could “fix that” and Bond pretended to look confused for all of two point five seconds before Q knew and Bond let the look drown his eyes in a way he was sure 99.9% of MI6 would look at with disapproval.
He 99.9% didn’t give a shit.
Q wouldn’t look at him after he spoke, and Bond wasn’t sure what had begun to anger him; the fact that the Quartermaster dismissed his defenses, his walls of bulletproof steel, as nothing but frailly spun sugar, or the fact that he himself suddenly, all at once, didn’t care about the knowing and the double-bladed, triple-bladed words.