Chapter Text
There was fire around us
So I should have known why
The touch of his hands
Was as cold as his eyes
So don't you tell me
We weren't hypnotized
It was a miserable, grey Wednesday that found James Bond and Q of MI6 bickering through earpieces as a certain agent maneuvered easily down a rusted ladder.
"All I am saying, 007, is the London Eye was an idiotic place to start all of that. Do you know how many civilians got injured? You’re lucky no one was killed.”
"I wanted to go to Istanbul- not my fault London is full of slack-jawed tourists. And besides- shouldn't MI5 be the ones dealing with this?"
"MI5's jurisdiction is based on the type of case and national security, 007. They don't automatically take over everything because we're on British soil," came the long-suffering reply, before the owner of said suffering voice took a sip of his Earl Grey. Bespectacled, jumper rolled up to the elbows, ink smeared unknowingly across his cheek, MI6's Quartermaster grimaced as he set the cup down. That was the last time he was letting someone else fix him a mug of tea.
"Why didn't 004 have to take this? Bastard's in Naples, and what do I get?"
"Consider it retribution for the last car you destroyed. Now pay attention. There- second story."
"Yes, I see it," Bond grumbled, jumping down to the half roof and heading towards the next ledge.
It was true that MI6 agents rarely spent a lot of time in London. Most criminals weren't interested in staying anywhere near the heart of MI6's seat of power if they could help it. Far better, easier places to hide around the globe. But this particular organization was bigger than MI5’s scope... A web with no easy strings to follow, the scale of which was only now becoming clear, to a horrifying extent.
Moving with practiced ease, Bond scaled the side of the wall and then in through the window, dropping down with barely a noise. For someone who so often seemed to enjoy destroying whole city blocks, the man could be surprisingly stealthy.
"You're not alone," Q warned him quickly, staring at the monitor on his desk, pulse increasing. For as many scrapes as he'd seen James get out of, there were still plenty of times he got anxious- agents weren’t invincible nor infallible, no matter how much they liked to act otherwise.
Bond cocked his gun, keenly aware of the other figures also in shadow, unseen but watching his every move. He could practically feel them around him. But he was most interested in the person whom they'd finally managed to track to this warehouse- the man he couldn't quite make out, lurking in the shadows like a spider baiting its lunch.
After a moment, the shadow spoke, startling in its sudden volume.
“James Bond! What an honor. Imagine having the infamous 007 sent to hunt down little ol’ me!”
No. No, it couldn’t be. Q pushed back from his desk, his breathing sharp and jagged. He knew that voice. That voice had haunted his nightmares for seven years. That deceptively pleasant Irish lilt, ringing out through the hall, reverberating off stone and into the Quartermaster's chest. He was supposed to be dead.
Three years ago, Q had cried himself to sleep, with relief, and with an emotion he hadn't wanted to name, when he'd seen the news. Jim Moriarty, criminal mastermind, was dead.
That death was one of the reasons this organization had been so hard to pin down- it had never occurred to them that the spider’s organization could be responsible for this. That had burnt down with Moriarty’s death…or so they’d thought.
Q had thought the situation was bad before. 'Bad' didn't even begin to cover it now.
“Bond, you need to stand down,” Q told the agent, struggling to keep his tone calm, fighting the shakiness that threatened to bring about a stutter.
“I’m sorry, did you just say ‘stand down’?” came the incredulous response from the agent who had never truly learned when it was wiser to stand down. His gun remained trained on the man still cloaked in shadow, the barest hint of smiling eyes and teeth gleaming at him.
“You heard me, Bond. Stand down. This isn’t a fight you can win. You need to trust me.”
“Trust you to let me get shot?”
The man in the shadows had taken a step towards him, more light falling on sharp features, and Bond was annoyed to see that his smile had only grown, amused by the half of the exchange that he could hear.
“Trust me to tell you when you’re in over your head- this isn’t like anyone you have dealt with before. You need to, for once in your God-forsaken life, listen to me! Get out of there, while you still can.”
Q’s control over his voice was faltering- he hadn’t heard Moriarty in several minutes, and it was putting him on edge. Bond’s window to escape was closing, and he wasn’t listening.
As if summoned by Q’s mounting terror, their target spoke again. “You know, Mr. Bond, it’s rude to carry on a conversation in front of someone when they can’t hear it.” He shook his head politely. “What little bird is singing in your ear, hmm? The famous Q, perhaps?”
Q nearly stopped breathing for a moment, chest tightening with no sign of it relaxing, panic
clawing at him. “Some stuffy bore who lets you do all the work, butting into our private party?” Q exhaled at last. Moriarty didn’t know. Of course, he didn’t know, couldn’t have known. Q was a title, a codename. There was nothing connecting the person Moriarty knew to it.
“Bond, get out,” Q urged, trying to use the monologuing as one final chance to get James moving.
“Now, normally I’d keep you alive,” the lilting voice continued. “Big bad agent that you are- I’d play with you, toy with you. Make you dance for me. But I really don’t have the time, and you’ve stuck your grubby hands where they ought not to be. I’m very unhappy about that. So it’s bye-bye now.”
Bond was going to die. He was going to die, and Q could do nothing to stop it. The only thing that would make the man “oh so changeable” as he could be, was to give him something that interested him. That changed the game.
“Bond, you need to say exactly what I say!”
“Q, I can handle myself, I’m going to detonate the watch-”
“You think that will still work? That he doesn’t have someone disabling all your kit as we speak? You need to tell him his Rook wants you alive.”
“His what?”
“Say it!”
Growling in frustration as a gun turned on him, and the well-dressed man gave him a little wave of farewell, Bond ground out, “Wait.”
Moriarty raised a hand, halting his men. “Some final speech? I’ll bite.”
“Your Rook wants you alive.”
It was startling what an instantaneous effect the simple statement had. Dark eyes widened, accompanied by a snarl of, “Put your guns away!”
He strode forward, dress shoes snapping against the marble tile, moving closer and closer until his own shorter body was practically slotted against the MI6 agent. Bond, to his credit, only flinched slightly, the sign of years of training and too many occasions where he’d ended up captive at the hands of insane men.
“Give me your earpiece,” the shorter man practically hissed, teeth bared.
“I wish I could, but it’s the Queen's property, you see, and-"
“Bond, give him the bloody comm,” Q snapped, his voice high and reedy.
Recognizing he was sorely lacking in context for this exchange, having never heard Q sound this desperate, Bond slowly raised a hand up to his ear and delicately extracted the earpiece, dropping it into the extended palm of his target.
All Q could hear for a moment was static and clicks as the piece of tech was moved and fiddled with.
Then came that dreaded voice again, speaking directly to him this time. “From one rookery to another, hmm? Traded chess boards for bird cages, is that it? You know, outing yourself to an opponent is a dangerous move, Q. ‘Q’…such a small name for someone with such responsibility. All these letters. How ever do you keep track of them?”
With this comment, he waggled his eyebrows cheekily at Bond, who stared back with frustrated bemusement.
“I think we should drop code names and start over, don’t you? I’ll go first- Hello, Graham.”
And there it was. Q knew what he was expected to do next. Confirm he was Graham. Stay the hand that threatened to execute Bond. Or deny it, and watch his colleague be killed. Or worse. It would have been a simple gunshot before. Now that he was involved, the potential for Bond to be tortured beforehand had gone up exponentially. Q closed his eyes and took three shallow breaths in and out before opening his eyes once more.
“Hello, Moriarty.”
“Oof!” The consulting criminal slapped a hand to his chest, over his heart, reeling comically backward. “Not Jim anymore? Ouch, little bird, ouch. Come onnnn, Graham. Let me hear it. After all, I’m considering doing you quite the favor, sparing 007’s life.”
He smirked up at the agent, whose expression gave the distinct impression of some faulty electric appliance short-circuiting.
Why was he talking to Q like that? Was Graham Q’s real name? James knew little of Q’s background or personal life- after all, why would he? That wasn’t the kind of thing one brought into MI6, not if one could help it. Never mind the intimacy of it, any of those details could be a liability. Could put people in danger. Bond knew vague details about M’s life and about Moneypenny’s. Random details about a couple of the more loose-tongued boffins.
But Q? Q had been a vault, refusing to give any details. There was a low-key pool going on regarding the most mundane details about his life. What was his real name? Did he own cats? Was he sleeping with anyone?
All of it was pure speculation, of course. Q had responded to any questions about his life outside of MI6 with low-key disdain on some occasions, and outright hostility other times. Personal topics were clearly a sore spot, more so for Q than for the average MI6 employee. This had been made abundantly clear when Bond had arrived on a low-stakes intel mission to find his gun malfunctioning and his suits stained with permanent ink. The night before, he’d dared to ask Q where he grew up and learned not to do so again.
Yet somehow this man knew Q’s name, had spoken it so very casually. What the hell was going on?
“Hello…Jim,” at last came the reply from the other end of the line, spoken through gritted teeth. “There, satisfied?”
A ringing laugh escaped Jim Moriarty’s thin mouth, though the mirth didn’t reach his dark eyes.
“Oh, Graham. Not in the slightest. We have a lot of catching up to do, don’t we?” The laughter was gone as soon as it had come, Moriarty’s words tense and clipped, and holding implications that Bond didn’t understand.
Q felt ill. He wasn’t supposed to be having this conversation; he had prayed he would never have it. After all, that had been the deal with MI6 when they’d brought him in.
One day, seven years ago, he ran. Ran as far as he could, as fast as he could. Three cities in four days. Graham changed SIM cards like clothes. Slept in train stations. Bribed the right people. He’d started getting sloppy as time went on. Six months later, when MI6 finally found him—half-starved and cornered in some hovel in Slovenia—they’d offered him a choice. Come work in Q branch, commit himself to a lifetime of service, and in return, they’d protect him from the spider. Or he could enjoy a cozy prison cell for the foreseeable future.
He’d started working for them for much less pay than his skills warranted. He handled coding that he could have done with his eyes closed. He lived a quiet existence. A small flat in a quiet part of London, encryptions and security around every file on him. A chance to be safe from the man determined to recover him.
But then Silva came along and changed the game. MI6 was bombed, and the dear old man Q had been secretly fond of, had been killed. And suddenly J, a quiet, secluded desk worker, with his thick glasses and perpetually mussed hair, took on the mantel of Q. He had tried to turn it down. Tried to insist he wasn’t looking for anything that serious, that high level. But MI6 was in a crisis, and they needed someone competent, sharp, and efficient.
Q knew deep down that if MI6 hadn’t discovered him, Moriarty would have found him. It would have been only a matter of time.
It hadn’t been until the news had come of Moriarty’s death that Q had truly started feeling like he could breathe again. He’d started to feel at ease in his new role, confident after all these years. What a fool he’d been.
“I have so missed you," Jim went on. "You gave me quite the run around. But the game’s at an end, poppet.”
Q’s response to the wording was so visceral that one of the unfortunate boffins nearby paused in their work and went to gently touch his shoulder, concerned for their boss. They were rewarded with the Quartermaster vehemently ordering them to ‘fuck off’.
He sat trembling at his desk afterward, an amused voice telling him, “How rude. I’m sure your expendable boffin was only trying to help.”
“What do you want?”
“Oh, so many things, Graham. But I’ll settle for this for now- a car will be there in thirty minutes. You want your dog to still have a pulse by the time this is all over? Then you’ll be in it. Until then, my rook.”
A kissing sound could be heard on the other end, loud and performative. No doubt a show for Bond- he wouldn’t have been so over the top had it been for Q’s benefit.
There was the screeching noise of static, and then Q could no longer hear anything but his own shuddering breath.
Meanwhile, Jim Moriarty smiled at James Bond the way a cat who’d caught a canary might, as he crushed the comms piece beneath his polished shoe.