Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s not long after that second kill initiating him into the ranks of the 00 program that James realizes this job is going to require him to escape from cuffs, ropes, and other restraints incredibly frequently. An inordinate number of his targets seem to think they can contain him with perfectly ordinary methods of immobilization, despite his training in the Royal Navy--let alone for MI6--including drills in both tying and slipping knots. MI6 had also insisted its agents be able to escape any restraint in under a minute. James is very, very good at getting out of these situations. It’s his job, and he is nothing if not good at his job.

Just over a year after his first mission and James is beginning to think it a bit undignified the way he still gets tied up, cuffed, strapped down, and otherwise bound by the types of people who should know better. He knows there’s a strong underworld rumor mill, and he can’t quite parse why no one seems to mention “Oh by the way, that Bond fellow, awfully good at wiggling out of restraints. Best come up with something new, something that’ll really keep him in place.” Instead they just keep up the same-old same-old, and James is frankly quite tired of it.

Once he and Eve Moneypenny are on joking terms, it becomes one of their favorite things to giggle about, a sort of grand running joke where she asks if he’s been tied up by anyone interesting lately and he tells her all about the latest ineffective method of restraint. Eve takes to keeping an actual tally on her desk of all the times the great James Bond, 007, Agent Provocateur Extraordinaire, has been unsuccessfully tied up in his career. She even notes down the different methods used. It’s frighteningly thorough. The number is also embarrassingly high--although James isn’t sure if he’s embarrassed that he gets caught that often, or if the embarrassment should be on the parts of the many opponents who have unsuccessfully restrained him.

“If the rest of the agency only knew,” Eve likes to laugh, leaning on James’ shoulder in shared merriment and discreetly flicking away her tears of laughter as he regales her with the latest tales of escaped bondage.

“That’s the worst part,” James admits. “They do know. Everyone knows. They think I’m heroic for it, or some shit.” He shrugs. “I’m not about to cock up my reputation as most dangerous, uncatchable Double-Oh just to set the record straight about this no longer being at all noble. I thought it was obviously getting to the point of stupidity after the third or fourth criminal underlord tried to tie me to a chair.”

Eve nods, still chuckling to herself. “It’s quite ridiculous, the sheer number of people who want to tie you down.”

“It must be a part of my irresistible charm that all these men want me at their mercy,” James teases, edging just a little closer to flirting than he usually does with Eve.

"Not only men," Eve says slyly, and James rolls his eyes.

"Good job I taught myself how to escape most locks, knots, and bindings early, then," he teases back. "I never have to stay put where I don't want to, or for anyone I don’t want to."

"Go on, then," Eve says, carefully not mentioning Le Chiffre, "you mean to tell me you've never gotten tied up by someone you might like to stay there for?"

James shrugs. "Not yet."

James isn’t superstitious, but even he should have remembered that certain things said aloud invite the very act to occur. It’s part and parcel of the sort of life he leads. James manages to forget all about his flippant reply, however. Perhaps the utter horror of hearing his handler tell his good friend to shoot him through the heart blots it out of his memory. Or maybe it’s the sand, the Turkish women, the long nights spent carefully catching scorpions and perfecting the heart-pounding trick of finishing a drink without disturbing the bloodthirsty creature on the back of his hand. Certainly the bittersweet return to London, the embarrassment of his testing, and the inescapable knowledge that he’s not the man he should be drive any and all wisecracks out of his mind.

He bluffs his way through his return to the Double-Oh program, tries to ignore Eve’s guilt and pity, tries to ignore the way he’s not quite the favorite of M’s that he used to be. His wrists ache for something he refuses to name, his arms flexing in phantom bindings underneath his bespoke suits. He hides himself behind the persona of Bond and 007 and doesn’t let himself think about being sent back into the field again, and what he might do to ease the ache in his wrists if he’s not allowed.

He doesn’t truly remember his invocation of the fates until he’s stepping off Severine’s--or perhaps it’s Silva’s--yacht, body aching in a way it shouldn’t this short a time into a mission, hands shaky with the need for a drink, shaky with the ache of old wounds that won’t heal. The jetty is clearly run down, but somehow still manages to convey a perfect sense of isolated habitation, a sort of “Yes, someone lives here, but you’d do much better to fuck off back where you came from” formed from half-rotted wood and crumbling sandstone.

It’s exactly the sort of island James expects an arrogant supervillain to live on, and the cliche makes him frown a little. There’s nowhere near enough security here, not enough cover, and James thinks distantly of the little radio in his pocket that will call in the cavalry and rescue him. He’s not stupid enough to assume he won’t need it, but his brain does call up the memory of his flippant not yet and the question that had caused it. The phantom ache in his wrists intensifies for a moment. He’ll be, yet again, unsatisfactorily restrained before the day is out.

“Bollocks,” he whispers under his breath, a private curse to remind himself that the universe likes nothing so much as to taunt James Bond.

Nothing in M’s files gave anything away about Silva, only basic facts--Spanish descent, flashy clothing, capable of blending in or standing out as he chose. It’s being frog-marched through Silva’s base of operations that lets James in on what Silva really is. James sees elaborate machines that could only be called torture devices; Rube Goldberg contraptions that remind James of nothing so much as Ratigan’s ridiculous death trap at the end of The Great Mouse Detective, grand and elaborate plans for torture both mental and physical. He spies stacks of files, presumably on Silva’s employees and targets, and can’t help thinking of all the myriad mind games Silva could play with knowledge that comprehensive. James hasn’t even met the man, has never heard his voice, but it’s no stretch to imagine he might be capable of the sorts of mind games James likes best.

He isn’t expecting to be restrained with merely a pair of ordinary handcuffs, on an ordinary chair, and he compensates for that with a macho sprawl and a practiced air of ease to cover his curiosity. Somewhere in the back of his mind he can hear the echo of Eve laughing at him, and his own prophetic words: Not yet.

The elevator doors open, and the man who appears behind them is unmistakably Silva, but he’s such a cliche of a villain James makes the mistake of underestimating him. But then Silva is striding forward, chattering merrily about ridding an island of rats, and something in James relaxes. For a long moment, James thinks fondly of the beach in Turkey, the welts along the back of his hand as he won money off the locals with the scorpion trick, the distracting pain of a sting when he got it wrong sending sick thrills through his belly. There’s a similar sick thrill sitting low in his gut now, and James wonders which of them is about to cross a line they shouldn’t.

Silva keeps talking even as he sits, mirroring James’ sprawl, finishing his charmless little story in the most charming way, eyes sharp as he watches James. Underneath the twisted metaphor, and the equally twisted explanation, James hears what he’s truly saying. Come with me and we can laugh while the world burns.

It’s not Silva’s recitation of M’s lies that wins James over, although the way M was willing to cheat to get what she clearly thinks is a disposable agent back in the field stings. Nor is it Silva’s honeyed promise of anything in the entire world James could possibly want, although being promised the moon and stars for something as simple and commonplace as a defection is quite flattering. What wins James in the end is how Silva looks at him, as though he’s enjoying the way James’ sprawl emphasizes his hands behind his back, enjoying the illusion of James being trapped; Silva looks as though he might thoroughly enjoy finding a knot James couldn’t undo, a lock he couldn’t pick. James is wooed by that look, and the gentility in his voice, the slight hesitation when he reaches forward to touch James’ chest, revealing the knotted scar he hasn’t had removed yet.

It’s this air of nobility, of polite and gentlemanly courtship that breaks through the carefully cultivated stoicism of James Bond. After Silva has removed the handcuffs and led James back outside, James is faced with a bound Severine and presented with a pistol he knows he won’t be able to aim quite right, and those same things are why James pauses instead of blundering forward like the blunt instrument he’s been trained to be. “What exactly did she do to you?”

"Severine has done a great many things," Silva purrs, deliberately misunderstanding. James just waits, not commenting on the evasion, evenly meeting Silva's gaze. As expected, Silva cracks first. "Oh very well," he sighs, making a little moue of disgust as he hands the pistol he'd kept for himself to one of the many guards he employs. "Do prepare yourself, Mr. Bond. It is not a pretty sight, what Mummy did to me."

The prosthetic comes out, and Silva's face caves in, and James watches, impassive. "She traded you," he says. "And you tried to end it." It’s not hard to piece together the last of the puzzle, based on what M’s shared, what he’s seen of Silva.

"Indeed," Silva agrees, speech slurred without his upper teeth--without a third of his face, really. "Cyanide is not a pleasant death, Mr. Bond, and for me, it was no death at all. Life clings to me like a disease."

It’s a line, practiced as thoroughly as though Silva is playing a part in some theatrical production. Bond isn’t it’s intended recipient, either, just another audience to practice it on until the proper time comes. Behind Silva’s soft brown eyes James can see the quick flare of rage and revenge, an ugly hollow look close on it’s heels, and Silva looks like a shell, emptied out to use as a vessel for holy fire before being consumed himself.

"If I were to join you," Bond says carefully, "what precisely would you wish me to do? I warn you, I am not particularly good at the types of things you do, I have no skill for technology, no patience to manipulate things from behind the scenes. My strengths lie elsewhere."

"Exactly why I wish you to join me, Mr. Bond," Silva says. "I need someone I can trust, someone to send after unruly debts, someone to use as a tool, who can think on his feet and adapt. I need your skill with people, Mr. Bond, your ability to seduce, to confound. Mummy uses you like a blunt instrument, a clumsy tool. I would use you like an elegant knife--pretty, decorative, but deadly."

"And what do I get out of the arrangement?" James asks, glancing toward Severine, who is shivering now with the wind and long minutes of terror, watching the two men she’d thought she loved seemingly discuss killing her with no second thoughts. "I'd really rather not end up chained to a rock being used for target practice by your next elegant knife."

Silva smiles. "I was quite serious before, Mr. Bond," he says. "Whatever you wish. Your own island to retire to? Done. Women a plenty to satisfy your baser desires? Easily accomplished. Cars? Money? Power? I can give you all of those things in spades."

"What if I want something less expected," James hints. "Something far more rare and valuable to a man like myself--like ourselves. Men made to be always in control, always free?"

"What are you suggesting, James?" Silva asks, and James decides he likes very much the way his name sounds on Silva's tongue, sibilant and shining.

"From the look on your face, exactly what you think," James admits. Not yet echoes in his mind. "What I want isn't power. It's powerlessness. From someone I won't need to escape from."

He can see Silva's mind working behind those flashing brown eyes, calculating, clicking away, trying to figure out if this is some kind of trap, or test. Finally Silva nods. "I could give that to you, yes, I could."

"Very well," James nods. "We have an agreement. I will be your elegant knife, and in return, you will be the one thing I'll never need to escape from."

"Never be able to escape from," Silva corrects, but James just smiles and turns once more to Severine.

"As you prefer," he says, and raises the dueling pistol with a hand more confident than it's been since a scorpion perched there.

Finally.

The bullet hits her between the eyes, and Bond can't bring himself to be sorry.