Chapter Text
007 waded into the thick of Q-branch (an ironic name for the moment, he had to admit) and watched tech analysts disperse from him like water from oil. Agents were typically seen as oil or kerosene: difficult to catch hold of, equally difficult to get rid of once they were on to you, and imminently attached to explosive and flammable conditions. Bond appreciated how Q-branchers were always aware of that and kept their distance, unless it was to point him timidly in the direction of Q’s office, where the man apparently still was.
Wary after the abrupt ending of the phone conversation (on top of the cryptic summons), 007 rapped his knuckles on the door before testing the lock and finding it open. He saw Q typing away behind his desk within, looking so normal that it caused a physical catch in James’s chest, until he looked more closely and saw that the thin-framed man had his eyes locked on nothing just beyond his computer screen. Still, with barely a twitch of his head - revealing a wireless earbud nestled firmly in one ear - he unerringly greeted, “Hello, 007. You’ve learned how to knock, I’ve seen. I’ll have to put that in your records. It will be a great day of celebration to remember in years to come.”
More set aback by the swift recognition than the flawlessly dry tone teasing him (apparently Q had smoothed over his early temperament, or perhaps buried it all beneath a layer of concrete), Bond stood a moment by the door before slowly letting it fall closed behind him and padding towards the chair opposite Q. The Quartermaster’s eyes didn’t follow him, of course, but Q had stopped typing and was clearly straining his ears, just barely able to follow the feline step of his agent even in the quiet of his office. Now facing the smaller man in person, Bond was able to see the faint tension in Q’s shoulders, the tightness around his eyes that said this tension was a chronic condition by now despite his apparent coolness. While Q’s expression remained placid, his posture screamed unease and caution to 007’s trained eyes. “What’s going on that you felt the need to call me in? Does M know about this?”
Bond had asked the right questions, because one of Q’s hand twitched, a giveaway.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’ to the last question,” Bond observed, feeling just a bit proud of himself for getting an answer for so little effort.
Q’s mouth twitched down at the edges, but he didn’t argue. “Quite correct, 007, very perceptive of you. M is aware that I’m still...continuing my efforts as Quartermaster, albeit in a limited fashion, but she doesn’t yet know the results of my work. I wanted to tell you first - test the waters, as it were.”
“Sounds promising,” replied 007 noncommittally, also adding nonchalantly as he idly drummed the fingers of one hand on the arm of his chair, watching the way it made Q’s head shift subtly as he caught the faint sound in one ear, “Sounds like trouble, too, if you don’t mind me saying. Don’t get me wrong, I love trouble as much as the next 00-agent, but if it involves going behinds M’s back-”
“We’re not!” Q hurried to say. One of his hands lifted in a belaying motion, one that normal people would use to perhaps keep a person from rising from their chair and leaving, only Q was on the other side of his desk and had precious little idea of exactly where Bond was. Frankly, Bond still wanted to know how he’d recognized him at the door. “That is, not for long. You see, Bond, I’ve found Mercer, and Genecode. He’s on the run with it, just like you suspected from the beginning, but it seems that now he wants to auction it to the highest bidder. We have to either get it back or destroy it before that happens.”
Bond shifted until he was leaning forward over his knees, a posture that indicated he was listening but was lost on Q, except to tell the blind Quartermaster more clearly where his coworker was. “And? Why the secrecy? Why call me in? I consider us friends, Q,” Bond said, pausing and watching Q’s face, because this wasn’t something either of them had verbalized, although 007 had considered it true for ages now, “but something tells me that you want Bond the 00-agent and not just Bond the friend.”
At that moment, the Quartermaster looked almost desperate to see, as he gave a few shocked blinks and visibly resisted the urge to swivel his head - a rather owl-like reaction that 007 was already getting used to, recognizing Q’s efforts to pinpoint sounds. “I…” Q started, then stopped and removed his hands to tuck them on his lap. 007’s eyes narrowed, but he was pretty sure that the smaller man was trying to hide a tremor that had started up in his long fingers. How many weaknesses and insecurities was Q hiding to maintain what tenuous hold he still had on his position as Quartermaster? “I’ll get right to the point then,” Q started over, perfectly in control again, although Bond suspected that this wasn’t the first sentence he’d been planning on saying. Leaning his chin on his palm, Bond watched with patient interest, drinking in the little tells and quirks of Q’s expression as he tried to figure him out even as the slender young man spoke. “The auction Mercer has sought out is very underground: very secret, very exclusive. Even with my hacking skills, I’ve been having a hard time finding out its exact location, although I have been able to procure the means to an invitation. Therein lies the dilemma, and the reason you and I are speaking.”
Bond waited a moment, all but seeing the words trapped on the edge of Q’s tongue, and coaxed them out by saying unflappably, “Spit it out, Q.”
The response was not what he’d been expecting...although he had to admit that he understood why Q had come to him alone with this before facing off with M.
~^~
“No. No, this is insane. Q, you’ve lost your bloody mind.”
It was more intimidating than Q wanted to admit, listening to a fully-trained assassin storm around his office without having the benefit of seeing him. He briefly wondered whether he still had enough power in MI6 to request the carpet be removed, so that he’d at least have a chance of hearing Bond’s footsteps as he paced back and forth, instead of just hearing his verbal outbursts from first one side of the room and then the other. At least he’d heard the rough sound of the chair jerking back and fabric shifting as 007 had lurched to his feet, his surprise making sitting still an untenable position.
“Give me a better option,” Q forced himself to say with enough calm so as to seem unaffected. In reality, he had his hands fisted on his lap, moved there so that the whitening of his knuckles wouldn’t stand out like a fucking target to 007’s trained eyes. Q knew as well as anyone else in MI6 just how much training every agent had at people-watching, something that he’d never worried about until he was suddenly in a position where he couldn’t watch back.
Bond was still angry, his voice sharp, temperamental, and contrary in a way that gave every word a silver-lined bite. “Blow the place up.”
“Ah, but I said I couldn’t find the place,” Q made his rebuttal, adding with smug wryness that was far more sincere than the calm he was layering over everything, “and good luck finding someone better at that than I am.”
Bond’s growl sounded like it came from behind his hand, and Q imagined the large man pausing a moment, rubbing a palm over his mouth before digging it back through his hair because Q had frustrated him so much. “No, Q. I shouldn’t have to remind you of this, but you’re bloody blind!” Bond snapped, his control breaking just a bit more. Q held his ground with effort as the man’s voice drew closer, right to the other side of his desk, which suddenly felt like no defense at all, really. “Even if that weren’t the case - and it is, I’m not going to sugarcoat this, Q - you’ve never been in the field.”
By this point, Q felt how his breathing had picked up slightly, although by some miracle he had managed to keep his posture and expression carefully neutral, even though Bond sounded as though he were leaning over his desk now. A split-second later, and the blinded Quartermaster realized that the intimidation was probably intentional: 007 was trying to get him to back out of the idea. That infused a whole new coating of steel into his spine, and Q pressed his lips together for a moment, doing his level best to direct his eyes to where he thought Bond’s face was, and retorted with as much icy control as he contained, “I say again, 007: Do you have any other options? To get an invitation, you need someone of my skills, my background. If you or anyone else tried to fake the role, it would be like a pigeon pretending to be a peacock - they are simply too dissimilar.”
Bond’s frustrated breath was a soft touch to Q’s face, light but still terrifyingly close considering that one of them was blind and the essentially helpless and the other had a licence to kill. Still, the agent kept his cool, and countered with only the sound of gritted teeth, “Pretend to be a prospective buyer until they give out the location. Then hand it over to me.”
“Won’t work,” Q argued unhesitantly. Physically, he was essentially useless, but mentally, he was still way ahead of everyone else. Just because he’d lost his eyes didn’t mean he’d lost his brain (whatever Bond may think at the moment). After all, he’d programmed his computer as well as the camera at the door to accommodate his new disability, the speaker nestled in his ear telling him when the facial recognition program picked up familiar face - Bond’s, in the most recent case. He’d also worked out the bugs on a program that was quite able to read code back to him, a feat that had made his minions rather shocked, but glad to have him back and working on his computer again. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do. “Computers and data aren’t the kinds of solid targets you’re used to working with - even if you get in, and even if M gives you the go-ahead to just summarily blow up the place, chances are the data will be saved elsewhere, and survive. If I’m there, onsite with you, I can find exactly where the data is and extract it.”
“How?” asked Bond mercilessly, and Q tried to remind himself that the agent was simply doing what was necessary: testing Q’s weaknesses, pushing and prodding, all to ensure that this wasn’t a death-wish from the get-go. Still, the man’s brutal tone made it difficult to hide a wince.
Perhaps it was wounded pride that had Q’s back stiffening, his tone taking on a frosted edge not unlike the kind he’d gifted Bond with on the phone barely two hours ago. “The same way I’ve been coding for the past week. The same way I knew it was you at the door without bloody eyes to see with. It was a bloody nightmare to set everything up, and I still feel like a fish on land, but I’m coping!” Realizing that he’d been leaning forward, on the verge of challenging a man he couldn’t even see, Q froze, lips pursing until their whitened. Then he made himself sit back, feeling the utter silence of the room like a smothering pressure around his head. “I’ll be as frank with you are you’re being with me,” he said, with a frigid approximation of professional calm that made him want to bite the inside of his cheek with embarrassment: he didn’t sound in control at all, he thought. But the Quartermaster plowed onward anyway. “I know I’m not built for this, I know that I’m a liability on the field no matter how one looks at it - but I’m all you’ve got. If we want to find Genecode before it get into the wrong hands, you need a hacker of my calibre. No other key will get you in and get the data you need.” Q moved a hand to his keyboard, orienting his fingertips in a flash and pressing a few keys.
007 must have turned to look. His voice was cautiously even. “What did you just do?”
“Sent M my proposal.” Q sat back a bit more, trying to remember how to be the Quartermaster dealing with a recalcitrant agent. “I wanted to do you the respect of informing you first, but ultimately, it’s her decision whether the gains outweigh the risks, or vice versa.”
“Q, you can’t do this,” Bond was still trying to explain the lunacy of all of this to him, and it was endearing, really, in a sad and annoying way. Q flashed a slantwise, bitter smile.
“No, 007, this is all I can do. Let me do it.”
~^~
‘Let me do it.’ Q’s last sentence kept ringing in his ears, and as Bond paced in the carpark, he kept running over his own responses to that whole damned conversation and wishing he could take it all back. Running frustrated hands back through his short hair, the 00-agent growled imprecations under his breath and considered going down and letting off steam at the firing range, but realized he was likely too tense and dangerous for that right now - and all he really wanted to shoot was Mercer. And maybe himself a little, for calling Q blind and useless. Bond winced, recalling his words without shock and temper fogging his reactions this time. No, today was definitely a study on how not to deal with crippled Quartermasters.
Really, Q was doing incredibly right now. After that last hollow smile, he’d gotten up, taking one of those canes customarily found in the hands of the blind, and had walked right out of his office. He’d kept the earbud in one ear, and Bond noticed that he carried something like a phone or blackberry hooked at his belt. Only then had Bond’s eyes flashed to the new cameras at the door, and recalled Q’s statement about recognizing him. It hadn’t taken too much after that for Bond’s deductive reasoning to kick in, and for him to realize that Q had somehow used tech to make up for where his body failed him.
Impressive.
Also, a little bit scary, when combined with the Quartermaster’s reckless determination to get back the Genecode. Q was barely holding himself together, 007 could tell, but the stubbornness was something the Quartermaster had always had. As much as Bond worried that that stubbornness was going to get him killed, he felt bad for attacking his plan so brutally. If Q ever talked to him again after that, it would be a bleeding miracle…
His phone buzzed with a text. Sadly, it wasn’t from Q, despite the ironic timing - instead, it was M. ~Come to my office. You bloody know what about.~
“Well,” Bond sighed to himself, typing out a quick ~On my way~ before the woman suspected him of ignoring her, “It’s either about Q’s fucking mission or it’s because of what I said to him.” Either way, he had the sinking feeling that he was about to get his arse handed to him...and he rather felt he deserved it. He still didn’t know what to think about his newly-blind Quartermaster diving into the thick of a black-market auction, but he figured Q deserved for him to at least give him a chance.
Pushing down his conflicting emotions of worry, frustration, and an uneasy mixture of guilt and something warmer, Bond made his way from the cold, concrete silence of the carpark back into the heart of MI6.
~^~
M had accepted the plan, which Q told himself wasn’t surprising, because he’d explained in his email quite succinctly why there was really no other option. Still, when he’d made his way to M’s office (a trip that looked easy only because he’d walked this way for two weeks now, until it was little different from shuffling around in his own apartment at night without his glasses), the Quartermaster had been expecting a blunt and long-winded refusal - and possibly a second lecture not unlike Bond’s, in which he was told why this was a bad idea.
The thing was, Q knew this was a bad idea - he just didn’t see why it was any worse than Genecode being in Mercer’s hands.
M had agreed, however, and after an interrogations of the finer details and what Q knew, M had called in 007, at which point Q had braced himself for the third time that day. Anger and helpless frustration fizzled in his stomach no matter how he tried to extinguish the painful flame, but he managed to sit composed and silent until the door opened behind him. Q turned his head, following noise until the micro-camera he’d imbedded in his glasses caught on a face, and the computerized voice woke up to say through his earbud: ‘Bond, James.’ Then the larger man was presumably sitting down in the chair next to him, uncharacteristically silent.
In fact, he’d stayed mostly silent. Q had been expecting another round of yelling.
Everyone always wished for an obedient 007 - Q was even fairly sure that some employees blew out their birthday candles to make such wishes - but now Q just found it bloody eerie, as if he were sitting next to a black-hole. At least when 007 had been arguing with him earlier, Q had been able to get his social cues from the man’s obviously furious voice, but now he was deaf as well as blind. It was so frustrating and distracting that the meeting was all but over before he knew it, without one word of dissention from 007.
Now Q was back at his desk, another program he’d modge-podged together reading out the mission specs to him with a pleasant, computerized voice droning in his ear. Unfortunately, since he’d come up with most of the missions specs, his brain had plenty of power left over to run over other worries in his head. ‘You’re not built for this, Q,’ some part of him warned direly, completely disregarding his recent, crippling injury and simply thinking in terms of how he’d never been in the field - and had never planned to be. Rubbing a hand at the headache gathering in his temples (likely caused by the tension that never really left his shoulders nowadays), Q pushed the little voice away but was unsurprised when it just came back. Logic was unavoidable that way.
“I’m a blind man who has barely learned to walk in a straight line with a cane, going on a mission usually reserved for 00-agents, to get back information that might end up going to who-the-hell-knows if I mess this up,” Q muttered to himself, pretty much summing up the entirety of his plans, “And I might end up in enemy hands myself if I can’t keep it together.” He could bluff a good game - call people’s names as they entered his range of sight, walk without hitting walls in Q-branch and the better known halls of MI6, code with only the minimal number of mistakes - but in reality he knew that he was barely functional. Awareness of his own strengths and weaknesses had always been something Q prided himself in, but right now it was a torment.
Even though it was viscerally painful to do, he typed off a quick text to Bond informing him that he’d probably have to make sure Q didn’t walk into things on this mission. Embarrassment made him want to just implode into nothingness, but for the sake of the mission, he hit send. At least his blindness was part of their cover, as hiding it would be impossible. Q was basically playing himself as a reclusive hacker interested in what the auction had to offer, and, being blind, he never went anywhere without someone watching over him (Bond’s job, obviously). The role itself would actually be easy to play, theoretically. The only difficulty would come from remaining calm, not screaming, and pretending it was utterly normal when he walked into a doorframe. With a slightly manic, bitter chuckle, Q leaned forward to push his fingertips up under his glasses - for once it didn’t matter if he smudged them - to rub at his eyes, which seemed to always ache now.
His computer kept listing off things he could see: “Balien, Adam. Hacker-slash-programmer. Numerous aliases…” They were all computer-aliases that Q had already had, wanting to keep to the truth as much as possible. After all, he didn’t have 007’s training at seamlessly absorbing and then spitting out lies as if they were truths. The criminal record he’d given himself was less sincere - Q of Q-branch was better at hiding his work than Adam Balien.
“Sterling, Richard. Ex-military. Bodyguard to Adam Balien for three years.” Q snorted, amused that Bond’s alias had known Q longer than James Bond himself, although it would hopefully explain away any moments where the two of them appeared familiar with each other. Even if Q weren’t dependant upon 007 physically, he knew that he’d need the man’s expertise and advice simply to work undercover, and the less often they were separated, the better. Unfortunately, that would severely limit 007’s range of activity, further proving just how much of this depended on the Quartermaster, who’d never been in the field on a mission in his life.
Finally buzzing with too much energy to sit still, Q pulled out his earbud with a sharp dig of his fingers and shoved himself to his feet, swallowing against the quiet of the room and panic in his head. Everything felt deathly silent without the chatter in his ear, and he itched to put it back in, having a momentary flashback to right after the explosion when he’d been deaf as well as blind. Pushing down the memory, feeling his way slowly, he made his way over to the battered futon situated at the back of his office (usually hidden by his desk), and stretched himself out on it. It was well-used, more slept-in than his bed, truthfully. Of late, it had even become a favorite place for 007 when the man barged unannounced into Q’s office. It had only happened a few times, but Q had gotten the idea that 007 was less interested in being annoying and intrusive and more interested in crashing somewhere quiet and comfortable, where he knew that the company was nice, familiar, and undemanding, and the environment was unthreatening. Q sighed, closing his eyes for the illusions of normalcy, and willed up an image of Bond, a crooked grin on his rugged face, slouching back in a tux against the faded black of Q’s worn old futon. The man had always looked as out of place as a peacock amidst pigeons when he sat on that futon, but it had somehow added to the amusing warmth of the memory, and Q drifted off with a chuckle echoing somewhere in his head, also thinking that Bond had just said they were friends earlier that day - had they been friends before then as well?
It was one too many questions in the Quartermaster’s strained brain, and he was out before he could find any answers that he was seeking.
~^~
A slightly nasal voice weaseled into Q’s ear, questioning, “Quartermaster?”
Out of reflex, Q jumped a bit, but his heart-rate stayed steady and barely picked up pace - until his eyes flicked open and saw nothing but darkness deeper than hot tar across his vision, his perception, his world-! The Quartermaster thrashed then, adrenalin slicing right and left like a knife in his chest and stomach, spurring on the actions of his heart as it tried to escape through his ribs, which had suddenly become the bars of a cage hemming it in. Q may or may not have let out a very unbecoming yelp, strangled panic stumbling out of his throat, but then the poor minion who had come to wake him was grabbing his arm and trying to calm him. Fortunately, the fellow succeeded before Q ended up on the floor, and the indignity of it all ended in just a few seconds, albeit seconds that felt like years.
Amidst rasped apologies (on both sides), the situation was brought under control. Q straightened his glasses pointlessly, trying furiously to hide the desperate shaking of his hands, wishing for one manic second that it had been 007 to wake him up - because he still couldn’t place exactly which of his underlings it was next to him (although he thought it was Marvin-something), but he knew that he’d recognize Bond’s voice the second he heard it. A second later, logic set in, and Q tossed out the thought of churlish and ludicrous, because the last thing he needed was 007 watching him lose his shit over something as simple as waking up. Humiliated from stem to stern, Q managed to make it to his desk and put his earbud in, a few pushed buttons on his new phone urging it to repeat what the cameras had told it: “Collins, Morris.” Ah, Morris. Not Marvin. Close enough.
“I was just coming to tell you that the taxi was ready…if...that is...if you are. Ready, that is,” Morris Collins stuttered, still off-put. Q made an effort to at least seem recovered and collected, although he had to brace his hands on his desk for a minute, squeezing his eyes shut until sparks of color exploded behind his lids - funny how that could still happen when everything else was jetty blackness.
“Yes, Mr. Collins,” Q nodded, voice back under control but sounding tired, as if he hadn’t just slept. Then again, he had no idea how long he’d been asleep either… Another few buttons pushed, and the relevant data was verbally relayed to his ear. 8 AM. Barely any time at all before he and all of his things went on a train to destinations dangerous. Bond was taking a different route only because he was willing to fly, and because M wanted him to get the lay of the land before they dumped a Quartermaster into the mix. That gave Q a bit more time to be an utter blind dunce before he made a fool of himself with Bond for company. His MI6 escort up until then would no doubt have to be threatened into silence, or else they’d never keep quiet about the fabulous tales of ‘Adam Balien’ stumbling, tripping, and various other clumsy things that sighted people never did…
It took effort to drag himself out of those thoughts. Before this, Q would have loved a ride on a train, but before now, he would have been able to watch the view as he reminded himself that he wasn’t on a tin-can with wings with no leg-room and bad in-flight meals.
“Um...here, sir,” Morris said uncertainly when Q’s hand felt around. His cane was nudged into them, and Q fought the urge to bristle at the help. “Two agents are waiting just outside Q-branch for you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Collins,” nodded Q with as much grace as he could muster, while he tried to figure out what to do with his cane. It was honestly more trouble than it was worth, and he walked into tables and chairs just as effectively with or without it. Somehow - as he left the familiar confines of his office, and wove through the equally familiar maze of his branch, and finally joined the two lower-level agents who flanked him like half-trained puppies - Q managed not to trip or otherwise embarrass himself.
~^~