Shame and Mercy
“I should have guessed that you were a Shakespeare snob,” Bond scoffed from where he was leaning against the shelves behind Q’s desk, arms crossed tightly.
“Don’t be obtuse, 007. The Globe has an impeccable acting troupe and Moneypenny and I have been planning for weeks to see their new rendition of Titus Andronicus. Have you ever read it?”
James twisted his lips in derision.
“Romeo and Juliet was the last play a professor ever got me to touch.”
An amused and self-assured grin stretched across Q’s face.
“You should give it a chance, Bond. Titus is Shakespeare’s most notoriously brutal and infamously horrific work. It contains more character deaths than any of his other plays all in quite revolting manners. Bassianus is stabbed and left to rot in a pit, Demetrius and Chiron are baked into pies and fed to their mother, and Lavinia is raped, has her hands cut off, her tongue cut out, and is eventually killed by her own father out of shame and mercy. It’s obscene, I know, but the reviews of the production are phenomenal. You should come see it with us, I’m sure there are still seats left.”
Bond shook his head. The young man looked way too enthused for his own good.
“Well you’ve already given me the ending, so there’s no need for me to suffer through three hours of it now.”
Q rolled his eyes.
“Suit yourself, then. I’m due to meet Eve in an hour, so I’ll have to ask you to show yourself out while I get some work done.”
Bond chuckled. Sometimes he forgot how young Q really was.
***
James was half way through his second glass of scotch when his phone started ringing. He glanced down at the caller ID and then to his watch. The show must have been going for a good 40 minutes now, what on earth could Moneypenny need of him?
“Are you and Q enjoying your evening of culture?” he immediately asked upon picking up the phone, not bothering with a greeting.
“Would that we were. He never showed up and hasn’t answered any of my calls. I asked Tanner to check his office but he said it was empty. So he’s not with you then?”
She sounded fearful. Moneypenny never sounded fearful.
“I haven’t seen him since this afternoon. MI-6 can track him, can’t we? He’s a bloody Quartermaster for Christ’s sake.”
Eve sighed and he could practically see her shaking her head and clenching her fists.
“There’s an emergency tracker in his specs but he has to activate it. James, something’s wrong. He’s been looking forward to this for two months, there’s no way he would miss it unless something terrible happened.”
Bond rubbed his eyes to chase away the sleepiness that had settled in them. She was right, of course she was right.
“You call the hospitals, I’ll go check his flat,” he ordered, and hung up without a good-bye.
***
Bugged. His office must have been bugged. They knew he was supposed to be at the theater for that bloody play. That. Bloody. Play.
***
Being a 00 meant seeing a lot of brutal, horrific, disgusting things that would drive lesser men insane. He had faced criminals who industrialized murder, profited from the sale of humans, and enjoyed torture as a pastime. He once assassinated a warlord in Africa whose favorite form of execution was a twice daily spritzing of sulfuric acid from a Windex bottle over the course of a month. There was a trafficker in Bosnia who refused to deal in anyone over the age of 14. Once in Mexico he met the wife of a Mara Salvatrucha boss who loved nothing more than to have the daughters of their enemies kidnapped and tattooed beyond recognition. James would have given anything in the world to be put at the hands of any of those monsters if it meant he could have found Q in any other state.
He had expected at best to find Q passed out in his bed, at worst still missing. In his wildest nightmares he could not have expected to walk into the young man’s kitchen and find the young man curled into the tightest ball Bond had ever seen a person make, head tucked, clothes shredded, and drenched in blood that was pooling on the wood floor all around him.
“Q?” he had probed hesitantly, immediately dropping to his side to survey the damage. “Q, it’s me, it’s James. I’m here now.”
But he had stayed curled in his ball, shaking violently, refusing to even peek out from his self-constructed defense. It was only when James gently pulled Q’s head up to meet his gaze that he realized the true extent of what had been done. Blood, tears, agony, and fear covered his Quartermaster’s face, but he had still refused to look at Bond, only staring down, and then James saw.
His hands. His hands were completely gone. There was nothing but grisly, unclean, oozing stumps where his hands had once been. When Bond finally recovered from the shock and looked back up, Q has parted his lips and out had streamed a seemingly endless gush of dark crimson blood and the most spine-chilling gurgling noise James had ever heard. Then he let out something that sounded like a sob, and collapsed into the agent’s arms, blood seeping through his clothes and onto his skin in mere moments.
So there they sat together, his own hands trembling and his own eyes filling with tears. “And Lavinia is raped, has her hands cut off, her tongue cut out, and is eventually killed by her own father out of shame and mercy.” Q’s words kept thrashing around his head like a hurricane made of echoes. This shouldn’t have happened. If he hadn’t been such a self-absorbed prick and actually agreed to spend time with Q this never would have happened. The young man would still be able to use the computers he loved so much and mastered so well. He’d still be able to bounce banter off the Double 0’s who adored him and the minions who bent over backwards for him. Maybe he’d still feel safe.
“Fuck, I could have prevented this… this is my fault…” he murmured into Q’s hair, but he doubted the Quartermaster actually heard him. He was clinging to Bond as best he could without hands.
The hands James never had the chance to hold. The tongue he never had the chance to feel. The man he would never get the chance to truly know again. The man who would never know the life he loved again…
“Out of shame and mercy.”
Bond looked down hoping to stare into Q’s eyes again, but his face was too deeply buried in his shirt, sobbing and still spitting blood. Maybe it was better that way. He gingerly wrapped one arm softly around Q’s neck.
Then he squeezed until the sobbing stopped.
Then he screamed until his whole heart died.