“You ‘have amnesia,’” Dr. Sharma repeated, her eyebrows arched.
“Oh yes,” Q said. He cheerfully waved his hand at his bandaged head. “Mugged this morning. Terribly traumatic. Physically, not mentally, since I don’t remember any of it, of course.”
Dr. Sharma’s eye twitched. “I see.” Over the past year of therapy, she had grown inured to Q’s shite, but this was perhaps a new level of it for her. “Amnesia,” she repeated.
Q beamed. “Judging by the dark circles under my eyes, this seems like a bit of an opportunity for a fresh start anyway,” he said. “Past me looks overworked.”
Dr. Sharma had been trying to get him a holiday for the past four months. Her “I see,” every time M had denied his request for leave had become steadily sharper. Now her eyes gleamed. “Amnesia,” she said, smiling wider than Q had ever seen.
(Also on AO3)
—
“Amnesia,” M said, squinting at him from behind his desk. “Really, Q?”
“M,” Q replied, tasting the name as if he’d just learned it. “Seems a bit funny to work for a letter, but I suppose my past self had his reasons.” He leaned back in his chair and cast his eyes around the room as if those reasons might be visible if he looked for them.
M’s hand twitched toward the security button on his desk lamp. “You answer to the letter Q,” he pointed out. “You clearly remember some things.”
“The name Q has silent vowels,” Q said, straight-faced. “Q-U-E-U-E. A long line in A&E is the first thing I remember experiencing, so it seemed fitting. You know, waiting for something that never seems to come gives you a lot of time to think.”
M glared. “If this is about your leave—”
“I am leaving, yes,” Q interrupted. “I even have the paperwork filed for Queue Smith, since apparently you lot do that here.” He quirked his eyebrows. “You still haven’t told me what I do, exactly, but I assume it’s some form of tech support, not anything crucial. Something other people have been trained in.” Like Q had been training R and X for the past six months, for instance. Specifically to deal with M’s bizarre separation anxiety.
“You are actually one of our most valuable assets,” M gritted out, clearly aware that said valuable asset was a lying liar who was lying to him at that very moment.
Q smiled. “What a shame I can’t remember anything, then,” he said. “No value whatsoever now. In fact, Dr. Sharma distinctly said I was as useless as a pin-pricked prophylactic, and the rest of the medical department agreed with her.”
M’s eyes narrowed and he sat a little straighter. “Dr. Simmons would never go along with this.”
“Dr. Simmons thought the whole thing was very novel,” Q disagreed. “In fact, he said amnesia might be under-diagnosed, particularly in injured field agents being recalled for missions.”
M frowned. “How patient-centric of him.”
“Oh, terribly.” Straightlaced Simmons, head of Medical, didn’t always see eye to eye with Q, but they both prioritized the health of the people under their care. M wouldn’t find anyone in-house who would challenge Sharma’s diagnosis. Now for the killing blow: “Everyone says that if I’m lucky and have a nice long rest, then I might remember some things. But who knows? Amnesia is unpredictable. I could be out of the game for good.” Q gave an innocent shrug.
“It can be dangerous, walking around ignorant in the world,” M said.
“Maybe,” Q said. “But I got mugged while I was working here with all my memories intact, so really, nowhere is safe, is it? Might as well be unsafe in the Maldives.” Q gave M his most beatific expression. It was rather cute of M to threaten him with being killed, as though Q didn’t have a dead man’s switch for exactly that contingency.
M gave him a long look but eventually sighed. “I’ll put you on an indefinite medical leave. Don’t do something stupid with your free time.”
Q stood. “I’ll do whatever I please. Since that is, in fact, the point of the term ‘free time.’”
—
Q spent five days eating take-away and playing Elden Ring in his pajamas. On the sixth day, he had enough energy to move, so he took the train and then a bus to a little town in Andalusia, dreaming of egg-and-potato fry-ups and sunny olive tree-laden views.
Warmth. Sunshine. Red roofs and white stone buildings. An outdoor cafe where he could drink his tea and people watch.
Down the street, a wrinkled old woman stooped down to scratch a brindled dog whose whiptail flew back and forth at the attention. Q watched them until they rounded a corner out of sight. When he brought his gaze back to his own table, Bond was sitting across from him. Shite.
“Amnesia,” Bond said. His eyes crinkled at the corners.
Q stared him down. “I’m sorry, do I know you?” If Bond asked about a mission, Q was going to send him back to R and X for replacement corneas.
But Bond shook his head. “You can call me James. We don’t know each other outside of work,” he said. “I thought we could change that.” Bond gave him a half-smile, somehow sheepish—different from his Target Acquired smile. His bright yellow I Heart España t-shirt was more camouflage than Q had ever seen him in.
“Caminito del Rey has beautiful vistas,” Bond added, his blue eyes locked on Q’s. “Or I know a place with good tapas if you’d rather eat than hike.”
This might be a work-shaped trap. But there wasn’t any tech in the Gaitanes Ravine, and yellow wasn’t the color Bond wore when he went anglerfishing. Additionally, traversing a treacherous one-meter-wide walkway carved into a rock face a hundred meters above a river sounded like it was genuinely Bond’s idea of a good time. “If we went hiking,” Q said, “it wouldn’t be efficient. I take pictures of cool bugs. I lollygag to look at spiderwebs. I get distracted by rock formations.”
“If I wanted efficient,” Bond said, “I’d wait until you ‘got your memory back.’” He offered Q a wry tilt of his mouth. “I have it on good information that you’re currently useless, and I don’t expect we’ll need any of your skills from the office.”
Bless the medical staff’s ability to gossip. Q exhaled and slouched a little. “You’re really here just because?” he asked.
Bond shrugged. “We’re good at being useful together. I thought we might be good at being useless together too. If you like.” He tilted his head.
Q stood without answering.
Bond stood with him. His designer blue jeans stretched flatteringly around his thighs. No concealed carry. His watch wasn’t one of Q’s. He had a knife in his boot, but that was sensible enough. His t-shirt showed off tan arms criss-crossed with pale scars and a smattering of graying hair. He had a red España bucket hat tucked into his belt.
007 on holiday.
Q smiled. “Lead the way.” He extended his hand.
Bond took it. In the center of a rural village steeped in machismo culture, Bond held his hand. “I have a car,” he said, and they walked, still linked at the fingers, to where Bond had parked his entirely normal Mitsubishi Mirage rental. Good god; a hatchback. Not even four-wheel drive. Bond was really giving this ‘useless’ thing a genuine effort.
If this went well, Q would have to send 006 a basket of explosives. Rather than leaving his mugging-based amnesia up to fate, he’d rather desperately arranged for a surreptitious blow to the head from one of Six’s experts in cranial violence. He hadn’t expected that his memory loss would lead to something so lovely.
