Why didn't looking at his own falling even cross his mind. He was so busy avoiding being reminded of his own death that he had actually forgotten to see what it looked like when he fell.

"So you don't know that either?" Bond said, disrupting Qemuel's train of thought. Qemuel was going to say something, but Bond had already begun typing. "Then let's find out."

"Oh, um, alright, well, I was born in-"

"I know." Bond said, still tapping away, slow to be sure.

"You know?" Q inquired sceptically. The agent hummed in agreement. "You read my file. You bastard. You looked in my file!"

"I told you I was going to."

"I didn't think you were being serious."

"You seem to assume that a lot about me." Bond said to Q, turning the computer so he could lean over and look on. This role reversal was not something Q was excited about. Multiple search results popped up close to Qemuel's birth year. Well, technical birth year. The two poked around for a while until they found several results that met the specifics Q was verbally feeding Bond.

What was supposed to be several minutes turned into several hours of the pair poring over multiple computers searching for a fallen star that might have been Q.

"This one!" Q shouted, a touch too loud. "This one was me! I remember it." Excited, Q rushed over to Bond's seat and placed his laptop on top of the one the agent was looking at. James mumble-read the page as he read the details, paying specific attention to anything related to the appearance of the space rubble.

"It seems completely normal. This doesn't help us at all." Bond said, though he continued to read.

"There has to be something different. Let me look at it again." Q swiped the computer from Bond as fast as he had given it to him and scrolled through for… something. There had to be some kind of giveaway that this one was different from the others.

There!

"Lunar. It's a lunar meteorite." Q shouted a lot louder than he intended.

"What? Really? Are you sure?"

"Absolutely," Q explained. "My minor was in astronomy. Well one of the was. The point is, they're incredibly rare."

"I thought none had fallen in Europe." Bond said, getting the link up on his computer so he needn't crowd over Qemuel's shoulder, risking getting smacked in the face with a wing, which had happened twice since the start of this. "Or in North America."

"Apparently one has. But they didn't label it officially as one.," Q continued. "It fell completely apart before they could properly do any tests. There's not a trace of it left."

"So you're just guessing at what it was." Bond didn't look impressed.

"I don't guess. I'm positive. The scientist working on it were sure too, they just couldn't do any tests to verify it so the information couldn't officially be released." Q paused. This was the first breakthrough in his research he had ever had. All these years and finally something was happening. About time too. Lost in thought he didn't hear Bond typing out on his borrowed laptop. Caught up in reading more information on himself he didn't look up until he heard James say:

"There's another one." The quartermaster froze. Another one?

"What?"

"There's another lunar meteorite in this base. Unofficial, just like the yours because it fell apart." Q didn't say anything to that. That had to be it. It had to be the other half. Q felt bizarre all of a sudden. Of course he wanted to look and learn more and drive off and figure out what happened to it and become the whole angel he was meant to be, but something felt wrong. He couldn't understand because he had waited for this for such a long time, he should be elated, but he wasn't. He wasn't feeling melancholy was he? No, he just had a bad feeling.

Breathing in deep Q brushed it off as a condition of nerves. "Let me see. Where- um- Where was it?" Bond turned the screen. "Glencoe, Scotland," Qemuel read aloud. That funny feeling was coming back.

"Well, we'd better get packing. That's about a 10 hour drive. Get down the official coordinates." Bond said, over his shoulder as he got up to stretch. "Qemuel?"

"What? Yes, right." Q realized he had been staring blankly at the screen.

"Are you alright?"

"Of course I am. I'm always fine. This is good!" His hands started moving and Q was jotting down the exact location while Bond eyed him suspiciously.

"Good." The agent looked no more convinced than the quartermaster felt. "I'll tell M."

"Wait! What are you going to tell him?"

"That we're requesting a day or two off for person health. That we're following a related inquiry in relation to our previous mission. I'm not sure. I'll figure it out when I get there." Bond explained, shrugging the whole thing off as irrelevant details.

Hours later Bond had pulled up in front of Q's apartment in an overly expensive rental car. Q had more time to pack for this trip and was taking with him all the technology he could fit into his suitcases.

"I must have missed the part where you said you were moving to Glencoe," Bond said, rolling down the window to better judge Q for all the luggage he was bringing with him.

"Hilarious." Q returned loudly as he stuffed the cases in the trunk. "This is everything I need to be comfortable. What did you bring? One tuxedo and condoms: The James Bond starter pack." Bond snickered, rolling the window back up. As soon as Q got in the passenger seat Bond took off. Qemuel didn't even ask this time before filling all the space in the car with his wings, making certain to slap Bond with one of them for no reason besides the fact that he could. There was an easy comfort between the two that had not been anticipated by Q, but he was grateful for it.

The trip was shockingly normal, considering. James and Qemuel argued over the radio, stopped at gas stations, and discussed work and co-workers. They drove an hour later than they intended to in that evening because Bond hadn't made an reservations and refused to stop at anywhere he deemed beneath him.

Finally Q forced him to stop and without thinking ordered a room with two beds instead of two rooms. It would never have occurred to him to get anything else. Bond seemed to not notice either.

"Did you need to bring every suitcase in tonight? We're only here for one night." Bond laughed, watching Q haul in all his luggage.

"If you could help instead of making snide remarks we'd both be a lot better off." Q told him, struggling to pull the last one through the door jamb. Bond sneered and laid down instead. "Thanks…"

Q set up all his computers and continued doing all the work he was missing being away from MI6. Bond thought he was being ridiculous.

"I'm sure the idea of someone doing work other than shooting people is foreign to you, but some of us have real jobs." He explained, tacking away. He felt sort of guilty, being away from work for so many days, but this expedition took priority. He still had that funny feeling about all of this, but for now he was blocking it out. Now was not the time for second guessing. He had waited too long for this.

Eventually James dragged Qemuel away from his computer and forced him to sleep.

"I don't need you mother henning me. I can-"

"Of course you can." Was all Bond kept saying, not listening at all.

In bed Q couldn't get to sleep. Things were going to change tomorrow. If he found his soul he could get it back, be a full angel again, maybe exact some revenge on his brothers and sisters. But what about Bond? Would all of this, the comfortable conversation, the snickering, the pleasant feeling in his half-soul when he got to see that ridiculous agent, go away? He had been trying to not think of that since the two began spending time together. Maybe that's why his stomach ached with some unnerving doubt. Was being an angel more important than this, right now?

"Bond?" Q whispered, soft and breathy.

"Yes?"

"Nothing just… Seeing if you were still awake." Q said a little softer than before, not sure why he said anything at all.

"Are you scared?" Bond asked, turning over in his bed to face Qemuel. Q thought about it for a minute.

"I don't know." Q didn't look over as he said it. He got caught-up in staring up at the ceiling.

"That's even worse." There was a silence as Q formulated something to say to that.

"What if we're wrong and this isn't the other half?"

"Then we keep looking."

"No, what if we're totally wrong and there's nothing out there. What if it's gone? Just completely dead and we're running around looking for nothing." Q swallowed, and breathed, slow and deep, forgetting to do so while he was talking.

"Would that be so bad?" Bond murmured.

"What!?"

"Well, would it be so bad to be stuck half human? You've lived a comparatively decent life." Q didn't answer him. Wrapping his wings around himself he flipped over and considered. Would he really mind?

Q didn't know when he fell asleep, but it happened at some point, and soon enough he was waking up. Pulling all his extensive luggage back into the car, this time the with help of Bond, they were back on the road for the last few hours of their journey. They were a little more quite this time. The conversation was delicate and predictable, though still comfortable and appealing.

"So, where exactly did the meteorite fall?" Bond asked, mutter afterwards "It better not be in the river."

"It wasn't in the river! I'll give you directions. Just drive." From there Q gave the directions verbatim to Bond the chauffeur. Bond, for some reason, looked more and more perplexed as he kept giving more directions, but he continued driving anyway.

"What is it?" Q inquired, noticing the abrupt facial changes.

"I'll tell you later. Keep going." Qemuel was curious, but obeyed, and proceeded with the directions. That is up until he noticed Bond anticipating what he was going to say before he said it. James was making all the correct turns without any prompting, so Q stopped giving them altogether.

"How do you know-" The quartermaster started before the car stopped. Then everything stopped. "I don't understand. This is impossible."

"Skyfall."

Qemuel stopped thinking completely, and then restarted at a faster rate than humans are capable. "You."

Bond shot him a look. "What?" Before he could say anything else Q was out of the car, sporting a smile, racing towards the meteorites precise location. Bond followed behind, but quickly caught up, easily faster than Q.

"You don't get it!" Q said, turning around as he ran, heart pounding. "When I saw this address on the database I thought it looked so familiar, I just wasn't thinking about it! The piece of my soul I've been missing did fall, but it inhabited life, just like my half did! The angel half to me, the human part- to you."

Q stopped running in front of a deep hole in the ground, different from the other assortments of burn marks.

"Here. This is it." Qemuel grabbed Bond's arm and tugged him closer to the hole. "But it's not mine. This is yours."

"I don't- I'm not-"

"I couldn't lie to you. I kept telling you about myself. I couldn't even keep my wings invisible to you. The whole universe was trying to tell me and I missed it completely!" Q was giddy. Positively elated. He was on the verge of giggling at his stupidity.

"But I don't remember anything you remember. Why would you know and not me?"

"Because you're not an angel. Angels don't have souls, but I did. Part angel, part human. You got the human bit, the part that wasn't alive in heaven. I'm so stupid! We were meant to meet each other James Bond. The whole time. In every and any universe we were supposed to end up together."

"But… But you can't become a full angel if I have the other half. You're stuck like this." James tried to explain, assembling his thoughts at a gradual speed. "You won't be whole."

Qemuel bit his lip, debating. "Of course I'll be whole." Then he grabbed Bond and pulled him to his lips for the shortest kiss imaginable. "I have you. I won't fly the way I wanted to, or go back to the way things were before, but right now I have the other half of my soul found and accounted for. That's all I needed." Bond swallowed, and arched his eyebrow.

"Dream bigger." He offered before he pulled Q back to his mouth. Qemuel's wings unraveled from his back and wrapped around James. He felt warm everywhere. No more feeling dead inside. No more fear of what had happened before. He wasted so much time searching for what he already had.

"So I'm the human half then?" Bond asked, pulling away from Q at last. Q hummed in agreement. "I still get some angelic perks though, right?"

"What the hell is an 'angelic perk'?"

"Just once I'd like to literally smite someone with the hand of God." Bond should have been joking but he sounded completely serious.

"No. You have no power to smite anyone, and neither do I, so that's out!" Q explained.

"For now."

"Bond, no!"