Night on Notting Hill lies heavy in the streets: pale houses towering in the darkness like mocking ghosts and Bond's never been this acutely aware of how elaborate a charade his life has become. Holding up the façades with a falsely charming smile directed at an old lady walking her dog in his direction while he's hiding a stab wound under his sleeve and a limp in his leg, rather much like a wounded attack dog with the bruises on his chest rubbing against his ribcage. He turns to cross the street and the dull aches of his injuries shift to the left, resembling a sudden, pointed sting characteristic to a broken heart rather than a broken rib and a subcutaneous pool of blood.

Only he hasn't had a heart to break in years, of this he is certain. The door to his flat gapes as a dark shadow in a chalky palace and gives without a sound at his touch. For a brief moment Bond considers simply climbing the stairs in the dark and falling into a dead sleep, suit and dignity be damned, but the box in his coat pocket lines up against his flank as he leans his back into the door and the night is not over yet.

He kicks off his shoes and struggles out of his coat in slow motion in an attempt not to jostle his ribs and - for reasons he doesn't care to examine too closely - the tape. The hall lights are too bright for his tastes, casting his shadow in sharp detail across the staircase as he descends it into the portion of the million pound flat he actually makes even a half decent attempt to live in.

Not that it means more than a couch and a telly on the floor with his few personal belongings scattered in random piles and spread across the odd spaces on the coffee table that aren't covered in tumblers and coffee mugs. Bond flicks on a desolate desk lamp that's travelled London with him on and off for twenty odd years. It's a relic from the fifties and it emanates the sort of light that makes no attempt at chasing the shadows into the corners, which is just the way he prefers it.

Moneypenny's tried hard to get him to toss it, to do something with all the space he doesn't bother occupying, but there is something to be said about dancing the line between belonging to the living and the dead. Bond reckons the place is merely an appropriate reflection of the lack of substance in his life outside the job. As M had put it: he was a blunt instrument for her to be wielded, more a weapon than a man despite his occasional slip into the realm of sentimentality.

Bond lets out a heavy sigh and sinks onto sofa, elbows placed on his knees with the leather upholstery accommodating for his weight as he leans forward to hold a white cardboard case in the halo of light on the coffee table. He turns it over, fingers brushing through the gathering dust on the table, and the bold letters scribbled onto it in Mr White's slightly slanted handwriting taunt him with all the answers he's been looking for. Vesper Lynd, interrogation. The memory of her scream sounds in the back of his mind, dulled by partial amnesia and the way his feelings have become all muddled over the years. Somewhere beneath it he can still feel the phantom of Le Chiffre's blows and the stench of sweat pervading the room. A thin film of perspiration breaks out at the base of his neck at the mere thought of Le Chiffre with his face distorted in panicked madness like a rabid hyena trying to save their own skin and Bond sets the tape down with shaking hands, pushing it just so for the title to vanish from his sight.

This, he decides, is not something he ought to do sober.

He has seven drinks - a bottle of British Bulldog, some fifty-year-old Macallan, and five familiarly bitter Vesper Martinis - before it crosses his mind to find the remote control and turn on the telly. Naturally, the news are on, broadcasting the destruction of half a block at his hands without a mention of it being for queen and country, a misguided loyalty he resents most in a drunken stupor, when his loneliness is overwhelmingly intense for the fraction of time before it fades with the rush of alcohol in his blood. Bond pours himself a healthy helping of Glenfiddich, a brand new bottle Tanner gave him for Christmas to get blackout drunk.

"Better to have saved it," Bond murmurs to himself, because the occasion calls for something out of the ordinary and the burn of whisky in his throat seems just right.

He reaches for the tape on the table and slips it out of its case to rest in his hand for a moment so long it might as well substitute an eternity with nothing but her name written across all of time and space. Bond blows on the cassette, dust whirling up around it as if to warn him about trespassing into a past he's half forgotten like a scabbed wound. He can't resist scratching at it and the tape slips into the recorder with a rumble. Bond rocks back on his haunches and stumbles to his feet and towards the sofa.

He downs the remainder of his whisky in a large gulp that leaves a burning trail in its wake. The sofa still smells like brand new leather, when he lies down on it under the strain of ever growing drowsiness and fatigue. On the screen, the blackness morphs into an unsteady film of a camera that's nauseatingly askew from the angle he's lying in.

"Did'ya knock into the bloody stand again?" a voice grumbles off screen in irritation before a finger pokes at the lens and the view shifts with the frame straightened out and angled toward a terrasse chair with Vesper's familiar form strapped to it with the same chafing ropes they bound him with. Bond can almost feel the itch of them, a shiver creeping up his spine at the thought.

They'd been so close in their misery: him stripped and beaten in one room, screaming at the top of his lungs and her, hooded and sitting stock still with only the slightest tremor in one of her legs. The video remains eerily quiet for two full minutes punctuated only by the involuntary whimpers of a gagged woman trapped in the short stillness that precedes the horror of torture. Bond watches her with rapt eyes. Her gown is torn at one side and falls over her left leg to reveal a massive bruise forming on her thigh and the angry, swollen ankle of a bare foot injured in the hassle of a kidnapping.

Again, the voice of a man rings out from behind the camera: "Vesper Lynd, interrogation. Montenegro, 2006." His voice tilts each 's' into a 'z' and Vesper shifts in her restraints as he comes into view.

From the other side, the first bloke steps into the frame and hoists the hood off Vesper's head. The sight of her so wrecked - tear stained cheeks and a bleeding gash at her temple with mussed up strands of hair drying into a dozen trickles of blood - has Bond's stomach lurch in utter surprise, because all he remembers of her now is that last pained look she gave him. But Vesper, despite what he likes to tell himself on sleepless nights, was all steel and hot fury with a sullenly realistic grip on a world she did not comprehend in full. And that cannot be eradicated by all the outrageously expensive whisky in the world.

"Miss Lynd," the Brit, who's supposedly in charge, says, "what a lovely sight you are. It'd be a shame to injure someone so pretty any more than absolutely necessary, so let's aim for co-operation shall we?"

Her jaw flexes at the comment, tongue pushing against the gauze in her mouth with the venomous reply she's restrained from spitting at him.

"All we need is the account number and you're free to walk away with all your limbs intact."

The other man moves to undo her gag, the fabric falling from her mouth into a lap, glistening with blood and saliva and Vesper runs her tongue along the oozing cut on her lower lip. "I was guaranteed inviolability as part of the deal," she bites out and another fat drop of blood forms on her lip to roll down her chin.

"That was before there was reason to suspect your… loyalty to certain parties. You give us what we want and, once Bond divulged the password, you and Yusef go free."

"And James?"

"He's none of your concern."

Vesper snaps her mouth shut with a contemplative crease forming on her brow. Bond holds his breath through the pregnant silence, the pounding of his heart in his chest the only sound in existence at that point in time. These are the very minutes that haunt him in his worst nightmares, the exchange he'd made up countless scenarios for, playing out as it happened almost a decade ago in his desolate living room.

"I'm afraid you are mistaken," she says tentatively and his breath rushes out in a long sigh. All those years Mathis knew, and Bond- "This wasn't part of the deal I made, nor am interested in that bargain anymore."

Vesper's interrogator sneers at her, "Oh really?" He turns his head a fraction towards his henchman and his voice drops a full octave as he says, "Cvetkovic, bring the pipes," with malice dripping from his voice and Bond's heart stutters in his chest as the other man moves to obey the command.

Bond tightens his grip on the remote as the Cvetkovic stands over her with an iron pipe clutched in his massive fist. Vesper's eyes flicker towards her assailant, fully aware of the damage he can wield to her body with a single blow and for a second she looks back at the Brit before shifting her gaze directly into the camera. For an instant Bond feels like she knows the recording will be his one day, that she'll be staring right into his eyes in another time and place.

"Last chance," Cvetkovic says with the pipe rising in wait for the first blow.

Vesper swallows and closes her eyes in a short lived prayer. "Go on," she says with nothing but icy defiance in her voice and the pipe comes swinging.

It hits her in the abdomen with a hollow thud and Bond can hear the breath being punched out of her. His jaw tenses as her face screws up in pain and a low, cut off groan falls from her lips. She isn't even offered another opportunity to confess before the second blow, or the third, and the fourth has sweat pearling on her brow with her laboured breaths cutting through the silence between each blow.

The man in charge raises his hand and Cvetkovic pauses with his weapon poised in the air in warning. "Well?"

Vesper shakes her head, heaving for breath and Le Chiffre's minion cocks his head from one side to the other as if to decide whether it is worth to be irritated by her or not. He takes a step toward her and crouches down on the ground with his trousers riding up his legs. He grips Vesper's face with a single hand, fingers digging into her flesh as he says, "You won't get out of her alive with that attitude, darling."

The mocking term of endearment rolls off his tongue in a long drawl that has Bond's gut twist with rage at the sheer terror in Vesper's eyes. She forces her jaw from his grip and obstinately turns her head towards Cvetkovic. Her breathing is still laboured, when the pipe makes contact with her body again and she yelps in surprise.

Bond doesn't notice his own breathing has adjusted to her's, until Cvetkovic graces Vesper with another break and he hears the sound of his own troubled inhales in the silence of his flat. "No use," Cvetkovic says and the other man rises to his feet in irritation, stalking out of the frame in two long strides.

"Let's see, shall we?" he says and the clinks of metal on metal pierce through the sound of Vesper's desperate gasps. A muffled scream rivals the sound of it and Bond shudders at the realisation it's him in another room, his and Vesper's parallel sufferings fusing into one in the present.

The Brit steps back into the frame wielding a kitchen knife. He runs his index finger along the blade, more for show than anything else, and it's like watching a bad spy movie. Unfortunately, particularly for Vesper, it's all part of a hideous reality.

"I promise you'll feel this, luv."

The camera is reflected in the blade and Bond closes his eyes for a few seconds, slipping even further from the present towards the past. By the time he opens them again the blade is set against Vesper's skin, drawing along the length of her arm so finely it barely leaves a track at first. Not until it sinks into her flesh in a sudden dip, the tip sinking an inch below the surface with blood welling up in its wake and she creams.

It's a sound he recognizes, high-pitched and woven into one of Le Chiffre's whispered speeches during his own torment that night. It's a sound he's never quite managed to forget despite his best attempts. On screen, Vesper's eyes open, tears spilling across her cheeks although she remains completely silent.

In the background, he screams again: a long, guttural sound of immense agony and Vesper looks more pained at that than the knife gliding out of her arm. She takes long breath with her eyes squeezed shut, tears continuing to race down her cheek as the wound on her arm sends a multitude of bloody rivulets spiraling down her arm.

She opens her mouth as if to say something, only to be interrupted by the rapidly approaching sound of gunfire and Bond tenses with the knowledge of what is to come. Mr White kicks down the door - like Lucifer playing a guardian angel - and his first bullet lands in the Brit's chest, the second boring into Cvetkovic's skull in a split second with his blood splattering everywhere as he collapses into Vesper's lap with a gun slipping from his limp hands.

Vesper stares at the body in unadulterated horror, warm blood flooding her lap and an utterly helpless sob escapes her. "Oh my god," she breathes and gags once, "Oh my god." Mr White stalks toward the door at the far end of the room and she chokes out a barely audible 'please' that doesn't quite catch his attention.

"Please, don't kill him," she blurts, getting a hold of her voice, and Mr White stops with his hand already on the door handle.

"And why not? What might you have to offer in exchange for 007's life, Miss Lynd?" he asks with his particular brand of a lunatic smile spreading across his face and all the way to his eyes.

"The money Le Chiffre has lost, one hundred and twenty five million. I can get it for you. Just… don't shoot James. Please." More tears well up in her eyes and Bond can't tell whether it's from the fear or the pain, but his own eyes glaze over listening to a deal he didn't believe in being made. He wipes at his eyes to see her properly: blood stained and injured for his sake, and still willing to make a deal with the devil to save the last shreds of his soul.

Mr White, tilts his head curiously. "And Yusef Kabira?"

She swallows thickly and draws her injured leg under her chair, shifting the weight of the corpse on her lap to fall to the ground. "That was not my fault," she says, resolve settling in her voice as she forces her body to still even in the grip of shock induced tremors.

"Not a very smart deal, Miss Lynd."

"That is for me to decide. Take it or leave it."

"Alright," Mr White concedes, "for a price of a hundred and twenty five million, James Bond lives."

She sighs in relief and Mr White bursts through the next door with his gun pointed at Le Chiffre and the murmur of their conversation sounds in the background of the recording before the last shot echoes. Vesper squeezes her eyes shut, holding her breath as she waits for more. But none come. The only sounds remaining are Mr White's receding footsteps that eventually fade into nothingness and Vesper's unrelenting wailing.

Bond's own tears spill over with the very mourning he'd forbidden himself all these years for nothing, because Vesper Lynd had loved him in her own chaotic, unsalvageable way. Her beaten figure blurs, the knowledge of her having signed her own death to save him when he couldn't save himself seeping in at last. Her head falls to hang over her chest with her hair falling over her shoulders and she must have known too. In a time where she lives to save him from certain death, he lies passed out on the ground.

Bond pauses the tape and allows himself a handful of shuddered sobs to cope with the sudden resolution that allows him to finally admit to himself how utterly tattered his heart is by years of 'what if's playing out in his head, when the truth was right there all along: in M's words, in Mathis' words. In Vesper's erratic breaths and her last, gentle caress that was meant to mend a broken heart he wouldn't ever allow himself to have.

Whatever is left of me - he thinks - whatever is left of me, I am yours.