the monument of a memory
and the crashes are heaven for a sinner like me
but the arms of the ocean delivered me
never let me go, florence + the machine
Venice. Sunshine. Water sparkling in the breeze. Tourists milling around, taking in the sights. A building, crumbling and breaking. The echo of gunshots hang in the air. A tortured man stumbles from the wreckage, replacing his armour like an expensive leather jacket, easily but with hidden care. A bird whistles in the wind.
(and, in a Venetian hospital not three miles away, a woman rises from the dead)
...
The water is always there, hovering beside her and choking her and haunting her.
She sleeps fitfully, but when she wakes, the world is just too far away to reach, and she always tumbles back into the abyss - every time, the focus gaining a little more sharpness and every time, just as she falls back into the murky Venetian depths which have claimed her dreams as their own, she thinks to herself-
just a little longer, then I'll be able to break through.
She just never considered what would happen when she did.
...
"You should have died."
Even the dead are not allowed to rest, not when M is on the warpath.
The older woman is there when she breaks free of the water's clutches, spluttering into life.
(even then she still can feel the water in her lungs, burning her throat)
The words are delivered in a matter of fact tone, but there is no denying the cold edge they conceal.
"I own you now, Ms Lynd - and if you don't do exactly as I say, then well - it won't be hard arrange for a little accident. I haven't had to organise a drowning in quite some while, I'll say."
One look is all it takes - once glance at the head of MI6's steely eyes - to know that she's not pretending.
...
She never shouts, but never does Vesper think that the other woman is anything less than irate. She explains, eerily, calm, about what will happen now.
She is dead. Vesper that is - there is a death certificate out there, signed in the scrawly hand of an Italian doctor who was probably paid to look the other way.
And there is no going back from that.
Vesper Lynd is dead, gone - history.
Because, as M, explains, her voice still completely still - at odds with the fire burning in her eyes, "James Bond thinks you're dead and things will remain that way."
Her breath catches in her throat and it feels so awfully like drowning again that she lets out an involuntary strangled sob.
M also explains that though it feels like yesterday, that crisp Venice day when she died was four weeks ago. The strain the event took on her body was almost too much and they didn't think she'd pull through. They thought even if she did, she'd be a vegetable, brain-damaged.
But here she is, breathing, defying the odds.
(and she wonders what the point is - M doesn't seem to realises that there are two of them in the room who wish she'd died in the Venetian depths)
...
They tell her to dye her hair.
It's a subtle message at the beginning; a bottle of blonde hair dye mysteriously appears on the hospital room table. She throws it away.
Then there's a replacement bottle a few days later, this time with a note, which tells her there's no point in fighting.
But fight she does. She throws the bottle and note away and stays the way she is.
Then a nurse brings a third bottle and the cold set of her glare says all there is to say. She fights, would kick and scream if she thought it would help, hanging on by her finger nails to her past - her tortured body giving all it has, down to her last. Then the nurse leaves, clear to her that her patient has made up her mind.
Then, finally, damningly - she comes in from the bathroom one morning and finds M standing in her room. She looks awkward and she doesn't even bother to take off her coat - this visit will be fleeting and she's unsure quite why the other woman has taken time out of her busy life to deal with something so trivial. But here she is, standing in a hospital room, holding a bottle of hair dye and the sight is so absurd that she can't help but laugh - but then the spymaster is muttering about ownership and Venetian depths and clicks of fingers.
Without another word, she picks up the bottle and disappears into the bathroom.
When she emerges, M is gone and so is the last thing she had left of Vesper Lynd- her looks.
...
Vesper is dead - and in her place rises Jane Cunningham, a twenty-seven year old statistical analyst from Ramsgate whose life is boring and whose job is boring and who, by all accounts, is boring.
One thing that could never be said of Vesper Lynd - right down to the name she carried through her life with her - was that she was boring.
But Jane Cunningham - plain old Jane - isn't Vesper Lynd. Vesper is dead. She is gone.
...
"You will not contact James Bond."
She realises pretty quickly she is no longer on the continent - it's England, drizzly, cold, achingly familiar England that she confronts out of her window the first time she works up enough energy to roll over in bed. Because if she thought her nightmare was over when she woke, she was wrong. Her body no longer seems to belong to her, the damage of the murky Venetian canal much worse than a well-founded fear of water. Even the simplest things take far more effort than she has.
"You will not contact anyone from your former life."
She breathes fresh air for the first time in five weeks, suffering the indignity of having to be wheeled out onto the patio by an aproned-nurse, one of the type who never asks any questions but instead chats aimlessly, pointlessly, about everything and anything. Vesper - no, Jane her wristband, tied too tight for her liking, says - Jane doesn't say a word. The nurse doesn't seem to mind.
"You will not tell anyone your secret."
Slowly, she builds her strength to the point where she can stand for exactly twelve minutes and walk exactly nine steps before her body fails her. She's forgetful, too - something to do with the lack of oxygen to her brain she sustained when her heart stopped - so some days, she wakes and is unsure of where she is, and why James isn't there or why her father is absent, and it takes a few minutes to remember what happened, and the weight of it crushes her like the water she nearly drowned in.
"You will do exactly what I tell you to."
Her heart stopped for seventeen minutes and as a result she suffered from cerebral anoxia because her brain didn't get enough oxygen and she contracted pneumonia when she was in the hospital, but these things mean nothing to her. All she knows is that her eyes burned in the water and her lungs screamed and her heart shattered into a thousand pieces, the light from the surface cutting through water in glittering beams and that when the black spots appeared in her vision and then swallowed her up, it came as the greatest relief in her entire life.
...
When M's visit finishes on what turns out to be Vesper - correction; Jane's last day in hospital, she's sitting in an arm chair, her legs curled up to her side, wearing a set of clothes -which appeared one day, when she became more mobile, when her recovery took a step forward - that are two sizes too big, the jumper swamping her.
M's stops talking, having finished explaining about what will happen when she is released. There's a place in Newcastle, somewhere Vesper never saw; a flat, a job, a life, waiting. There'll be a monthly stipend too, all hers until M comes calling - for what, she doesn't explain, but she figures that as the spymaster now 'owns' her, it won't be pretty - she's seen what James does, up close, personal.
She's looking out the window, and she watches M get up out of the corner of her eye and sees her make her way to the door. She looks away, content with the solitude, the silence, but M hasn't gone yet and her voice, ice cold, cuts through the room.
"James Bond was one of my best agents." She'd be lying if she said she didn't hear the affection that slips into the words, unbidden. "I'll be damned if what you did to him," she continues, the accusatory note sharp and painful. "break him."
There's a flash of blue at the edge of her vision, then; "You will never tell him you are alive. No matter how much your heart begs you to, Vesper Lynd is as dead to world as she is to James Bond and there will be no disputing that. Do I make myself clear, Ms Cunningham?"
It takes her a few moments to recognise the foreign name as it flows off of M's tongue, but then she says, her voice a whisper in the emptiness of the sterile hospital:
"James Bond will never know the truth."
...
They say water cleanses the sins of the guilty.
No fucking way.
...
Jane Cunningham's cupboards and wardrobes are full when she arrives in a rainy, unfamiliar city. At least M seems not to want her to drown with this new found freedom by making her have to go shopping.
...
Even Jane's clothes are boring - chunky knitted cardigans and pale blouses in greyscale match with black or dark blue trousers; one pair of jeans, no heels, just flats in as varied colours as grey and white.
There's one top, a blue colour that so vividly reminds her of guilt and sin and gasping for air that wasn't there that she chucks it out straight away.
...
There's a tub in a bathroom with the walls painted blue.
The first thing she does is call a plumber and see how long it will take to have it replaced with a shower, where she can't slip under the surface and her eyes can't burn and her lungs can't scream and her heart can't shatter into a thousand pieces; where the light from the surface can't cut through water in glittering beams and black spots can't appear in her vision and swallow her up.
Then she buys white paint and then walls are neat and neutral, and - god-forbid, boring.
...
Jane Cunningham works for a bank as an analyst.
She gets up at seven o'clock every morning, even weekends, and stares out the window. Then she dresses (in clothes that aren't hers) and then she's out of the house, catching the number fifty-five bus from the end of her road (something she hadn't done since her teenage years and it feels strange doing it now)
Her colleagues are a friendly bunch, but even still, she's still seen as 'prickly'. Especially now, she concedes, because she talks in brief sentences, never about herself and everyone just leaves plain old Jane to herself.
Then, she comes home, again taking the number fifty-five bus and sits in front of the TV and sips wine and then falls into fractured sleep in front of the flickering images that wash over her in the dark room.
Then she wakes the next day and the cycle repeats itself.
...
There are men, of course.
She turns every one down.
(haunted by two midnight-blue eyes, a wry smile and Venice in summer)
...
Once, she buys a swimming costume in a department store in Newcastle city centre on one of her infrequent shopping trips.
She doesn't know why. All she knows is that water cannot scare her forever.
(but she's oh so wrong)
She makes it to the entrance of the pool, and a picture on the wall of the reception, of children, splashing and playing and having fun in the water, has her high-tailing it back to the bus stop. She sits, thankful no one is about, and she chokes and splutters and her fingers grip the plastic bench so tightly they go bright white.
...
She comes home one day, and on entering her living room - dark in the night - finds the head of MI6 sitting in her armchair by the television.
She's been in Newcastle a year by then and it's near Christmas (now the most depressing time of year because she has no one) and she's finds it funny that such an important woman is sitting in a battered armchair, drinking a cup of tea in a council house in Newcastle.
And then her breath catches in her throat and the familiar feeling of being unable to breathe returns.
Because either M has come to cash in her favours, or James Bond is dead.
She knows which one she'll take every time.
But she's there for neither, in turns out.
She's there because a man was arrested two days before, with crunching boots on snow in Russia. Vesper - sorry, Jane frowns in the half-dark. She doesn't understand.
Then M sets a necklace down on the table, something so familiar, yet so alien to her now. The Algerian love-knot lies on the coffee table between them, and she understands.
M explains, briefly. About how Yusef was a set-up from the start and she's not surprised, she realises. She knew, in the back of her head, that he was a trap, but she didn't want to believe it.
"So he didn't kill him, then?" Vesper says - for Vesper exists in that moment, for a flicker of a heartbeat, no matter practicalities and scrawled Italian doctor's signatures on death certificates - after a long moment.
They both know who they're talking about.
"I was as surprised as you," M replies, and for once there is something other than ice cold detachment in her tone.
She's reminded of the last thing Vesper Lynd thought before she died. It was an incoherent thought, water choking her and her mind rushing at two-million miles per hour;
if you see him - tell him I'm sorry but I fell in love.
She knew James would not give up until he knew the truth and that truth would lead him to Yusef. She wanted the man she loved more than anything to tell the man she thought she loved why she ended up dead in Italy, her lungs full of Venetian canal water.
It was because she fell in love.
...
M returns the next day - and this time, the spymaster's eyes are clouded and deceptively calm and notVesper knows that whatever yesterday was, today the world has righted itself and M hates her again.
And she knows that whatever it was that's been keeping her alive, whatever purpose it is that M wants her for - because if there was nothing she'd be at the bottom of the Grand Canal instead of living in a semi-detached home in Newcastle – is coming calling.
"I need a dead woman. I need someone who can never be traced."
She's sitting at her kitchen table, familiar and comfortable after the year she's spent here, cradling a cup of tea and she knows it's all over. Everything Jane built here is going to crumble, just like everything Vesper once was had been destroyed.
"You came to the right woman then."
...
Jane has an accident a little over a week later.
She's just glad that it doesn't involve a lift, or water. She felt like M might have had a sense of humour.
But no - it's just a simple car crash that does in the most recent incarnation of the woman formerly known as Vesper.
...
She finds herself in London by the end of the month and it takes her breath away.
Streets she used to walk, views she used to love, crowds, people - all look different now she's a no one, now she looks out on the world through dead eyes.
M gave her a phone before she left and it was a message on there that led her to London and then it leads her to a building on Thames-side where she realises what M meant when she said she need her.
...
She never wanted to be a spy.
She worked for the god damn Treasury for god's sake.
But somehow her life has led her here, to an abandoned warehouse by the river Thames where she will the tricks of the trade so that she can be thrown into the fray without getting herself killed.
(because M isn't heartless, and to be honest, she needs the training because she's just an innocent at heart; the woman who cried in the shower because she couldn't get the blood off her hands - how people change)
...
There are others, she's not the only one - though, clearly she's the only one there not by choice.
They are given numbers, and notVesper realises that M does have the sense of humour she thought she might.
She becomes number seven - another identity she slips into because she doesn't have a choice.
...
They pit them against each other and she hates them all.
She always comes last. She wasn't made for this. She can't - she can't - she's not-
After a tough week, she finds herself alone in her room, and she can hear the others in the mess down the hall, talking, chatting aimlessly. But she's different, so she cries, alone, because she might be a dead woman but she's lost too much of herself and there's nothing left.
...
Water.
She should have known she couldn't escape it.
Everyone laughs at her, but then she looks at them - at their strangely innocent eyes, because they are young, unknowing - and then her gaze flicks to the battle-hardened instructors and they aren't laughing, because they've lived.
She takes a breath, and dives into the water.
Her lungs sting and the water is almost too much. But she makes it to the other side, emerging last, but at least emerging this time.
And something breaks within her then.
Because M owns her and there's no way out.
...
She dyes her hair.
There's a hairdressers down the road from the warehouse and one day she sneaks out and pays the man to turn her back to the woman she was - because notVesper is a victim and weak and has nothing left, but Vesper always had spirit and she needs it back. But even then, she's not quite the woman she was, because Vesper, real Vesper with messy things like emotions and frailties, is somewhere at the bottom of the Grand Canal.
...
She's unsurprised when M appears that night at her lodgings, her face contorted with anger.
The head of MI6 castigates her for her irresponsible choice, but she doesn't care.
"You need a no one," she replies, calmly when the older woman finishes her rant. "A dead woman walking - and that's what I am. Vesper's dead, Jane's dead. Why does it matter what colour my fucking hair is?"
She stops and realises what she has just said - to the one woman who can have her dead just like that, but then, surprisingly, M just smiles and mutters to herself - "I knew Bond wouldn't have made a mistake," and she doesn't understand.
Then M looks up at her, and their eyes meet. "I'm glad you seem to have your spirit back, Ms Lynd."
And it's the first time in a year that anyone has uttered that name aloud.
And it kills her almost more than the water.
"Don't," she snaps. "Like I said, Vesper's dead."
She couldn't cope with the reminder of what she once held in her hands, not now when she looked in the mirror, she could forget for a second what had transpired - no, now it mattered even more that that part of her life was over, and done with and dead.
"She's dead."
…
Slowly, slowly but surely, she becomes good.
So much so that when the end of her training rolls around, everyone else is scared of her. Of what she's capable of.
…
Before she can leave the warehouse in Thames-side, she must under go a phycological assessment.
She passes most of it with flying colours.
Then comes the word association test. Simple things to begin with; bird, car, tree. She responds easily, calmly.
Then it comes, out of nowhere.
"Venice."
She falters, a second, then; "Summer." He raises an eyebrow at her, but continues, regardless.
She can guess what's coming next.
"Water."
She doesn't even have to think about this one.
"Retribution."
A beat, a pause, then; "James Bond."
Her gaze slips to the floor - she wants to up and leave but she doesn't. She raises her eyes, slowly.
"Death."
…
When she leaves the room, she cries.
...
They let her go, when the training's finished. She gets a place far from the river, anonymous and simple.
She's there a little under a week before M shadows the doorway.
She's clasping a folder, her eyes still shining with anger, and hate. It's then that she realises she'll never be like the people she trained with, the people who can walk into the MI6 building, who don't have the chief spymaster visit them in their own home. She should have known that it would never be the case – she is not here by choice, M owns her and that is that.
So when M tells her she's needed on a mission, because the only person who can undertake is a no one, a ghost, a shadow, the dead reawakened, she says yes, without question.
She is, after all, all those thingsand more.
…
She doesn't like thinking about what came after.
About the gun, heavy in her hand, about the blood on the hot sand and guilt that pooled in her stomach; about how she became someone she always thought she'd never be.
She told James, so long ago now, that just because you did something once – it doesn't mean you have to do it again, and yet, she feels herself falling, falling, falling into their web, their world. She can't see a way out. She is theirs and they are who she is now.
…
The mission is a success.
And when she returns to London, she finds M gracing her home yet again, darkening the hallways and rooms.
The spymaster is only there for a brief flash – only to tell her agent (for that's what she's been reduced to now) that she will return in the near future with more missions.
There is one other reason for the visit. M tells her dead woman, a woman who used to be an innocent and now is not, that she has earned her status as a double-o.
The blood on her hands is not so easy to wash away now.
…
Through she would not admit it to a soul, the water still haunts her.
She's just so good at hiding it now.
…
More missions pass, and by the sixth, 009, as she's known now, knows they are always the same; she will do something despicable, with calm and poise, someone will inevitably die, almost certainly by her hand, and something bad for her country will be averted.
It's always the bloody same, her dead woman's footprints leading to a trail of death, and destruction.
And all because she didn't die when she should have and now M owns her.
…
She's in Istanbul, listening, waiting, watching for her moment.
But before her moment comes, there's a flicker and and shadow across the wall behind her and she turns; instincts, perfectly honed now, screaming at her that something is up.
She turns, and finds herself face to face with a stranger, a woman who tells her it's time to go home.
009 laughs, tells this woman with her MI6 badge that she doesn't have a home, hasn't for years. The woman doesn't understand, but she doesn't blame her.
They leave the spot, and with it her mission and there is a stay of execution for someone, somewhere - and are on a plane within the hour. It's then – when they're safely stowed aboard, that she finally understands that this is no administrative decision or even M's choice – this goes above that.
She asks her companion – a woman named Eve, or at least that's what's she's told her, who has been viewing her with a strange mix of curiosity and fear since they first met – about what's going on.
Eve tells her, slowly, about Vauxhall Cross, about the attempt on M's life in London, and finally, about the spymaster's untimely demise in a rural Scottish house.
It's after this, when they've lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, that this stranger from MI6 makes it clear why she is so suspicious and curious about her travelling companion.
"It was James Bond's family home."
She tries not to flinch at the mention of his name, which has not passed her ears in years, but the statement takes her by surprise and she starts a little.
She lets her gaze fall away from the stranger sitting next to her and tries to forget about her words; about the memories that are being stirred up. Instead she considers the implications of M's death – now the woman who ownedher is dead, where does that leave her?
"You know James Bond, don't you?" her companion asks, gently after a pause.
"No," she replies, instantly – brusquely, for it is true. This her – this unnamed killing machine, does not know James Bond.
There's clearly something in 009's tone that warns Eve to steer clear of that particular topic, so she switches, revealing the reason behind their current situation.
"The New M wants to see you; that's why I'm here. You're a mystery and he doesn't like mysteries."
She thinks about that statement – about how many different shoes she's worn over her life – first, Vesper's, then Jane, then countless other shoes and names she's had courtesy of M and MI6. None of them stick, all fading because they aren't really people, just identities that are inhabited and then discarded – all except Vesper, the ghost, the shadow, the flicker of the woman she once was.
She doesn't find it surprising that M – the woman she knows as M at least –did not think it necessary to inform anyone else about the fact that a woman who should have died in Venice was in fact not and was being run as an agent.
"A mystery?" she muses, out-loud. She considers her past, and her future – one description of her is certainly that of a mystery.
She wonders what this new M will be like. Clearly she – or he - doesn't know anything about her, or at least not as much as they'd like. She thinks about what will happen if this new spymaster deems her surplus to requirements and she is left at a loose end. The prospect of freedom scares her, she can admit to herself. It's been years, so many now since she last walked with her head high and years since the words she spoke were not a lie.
All she knows now is death, and she wonders if that will continue; if they can let her go and if she can do the same in return. She is theirs after all, even if they don't know it.
…
She sits in the chair. Eve is sitting at a desk that could easily slip into an antiques shop. The solid oak door stands like a sentry between the two women, and both their eyes keep flicking to it, waiting and waiting.
She's there half an hour before the phone on Eve's desk rings and they meet gazes, both knowing what it means.
A few seconds later, 009 is waved into the office of her new boss.
The new M is almost the opposite of his predecessor – a man for one, and younger too. She wonders what this means for her future. If it's a good, or bad thing. Idly, and only because his name was mentioned earlier in the day, she wonders if this new spymaster knows James Bond as well as the woman he replaced.
She takes a seat opposite him, and his eyes roam her face and the frown on his brow reminds her of Eve's words on the plane; he's trying to find a clue that tells him her secrets. Unfortunately for him, she's had six years to perfect her disguises.
"I'm glad to see you made it back from Turkey in one piece," he notes, his opening wary and cagey. She wishes he'd just get to the point of this little meeting and, to her relief, a moment later, when her reply is not forthcoming, he does.
"As you probably know, M is dead and I am her replacement. I know you are probably deeply saddened by this news-"
She cannot help but cut in there, her voice cold. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why would I be sad that that bitch is dead?" All those years of turmoil, of anger and terror – six years of emotions tumble out of her, because the woman who took away the woman she was and forced her to become someone she was not is dead and someone expected her to be sad about it.
The new M doesn't seem to know what to do with himself after her statement, looking away and shuffling some papers.
"I was under the impression my predecessor took a great interest in you," he offers, after a long pause.
"You'd be right. You'd be wrong if you assumed it was because she liked me."
A silence descends on them, uncomfortable and suffocating, before – "You're a mystery, you know. She sent you as a rookie on missions I wouldn't have sent a specially trained agent to complete. She had faith in your abilities where no one else would have. And the bit that makes you a mystery?" He pauses, his eyes watching her again. "Your file."
"My file?"
"Yes. I've seen heavily redacted files before but yours is not one of them. Nothing's been taken out - it's more of a case nothing was put in in the first place. You have no name, no family, no history. You have no identity." He pauses, his eyes scanning her face - searching for something. Then he reaches into a draw and removes what she assumesis her file. It is barely a sheet of paper thick, she notes as he places it on the table between them.
She looks away.
"But do you know what it does have in it, 009?"
She shakes her head.
"A warning."
The new M flicks open the file and reads the words carefully
"Keep away from James Bond at all costs." Her new boss lets the words sink in before continuing. "Why's that?"
She starts to shake her head, before she realises something. "Do you value James Bond as an agent?"
"Yes," he begins, but she doesn't let him continue.
"The moment you place me in the same room as 007, he will cease to be useful to you. In fact, he might make it his life's mission to destroy you and everything you stand for."
M, sitting across from her, frowns again.
"And why would that be?"
She shrugs. "Why don't you put us in the same room and find out?"
The moment the words come out of her mouth, shutting down that avenue of conversation, she realises why she doesn't want to tell the man across from her her story – spill her secrets. She is ashamed of them, of what she did, of how she then let M control her, of how she became everything she once abhorred.
She is ashamed if the person she has become.
…
After a while, she is cleared for active duty again.
Not before, of course, a physiological exam.
As she sits in the hard, metal chair, the doctor opposite her, she knows M is behind the one way glass and she knows what will come up.
First it is, like always, simple. She is surprised when words that always come up – water, Venice – do not come up, before she realises why. M is dead, and with her go the secrets of the city of canals.
She is unsurprised, however, when the doctor says "James Bond," because she knows M expects to glean some sort of information from her reaction.
"Gone," she realises, simply, without thinking.
She chides herself for answering without pausing to consider her response.
…
Later, however, she realises her answer was perhaps the perfect one. It creates more questions instead of answering any and is so much more preferably to what could have come out.
Love, for example.
…
The next few months pass in a haze.
Later, when she thinks back to this time, she cannot recall a single event except, of course, how it ended.
Cold, snowy tarmac. A gun, pressed hard to her ribs and a muttered curse in German – a language that to Vesper would be nonsense but to 009 is beautiful, except when it's spoken by a man trying to kill her. She wonders, with eyes closed hard, whether it will start to snow.
She creeps an eye open. The man sent to end her life sneaks a glance around. To all the tourist and residents moving past them in the Amsterdam chill, they probably look like lovers, entwined in a embrace. Instead, he lowers his face to bear hers and barks out a whisper in his native tongue.
"This is for Paris, bitch," and instantly she knows why this is happening and who for. She killed one of theirs; this man is here to repay the favour.
But before he can, there is a crash and her would-be assassin's gaze is taken for a second too long. 009 kicks out sharply and she feels bone in the satisfying connection she makes. The man slumps, his grip loosening just enough for her to twist away.
She makes a break for the nearest cover, but before gets there, there's a crack in the freezing night air. It would be inaudible to the tourists passing by her, but she has been trained and she knows what a silenced gun sounds like when it's fired. She launched herself towards the nearest cover.
The bullet thuds into her arm and she bites her tongue to stop herself from swearing before she pulls herself up and starts running, ignoring the pain that is creeping up her arm and into her shoulder.
By the time she gets to her safe house and has sent of a scrambled, slightly incomprehensible S.O.S message about her cover being blown, the pain has set in deep in the bone.
It shatters the haze she's been trapped in ever since that later summer day she was called into M's office and cruelly reminded of all that was taken away from her.
Her mind is clear.
And all of a sudden, she realises why she preferred the haze.
It hurts so damn much, eclipsing the ache in her arm. Her heart begs for those she loves, but hasn't seen in too long.
It's not just him, either. Memories long since faded return – of her parents, of her past, of a time before she was left all alone in this terrifying, cold world.
In a daze, she slumps to the floor of the plush apartment. The memories flood and flood until she's spent and it takes all she has to reach out and grab the bottle of scotch that's been sitting on the table all evening.
Soon, she cannot remember a thing again and it is bliss.
…
They extract her later than evening.
The booze has numbed the pain so she doesn't realises that her arm is pretty messed up. They come, the agents in dark clothes with soothing English accents, and take her away, stowing her on a plane.
They fly, and the scotch, which began to wear off a couple of hours ago when she was lying, cowed in a corner, waiting to be saved, finally fades away.
The pain sets in after that, flames roaring up her arm and scorching her, inside then out.
One of the extraction crew comes to check on her, a little while later, and finds her nearly passed out from the agony.
"Oh, shit," she hears him mumble as he grabs her by her jacket and pulls her into a sitting position.
"Matthews?" she hears him call, over his shoulder before he turns back to her, slapping her gently on the face. "M'am?" he says, shaking her. "Please wake up."
"Matthews?" he calls again, sounding even more worried this time. She's floating near the edge of consciousness now, but his voice is as clear as day.
"Oh, shit," he repeats. "Dan!" he yells. "I think she's dying. Oh god, Dan, Philipa, Jess, anyone!" No comes and he turns back to her, almost cradling her in his arms.
Idly, for this is no time to think about matters like this, she realises this is that first time someone has touched her in a long time, let alone held her.
"Help me! If she dies, M is going to fucking kill us."
As he gets to the last word of his sentence, both of them hear clanging footsteps heading their way. She almost smiles. She thought maybe this was it.
Release at last.
But no.
A person rounds the corner, and she finally slips in to unconsciousness.
…
She wakes up, and instantly knows where she is.
A hospital.
She spent so long looking up at hospital ceilings all those years ago she'd know them anywhere.
Her arm is throbbing and so is her head, but she's clearly not dead.
She doesn't know whether to be relieved or upset that that isn't the case.
She opens her eyes and is greeted by a sight she expects.
M is sitting by her beside, reading what she assumes are her notes.
He looks up and and sees her watching him.
He closes the file and shakes it at her.
"Thought I'd find more out about you from your notes. Seems I was wrong. My predecessor did a damn good job making sure no one ever knows who you are."
They fall into silence, before – "You probably want to know where you are."
She nods, gingerly – her head is pounding.
"London. A little hospital out of the way. You lost a lot of blood on the flight back and you nearly didn't make it. You had to have emergency surgery to stop the bleeding and its been touch and go for a couple of days now, but the doctors think you've made it out the other side."
She absorbs the information, nodding as he talks.
"If you were wondering, we found the man who shot you. He's currently detained at our pleasure spilling his deepest darkest secrets."
She nods, again, before silence fills the room.
After a while of nothing, M stands and makes his way to leave. When he gets to the door, he turns back.
"Could you tell me your name, at least?"
She looks at him, wondering why it bothers him quite so much.
"It doesn't matter," she shrugs. "I'm useful to you and the people you work for because I am a ghost, a nobody. I think it's best if it stays that way."
…
She's passed fit for duty after a couple of weeks. She's not quite sure how, but it doesn't matter.
Her work is all she had now to take her mind off the past.
…
Time passes. Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly.
When the memories threaten to overwhelm her, a bottle of scotch is always on hand to chase them away. It's not healthy and it isn't good, but what in her life can be described as that anymore?
…
She's back in London, in the flat that's nowhere near the river, in a lull between missions.
She watches dead-end TV and goes to the shops every now and then and obsessively checks her phone for messages.
It is brain-numbingly dull; but the worst bit is it does nothing to keep her mind from straying.
One day, she receives a message that summons her to Whitehall; to M's office.
Eve is still manning the desk, all this time later, and sends her through without a word when she arrives.
She takes a seat and can feel M's eyes on her, instantly.
"I thought you might like to know James Bond has left the service."
She tries not to let the words visibly affect her, her perfect disguise maintaining a simple look of detachment.
She nods.
"Is that all?" she asks, brusquely, after a pause.
M nods, almost wearily. He seems to have conceded defeat in his attempts in discovering her identity.
She stands, makes her way to the door. When she gets there, she cannot help herself but turn back, speaking as she does so.
"What was her name?" she asks.
"Who's name?" M replies, his tone surprised.
"The woman James left MI6 for," she says, leaving M looking astounded.
His name feels strange on her tongue after so much time.
"Madeline. Madeline Swann," he answers, hesitantly.
She takes this information in, filing it away somewhere she will try her utmost not to think about again.
"How did you know he left because of a woman?" M asks, frowning.
She gives him a wry smile.
"Do you think she's the first woman he's wanted to leave this god-forsaken hell-hole for?"
She lets the implication behind her words sink in, before turning in her heel and leaving the office, and M, behind.
…
A new mission duly arrives not long later.
She completes it, but something is missing.
Her meeting with M weighs heavily on her mind.
By the time she return to London – by way of Cairo, Philadelphia, Oslo and Tallinn – she has made a decision.
She makes her way to Whitehall, the day after her return, with one thing on her mind.
Eve lets her through after a little while, when she has been impressed upon the importance of the situation
M's eyebrow quirks when he sees who his next visited is, and rises even higher when she says what she's come here to say.
"I'm resigning from MI6. I want out. You don't own me anymore," she says bitterly.
He regards her for a second.
"Okay."
She feels deflated, for a heartbeat. She thought it would be harder than that – she thought she'd have to tell her story and beg and threaten ad everything under the sun, but it seems not.
"Okay. I don't see why that cannot be arranged."
She wonders if he can see the brokenness within, if he feels pity for her.
…
She signs the Official Secrets Act and just like that, it is over.
They give her a pension, and an identity, seeing as she doesn't have one of her own.
She becomes Lucy Brown, a librarian in Chiswick.
Another nobody from nowhere, that's all.
…
Some habits die hard.
She sleeps with a revolver under her pillow, and always looks over her shoulder to check if she's being followed.
She wonders if any one will come after her.
She has ruined enough lives, after all.
…
She finds herself in Siena, as the summer turns to Autumn.
Her cosy librarian's job is but a distant memory. Her work with MI6 have given her the taste for travel, and she does that instead.
She is staying in a grand hotel, near the main square, and stands on her balcony, drinking in the fresh, cool air.
She is free, but she knows she will never really be free at all.
The chains are just invisible now.
…
Lucy goes to Paris.
Visits the tourist sights and pretends she's never been here before, which technically, she hasn't.
(but 009 has, and Vesper too, long, long ago now)
…
It's on her last night in the city it happens.
She's in the hotel bar, scotch in hand, wearing an expensive dress and conversing in low tones with a man she has just met but who is paying for her drinks; when a woman enters the bar, and takes a table across the room. The veranda doors have been thrown open to create a draft through the stiflingly hot room.
Her attention is only taken by the woman for mere seconds, then she turns back to the man opposite her.
Then the doors open again, and the woman is joined by a man.
Lucy's breath catches in her throat, but then she is standing and stuttering out a a thank you in French before she flees the room, making her way to the veranda doors and the cool night air.
The man is up like a flash, and it's then Lucy knows running is a bad idea – it draws attention to her.
But what's done is done and cannot be taken reaches out, grabbing her waist in an attempt to pull her back. She dips and turns, dislodging his grip and spinning away, out of the doors and spilling out into the night.
She runs a little distance, down a cobbled street before ducking into an alcove under a grand set of granite stairs that curve and twist along the street.
She breathes heavily for a few seconds, before she hears footsteps and then she is no longer alone in the alcove.
James Bond stands next to her.
"Since when do you walk around with a Beretta strapped to your thigh?"
She laughs at the absurd nature of his question.
Her laughter rings out in the dark night. She cannot bare to look at him, and the face that has haunted her for so long, so she laughs, putting off the inevitable.
But that's the thing about the inevitable – it always comes, no matter what.
"You're dead," he says, once her laughter has died away. "You're fuckingdead.."
His words are harsh, and painful – but true. For all intents and purposes, she is a dead woman.
"I've got a Beretta for the same reason you've got a Browningin a shoulder holster," she offers, instead of an actual answer. "The same reason I can never sleep with both eyes closed and you can't either."
He looks at her then – she can feel his eyes on her. Knows when the anger makes way for something else – incredulity at the implication of her words.
It's then she finally turns to look at him.
He doesn't look much older than he did before; still just as handsome. Their eyes meet, and she knows it's still there, even after all these years, and everything that has happened.
She catches a glimpse of something, shining in the moonlight. A band of gold, reflecting in the night and she knows. The woman he left MI6 for is sitting back in the bar. Madeline - that's what M called her; James's wife.
She runs then, and she's too fast for him – he's left grasping at thin air.
…
She goes back to London, to the flat as far from the river as possible, and Lucy Brown's cushy job. Travelling had too many risks.
…
It takes him eight months.
She spends every day, waiting for him.
She knows he's coming. She left him with too many questions, and no answers. A dead woman with a gun in an expensive hotel in Paris? He never could walk away from a mystery and that's what she's become.
She comes home one evening and as she opens the door she knows.
She finds James Bond sitting on a wooden chair in her kitchen, beer in hand.
She turns away and pours herself a scotch.
"Hello Vesper."
…
a/n Title comes from Various Storms & Saints by Florence + the Machine