"He'll be fine," the kind red-headed medical officer told Q as she passed the now awake baby back to him. "I'm much happier now he's awake. What sort of parents...' She trailed off, giving Q a grim smile. The sort of parents that MI6 sent a Double-oh after, of course.

Q juggled the baby uncomfortably, hyperaware of the red-head's eyes on him, judging his ineptness with children. She gave him a reassuring smile. "You'll need to keep a close eye on him tonight and tomorrow. If he starts having any respiratory problems, call us immediately. I haven't seen any signs of smoke inhalation but you just never know. Better to be safe than sorry."

"When you say respiratory..." He sat down on the bed, jiggling the child slightly when he fussed.

"Wheezing, coughing, anything apart from breathing. Breathing's quite normal for a baby," she teased, as she pulled over a black gym bag. "Everything you're going to need is in here. Nappies, bottles, baby food, clothes, dummies - he may not use them, but if he does, it might make things easier - oh, and I've picked up a couple of toys to help you keep him occupied." Q nodded obediently.

"Don't look so worried; I'm sure Bond will help you." She turned towards the blonde, who was sitting by the window, having a cut on the back of his head stitched. "Won't you, 007."

"I can't. I've got a concussion." Though he sent a smirk in Q's direction, which Q took to mean that he would help.

"I'm sure you'll figure it out between you." The medic patted Q's arm with what could only be empathy. "He'll be a little fussy, that's nothing you're doing wrong, he just doesn't recognise your scents. It will help with you being a mated Omega though; a mated Omega's scent has a certain calming quality on youngsters."

Q noticed that the other medic had finished with Bond. The agent stood up from his chair, clearly shepherding the medics out. "Q will do what he does best." The two medics and Q waited to hear what that might be. "He'll Google it. Good evening." The red-head medic gave him one last reassuring smile before Bond shut the door in their faces.

"That was rude."

"Yes, well, I'd like to get some sleep tonight." He gathered up the medical supplies that had just been used to stitch him up and took them into the bathroom before Q heard the toilet being flushed. "I take it you have work to do?"

"Yes. I've secured the release of the body and possessions to us in the morning." Q moved back against the headboard, shuffling the baby again so he had an arm free to work on the laptop. "The woman who owns the flat is a Doris Newman; she's 82."

"Not our Woman, then?" Bond said, fixing himself a drink from the mini bar. "Are you monitoring the police reports?"

"Of course. They've listed her as a Jane Doe." The baby reached up and tried to pry Q's glasses off his face. He gently grasped his hand and moved it away and sighed. "I wish we knew his name."

"The other suspect?" Bond asked while taking a gulp from his whiskey.

"No, the baby. He's lost his mother tonight and he'll probably lose his father on terrorism charges. If we don't find out whom his parents are he'll lose his identity, too." As soon as Q reached back towards the laptop, the baby reached up for his glasses again.

"Like us, you mean?" Q didn't look at Bond. Though he knew the man knew about his childhood, he was quite unwilling to discuss it. He simply hummed in agreement, sighing again when the baby worked his glasses off his face this time, and started banging them on his bed. Bond laughed but put his drink down and sat down on the bed at Q's feet, working the glasses carefully from the chubby hands, which had a surprisingly strong grip on them.

"I'll change him and keep him occupied while you work." He placed the glasses back on Q's face and motioned for him to pass the babe over. Q did, and watched as Bond set him on his hip, and rummaged around in the bag for a onesie, a clean nappy, and wipes. He pulled his laptop closer and started tapping away to find CCTV from the area surrounding the flat to see if he could get a still of their woman and perhaps identify the male too. Out of the corner if his eye, he watched Bond change the baby with surprising ease. Afterwards, while Q continued to search through CCTV, Bond lay the baby down on the makeshift child-friendly bed, and played with a toy until the child's eyes finally closed.

"You have many talents, don't you, 007," Q commented, when the man quietly lay back down on his own bed.

"I had a brother," Bond told him, eyes fixed on the roof. Q hadn't known that. "It's not in my file. A bit of information that was conveniently lost long before I came to MI6. My father worked away a lot, so I used to help my mother with him. He was almost one when they were killed."
Q thought then of his own siblings, both older, that were most definitely in his file. "Your parents?"

"Alpha and Omega." It was a common enough question for an Alpha, as the strongest, most powerful ones, were often born from an Alpha/Omega pairing. This in turn meant that Alpha and Omegas born to Beta parents usually mated to other Alpha and Omegas born from Beta parents. "As yours were."

"It's just strange that you and your brother had such an age gap." Finally, Q found a woman pushing a pram through the front entrance. Capturing a still of her face, he ran it through his face recognition program.

"As I said, my father was away a lot." Bond closed his eyes. "My mother spent her heats in a refuge." Q felt a pang of sympathy in his chest upon hearing that. Before heat suppressants were made widely available, unmated Omegas, or those in similar situations to Bond's mother, were forced to spend their heats in seclusion. The refuges had long been branded cruel and the majority of them had been disbanded. Q still heard the occasional horror story about them though.

"I have our woman, I think." His laptop beeped, indicating that a match had been found. He turned the screen to face Bond, who studied the passport photo that it had brought up intently.

"That's her," he confirmed, before getting under the covers.

"Jacinta Crass, Beta. Occupation, unemployed. Marital status, single. Children, one, a Benjamin Crass. Father listed as unknown." Q sighed and looked down at the sleeping child. "So, this is little Ben."
Bond gave a bitter laugh. "My brother was called Ben."

"It's a lovely name." The agent didn't answer. "We should sleep now - we need to leave here in five hours."

"If it had escaped your notice, I havebeen trying to sleep for the last ten minutes, failing miserably, might I add, due to your incessant talking and your bloody laptop doing its best to light up the whole of Glasgow," the man snapped, causing Q to quickly shut off his laptop and hunker down in the bed. He lay facing away from Bond, trying to breathe as quietly as possible. After a few minutes, there was a rustling of sheets and soft footfalls before the bed dipped behind him. Two muscled arms pulled him against an equally muscular chest, and he felt a nose finding its way into his curls and inhaling deeply. "I'm sorry," was whispered into his unruly mop. "My nerves are shot after your heroics this evening."

"Heroics? For goodness sake, Bond - I only woke you up." The man merely hummed, and Q listened as his breathing eventually evened out, before letting himself sleep, too.

It turned out that they didn't need the alarm that Q had set for 5am, as Ben woke them up a good hour earlier. Bond tried his best to calm him, as Q made a bottle of warm baby milk, using some sort of powder and warm water from the kettle. Even after he had gulped down the milk, he hadn't settled until Bond had needed the toilet and passed him over to Q. Ben had settled down immediately, burrowing his nose into Q's shoulder. Bond had raised an eyebrow and let out a small laugh before informing him that he should try and calm him first for the rest of the day.

The body and possessions were collected in an unmarked van, followed by an unmarked Audi with blacked-out windows, which pulled up outside their hotel at 5.45am. They arrived back in London at around 1pm, even with Q controlling the traffic lights on their way down. They had made one service station stop, where they had changed Ben and fed him orange baby food, which had made Q wrinkle his nose in disgust. When Q had strapped the child back in the car seat which had been provided, Bond pulled him back out of the car and sat him in the front passenger seat. This had given him a couple hours shuteye while Bond kept Ben distracted in the back seat. Once parked up in the MI6 parking lot, the agent whom they had travelled down with directed them straight into the lift, pressing the button for the seventh floor before backing out himself, letting the door close. Bond and Q shared a looked, both having similar feelings about M's debriefings. Ben gurgled and wiped a sticky hand on Q's favourite cardigan, just in time for the lift doors to open, revealing Moneypenny and M.

"My Office. I want to know everything you know." Tanner was already in M's office when they entered; he pulled a seat out for Q, who gave him a nod in thanks, seating Ben in his lap. "Q?"

"Still haven't identified the male suspect. You received all the information I managed to find on the woman this morning - I'm hoping I can find something from a storage device that's been listed with the possessions."

M nodded thoughtfully. "Do you think we could get a message around to let this guy know we have his son?"

"I could do," Q nodded.

"Good. Well, get on it, then. I want this guy caught." He dismissed them with a wave of his hand, but Q stayed seated.

"Sir? The child?"

M frowned at him. "What about him?"

"Who's going to look after him?"

frown deepened then. "Well, I thought you..."

He was interrupted by both Bond and Q's protests that they couldn't possibly look after a child and continue with the hours that they put in for MI6. Moneypenny laughed at their awkward excuses ("MI6 has a crèche, you know"). "Oh for goodness sake, you two; I'll take him."

And so it was agreed, and little Ben was handed over into the caring arms of Eve. It wasn't for another hour that Q decided that perhaps he missed the little guy a bit.