Interlude: The Road to Solace

Chapter 1: Homecoming

A/N: While Quantum of Solace picks up literally about an hour after the end of Casino Royale, there was still a significant gap between Vesper's death in Venice and Bond's confrontation with Mr. White...which this fic aims to cover.

London, England

As soon as James Bond disembarked from his chartered flight and cleared Immigration, he briskly walked out of Heathrow and hailed a taxi. A little less than an hour later he was at the door of his flat in Chelsea.

He stepped inside and was pleased to find everything neat and tidier...tidier by far than when he'd left it. May, his 'Scottish treasure' as he liked to think of her, had certainly done a thorough job keeping the home fires burning while he had been abroad, lighting other fires...

Hastily making himself a cup of Instant Coffee, Bond down on a chair in his small balcony looking out at the Chelsea skyline contemplatively.

How long had it been since he'd last been here? Since he'd last seen all this? A month? Two months? More? He vaguely remembered the brief stopover after that mess in Madagascar, just before he'd broken into M's house. To think of everything that had happened since then! The Bahamas, Alec Dimitrios and his wife Solange, the incident at the Miami airport; and then his titanic clash with Le Chiffre at the poker tables of Casino Royale, the crawling of the skin as the ill-fated gambler had sadistically tortured him, the weeks of recover and Vesper...

Vesper.

Bond averted his thoughts from the past immediately. He did not want to think about her. About what had happened next. But try all he could, he simply was unable to forget her. Forget the sweetness of her smile, or the warmth of her body...or the sting of her betrayal...

Once you've tasted it...that's all you want to drink, he bitterly remembered his own words.

Well, he'd drunk it alright, he thought sourly, and now he was poisoned. Dying a slow death from inside out...

He finished his coffee and carefully settled his cup down on the coffee-table nearby. A quick glance at his Omega told him he had exactly an hour and a half before his meeting with M and the man from the Treasury, Vesper's former boss. Enough time to have a wash, a change of clothes, and drive down to MI6 headquarters.

He still had a job to do, he reflected, as he was weaving through the streets in his Bentley. A small consolation, but the only one he had. Not very long ago, he'd wanted to quit...to leave with what little soul he could salvage, in his own words. But that door had been slammed shut in his face.

Now there was only what had been there in the beginning. His duty. Perhaps there was a small measure of solace to be gained from that...