A/N: We've finally gotten to the end! Feels like a miracle to be honest. Please note that I have posted two chapters today, so read the previous one, if you haven't. This one's a bit short, but this is how I envisioned the end to be, so this it how it will be. The first chapter of this story was published exactly a year and a half ago, so this is not only the end, but also an anniversary of sorts. Additionally The Bond Girl reached 25'000 views just yesterday and I feel humbled by that. Thank you to anyone who's been along for the ride from the start, from somewhere in the middle or even just for a short bit. Thank you to every person, who favourited or followed the story and a special thanks to every single reviewer. You've all been a part of the process of making this story and it's been quite the experience. Without further ado, here's the very last chapter of The Bond Girl. Enjoy!

Chapter Thirty-Nine – Present Birthday's Are Future History

James sneaked into Louella's bedroom at dawn, since he couldn't sleep with the remnants of post-mission jetlag clinging to him. He shook her gently, until she mumbled and cracked an eye open with a stern frown. "Stop, daddy."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I just thought you didn't want to miss a minute of your birthday."

Louella tugged the blanket from her face. "Today?"

"Yes."

She kicked it further, not bothered by the sudden cold air. "My birthday today. I wanna put on the pwetty dwess and bake a cake and eat many bananas." She spat her pacifier out mid-ramble.

James couldn't quite surpress a grin at her enthusiasm, when she was in a fairy nightgown with her hair stuck out in every direction. She noticed and stopped dead in her tracks, fixing him with a new glare. "Stoppit!"

"Sorry." He lifted his hands up resignation. Sometimes he realised how he must look - a grown man being bossed around by a tiny firecracker on legs - and her dearly hoped Moneypenny would never get wind, or he'd never hear the end of it. He had to wonder, if Louella had somehow sensed the steel in M and adopted it or if she'd just been born with determination coursing through her blood.

James hung Louella's favourite dress on the door and let her pace around, fussing about what needed to be done. He listened for as long as he brushed his teeth and then handed her her own toothbrush. Louella gave up the attempt at mumbling with a mouthful of toothpaste, but not without drooling some onto her pyjamas. James sat on the toilet lid and sighed at yet more unnecessary laundry. At this pace he'd be tired out before noon and he wasn't wrong.

But Louella couldn't run around forever and getting up early in the morning meant crashing in the afternoon. "Daddy," she said with resignation shimmering through her voice, "I think we should nap."

"You know what, I think that's a fantastic idea." James yawned. He wasn't normally one to sleep in the day, out of sheer principle of keeping up a rhythm, but even he'd give in every now and then. He drew the blinds in his bedroom and let Louella scoop up the majority of the blanket into a loose bundle. In the middle of a Saturday afternoon in early March the Bond residence quieted to the sounds of deep breathing and even deeper silence.

They tried baking a cake in the afternoon. James couldn't vouch for anything more, when he looked down at the slightly deformed rectangular heap with drooping cream. It cam out of the oven looking alright, if a bit dull, and he had for a little while been of the opinion it was a good cake. Then he'd unleashed Louella and let her decorate it.

"It's very pretty," he lied and forced himself to mentally add the word 'almost'. He could remember he birthday cake as almost pretty once he'd be old and senile so long as there wasn't photographic evidence of it.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, especially the bananas are a nice touch." James cut them both a slice and hoped he wouldn't have a heart attack from the sugar. Louella had insisted on cream, a sliced banana, a whole banana on top with a sort of molten trail of chocolate, before she turned it into a work of art with sprinkles of all colours and flavours.

To humor Louella he'd also bought alcohol free sparkling wine with ridiculous comic characters on the bottle. She screamed when he popped it. He wanted to scream once he got a taste of it, but gulped it down without complaint.

"What's next?"

"Cindewella!"

"Ah, I see," he said, pouring her another glass of fizzy liquid sugar. Mentally he tried to calculate how many times he'd seen that movie and how many more times he would see it still.

Louella fell into bed sleepy and content that night. She tried to mumble even half asleep, lest her thoughts would escape her and her father would never get to know what she thought of the world. Sleep, however, overpowered her and pulled her under into its soft darkness.

James watched her for a little while. Closed his eyes and listened to the wheezing breaths around a pacifier. It occurred to him he should snap a picture. He should snap far more and put them all into the box where her mother had kept them, so that if something were to happen to him her past would not be lost.

He took a picture with an old Polaroid camera he kept around, because it meant instant physical copies. Originally he'd purchased it for a different purpose, but that was he'd been a young field operative dancing of the verge of excessive paranoia and not enough of it.

James left her to dream and retreated to his own room with a glass of scotch and the box full of photos. He still found it odd that Louella had lived somewhere far away with out him there to watch Cinderella or slice bananas. He still found it odd that she'd slotted herself into his life so nicely, that he could actually take care of her and not muck it up completely. And he found it odd that she had a history in a box and he was forced to wonder what the circumstances and stories behind every picture were, because he hadn't been there.

But he added his own photo to the collection and vowed to fill it with many more, so that Louella could look at them and point to a silly picture and he could tell her just what had happened that day, because he'd been there to snap it.

A/N: Thank you.