Twelve. The final confrontation.

As soon as they walked in the door, Q said, "You've been in my flat."

The observation startled Bond enough that he abandoned his security scan to stare at Q, if only for a moment. "What detail did I miss?"

"You knew that I have a cat."

"I could have been saying that hypothetically."

"And I expected you to go straight for the voices coming from the bedroom."

Now that he expected its presence, Bond had whited out the sound of Crime and Punishment the same way he would falling rain or cars on a crowded street. But it was still there, the murmur of a man plotting in another room.

"He did not know where he was going and did not think about it. This much he knew: he had to put an end to all that, today, right away, once and for all, otherwise he could not return home, because he did not want to live like that."

"It's a nice touch," Bond granted.

Q nodded. "I've been working my way through the classics. All the books people should have read but probably didn't. Hopefully the security team finds it illuminating – at least more so than my personal life."

"I wasn't aware you had a personal life," Bond teased, moving through the flat, shouldering open doors and nudging his gun into corners like a police dog sniffing for contraband.

Q said, "Exactly." Bond could hear him banging cabinets open and closed in the kitchen, rustling through paper packets, clattering the kettle against the stove top. When he opened the door to the computer room, the cat shot out over his feet and disappeared around the corner, towards the light and noise and Q.

The flat was clean. In the bedroom Bond peered through the blinds at the cars parked below and wondered if Colin Burns would be smart enough to change vehicles. A white sedan turned onto the street, slowed briefly in front of the building, then drove on; Bond eyed the license, but it pulled into a driveway at the other end of the block, and a young couple got out and unloaded an infant strapped in a carrier.

"Double-oh-seven." Holly's voice in his ear. "You've been stopped for almost fifteen minutes – everything all right?"

"Fine. We're getting him a change of clothes."

"Well, move your arses, 'cause I won't be able to sit down till we've got you both back safe."

"Do us one favor."

"What?" She sounded suspicious. Bond's estimation of her increased, again.

"Send us a couple of medics and another agent in a second car. Burns is still at large, and I have a feeling we'll need them."

A sharp silence. The faint static hiss of Holly's breathing was all that kept Bond from assuming the line had gone dead.

Then she said, in a low, controlled voice much more frightening than a yell, "This was his idea, wasn't it? If he's trying for martyrdom, tell him to come back here and I will cheerfully kill him myself."

Bond had been around long enough to know when to put himself in the middle and when to duck out. "We'll be back within the hour."

At that she did start to yell, and as Bond pulled the earpiece away he could hear her from an impressive distance: "Oh no, do not hang up on me, I want to talk to him –"

Q was standing in the doorway with eyebrows raised.

"Backup boys'll be here in twenty," Bond explained, setting the earpiece on top of the CD changer, "and Holly Mason might have your head when we get back."

Q sighed. "I was hoping she'd wait. There'll be nothing left of me for M to chew over."

"You'd rather M went first?"

"Well..." Q rummaged through the closet, emerged with a clean shirt and a soft gray sweater. "It's like choosing between the headmaster and your mother."

Bond smiled grimly and said, "I wouldn't know," and there was a little flash of sadness in Q's eyes like light glinting off gold.

The kettle whistled and Bond accepted this excuse. It was several minutes before Q joined him, freshly dressed, hair damp in patches where he had washed out the crusted blood. He sat down, stiffly, and slumped his shoulders against the table, arms limp in his lap and chin resting on the varnished surface. His eyes peered up at Bond through his fringe.

"Thanks for the cup of tea you didn't make me."

"You're welcome."

The cat had made itself a centerpiece, paws curled beneath its body and tail lashing back and forth as though it had independent intentions. Bond stretched a hand towards it and was batted back by a paw. Q smirked and stroked the cat with his good hand, apparently just to prove that he could; the fickle creature nuzzled his fingers and rumbled contentedly.

"What's her name?"

"His. Schrodinger."

"Schroeder?"

"Schrodinger. Schrodinger's Cat is a thought experiment in quantum mechanics designed to make you consider when exactly quantum superposition shifts into the reality we see –"

Bond held up a hand in surrender. "All right, so it's a boffin joke."

Q had a look as though Schrodinger the cat had just dragged in something unpleasant from outside, but he conceded, "I suppose you could say that."

Bond knocked back the rest of his tea and checked the clip of his gun, took experimental aim at the front door, which he had a straight shot at from the kitchen table. Q seemed to be conserving his energy, sitting still as a statue except for the subtle rise and fall of his ribs and the sweep of his eyelashes. He was staring so intently at the door to the broom cupboard that Bond looked round twice to make sure there wasn't anything there he was supposed to be seeing.

Q's eyes darted to Bond, over and away, three times.

"Spit it out," Bond said.

Q half-smiled, half-grimaced, and Bond knew he had taken him by surprise. His eyebrows tightened as though he were puzzling over his next words.

Finally he said, "M told you that I used to steal from the Secret Intelligence Service."

"Yes."

"I exposed the identities of multiple field agents."

"…Yes."

Q's voice was too light, too composed. "In essence I'm not much different from our friend Mr. Silva."

"Q –"

"But you came for me anyway." He turned his head just a little and watched Bond patiently, as if he expected an explanation.

Bond had never thought he would have to give one. The silence seemed a fragile but suffocating thing, like a plastic film – easily destroyed, but still thick enough to choke a man.

"I don't know exactly what you did," Bond said slowly, "but M decided that the good outweighed the bad, and that's enough for me."

Comfort was not Bond's strong suit, and inscrutability was Q's; his forehead remained tense and the focus of his eyes altered as though he were again seeing something Bond could not. Each blink shaded with a different emotion, gratitude-confusion-sadness-guilt – here again the fault lines, the cracks Q had strengthened but could not repair, and he was teetering on the edge of one, a question and a fear rising like groundswell in his eyes –

Then, at the bottom of the staircase just outside the flat, a door slammed. Bond drew his gun and cradled it in his lap; Q turned his chair to face the front door with a scraping sound that sent Schrodinger shooting from the table like cannonball.

Footsteps on the stairs, fast and loud and careless, and then the door burst open and Colin Burns took two steps into the flat before freezing with one hand still on the doorknob and a sheepish grin on his face. His manner was so breezy that an outsider might think he had stumbled on the scene by accident, if not for the blood dried crackling on his wrists and cuffs, on his trousers where he had wiped his hands.

"Put your hands where I can see them," Bond growled.

Colin raised his arms obediently and ran his eyes over the mismatched furniture, over Bond and his cocked gun, over Q with his bruised face and bandaged arm and blank eyes. His grin morphed like an optical illusion, awkward innocuousness melting into malice.

"Only one hired gun?" he said to Q. "I'm a little disappointed."

Q's jaw tightened, but he did not speak. Bond rose from his chair and stepped over the living-room threshold, gun trained at the heart.

"Of course, 'a little disappointed' could describe my feelings about our entire reunion," Colin continued without concern. "I gave you more than an hour with my personal computer and all you managed to do was dox me."

"One juvenile revenge fantasy for another," Q muttered.

Colin's smirk wavered, but only for a second. He glanced curiously at Bond.

"Did you see how I marked him? I made him an honest man for once. I was thinking about putting 'thief' on the other arm – he likes to steal, did you know that?"

"I hear you like to steal too," Bond said, closing the gap between them step by step.

Colin shrugged, bit his lower lip in a parody of embarrassment. "Guilty as charged. And I suppose I will be charged now –" With a cock of the head at Q: "Are you going to testify against me? They do allow indentured servants to speak in court now, don't they?"

All color had fled Q's face, but his eyes were dark and dangerous. "You're assuming they'll even grant you a tri–"

But then Bond stepped directly in front of the television, and the damn thing lit up with a "Good evening," startled him enough that he looked away for a fraction of a second – and in that hair's-breadth of a moment Q dove for the remote on the coffee table, and Colin lunged for Q. They collided and scuffled, both still on their feet – Bond swung round and aimed again, but the dying light from the window glinted off the gun pressed to the side of Q's head.

Q sighed. "This has become extremely melodramatic, even by your standards, Colin."

Colin's free hand pressed down on Q's collarbone, held him back as a shield against Colin's chest. "Well, the stakes have always been high between us," he said, right by Q's ear. Q flinched, but Colin caught his chin and held it. "Trust among thieves is a funny thing – it's always conditional. I didn't expect MI6 to send as much firepower as they did. I thought they'd see this as an… opportunity. To rid themselves of a liability."

Bond made a scathing sound in the back of his throat. "You're fucking around with things you don't understand."

The door below opened again, and Bond heard the rustle of clothes restricted by a bulletproof vest. He hazarded one step sideways so he could glance down the stairs, make eye contact with the field agent drawing her gun, shake his head in warning; she nodded and stood down.

"Don't tell me you've never sold anyone out before." Colin's whole face was alight with a playful cruelty. "That's how the world works, especially in your profession. Take what's useful and then leave them behind."

The glare from the telly turned Q's glasses into little screens, whited out his eyes. "Take the bloody shot, Bond."

"Oh, look at you," Colin purred. "Giving orders."

"Think very carefully about what you're doing," Bond said, to both of them.

"I have," Q told him quietly. His glasses slipped a little, and over the frames his eyes were strained but serious.

And Bond felt anger strong enough to make his gun hand quiver, that this arrogant child with his insulated existence could possibly threaten the core of MI6, that Q would even consider himself a fair trade for this lowlife. "There's always another option," he said firmly, meaningfully, for Q.

Q stared. Then he nodded, half to Bond and half to himself. His gaze skimmed the couch, the coffee table, the carpet as though he were looking for something.

Colin clucked his tongue. "Apparently even MI6 is full of compassionate fools these days."

"Are you saying death isn't compassionate?" Q edged his foot under the table, touched something small and spherical with his toes – a little silver ball, a cat toy. "It might be a mercy, for you."

And he kicked the ball sideways past Colin's shoes, and at the little jangling sound Schrodinger sprang from beneath the couch, leapt over their feet in a furious gray blur, and Colin's head turned, the gun tilted barely away from Q's temple – Bond recognized what Q did next as an MI6 self-defense maneuver, feet planted, upper-body twist, elbows in the right places, and Colin hit the floor on his back, scrambled to sitting – and froze as Q released the safety on the gun.

Q was panting from the pain this had cost him, skin stretched tight and translucent over his cheekbones, sweat curling the hair around his ears. His lips drew back in an animal grimace and there was something feral and frightening in his eyes. His shoulders shook, but his hands held steady.

For a moment Colin's eyes betrayed a fear he had never shown to Bond – but then he bared all his teeth.

"Go ahead," he hissed. "Shoot. Make 'murderer' a line on your resume."

A beat, and Q's eyes rounded with understanding in a way that made him look innocent despite the gun. "I see. No matter what happens now, you win. If I shoot, then you die a martyr, knowing that you goaded me into committing a crime you never did. But if I don't shoot, then you can tell yourself it was because I didn't have the fortitude to finish off my torturer, that I'm soft, or still sentimental about you in some way."

Colin's sneer widened. "Good boy," he said, "Very clever," and a stab of rage twitched Bond's finger against the trigger.

Q breathed deeply, in and out. His eyebrows had dropped into the frown that meant he was focusing on a surprisingly difficult problem. Then his tongue darted out to wet his lower lip and Bond knew that he had settled on a solution.

His eyes hardened and his spine straightened and his grip tightened on the gun. He looked at Colin straight.

"You've always been a bastard, Colin."

And he turned the gun over in his hands and swung it into the side of Colin's head, hard enough to stun Colin sideways, drop him in a daze right at Bond's feet.

Bond stepped one foot over him, gun pointed between his shoulders, and nodded down the stairs at the backup agent poised on the bottom step. Colin turned his head at the sound of her approach, blood streaking his pale hair and tracing the corner of his jaw. He seemed too shellshocked to struggle. With difficulty he turned his head back and focused his eyes on Q.

Q crouched in front of Colin with the gun dangling loosely between his knees. "Would you like to know what I did with the three million I stole from you?"

Colin growled something just intelligible enough to register as profane.

Q held his gaze calmly. "I kept about forty thousand. The rest I divided into varying chunks and donated anonymously to charity. UNICEF. Comic Relief. Oxfam. I think there were six or seven of them altogether. Redistribution of wealth, from the morally bankrupt to the truly needy."

A snarl contorted Colin's face, exposing the creature beneath – but for once he had no words.

The female agent made quick work of the handcuffs, hauled Colin to his feet, and manhandled him, staggering, out of the flat and down the stairs. Bond stepped out on the landing and watched through the front-door window as she shoved Colin's bloody head down into the backseat of the waiting car.

The floor creaked behind Bond as Q stood up. Then he said, "Oh," very softly, and the gun hit the carpet with a thump, and Bond turned just in time to see his legs fold and his eyes lose their focus and his hand fly out too late to catch the steadying furniture.

Three strides and Bond knelt beside him. "All right?"

"Yes," Q mumbled, eyes shut. "Just… more painkillers and a glass of water and sleep, lots of sleep, like two weeks of sleep."

A smile twitched Bond's face despite his best efforts, and he rolled his eyes at himself. Clearly he was becoming sentimental in his old age, if the MI6 alphabet had this effect on him. "You could have shot him somewhere non-lethal. The shoulder or the leg. I would have covered for you."

Q shook his head, making himself wince. "I couldn't have done that."

"Don't tell me you can't fire a bloody gun."

The kid's prone position couldn't mitigate his offended glare. "Do you honestly believe I'd send agents into the field with something I didn't know how to operate?"

Bond conceded the point with a little nod and Q, satisfied, closed his eyes again.

"At such close range," he murmured, "the bullet would have passed through Colin, through the wall behind him, and into the flat on the other side, which is occupied by a single mother and her two children. Too much risk." His voice had dropped so far that Bond had to lean in to hear. "Besides, I'm content with him sitting in a prison cell for many years, on a shorter leash than I."

Medical swarmed the door and Bond waved them inside. "Speaking of leashes, I doubt M will allow you into the field again anytime soon."

"I'm strangely at peace with that." Then Q's eyes shot open and he sat up so suddenly that he almost knocked over one of the medics at his side. "Wait – the robot. For the rigged counterfeiting boxes. Did it work? Has anyone tried it yet?"

And Bond laughed, actually laughed from somewhere deep in his chest for the first time in an age, and Q only looked wounded for a second or two before he gave in and fell back into the medics' hands with the germ of a smile on his face.

It was a week before Bond saw Q again, and then only by accident. When he announced his return from a four-day assignment in Austria in his usual fashion – breezing past Moneypenny's conveniently empty desk and barging straight into M's office – he found himself on the receiving end of a pair of startled looks that shifted into annoyance on Mallory's part and resignation on Q's. In the corner, Tanner's shoulders slumped as though he had just sighed silently.

"Charming reception." Shame was not usually part of Bond's emotional vocabulary, but he could see from the set of Q's mouth what they had been discussing, and he had spent enough time wondering if Q regretted where he placed his confidences. "I'll show myself out."

"Never mind, we're about finished here," Mallory said, glancing over for Q's affirmation and getting a nod. He held out a manila folder. "Mr. Burns' trial date is set for June first. Rest assured we do not plan to make any deals with him."

"He'd be a security nightmare," Q said, perfectly composed. "I suspect his name and photograph are known on all seven continents and the International Space Station by now. My staff might quit in protest if they had to erase him."

M indulged in a smile.

Bond stepped aside so Q could open the door – but Q paused, turned around, faced M again.

"You sold some of my programs to Barclays."

Mallory's forehead wrinkled with surprise, but he met Q's gaze evenly. "Yes. We've made money off of certain products on the public market for years –"

"How much?"

A pause. Mallory glanced at Tanner, who shrugged. "I… don't know the exact figure, but… about ten million."

Q considered, then gave a small self-satisfied nod. The faintest defiance armored his voice as he said, "I like to keep a tally of how much I'm worth to MI6. Sir."

And then he was gone. Bond basked in Mallory's raised eyebrows for a moment before glancing after Q and catching only a flash of color as he rounded the corner out of Moneypenny's office.

Q walked faster and had longer legs than Bond, but he hadn't spent a significant portion of his life involved in foot chases. Bond caught up to him halfway down the hall; Q acknowledged his presence by slowing down to match Bond's natural pace.

"How are you holding up?" Bond asked. The bruises had faded to unswollen yellow stains and he moved as though unhampered by pain, but he was wearing his arm in a sling, bandages peeking out from his cardigan sleeve.

"I should be asking you that. Aren't you just back from official business?"

"It was fairly routine, for a top-secret mission. I only fired my gun once, when I was putting a bullet through the target's head."

"Does that mean you actually brought your equipment back in one piece?"

"No. I threw it in the river. Didn't want you to get spoiled."

They kept walking, side-by-side.

Bond muttered, "Holly Mason sent me flowers."

Somehow he knew that Q had just barely conquered the urge to roll his eyes. "Did you remind her that you were just doing your job?"

"It was a little bit more than that."

They reached the lifts. Q called one to take him downstairs, to his computers and his guns and his staff, to the department he had been handed at such a young age by the people who should most mistrust him, and Bond thought that Colin Burns had been completely wrong, that this man had never and would never be owned by MI6, or by anyone.

Q was carefully looking everywhere else. "I never said thank you, so –" His eyes slid sideways to meet Bond's, but then he seemed to decide that that wasn't good enough and turned to face Bond full on. "Thank you, 007."

The ping of the arriving lift made Q – not jump, he wasn't flighty – but definitely twitch. Bond didn't bother to hide his smile.

"Does expressing gratitude always make you this anxious?"

Q put one foot on the lift floor to hold it. His gaze traced the pattern on the carpet. "I find myself humbled lately, and considering the things I have to be grateful for."

"All your secrets are safe with me," Bond promised.

Q looked up with a little light of mischief. He stepped into the lift and pressed a button, all insecurity dowsed like a candle flame. "Double-oh-seven, what makes you think you know all my secrets? Wouldn't want you to get spoiled."

The door slid closed on his grin.

Bond shook his head in wonder, staring at his own half-smile reflected in the lift doors. He allowed himself a long moment before he turned around to head back to M's office, hands in his trouser pockets and an echo of Q's grin still playing about his face. Always the last word, his Quartermaster – for now.

Author's notes:

The Crime and Punishment quote is from Part Two, chapter six.

"All right, so it's a boffin joke."

Because no one explained this to me when I first started reading Brit fic and it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure it out - a boffin is someone who knows a great deal about a specialized field of science. Sometimes used disparagingly the way Americans use "nerd." Q is pretty much a boffin stereotype.

"I gave you more than an hour with my personal computer and all you managed to do was dox me."

Doxing, or d0xing, is hacker slang for releasing someone's personally identifiable information to the public online.

And thus we have reached the end. Much like Q, I think gratitude is in order.

INSPIRATIONS THAT DROVE THIS FIC:

- Wired magazine provides great insight into Q's tech world for someone like me who has only started to learn the full potential of computers and tech-geek culture. I based Q's hacker past partially on Wikileaks and partially on an article about the collectivist hacker organization Anonymous that ran in print in Wired's July 2012 issue.

- Joss Whedon discussing the writing process of The Avengers: "They're gonna talk for like ten pages, is that okay?"

- I finished reading Tana French's psychological thriller In the Woods not long before I started working on this fic, and fans of the novel might see its influence. The chapter where Cassie tells Ryan about her experience befriending a psychopath at uni certainly informed the character of Colin Burns.

- Canon Q is such a big question mark that I necessarily drew from texts other than Skyfall to give him more color. Probably my biggest influences are Raskolnikov (protagonist of Crime and Punishment), Frank Abagnale (as seen in Catch Me if You Can), and Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield's performances in The Social Network.

- And also, ALL OF YOU LOVELY PEOPLE who contribute to fandom! Gen fic is pretty rare in this corner of the fan world, so I appreciate everyone who took a chance on something outside their normal reading habits. I hope I made it worth your while.