BOND Fic: in line with all your churches
notes: SO HOKAY. I blame this on oxymoronassoc, and the obscene amount of times that I’ve been re-watching Casino Royale, looking through Eva Green pictures, etc etc. But mostly, I blame Britta because she ENABLED me. I hope you enjoy.
in line with all your churches
we'll wear our sleeves over hearts and breathe in the direction of our choices; she’s never liked funeral songs. bond: casino royale. vesper, vesper/bond. 5,200 words, au. r.
--
And I tried to hold him
I tried for the creed
I’ll make a suit of colours
to stop the blinding mirrors
bats for lashes - glass
Vesper Lynd is dead.
And outside an Italian hospital, Ellen Young waits for a taxi to come.
She is not an American, but the odd tourist. There is no boyfriend, and she is unmarried, returning home from her sabbatical. She will teach. It will be a small school, at the end of a road in a forgotten town.
She is to wait.
There is hardly anytime to remember. There is before, and after, and before the after. She wears a hospital bracelet, wrapped around her wrist, and it picks at her skin, idly as if to remind her. The two names stand face to face, in her head, and she is trying to practicing learning how to forget. She does not know how long she has been here.
Her name is Ellen Young.
Not Vesper.
Vesper Lynd is dead, gone, and forgotten like an old lover. She did not wake up in Italian hospital, to faces that she did not know. She will stay dead.
Drowning is the worst kind of death as it is.
Her bag is small and resting against her feet. She does not move to pick it up. Instead, she shifts. The bottom of the bench presses into the back of her knees, and the wood moans. A nun passes in front of her, head bowed and smiling. It is mid-afternoon and the sun high, bright. It is warm. Ellen is a Catholic too. Vesper never remembered her Sundays. It doesn’t matter even now, funny as it is.
Her mind is still tired. Her hair is plaited back, tight and clean. It is an old habit, odd and necessary. There are moments where her ears start to ring, her breathing becomes heavier, and she thinks she’s drowning again. She doesn’t know how or why she is alive, but neither seems to be the right question.
Behind her, there is a cough. She doesn’t move.
But it is James’ boss that reappears. There are no smiles. She is a small woman, sharp, and cut into her suit. She watches as she sits on the bench next to her. There is an envelope in her hands. She does not smile.
“It will be a short trip, of course.”
She gives her the envelope. Vesper remembers that this is M. James called her M. The others, they lower their eyes and flush, just to call her ma’am. They waited for her too, outside her hospital room as she changed into clothes that they brought her.
She didn’t ask questions. She doesn’t ask for James. She knows very little too, and she’s all right with that. It’s selfish, but she doesn’t know what else to think.
“Of course,” she murmurs.
“Everything is provided for you.”
She is surprised. She opens the envelope. The name of airline is written under the flap. There is an address, a passport, and a few pictures framing a card and a thin stack of pound notes. It’s as if they were ready for her, with or without the circumstances. She does not know how to feel about that.
“Why?”
“Courtesy.” The woman’s mouth thins. She then adds sharply, “and necessary. You are tied to a lot of things that we do not understand yet. And of course, this is for his safety. He’s mad enough as it is.”
There is nothing else to say.
Her fingers dip back into the envelope, and they brush against the passport again. She could very well find this funny. She doesn’t feel like laughing. Her hair is too long and she can taste the bruising along her mouth; it makes her seem heavy and tired, alone and waiting for sympathy. She was never that kind of girl. She will not stop.
Looking back up, she sees two men waiting - agents, she thinks. She is amused. They watch them, side by side, and are only unmatched in height. They are dark suits and glasses, hands folded in front of them as they wait for a signal from the woman at her side. M still doesn’t move.
“Will he know?”
Vesper asks because it seems that she is wait. Her name is not Ellen quite yet, at least in her head. The other woman chuckles, and smiles with her teeth, shifting her hand over her knee. It is polite enough to cut.
“No.”
She is not surprised, or relieved. Should she be? Her eyes close and she curls her hands into the envelope. It wrinkles loudly.
“If he -”
There is a loud snort. “You’re a smart girl.”
They do not talk about the possibility, but it stands between them. M says nothing of being prepared. She is not an agent. She is a dead woman, and only knows of the other woman through James and her old superiors; there is very little that she can have, but she does keep to what is there for her.
In front of them, a couple walks excitedly into hospital grounds. The man grins and presses his mouth against the woman’s shoulder. There is a ring and the woman, flushed, is holding her hand over her belly. Vesper looks down to the envelope in her hands. She thinks of her necklace. She forgets. It’s for the best, like everything else.
Her gaze wanders back to the guards, and they seem to shy away. One picks up his phone, the other heads to the bench, straightening as he approaches.
She sighs then.
“Why?”
The older woman laughs. She stands, but doesn’t turn. Vesper stares at her back as she straightens, her hands tucking into her coat. The entire motion is flawless and it makes her uneasy, however simple and inane it seems.
“Maybe, you’ll be useful,” is her response.
It will be a few years in a town with no name.
It is a small town, and she will learn to forget numbers and money, the sums of human behavior, and staples and needs. She will board at a small house, wear raincoats, and cut her hair a little. Her students will love her and whisper in speculation; is she a writer, failed, or a widow, in mourning. Is there someone waiting for her, somewhere.
Ellen does not laugh. Vesper would.
There is no coast by the town, and she does not dream about drowning, or dying hand in hand. She will not cry herself to sleep. It is punishing.
Ellen Young will meet a boy. She will leave him too.
“You don’t know how to let things go,” he will say. His name is not James, but she has heard this before, long ago and when things were new, mistakes were fresh and worrisome.
She still remembers to scoff.
There are still dreams, of course.
It is silly, and then it’s not, and then, she spends too much time awake and hating herself. For being thoughtful, for being in love. For not falling out of it.
Sometimes, she sees James. Sometimes, she doesn’t. Sometimes, she is with Yusef. Somewhere, not here, she imagines that it will be like this for years to come and it won’t really matter.
She does not wake up screaming.
This is a long time ago. It does not want to stay that way.
Miles outside London, she is too close.
Time has passed. And she still feels close.
She does not have to think of him, or wonder. It happens when her neighbors gossip, or when her students talk about holidays in the city. They giggle and laugh with wide, impressionable eyes. She tries not to tell him. She does not let herself forget the allure.
Her story does not belong to them. At least, this is how much they know.
It is the last time they send an agent to check on her. They sit together at a table in a small shop, watching road signs that point away from the city. People stare as they pass. He is young and angry. His clothes are pressed too carefully and he fidgets, hands framing a coffee cup tightly. It feels familiar.
She is not in the service, nor is she an asset, and what she knows is very little. It’s been too long for it to be important. She is well aware of the fact that she was saved, and only as the scrapings of a favor. She also knows that he knows this too.
He won’t look at her. They never do.
“I want to move.”
She watches him frown. The corners of his mouth cut deeply into his skin. She can’t remember if the last one was young, or even older. Somehow, they’ve all started to look the same.
“Move?”
“Yes,” she nods. “I need a change of scenery.”
She talks as if she were discussing a vacation, or payment, and neither seeming fitting enough.
“Of course,” he says then.
He does not engage the conversation further. This is what Ellen is for. Ellen has a life full of neighbors and responsibilities, students and school, a small town that is starting to swallow her whole. Ellen doesn’t drown. Ellen doesn’t know how to swim either.
Vesper finds this funny, in a way.
He slides an envelope across the table. “This is for you.”
They have suddenly begun to understand when to expect her, or expect when she asks; they are one in the same. She keeps to some old habits faithfully and somehow, she remembers that there is a formula to being in the service of her majesty’s government. It always knows how to appreciate irony.
“I know.”
The agent smiles tightly. It does not reach his eyes. He pulls his hands back, and looks at her, waiting.
“They found him, you know.”
She looks up. “They?”
She’s had this conversation before, before him and elsewhere. She can count the number of agents that have tried to tell her that they found him, the scam, and the list of women that were just as idealistic and easy as she was.
She only thinks of the necklace, not of Yusef or the betrayal. She does not want to think about what that means. It still follows her, even now. There is shame, and more shame, and she’s long let go of the ways that James must think of her now. She hopes he is still angry. She would want him to be. Furious, even. She knows nothing outside of this.
Still, the agent gives her a look. She tries not to laugh. She remembers that she has practiced this before: she is companionable and graceful, at best.
“You, you mean,” she murmurs.
“The man,” he corrects. He does not say James’ name either. “Your boyfriend, the scammer. He has been taken care of.”
Vesper is quiet.
It means that he doesn’t understand why she is still doing this, or why she is still alive. She wants to agree with him. But she says nothing. She has no desire to. She looks away, curling her hands around the envelope. It feels heavy under her palms. She does not open it, or have to know what is in it. Her name will not change. Ellen, it seems, is a remarkable teacher. Ellen also loves her job. This is not important.
“Good,” she tells him finally. This is practice for the next time. It leaves her a little cross, mostly tired, and she folds the envelope to her chest.
The agent nods.
“M sends her regards.”
When she first woke up, it was M standing at her bedside.
She is unfamiliar, and does not sit.
The nurses call her your mother and she does not know how to correct them, curling her fingers around her sheets.
“You’re a lucky woman,” she frowns.
Vesper never forgets this.
So the story goes.
The town is lost against the coast.
Her cottage is not a house, and it lives at the edge of town, over a pack of cliffs and a few stone gardens. She rents and they think she is a writer too this time, romantic enough to cause early questions.
There are fishermen, and fishermen’s wives. The school is tinier than the last few, the ones that she remembers, and her students call her “Miss Young” as if she has been theirs all along.
She is not comfortable.
But this is the last time she moves.
What does a dead woman do?
She learns to stay dead.
It is the end of a late afternoon.
She walks home slowly, her shoes scuffling over gravel and dirt as her cottage comes into view. Her hair cuts against her chin. Today, she is tired.
There are too many papers in her bag, and she is trying to remember if she had gone to the market the day before. The sky is beginning to sink anyway, running from the afternoon and clearing over each of the houses.
Her fence is shudders when she reaches it, pulling at the latch as the wind picks up for a moment. She remembers that she needs to ask someone to look at it come the weekend.
“Good evening, dear,” Mrs. Harper calls. She stands at the cottage gate, right as it snaps shuts behind her. There are books in her hands and she is smiling just as she turns to face her.
“Good evening,” she returns. Her books shift from her chest to her hip, and then her bag strap starts to dig into her shoulder. The neighbors are watching, always watching; after years, she is still new and wise to understand that. There is a coat in the older woman’s hands, and she remembers she’s left hers in the classroom, a failing habit.
They stare at each other, Vesper with her smile and Mrs. Harper waiting, waiting for some bit of inane, tired conversation. She could talk about her students, or the weather to come in the next couple days, and still, behind her, the small cottage would stand made, as if ready to disappear.
“Your roses,” she says finally. She is polite. “They are lovely this year.”
“Yes, thank you.”
The woman smiles, but she does not return it. She nods a goodbye and turns, moving to her door. Her hand fumbles with her keys, sliding forward and only to push the door open with her knuckles. She frowns.
Reaching forward again, she pushes the door back and then places her books down on a table, resting by the entrance. Her bag drops to the floor and it echoes even she turns, looking back out to see if anyone else waiting. Mrs. Harper is already down the road, fading as she passes into the deep of town.
She exhales, and then steps inside. Her throat is tight and she keeps her frown, sinking her teeth into her lip. She closes the door behind her, resting against it. She doesn’t hear anything. In front of her, a small set of stairs rises into the second floor. Her fingers curl at her sides and she clears her throat, hoping that this all just something silly in her head.
“Hello?”
It’s been awhile since anyone from the office has come to see her; she prefers to be long forgotten, awaiting some sort of rescue. It is a better joke after drinking, for sure. Still she can only hope this that, or something quite close to that. It seems ridiculous otherwise.
“Hello?
She takes a step forward. Her arms fold against her chest and she steps into the hallway, facing the beginning of an empty living room. The hallway is poorly lit. She has candles hidden away, in drawers. There are no ghosts here, she doesn’t laugh. The idea, alone, reminds her of her loneliness. It’s a horrible guise, being lonely and covered in the whispers of her neighbors, her students alike as they try to guess her story. Some days, she laughs at it. Others, she ignores them all. Alone, it tries to push her.
But when she stops at the end of the hallway, she sees him. Her eyes widen and her mouth parts, the corners wrinkling. She doesn’t breathe and her shoes scuff into the floor, shifting her weight back and forth.
“James,” she doesn’t say. "You found me," she does. Her voice is soft. She is surprised, and caught, hoping to show neither as her hands fold neatly into her sides.
"I did."
He does not fit into her kitchen. Tall, taunt, and carved into a corner between a window and her breakfast bar. His eyes are hard. He is hand some, and stands almost to be cruel, waiting. He watches as she leaves her bag by her feet, alone with its strap skewed onto the floor. Her books stay on the table by the door, forgotten and closed. She still does not keep any pictures. It’s easier this way.
She does not look at him yet. I’m sorry, she won’t say. It’s callous. Sorry might’ve been suited for the years before. Her keys are still in her hand. She puts them down. She remembers again that she left her jacket in the classroom. She doesn’t know why that’s important. She does that a lot these days; it’s spring coming, and her students seem to roll their habits over her. She tries to be affectionate.
But Vesper turns again, and then studies him silently. His jacket remains on, the collar turned at his throat. Behind him, his reflection is heavy in the window. When she looks at it, he seems to straighten and it shifts, as if to challenge the assumption of what she sees. It feels familiar, if not small, and somehow, she finds herself clinging to that anyway.
“You’re alone.”
“It’s late,” she chides sharply.
His mouth turns in amusement. “And unmarried,” he adds.
“You seem surprised.”
She is tired. Her feet are sore. She leaves her shoes by the wall, walking barefoot into pantry. She stops watching him, and her fingers are nervous, pulling open a small box of tea bags. She will not talk about the exile, or the late exodus; her god-fearing days are left dead, and alone with her childhood, which is hers no longer anyway. She is still angry. She knows she was a fool.
She closes the door to the pantry. The tea bag swings from her fingers. She drops it over the counter, watching as the grains shift against the mesh. The smell is muted, but she looks up at him and sighs.
“Tea?”
“Scotch.”
“All right,” she murmurs. She is polite. She pulls two cups from the cabinet anyway, and then fixes the kettle over the stove. The knobs crack when her fingers turn them. He doesn’t drink scotch, she remembers. She should. She is careful with what she remembers.
They are quiet.
She could ask, and she will, but the silence is impossibly curious, daunting, and unravels a little in her head. She thinks she’s been waiting for this, for a long time; they told her, if anything, to expect accidents and inevitability. Selfishly, she had hoped. But it’s been years, and she’s lost count too many times before.
This isn’t what she wanted, she aims to tell him; but it never leaves her mouth, instead she looks up at him and stares, studying him as if to pick him out of her all over again. It feels like a punishment and Vesper knows far too well that her name hasn’t been her name in a very long time. He should know this too. Maybe, she thinks, this is why he’s finally come.
“How?”
And she asks, but he laughs, his mouth twisting. “Do you want to know?”
“No.”
“Because,” he says. It’s as if he doesn’t hear her. “I suppose I could tell you; assuming that you care, or already know what I’m about to tell you. We used to have these conversations for sport, Vesper.”
“Ellen,” she shrugs.
She says her new name, old, and he frowns. There are creases in the corners of his mouth. He is older too. She wonders if he realizes.
“Charming name.”
“It wasn’t my choice.”
It’s for spite, she thinks as soon as she answers. He chuckles and shakes his head. She can still hear him: charming, the word pulling over his tongue in that sharp and deprecating way. She tries to ignore it, but it’s there.
The kitchen is too small for them, then, and she moves quietly, as she’s done every night and in habit, for the last couple years. She reaches for lemons in a bowl, just by the sink, and picks one. She finds a knife. He is still standing off to the side and watching her, waiting. She doesn’t know what he’s waiting for her to do.
For once, she allows herself to wonder how long. He’s good, and the best, and certainly, like his boss told her once, he would find her. It’s what he decides to do with knowing where she was. She wonders how long he’s known. She wonders if she should care.
Quietly, she listens to him pull his jacket off. It hits one of the chairs and when she looks up, he’s swinging over the back. The kettle, between them, starts to whistle softly. She doesn’t reach for it yet. She looks down at her hands, a lemon in one and the knife in the other, and fixes them in place.
“Why are you here?”
She asks and the lemon rips into, the knife hitting the cutting board. The handle sinks into her palm.
“An early spring holiday, of course,” he says dryly.
The knife rests against the counter. She laughs. And it’s hard, coarse as her hands drop to rub against her hips. She laughs to be angry. She laughs to pick at him. She has very few things left and he knows; there is still very little that she can hide from him, shapeless and uninformed.
“Why are you here, James?”
She asks again, looking to him. The kettle starts to shriek.
“I can’t imagine you suffering from some sudden need to be a fisherman again. There are no yachts.”
His mouth curls. “If only.”
“You would be murderously bored.”
“I would.”
They stare at each other. She feels shy, uncertain. Her fingers curl around the kettle handle and she pulls it off the stove. She turns and pours water in her cup, forgets his, and returns the kettle to its place. She picks up one of the lemon halves and squeezes into the water, watching as the juice skips and rolls down her fingers.
He comes closer, to her side, and blocks the view outside of the kitchen. He hasn’t asked about the cottage. She drops the lemon and curls her fingers around her cup. She does not pick it up, staring straight ahead. His hands fold into his chest.
“I wanted to see you,” he says then. And he means it, really means. She knows because it feels familiar. It feels tired too. “I wanted to see you and so I came.”
“Stop,” she says quietly.
She does not know how to hear this. It’s a lie and a half-truth; this is the difference between wanting and needing, having and not. He’s here and she doesn’t know how to quite handle it. She is not that girl, or that woman, the one that spends her years pining away mercilessly. She loved him. She loves him. This is punishment enough.
“I found you.”
“I know.”
“I almost came before,” he tells her absently. “Years before,” he then adds. “To kill you. I was angry. I am angry.”
She looks up at him.
“They brought me back.”
It’s an impasse, instead, and she tells him, not to confess, but to tell him anyway as if she knows that there’s nothing to be had here. She pulls her fingers away from her tea. Her hands flatten against the counter and he shifts, leaning into it with his hip.
He breaks his hands away from his chest and pulls his fingers over his sleeves. The buttons at his wrist break with a soft, coy snap and slowly, she watches as he folds his sleeves back. He is neat, concise. He does not hesitate. For her, he is still that odd man.
“I know.”
It’s pitying, but he doesn’t say well, it was in the file or they told me. She supposes that it’s as earnest as he will get. It is odd and she thinks about the cottage, half-empty with things that are Ellen and not her. Or her, she reasons. She thinks about this tiny, quiet town that she’s going to stay in and that he knows, now, and will forget, later. Of course, this was never meant to be.
But it doesn’t make them less, or more of anything. That is something, instead of nothing, and she takes that selfishly.
“You look older,” she tells him.
She doesn’t say: your face is round, what is that scar, and are you all right, are you still willing to make a choice. Vesper was a romantic once. Before, she might’ve suffered through the illusion of begging him to stay. Here, they’ve made her incredibly weary. Nonetheless, she means it. Ellen is more practical.
“You look softer,” he says. He does not add anything. She does not blush.
She picks up the kettle again, reaching around him. Her hip brushes against his, and she turns to pour water in the extra cup. She pulls her tea bag from her cup and drops it in, ignoring the extra lemon slice.
When she hands him tea, not scotch, he looks away. His hands hold the cup awkwardly, his thumbs sinking along the brim. Steam rises in strings, thin and sneaking in between his fingers.
“I wasn’t going to come,” he says absently.
It is all he says about this. She answers honestly, still.
“I wish you hadn’t.”
Vesper kisses him.
Against her, he remains unfamiliar.
Her bedroom is quiet, and he fucks her, hard and callous, as she claws her nails into his back. The pads of her fingers are slippery. He grunts before he comes and she sinks her teeth into his shoulder. Everything is dark, and still, and the room seems only happy to watch them.
They are strangers. She makes sure that they both know.
You can only die once, then.
Now, they are a mess of limbs and sheets, pulling each other into silence. She breathes. He sighs. They do not look at each other as if it costs something, something that neither of them can give. The understanding is mutual.
She does not let herself forget.
When her eyes open to the room, she rolls, and then presses her body against the length of his frame. She does not cover him, but fits neatly into the crook of his arm. Her fingers are slow against his chest. She rediscovers scars, gone and then familiar. She traces a line along his hip and he turns them, sliding a thigh between her legs. His weight takes hers.
They are hot, sticky, and he confesses:
“I was going to leave.”
She is afraid, all of the sudden, and attempts to remain motionless. Her chest rises and falls. She breathes. She looks up at him and his mouth is turning, amused but not angry.
He expects this from her. She wants to hate him again.
She is careful: “You’re a liar.”
“No more than you,” he says. He presses a wet sigh over her neck. “You changed everything.”
There is a burn in her throat, heavy, heavier, and she closes her eyes, slipping her fingers into his hair. She runs them through, and they still over the back of his neck, picking at the small, soft tufts. His jaw feels heavy resting against the crook of her neck.
There is something her that she is supposed to be agreeing to, or understanding; even less, she can feel herself separate from what should be and what she wants, all over again. He is dangerous. She is dangerous. Somehow, none of that has changed.
“I am still dead.”
She feels like laughing. The sensation is hysterical. “Gone, finished, ashes over the ground - I suppose, then, it’s only fitting that I’ve changed.”
“Undoubtedly.”
He presses his palm into her breast. His skin is coarse and in her head, she counts the lines that she can remember, silly indentations that should mean nothing to her. Her lips part, and his thumb slides over her nipple. He presses his mouth back against her throat.
She does not moan. Her shoulders rise and she is almost tense, her hand stills against his neck. There are questions that she wants to ask, or knows that she has to; she cannot decide, or doesn’t want to, and either hand seems to scare her equally. She remembers something he said about probability and chance. She remembers laughing. She didn’t believe him then.
“They found him,” she murmurs.
She sighs. She used to have photographs and her neck was never naked. His hand slides away from her breast, over her stomach and stops. His fingers begin to brush slowly against her skin.
“Yes.”
“You must think me foolish.”
He shrugs against her. “Then.”
In the dark, she thinks of him smirking. She is almost absent.
“Don’t be crass, James.”
He doesn’t laugh, but she can imagine him. Somehow, she thinks back to boats in Venice and hotel rooms, the off chance of something changing, and ending. She wonders what might’ve happened to her then, had her confession been immediate, and somehow, she can only see herself here, still waiting for something and fighting to let it go.
She imagines herself desperately sad.
But what he is, however, is soft; his hand stops again at her belly, his fingers spreading as he loops his mouth back over hers. He kisses her softly, slipping is tongue along her lip as her mouth opens against his, and brushes it over hers. She lets her fingers curl back in his hair.
“You haven’t changed,” he murmurs into her mouth.
She is disappointed and lost, again.
“No?”
He pulls back, watching her. “No,” he says. “You haven’t. Then again, you were never surprised easily, Vesper.”
He means it then, and that she knows. He says her name. Maybe, it’s nostalgia. Maybe, it’s this town and how tiny it is, how unfamiliar she has written into it and supposed to be. He is looking at her like he knows her, but she is watching him like she doesn’t. This is the difference between them now.
“I didn’t want this.”
Quietly, she looks away. He pulls a hand into her hair, his fingers braiding into a few strands. It is shorter now. She forgets that a lot, however sharp it feels cutting into her jaw.
“It is never about the things that we want, is it?”
“No,” she agrees. She shifts, then, to slide herself over him again.
In the morning, he is gone.
The cottage is still. Light skips into the bedroom from a window, off to the side. Next to her, the sheets wrinkle and press back into her breasts. They are warm.
She is not surprised.
in line with all your churches
we'll wear our sleeves over hearts and breathe in the direction of our choices; she’s never liked funeral songs. bond: casino royale. vesper, vesper/bond. 5,200 words, au. r.
--
And I tried to hold him
I tried for the creed
I’ll make a suit of colours
to stop the blinding mirrors
bats for lashes - glass
Vesper Lynd is dead.
And outside an Italian hospital, Ellen Young waits for a taxi to come.
She is not an American, but the odd tourist. There is no boyfriend, and she is unmarried, returning home from her sabbatical. She will teach. It will be a small school, at the end of a road in a forgotten town.
She is to wait.
There is hardly anytime to remember. There is before, and after, and before the after. She wears a hospital bracelet, wrapped around her wrist, and it picks at her skin, idly as if to remind her. The two names stand face to face, in her head, and she is trying to practicing learning how to forget. She does not know how long she has been here.
Her name is Ellen Young.
Not Vesper.
Vesper Lynd is dead, gone, and forgotten like an old lover. She did not wake up in Italian hospital, to faces that she did not know. She will stay dead.
Drowning is the worst kind of death as it is.
Her bag is small and resting against her feet. She does not move to pick it up. Instead, she shifts. The bottom of the bench presses into the back of her knees, and the wood moans. A nun passes in front of her, head bowed and smiling. It is mid-afternoon and the sun high, bright. It is warm. Ellen is a Catholic too. Vesper never remembered her Sundays. It doesn’t matter even now, funny as it is.
Her mind is still tired. Her hair is plaited back, tight and clean. It is an old habit, odd and necessary. There are moments where her ears start to ring, her breathing becomes heavier, and she thinks she’s drowning again. She doesn’t know how or why she is alive, but neither seems to be the right question.
Behind her, there is a cough. She doesn’t move.
But it is James’ boss that reappears. There are no smiles. She is a small woman, sharp, and cut into her suit. She watches as she sits on the bench next to her. There is an envelope in her hands. She does not smile.
“It will be a short trip, of course.”
She gives her the envelope. Vesper remembers that this is M. James called her M. The others, they lower their eyes and flush, just to call her ma’am. They waited for her too, outside her hospital room as she changed into clothes that they brought her.
She didn’t ask questions. She doesn’t ask for James. She knows very little too, and she’s all right with that. It’s selfish, but she doesn’t know what else to think.
“Of course,” she murmurs.
“Everything is provided for you.”
She is surprised. She opens the envelope. The name of airline is written under the flap. There is an address, a passport, and a few pictures framing a card and a thin stack of pound notes. It’s as if they were ready for her, with or without the circumstances. She does not know how to feel about that.
“Why?”
“Courtesy.” The woman’s mouth thins. She then adds sharply, “and necessary. You are tied to a lot of things that we do not understand yet. And of course, this is for his safety. He’s mad enough as it is.”
There is nothing else to say.
Her fingers dip back into the envelope, and they brush against the passport again. She could very well find this funny. She doesn’t feel like laughing. Her hair is too long and she can taste the bruising along her mouth; it makes her seem heavy and tired, alone and waiting for sympathy. She was never that kind of girl. She will not stop.
Looking back up, she sees two men waiting - agents, she thinks. She is amused. They watch them, side by side, and are only unmatched in height. They are dark suits and glasses, hands folded in front of them as they wait for a signal from the woman at her side. M still doesn’t move.
“Will he know?”
Vesper asks because it seems that she is wait. Her name is not Ellen quite yet, at least in her head. The other woman chuckles, and smiles with her teeth, shifting her hand over her knee. It is polite enough to cut.
“No.”
She is not surprised, or relieved. Should she be? Her eyes close and she curls her hands into the envelope. It wrinkles loudly.
“If he -”
There is a loud snort. “You’re a smart girl.”
They do not talk about the possibility, but it stands between them. M says nothing of being prepared. She is not an agent. She is a dead woman, and only knows of the other woman through James and her old superiors; there is very little that she can have, but she does keep to what is there for her.
In front of them, a couple walks excitedly into hospital grounds. The man grins and presses his mouth against the woman’s shoulder. There is a ring and the woman, flushed, is holding her hand over her belly. Vesper looks down to the envelope in her hands. She thinks of her necklace. She forgets. It’s for the best, like everything else.
Her gaze wanders back to the guards, and they seem to shy away. One picks up his phone, the other heads to the bench, straightening as he approaches.
She sighs then.
“Why?”
The older woman laughs. She stands, but doesn’t turn. Vesper stares at her back as she straightens, her hands tucking into her coat. The entire motion is flawless and it makes her uneasy, however simple and inane it seems.
“Maybe, you’ll be useful,” is her response.
It will be a few years in a town with no name.
It is a small town, and she will learn to forget numbers and money, the sums of human behavior, and staples and needs. She will board at a small house, wear raincoats, and cut her hair a little. Her students will love her and whisper in speculation; is she a writer, failed, or a widow, in mourning. Is there someone waiting for her, somewhere.
Ellen does not laugh. Vesper would.
There is no coast by the town, and she does not dream about drowning, or dying hand in hand. She will not cry herself to sleep. It is punishing.
Ellen Young will meet a boy. She will leave him too.
“You don’t know how to let things go,” he will say. His name is not James, but she has heard this before, long ago and when things were new, mistakes were fresh and worrisome.
She still remembers to scoff.
There are still dreams, of course.
It is silly, and then it’s not, and then, she spends too much time awake and hating herself. For being thoughtful, for being in love. For not falling out of it.
Sometimes, she sees James. Sometimes, she doesn’t. Sometimes, she is with Yusef. Somewhere, not here, she imagines that it will be like this for years to come and it won’t really matter.
She does not wake up screaming.
This is a long time ago. It does not want to stay that way.
Miles outside London, she is too close.
Time has passed. And she still feels close.
She does not have to think of him, or wonder. It happens when her neighbors gossip, or when her students talk about holidays in the city. They giggle and laugh with wide, impressionable eyes. She tries not to tell him. She does not let herself forget the allure.
Her story does not belong to them. At least, this is how much they know.
It is the last time they send an agent to check on her. They sit together at a table in a small shop, watching road signs that point away from the city. People stare as they pass. He is young and angry. His clothes are pressed too carefully and he fidgets, hands framing a coffee cup tightly. It feels familiar.
She is not in the service, nor is she an asset, and what she knows is very little. It’s been too long for it to be important. She is well aware of the fact that she was saved, and only as the scrapings of a favor. She also knows that he knows this too.
He won’t look at her. They never do.
“I want to move.”
She watches him frown. The corners of his mouth cut deeply into his skin. She can’t remember if the last one was young, or even older. Somehow, they’ve all started to look the same.
“Move?”
“Yes,” she nods. “I need a change of scenery.”
She talks as if she were discussing a vacation, or payment, and neither seeming fitting enough.
“Of course,” he says then.
He does not engage the conversation further. This is what Ellen is for. Ellen has a life full of neighbors and responsibilities, students and school, a small town that is starting to swallow her whole. Ellen doesn’t drown. Ellen doesn’t know how to swim either.
Vesper finds this funny, in a way.
He slides an envelope across the table. “This is for you.”
They have suddenly begun to understand when to expect her, or expect when she asks; they are one in the same. She keeps to some old habits faithfully and somehow, she remembers that there is a formula to being in the service of her majesty’s government. It always knows how to appreciate irony.
“I know.”
The agent smiles tightly. It does not reach his eyes. He pulls his hands back, and looks at her, waiting.
“They found him, you know.”
She looks up. “They?”
She’s had this conversation before, before him and elsewhere. She can count the number of agents that have tried to tell her that they found him, the scam, and the list of women that were just as idealistic and easy as she was.
She only thinks of the necklace, not of Yusef or the betrayal. She does not want to think about what that means. It still follows her, even now. There is shame, and more shame, and she’s long let go of the ways that James must think of her now. She hopes he is still angry. She would want him to be. Furious, even. She knows nothing outside of this.
Still, the agent gives her a look. She tries not to laugh. She remembers that she has practiced this before: she is companionable and graceful, at best.
“You, you mean,” she murmurs.
“The man,” he corrects. He does not say James’ name either. “Your boyfriend, the scammer. He has been taken care of.”
Vesper is quiet.
It means that he doesn’t understand why she is still doing this, or why she is still alive. She wants to agree with him. But she says nothing. She has no desire to. She looks away, curling her hands around the envelope. It feels heavy under her palms. She does not open it, or have to know what is in it. Her name will not change. Ellen, it seems, is a remarkable teacher. Ellen also loves her job. This is not important.
“Good,” she tells him finally. This is practice for the next time. It leaves her a little cross, mostly tired, and she folds the envelope to her chest.
The agent nods.
“M sends her regards.”
When she first woke up, it was M standing at her bedside.
She is unfamiliar, and does not sit.
The nurses call her your mother and she does not know how to correct them, curling her fingers around her sheets.
“You’re a lucky woman,” she frowns.
Vesper never forgets this.
So the story goes.
The town is lost against the coast.
Her cottage is not a house, and it lives at the edge of town, over a pack of cliffs and a few stone gardens. She rents and they think she is a writer too this time, romantic enough to cause early questions.
There are fishermen, and fishermen’s wives. The school is tinier than the last few, the ones that she remembers, and her students call her “Miss Young” as if she has been theirs all along.
She is not comfortable.
But this is the last time she moves.
What does a dead woman do?
She learns to stay dead.
It is the end of a late afternoon.
She walks home slowly, her shoes scuffling over gravel and dirt as her cottage comes into view. Her hair cuts against her chin. Today, she is tired.
There are too many papers in her bag, and she is trying to remember if she had gone to the market the day before. The sky is beginning to sink anyway, running from the afternoon and clearing over each of the houses.
Her fence is shudders when she reaches it, pulling at the latch as the wind picks up for a moment. She remembers that she needs to ask someone to look at it come the weekend.
“Good evening, dear,” Mrs. Harper calls. She stands at the cottage gate, right as it snaps shuts behind her. There are books in her hands and she is smiling just as she turns to face her.
“Good evening,” she returns. Her books shift from her chest to her hip, and then her bag strap starts to dig into her shoulder. The neighbors are watching, always watching; after years, she is still new and wise to understand that. There is a coat in the older woman’s hands, and she remembers she’s left hers in the classroom, a failing habit.
They stare at each other, Vesper with her smile and Mrs. Harper waiting, waiting for some bit of inane, tired conversation. She could talk about her students, or the weather to come in the next couple days, and still, behind her, the small cottage would stand made, as if ready to disappear.
“Your roses,” she says finally. She is polite. “They are lovely this year.”
“Yes, thank you.”
The woman smiles, but she does not return it. She nods a goodbye and turns, moving to her door. Her hand fumbles with her keys, sliding forward and only to push the door open with her knuckles. She frowns.
Reaching forward again, she pushes the door back and then places her books down on a table, resting by the entrance. Her bag drops to the floor and it echoes even she turns, looking back out to see if anyone else waiting. Mrs. Harper is already down the road, fading as she passes into the deep of town.
She exhales, and then steps inside. Her throat is tight and she keeps her frown, sinking her teeth into her lip. She closes the door behind her, resting against it. She doesn’t hear anything. In front of her, a small set of stairs rises into the second floor. Her fingers curl at her sides and she clears her throat, hoping that this all just something silly in her head.
“Hello?”
It’s been awhile since anyone from the office has come to see her; she prefers to be long forgotten, awaiting some sort of rescue. It is a better joke after drinking, for sure. Still she can only hope this that, or something quite close to that. It seems ridiculous otherwise.
“Hello?
She takes a step forward. Her arms fold against her chest and she steps into the hallway, facing the beginning of an empty living room. The hallway is poorly lit. She has candles hidden away, in drawers. There are no ghosts here, she doesn’t laugh. The idea, alone, reminds her of her loneliness. It’s a horrible guise, being lonely and covered in the whispers of her neighbors, her students alike as they try to guess her story. Some days, she laughs at it. Others, she ignores them all. Alone, it tries to push her.
But when she stops at the end of the hallway, she sees him. Her eyes widen and her mouth parts, the corners wrinkling. She doesn’t breathe and her shoes scuff into the floor, shifting her weight back and forth.
“James,” she doesn’t say. "You found me," she does. Her voice is soft. She is surprised, and caught, hoping to show neither as her hands fold neatly into her sides.
"I did."
He does not fit into her kitchen. Tall, taunt, and carved into a corner between a window and her breakfast bar. His eyes are hard. He is hand some, and stands almost to be cruel, waiting. He watches as she leaves her bag by her feet, alone with its strap skewed onto the floor. Her books stay on the table by the door, forgotten and closed. She still does not keep any pictures. It’s easier this way.
She does not look at him yet. I’m sorry, she won’t say. It’s callous. Sorry might’ve been suited for the years before. Her keys are still in her hand. She puts them down. She remembers again that she left her jacket in the classroom. She doesn’t know why that’s important. She does that a lot these days; it’s spring coming, and her students seem to roll their habits over her. She tries to be affectionate.
But Vesper turns again, and then studies him silently. His jacket remains on, the collar turned at his throat. Behind him, his reflection is heavy in the window. When she looks at it, he seems to straighten and it shifts, as if to challenge the assumption of what she sees. It feels familiar, if not small, and somehow, she finds herself clinging to that anyway.
“You’re alone.”
“It’s late,” she chides sharply.
His mouth turns in amusement. “And unmarried,” he adds.
“You seem surprised.”
She is tired. Her feet are sore. She leaves her shoes by the wall, walking barefoot into pantry. She stops watching him, and her fingers are nervous, pulling open a small box of tea bags. She will not talk about the exile, or the late exodus; her god-fearing days are left dead, and alone with her childhood, which is hers no longer anyway. She is still angry. She knows she was a fool.
She closes the door to the pantry. The tea bag swings from her fingers. She drops it over the counter, watching as the grains shift against the mesh. The smell is muted, but she looks up at him and sighs.
“Tea?”
“Scotch.”
“All right,” she murmurs. She is polite. She pulls two cups from the cabinet anyway, and then fixes the kettle over the stove. The knobs crack when her fingers turn them. He doesn’t drink scotch, she remembers. She should. She is careful with what she remembers.
They are quiet.
She could ask, and she will, but the silence is impossibly curious, daunting, and unravels a little in her head. She thinks she’s been waiting for this, for a long time; they told her, if anything, to expect accidents and inevitability. Selfishly, she had hoped. But it’s been years, and she’s lost count too many times before.
This isn’t what she wanted, she aims to tell him; but it never leaves her mouth, instead she looks up at him and stares, studying him as if to pick him out of her all over again. It feels like a punishment and Vesper knows far too well that her name hasn’t been her name in a very long time. He should know this too. Maybe, she thinks, this is why he’s finally come.
“How?”
And she asks, but he laughs, his mouth twisting. “Do you want to know?”
“No.”
“Because,” he says. It’s as if he doesn’t hear her. “I suppose I could tell you; assuming that you care, or already know what I’m about to tell you. We used to have these conversations for sport, Vesper.”
“Ellen,” she shrugs.
She says her new name, old, and he frowns. There are creases in the corners of his mouth. He is older too. She wonders if he realizes.
“Charming name.”
“It wasn’t my choice.”
It’s for spite, she thinks as soon as she answers. He chuckles and shakes his head. She can still hear him: charming, the word pulling over his tongue in that sharp and deprecating way. She tries to ignore it, but it’s there.
The kitchen is too small for them, then, and she moves quietly, as she’s done every night and in habit, for the last couple years. She reaches for lemons in a bowl, just by the sink, and picks one. She finds a knife. He is still standing off to the side and watching her, waiting. She doesn’t know what he’s waiting for her to do.
For once, she allows herself to wonder how long. He’s good, and the best, and certainly, like his boss told her once, he would find her. It’s what he decides to do with knowing where she was. She wonders how long he’s known. She wonders if she should care.
Quietly, she listens to him pull his jacket off. It hits one of the chairs and when she looks up, he’s swinging over the back. The kettle, between them, starts to whistle softly. She doesn’t reach for it yet. She looks down at her hands, a lemon in one and the knife in the other, and fixes them in place.
“Why are you here?”
She asks and the lemon rips into, the knife hitting the cutting board. The handle sinks into her palm.
“An early spring holiday, of course,” he says dryly.
The knife rests against the counter. She laughs. And it’s hard, coarse as her hands drop to rub against her hips. She laughs to be angry. She laughs to pick at him. She has very few things left and he knows; there is still very little that she can hide from him, shapeless and uninformed.
“Why are you here, James?”
She asks again, looking to him. The kettle starts to shriek.
“I can’t imagine you suffering from some sudden need to be a fisherman again. There are no yachts.”
His mouth curls. “If only.”
“You would be murderously bored.”
“I would.”
They stare at each other. She feels shy, uncertain. Her fingers curl around the kettle handle and she pulls it off the stove. She turns and pours water in her cup, forgets his, and returns the kettle to its place. She picks up one of the lemon halves and squeezes into the water, watching as the juice skips and rolls down her fingers.
He comes closer, to her side, and blocks the view outside of the kitchen. He hasn’t asked about the cottage. She drops the lemon and curls her fingers around her cup. She does not pick it up, staring straight ahead. His hands fold into his chest.
“I wanted to see you,” he says then. And he means it, really means. She knows because it feels familiar. It feels tired too. “I wanted to see you and so I came.”
“Stop,” she says quietly.
She does not know how to hear this. It’s a lie and a half-truth; this is the difference between wanting and needing, having and not. He’s here and she doesn’t know how to quite handle it. She is not that girl, or that woman, the one that spends her years pining away mercilessly. She loved him. She loves him. This is punishment enough.
“I found you.”
“I know.”
“I almost came before,” he tells her absently. “Years before,” he then adds. “To kill you. I was angry. I am angry.”
She looks up at him.
“They brought me back.”
It’s an impasse, instead, and she tells him, not to confess, but to tell him anyway as if she knows that there’s nothing to be had here. She pulls her fingers away from her tea. Her hands flatten against the counter and he shifts, leaning into it with his hip.
He breaks his hands away from his chest and pulls his fingers over his sleeves. The buttons at his wrist break with a soft, coy snap and slowly, she watches as he folds his sleeves back. He is neat, concise. He does not hesitate. For her, he is still that odd man.
“I know.”
It’s pitying, but he doesn’t say well, it was in the file or they told me. She supposes that it’s as earnest as he will get. It is odd and she thinks about the cottage, half-empty with things that are Ellen and not her. Or her, she reasons. She thinks about this tiny, quiet town that she’s going to stay in and that he knows, now, and will forget, later. Of course, this was never meant to be.
But it doesn’t make them less, or more of anything. That is something, instead of nothing, and she takes that selfishly.
“You look older,” she tells him.
She doesn’t say: your face is round, what is that scar, and are you all right, are you still willing to make a choice. Vesper was a romantic once. Before, she might’ve suffered through the illusion of begging him to stay. Here, they’ve made her incredibly weary. Nonetheless, she means it. Ellen is more practical.
“You look softer,” he says. He does not add anything. She does not blush.
She picks up the kettle again, reaching around him. Her hip brushes against his, and she turns to pour water in the extra cup. She pulls her tea bag from her cup and drops it in, ignoring the extra lemon slice.
When she hands him tea, not scotch, he looks away. His hands hold the cup awkwardly, his thumbs sinking along the brim. Steam rises in strings, thin and sneaking in between his fingers.
“I wasn’t going to come,” he says absently.
It is all he says about this. She answers honestly, still.
“I wish you hadn’t.”
Vesper kisses him.
Against her, he remains unfamiliar.
Her bedroom is quiet, and he fucks her, hard and callous, as she claws her nails into his back. The pads of her fingers are slippery. He grunts before he comes and she sinks her teeth into his shoulder. Everything is dark, and still, and the room seems only happy to watch them.
They are strangers. She makes sure that they both know.
You can only die once, then.
Now, they are a mess of limbs and sheets, pulling each other into silence. She breathes. He sighs. They do not look at each other as if it costs something, something that neither of them can give. The understanding is mutual.
She does not let herself forget.
When her eyes open to the room, she rolls, and then presses her body against the length of his frame. She does not cover him, but fits neatly into the crook of his arm. Her fingers are slow against his chest. She rediscovers scars, gone and then familiar. She traces a line along his hip and he turns them, sliding a thigh between her legs. His weight takes hers.
They are hot, sticky, and he confesses:
“I was going to leave.”
She is afraid, all of the sudden, and attempts to remain motionless. Her chest rises and falls. She breathes. She looks up at him and his mouth is turning, amused but not angry.
He expects this from her. She wants to hate him again.
She is careful: “You’re a liar.”
“No more than you,” he says. He presses a wet sigh over her neck. “You changed everything.”
There is a burn in her throat, heavy, heavier, and she closes her eyes, slipping her fingers into his hair. She runs them through, and they still over the back of his neck, picking at the small, soft tufts. His jaw feels heavy resting against the crook of her neck.
There is something her that she is supposed to be agreeing to, or understanding; even less, she can feel herself separate from what should be and what she wants, all over again. He is dangerous. She is dangerous. Somehow, none of that has changed.
“I am still dead.”
She feels like laughing. The sensation is hysterical. “Gone, finished, ashes over the ground - I suppose, then, it’s only fitting that I’ve changed.”
“Undoubtedly.”
He presses his palm into her breast. His skin is coarse and in her head, she counts the lines that she can remember, silly indentations that should mean nothing to her. Her lips part, and his thumb slides over her nipple. He presses his mouth back against her throat.
She does not moan. Her shoulders rise and she is almost tense, her hand stills against his neck. There are questions that she wants to ask, or knows that she has to; she cannot decide, or doesn’t want to, and either hand seems to scare her equally. She remembers something he said about probability and chance. She remembers laughing. She didn’t believe him then.
“They found him,” she murmurs.
She sighs. She used to have photographs and her neck was never naked. His hand slides away from her breast, over her stomach and stops. His fingers begin to brush slowly against her skin.
“Yes.”
“You must think me foolish.”
He shrugs against her. “Then.”
In the dark, she thinks of him smirking. She is almost absent.
“Don’t be crass, James.”
He doesn’t laugh, but she can imagine him. Somehow, she thinks back to boats in Venice and hotel rooms, the off chance of something changing, and ending. She wonders what might’ve happened to her then, had her confession been immediate, and somehow, she can only see herself here, still waiting for something and fighting to let it go.
She imagines herself desperately sad.
But what he is, however, is soft; his hand stops again at her belly, his fingers spreading as he loops his mouth back over hers. He kisses her softly, slipping is tongue along her lip as her mouth opens against his, and brushes it over hers. She lets her fingers curl back in his hair.
“You haven’t changed,” he murmurs into her mouth.
She is disappointed and lost, again.
“No?”
He pulls back, watching her. “No,” he says. “You haven’t. Then again, you were never surprised easily, Vesper.”
He means it then, and that she knows. He says her name. Maybe, it’s nostalgia. Maybe, it’s this town and how tiny it is, how unfamiliar she has written into it and supposed to be. He is looking at her like he knows her, but she is watching him like she doesn’t. This is the difference between them now.
“I didn’t want this.”
Quietly, she looks away. He pulls a hand into her hair, his fingers braiding into a few strands. It is shorter now. She forgets that a lot, however sharp it feels cutting into her jaw.
“It is never about the things that we want, is it?”
“No,” she agrees. She shifts, then, to slide herself over him again.
In the morning, he is gone.
The cottage is still. Light skips into the bedroom from a window, off to the side. Next to her, the sheets wrinkle and press back into her breasts. They are warm.
She is not surprised.