[Sept 21] [James Bond] Vengeance

[tortillafactory.livejournal.com]

Title: Vengeance
Day/Theme: Sept. 21 - A secret unlit room
Series: James Bond
Character/Pairing: Bond/Alice (OFC)
Rating: PG-13

Note: This is the fifth and FINAL (!!!!) part of a 31_days series, beginning with Mockingbird, Parade, Damsel, and Prisoner. Once again, the views expressed by these characters are not necessarily those of the staff, advertisers, management, or ownership of this fic, so don't get your panties in a bunch.

She left him in a secret unlit room, alone with his gun and his thoughts.

Surely the bastard expected him to have a weapon. Why didn't Leah frisk him? Surely not even a psychopath could be so confident as to think...though, of course, Bastard had the advantage. He knew when he planned to enter the room. Bond did not.

This, he thought, not for the first time, is absurd.

It had been easy, so bloody easy. Something was not right. Something was, in fact, very wrong -

something rotten in the state of Chinatown.

He grinned fiercely to himself, and it drove a spike of courage through his heart.

Let's roll.

Minutes. Hours. Time had no meaning in the dark. He was neither hungry nor thirsty, and so decided it must be the former. Some people would sit in sensory-deprivation rooms on purpose, to meditate. Some found it erotic. Bond found it utterly, utterly boring.

He began counting the seconds: one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, until he realized it was meaningless because he didn't know the starting point. Anything, really, that kept him from thinking. After too long in the dark, there was no telling what gorgon might rise from the corners of his brain.

Religious martyrs sang hymns in prison. It kept them alive, kept them sane, reminded them of their ultimate reason for being in this hell. Bond had nothing of the sort.

A hymn to Alice?

The very idea amused him. No, not to Alice. Just a hymn.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound -
that saved a wretch like me -

I once was lost -

But now am found -

Was blind, but now -

I -

The door creaked.

See.

The shaft of light pierced his eyes like needles; his instinct was to close them, but instead he looked away, focusing on a dark corner of the wall and watching the advancing, shadowy figure in his peripheral vision.

His Walther was ready. The figure was stepping blindly into a dark room, an exceedingly idiotic thing to do, Bond thought. He could sense that the figure was coming closer. He moved his finger to the trigger -

Bond heard, rather than felt, the sickening crunch of his hand being kicked into the wall. The shock of pain came later, exploding through his whole arm and making him almost cry out. He clamped his teeth together, catching a bit of his mouth in the process. In a moment he tasted blood.

His gun, propelled by Bastard's foot, skittered across the room. Closed his eyes, Bond thought, his mind still hazy with pain. Stood outside with his eyes closed so he'd be ready.

"Unbelievable." The figure shut the door behind him, and Bond noticed for the first time that he was carrying a halogen lantern. "Fate's finally turned against you, Commander Bond. Lady Luck kicked you out of bed. You come here like a lamb to the slaughter - like you really believe God's going to come back in three days and raise you from the dead!"

"Shut the hell up." It wasn't witty, but it got the point across.

"I knew I had fate on my side. Good thing, too. Saved myself quite a bit of extra trouble. You took the bait like a starving fish."

"Why me?"

The man was tall - unusually tall, though from Bond's prone position he probably looked much taller than he truly was. And his face - unmistakably Chinese, right down to his eyes.

His eyes.

The only thing his victims had noticed.

He smiled.

"I have friends, Bond. They're powerful, and they don't like you. I owed them a debt. Besides, I like the idea of bringing down a legend."

"Where I come from, we call that spite." His mangled hand had calmed to a dull throb, which he felt all the way through his chest.

"Call it whatever you like. I've still got the gun."

The doorknob rattled. In a moment, Leah stepped in, looking rather like a ghost. Bond's captor turned his unsettling smile to her.

"Beautiful trophy, isn't he? Shame we can't have him stuffed and put on the mantlepiece. Exemplary job reeling him in, my dear."

She said nothing.

"Look, do whatever you've brought me here to do," Bond cut in. "I despise long goodbyes. You want information? I don't have any and I wouldn't give it if I did. You want me dead? Then shoot me. I've got no patience for the likes of you."

The Chinese smiled wider and took aim.

In a flash of movement, Leah threw herself at him. The gun fired wildly somewhere into the wall, and Bond scrambled for his Walther. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the bastard, his back turned to Bond, firing into Leah's stomach at point-blank. She fell, eyes still wide open.

Bond cocked his gun, clumsily, with the wrong hand.

"Drop it."

His opponent obeyed him.

Grimacing against the sharp agony down his arm, Bond said, "if I were religious, I'd have no compunctions about sending you straight to Hell where you belong. Women may be bloody fools sometimes, but they're not objects to be destroyed. As things are, I'm simply not sure I can trust the Powers That Be to make you burn for eternity. So I'll leave you to the police."

He frisked him quickly for keys, and then, noticing the room had no keyholes on the inside anyway, picked up the latern.

"Goodnight," he said, slamming the door behind him.

///

Alice was smiling faintly.

"They caught him."

"Is that so?" Bond smiled back. "I'm awfully glad to hear it."

"I would have told the police more, but I was so afraid! He said he'd find me and kill me - a man like that, you've got to believe him -"

"I understand."

Bond took a sip of his brandy.

"So, then," he said. "Dessert?"