A Skyfall fix-it of sorts that I’ve been silently agonizing over for almost three months now. 

Q looks worlds better already, bandaged as he is, with hair drying into dark curls around a pale face and wrapped in warm sheets as his breathing finally evens out from the stuttering, pained ones he’d been struggling to take not two hours before.

They move him about easily in quick, practiced motions before they wheel him out. Bond trails lazily behind, watching closely for any signs of distress, but not once does Q react to the jostling. He considers, briefly, following them the rest of the way to medical.

It doesn’t feel right to leave him now. Partly because Bond can’t imagine Q wanting to wake up blurry eyed and alone in the hands of strangers and partly because the helicopter ride wasn’t quite long enough to flush out the adrenaline pulsing through him that tells him Q is to be protected. 

He spares one last look before peeling away. 

Q is in capable hands, strangers or no, and Bond has more pressing matters to attend.

He catches up with M at the tunnel’s entrance. She looks immaculately put together — rumpled clothes notwithstanding — eyes hard and mouth drawn into a tight line and once again looking every bit the head of MI6 that she is. 

Tanner, already at her side from the instant they arrived, looks very much the same, grim faced and speaking in hushed tones as he leads them confidently down one winding hallway after another.

“How’s our rat problem?” Bond asks. 

Tanner reaches into his pocket, pulling out a phone and waving it wordlessly in Bond’s direction until he grabs it.

“Taken care of. Q’s program did most of the work for us, really. Two in Q-branch and another in Accounting,” he supplies as Bond flicks his way through names and faces of people who look only vaguely familiar. “Just the three.” 

“Four,” Bond corrects.

Eve Moneypenny stares up at him from the screen.