Archive of Our Own ^beta

As they lowered her coffin into the ground, all Bond could think was that the name on the stone looked fake. He had known it for years, but it still felt like an alias. Who had ever used that name? Her husband? He had been dead for a few years now. Bond had never met him. She was M. It felt wrong that she should be disguised as someone else in death. Someone ordinary. She had never been ordinary.

A pang of fear and hesitation had shot through him just before he'd left for the funeral. He had thought he might cry. He wasn't sure how he would have handled that. Bond didn't cry. If he did, he certainly didn't do it in public. He hadn't cried in front of people since his parents died. He had cried when he held Vesper's dead body in his arms. He had thought, then, that he would never cry over a woman again. In a certain sense, that was still true, and would probably remain so. But he had held M's dead body in his arms, too, and he had cried over her. He had cried until Kincade had prised him away, when they had heard the cars come. Kincade had wrapped an arm around his back, and he had felt like he was a little boy again. It was a horrible feeling: the pain, the powerlessness, the rage at the world – and now the rage at her for putting him through that again.

He hadn't cried. His eyes hadn't even turned red. He knew because as the attendants broke up Tanner shook his head at him and said: "You really are a cold-hearted bastard, aren't you? Still, you are here. I suppose that counts for something." Bond wasn't sure it did. Not when the name on the stone was the name of a person Bond had never known. Not when the speeches had been made by politicians and grandchildren.

There would be no ceremony for the M Bond had known.

Part of him had wanted to speak, but even if it had been allowed, what would he have said? He couldn't say: "You all sit here now with your sad faces and your finest black clothes, but I held her in my arms as she bled out." He couldn't say: "I'm the one who heard her last words. She looked up at me and said 'I did get one thing right'." He really couldn't say: "Do you know what? Silva might have been mad as a hatter, but he was right. She was our mother. She was mine. She raised me. She taught me. She scolded me. She believed in me." And under no circumstances whatsoever could he say: "She was a bloody bitch most of the time, but that's why I loved her."

Mallory told him, as they walked out of the graveyard toward a big black car that would drive them back to Vauxhall, about the lines she had quoted at the hearing just before Silva had burst in. Lord Alfred Tennyson's Ulysses:

"Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

"I think she was thinking about you," Mallory said. Bond gave him a look, raising one eyebrow. He waited for an explanation. "You and her," Mallory specified. "The old school. The ones who remember the old ways. The ones who recognise that the old ways were new ways once too, and that at the end of the day mentality matters more than method."

"You've changed your tune," Bond said.

Mallory shrugged, and then winced slightly. He'd forgotten about the shoulder. Plenty of shoulder wounds going around these days, Bond thought, and couldn't help smiling.

"I've remembered a thing or two. And I was never quite the antagonist I think you took me for, double-O-seven. Though I meant what I said in her office, too. She had a soft spot for you. She sent you out into the field ..."

"... 'knowing I wasn't ready, knowing I would likely die', yes, I know. That's what Silva said, too."

Mallory looked none too pleased to be compared to that man.

"He did?" He said, straightening his back as if making ready to defend himself. "Why? To taunt you?"

To his own surprise, Bond found himself smiling at the memory of the game of cat and mouse – or was that rat and rat? – that he and Silva had been playing that day. Somehow it seemed more amusing and less menacing in retrospect.

"To get me on his side, I think," he said, and held up the car door for Mallory. "To get me to think M was a manipulative old bitch." Mallory cringed at the language, and Bond smiled even wider. "As if I didn't know that already."

Mallory made a move to get into the car, but stopped to study Bond.

"Is that really how you feel about her? Even on a day like this?"

Bond went silent, unsure of how to reply. He had thought Mallory understood.

Hesitantly, he said: "Silva called her our mother. Did you never call your mother names, Mallory?"

Bond considered that sentence and the man in front of him, and before Mallory could reply, he said: "No, I suppose you didn't. Well. We aren't all so well behaved."

Mallory smiled. Then his face slowly fell again, and Bond could see the condolences and the questions after his wellbeing coming a mile away. He quickly ducked into the passenger seat before he had to face that. Behind him, Mallory sat down in the back seat and fastened his seat belt. As the car drove out, he cleared his throat. Bond braced himself.

"Well," Mallory said awkwardly, "I don't use that word. But she was a remarkably stubborn old lady, I'll give you that."

Bond laughed. In the rear-view mirror he saw Mallory was smiling wistfully too.

"And she practically was the Service," Mallory added. "I don't envy the person they'll get to try and fill those shoes."

"No, Sir," said Bond. "Neither do I."