#I love Q and want to take him home and cosset him

[feelingfredly]

A Fork in the Road

My crashing the 007 Fest party! :) First 007 fandom post--hopefully not my last.

Headcanon: Q hates plastic cutlery.

“Knock, knock, Quartermaster!” Eve said, rapping a knuckle on the partially open door. “I bring you glad tidings of great joy.” She waved a sack that smelled divine into the small opening.  “And although it isn’t exactly Christmas, I do have Massaman curry from that place you like so much over in Pimlico.”

Q pushed his chair back with an embarrassed groan and ran a tired hand through his hair.  “Oh, I am a right arse. How late am I?” He glanced at his phone and sighed.  He’d meant to just tie up his loose ends and meet Moneypenny to go for fish and chips at the Red Lion… two hours ago.

Q looked at the stack of paperwork occupying the only other chair in his office and grimaced. Having one chair typically ensured only one idiot bothered him at a time.  If he happened to pile things on it regularly, it wasn’t an intentional effort to reduce that number, but it happened to work that way, and who was he to complain?

“Just shove the dinosaur fodder out of the way.  I am so sorry. I meant call you. I was running a little late already, and then 009 did what 009 does and I ended up having to erase half an hour of him rampaging through the streets of Vienna on a stolen motorbike.  Luckily, they haven’t changed their CCTV security codes since the last time I had to scrub them, but by the time I’d finished that R had found a problem with one of the programs we’re supposed to be sending 002 out with Friday, and, as you can see,” he waved an apologetic hand at his computer screen, “down the rabbit-hole I went.”

Eve dropped the bag in front of him before picking up the stack of offending papers and setting them on another pile threatening to topple over on his second desk.

“Don’t let Marianne hear you call these dinosaur fodder,” Moneypenny said, settling into the plastic monstrosity of a chair more gracefully than should have been possible. “Those hard-copies are the only record Accounting has for some of those expenses.  Double-Ohs aren’t exactly on-the-record all the time, you know.”

Q’s stomach rumbled and suddenly he realized he was starving. He pulled the still hot tray out of the bag and took a deep breath.  Heavenly.

“Well, Marianne should join me in my perennial request to the powers-that-be to update the system so that important things like that aren’t single-point-of-failure items anymore.” He started patting his pockets, and when he didn’t find what he was looking for, started searching his desk.  Damn it.  Where did it go?

“I know, I know,” Moneypenny nodded, having heard the argument at least a dozen times before, “but for now, you should smile and nod and let her think her forms in triplicate are as fascinating as her grandchildren.  You’ll get your budgets approved faster.”

Q shifted his second tablet to the side, and then lifted his laptop to peer under it.  Still nothing.

“What are you looking for?” Eve asked, watching him excavate his desk with more energy than she usually saw from him unless a deadline was looming or someone was getting shot at.

Q stopped his search momentarily and looked up a little awkwardly. “Ah, I was looking for my…” There! He saw it, the end of a pen peeking out from behind a tin of tea. “This!  Just this.”

He held up the pen and Moneypenny shook her head and laughed.  “You don’t have to sign for your dinner, darling.  I’m not that fashed that you skipped out on the pub.”

Q held the pen still for a moment and then pulled the cap off.  “It isn’t actually a pen.” He held it up with a flourish and Eve raised an eyebrow in polite enquiry. “It’s actually something I came up with a while ago.  I found it useful to have when I would get stuck here over mealtimes.” Q activated the hidden mechanism and the handle split open to reveal a slim fork, tines expanding to full-size as they cleared the casing.

“A fork?” Moneypenny was laughing again, but Q just nodded.

“Yes.  The tines are made of titanium, see?  It’s lightweight.  Strong.  I thought about making more for the agents, but somehow the thought that one of them would end up stabbing someone in the eye with it kind of ruined the whole thing for me, so I stopped after this one.”

“Q. Darling,” her eyebrow was still cocked, “there’s at least half a dozen plastic forks in that bag.  You didn’t need to go all Doctor Livingstone just to eat your supper.”

Q shifted uneasily in his seat as he pried the lid from the takeaway container.  “I know.  I simply prefer to use something a little more substantial, I suppose.”

He felt the weight of her eyes resting on him and knew she could tell there was something more going on than a disdain for plastic sporks, but she was too polite to ask. Sometimes he hated having a trained observer of human nature as his best friend.  It kept things interesting, but it made personal space difficult to maintain.

To be fair, she’d never used her inside insights against him.  Even his drunken confession of an unrequited something after Bond ran away with Dr. Swann had gone no farther than the floor of his loo where she held his glasses whilst he reacquainted himself with the intricacies of modern plumbing.

“You do love your toys.”

It was true, as far as it went, and he could leave it there.  But maybe letting her know a little of the rest wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe. Oh, well... hell.

“My file doesn’t say much about the time before M, my M, found me. Mostly because there wasn't much before that.”  He focused on the curry in front of him, letting the words fill the space between them. “I guess I was sixteen?  My parents were…  well, let’s just say there’s a reason I don’t like to fly, and I’d been on my own by that time for about a year.  School was boring, and I was grieving and angry, but one does what one must, right?”

He’d heard the rumors—he’d hacked MI5.  He’d been an international criminal.  He’d set his resume as the wallpaper on M’s personal computer.  The truth, though, was much less exciting.  “Life insurance and a healthy estate made things much easier than they could have been, but having no one but a state-appointed guardian leaves a lot to be desired as far as care and keeping goes.” He sighed at looked across the office.  There was no pity on Eve’s face, but her lips might have been a little tighter than usual. “I pushed through my A-levels at fifteen.  Entered Uni at sixteen. That was when someone referred my file to MI6, and they started watching me. Then, two degrees by twenty, and an offer from MI6 by the time I’d gotten halfway through my third. On paper, it was a very successful time.”

He looked up and braced himself f the rest. “But, at the end of every day I was alone in an empty house. Every meal was takeaway. Plastic cutlery and paper plates. Years of it.” He shrugged as if it didn't matter. “If I never use another plastic fork it will be too soon.”

Q held up the pen-fork. “M knew I needed something else or I’d burn out completely.  Either that or turn into a world class villain, but I don’t think she thought I had that much imagination honestly.”  He didn’t say that she changed her mind later, but it was one of his favorite memories.

“So, she offered me a position and I came to Q Branch. Most everyone was older than I was, and there was more than a little suspicion about my qualifications—you know how it is to be the youngest in the room—but I understood them. I spent a lot of time in the labs hanging out with the other rats working on pet projects. Most of them were weapons, but I loved working on the subtle bits.  The cuff links that were Geiger counters.  The miniature cameras. The fork idea impressed Q.” He laughed softly. “The man had a huge soft spot for things that looked like other things, but they had to work. He told me that seeing the effort I put into this—the miniaturization, the durability, the attention to details—was what convinced him I was in the right place, and after that he made sure that I knew it, that I had a place.”

“For the first time I didn’t end my days alone.”  Q looked pointedly at the tin foil tray of curry on his desk but there was no dissatisfaction in it. “The meals may still be takeaway, but the rest…” he looked at Eve and though he flushed at the soft look around her eyes, it made telling her worth it. She understood. He handed her a cup of sweet mango rice and one of the loathsome plastic spoons with a half-smile. “There’s nothing disposable about the rest.”

[cassandraclare]

TLH Q&A (leading up to CLS...)

Hi Cassie! First of all, i'm a great fan of your work, i truly love you and what you're doing. A lot of the people i know are just angry at Alastair, but i want to believe in him, like, i think he's just a kid with bunch of problems, and he's just acting like that because he's just trying to cover up the things that make him sad or angry. Was Alastair always like that? Like, did he make fun of Cordelia, or even now, he cares about her? I'm really curious about the relationship between them.

Thank you so much! Alastair definitely has a bunch of problems--as many of my characters do, but it's the choices they make, and how they act on their sadness or anger, that defines who they are. 

Alastair and Cordelia had a difficult upbringing, and are very different people who express themselves in wildly different ways, which will cause clashes between siblings in the best of situations, and their situation certainly isn't the best. Growing up, their relationship had ups and downs, but it certainly disimproved when Alastair came back changed by his experiences in the Academy. Nevertheless, I've mentioned before that Alastair, a prickly individual, likes only four people in the world. Those four people are his mother, Cordelia, Charles--and one more. He detests everyone else. Both Alastair and their mother Sona are pushing Cordelia to make a good marriage, and even if they're activated by concern for her in dark times, that's a huge concern for a girl in that era, whose whole future could be shaped or shadowed by marriage. 

henrybrnwll said: I really love Henry, and, when reading the part of TFTSA where Matthew says he needs to take care of his father bc Lottie can’t and Charles >won’t<, I started to think about how their relationship might be and my thoughts were ‘not that positive’. And I would be so pissed if Charles dismissed Henry in any way, bc Henry wanted him so much! Could you tell us a little more about the Fairchilds after TID? LOVE YOU AND YOUR BOOKS! I wouldn’t be alive with it wasn’t for you - carol from brazil

Oh, gosh. Thank you, and that means a lot. Shine on, you diamond. Henry and Charles have a complicated but ultimately loving relationship! Henry loves Charles a lot, and is very proud of his political prowess--in the same way he's proud of Charlotte's brilliance--and Henry never thinks Charles neglects him. He's all 'Charles Buford WILL be Consul one day! Charles Buford is interim head of the Paris Institute, I understand not one word of his letters home, it is so impressive.' (Henry calls Charles “Charles Buford" affectionately, though Matthew copies him to tease Charles.) Sometimes Charles is embarrassed by Henry, who is not ideally diplomatic, but well, parents do embarrass their kids sometimes! Charles is a more conventional person than Matthew or Henry, and Shadowhunter society looks down upon Henry's type of intelligence. Which is not to say that Charles looks down on his father: he just doesn't see the extent of Henry's genius, and is thus often puzzled by his behavior. Along with many other Shadowhunters. 

Matthew is also a natural caretaker in a way Charles is not--he does not just look after his father, but as we will see, he tries to cosset Charlotte and feed her when she seems particularly stressed by Clave business. He collected Christopher, who blows up stuff, and small sickly Thomas, when they were little, and as soon as possible he collected James, who has what most Shadowhunters regard as infernally tainted blood. Charles can't really be blamed for not having that instinctive tenderness--it's a rare quality and often not valued in men--and yet Matthew can't understand people not feeling it. So many failures to get on are failures of understanding!

lilyherondale13 said: Hi Cassie! I have a question about Cecily and Gabriel: why they children Alexander was born many years after Christopher? There was no contraception in 1903 we can think they would have a child earlier. Thanks Cassie!!! There actually was contraception in 1903. The first rubber condom was produced in 1855. There are cave paintings of men using makeshift condoms. In ancient Greece, they used goat bladders. Later there were condoms made of sheep innards, which could be tied on with ribbons of various colors — very festive! Throughout history, like everybody else--before Clary Fairchild, our hero for this and many other reasons, came along with the contraception rune--Shadowhunters did various things to try to stave off having kids at inopportune times. Sometimes they worked great, sometimes they worked not at all. Shadowhunter women have to be even more careful than other women, because many Shadowhunter women (definitely Sophie and Cecily, who were both very keen to be Shadowhunters!) are fighters, and fighting demons while pregnant is risky, and in the later stages of pregnancy extremely difficult. At the same time, Shadowhunters often die young, so they have kids early with hope that even if they die, the next generation will carry on their legacy and their fight. (Valentine's Circle all had their kids at a very young age--not that the Circle are role models, but that's the way it often goes down in Shadowhunter society--they have the kids, and then continue the fight. As we see in Born to Endless Night, Alec wanted to have a kid young, and only worried that he wouldn't be able to because of the Clave’s prejudice regarding his sexuality.)

The time in between TID and TLH is a time of relative calm and happiness, which is a first for me: each of the other series were preceded by tumultuous events and fragmented families! In TLH, we see more of how the Shadowhunters as they traditionally work as a society, when not shattered by the events of the Circle, or the aftermath of Sebastian's Dark War. Shadowhunters have kids young, and hope: but also, nobody can keep fighting forever. When a Shadowhunter woman is ready to give up or at least scale back fighting, or when her partner feels ready to give up or scale back on fighting, they often try for a last child, who they can bring up with both parents very around and very involved. And often with Shadowhunters, that child comes. It's seen as a happy, lucky thing for Shadowhunters, a blessing from the Angel--a sign you both lived! For instance, you may have noted Jem's parents had Jem young, and then never any other kids. But if they had survived, I think they definitely would have tried for another kid. It's just that they didn't live. That's a common tragedy for Shadowhunters, and the later-in-life kid is thus a rare and beautiful thing, a sign of an enduring happy ending. Cecily and Gabriel, with Anna and Christopher almost grown and rather splendid, and with London and Idris both in a time of almost unprecedented peace and prosperity, decided to scale back on fighting, and try for a last child. Thus, Alexander! Alexander is much adored and cosseted by both his parents, though with the instinct kids have for trouble, baby Alexander is often to be found toddling after his big brother Christopher and risking having test tubes of bubbling liquid upset on his tiny head. This answer may lead to more questions--are any other ladies we know likely to have a child? It's entirely possible. ;) Remember, we can't trust the family tree...