It’s a story that James loved to tell before The Accident: the story of the Skyfall Stag. He would tell it to his schoolmates, Kincade (even though Kincade had heard it from Andrew, and his father before him), his mother, anyone who would listen, really. One of James’ favorite things to do when Andrew was home from abroad was drag him into the library and tell the story to his father, with only the fire to keep them company.
It wasn’t a simple story. It was long. It was complicated.
It consisted of many borders. Of faith. Of magic. Of ownership. Of power.
Of ice and fire.
It started with a young stag and direwolf running away from the mad dragon. It saw the mad dragon felled by a lion. It saw sand snakes and kraken and bears and horses and men so cold they died but continued to walk among the snow. It ended… well, it never really ended. It continued. Lands came under new lords. Continents drifted. Languages changed. Ancestral names were shortened and bastardized.
Bastardized. James knew he owed his existence to a bastard son of a king, the one bastard to slip through the claws of the young stag’s golden queen.
By the time of The Accident, James knew his family’s story backwards and forwards. However, when he came out of the Priest’s Hole to face the world as an orphan (which was worse than a bastard, he thought, while shivering underneath the moor), that wonderful world stayed down in the depths, only to be remembered by the face that changed the boy into a man.
--
He may not have cared at the time, watching his childhood home glow golden against that dark Scottish moor, but approaching the chapel, seeing his parents’ gravestones, Bond had a flash of memory amidst the chaos Silva was inflicting on the world.
(His world. M’s world. The quiet world of Skyfall.)
Not that it mattered then. Silva had to be neutralized. M needed to be rescued. Balance needed to be restored.
As MI6 agents stormed into the chapel, James doesn’t quite understand why all the important people in his life had to die.
Mother and Father.
Vesper.
M.
Too much loss.
Too many tears for a Double-O.
--
After Silva, James gets on with his life.
He gets himself declared alive, for starters.
He continues to work on elevating his performance scores. He works the soreness out of his shoulder through his own means. He loses the tremor and fires his Walther without hesitation.
He receives his missions from M (calling Mallory M hurts him in a place James isn't ready to explore just yet). He flirts with Eve. He annoys Q.
He seduces whoever needs to be seduced to get to the next point on the map.
He gets the job done. Including the paperwork.
He doesn’t let himself think about the shell of a manor in Scotland with its bronze sentinel still standing guard, and what that house (and stag, and story) meant to a father he hasn’t had for thirty years.
--
Until he does.
--
He receives an email from his family’s lawyers while on assignment in KL, but isn’t able to answer it until the job is done and he’s stowed away safely inside the MI6 safe house in Perth.
(Perth. Of all places.)
The explosion didn’t stop the sale of the estate. If James still wants it, he needs to act fast.
There wasn’t a moment’s hesitation.
It wouldn’t be right to let his stag become the sigil of another family.
--
He doesn’t go up to Scotland, at first. On downtime between missions, he researches and employs historians and restoration contractors. The insurance on the manor is more than enough to cover the cost of its repair (when one has been paying into the same policy for over a century, certain insurance companies don’t want to lose that kind of business, even if it costs them a fortune), and the village down the road welcomes in all the business the construction workers provide.
At first, Kincade dislikes all the commotion, but eventually warms to the company and occasionally sends blurry camera phone photos to James’ unclassified email account, keeping him abreast of the process.
Bond doesn’t respond, but doesn’t delete them, either.
--
Of course, Q notices the increased email traffic.
--
“What is all this, 007?”
Bond looks up from his desk to see Q, raggedy and bespectacled as ever, standing at the threshold of his office.
“What is all what, Q?”
“Your email traffic has increased 200% since the incident with Silva, and that’s saying something, since it’s hard to quantify 200% of zero. Is there anything we should know about?”
Bond’s features remain stoic. “It’s a personal matter.”
“As I can see from the subject headings.”
Q pulls a small tablet from his pocket and taps its screen. “Invoices for lumber. Notices of cubic feet required to complete restoration on stonework. Requests for correspondence on artwork and colour schemes. Poorly spelled attempts at conversation by a Mr. Kincade. ”
Bond stands, a scowl on his face. “Yes. All that. Let it alone, Q.”
The two men stare at each other. Bond knows that Q is familiar with the mission report and is smart enough to put two and two together.
Q is the one to break first. “I… I would just like to remind you, then, that MI6 email accounts are not for personal use. Please find another form of communication for this matter, 007. Viruses can come from the most innocuous places.”
Q leaves, and Bond returns to his paperwork.
And if Bond creates a Gmail account soon after, the effort isn’t lost on Q.