arm yourself because no one else here will save you

[lastrat]

YOU CAN'T DENY THE PRIZE, IT MAY NEVER FULFILL YOU
IT LONGS TO KILL YOU, ARE YOU WILLING TO DIE?

the coldest blood runs in my veins, you know my name



User Name/Nick: Ari
User DW: zenith
AIM/IM: FallenSun13
E-mail: redrobin133@gmail.com
Other Characters: Tim Drake, Arya Stark, Erik Lensherr, Morgana Pendragon, Natasha Romanoff

Character Name: James Bond
Series: James Bond movies
Age: mid 30s
From When?: Quantum of Solace, just after meeting Leiter in the bar. He wasn't fast enough to avoid the CIA.

Inmate/Warden: Inmate. Bond may fight for the 'good guys' in the end, but he gets his hands very, very bloody, and has very little concern for collateral damage.
Item: --

Abilities/Powers: James is a baseline normal human with terrific training in peak physical condition. He's British Batman

Personality: James Bond is not an easy man to get to know. While on the surface he seems simple, with his cocky attitude, his quiet snark, and his eye for beauty, he is - like most - much more complex. He portrays himself as over-confident, even arrogant, and his ego, at least, is one thing that is the same on every level. Bond attained double-oh status comparatively early in his career, and it did nothing to diminish his already well established sense of self. The humbling moments of Bond's life have often been met with anger - his schoolmates at Eton and Oxford never let him forget where he came from or what he was: unestablished, without family or connections. He is not the sort to be cowed, however; in his youth, James responded with violence. Later, he displayed a stiff upper lip, and cultivated the ability to deliver a polite fuck you in the form of academic brilliance. He took no small amount of joy in seeing those high brought low - and enjoyed it even more so when he was the one orchestrating it. His violent nature has been tempered by MI6; really, it's a wonder he passed his evals at all, given his general unwillingness to let others dig into him. But he wanted to be a spy, and when James Bond wants something, he pursues it.

Though emotionally closed off, James has always had a certain charisma that draws others to him. He is not the sunny, bright center of a party; he is the quiet man smirking on the sidelines. Maybe he can't boast many friends, but that has never bothered Bond: friends, like relationships, are an effort he is largely unwilling to apply himself to. Being alone is easier - perhaps he learned that after his parents' deaths, when he hid himself away in the dark for two days, but he has never questioned it - not until Vesper.

Love has always been a word of abstract meaning for Bond: he loves nice cars, he loves driving fast, he loves fine wines and martinis. He loves England, he loves his work, but people? There is often a sarcastic bite to this word when applied to people, if it ever is; in Casino Royale, he says "love you too, M," when he sits in his Aston Martin for the first time. She can't hear him; no one can. He doesn't really love her, he loves the car. But later, after the card game and the torture, when Vesper has well and truly wormed her way into his heart, he realizes he loves her - and he admits it openly, easily, self-confident even in this. James is a dedicated, loyal man (when he chooses to be), and he was very much prepared to shift his loyalty from M and MI6, to Vesper. He would have left the world he spent his whole life working toward without a thought for her. He would have done anything for her.

But she betrayed him, and that leads us to his utter inability to forgive. Because Bond doesn't trust easily, he doesn't give second chances - and as he has a license to kill, betrayers rarely have the opportunity to win back that trust. Only Matthis manages this - and that, only because he was innocent to start with. James does not trust easily - in fact, he trusts no one now, and thinks it's a good lesson learned. When you're a double-oh, it's better to be unattached, to have no concern for the people who may die around you. James knows very well that you can't save everyone, you can only save yourself if you're strong enough. It's a thought process that has gotten him through more than ten years with MI6, and, he doesn't doubt, will get him through ten more. Mr. White's off hand comment that Vesper would have been used against him hit home, though he never let on; he doesn't like being used. Even by his own people.

Which is why, perhaps, he's considered such a loose canon.

"How much do you know about Bond, Camille, because he's rather a tragic case. His MI6 says he's
difficult to control. Nice way of saying that everything he touches seems to wither and die."

Spoken by an enemy, but no less true, and Bond knows it. James doesn't follow orders to the T, he follows his gut. He's a creature of instinct, not logic, and he is very, very bad at ignoring instinct. That's not to say Bond is stupid by any means - he's very intelligent, and talented at using subterfuge when the occasion calls for it. He can lie and cheat with the best of them - but he can also dispose of bodies and hide the dead in a pinch. And his approach to problems often ends bloody. He is, however, occasionally reckless to the point of stupidity. In Casino Royale, when Bond has fallen prey to Le Chiffre's fake tell and lost all his chips, when it's clear that Vesper won't give him the other five million to buy back into the game, he makes the very, very rash decision to try and kill Le Chiffre instead. Armed only with a steak knife, he would have attacked Le Chiffre - surrounded by armed men - had he not been stopped. It would have been a suicide mission, but it would have been better to die fighting then to fail so spectacularly.

"You two do make a charming couple though. You're both - what's the expression - damaged goods?"

Bond knew Greene barely at all, but Green read him to a T: Vesper's betrayal and death damaged him almost irreparably. Bond may have been wild before, but he'd become a danger - to himself, and those around him. And he didn't care. M - arguably the one person Bond has formed a lasting link with, even if it's almost purely professional - is the one who saw it in him best. Though Bond played it cool and collected, she saw through him.

"You said you weren't motivated by revenge."
"I'm motivated by my duty."
"No. I think you're so blinded by inconsolable rage that you don't care who you hurt."

Inconsolable rage is all that has driven him recently, and for his efforts, both Mathis and Fields - an MI6 agent who was only meant to send him home - died badly. Fields was a terrible casualty, whose death quite affected Bond, even if the obviousness was brief: he was appalled to see her dead, but the expression didn't last. Mathis, however, had a worse fate: he was beaten and used to frame Bond, thrown into the trunk of his car. When police pulled them over and made Bond open the trunk, James used Mathis - the closest thing he's had to a friend in far too long - as a shield. This is incredibly potent, given the cut line from Casino Royale, from Bond to Mathis: "But I've found the only person you want really close to you is one you can use as a shield." In the end, that's just what he does. He sacrifices Mathis so that he and Camille may have a chance.

Mathis doesn't hold it against him, is careful to say that all is forgiven between them; James is faced with a difficult moment, cradling his friend as he dies. He's met Mathis' wife, he knows now who will feel this man's loss most greatly, and he knows that Mathis only left his comfortable retirement because James asked him to. Another death on his conscience, and this one he can't just write off as collateral damage he can't be held responsible for. To make it all the worse, with his last breaths Mathis tells him to do the one thing he absolutely cannot do: forgive Vesper, and forgive himself.

James doesn't cry for Mathis: when his friend is dead, he drops him in a dumpster, and empties his wallet. Camille asks, "Is that how you treat your friends?" Bond doesn't even bat an eye when he points out that Mathis wouldn't have cared. In that, he is logical. It's not Mathis anymore, only a body, and being sentimental is useless.

In case any of this makes James out to be an emotional creature, don't take it too far to heart: in the end, he is still a man of very few words, who is more likely to feign a lack of emotion with a startling ability to convince than to ever let on how he really feels. He tends to come off as cold and unattached, and that's how he prefers it.

Barge Reactions: Bond will take the Barge in stride, to an extent; he will, at first, think it a very shoddy kidnapping job, right up until he gets to the deck. When it settles in that the company line is legitimate, he's going to become rather reckless; death has no meaning here, so why bother trying to assign it one? Most of the other characters on board will be fictitious to him; at first, he'll probably think it's a mental asylum of some kind, or that he's been drugged or something. But Bond's whole life has revolved around being able to roll with a situation and make the best of things. It will phase him, certainly, but he's no fanboy. His whole world is MI6, so he won't have any kind of intimate knowledge of the characters on board - but he will very likely try to accumulate some. Ultimately, he'll just treat others like he treats all targets: people to learn about, and potentially eliminate. Preferably with more emphasis on the former, here.

He also won't take very well to actually being an inmate, but he won't spend all his hours arguing against it. He knows the life he's led and the things he's done; Bond isn't a religious man, but if he was, he sure as hell knows he isn't winding up at the pearly gates. But this isn't hell, or even purgatory, it's a second chance that he doesn't want, not exactly; given his pull point, he'll be extremely anxious to get back and do his job, instead of laze about the ship getting out of shape and more and more frustrated by the expectations on him.

Path to Redemption: James' issues are twofold: first, and probably more easily, he needs to learn to follow orders and be less of a loose canon. His actions have consequences, and he's aware of that - but less so does he care about it. He frequently kills when he doesn't need to, he ignores orders from M outright in order to follow his gut. He's dangerous, and a liability, and the fact that he's good shouldn't allow the rest to be waved off. Yes, he gets results, yes at the end of the day he does his duty - but how many corpses does he leave behind, how many people die just because they got in his way, how many women die just for knowing him? He is good, but he can be better.

Next, and the much deeper issue here: Bond is emotionally closed off. He doesn't trust anyone, now more than ever. He was in love and betrayed, and he cannot forgive that so easily. His reaction to being hurt is to pull back completely - M says, when all is said and done with Vesper, "You don't trust anyone now, do you?" Bond's response is a simple "No." And while that is a useful hang up for a spy, it's a terrible one for a man. M told him he'd learned his lesson, recognizing that she's sacrificed the man to create the spy. But Bond can be both, and that's what he needs to learn. Not how to be trusting, because that would get him killed and put England at risk - but how to let people in, and how to forgive.

History:

-Born in Scotland
-Parents Andrew and Monique Delacroix Bond
-Grew up around Kincaid and a passel of dogs
-Skyfall was dreary even then
-Rambunctious, quiet but active, learned to shoot spent his free time running around the moors and exploring and shit
-Age 11: parents die in mountain climbing accident in Switzerland. Locked himself in the priest's hole for two days; no longer a boy when he emerged
-Attended Eton. Occasionally caned for fighting; kicked out at 14 for having an affair with a maid. She was fired.
-Returned to Scotland to attend Andrew's college. Took up track; running clears his head, calmed him down. Never visited Skyfall.
-Attended Oxford on full NROTC scholarship; he was definitely middle class, that manor was not well taken care for, and his schoolmates were dicks. Continued track
-Climbed the mountain where his parents died. Didn't help his restlessness
-After Oxford, attended Britannia Royal Naval College for nearly a year (49 week program)
-Entered the Royal Navy as a Lieutenant
-Fought in Afghanistan (?)
-After six years in the RN, promoted to Lieutenant-Commander, then Commander; became a Companion Order of St Michael and St George for services rendered; never displays the cross
-Recruited to MI6 (different department first?)
-Spent a few years working his way up, getting further training
-Developed habit of spending several hours a week in various shooting ranges (Scotland Yard FATS once a fortnight)
-Roughly age 30: promoted to 007
-Events of Casino Royale occurred
-Events of Quantum of Solace followed
-Coming to the Barge 3/4 of the way through QoS, after the CIA try to ambush him in the bar.


Bond was born in Scotland, to Andrew and Monique Delacroix Bond. His earliest years were spent happily enough at Skyfall, the family estate. He grew up roaming the moor, exploring the old priest's hole under the manor, learning to shoot a rifle, and living quietly. He was never terribly fond of it, but it was a good life. And it ended when he was eleven. The grounds keeper, Kincaid, was the one to break the news to him: his parents had died in a hiking accident. He was an orphan now. He locked himself in the priest's hole for two days after he'd heard; and when he came out, he was no longer a child.

From there, life took a sharper turn. James was never an open, affectionate boy, but he became much more closed off after the loss of his parents. He attended Eton, where he was caned fairly regularly for fighting; violence settled in him at a young age, and he was often prone to take it out on others with very little concern for the consequences in those days. When he was fifteen, he was expelled from the school - the matter was kept quiet, but many whispered that he'd had some sort of affair with one of the school's maids. After that, he returned to Scotland, to attend his father's college; boarding schools made it easier to forget he was an orphan, though the others rarely let him forget it. Later, when he attended Oxford - on a healthy scholarship, as his family had never been very wealthy and most of his educational allowance was spent on college - his schoolmates never let him forget that he was there on someone else's charity. He hated it.

He hates being beholden, and very rarely allows debts he owes to remain outstanding.

James knew early on what he wanted to do with his life - a government job, one that would send him all over the world and pay him well, one that would afford him all the money he ever needed, and all the drive he needed to keep going. MI6 had a way of taking maladjusted young men and molding them into agents who wouldn't give a second thought to protecting queen and country, after all. James very nearly quit school in favor of joining; only academic requirements from the SIS saw him graduate from Oxford. The same day, instead of celebrating with his class, he took his resume directly to MI6.

From there, his almost illustrious career began quickly: a nine month background check left him prickly and ready to move forward with his life, now that his past had been laid bare. He took to the training with gusto; his days of fighting at Eton were long behind him, but never fully out of reach. Bond climbed the ranks, paid his dues, and eventually was offered 00 status - all he needed was two kills on file. He had zero. James hadn't thought much of it; there were people out there that were too dangerous too live, and if killing them made the homefront safer, then all the better. He'd almost convinced himself, too, right up until the first kill. It was messy, drawn out, hardly the in and out operation he'd been expecting. But did what he had to, and put a bullet in the man's head. It left him unsteadier than he'd ever admit aloud; to the psychologists, he played the game and made certain they would continue to pass him for active duty.

By the time the assignment came for his second kill, he was much more settled. This time he was able to plan it out in advance, played the proper spy. And when he shot the traitor mid sentence, he felt nothing.

From there, the events of Casino Royale occurred; Bond found himself properly in love for perhaps the first real time - and he found himself properly betrayed, to. Though he nearly died to save Vesper, in the end he resolved to hate her; she had played him, and now the bitch was dead. But there was more to the mission - more to Quantum, and he pursued the only lead he had left - the one Vesper left him. Quantum of Solace followed; James comes to the barge from just after his meeting with Felix Leiter; instead of escaping the CIA when they flooded the bar, he was shot and killed.

Sample Journal Entry: [There's been another VIP flood. Bond struggled with the desire to say anything at all, but here he is. The camera is positioned several feet away, and he's perched on the edge of his bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. A chain dangles from his hand as he turns something over between his fingers.

He spent the last three days as Vesper. Floods have always been an investigation for him: discover exactly what it is and how it affects him before he forms an opinion. Given the comments over the network and the information he's already collected, they turned into people they cared for. Deeply.]

Vesper Lynd, [he starts, voice detached as he looks up at the camera.] Was a lying, backstabbing bitch.

[No she wasn't, part of him snarls, but he keeps it buried and hidden.] Worse, she was a coward. She fucking killed herself rather than deal with the consequences.

[He throws the necklace - because that's what it was, Vesper's Algerian love-knot - away from himself, disgusted.] Maybe he'll turn us into our mothers next, and bring Sigmund bloody Freud aboard for diagnoses.

[He gets up, walks to the camera; it's a little easier to see, closer up, that he's more haggard than usual; he tries to keep his face out of sight. There's a muttered curse, and then the feed dies; no replies will come.]

Sample RP: Being shot in the back hurt.

He's been shot before, grazes, mostly, sometimes bad hits, but he's always been able to walk away from it. He's always gotten up and finished the damn job. But today, when he drags himself to his feet after the CIA seem to fill him with bullets, something is wrong. He isn't in the bar any longer, and he's immediately tense. Abducted? he isn't even tied. It's almost amusing.

Except for the setting.

He's back in the hotel in Montenegro, in the suite he shared with Vesper. He doesn't clench his hands. He doesn't glower. It's what they'll expect. Instead, he takes advantage of his unhampered state and explores every inch of the room, pausing at the door to Vesper's bedroom - or rather, where the door should be. He runs his hands over the wall, checking for hollow points. This isn't typical CIA procedure; this isn't typical anything.

Maybe Quantum's got him.

There's no gun, no knife, not even a goddamn letter opener, so James yanks the wire out of a lamp and wraps it around his palm before heading for the door. He listens for a moment, looks for shadows, finally checks the peephole for guards, but there's nothing. Not what he'd expect from Quantum, but it only sets him more on edge. Easing the door open, James peers out int an empty hallways that most certainly was not the one outside his Montenegro suite. Who would have gone through the trouble of recreating the room? Flexing his fingers around the wire, James paused only to rub at his back, which was decidedly not bleeding. It was sore, certainly felt bruised, but he'd been certain he'd been hit, felt the blood before losing consciousness. He'd thought he was dying. Could it have been rubber slugs?

His eyes flicked down the hall again, and he stepped out, walking slowly, acting as if he belonged here - despite the dirt and dust on his face and suit. He barely glanced at the few people he passed in the hall, studying them instead from the corners of his eyes. Not armed, possibly trained. Hard to say. James didn't stop, and no one stopped him. Were they all prisoners here? His jaw set. This wasn't Quantum's MO, this was someone else. All he had to do was find out who, and get out.

Never a simple thing, but given the security, he expected it wouldn't be terribly difficult. Reaching the end of the stairs, he eased the door at the end of the hall open, slowly at first, then pushed wide. His grip on the wire slackened, his lips parted. Ahead of him was - a hologram? A green screen? A fucking hallucination?

He was in space. With nothing, apparently, keeping him from suffocating. It couldn't be real.

Heading for the rail, he gripped it tightly and leaned over, wary of anyone coming up behind him. He stretched out his arm and waved into the ether. No cords, no ripples from a projection, not absolute zero temperatures. It couldn't be real, and yet--

Bond lifted a leg and slammed his foot into the rail in a rare burst of anger. He'd been so close, he knew where Greene was - and now the deal was probably completed, God knows how long he was out, he missed his window. Quantum would get their money, Greene would get away, and it was on him for being too bloody slow.

"Fuck," he snapped at nothing, and now he did ball his hands into fists. Fine; he would find whoever was responsible for this, kill them, get back to Bolivia, and pick up the fucking trail. Again.

Special Notes: Because he's so damn quiet I didn't quite meet the sentence requirement for the first person, so here's so more examples: One, two, and three.