007 Fest AU Prompt Table: Groundhog Day AU
Bond never expected to end up repeating time. And the day that M died was probably the day he least wanted to repeat.
The first time it repeats, he thinks he got a concussion and is in Medical.
The third time, he debates telling M, but he knows she’ll think he’s utterly lost his mind.
By the sixth time, he didn’t think he had any tears left to cry. He has tried several different things, but he can’t seem to figure out exactly how M is getting mortally wounded.
Until the seventh time through. That’s always been his lucky number, right? 7? This time he stayed closer to M and was able to see which guy got through and took a shot at her before the trap took him out. Bond still fights his way through everything only to reach the church and cradle M while she dies. But now, while the tears pour hot and wet down his face, he’s thinking. Planning. Unless he’s dead and trapped in purgatory for eternity, saving M’s life has to be the way to break this cycle. It has to be.
He hasn’t just been fighting randomly. Bond has been paying attention to attack patterns and actions. He knows where many of the enemies will be. But even with this knowledge, cycle 8 fails. So do attempts 9-12.
But he won’t give up. He’s MI6′s most stubborn agent. He doesn’t give up. He promised he would bring M back to London, and he bloody will.
Try 13 does it. Just barely. He’s injured a bit more seriously than other times, particularly from a nasty head wound that has half his face covered in blood, but he and M and Kincade are all alive. Silva is dead.
They limp back to the house, but Skyfall is in shambles. Kincade leads Bond and M to his groundskeeper’s cottage, and the three of them clean up in silence. Even M is quiet, not berating Bond for the injuries he’s sustained. The agent is grateful for that too. He swears he can feel echoes of the pain from the previous attempts to protect M. All the wounds, the blood, the bone deep chill from swimming in the lake.
Bond doesn’t want to sleep. The part of him that isn’t sure whats happening or why is too afraid of his actions not being enough. Thankfully Kincade has alcohol, and they all drink scotch in silence while they watch the sun rise. And the new day begins. He’s not back in the Skyfall mansion. M is alive. Yes the Aston Martin is rather busted, but Kincade has offered to lend a car for them to take back.
The drive is also mostly silent again, until M softly thanks Bond for saving her life. That he had done incredibly well against odds that rather should’ve worked against them. He nods and keeps his eyes on the road. He doesn’t want to admit that it took him multiple tries to save her, multiple times of her dying in his arms before he was able to successfully get them out. He’s still not sure everything that happened was real.
Eventually, long after he and Q have gotten together, the nightmares of being trapped in the loop resurface. He talks in his sleep, so he tells Q what he experienced. Q heard too much for him to deny it. To his shock, Q believes him. Because Q was stuck in that day too. Stuck in London after setting the trap, waiting to hear whether Bond and M had survived.