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Someone once told him that if they were to erase everything from existence except for microbes, - but leaving them perfectly in place, floating in suddenly empty space - they’d end up with a perfect topographical map of the earth, accurate down to the veins on leaves and eyelashes on faces. From one pole to the other; every surface would be detailed. It wasn’t the kind of thought that would usually stick in his mind, theoretical and nonsensical all at once, but it had struck him later; how complete of a body scan could someone make of him using only his scars?
The aftermath of gunshots spiderwebbed across his skin, sometimes crossing over slashes from blades accompanied by the little dots that testified to stitches of varying skill. Shallower wounds still left marks, and he had rough skin all around his wrists (and forearms and biceps and ankles and even a little bit around his neck) to prove it. He reckoned, too, that there were enough pits and pockmarks and the occasional cratered cigar burn to put together a fairly accurate mock-up of the solar system, moons included. Bullet fragments, chips flying off of walls and fences and stairs, and every composition of road across the world rising up to meet him as he tumbled and skidded and fell; they’d all left their mark on him.
There were internal marks as well. Whatever bone density was being stolen by time and spotty calcium intake might very well be outweighed - literally - by the additional calluses his body had formed around all the fractures and breaks collected over the years. When he got up in the mornings, he creaked, and there was hardly any part of his body that he could press his fingers against and not feel the stiff resistance of scar tissue moving uneasily under the skin.
If he ever developed scurvy, he was going to fall apart like a puzzle knocked off a table.
Speaking of wounds both visible and not as well as the potential to fall apart, the psychologists employed by MI6 certainly loved to pick and poke at him like too-curious children obsessed with finding out exactly what it would take to bring some carefully constructed creation crashing down. They were always focused on taking regular measurements of what they considered his weak points, and showed little interest in proactively strengthening and shoring up his mental health. They were invaders, not defenders. Not that Bond was all that eager to sit down with anyone and try to map out the twists and turns in his psyche, but it did make one wonder. And resentful.
To be fair, attitudes like this often got picked up as they rolled downhill, and the woman at the top of this organization was very much the trial by fire type, wanting only agents tough enough to survive and smart enough not to get burned a second time. M didn’t believe in lessons learned simply by listening or recording or observing. She wanted the most important things to be burned in and carved deep, permanently embedded into the mind so that they’d well up during sleep as nightmares for years to come. Education and experience were things every employer looked for in their work force. M wanted more; demanded it, expected it, and created it where it was lacking.
He wondered if that was all he boiled down to, in the end. If all the useful bits of him, the most valuable parts, weren’t anything he was born with or collected willingly, but rather the byproduct of his worst pains.
Scar tissue.