Agent Chetiri

Chapter 15

We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love and never so helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our beloved object or its love.

-Sigmund Freud

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Nothing was alright after her death.

Alexa had assumed that everything would be fine if she was dead. The Agency would leave them alone and everyone she cared for would be safe. However, she found that her emotional state had been pushed to the limit and she felt tired and rather strained, like anything could push her over the edge. When Anthea had brought her back to Mycroft's office after her suicide, she had a panic attack upon realizing how badly Q would take her death.

After that panic had subsided and she had calmed down, she knew had to change her entire identity. Alexa was brought by Anthea to a hair salon on the north end of London. She later walked out of the salon looking like a new woman. Her dark brown coloured hair that stretched past her shoulder blades had been lopped off to be about chin length. She had gotten both her hair and eyebrows dyed to a lovely shade of ash blonde and both were reshaped to a new design that would help disguise her. Alexa would change contact lenses to make her eyes a different colour for her different identities.

Her first alias was Alyssa Cartieré, for which she used a pair of strikingly blue contact lenses. This identity would stay with her for the first two months before she would switch. After they had taken that picture for her licenses and passports, she switched to Natasha Semyonova and put on a pair of glassy green lenses. Alexa had put on a pair of brown lenses and her black glasses for the Veronica Ryder disguise. At the end of the next day, the new passports and licenses had been processed and were delivered to the safe house where Alexa was staying.

It was a basic and rather spartan flat in Islington. It merely had a bed, a television set, necessary items, a bathroom, etc. And with that, she would more or less be alone until after the funeral. Although the concept of being alone was familiar to her, she still missed being able to see Q and her friends and found that she was more irritable if she was on her own. She could snap at anything and everything, given that it was there.

She tried to cure her irritability by sleeping often but did not come easily for those next few nights. Her dreams were a jumbled mixture of her fears and past experiences. Alexa would always somehow wake up in tears at the thought Q watching her die before his very eyes or at the thought of that night her parents had died. She would then attempt to return to sleep but the dreams did not cease and continued to plague her every time she tried to sleep. It only seemed to get worse and on the bad days, she was forced to take sleeping aids in order to get enough rest for one night.

She laid low for one week until Mycroft informed her that the funeral would be the following day. He would allow her to see him but that would be the extent of their communication. Their contact would undoubtedly be short and sweet but it was all she needed. After that, Mycroft would bring her back to the office, where they would part ways.

Alexa rose from her bed on the morning of her funeral feeling both strained and exhausted. She stumbled through her morning routine, before walking to the kitchen to make coffee. The fresh aroma of the brew seemed to wake her and she ate a tasteless breakfast of bread and butter. After eating, she cleaned the apartment for her departure and took a shower. She then slipped on a pair of knit stockings, boots, and a black dress. She slipped on a pair of calfskin gloves and a black winter coat before donning her red scarf and taking one last look in the mirror.

Alexa looked miserable, to say the least. She had tired blue eyes now and had lost several pounds from losing so much sleep. It seemed that she had also lost that bright aura that defined her and seemed lifeless and lackluster. Alexa merely sighed at her appearance and made her way out the bathroom door.