Agent Chetiri

Chapter 19

Author's Note: This is a new addition, so I hope you like it!

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It hurts to let go .You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you, because you think that your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it's so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it never comes back. You're left so alone that you can't explain.

-Marilyn Monroe

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Q walked quietly through the darkened halls of the MI6 base, his feet padding softly across the concrete floors. He was finally heading home for the night, after a lengthy (and quite honestly, hassling) day of work and wanted nothing more than to eat his dinner, have a cuppa, and sleep. Forget the cuppa; whiskey would be better after all I went through today, he thought to himself. Q shoved his pass at the scanner rather lackadaisically and headed out the door with his hands shoved deep inside of his pockets.

The chill soon crept into his bones and he hurried down the sidewalk, eager to get home. The incident from last night left him unsettled, now that the initial feeling of excitement that came with decrypting Alexa's message had passed. In turn, he was wary of everything that moved around him in the shadows and attempted to confirm what each amorphous shape could be. Upon arriving at Farringdon Station, Q fumbled for his card momentarily before passing it through the scanner. He walked through the gates and headed down the stairs, to wait for the evening train going home. Q took a seat at his usual spot, the faded brown bench, and stared forward to ignore the noise around him. His mind was slipping in and out of different topics and attention to his surroundings soon began to drift away as he pondered on different things he had to worry about at work and at home.

The rustle of paper brought him out of his reverie and he saw the person next to him set down a receipt on their thigh. Q had only glanced for a moment but in the corner of his eye, he caught the words, "Computer Viruses: from Theory to Applications..." at the top of the receipt. His heart beat quicker and it was too much of a coincidence for those same words to appear, at the very place where he had first met her almost a year ago. It had to be only one person- Alexa.

Q stared at the woman next to him, whose face was currently being blocked by the book. He watched as she kept reading casually and he cleared his throat. "Excuse me-" he began, flinching as the words came out of his mouth. They sounded almost too loud (as did everything else) and the words rang in his ears. His body was a mess of emotions and he could not understand what he was feeling or what he was even supposed to feel.

For the first time in his life, Sherrinford Holmes was completely unsure of what to think of his predicament.

Without warning, she snapped the book shut with a simple, smart motion. Alexa set the book down on her lap and looked directly into his eyes. "Hello, Q. It's good to see you," she said, allowing herself to give him a shy, but nonetheless weary smile. Q stared at her without speaking and could only stare at her as she sat in front of him. It was as if he was mentally deciding whether this was real or not and she decided to assuage his current fears.

"Don't worry, I'm really here," she said softly. There was slight hesitation in her voice and her eyes were filled with a myriad of emotions. She looked both afraid and excited at the same time and she looked as if she wanted to say something, but no words escaped her lips after that point. Her eyes met with Q's and for a moment, there was an unspeakable look of pain in his eyes. This was the woman he loved more than anything, whom he had believed to be dead. Instead of being dead, she was sitting before his very eyes in the place where they first met. In all honesty, he felt betrayed by seeing her here today. The pain was later replaced with one of anger and although he attempted to keep his face expressionless, the anger still remained.