Work Text:
The contrast of the pink blossoms on the tree against the white of the snow played in her mind, something alive and brilliant being smothered by a thing void of color, beautiful but dead. Alphard reached out and dusted the snow from the blossoms, before crushing them in her hand, staining her palms pink. She wanted to say she was tired, but that wasn't true. She was merely bored. She had nothing to do. It was a poor state for someone in her position to be in.
From inside could hear the rapturous sounds of Cummings accepting his punishment from Liang Qi's air gun. It was a strange relationship those two had, one of disgust and adoration. She wondered if she and Canaan shared the same sort of bizarre ties, and then dismissed the notion. She was tied to Canaan by a name, and a ghost of her own creation.
Looking up into the night sky she could only see one star. She made a noise of disgust and walked back into her part of the large hotel suite. Yes, she thought bitterly, I am the solitary star, the heart of the snake.
"But, no matter what, I was still Canaan to you," she muttered.
She moved towards her computer and looked over the information on the screen. She had everything in place, and even the trap that awaited her could be folded in to fit with what she wanted. She looked over the postcard and her eyes narrowed. It wasn't him. He wasn't back from the dead, though the thought had crossed her mind on more than one occasion. After all, she never stayed to watch him die. She had just left him there, but he remained with her nonetheless.
"If you ever had a personal desire..." She heard Siam's ghost whisper, and slammed her laptop shut.
He never understood what it did to her giving someone else her name. He never understood, and if he did then he was a cruel man. She couldn't share the weight of what that name meant to Siam with someone else. She had to be on her own, and she had thought that being able to harden her heart and take on the extra task of killing Siam and the new Canaan as part of a job would better define her. Truly mark her presence as her own person, a self named woman, an assassin to be feared.
It didn't.
It couldn't.
Even when he finally called her by her new name it wasn't right. He looked at her and saw Canaan. And she knew she could never be free of him, or the love she felt for him. Not romance, she wasn't blindly obsessed, but the love of a student for her teacher, mentor, father figure. He had been her compass, and now there was nothing left to guide her. There was only the chance that she might one day meet his new Canaan in battle once more, and that an end would come to her anger.
There was a knock at her door and she looked up. Cummings stood in the doorway slightly flushed.
"What is it?"
"Your flight," Cummings stated, and cleared his throat a bit, "I wanted to remind you."
"Of course," she replied.
"Are you sure you want to go alone?"
Alphard smiled knowingly and said, "Yes."
The door shut and she, in turn, shut her eyes.
"I shall go alone, as I have always been, into a trap, and then... Maybe then, I'll be free."