So who screamed her head off in frustration when her internet conked out two days before series 8 starting? Yeah, that's right.
Arghhhhhhhh!
Well, anyways. My other fics are all kind of 'on pause' as I consider where to go with them after the whole 'Ruth returnageness'. Meanwhile, enjoy this mini offering…
Ruth watched as the people passed.
She watched because she had nothing to say – it had been Harry who had suggested this break from the grid, not her. As it happened, she actually thought she had some clue as to what he wanted to talk about, but she sure as hell wasn't going to start the ball rolling; that was his job.
Harry, on the other hand, evidently had other plans, and as Ruth waited – and watched – it became clear that he had no intention of commencing the discussion. In fact, it didn't seem that he was interested in doing anything significant at all; just looking at her.
So she watched; and he watched her watch; and surreptitiously, she watched him watch her watch.
Finally, he spoke.
"There's something I need to ask you, Ruth."
His voice was soft and low as he made the announcement, and at the sound of it, Ruth realised that he could do all the ball-rolling he wanted; she still wasn't ready to have this discussion.
"I would have thought that, during my impressively lengthy absence, London's spook population would have found somewhere else to be discrete. Tom accused me of being a mole on this bench."
Immediately, he spotted exactly what she was doing, but deigned – for now – to play along.
"Accused?" he repeated, that ghostly smile he reserved just for her playing about his lips.
She grinned back at him, elegantly.
"Not without…some justification, I must admit."
Harry's smile stayed where it was – he could not pretend to be in possession of the ability to rise above gladness. Gladness that they had regained much of their old ease again; albeit their own unique brand of highly awkward ease.
"Danny asked me to discipline Adam on this bench. Went behind his back and came to me, the boss."
"He must have been really worried to stoop to such an action," noted Ruth dutifully. Before adding, "It's not as though you'd do anything of the sort, of course – asking me to help you betray Tom Quinn, for instance."
Harry had to laugh at that.
"So, to conclude, we're all terrible people."
Ruth nodded in agreement as she continued on his thread.
"And to make ourselves feel better, we pick an anonymous little part of the city – like this bench – and call it our own, and say 'look at us; we're terrible people, but aren't we so quaint'."
He laughed again, harder this time.
"Very unforgiving, Miss Evershed."
He said it without thinking, and winced as soon as the address was out of his mouth. To her credit though, she sensed his silent self-reproaches and gallantly quashed any grief that his words might have prompted.
"I'm in an unforgiving mood," she countered enigmatically.
Her smile was acidic, and didn't reach her eyes. He reasoned that now was no worse a time than any other to brave the subject he had truly meant to pursue.
"You were late for work this morning."
Her reply was fluent; "I was waiting for a call from Nico."
"You're lying."
She saw no little admiration in his eyes, but it was – as ever – dwarfed by that something else she was still terrified to identify. That something else that always softened his eyes when it was her he was regarding.
"Couldn't you have let me have it?" she asked, with a slight, almost defiant, smile.
"No," came the decisive reply. "Because we have to talk about this."
"Talk about what?" Now she was just being petulant.
She wasn't going to get away with that, and his voice was cold as he countered.
"Talk about whether working at Section D is really what you want. Whether it's really appropriate."
His words cut her quickly and completely, and for a moment she was drowning in ice-water. But as her head span around, his eyes met hers, and she knew. He could speak as ferociously he wanted – he'd never really abandon her.
Right now, he was looking her in a way that made her stomach flip over; in a way that said that, at this very moment, he cared about nothing but this conversation. Nothing but her.
"Because I was late?"
"Because you're never late. And you haven't been the same since Jo…"
"I was late, because I didn't want to come in at all."
They both betrayed a little shock at that utterance; even she hadn't been expecting it to come out of her mouth. In fact, she had just been forming a response to the effect that she should be allowed to be affected by her friend's death, didn't he think, and could he please keep his nose out of her business, and out of her grief?
But she had forgotten the healing properties of confiding in someone she really trusted. And confiding in him had always been best of all.
She continued.
"I gave up everything for this service. Then I lost everything I'd gained afterwards. And then I lost Jo. That's what I was thinking this morning. Why the hell should I?"
Harry nodded.
"Do you want to know something, Ruth?"
"Why not?"
Her voice was a little cold, but he carried on nevertheless.
"That's exactly how I felt when you left. Why the hell should I? Why the hell should I give even more to the service that took her from me?"
"But evidently you did, Sir Harry."
"Yes, I did." He took a deep, shuddering breath and let his eyes lock onto hers. He was not going to be perturbed by her coldness. He recognised it as the old fear. "Because almost as soon as the thought came to me, I was mortified. You had sacrificed everything so that I could carry on leading the team, and there I was; thinking about what I had lost."
She tore her eyes away nervously, and went back to watching as she spoke.
"And that's what I ended up remembering, this morning. Jo had worked so hard to get me back on the grid – staying there was the only was I had of paying tribute."
Harry sighed.
"That's what Jo said when Adam died."
"So we're all terrible people, but we all think exactly the same. All ridiculously bloody self-sacrificing." She was rolling her eyes a little, spitting the words.
"Some people," pointed out Harry gently, "Would call it heroism."
Ruth snorted.
"Well some people haven't been there and seen it. Clearly."
"Clearly."
There was a brief pause. Technically, the discussion was over – she was staying, she was okay. But there was so much more waiting to be said, and it had gotten to the point where it simply wouldn't stay put. It was going to spill from their lips, one way or another.
"Was she the only reason you came back?"
She turned to face him, a warning look in her eyes.
"I don't know what you mean," she said carefully.
He was tired of staying on the safe side.
"You know what I mean, Ruth."
They held one another's gaze for a long while.
"Do you remember," she said finally, "When we laughed at Danny? When the removal men scuffed his floor."
He nodded; that knowing smile resurfacing. She took it as her cue to carry on talking. Or perhaps she didn't – perhaps she simply had no intention of stopping.
"And when Angela held us hostage that night? And in the corridor…?"
He nodded more emphatically here.
"And after Colin's funeral – when you drove me home, and made me tea while I cried?"
Another nod.
"All the people connected to those memories, Harry, all of them – they're gone. Danny's dead, Sam's gone, Fiona's dead, Jo's dead, Zaf's dead, Adam's dead, Colin's dead, Malcolm's gone."
Even he reeled as he listened to the list – he'd never recited it like that. And all the other's not included; Tom gone, Zoe gone, Ben dead, and poor, poor Helen…
He silenced his mind, sensing that Ruth wasn't done.
"All gone. Not least, me and you." She clenched her hands tightly as she arrived at her point. "That me and you, anyway. 'Us' is as dead as all those wonderful friends."
And then she stood up and walked away.
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This isn't the end. Not this time.
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She had walked about twelve steps when he called her name.
"Ruth!"
She stopped, but for moment, it didn't look as though she was going to turn. Eventually, she did.
He took it as an encouraging sign, and walked swiftly to catch up with her until their faces were almost touching. He was grinning; the wind was pulling tendrils of her hair across his face; their breath warmed one another's mouths.
"As long as you remember it, the past lives alongside the present. I would have been happy whilst you were gone, if I could have forgotten you. But I couldn't, and I was bloody miserable."
"Harry –"
"No. Listen to me on this one – as long as I can remember how brave every one of those people proved themselves to be, again and again, they'll still be there. And as long as I can remember how it felt to sit in my office and desperately resist the urge to put my handkerchief in my mouth as I watched you wrestle with your desk lamp, 'us' will never be dead."
She regarded him for a moment or two, her expression impossible to read.
And then, finally, "Handkerchief in the mouth? Seriously, Harry – has anyone outside of an Enid Blyton novel ever actually considered doing that?"
They walked back to work, shoulder to shoulder, fingers never quite touching.