A/N – Number eleven, guys. Number eleven. The last four or five of these have all ended up being set in the later series' of the show, so I have decided to write a chronological timeline of all of these and put it on my profile. So, if you want to read them again in order (or if you are new to the series) then feel free to have a look.
Silence, I'm screaming,
But I can't hear a single sound,
I'm feeling uneasy,
And I wait and I wait,
For a change to come around…
The old techie, Malcolm, he must have been a hell of a guy. Tariq could hardly believe his luck in inheriting the systems and the stuff that the old guy left behind. They'd warned him, the teachers who guided him through the fast track, they'd said that he'd most likely be replacing an older techie. He should go in expecting old systems, a certain way of doing things that would occur to no one who had seen a computer since 2001. So he'd gone to Section D expecting the worst, imagining long days spent rebuilding and restructuring before he could even get to work properly.
The teachers had been so wrong.
Malcolm had kept up the latest developments probably even better than half the other people in Tariq's class. He'd made them even better, taken the newest updates and played until Tariq could barely recognise them anymore. It was brilliant.
And the inventory in the tech cupboard. Amazing. Tariq spent his second day headfirst in the cupboard, pulling out boxes and stacking them on the table. The stuff was seriously cool; bugs he had never seen before, trackers, scanners and a little remote control robot who was packed tenderly into a box on the top shelf which was labelled 'Colin's Baby'. Ros had come by late in the morning and Tariq couldn't help himself.
"This guy. What was his name? I need to send him a thank you card."
"Malcolm," she drawled, "His name is Malcolm."
"Well, he's something else."
"He is."
She hadn't said anything rude, not really, but boy oh boy did he get the message. His presence was very far from satisfactory.
Loud and clear, scary lady, loud and clear.
Lucas was much nicer. He bought doughnuts and pastries every single day and he ate them as quickly as if he didn't know if he would ever eat again. He always gave Tariq a couple though. He even started buying double the number of chocolate ones when Tariq told him he liked chocolate the best as well. Lucas smiled too, which seemed to be something that no one else on his new team could do very often.
Harry definitely didn't smile, not that much. At first Tariq thought it was something he had done, like daring to be the one replacing Harry's old friend. He kept out of the way as much as he could – the last thing he wanted was his first real boss deciding he needed swatting like a mosquito.
Then Ruth came, The Ruth, the one Tariq had only heard mentioned in mumbled conversations between Ros and Lucas. Ruth was nice. She didn't patronise him like Ros did sometimes and she also remembered to treat him like an adult, something Lucas forgot to do quite often.
Ruth was his favourite, no doubt about it.
She was also Harry's favourite, although it was pretty obvious that was a whole different ballgame. Harry's moods suddenly made a whole lot more sense. The tension when the two of them were together was unbelievable and Tariq knew it was bad because he was as obtuse as a particularly thick brick wall when it came to People Stuff like that.
"What's the deal with those two?" he finally asked one afternoon, when Harry and Ruth were awkwardly stepping around each other in the kitchen.
"Don't ask," Lucas smirked, glancing up from his computer and eying the kitchen, "Safer not to know."
Ros, who had come over to perch on Lucas' desk, looked up from her file and stared at Tariq with those terrifying eyes.
"It's complicated. We don't talk about it."
"But what hap-"
"A lot of pain and frustration," Ros said sharply, "And that's all any of us need to know, OK? It's private."
It was a pretty rubbish explanation but Tariq turned back to his screens. He'd be damned if he challenged Ros. Maybe he'd get a little more out of Lucas, if he wheedled enough.
Maybe.
X
Something had happened at Ros' funeral.
Two days after the service, Lucas took off for Africa with the new guy Dimitri in tow, and Tariq was left alone with Mum and Dad.
And something had definitely happened. Things felt different. Not better, but definitely different.
The air still felt like static when they were together but Ruth didn't go all tense when Harry was in the same room anymore. They still had long talks where they stared at each other like they were both speaking a different language but Tariq no longer wanted to jump off a bridge to escape them when they did so.
He wondered for a little while if maybe they'd actually done it, maybe they'd finally worked it all out and got together.
It didn't take long to decide they hadn't. Harry was still unhappy, still stalked off to his office to hide whenever he felt like it and Ruth was too careful with him, like he might break.
Maybe they had just aired some dirty washing instead, like Tariq's grandma would have said. Maybe they'd both finally said some of the things they needed to say.
He couldn't ask Lucas what he thought. There was no canny field Spook to tell him what he wanted to hear, no one who could read people better than him.
Sometimes, Tariq wondered why he even cared and he didn't have an answer. Then he realised there'd be something wrong with him if he didn't care. Everyone should be rooting for the good guys, no matter what the story.
X
It was late, so late it was almost morning, and Six-Hours-Ago Tariq had decided it would be a damn good idea to run a maintenance check on one of the servers. Now-Tariq hated Six-Hours-Ago Tariq; he had bad ideas. At the rate the check was going, he might as well be preparing to bed down under his desk. He had a Chinese takeaway planted in front of him, his headphones plugged into his laptop which was playing the newest episode of CSI. The episode was almost finished but he had a whole back catalogue of Buffy to get through. He was about as happy as he could be running the slowest check known to mankind.
The pod doors swished open and he glanced up to see that Harry was finally back from his meeting. He stomped into his office and slammed the door. Ruth, who had been in the kitchen, abandoned her newly made cup of tea on her desk.
"Was that Harry?"
"Yep," Tariq tugged his headphones from his ears, "He looks about as cheesed off as he normally does after a meeting with Six."
Ruth smiled, "You have some lovely turns of phrase, Tariq. I'm not sure Harry has ever been 'cheesed off' in his life."
"You didn't see him just then."
She laughed softly and went back into the kitchen. The kettle clicked on and the microwave fired up. Tariq turned back to his episode. It hadn't been the same since Grissom left but for some reason he kept watching. Maybe that said something about him. He wasn't sure.
Ruth appeared with a steaming bowl of Chinese food and Harry's mug. Tariq had just thought she was planning ahead to lunch the next day when she had ordered two meals. Apparently not. She collected her own mug and went into Harry's office. His head jerked up when she blazed in and then he smiled, tired as he looked. Ruth put the tray down in front of him and sat down, her back to Tariq. He couldn't be sure but he was pretty certain she reached out and briefly touched Harry's hand.
Tariq turned back to his laptop to fire up Buffy. He was smiling like an idiot and he wasn't even sure why.
X
"It's my turn."
Those words obviously meant something to Ruth, because she flinched like she had been shot. Harry disappeared without another word and then Beth and Dimitri ran off to deal with the bomb and Tariq was left alone with Ruth. Normally, he could welcome some time with her.
This wasn't normal.
Harry was going to die.
Tariq said it to himself, once, twice and then he felt fucking furious, furious that Harry had just left and Ruth hadn't stopped him. This could be it. Harry might not be coming back and he just walked away and Ruth let him. They were still pretending, pretending after Harry had given up the file to save her, that they meant nothing to one another.
Damn them.
Tariq couldn't look her in the eye, not when they were waiting for a bomb to explode and not when Harry was going to die and Lucas was going to be the one that killed him.
He busied himself with keeping track of Beth and Dimitri's phones, and he also located Harry's. Lucas hadn't said they couldn't track Harry's phone. Lucas would never know but Tariq needed to. He needed to see.
Ruth paced the meeting room for a little while and then she started to pace on the Grid floor. She was even more helpless than him.
When the call came in that the bomb was a fake, Tariq put Dimitri on conference call. Ruth sank into Tariq's desk chair and didn't say a word, not a single word. First, her shoulders tensed up and her hands clenched into fists. Then she lowered her head just a little and Tariq saw her eyes in the reflection of his screen, darting left and right and left again.
No way out.
When she started to cry, he was almost relieved.
Almost.
He had never seen Ruth have an emotional reaction before. Not a public one anyway. He wished for Beth or Dimitri or Lucas, who would have known what to do. Beth would have led her off to the toilet to do whatever ladies do and Dimitri would have hugged her and Lucas, Before-Lucas, would have said exactly the right thing. Tariq wished for Harry. But Harry – Harry wouldn't have known what to do either, not when it came to Ruth – and that, Tariq realised was everything, the only thing he had ever needed to know about their relationship.
That was the whole damn tragic story.