Sadly I don't own any of the characters of Spooks – that honour goes to Kudos and the BBC. I just wanted to take them out and play with them a bit.
Set after the end of series eight. Possible spoiler.
A Little Patch of Vermeer
Chapter One
He looked as if someone had scraped all the tiredness in the world together and poured it into a suit.
His face was pale, what little hair he had was askew, and he paused at the top step to take in the grid, all leave cancelled, three people to every station, the bustling and shouting more in keeping with a trading floor than a government office, and he stepped gingerly onto the floor and heading for his office, unnoticed by the throng.
Well almost…
"Harry?"
He quickened his pace without looking back.
"Harry!" She repeated, breaking into a trot.
"Ruth" he barked, not turning his head, "Believe me nothing has changed since our last conversation eight minutes ago in the car!"
He disappeared through a doorway to his left and she followed him in without knocking and stopped in the entrance, arms folded, and watched him shrug off his jacket, pour himself a large whisky, and perch on the edge of his desk.
"There" she said, eyes narrowing "You did it again."
He took a long gulp, savouring the burn before answering.
"Did what?"
"Winced." She said "You're hurt."
"It's nothing."
"Define nothing."
Paying more attention to the contents of his glass than to her, he waved a hand in bland admission
"The blast threw someone onto someone and onto me and I landed on a crash barrier." He drained his glass. "Cracked a couple of ribs. I've had worse."
"Have you been to hospital?"
Easing off his desk he refilled his tumbler. "They're a bit busy right now" he said "apparently a bloody great bomb just went off in central London. Now…" He nodded toward the entrance "I'm expecting a call".
Ruth ignored both his sarcasm and the personal semaphore they'd developed over the years and stayed put, considering her options.
"I'll send for Doctor Shore." She said with practised resignation "He'll give you something for the pain. But if a bone splinter gets into your blood stream, that close to the heart..." she glanced toward his glass "Are you sure you should be drinking that if you're about to take painkillers?"
Harry gave her the kind of look he usually reserved for Home Secretary's' and pointedly took a swig.
"Right." Said Ruth "Of course" and turned on her heels to leave.
He called after her, his voice softer, less barbed. "Ruth?"
"Yes?" she said through clenched teeth.
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"For caring enough to be furious with me" he said, adding hopefully "and being kind enough not to do anything about it."
He even threw in a conciliatory smile. No dice.
"We'll talk about this later Harry, yes?"
He nodded uncertainly as his phone buzzed into life and she left.
"Prime Minister!" he said, and a very long night began.
The trouble with intelligence, Harry reminded himself some hours later, was that you never got praise for the atrocities you prevented merely condemnation for the ones you didn't. Call followed call followed call and as the casualty list grew, so did the universal outrage and the clamour for revenge, and try as he might, passing off the days' events as a partial success, without license to reveal Nightingales plans for, as Ruth put it, 'controlled holocaust' was proving more than a little sticky.
And into the information gap poured the internet, untrammelled by context, unbothered by fact, spewing forth cabalistic conspiracies that added to the chaos he had to deal with.
Pausing he turned off his phone and rubbed his face with both hands. His chest was killing him, he couldn't get comfortable and the liquor was nearly gone. Pouring out the last of it he held the glass aloft.
"Ros."
He hadn't allowed himself to think about her until this moment, knowing that she, above everyone else, would understand. He still had concrete dust on his trousers, dust from her demise and he brushed it off like it was sadness. They were both soldiers, it was what bound them together beyond the usual pseudo familial relationships you find in organisations. She was his Captain not his daughter, brave loyal, utterly determined with just the right amount of contempt for death necessary for a first class field agent. Not that soldiers want to die of course, they don't, but if they do, they want to die 'expensive' – taking as many of the bastards with them as they can, secure in the rightness of the cause.
The realisation that he'd never see her again didn't yet cause him pain, in fact it merely added to the numbness weighing down his better centre. He tried comforting himself with the idea that if there were a Valhalla, then she'd have already hooked up with Adam and was probably arguing with Odin about now, but as his thoughts began to drift to memories of Zaf Jo, Danny and Colin. All of them dead on his watch. Was the world a better place for their absence?
"Plus ça change" he sighed.
"May I?"
Harry jolted back to the present, and swore.
"That would be the ribs then I take it?" said the tall thin man laying his black bag on Harry's desk. "Let me take a look"
Harry closed the blinds and reluctantly unbuttoned his shirt as Doctor Shore snapped on some blue gloves.
"I don't want a rib band" said Harry firmly.
"Then you're in luck, I don't think I have one big enough" said Doctor Shore, reminding Harry why he irritated him so.
"Can we leave the 'you're fat' conversation to my annual medical?" said Harry but Doctor Shore just ignored him, and carried on pressing his stethoscope over his torso monitoring his breathing.
"Actually you're in luck. You may be on the fast track to a heart attack but a thinner man's ribs would've snapped like twigs. Your padding saved you."
He probed his left flank with practised hands, and as Harry cursed, Dr Shore shook his head.
"Still nasty though. Three cracks, one possible break, luckily they're lower ribs but you need an x-ray which I can see you have no intention of getting, so all I can do is give you something for the pain and advise you to go home and rest."
He handed him a small bottle of pills, and Harry shook it.
"Is that all?"
"Two days worth. I shouldn't be giving you anything with the amount you've had to drink. This way, you'll have to see me again."
"Oh good."
Doctor Shore shut his bag signifying the consult was over.
"Expect to feel tired and dizzy, maybe experience the odd headache, but if your breathing becomes worse, or pain concentrates around the heart, dial 999 and tell them to hurry."
"Anything else?"
"Yes." His tone shifted. "I'm sorry about Ros. She was a fine officer."
Harry accepted his commiserations with a nod.
"Thank you."
"Terrible patient, but a fine officer. Can't think where she got it from. Good night Harry."
"Thank you Peter"
He left and Harry turned on his phone. It rang instantly.
"Plus c'est la même chose" he sighed.
By two in the morning Harry's head ached, his chest was agonising and whether he was dizzy from the injury or the cocktail of single malt and painkillers he couldn't say, but in the middle of this mental fog, Harry realised he was talking to the Canadian Ambassador, and had no idea why.
"Mr Ambassador, I'm going to have to get back to you on that one" he said curtailing the conversation, and groaning.
"Oh God…"
"I've called your car, it'll be ready in five minutes" said Ruth from the doorway.
Embarrassed to have been caught off guard, he snapped "I'm sorry?"
"You're no good to anybody in this state. You need to go home."
"Have you been talking to Dr Shore?"
"I don't need to, I can see you from my desk. The pain is the only thing that's keeping you awake."
"I'll go home when I decide to" he said "and not a moment sooner."
He tried leaning back in his chair, but his imperious manner was somewhat ruined by his yelping with pain.
She didn't say anything, merely looked at him, eyebrows raised.
"You're right" he conceded brushing away her offers of help and slowly getting to his feet. "But if I have to go home, then so do you."
"I've got work to do."
"I want you on your game tomorrow, so I'm telling you, go home, now." he said
"You can't just order me to go home"
"I think you'll find I can" he said re-asserting his flagging authority.
"No, I mean you can't because there aren't any cars." She said padding along beside him as he headed for the pods. "And cabs are off limits until they've been re-cleared. I'm booked to leave at four with two people from nights."
"Four?" said Harry. "No, no no, you're coming with me, Mike can drop you off afterwards."
"I'll wait my turn" insisted Ruth.
"No" said Harry "You'll do as you're told."
Hell hath no fury like a smart women being ordered about, and after fixing Harry with a withering look, and under public scrutiny by all and sundry, she stomped over to her desk, gathered her things, and marched through the pods without giving him a second glance.
Harry followed, his pride assailed by the horrible feeling that 'later' was going to happen sooner than he'd hoped.
"Bugger" he said.