A/N – Set post-season 10. My apologies, beforehand, for being utterly depressing.
Silver
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One still point
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The first time he visits her house, he has to turn away. There are too many little things – her favourite book lying on the sofa, her coat hung on the stand in the hallway – he cannot stand to be in a place so full of her. He stays away for a few days but, inevitably, he returns. The pull of her, painful or not, is too strong to resist and he misses her desperately.
Outside, the world moves on and Ruth's life is all but forgotten. (There are more pressing matters to attend to and she had always moved in small circles). Inside the house, however, everything stays the same. Time seems to halt. Harry comes often and sits at the kitchen table, watching the shadows of the trees moving outside. The setting is so familiar that he almost expects her to come walking back through the door, having just popped out to the shops, or perhaps coming home from the Grid. He grows to like it there, alone with his memories, in her place.
The little signs of her, which hurt at first, are now a comfort. Her lingering scent soothes his tired mind. He can smell her strongest when he first enters and his skin tightens in response. It is not just her perfume, but something he cannot quantify – something else, something Ruth. He takes care not to disturb the air too much. The door must be opened and closed quickly, lest the little he has left of her escapes out, into the world. It cannot last forever, he knows that. The scent of her will fade and her rent is up in one months' time; his little sanctuary here will have to be disbanded.
He knows it has to be. He is not naive, just broken. Missing something, missing someone. Again.
The first time he lost her had not been so terrible. The grief had lasted longer than he had expected and the pain never really faded, but he had acclimatised to it. He had survived, as he always had, by focussing himself inwards, on the work. After all, he was Harry Pearce, the still point in a turning world. He had to keep going. People were depending on it. So he played his role faithfully, through the pain.
This time is different, however. This time, he has no comfort in knowing that she is out there, living her life. He steps into the bloody fray of the Grid, each day, knowing that he will never see her again. He will never see her eyes flash, or hear her voice say his name. She is gone and everything makes him think of her, and thinking of her just makes him ache. He is tired, so exhausted from trying to move on. He wants to stop, to give up and put his life on hold, while he wallows in guilt and self-pity.
Ruth would have laughed that disbelieving little laugh of hers, to hear such thoughts from him. I told you, Harry, we were never meant for that.
She was right, of course. What would he do, if he retired now? Drink, most likely; live out his days with the curtains drawn and only the sound of the television for company. It would not do anyone any good, nor would it make him feel better. It is why he chose to return to work. The Grid is what made Harry Pearce Harry Pearce. If he left, he would not be the same man, and then he would have no business loving Ruth. She fell in love with a man who did not walk away from pain just because it was convenient.
So, he returned to work, back to the grid and its gauntlet of memories – some good, some bad and all painful. He stood and fought as he had always done. And, at the end of the day, when he had done all he could do and disaster was momentarily averted, he returned to his cold, dark house and tried to sleep. And when he could not, he would drive to her place, his sanctuary.
His sanctuary does not feel so comfortable, right now. Harry's cheek rests on the uneven wood of the kitchen table, arms are folded beneath his chin. The day has been an excruciatingly long one and he is so tired that his eyes are dry. Even tortured, heartbroken old spooks need to sleep sometimes, so he forces himself to rise. He stands, with difficulty, and returns his coffee mug to the sink. He will wash it in the morning. It is her mug, brought home from the grid. It was surprising how much of her had still lain around the office, even after her move to the Home Secretary's employ. He had not quite had the heart to touch anything, so they had remained for almost a week after he had returned. Eventually, someone gathered them and put them in a box, in his office. Harry suspected Erin, though she never said anything.
The house is quiet, at night. The tree in the rear garden groans softly, in a slight wind. He places the mug on the counter, beside two empty wine glasses, and turns heading back into the hall. As he passes, he runs one hand along the back of the chair, at the point where her shoulder blades must have rested. The memory caused him momentary pleasure, followed by a dull ache of longing. He had traced those lines, just once or twice, but imagined doing it a thousand times.
He turns and leaves the kitchen for the darkened hall. Faint orange light streams in, from the street lamp across the road, but Harry does not need it to illuminate his progress. He knows the steps of this house off by heart, now. Standing outside the kitchen door, he assesses his options. He should probably leave. It would be healthiest to leave – he was beginning to need her scent around him to sleep at all. He knows it takes five steps to reach the stairs and only four to reach the door, but he is shoeless and has left his coat in the car. Surely it is too cold outside, to venture forth without a coat? The excuse is enough to quell his guilt at staying another night. He turns right and takes the stairs.
Fourteen steps take him to the top landing, then five more along to her door – all of it in darkness. The doorknob squeaks as he turns it, the door opening with a tired wooden sigh. Apart from these whispers, all is quiet. The window to this room overlooks the front of the house, rather than the back. He can no longer hear the tree groaning in the wind outside. In the distance, there is a faint siren, but nothing that disturbs his progress. The room beyond the threshold is small, but well proportioned. The furniture is sensible, but in good taste. A smile twitches his lips as his eyes come to rest upon a pair of boots, thrown haphazardly to the ground. They are the only thing out of place. Ruth had always been a creature of habit and order.
Dropping his jacket to the floor, he pulls off his shoes and leaves them at the door; like a man entering a temple.
There are four steps to her bed and here the scent of her is strongest. It is soft, a mellow scent, mixed with citrus-scented of her skin crème. Taking the corner of the duvet in one hand, he pulls it back. Shirt off, trousers off, socks on because he is too tired to bend down any more and he does not think she would mind, not really. The mattress is soft, the sheets welcoming. He climbs into them and moves around until he has found a comfortable position, with his face pressed into the side of a pillow, where he can still smell her faintly. If he breathes shallowly, he can almost imagine she is there. Almost.
Tears threaten, as they usually do, but do not fall tonight – not because he feels any less, but because he is so tired. As his body warms the sheets and he breaths her in off the duvet, his mind wanders back to downstairs, to the two wine glasses he saw sitting on the counter. He is almost sure that they had been lain out for the two of them. She had asked him to come around one night, before it all happened, to talk. Harry can not quite remember what she wanted to talk about. He had been so busy, at the time, that he had not really asked. Remembering it now caused an echo of hopefulness inside of him. Had she wanted to talk about them?
Theirs had been an almost-relationship, neither sure how to put their love into practice. But, after the Lucas event, they had grown closer. Perhaps, maybe, for once, Ruth had wanted to talk about them.
As much as he wracks his tired brain, he cannot remember. The first part of her has slipped away from him. Tears prick then, his throat hot and tight. He cries because he is well versed in losing people and he knows how it works. First, the anger fades to sadness and the sadness fades to burning loss, and then the worst part happens; the other things begin to fade away, the faces, voices, and memories. Right now, he cannot imagine ever forgetting Ruth's face – her eyes and that gentle smile, with a hint of a tease – but it is inevitable. He had never believed he would forget the others, but, now, he cannot even remember some of their voices. And did Adam have blue eyes or brown? And was Ros shorter or taller than he?
God, he has lost so many...
Still point in the turning world, he may have been, but Harry Pearce was far from the perfect spy. He was old-fashioned, made decisions based on instinct and – underneath his facade of cool – was far too trusting for his own good. He cared deeply for his team and dealt with loss poorly, despite all the practice the service had given him. This closeness to his team had led to many a sleepless night, whiskey glass clutched in hand in the darkness of his office. But, for the last ten years, Ruth had always been beside him, sharing the grief. She always had a word, or a look which could patch him back together.
Now she was gone and he had no idea how to go about grieving without her. She had always been the one to arrange things like memorial services. She had always seen to it that HR picked up dead colleagues belongings and that memos were sent out to the right people. Now it was Harry's turn. He had stumbled along in a daze for the first day or so, not really accomplishing much more than putting one foot on front of the other. He had trailed into work, making it all the way up to the pod doors before Erin turned him gently around. She told him to go home and get some rest, but he had known that was impossible. Instead, he wandered along the river for a little while, before returning to Thames house and taking up residence in his office. After a day or so, (he could not be sure how long he had lived in there, as it was always a pale blue inside the grid and time was being strange, with Ruth gone), a paralegal had turned up at his door and informed him that he was to be executor of her will.
In a letter to him, Ruth had detailed what she had wanted to do with her estate – such that it was. Her modest savings were to go to Nico, a few belongings went to Malcolm and the rest was to be disposed of at his discretion. The lease on her house was paid up until the end of the year, she had noted, so he had plenty of time. It was all so very Ruth – so very polite and tidy – no loose ends. Despite the pain of it all, Harry had tried to do his duty diligently, except for having the house cleared out. He just couldn't face it. Instead, for a small extra fee, he arranged for the house to be left as it was, for an extra two months, just until he got his bearings. The landlord had taken very little cajoling. Money was money, after all. Whether it came from a dead spook or her heartbroken lover/boss was nothing to him.
So Ruth's home remained as it had been, before her death, and Harry found himself unfailingly glad of it. Finally, he had somewhere to go that was not his empty house or the blue-tinted, perpetual horror of the Grid. He visited sparingly at first, because the pain was so fresh. In time, however, the pain of her absence outweighed that of being surrounded by her things. He spent a little time, each week, moving silently through her things, wondering at the woman he had barely known and loved so fully. He organised her belongings, packing the house up room by room – leaving the ones which were too painful until last.
One night, exhausted beyond reason, he fell asleep across her bedspread. The next morning, he woke without having a single nightmare. After that, he began to come more often. The house allowed him to get just enough sleep, just enough comfort, to get through the next day. And those days added up. Since Ruth had died, the team had saved hundreds of lives. His experience had helped them do so. Those lives were her legacy; those and the thousands that they had helped save together.
Harry gives a wry smile into the pillow. The irony was that, some nights, he thinks he would throw a million lives into the wind, just to see her face again.
Rolling over onto one side, he heaves a sigh. His day has been spent rushing back and forwards between different bureaucrats, attempting to locate a young man of Afghan origin, with designs on making London the world's biggest nuclear wasteland. They did find him, in the end, but – another plan foiled, another life needlessly wasted – Harry's body is weary from the stress of it all. There are aches and pains cropping up along his back and shoulders which he has never felt before. Old age, perhaps. He is just another tired old spook, on the long road out. It won't be long until they ask him to leave quietly through the back door, maybe a year or two. He does not relish that day. Once he has left work, coping with her absence will become infinitely more difficult. Somewhere inside, he had always believed that they would leave together – that once they had done everything they could for MI5, they would start again.
Here ends another stolen dream.
His breaths deepen, sleep creeping closer. Without realising it, his eyes have slid closed and his heart rate slowed within his chest. He cannot think anymore. It's been too long a day. Shifting, he pulls the duvet around him, more for her scent than the warmth, and curls his body into a comfortable shape.
This will be the last night he spends in the house – he has decided it, somewhere between thoughts of work and thoughts of her. Whether Ruth had meant it to be or not, this house could only ever provide a temporary sanctuary. Harry is not a man who believes in Gods or fate, but he does believe in forgiveness. She forgave him long ago. Now he must find it in himself. The only way of doing that is to live as she would have expected him to. He cannot hide here anymore. He has to fight on alone now, until it is his turn to die.
They were never really meant for anything more, were they? What would they have done with a cottage in the country – with happiness? Faded away. They were never meant for that. They were Ruth and Harry. Being Ruth and Harry was never easy, but both of them had chosen, long ago, between lives which would be easy and those where they could make a difference. Ruth and Harry were never meant for anything more. He knows it is a lie, but it is a lie she gave him, so he presses his face into her pillow and clings onto it.
Tonight will be his last night here. It is the right decision to leave. The house is almost packed and he would not want to see the magic of this place fade away; her coat at the door to gather dust and her scent to weaken. Every time he sleeps in her bed, it smells a little more of him and a little less of her. The world has already forgotten about Ruth. He does not want to come back, one day, and find that there is nothing left of her here, either. It would be like breaking open the wound all over again. No, best to save himself some pain and leave while this place still felt like home. Sleep would be elusive for a while, but he would manage. After all, he thought, with a sigh, he was Harry Pearce. He always did.
London droned on, muffled through the window pane. A book of Ruth's lay, discarded on the windowsill where she had left it, a bookmark still holding her place. Beneath her sheets, Harry let his body sink into oblivion, and slept.