Paris at sunset was a beautiful thing to behold. The lights sparkling along the river, the Eiffel Tower just visible in the distance, the sounds of cars and the laughter of people passing by on the street below floating up to where Harry stood, alone and somewhat forlorn, on the balcony of his posh hotel suite.
It was supposed to be a bit of fun, this trip to Paris. Just Harry and a rather agreeable woman he'd met at an embassy gala a few months before. Fun was a more or less foreign concept to Harry, but having worked two straight years without taking a single day of holiday time or sick leave he had been strong-armed into this little break by the Home Secretary, and - not wanting to spend a full fourteen days holed up alone in his too-quiet house - he had elected to make the most of the gift he'd been given. Paris at sunset was a beautiful thing, and there was a beautiful woman in the en suite, and they would soon go down to enjoy a beautiful dinner, and if his heart wasn't really in it, he supposed that didn't matter all that much. He would enjoy Rebecca's company, would wander through the streets of this city he loved nearly - but not quite - as much as London, would venture through museums and pâtisseries and gaze in wonder at all the beautiful things around him, recall the misspent days of his youth and try his very best not to think of her, the one woman he wished to see more than any other, the one he had promised to bring with him to this city one day.
Another promise broken, he thought grimly. It had been two years since he'd last seen her, since he'd looked in her eyes and murmured it's my turn, gone off to face the consequences of his actions, to bear silent witness as John Bateman ended his pitiful life. That day, that horrible day, the day it all came crashing down, the day Ruth had watched him with vengeance in her eyes and told him it was unfair of you to love me, that day had nearly been the end of him. After dealing with the plods and sorting through the mess Bateman had made Harry had returned to the Grid to discover that a provisional leadership had taken over in his place, that Ruth had been sent home, that he was to prepare for life after MI-5. In that moment he had only wanted her, wanted to see her, to hold her, to grasp her hand in his own, to tell her the truth, tell her how Albany did not really work, that he had not traded his humanity for her, only his career. But that very day he'd been placed under surveillance, shuffled off the Grid by a security detail, and when he finally stepped foot within the halls of Thames House once more it was to discover that Ruth had vanished, without a trace. Even Malcolm did not know where she had gone; she learned a few tricks out there, I suppose, Malcolm had told him sadly.
And that had been that. There were no second chances for he and Ruth, no saving grace, no absolution, no resolution, no healing for the festering wound she'd ripped in his chest. She was gone, long gone now, settled in some corner of the world too far for him to reach, and he would have to do his best to soldier on without her. It was hardly the first time, but somehow it hurt all the more now, now that they had come so damnably close to seizing something more for themselves. He knew the taste of her kiss, now, the warmth of her skin beneath his fingertips, the way she sighed his name and cradled him between her thighs, had learned a million secrets about her during the few short months between her return and his disastrous proposal, and those secrets sat heavy as lead in his chest. He had cocked it all up, and she was gone, and there would be no putting things to rights between them. Not now, not after everything.
Stop this, he told himself reflexively, the way he did whenever his thoughts drifted to her. Which, to be fair, was not so very often any more. It was just Paris, the lights and the sounds and the smells, and the memory of a quiet conversation, a hope so long nurtured, so cruelly dashed. He never should have brought Rebecca here, he knew, should have insisted on Venice or Rome or even Madrid, but Paris was closer to home, and Rebecca had suggested it herself, and he was tired of fighting.
To his right he heard the sound of a door opening and closing; whoever was staying in the suite next door to his was stepping out onto their own balcony now. There were a few strategically placed potted plants on the right side of the balcony, shielding him from his neighbor's view, for which he was very grateful. Harry had been too long a spy, and he did not enjoy the sensation of being observed, even by a stranger, even when he was doing something as inconsequential as staring out at the vision of Paris at sunset.
"It's beautiful, Rachel," he heard a man say in a vaguely Northern sort of accent; he sounded like a Yorkshireman, but one who had spent most of his life trying very hard not to sound like one. "I'm glad we're here."
If this Rachel answered him it was in a voice too soft for Harry to hear, and based on the man's next words Harry was fairly certain that the woman had said nothing at all. It wasn't that he was intentionally eavesdropping, it was just that the closeness of the two balconies and the crisp evening air allowed the stranger's voice to carry, and Harry had been too long a spy to ignore any conversation taking place within his hearing, regardless of whether or not it was intended for his ears.
"What's gotten into you?" the man asked, his tone rather haggard. "You've been in a mood since we got here."
"I'm not in a mood," the mysterious Rachel fired back, and Harry felt his whole body tense, his heart start to race, his stomach swooping uncomfortably as the sound of that voice washed over him and alarm bells began to ring in his mind. "I just don't see why we had to come here, that's all."
"Yes, because it's such an imposition to spend a weekend in Paris in the springtime," the man said. Though there was a hint of sarcasm to his words he sounded more concerned, more affectionate than cross, but the sound of his companion's sigh was loud enough now to carry to Harry's ears.
"Paul, really," she said, and he had to close his eyes, because he couldn't quite believe this was real, somehow, didn't understand how this could possibly be happening, because he ached with every fiber of his being to fling aside those damnable plants and reach across the narrow chasm to where Ruth stood, enjoying the sights of Paris at sunset with a man who was not him.
How...how...how...the word rang through his mind like some great booming bell. Of all the gin joints in all the world, and all of that - somehow, though Harry could not say quite how, though it seemed the most impossible thing in the world, though some piece of his mind was beginning to wonder if he were having a stroke or suffering some equally cataclysmic sort of break with reality, it seemed to him that Ruth, his beautiful, passionate, broken Ruth, was standing no more than two meters away from him, spending a few days in the same hotel, in the room right next to his own.
"I just meant," she said, sounding somewhat prickly, "that I don't have to attend this conference tomorrow, and I could be home with the stack of term papers I have to review and my cats and my pajamas, and instead of you've brought me here, and all my work is going to pile up, and -"
"And you will spend a few hours in the Louvre tomorrow like you wanted and then I will take you out and we will have a beautiful evening together and on Sunday you can drag me anywhere in this city you want to go," the man - Paul - told her in a wheedling sort of voice.
Harry, somewhat irrationally, felt a sudden desire to punch the man square on the jaw, but he kept his fist tight by his side and tried to focus on his breathing, tried to calm his racing thoughts. Did he dare call out to her, go racing through his suite to bang upon her door, shout the bloody hotel down until they were face to face and he was at last allowed the opportunity to speak to her, properly, the way he so longed to do?
"Anywhere?" Ruth asked, and dejection and disappointment began to slow the racing of Harry's heart. Her voice was playful and soft, and though it seemed a bit forced he could tell that she felt a certain fondness for this man, this Paul. This was hardly the first time Harry had been reunited with Ruth only to discover that her affections belonged to another man, and given how badly things had gone the last time he was suddenly entirely certain that calling out to her would be the worst possible course of action.
It didn't matter, really, because at that very moment the door behind him slid open, and Rebecca made her appearance.
"Anywhere," Paul told her firmly, a decadent sort of promise to his voice, and so Ruth smiled and tilted her chin so that he might press a kiss to her cheek before slipping back into their suite. She sighed and leaned against the wrought iron railing, looking out at the beauty of Paris at sunset. It wasn't Paul's fault, she supposed; he thought he had done something quite romantic in inviting her here, had never imagined, even for a moment, that this city held such sorrow for her. It wasn't Paul who was supposed to offer her his arm as they walked along the river, wasn't Paul whose eyes were supposed to crinkle as he smiled at her in the wavering candlelight of a romantic dinner, wasn't his body she was supposed to fall asleep wrapped around in the dark of a beautiful night, but it wasn't his fault that she was here with the wrong man, and she could hardly blame him.
It wasn't his fault, after all, that he was not Harry.
Damn him, she thought reflexively, the way she always did when Harry came to mind. Damn him for his impetuous nature, his impulsiveness, his horrible sense of timing, his misplaced nobility. Damn him for being the only man who held any sway over her heart, no matter how much time had passed.
At the time, Ruth had known that leaving was the only sensible option. Harry had thrown away his career, committed treason to save her life, and even if what he had done could be in any way considered justified the truth remained that she could not stay with Five. The whispers would follow her everywhere she went, the sneers, the derision, the deliberate misunderstandings, the people watching her walk past and saying her? All this, for her? They would say that Harry was weak, that she had used him, ensnared him, would never understand that on that terrible day Ruth had wanted to die. And if by some miracle Harry had been reinstated, she wasn't sure she'd ever be able to look him in the eye again, not after the terrible things she'd said to him, the way her fear and her anger had so spectacularly boiled over. The service sent her home that day, and Harry never came to see her, and after a week she packed her things and left, and she never looked back.
Actually, she supposed, that wasn't entirely true. She looked back all the time, whenever she stepped into a crowded lift with a man who wore Harry's cologne, whenever she watched the news and felt her heart constrict at the latest disaster, whenever she passed a broad-shouldered and slightly balding man in the street. She looked back when Paul held her close, and her traitorous mind reminded her how it had felt to fall asleep with Harry's arms wrapped around her instead. But Harry had made his choices, and Ruth had made her own, and there would be no changing course now. Whatever had become of him she could not say, and she knew in her heart that this was for the best.
To her left a row of potted plants shielded her from the view of the balcony next door, but they did little to muffle the sound of voices, and those voices carried to her, now, offered her a welcome distraction from morose thoughts of love and loss. She tilted her head, and listened closely.
"Really, Harry," the woman was saying softly. "You're supposed to be on holiday. Put the phone away and come downstairs. Let's go and have dinner."
At the sound of the name Harry Ruth had sighed, softly, thinking of her Harry, of all the mistakes and all the regrets and all the love and loss between them, but then the Harry next door was speaking, and the breath froze in her lungs.
"It's one call, Rebecca," he was saying. "Why don't you go on down, and I'll join you in a minute."
How...how...how…
The question swirled round and round through Ruth's mind; she reached out and clutched the railing for support, nearly undone by the sound of Harry's - her Harry's - voice coming from no more than two meters away. Harry, the Harry, her Harry, her very heart, the only man who had ever broken her in half, the only one who had ever mended her again, that titan of a man who had encouraged her to greatness, pushed her, challenged her, pressed her, molded her into a new creature, one almost entirely of his own making - damn him - and he was standing just beside her, on a balcony, in Paris, at sunset. It was so far outside the realm of possibility that Ruth was beginning to wonder if perhaps she had gone quite mad.
"When have you ever finished a phone call in a minute?" the woman, Rebecca, asked him, and though Ruth supposed she ought to have felt a bit jealous that he was here with some other woman, that he had spilled his honeyed promises into someone else's ear, she supposed she could not fault him when in the room behind her another man lounged on the bed, scrolling through his emails and waiting for her to join him so that they could go down to dinner together.
"Ten minutes, I promise," Harry said wearily.
It would seem that this was sufficient for his companion for Ruth heard the sounds of her footsteps retreating, heard the opening and the closing of the door, heard Harry's soft sigh of relief.
The tension that coiled within her in that moment was unlike anything Ruth had ever felt before. Her heart pounded in her chest, her blood rushing through her ears so loudly she could no longer hear the hum of the traffic below. Harry was here, alone for the moment, and she was here, alone as well, and with each heartbeat the seconds were ticking inexorably on, the opportunity for action drifting further away. What would he say, she wondered, if she called out to him now? Would he curse her, scorn her, throw himself at her mercy? What could she possibly say to him? How could she ever explain the grief, the sorrow, the devastation he had caused her, and the way the thought of him even now filled her heart with hope despite all the ruin that had come before? Did she dare disturb his quiet getaway?
Maybe it would be best, she thought morosely, if I just let him be.
The decision was taken out of her hands, however, for in that moment Harry spoke.
"Hello, Ruth," he said softly. His voice did not carry far, but then it did not need to; he was hidden behind his own screen of foliage, but perhaps he, like Ruth, was facing it now, wishing he could vanish it with a single thought, wanting to reach through and touch her as she longed to touch him. How he had come to realize she was standing there Ruth could not say, but in that moment she wasn't entirely sure that it mattered.
"Hello, Harry," she answered.