This is the sequel to Breathe Me (or, How Harry and Ruth Learned to Love One Another and Deal With Almost Teenagers). I left Breathe Me off in a place with some finality, because it seemed like the place to end it. Now, this is the place to begin again.
I do not own Spooks in any way, shape, or form. I only own the voices in my head, and they will contest that whole ownership thing.
Chandelier
by ScintillatingTart
October - November 2014
One:
The Dropbox
Malcolm had set up the online dropbox and Adam had given her the username and password. It was a way, simple and effective, to stay in touch with them. She was to access it once a month, download the information, and move on.
The first month, it had been updates on Mace's whereabouts and information on where to go when she needed a new falsified passport.
The second month, it had been orders to break away from the identities that they had given her when she'd started out.
The third month…
Ruth's heart broke.
The third month had been letters from Rose and Daisy, and their new school photos.
The fourth month, she was on the run.
The fifth month, she stopped running, but she didn't access the account, for fear that someone would be able to track it, and thus, her.
The sixth month, she bought a car and settled down enough to take a temporary secretarial job.
The seventh month, she quit the job and held her son in her arms for the first time, marveling at how she and Harry had managed, finally, to get what they'd wanted in spite of everything in the universe conspiring against them.
The eighth month, she accessed the box and downloaded fifteen gigabytes of ramblings from the previous months. Harry's letters, the girls' diaries, photos, scans of newspaper clippings, songs that Harry said were helping him through the absence of her.
The ninth month, she didn't check the box. It was too painful.
When she accessed it again, seventeen months had passed since she'd left England. Seventeen months of anguish, pain, and yet… such joy. Jamie had been born, had grown into a happy baby with his father's eyes, chubby cheeks, and pouty lips, but he was clingy, reticent, taciturn like his mother, always cautious and wary, despite his smile and outward cheerfulness. He was almost a year old, and she'd never been able to bring herself to take his photograph and send it via the dropbox. She didn't want Harry rushing out and doing something stupid, like tracking them down and finding them.
They'd moved from place to place, and she did odd jobs, keeping James on her hip as she went. She never let him go.
And she wasn't stupid enough to stay in one place after using the dropbox. She knew Malcolm hid a trace file in every compressed document he placed in the box. But it was only good for tracking where she was when she picked up the information.
So they moved on, and on…
Jamie looked up at her from the floor of the cheap motel and smiled. "Mama," he said. "Mama, up!"
She disabled the tracker as soon as she'd opened the zip file, and walked over to pick him up. "Oh, my goodness, love, you're getting so big! Soooo big and soooo heavy," Ruth murmured. "Are you mummy's big boy, Jamie?"
He beamed at her and tucked his face shyly into her shoulder.
"We're going to go on a long car ride tomorrow," Ruth said softly. "Would you like that?"
The baby squealed and yawned; it was past his naptime.
Ruth gave him a kiss and set him up on the motel bed, tucking him in with his blanket, his naptime pillow, and his stuffed bear she called Harry. It was only a few minutes before he fell asleep and she began to gather their things up into bags. She wouldn't stay more than an hour.
It wasn't running, exactly.
It was keeping him safe.
That's what she told herself every time they fled like a thief in the night.
This was all to keep them safe.
They finally stopped running.
She took the name Sarah Walker and took a job teaching Classics and Latin at an upscale ex-pat boarding school in New York City, catering to the displaced Brits with money and power. It was simple, it was elegant, and she shared an apartment in Brooklyn with one of her fellow teachers and her sister, a student at Columbia University. Ellen watched Jamie during the day and took all of her classes at night or online. Dannette and Ruth worked during the day and came home to grade papers and play with the baby.
It was simple and elegant in its simplicity.
She stopped thinking about the dropbox, but she never stopped thinking about her family, her old life. She never stopped thinking about Harry Pearce or the love that they shared, so keen, so honed, so sharp like a knife.
She never had any illusions that he would come to find her. The last place she'd accessed the box had been Miami. Since then, she'd been very careful to stay away from surveillance whenever possible. She'd grown out her hair, changed the color of it, and she had been very adroit in keeping the baby weight on instead of trying to lose it. She changed her clothing style and always came up with an excuse to shy away from the camera when it came out to play.
She was protecting herself. She was protecting him. She was protecting their children.
And it left her hollow, dead inside, rotting from the inside out, the sweet taste of despair and loss welling up within her like bile.
She hated herself for being so weak. She hated Oliver Mace for forcing her into this desperate flight for her life. She hated Harry for letting her leave. She hated herself even more for being a coward and not telling Harry about James Henry Pearce, the little boy who would never know his father's love.
She hated herself for crying in the night, smothering her sobs with her pillows so she wouldn't wake the baby or her roommates.
She hated herself for loving him so much.
Three years, five months, and twenty-eight days. Tomorrow would be twenty-nine days. And after that would come thirty and thirty-one. And the hole in her heart would only be that much bigger.
END PART ONE