Kudos are king and own all. Starting angsty but would imagine it may not end like that!

Ruth could see more clearly than she had for a very long time. And yet.

Cyprus was a lifetime ago. Another lifetime that happened to another person. George was a sweet man, whom she was never in love with. Nico she had treasured. They were gone, memories only.

She was fine, well, fine if fine was flat, empty and muted.

Until now. Now the void kept been overwhelmed with feeling. As she pumped bullets into the Frenchman's chest, she felt; as she cried over Lucas's death and Harry's survival, she felt; as she was told by Beth that Harry had given up Albany for her, she felt; and that day in the churchyard, as he had said the words she had so often wanted to hear in the past and so least expected in the present, she had felt; felt so much, before she had stamped down hard on her own heart.

She had tried to pick her relationship with Harry apart, had tried, as she always had, out of habit, to analyse the bones out of it, but what Lucas had said never really left her head. She loved him and it was no more complicated than that, even if she tried not to, even if she felt she didn't deserve to, it was just the way it was. So why struggle against it. Why had she ever struggled against it? It was so simple that it seemed everyone could see it bar her. So simple. And yet.

And yet.

There was Albany.

Harry ended the call from the HS and stood looking at the skyline. He felt flat, empty, muted. He had lost Lucas, the respect of his team and even his job, in all probability. He wondered if he could add Ruth to that list, could he really say he'd lost her when he was not sure he'd ever had her to lose in the first place. She looked at him now with unforgiving eyes. She had acknowledged he loved her but yet judged that love not commendable but wrong. She was alive at the cost of so, so many others, the mathematics didn't add up. Ruth didn't like things not to add up.

Harry rested his head in his hands and closed his eyes. He had wanted to tell them for two days now that Albany was a fake but he was under strict instruction that though it was gone, the lie was to be maintained.

She stood by the door to the roof and looked at the back of the hunched figure by the rail. He didn't move. She turned away back into the warmth.