One I'd Never Switch
It would be the greatest challenge of her life. Ruth knew that going in. Gone was her isolating cubicle. Her boring computer. Her pointless job. It was the safest place for her, staying at GCHQ where nothing ever happened and no one ever noticed her and Ruth could just fade right into the background. She could live perfectly fine like that forever. After all, the thing she wanted most in the world was to just be normal. And wasn't that the most normal thing in the world? To hate your job?
But she couldn't do it anymore. Ruth was suffocating in Cheltenham. She needed to find something interesting and challenging and important or she would just burst. That was the last thing she needed.
And so, against all her better judgment, Ruth Evershed applied for and accepted a secondment to MI-5. Section D Counterterrorism. She worried that the stress of it would be too much, that she'd slip. But that was a risk she would have to take. She might fail spectacularly, but at least she could it meant she could do something spectacular.
The first problem was altogether unexpected and therefore the hardest to account for. She met with Section Head Harry Pearce, and she was rather certain his tie changed color for a minute. It was black and then red. Or was it a trick of the light? Surely she just imagined it. But Harry startled her. She wasn't sure why. He wasn't too terribly tall. He wasn't too terribly handsome. He wasn't too terribly eloquent. But he was just enough of all those things to bowl her over. Something about the sharp warmth of his hazel gaze, the pouting expression of his full lips, the solid bulk of his broad body. Ruth felt all the wind knocked out of her when he first spoke, and she may have blacked out for a moment when he first shook her hand. He frowned slightly and walked away.
And then it was over. The world returned to normal around her. Everything was fine. She scurried to find the files he'd asked for—some small part of her brain had thankfully paid attention—and rushed to find the meeting room.
But oh, then he made a stupid little joke and laughed, a joyful wheezy sound that made her smile without meaning to. And all of those files jumped right out of her hands. She scrambled for them, hopefully making it look as though she'd dropped them and they hadn't left her of her own volition. Damn, she'd need to be more careful!
For Ruth Evershed had been cursed. People claim to be cursed in all sorts of ways that are quite ordinary. Ruth might have said that she was cursed with clumsiness, cursed with cowardice, cursed with clutter. All of those are perfectly regular things and perfectly acceptable to be claimed to be cursed with. But Ruth was well and truly cursed in an altogether different manner. Ruth Evershed was cursed with magic.
Why and how it happened, no one was quite sure. Well, no one living. There were rumors and urban legends and old wives' tales about magic. About those gifted few who possessed inhuman powers. Sorceresses who lived in the bog. Warlocks residing the moors. Witches hiding in condemned warehouses. Kept apart from the real world, hidden from those who might exploit their powers or be doomed by exposure to them.
Ruth was eleven when it happened. She was out on a house call with her father, in Exeter where he was a doctor. A woman whose face Ruth could not recall had accosted them. Her terrible voice was burned in Ruth's memory. This horrific banshee witch had cursed young Ruth, cursed her to misery broken only by true love's kiss. Dr. Evershed tried to protect his little girl, tried to get between her and their assailant. But it was no use. Ruth had lost her father that day, and her curse of misery truly took hold.
As time went on, Ruth's excitements and apprehensions about working in such a stressful job all proved true. Yes, she adored coming to work and staying long hours and finding every nugget of truth she could and working with the team for truly important causes. But yes as well, the stress of it frayed her self-control.
The worst of it first came at the EERIE exercise. At first it was all a bit of silly fun, morbidly imagining what would happen if there was a truck of VX gas in the middle of London. But then they lost power and communication and Tom was nearly at his wits end and Zoe was crying and Malcolm couldn't figure out what was going wrong with his systems. And Ruth began to panic. Because whether or not this was real—and it was starting to feel very real—were the horrible occurrences part of it, or was it Ruth? Had she been the cause of the communications cutting out? Had she somehow given Harry the shakes and filled his mouth with petrified prayers? Would the next disaster be her fault because she simply couldn't keep it together? Tom pulled the trigger on the gun and when it failed to fire, she heaved a sigh of relief. For once that day, she knew exactly what had been her own doing. Though later, just for good measure, Harry's glass of scotch shattered in his hand and the George, spilling everything all over him. It was what he deserved for that filthy trick.
She'd started to get a better handle on things after that. Kept herself more measured, got used to the constant strain of the job.
Until Tom went off the deep end. Until he'd escaped the only way he could. Until Zoe called Ruth and told her Harry had been shot. It wasn't until someone yelled for Malcolm to look at their computer that Ruth realized her crying had made all the electrics flicker.
Harry drove off Oliver Mace, proved Tom's innocence, got control of the Grid once more, and things reverted back to the baseline once again.
Strangely, the next outburst from Ruth's powers wasn't at a time of high stress for the Grid. Not for everyone, anyway. And that made it so much worse. People paid less attention when they themselves were struggling to cope. This time, only Harry and Ruth we're struggling. Harry's fraught relationship with his daughter had him on edge, had him worrying more than usual, more suspicious than usual, more melancholy than usual. And in that, Ruth was reminded of her own father, taken too soon and leaving her with this curse. Being reminded of her father, of the man who had died trying to protect his daughter, and Harry, who would surely do the same in an instant for Catherine, Ruth had even less control than usual. If she had any other job in the world, she would have stayed at home and pretended to be sick just so she could escape. Anything to avoid people's questions. Anything to avoid being of interest. Anything to avoid getting in the way.
"Ruth, come in here a moment, would you?" Harry asked.
She looked up from her station after answering her phone to see him through the window into his office. Her tongue felt stuck to the roof of her mouth, so she just nodded and hung up without a word. Ruth felt like she was floating through a fog as she went towards his office, her whole being so consumed with trying to prevent her emotions from overtaking her, practically vibrating from the effort.
"Are you alright, Ruth?" he asked, looking at her strangely when she entered.
That was just like Harry, to notice her melancholy when he himself was burdened by concerns about his daughter. Before she could get herself to speak a single word, the bulb in the desk on the lamp flickered and went out. Harry turned to look at it, but Ruth recaptured his attention. "I'm fine, Harry. What can I do?"
He looked at her with a small hint of a smile that she didn't quite understand. He regarded her almost…fondly. He'd been doing that a lot lately. Why did he do that? What on earth could have captured his attention, and how could she stop it?
The lightbulb exploded, spraying shards of glass all over Harry's desk. Ruth thought she might vomit.
"Jesus, are you alright? Did any of that get you?" he asked with concern after the small explosion gave them both a start.
"No, no, I'm alright. I'm sorry about your desk, though," she replied. Oh Christ, her voice was shaking.
This time when Harry looked at her, it was with confusion and suspicion. She needed to get out of here!
"What did you need, Harry?" she asked, hoping to hurry this along.
He seemed to remember what he'd called her in for. Right back to business, helping Adam with research on the November Committee. Thank god, somewhere to put her focus that wasn't Harry or her own father. "Ruth, you really don't look quite right. Are you sure you're feeling okay?" he asked again.
Tears pricked her eyes and she forced a smile before turning on her heel and scurrying out of the room.
Thanks to some blessedly merciful force in the universe, Ruth was able to go another few months without another mishap. She really was getting used to the Grid. Things weren't so personal for her anymore and she was getting a lot better at detaching herself from things. But still, there was Harry. Harry whose looks made her feel warm all over. Harry whose voice made her tremble. Harry whose very presence made her mouth feel dry. Harry whose attentions were proving far too difficult to ignore.
Ruth had never felt like this before. She'd resisted romance in the past. The youthful fantasies she had about true love's kiss breaking her curse were quickly dashed by a steady stream of selfish, stupid boyfriends who always started out very sweet and ended up treating her like rubbish. But if she'd never felt anything like this from anyone else, surely Harry was worth giving a chance? Assuming, of course, that his interest in her was even romantic in the slightest. After all, he was the famed Harry Pearce, and she was just bookish, shy Ruth. Not entirely unattractive, she knew, but Harry was known to be something of a lady's man, could get any gorgeous woman he wanted, so what on earth would he want with her?
One day, Harry called her from his mobile and asked her to meet him up on the roof. She rushed to join him, still hating herself for being so drawn to him despite knowing better than to let him get too close. That would only spell disaster, surely.
She approached him up by the railing without a word. His coat blew in the wind which whipped her own hair around her face. They stood side by side, looking out over London. Neither spoke for quite some time.
"You're a very good analyst, Ruth," Harry finally said, breaking the silence.
"Thank you," she replied, looking down at her shoes and blushing slightly. She certainly hadn't expected him to call her up to meet with him privately just to compliment her.
"I'd like to keep you on permanently. And I'd like to expand your role on the team."
"Oh…thank you." Her mind began to race about what that might mean.
Harry continued, "I was also wondering if you'd like to go for a walk. There're other things I'd like to discuss away from Thames House. Maybe by the river? Since it's such a nice day?"
No sooner had the words left his lips when Ruth began to panic and storm clouds covered the blue sky and opened up rain from the heavens. "Maybe another time, Harry," she said as she ran back to the stairwell to escape being soaked in the foul weather she'd created.
Over the course of the next month or so, Ruth started to notice a pattern. Her curse was becoming far too apparent to anyone who might have been paying attention. And Harry was paying attention. He would stand over her shoulder and look at her computer screen, and Ruth's nerves would make it flicker. He would ask her to walk with him when he was on his way to some meeting or other and lights would go out. Once, he was looking particularly tired and upset, and Ruth made the horrible mistake of placing a gentle hand on his arm when they were waiting for the elevator and the whole system shut down for a full ten minutes.
She had allowed herself to go on walks with him. Sit on a bench overlooking the river. And every single time he tried to venture into anything that wasn't strictly work related, it began to rain. Ruth was so annoyed with herself, she wanted to scream.
Because now, she found she didn't want to keep her distance from him. She saw a hint of possibility between them. Yes, he was her boss. Yes, he was terribly frightening and stubborn and gruff. Yes, he was a spook through and through. But he was also soft and gentle and unspeakably kind when it counted. Harry Pearce had a strong constitution and a stronger sense of duty and an even stronger loyalty to those he cared about. And it seemed Ruth could be counted among those. At least she hoped she could.
As much as she tried to deny it, the months of working with Harry had drawn her inexorably close to him. So close and yet still so far. Not once had she managed to allow anything personal to happen between them. She wanted to. She really, really did. Gosh, what would his thick boxer's hands feel like against her skin, how would his pouty lips move on her mouth, how would it be to wake up in the warm comfort of his arms? But that was surely a dream Ruth couldn't manage to make real, that was surely a dream for someone not saddled with the awful curse of erratic and dangerous magic.
The crescendo came one day that hadn't seemed too different from any other. Ruth and Harry were undercover together as a banker and his assistant to keep watch over an oil company headquarters with an Al-Qaeda threat dangling over them. It was all fairly routine. Comms in ears, legends in place, Adam running the tactical team and Malcolm running tech from the Grid.
But suddenly, the AQ threat wasn't so much a threat as it was a reality. Harry and Ruth were in the basement records room snooping about when the thundering boom and resultant fireball consumed the entire building. Harry pushed Ruth to the ground and covered her with his body to keep her from being harmed. Thank god there was a known bomb on the premises or Ruth would have thought that she toppled an entire high-rise from the unexpected feeling of Harry's body on top of hers.
Silence rang out. Dust and rubble surrounded them. The room was still structurally sound but the view of the stairwell made it abundantly clear. They were trapped.
Harry gingerly moved away from Ruth, coughing and helping her up. "Are you alright?" he asked with concern.
"Fine, I think," she replied.
He nodded. "Good. That's good."
The eerie quiet fell between them again. A crackling in her ear told Ruth that the comms weren't completely down.
"Harry? Ruth?"
"Yes, Adam, we're here, we're okay," Harry replied. They both prayed the microphones were still in working order and they could at least have a lifeline to the outside world.
"Thank god. Right, so the bomb went off. Zaf and Jo are rounding up emergency responders and organizing a rescue op. You're in the basement, and the building above you is completely gone, but there's about twenty feet of rubble directly on top of you. We're trying to figure a way to get you out," Adam told them.
Ruth nodded and removed the microphone from the collar of her blouse. Trying to stave off panic, she blurted, "Oh Christ, Harry, I'm so sorry."
Harry removed his own microphone, not wanting to be overheard for whatever was about to happen. "Why are you sorry, Ruth?"
"I just...I can't seem to control myself around you."
"Oh?" A small twinkle appeared in his eye to match the smirk on his lips. He seemed strangely pleased, despite their dire circumstances.
"This is all my fault!" Ruth lamented.
"Ruth, we got caught in a building that got bombed by Al-Qaeda. How is this your fault?"
She knew she'd have to tell him. She'd have to find a way. "I've got...bad luck," she replied lamely.
A knowing expression made its way across his dear face. "Would this have anything to do with the way the lights flicker when I stand close to you or how it always seems to start raining when I try to ask you out on a date?"
"A date?" she squeaked.
"If the rain is any indication, you're going to say no anyway, but I would like the opportunity to get the words out."
Ruth swallowed hard and shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut to keep the tears at bay. "I'm sorry," she whispered.
"There's no need to be sorry. I'm certainly not going to force my company on you. I think you're wonderful, Ruth, but I am your boss and I am perfectly capable of keeping our relationship strictly professional, if that's what you prefer."
She opened her eyes. "No."
"No?" Harry suddenly went from dejected to hopeful in a way that made Ruth's heart beat faster.
"I'm sorry I keep making it rain whenever you try to ask me out. I've tried to hide it better but I suppose I'm not very subtle. I don't want to ruin you like I ruin everything else."
"A little rain doesn't bother me, Ruth," he told her gently.
"It's more than that, Harry. It's a horrible curse, I never know what could happen. Really, I've no right to try to do this job. I'm too much of a risk."
Harry interjected, "You are brilliant at this job and I won't hear anyone say otherwise."
"I should have moved to a cottage in the woods far away from everyone long ago," she said darkly. "Where my powers won't be in anyone's way."
"I really don't think you're all that dangerous, are you? Flickering lights and some odd weather? Witches of fairytales are far more sinister."
"I can do a lot more than lights and a bit of rain," she replied cryptically.
Their earpieces crackled and Adam's voice filled the space. "Harry, Ruth, we can't seem to move most of these rocks without machinery. It'll be a while. We'll try to get water to you when we can."
Harry got his mic and confirmed they'd gotten the message.
Ruth's heart dropped to her stomach. She looked at Harry with fear in her eyes. "What do we do, Harry?"
"We will get out of this, Ruth. And since we're trapped in a collapsed building where we can't get rained on and you can't run away, I think I'll take the time now to ask you if you'd like to have dinner with me when we're able."
She couldn't help but laugh. "Yes, I'd like that."
"You would?"
"Yes. And I'll try my best not to make it rain at dinner. But there's no telling what a cursed witch might get up to," she added ruefully.
"You may feel like you're cursed, but you're quite a blessing to me, Ruth."
The butterflies in her stomach were rather overwhelming. Ruth wasn't quite sure what to say or what to do now. Though they couldn't do anything till they were rescued, till the rubble was shifted and they could get out. There was no telling how long the machines would take to move all that rock. But Ruth had an idea. "I think it's time we get out of here now," she announced.
Harry frowned and reminded her, "You heard Adam."
The smallest hint of a smirk crossed her lips. "And I told you weather and electrical malfunctions aren't all I can do." She squared her shoulders and faced the pile of destroyed concrete piled beside them. "Now please be quiet, I need to concentrate and I can't when you're being charming and attractive."
Despite their somewhat dire circumstances, Harry's whole expression was rather bright. "I'll sit here and be as quiet and unappealing as I can possibly be."
She chuckled and then set to work. All her life, Ruth had tried to deny her powers. She had always believed that if she suppressed them and hid them, maybe she could live a normal life. It was a shame it took her all this time to understand that she wasn't normal at all and wasn't destined to live a normal life. Working for MI-5 wasn't normal and certainly being trapped inside a bombed building with your boss who's asked you out to dinner wasn't normal. Perhaps Ruth didn't want normal after all. And surely the least normal thing about her was her magic. May as well put it to good use.
Ruth took a deep breath and let it out slowly, clearing her mind as best she could and keeping herself centered and calm and focused. She raised her hands, hoping to orchestrate the effect she hoped to achieve. Ruth put all her energy and all her concentration into that big rock on top. She took a sharp breath in and exhaled with purpose. The rock trembled and began to rise.
It was as though she'd broken through a dam with that first bit of movement. Her power flowed through her with more control than she'd ever experienced. Sweat beaded on her brow with the effort of stemming that mighty outpour of magic. But the rocks moved and cleared a hole to the surface.
At last, there was sunlight trickling through the space Ruth had created. She finally let go, releasing her hold and freeing all the tension in her body from her efforts. Her knees buckled and she crumpled.
Harry dashed forward and caught her before she completely collapsed. He sank to the floor slowly, holding her gently. "That was incredible, Ruth," he said in awe.
Ruth could feel his arms around her and his hand stroking her hair. She smiled, unable to do much else. "I didn't know I could do that," she replied meekly.
"You are absolutely brilliant. You and your witchcraft." He leaned in and softly pressed his lips to hers.
She'd expected a short kiss, just the gentle brush of his mouth on hers. After all, she was so exhausted, and emotions were certainly running high. But something happened in that kiss. An electric jolt passed between them and Ruth was flooded with vibrant energy. She reached up and held his cheeks, keeping him anchored against her as their kiss grew deeper. Without really knowing how she knew—and Ruth hated when that happened—Ruth knew that her curse had been broken. She reluctantly pulled away from him before leaning back in for more. "True love's kiss," she murmured, kissing him one final time.
"What was that?" he asked, still holding her tight in his arms.
"My curse could only be broken with true love's kiss. I had a feeling it might be you."
"Did my kiss take away your magic?" he asked.
"That was my curse," she replied.
Harry pouted slightly. "I was just starting to get used to the idea of it."
Ruth laughed. "Well, isn't it better I don't make it rain?"
"I really don't mind the rain," he replied with a slight shrug. "And with all this horrible dust from the explosion, a bit of rain might help clean the air."
He did have a point, she realized. If she could make it rain, she would. And in that moment, water began dropping down on them from the exposed hole above them. "Oh my god, it's raining!" she exclaimed.
They both stood up. The rainwater cleaned the grime from their faces. "Ruth, did you make it rain?" he asked.
"I think I did! But how? You broke the curse! I felt it!"
"Maybe the magic wasn't your curse. How do you feel otherwise?"
She opened her mouth to say that she felt fine, but closed it again. Because Ruth didn't feel fine. "I feel…free. Like a weight's been lifted off me. I'm not scared."
"So maybe that was your curse." He kissed her once again, just because he could. "Be happy, Ruth."
"I think now I finally can," she realized.
The excavators and rescue squad found the hole Ruth made and started shouting at each other over the sound of the pouring rain to get a ladder down to Harry and Ruth. As they waited, Harry slid his arm around her waist and softly sang into her ear the old Frank Sinatra song in her ear, "It's such an ancient pitch, but one I'd never switch, 'cause there's no nicer witch than you."
She chuckled, feeling giddy from all the adrenaline and everything else, and rested her head against his shoulder.
"I think I may sing that song to you every day."
"I think you should, yes."
Harry gave her one last kiss to seal the promise as the rescue team began to help them climb out and back into the real world.