A/N: I have used some dates and information from Harry's Diary but I have taken a bit of creative license in places, including Ruth's date of birth, and I hope you all will forgive those deviations. The title for this fic comes from the Steve Earle song of the same name; though I am aware that apparently Ed Sheeran has also released a song entitled Galway Girl this country girl's heart remains loyal to Steve.


And I ask you, friend, what's a fella to do

Cause her hair was black and her eyes were blue

So I took her hand and I gave her a twirl

And I lost my heart to a Galway girl

-Galway Girl/Steve Earle


14 July 2006

Harry stared out across the Grid, watching his team hard at work, and thinking, not for the first time, how much things had changed across all the many years he'd been sitting behind this desk. From where he sat he had a clear view of Adam, who was in the midst of what appeared to be a rather earnest conversation with his young protégé, Jo Portman. Beyond him, Ros Myers was sitting still as a statue at her desk, her back ramrod straight, her icy animosity palpable, even at this distance. Ros viewed her transfer from Six to Five as nothing less than a personal affront, and she wasn't afraid to show it, constantly flouting her own skills and quietly suggesting that things were done differently on the other side of the river. Harry knew he needed to nip that in the bud; left unchecked her resentment would fester like an open wound, and he knew no good would come of it. Tom Quinn and his exploding conscience sprang to mind; as soon as an agent lost sight of their shared goals, as soon as they began to think about themselves rather than the unit, calamity was never far behind. He might not have trusted Ros Myers, but he needed her onside.

On the other side of the coin there was Zaf Younis, another transfer from Six who had taken to his new position like a duck to water, happily immersing himself in the work and quickly becoming a vital part of the team. As much as Harry might have disapproved of his glib turn of phrase (no other agent in Harry's memory had ever used the word cool quite so much), he certainly approved of the young man's enthusiasm, and even Harry had to admit that Zaf was only cheeky when it suited the moment. Like any good agent, he knew when to be serious, and when to laugh in the face of death.

Beyond the circle of desks that crowded the foreground there was Malcolm, working studiously away behind his bank of monitors in the tech suite. Sure, steady Malcolm, Harry's right hand, the one person he trusted and respected above all others. Harry and Malcolm had worked together for many years now, and they had passed many a night drinking fine scotch and telling sad stories of the death of kings. The kindly twinkle in Malcolm's eye had dimmed of late; he was missing Colin, Harry knew, missing his closest friend, his one kindred spirit on the Grid. For years now Harry had watched the pair of them conspiring together and wondered if there weren't perhaps something more than friendship there; save for one broken engagement twenty years gone Malcolm had never shown any particular interest in the opposite sex. Harry didn't mind, one way or another, and he certainly wasn't about to ask; if it weren't true, Harry thought that raising such suppositions would be crass in the extreme, and if it were, he felt it was not his place to intrude upon Malcolm's private grief. So he gave his friend the space he so clearly desired, and kept his own counsel.

There were others, of course, other field agents, a veritable army of analysts, all of them under Harry's protection, his responsibility, his own little fiefdom deep in the heart of Thames House. Harry ran a tight ship, he always had done, but of late he had watched Zaf teasing Jo, had seen Ros and Adam circling one another like two wary birds of prey, and he found himself recalling the way things used to be, long ago when he was young and convinced of his own invincibility, when the desk that now belonged to Adam had borne a photograph of Harry's two young children. They were young no more, Harry's children; Catherine was twenty-six and desperately trying to save the world, and Graham was twenty-three and desperately trying to kill himself with whatever narcotic he could get his hands on.

Yes, times had changed. Clive, Archie, Amanda, they were all dead and gone. Only Harry remained, though he was not unchanged. Jane had left him, not without cause, Graham refused to speak to him, and Catherine responded to his infrequent emails with all the petulant brevity of a girl nursing a broken heart. And all of it, all of his personal failings and professional losses and private grief had changed him, made him harder, made him suspicious, made him sad. There were days when he thought about retiring, leaving this world behind and settling down in a cottage somewhere by the sea, but those moments of weakness were infrequent. Left to his own devices, Harry knew he would go mad surrounded by such solitude and bucolic splendor. He had several good years left in him, and he was determined to continue the fight, to carry on; he had sacrificed too much to stop now, to walk away simply because he was sad and lonesome and tired of the lies. He served a purpose greater than himself.

So it was that Harry was in rather a pensive mood when the call came in from his counterpart with the Special Detective Unit of the Garda Síochána in Ireland. The man's name was John, and Harry rather liked him, though they had not had much occasion to work together in the past, and traditionally the sound of an Irish accent set Harry's teeth on edge.

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" John asked politely. Harry fought the urge to sigh, choosing instead to lean back in his chair and loosen his tie somewhat. The end of the work day was fast approaching, and he had been rather looking forward to making an early escape, not that there was anything much waiting for him at home. Just an arthritic old dog and an empty house, same as always.

"Not at all. What can I do for you?"

"I've just had a call from a friend of mine in County Down. Mulvaney?"

"I've heard of him," Harry muttered darkly. He was not on particularly good terms with MI-5's local man in Northern Ireland; Mulvaney was pompous and brash and as he labored under the delusion that he was Harry's natural successor he never missed an opportunity to point out that Harry was rather getting on in years, and that perhaps it might be time for him to start thinking about retirement. Privately Harry thought there were easier, less antagonistic ways for the man to find himself a new post back home in London, but he had bigger problems at present than the comically inept machinations of his homesick compatriot.

"He's been chasing his tail for weeks trying to source a stream of money and illegal firearms on his patch. He's convinced they're coming in on my end."

Harry was only mildly interested in Mulvaney's domestic woes, and he failed to see what any of this had to do with him; unluckily for him, John was a born storyteller, and he rather enjoyed leaving his audience – in this case a particularly cross Section Head – in suspense for as long as possible before making the big reveal.

"Mulvaney's people think the guns are coming ashore in Galway."

All of Harry's private musings of a quiet night in vanished the moment that word echoed through his handset. Galway. Galway was another world to him, a lifetime away, a memory of the smell of the sea, of a girl so lovely she put the stars themselves to shame. Harry hadn't thought about Galway - or the girl - in years, but in that moment, tired and trapped behind his desk, he found himself transported through time, back to the man he had been before, young and blinded by love, damning love.

"Galway," he repeated.

"Which of course makes this my problem, as far as Mulvaney's concerned."

And you're telling me this because? Harry wondered.

"There are some factions on my patch who are…sympathetic to the cause of their Northern brothers, and I've got eyes on most of those groups. The only problem is, I've not had so much as a whiff about the guns. Which makes me think whoever is behind this is someone I haven't tapped yet."

"John-"

"There's a woman," John cut him off, warming to his subject now. "She's…uniquely placed to deliver information to us, but she's skittish. She can smell a lie a mile away, and she doesn't trust anyone. Apparently she was involved in some cock up of a Five operation a hundred years ago – her codename was Lolita."

It seemed to Harry that the entire world stuttered to a halt just then; he clutched his desk, a drowning man clinging to a life raft. Ruth, he thought. The codename hadn't been his idea; Jane had told him once how Nabokov himself had been appalled by those who interpreted his novel as a story about love, rather than one of damning obsession. Some of the local washouts who had worked with Harry on the op to capture Patrick Magee thought they were being clever in their choice of name for their young, bright-eyed informant, and the name stuck despite Harry's vehement objections.

She had been buried somewhere deep in the darkest corners of his heart for over twenty years now, that girl with diamonds in her eyes and demons in her heart. He had indulged himself a time or two in thoughts of returning to Galway, of waltzing into that little pub to find her behind the bar, of sweeping her off her feet. Always he had resisted; Ruth was a dream never realized, a tree pulled up by its roots before it ever flowered. He hoped that she had moved on, that she had found some way out of her little corner of Ireland, that she had seen the world and loved with her whole heart and been happier than he could ever make her, and it was that hope that kept him firmly rooted in England.

"I looked into it, Harry, and you were her handler," John said gently, as if Harry had forgotten. He never had; he remembered everything about her. "I managed to get word to her, and she said she would speak to you, and only you."

"This is insane," Harry said hoarsely.

"She's a fixture of the community," John dug in mercilessly. "That pub's been there since the dawn of time, and not a thing happens in the neighborhood she doesn't know about. Her husband – absolute waste of space that he was – was in deep with a bunch of would-be PIRA nutters, and those men still trust her. They still speak to her, and they still use the pub as a meeting place. We need her information, Harry, and you're the only one she'll speak to."

Words failed him, in that moment. A few feeble, half-formed protestations rose to mind, but they faded as quickly as they came. Things were quiet on the Grid, and it might be good to give Adam Carter an opportunity to assume more responsibility; though Harry fully intended to die at his desk he was not unaware of his own mortality, and it was Adam he wanted to replace him, not simpering, ingratiating Mulvaney. This would be an ideal moment to see how Adam handled the pressure of being boss spook. Yet still, Harry could not fight the rising tide of fear that threatened to drown him; things had not gone well for him, in Galway, and the thought of seeing Ruth again was as horrifying as it was intoxicating in its promise. Why was she insisting on speaking to him? Had she thought of him, as he had of her, with fondness, with regret? Did she want to curse him for what he'd done to her, taking her into his bed when she was hardly more than a girl and he was married to someone else?

"Your old legend's still intact. James Harrison, author and world traveller. We'd book you a room in the pub for a week or two. All you have to do is wander around, play the tourist, and find a way to speak to her in private. Once we have the intel, you'll be back on your way to London, no harm done."

There was something of the car salesman in John's voice, something wheedling and slightly desperate. Harry knew the man had to have been at his wit's end to make such a call in the first place. But how should he respond? Should he refuse, claim his team needed him, or should he give in to the churning in his gut, the clamoring in his soul?

What would it be like to see her again, years later, when he was finally unfettered? When he was older and sadder, fatter and balder? The years had not been kind to Harry, he knew; some days he hardly recognized himself. How much she have changed? She was barely twenty-one the last time he saw her, and she'd be in her early forties now. He couldn't imagine it somehow; in his mind she was perpetually young and lovely.

Christ, get ahold of yourself, man, he told himself sternly. Forget the personal. Focus on the issue at hand. He was fighting a losing battle, and he knew it.

"You'll make the travel arrangements?" he asked finally.

"I've already spoken to the DG. We can have you on a flight first thing in the morning."

I must be mad.

"Send me the details."

John thanked him profusely and rang off with promises to email him the information, and Harry sat for a moment in stunned silence, thinking of Ruth, of his own failings, of his own battered heart.

He reached for his phone.

"Adam," he barked. "I need a word."