A/N: I am taking a brief respite from Galway Girl for this 2 (or possibly 3) chapter fic, which is a birthday present for the wonderful Marty Swale. I just wanted to say thank you; your friendship and support means the world to me. You're lovely, inside and out, and I hope you have a fantastic birthday. xoxo (xbox)
On the Grid there was no sense of time and place. Buried as it was deep within the bowels of Thames House, there were no windows to let in the early morning sunshine or the late night glow of the city lights. Terror never slept, and nor did those intrepid souls who dedicated their lives to fighting it. Sunday or Tuesday, noon or midnight, it made no difference; every minute of every day the Grid bustled with life, as agents monitored surveillance feeds and desperately researched threats, came home to roost at the end of successful operations and kitted themselves out to step once more into the breach.
Such complete and utter disregard for the fallible human construct of time made maintaining relationships outside those walls that much harder for the people who called this place home. It was difficult enough, to keep the work secret; the struggle to explain long absences, inconsistent working hours, constant fatigue and, in some cases, scars and screaming nightmares, had been the downfall of many a romantic partnership. The turnover rate in Section D in particular was astronomical; agents entered the service, young and naive and full of boundless energy, and left just a few years later, twitchy and damaged and longing for simple human contact. Thus was the nature of the beast.
There were a few exceptions, as there always are, hardy souls who clung to their duty, no matter the cost. If death did not claim them, if their consciences remained undetonated, if the bitter truth of their lives did not shatter them to pieces, they remained long enough to enter the upper echelons. When their bodies grew too old for proper spying they settled themselves behind desks, carefully plotting and planning and trying their damnedest to keep the young agents under their care alive and well. Harry Pearce was one such a man.
He was a hard man, a rough and tumble youth who had grown into a weary, suspicious man. A soldier at heart, he loved his country, and he loved the people he served with, his brothers-in-arms. Their safety, their survival, was his paramount concern, but he had, on more than one occasion, been forced to make choices that resulted in the loss of life. Each one of those moments, etched on his heart, hardened him further, made him harder and harder to reach. There was no one better equipped to lead Section D than Harry Pearce, no one with more experience, no one with more grace under pressure, no one with a sterner moral code.
While this was not news to anyone within the Security Services, it might have come as a surprise to the pinch-faced men in Saville Row suits with whom he spent most of his time to learn that the true source of that man's unerring moral compass was not his own human heart, but a slight young woman with mousy brown hair and eyes so bright they put the stars themselves to shame.
Her name was Ruth Evershed, and Harry Pearce loved her with every piece of his soul.
She was an unassuming sort of figure; she took up very little space, and spoke in a soft voice. She dressed in dark colors, and had a tendency to fade into the wallpaper, never seeking attention or acclaim. Burdened by an astonishing intellect, her conversation often left her companions in the dust, and she had no personal connections of note. On the surface, she was as different from Harry Pearce as it was possible for a person to be, the feminine foil to his masculine ostentation. Perhaps it was strange, this yearning he felt for her, but a bond had been forged between them through fire and blood and grievous losses beyond counting.
On this particular night, buried beneath a mound of paperwork and nursing a glass of good scotch, Harry Pearce was ruminating on the mystery of Ruth Evershed, and everything she had come to mean to him during the many long years of their acquaintance. Death had haunted their steps, stolen their friends, taken her from him for a time, returned her to him glorious and distant in her grief. She had given up her life for his career, and he had traded his career for her life, and though there was not another soul on earth who knew him as she did, whom he trusted as he trusted her, she remained just out of his reach. He had kissed her once, long ago, in another life, when they were both of them younger, foolish enough to hope that the gentle blossom of love they had nurtured between them would survive the harsh winter of her exile. If he were being perfectly honest with himself, there was nothing he wanted so much as to kiss her again.
But Ruth was not a maiden to be rescued and despoiled and then locked away in a tower for a lifetime of pampering. She was not a timid doe to be tracked through a forest, laid low by an apple and the promise of tenderness. Ruth was a wolf, dressed as a lamb; there was a strength, a ferocity in her that he had never reckoned on, when first he'd brought her onto his team. It had been in his mind, at the time, to think she would not last out the year, that her gentle, quirky nature would quickly be snuffed out by the harshness of life on the Grid. He had been wrong, however; though she was not physically imposing, he had yet to encounter a foe who could outsmart her, had watched in awe as she stubbornly pursued her goals, unrelenting and determined.
The spaniel, Juliet had called her once. Harry had rather taken offense at Juliet likening the lovely Ruth to a dog, but even he had to admit that there was something endearing about her tenacity. And, like some canines, once Ruth sank her teeth into an enemy, she refused to let go until the job was finished.
That dogged, brilliant bitch, Nicholas Blake had called her once. Harry had most certainly taken offense at Blake's use of the word bitch, but as the man was dying anyway, poisoned by Harry's own hand, Harry had not voiced his objection to that particular epithet.
The object of his musings was, at this very moment, seated at her own desk, working diligently away beneath the sterile blue lights of the Grid. Her dark hair fell in a smooth wave, obscuring the side of her face, her fingers flying over the keyboard as she dove through some mind-numbing bit of intelligence, looking for God in the details. Though the night's rota of agents were hard at work all around them, there was something rather special about this sitting together on the Grid in the evening. Their team usually worked during the daylight hours; Harry's job required his attendance at various meetings, and Ruth's intelligence was needed for the morning briefings. They had no more than a passing acquaintance with any of the people who surrounded them now, and there was a certain comfort to be found in that anonymity. No one the Grid at this moment in time knew their story, save for Harry and Ruth themselves. Or at least, they did not know it in its entirety. Harry was not so foolish as to think that the gossip of his personal life had not reached the night shift. Once, that gossip had sent Ruth running for the hills; would it now? he wondered. She was older and wiser, and like him had seen the very worst of human nature, had learned, to her cost, just how fleeting life could be. Perhaps, given a second chance, she would not allow wagging tongues to stop her in pursuit of her heart's desire.
If, indeed, she desired him at all.
It was unfair of you to love me, he heard her voice echoing softly in the darkness of his office.
At the time, when she had spoken those words to him, Harry had felt as stunned as if she'd struck him, flabbergasted and hurt and lost all at once. He had not understood then what he understood now, and to his cost he had allowed that hurt to guide his steps away from her, thinking that she was better off without the burden of his heart.
But he had never given up on her completely, and when the psychiatric reports had come down in the wake of the Albany scandal Harry had used his high level security clearance and his own not inconsiderable personal charm to get his hands on the notes from his Senior Analyst's interview with the in-house shrink. The results had been eye-opening, to say the least; while the report stopped short of using the word suicidal, it noted her chronic battle with depression and declared her to be in the throes of a monster case of survivor's guilt. The psychiatrist had recommended a month's leave, which Ruth had taken while Harry himself had been suspended, and upon her return had given her a clean bill of (mental) health. Clearly, the time away had helped her to put her troubles into perspective, but reading the notes the doctor had taken about Ruth's emotional distress had left Harry himself feeling powerless and weak. He knew, now, that she blamed herself for living when others had not, that when she had delivered that damning invective she had not been blaming him for loving her, but rather had been blaming him for saving her life at all. And how, in God's name, was he supposed to deal with that?
Harry was not particularly experienced at mending broken hearts; he was usually the one doing the breaking. His own hold on happiness was fleeting at best; how could he lift her out of despair? He did not know, and so he did not try, choosing instead to soldier on, maintaining the status quo and hoping that Ruth's holiday had been sufficient to do the dirty work of mending her disastrous emotional state.
As he watched her now, he could not help but wonder if perhaps what Ruth needed, more than anything else, was a shoulder to lean on, a friendly ear, the support of someone who understood what it was, to lose dear friends, to blame oneself for that loss. Perhaps what she needed was a cup of sweet tea, and the comfort of two strong arms to hold her while she slept. If that was the case, Harry felt that he himself was the man best equipped for the job.
Finishing his drink with a single fortifying sip Harry stepped out of his office, moving as nonchalantly as he could while still keeping an eye on Ruth all the while. He was heading straight for the kitchenette at the back of the Grid, bent on firing up the ancient kettle and making her a cup of tea, just the way he knew she liked it. It was in his mind to offer her this olive branch, to sit beside her and speak to her quietly and offer her a lift home, as he had done in the old days, when their relationship was just beginning and she was all crimson blushes and tentative smiles. The moment felt right, as if the universe itself were whispering to him, go to her. And so he set out, moving silently and swiftly across his domain.
Alas, it was not to be; though his heart pounded excitedly in his chest, though his steps were light and unfaltering, he was intercepted by an anxious young agent before he could reach his destination, and by the time he had untangled himself Ruth had packed her things and departed. Harry sighed and returned to his desk, thinking dark thoughts about the futility of fate.
Two months later…
Though there had been many times, across the intervening weeks, when Harry's restraint very nearly failed, when he very nearly dropped his guard and threw his arms around her and pressed his lips to hers in sheer exuberant desperation, he had not once come even close to speaking to her about their personal relationship. This was due in part to the operation at hand, a rather delicate investigation into a coalition of businesses that were suspected of funnelling money to terrorist cells in exchange for continued unrest and continued access to oil fields. Harry only barely understood it, truth be told; he had other things on his mind, and he had been downright befuddled when Dimitri Levendis and Erin Watts had requested that his entire primary team, himself and Ruth included, abscond to a hotel in the country for a weekend of espionage and heavy hors d'oeuvres.
Harry wasn't entirely sure why it was that his presence was necessary - something about Dimitri having already blown his cover, and their needing a figure with gravitas to pose as a potential new recruit for the cabal of blood thirsty capitalists. And when he discovered the location of their weekend getaway, his blood ran cold and his stomach clenched and his eyes of their own accord had sought Ruth out across the table.
Havensworth.
There was no one else at that table, he knew, who could possibly understand what that word meant to Harry and Ruth. What bothered him so was not just the death of a beautiful young patriot - Harry could still Adam's anguished cries echoing in his ears, could still the man kneeling, cradling her lifeless body in his arms. It wasn't just the memory of Ruth staring at him in a darkened corridor, her eyes brimming with desire while she shook her head and tore herself away from him. It wasn't just Ros, spewing invective at him, or Ruth's hand, gentle on his arm. It was all of these things, and more besides; it was the memory of what came after, the horror of Cotterdam, the sensation of having his very heart ripped from his chest and cast away upon the Thames. Those few weeks, between their precious dinner date and the anguish of Ruth's departure, had been etched into his skin, a tattoo of heartbreak and devastation. Nothing had been right, since that night at Havensworth.
And now they were going back.