A/N: This is a multi-chapter fic of around 11-12 chapters. It begins a bit slowly, but that is just set-up for the rest of the story.

The first couple of chapters are largely to set up the rest of the story.

I've rated this M for adult themes – especially in the opening chapter – and some random smut along the way.

oOo

He woke in a turmoil of stymied emotions and physical release, having dreamed of her again.

He'd woken the same way he had the other mornings she'd entered his dreaming state. In his dreams he'd been searching for her – as always – and he'd wandered through parks, playgrounds, a Tesco's, a Boots, and had finally found her leaning against a low concrete wall next to a monolithic block of flats on a council estate. He'd walked up to her, his heart beating hard against his ribs, ecstatic to have found her after all this time. She'd recognised him, granting him a wide smile as she leaned across to greet him with a kiss. Emboldened, he'd grasped her hand and led her to the underground car park, where he'd continued the kiss, deepened the kiss, then sensing no resistance from her, with both hands he'd lifted her skirt, pulled aside her underwear, and made love to her against the eastern wall of the car park, hidden from sight behind a row of residents' cars. He'd felt her muscles contract around him, and then, unable to hold back any longer, he'd ejaculated. He woke up, his intense orgasm having shocked him into wakefulness. He'd looked around the darkened bedroom to realise he was alone.

Two to three mornings a week, for how many weeks was it now? Too many to count, as the weeks had rolled into months. He did a quick calculation in his head. He had moved to this remote place ten months after they'd said that sad and wretched goodbye to one another by the Thames, and it had now been a little over three months that he had lived here. He lived here alone, but that was nothing new for him. Scarlet, and Ruth's cat Fidget were with him, so he was not completely without company. Scarlet loved the cottage, right on the edge of the moors, spending her doggy days in search of rabbits, and occasionally finding one, and then barking herself silly at it, not knowing that as a dog, technically she had the upper hand. Fidget spent his days either curled up in the middle of the sofa in the living room, under Harry's bed, or curled up on the double bed in the spare bedroom next to his own room.

The dreams hadn't begun right away. It had been around six months after her departure when he'd had the first dream about her. They began slowly – firstly he had them monthly, then fortnightly, then once a week. By the time he took leave from the service and moved to this cottage, he was having the same dream - with variations - anything up to three times a week. The dreams exhausted him. At first they had embarrassed him. He was no longer a teenager, after all. In the dreams – in almost every dream he had had – he was searching for her, looking in abandoned buildings, restaurants, coffee shops, pubs, remote cottages, office buildings, along a deserted beach. He'd call out her name, and then wait for a reply which never came. He generally found her just as he was about to give up looking. Sometimes he found her outside on the street, or at the desk she'd occupied on the Grid. Sometimes he found her wandering down a country lane on her own, or in a corner store waiting in line to be served. Once she was at a service station, about to put petrol in her car, while another time he'd opened his front door to the cottage, where she'd stood with her hand raised, about to knock. The dreams all ended the same way. He'd grasp her hand and ask her to come with him. Her eyes would widen as she recognised him, and she'd lean into him and kiss him gently, her hands on his cheeks, as they had been when she'd kissed him goodbye on the day she'd gone away. He'd take her to a private place – a hotel room, his own house, a remote field in the country, a dark and secluded lane – and he'd make love to her, slowly at first, and then frantically, as though they only had a brief time together before she had to leave. He'd feel his orgasm build within him, and then as he ejaculated, he'd wake up to find that as well as in his dream, he'd ejaculated in real time.

He'd always preferred sleeping naked. He liked how free he felt, how sensuous it was to slide his bare skin against the sheets. He had missed having someone touch his body, he had ached for a connection between her skin and his, so if he wasn't to experience her bare body sliding next to his own, clean sheets against his skin was the next best thing. Except that once he moved to this remote cottage, he began having the dreams more regularly, and so he'd had to wash his sheets as often as three times a week. As well as being inconvenient, his closest neighbours – from the farmhouse just over a mile away – had to drive past his house to get to the village, and he was concerned that they'd notice that he often had sheets drying on the line. It was then that he bought a few extra pairs of track pants, and began wearing them to bed. He'd had to trade the sensuousness of bare skin on sheets for the practicality of the situation. Track pants were easier to wash than sheets. He felt like the fourteen-year-old boy he'd once been, with nightly wet dreams that had stained his clothing and his sheets, his mother knowing, but never saying anything.

Soon after moving to this cottage, he had the idea that regular masturbation might stop the dreams. If he was sexually exhausted before going to sleep, then surely he'd not be able to have the dreams and the unconscious ejaculations. He'd been wrong. Masturbation, even daily, made no difference. The dreams continued unabated. His exhaustion overwhelmed him so totally that he gave up the masturbation.

Harry was not one to visit doctors, and definitely not psychologists and psychiatrists. He'd almost let slip his state of mind when the section psychiatrist had insisted they engage in a word association exercise, and to her prompt `missing' he'd replied `something ….. someone.' He knew what his dreams meant. He didn't need anyone dissecting his mind in search of answers or explanations. Firstly and most obviously, he wasn't getting enough sex. No sex at all wasn't enough. He'd been celibate for three years or more – ever since he'd met her - so that conclusion went without saying. It wasn't as though he couldn't get sex. There were a few likely candidates, women who had propositioned him in the past, or even strangers he'd met in bars, but that would be meaningless sex, and he had moved beyond that. He had made a pact with himself that he would forevermore only engage in sex with a woman whom he loved and valued. That meant that he was only prepared to have sex with her, and she was God-knows-where. Secondly, he missed her. He missed her. Missed. Surely there was a more succinct word in the English language to describe the physical yearning which greeted him on waking every day since she'd gone. As he remembered where he was, and where she was, his heart ached at the probability of him never seeing her again. He hadn't cried, although he'd often found himself close to tears – a sad song on the radio, a sudden memory of her, Fidget cleaning himself and then looking up at him as if to say `where is she?' He was afraid that were he to allow the tears to come, he'd never be able to stop. Yes, he missed her alright. Thirdly, he longed for her, had wanted to make love to her, but had been thwarted at every attempt he'd made to get closer to her. The dreams told him all of that. The dreams were also expressions of his desperation that he find her and bring her home before it was too late. He could not suppress the powerful feeling that she was in danger, and he believed that within his dreams he was trying to rescue her. Alternatively, he may have been experiencing a knight-in-shining-armour fantasy about her, but he didn't think so. Ever since he had moved to this remote spot on the coast, he could feel the danger she was in, and that feeling was no fantasy.

He just wanted her to come home, but he also knew she couldn't. If he'd known where she was, he would have gone to get her long ago.

.

He'd taken leave from the security service after he'd one day had a meltdown on the Grid. His inner tension had been building for weeks, and then one day it just spilled over into a tantrum which would have done a two-year-old proud. He had learned over time that the best way to deal with grief, pain, or inner turmoil was to suppress it, and then to act his way through it. He hadn't the time to feel it and wallow in it. His job was as much about leadership of his team as it was the constant meetings and the endless PR and arse kissing. As a leader he had to set an example, and mostly that was second nature to him. Since he'd said goodbye to her, he had closed his inner doors to any emotion that was not adrenalin-inducing, and then one day one of those doors had opened very slightly, and the surge of pain from deep inside him frightened even him. It was when he had grasped a glass paper weight from his desk with a view to hurling it at the window which separated his office from the Grid floor that he recognised that it was time he took a break. He hadn't thrown it, but he'd wanted to. He'd stood there behind his desk, the paperweight clutched in his hand, his teeth clenched, his whole body taut, until his breathing had settled. The feeling had shocked him, as he hadn't known he was capable of losing control in that way. He'd initiated taking leave when he recognised the signs that he'd lost complete control over his emotions, and that this may lead to loss of life, even the inevitable loss of his career. It was Malcolm Wynn-Jones who had approached him and suggested he spend his leave at a cottage owned by Malcolm's cousin. Situated not far up the coast from Whitby, the cottage was both remote and close to the sea. It was a perfect spot for Harry to reclaim his life and his soul, if in fact this was possible while the whereabouts of the woman he loved remained unknown to him.

Harry and Malcolm kept in touch by email. Mostly they exchanged pleasantries about the weather, Harry's activities, and the general goings-on in the nation. Malcolm deliberately kept Harry out of the loop where MI5 was concerned. Harry was meant to be resting and de-stressing, and so discussion about the nation's security would only tempt him to thinking about his job, whether it was being done adequately in his absence by Ros Myers, and what information he had which Ros may need. Both Harry and Malcolm knew that to enter into a dialogue about `the job' was not only a bad idea, but it was dangerous to Harry in his current emotional state. Malcolm felt that he was someone who understood Harry's grief, not because he had experienced what Harry was going through, but because Malcolm was an observer of people and of life, and he had been observing his work colleagues on the Grid for as long as he had worked there. As he understood it, Harry had needed to go somewhere he was not faced with life or death decisions – this was too much to expect from him. In Malcolm's estimation, Harry had a need to feel free to vent his feelings, to cry if he could, and to hurt. If he was at all motivated or able, in the isolation of the cottage on the remote North Yorkshire coast, to come up with some kind of solution in relation to the woman he loved, then all the better.

Which was what prompted Malcolm to send an email to Harry in relation to the woman. Since she'd gone – perhaps forever – she'd been a topic of conversation which had remained off-limits. Without even testing the waters, Malcolm knew this to be so. Any reference to her after she'd left had to be done out of Harry's earshot. It was the the throw-away line by Adam: Where's Ruth when we need her most? that had triggered Harry's grasping the paper weight with the intent of launching it at the window. Adam had seen the paperweight in Harry's hand, the flare of emotion in his eyes, and the hard set of his jaw, and had said: You're not the only one who misses her, Harry. Adam's words only added salt to the wounds. Harry had been a man suffering extreme pain, and so in Malcolm's estimation, the solution for Harry was to be in the first instance, isolation from the source of his pain, the constant reminders that she was no longer in his life. In the second instance, after a long period of healing, Malcolm has intended to give Harry the opportunity to again get in touch with Ruth. The time had not yet been right for this to happen, except that the unexpected had happened, and Ruth was potentially in danger. Malcolm was hardly the rescuing-a-fair-maiden type of man ... but Harry was, and while Malcolm regarded Ruth with admiration and respect, Harry loved her with every cell of his being. Harry, as damaged as he was, should be the one to go there and bring her home. It may be necessary to Harry's healing for him to be the one to find her and bring her home.

From: Malcolm Wynn-Jones

To: Harry Pearce

Subject: Escape

I feel the need to get out of London for a couple of days, so I hope you don't mind if I arrive some time Saturday (19th) afternoon, and stay overnight, travelling back home on Sunday afternoon.

I have important information which best not be communicated electronically.

Malcolm

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From: Harry Pearce

To: Malcolm Wynn-Jones

Subject: Re: Escape

That's fine, Malcolm. I look forward to seeing you again.

If I'm not home when you get here I may be walking the dog. Feel free to let yourself in. There's a key on the extreme left-hand side of the lintel over the front door.

Harry

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