Set some time after the end of series 9, Spoilers and speculations for 9.7 and 9.8….not sure whether to leave it at that, or to add a couple of chapters…you decide!
Thanks for reading….HRFan.
A letter: Ruth to Harry.
Dear Harry,
By the time you get this, you will have returned from your annual leave, and I will have gone. We've become so estranged from one another, you and I, that I don't know how to talk to you anymore. I sit at my desk, and know that you are in your office across the Grid, and whereas in the past I would think nothing of coming over and sharing with you snippets of information and operations-related worries, or of joining you on the rooftop to look at the London skyline, now I dare not do that. Not even to tell you, to your face, that I have decided to leave MI5.
I could have done it without saying anything at all, not even in writing. And yet, we have so much shared history you and I, there are so many unsaid things between us, that it feels as if I have no choice but to pick up a pen and try to convey why I cannot work with you, under you, any longer.
For this is the problem, isn't it? From the moment you asked me to marry you and I said 'no', we have been unable to handle those shifting boundaries between us. One moment equals, the next unequals….from would-be husband-and-wife to boss-employee…We couldn't do it, could we? Rather, I couldn't. I know that I pushed where I should have left it well alone. I took initiatives and took on a role in the Grid which were not mine to take, and with the benefit of hindsight, I can see why you were so angry with me over this. I undermined your authority, out of arrogance and blind faith in my intuition, and I am so sorry for that – more than I can say.
The problem is that I can't revert back to being good-old-dependable-biddable Ruth. I am not the woman I was when I first came to the Grid, all those years ago, giddy with excitement, infatuated, so desperate to please you. Too much has happened to me, to us, for me to be your quasi-military subordinate. And it's not because (or at least not merely because) I am ten years older and have lost and given so much to the Service. It's mostly that I have, at long last, knocked you off the pedestal where I had so firmly put you all this time.
Re-reading this, it sounds awful. But please don't throw this letter away now. Keep reading it. Read that I love you. A few weeks ago, you told me that you sometimes have to give a man the chance to show who is really is. But I do know who you are, Harry. At least partly. I've seen, or guessed, the very worst you are capable of, and the very best. I've seen you vulnerable, in tears, cold, angry, frustrated, aroused with desire, lost, kind, loyal….I've seen all of that, and I love you. I want you too, for good measure. There. I've said it. I want to know what I don't know yet: what it would be like to hold you in my arms, and to have you hold me, what it would be like to see your face as we fuse together and to give myself to you…
And that's why I can't take orders from you anymore. It's not simply that I love you so much that I can't imagine what it would be like to stop loving you; it's not simply that I want to relate to you only as an equal, in every way; it's also, of course, the fact that since Lucas' death, you have made it so clear that this ship had sailed. I have no recollection of what happened on the roof at the end. All I remember is Lucas shooting, you screaming my name, and then nothing. The next thing I knew, I was in hospital, swimming in pain, and you were nowhere in sight. Oh, you came once or twice to visit, and made polite chit chat. But whenever I brought up our relationship – correction, our non- existent relationship - you brushed me off. This is not the time, you kept saying, now is the time to recover, you were in a comma for a week, so this is not the time… I was hoping that we'd be able to talk after my sick leave, but then too you found ways to say 'no' on the two or three times I suggested we grab something to eat together, or have a drink. You did it very kindly of course, but still, I do recognise a brush off when I see one. It never is the time with us, Harry, is it?
I so wish things had turned out differently between us. How is that for the understatement of the Millenium…What grieves me the most, beyond anything I can describe, is not so much the fact that I have lost you as a lover (in the full sense of that devalued word) before I even had you; it's the fact that I've lost you as a friend. The pain of that loss is physically unbearable. And that's why I have to go.
I'm not expecting you to reply. Perhaps I shouldn't have written. Then again, I think I owed it to you to be honest, for once, about my feelings for you.
I hope that you will find happiness one day. With someone else, or alone if solitude really must remain your constant companion. But happiness nonetheless.
Ruth.