Summary: "It is inevitable, really, that he will let death do his talking for him." Alternative ending to 10.6. Still involves main character death. H/R, slight implication of D/E.

Disclaimer: Alas, the characters are not mine.

Note: I didn't mind the ending (I was literally jumping up and down in my seat when Tom reappeared), and I knew that because Spooks is mean like that, Harry and Ruth would never be together. When theorising with my brother, I made a 'series 10 prospective body count' and either Harry or Ruth was on it from the start. Since Harry is the only character who's been around since episode one, it seemed wrong to kill him off at the end, so Ruth's death was therefore rather likely. The thing is, though, that doesn't stop me wishing it hadn't happened. So here's a different version of 10.6, one that for a brief moment, I almost thought was going to happen. I'm not saying that this is what should have happened, it is just another version of what could have happened; because as lovely as it would be, a fluffy 'nobody dies' ending would be completely beyond Spooks. If we save Ruth, Newton's third-and-a-half law means someone else must die in her place...

Inevitability

She notices the light bounce at an odd angle as Sasha leaves the observation room, and in that moment she knows that it is inevitable, really, that he will let death do his talking for him. Sasha's temperament can change on a knife edge but always has the same result; that of violence or the threat thereof. In the absence of his gun he had taken the next best thing. She knows that she does not have long to make her choice and so she chooses, leaving Calum in his quandary, leaving Dimitri to try and extricate Elena's lifeless body from her husband's iron grip. She follows him, knowing that if she can just buy them some time, talk some sense into him…

"Sasha, I know that this is the worst cliché in the world but no matter who you kill or threaten to kill, it won't bring Elena back."

It was inevitable really, thought Harry as he stood in front of the nondescript front door in the city centre, that he was the bearer of bad news. He always was, and he would have it no other way. It was inevitable that at the one point when his presence might have changed things, he was not there. And it was inevitable that the one member of their team who had so much more than the rest of them to lose had lost. If only he and Ruth had ended their embrace sooner. If only they had made the decision to return to the bunker a little earlier. Then, perhaps they would not have been greeted by Calum's chalk white face telling them what had happened.

He pressed the doorbell. Ruth had offered to come with him but he had declined. The duty which he now performed he had unfortunately done many times in the past, and although it never became any easier, he knew that he had to go it alone.

"Mrs Watts?" he asked the older woman who opened the door. She nodded. "My name is Harry Pearce. I'm afraid I have bad news."

Sasha ignores her and keeps striding out towards the door to the bunker, towards where Harry and Ruth are so terribly without protection in the open air. She has to keep him inside; she has to keep him talking.

"For crying out loud, Sasha!" she explodes, finally catching up to him but maintaining a safe distance from the glass in his hand, the glass that he is clutching so tightly that blood is running in thin ribbons between his fingers and over his knuckles. "What the Hell do you hope to achieve? Some pathetic kind of medieval justice? Your mother would have let you die for Russia!"

She knows how dangerous it is to goad him like this but she also knows that it is her only chance. And it works. He stops. He turns.

"Are you saying that my mother deserved to die?" he asks icily. "That she deserved to be murdered?"

It is only now that Erin realises that in her hurry to catch up to him she has left her gun in the observation room.

It was inevitable, thought Calum as he stared despondently at the unforgiving glass plaque in the darkened room in the centre of Thames House. The one person whose trust and friendship he had virtually built his entire career upon should be the next to have her name added to that hateful list of those killed in action. It was inevitable that Erin had chosen to play the hero. But whatever he said, whatever he thought, he could never stay angry at her for long. He had tried being angry at Harry and Ruth, whichever one of them had given Gavrik the key and started the whole thing off, but as time had passed he found that he could not stay angry at them either, because the person that he was really angry at was himself. Why hadn't he gone after them? Why hadn't he done something, anything, that would mean that Erin would still be there in the office with them and not on an etched list in front of a hypocritical peace lily?

"Who killed Elena, Sasha?" she asks, still backing away and hoping that she can lead him back to the observation room where Dimitri has a gun to hand and where she knows exactly where hers is. There's no use in yelling for backup, even a sprinter would take too long to arrive. As long as she can keep him away from Harry, that's all that matters, and soon, they'll talk him down and bloodshed will be avoided. "Was it Harry? Was it Ruth? Was it me, or Calum, or Dimitri? No. It was your father. He and he alone. Nothing that you do, nothing that we do, and nothing that either of us could have done will or would have changed that."

Sasha shakes his head and in that moment she can see Elena in her son so clearly. The stubborn side. The fanatical side. The side that refuses to believe in any way that the path he has chosen is anything less than fully justified, nor that it is not the only path available.

"Harry gave my father the key. He knew what would happen. He signed her death warrant. He is just as guilty."

She is almost out of arguments, and she can hear running footsteps.

"Erin!" Dimitri's voice is low, warning, authoritative. Sasha raises an eyebrow, daring her to yell back to him and make their location known.

"Do you know what would have happened if that key hadn't found its way into Ilya's possession?" she asks. "Britain and Russia would have gone to war. It would probably have gone nuclear. Millions of lives lost on both sides."

"But my mother would still be alive."

It was inevitable, thought Ruth. The final straw had broken the camel's back. She stared at Harry as he sat in the living room of their Sussex home, and she knew that it was not her words that had caused him to leave the service, however inevitable their departure might have been once the entire debacle had been sorted out. No, it was inevitable that one day, one officer too many would be killed under Harry's watch and he would call it a day, quit before anyone else met the same fate, quit before he broke when really he was broken already. It was the cumulative effect of so many years of losing people, good people, that had led him to this. Ruth wondered whether things would be different between them had Erin not died. Would they still be sitting here like this, not speaking but both thinking?

Ruth knew that she would inevitably begin analysing Harry's moods as if they were a particularly intriguing piece of intel in order to keep her mind away from her own turmoil, the knowing that it should have been her name on that plaque, on that gravestone; should have been her beneath the Earth. She knew that one day, unless she was very careful, the guilt would inevitably start to eat away at her.

She shakes her head.

"No she wouldn't, Sasha. Because no matter how many bombs were dropped, no matter how many millions of people died, no matter how much our countries were plunged into a new stone age, no matter how righteous we could feel about ourselves because we were good and moral and we didn't give Ilya the opportunity, it would make no difference. Ilya would have found the means and opportunity and you know it. It was inevitable."

She pauses and she knows from the look in his wild and confused eyes that he does indeed know it, he does indeed realise that her words are true. Her task is complete. She turns her head slightly as she hears more than one set of footsteps come around the corner.

"Erin!"

"Sasha, niet!"

Everything happens at once, and as Erin feels the cold and grimy glass penetrate her ribcage with an animalistic cry from its perpetrator, she simultaneously hears a gunshot, feels him jerk away from her taking his blade with him. She feels Dimitri catch her as she falls. She feels him try to staunch her wound, as if he is trying to press her blood back into her where it is spilling out in a ruby stream. Her vision is fuzzy but she can see Gavrik crouching over Sasha. She just makes out Calum running for first aid. She knows that what is inevitably coming next.

"Come on, Erin, stay with me, keep talking."

She doesn't know what to say. The blackness has already overwhelmed the edges of her fading sight…

It was inevitable, thought Dimitri. He should be the one to profit from Erin's death. He had turned down the post several times now but finally he had fooled himself into believing that stupid age-old maxim of 'it's what she would have wanted' and he sat, lonely on the busy Grid, the new section chief. He had witnessed colleagues and friends die before now, and in a way Erin was no different. Inevitably though, he could never convince himself of this. Erin was and had always been different. His thoughts would always keep coming back to Rosie, the little girl who had not wept as she had stood with her grandmother by the graveside, but whose face had spoken of a sorrow too great for tears, as if she had cried herself dry already. He remembered the evening he had spent with her, remembered the sense of privilege he had felt, knowing that Erin had trusted him enough to let him into her softer inner cocoon, the part of her life that was so far removed from the woman that showed herself to the world. Somehow though, since that day, he had always known that the idyll she fought so hard to protect would end in tragedy. It was, as she herself had said, blood pooling in her mouth and her breath coming in ever shorter gasps as Harry and Ruth and Calum all hovered and helped and hindered, inevitable.

Note2: A review would be lovely especially as this is my first time writing in the Spooks section. (Typical that I only start after it's finished…)