Thank you for the reviews for the first chapter. I know Adam is dead in canon by this point, but for this story he's alive.


A year later

Ruth awoke with her heart racing to the baby screaming. Not just crying, screaming. She was out of bed and in her daughters bedroom before she consciously made the decision to move.

"It's all right," she soothed as she picked up her eleven month old child. Her soothing was barely audible over her screaming. "Come on darling, it's okay," Ruth murmured, rocking Lucy up and down. The screaming had lost it's high terrified pitch, but was still loud enough to make Ruth's hair stand on end.

It took a good twenty minutes, but she managed to calm her daughter back into sleep. Once she was, Ruth put her down in the cot and closed her eyes. Without knowing how she knew it, she knew. That today would be the day when Harry's absence was explained. For a year, she'd known nothing except the fact that he'd been taken by unfriendly forces, probably Russian. But she hadn't been in a position to do anything. With the last stages of her pregnancy, and then a newborn child to deal with, she hadn't had a chance to get her clearance applied and go back to the grid to hunt him down. And then the trail had gone cold and it had been too late. The guilt she felt at not being able to find Harry was enormous, almost as bad as the loss and loneliness she felt with his absence.

Unfortunately, she hadn't been able to wallow in her grief, it was impossible to do that when a newborn baby required all of her attention every second of the day. But after a year, she thought the trail would have gone cold. But she still had a feeling that it would be today.

So when a car drove up her driveway at midday, she wasn't that surprised to see Lucas and Adam get out of it. Ruth ran outside, clutching Lucy tight in her arms.

"Tell me," she said, before they'd even closed the car doors. "I need to know, just tell me."

"Do you want to put her down?" Adam said.

"No," she replied. "I don't want to let her out of my sight right now."

"Ruth, I'm so sorry," Adam said.

"You've found him," she said heavily. It wasn't a question, and if Harry were alive after they'd found him, he'd be here with her right now.

"Yes," Lucas said, as Adam stayed silent. "I'm sorry."

"What happened to him?" she asked, trying to keep her composure. Trying not to scream and cry and fall apart while she held her daughter.

"Ruth, don't," Adam said. "You just…"

"How did my husband die?" she asked, a note of steel in her voice. "I need to know."

"We're not sure," Lucas said. "Tests are being done on… but it's going to take a while with the condition he was in."

"Adam," she said, pleading. Her blue eyes were wet with tears which she wasn't allowing to fall. She couldn't afford to fall apart until she knew everything.

"He's been burnt," he said. "Identified through dental records, and no is the answer to your next question."

"What was my next question?" she asked.

"You can't see him," Adam said. "You know perfectly well what bodies look like when they've been subjected to that. I am not going to let you see him in that state."

She nodded, because Adam was right. She didn't want to see Harry like that. Her Harry burnt until there was nothing left to recognise him by, except his teeth. That wasn't the essence of the man she'd married. "Thank you for telling me," she said quietly. "I assumed he was dead after so long, but… who took him?"

"We think it was originally the Russians. A splinter group of dissatisfied ex FSB. Then… he was passed on," Lucas said. "Sold to other… less kind people."

"How long?" she asked. "How long has he been dead?"

"We don't know," Adam said. "It looks like three or four weeks."

"So he's been tortured, for nearly a year. Constantly tortured," she stated blankly. "Let me know when I can have the body back… for the f… f… funeral," she eventually managed, her voice wavering.

"I will," Adam said. "Do you need anything?" he asked kindly.

"Nothing you can give me." She turned and left them, going back into her house. She didn't fall apart until she'd put Lucy down in her crib, then she let the tears fall. She let the complete devastation of his loss overwhelm her and drown her, wondering if she'd ever stop crying from the hole in her heart.


Meanwhile, somewhere in Ukraine...

After so many days on the cold concrete floor in a room too short to stand up in, he was beginning to lose his mind. He hadn't eaten in… he didn't even know. He was desperately hungry and kept slipping in and out of consciousness. He was so weak he wondered how long he could survive in this state. Days? Hours? Maybe even minutes.

The hatch opened and Harry wondered what torture he'd be subjected to next. A pair of arms reached for him, pulling him out of his concrete cage, and he blacked out due to the pain in his damaged arm.

He came around to ice cold water being thrown on his face. He spluttered, gasping for breath.

"Eat." He saw a plate of hot food, and knew it would be drugged, but he felt too hungry to care. He wolfed it down, as quickly as he could without risking bringing it back up.

"Your "body" has been sent back to England," the interrogator said.

"How?" he managed to find the energy to ask.

"Well, we've… fiddled with the official dental records. So when a completely unrecognisable body, or burnt skeleton really, arrives in Britain, it'll be accepted as Harry Pearce without question."

"Why would you do that?" he asked. "Why convince the world that I'm dead?"

"You have friends in London," the Russian said. "Friends I would prefer stopped looking for you."

"My wife," he said after a moment. "She won't believe a fake corpse."

"She will. There is absolutely nothing left to identify you. She'll have no choice. Your poor daughter. Growing up without a daddy. Would you like more food?"

"Yes," he said through gritted teeth. He had no idea if Ruth had had a son or a daughter. Every time the child was mentioned, the story he was told changed, including a stillborn. But he didn't think that was the case. If it were, they wouldn't still be mentioning his child with such regularity.

He reached for the glass of water, sipping slowly. He didn't know when he'd get another, and right now when he wasn't being beaten, he let his mind go to Ruth. He hoped she was happy in motherhood. Of course she was, she'd almost glowed thinking about their baby. They'd thought it'd be a boy, but they'd never known for sure. He was regretting that right now. It would be so nice to know for certain.


More soon.