A/N This chapter strays into M territory for language.
Still don't own the characters—Kudos does. Shame
(Harry) The dreaded EERIE exercise was yesterday and I must say that Tom Quinn did a bloody good job keeping things together. I think he learned, in a very profound way, how lonely and hard it is to be a leader and have to make decisions based on protocol, not the heart. I'm beginning to realize that having to make those kinds of decisions year after year begins to eat at one's soul. It's beginning to eat at mine. And I don't know what to do.
Before Ruth came on the scene, I really didn't care about anyone in a personal manner. Oh, I care about "the greater good" and Britain's citizenry in a sort of high-minded way but individuals, not so much. I love my children, of course…although a lot of good that does me. I haven't seen either one of them for years. I care for my team but as colleagues. It's too painful to do otherwise because one or more of them could be gone in a minute—dead or something else—never to return. It has already happened too often and I cannot open myself up to that kind of pain. It's just too hard. Too, too hard.
Ruth innocently thought that the exercise was going to be fun. She learned otherwise quite quickly when Tom discovered that it was VX gas that had been released in the city and she could hardly speak about it at the team meeting. I thought she was going to cry.
That woman has such a pure, loving heart and she works here, on the grid, where we see all kinds of evil everyday. I don't understand how she comes into work day after day; but then she cares and she cares about not just her work colleagues but the unknown masses as well. I didn't expect her to come into my office once the exercise was in full swing but she did and she looked shocked when she saw me with the symptoms of VX poisoning. She went and got Tom and then Tom dismissed her from my office. I couldn't exactly tell what emotion was displayed on her face but she looked like she didn't want to leave.
Then she called me a bastard when it was clear the exercise wasn't real.
(Ruth) The thought that there might be something new and exciting to do yesterday, something other than the ordinary tasks I have to do, was going to be fun. That thought disappeared rapidly when we realized that everything happening seemed to be real. VX gas, my god! What horror! I couldn't even hold it together enough to tell the team the details about VX—Sam had to step in for me. There would have been so many deaths, so many deaths; deaths on a scale commensurate with an exploded nuclear weapon. How can anyone even think of doing something like that?
And then, I went into Harry's office and saw him talking to himself, reciting nonsense and looking like he was in pain. Something was very, very wrong so I got Tom to come and see. Tom dismissed me right away but I knew something is not right with Harry and I so, so scared that he had been infected. I thought about what it would be like to lose him and it was awful, just awful. I don't know where that depth of feeling came from but it was there. I'm afraid I'm falling for my boss and I don't know what to do. I really don't know what I'm supposed to do.
When we all finally realized that the exercise was just that, an exercise, Harry comes out of his office with that smirk on his face. Looking like that after all that we have gone though while he was in his office pretending to be dying; I could have killed him myself. Bastard.