We're nearly there, y'all! One more chapter after this.
Three words that became hard to say
I and love and you
-I and Love and You/The Avett Brothers
Manhattan, New York
U.N. Headquarters
The same night
The breath had been stolen from her lungs, the world around her had lurched to a halt, her heart thundered so loudly in her chest that she could hear nothing over the roar of blood in her ears; she couldn't move, she couldn't think, frozen in a single moment as Rachel Wallace ceased to be and Ruth Evershed finally awoke for the first time in nearly six months.
Harry.
To her, he was the only person in the room, the edges of her vision blurred by a sudden rush of tears as everything around him went fuzzy and he came sharply into focus. She drank him in; the lines of his face, the slight curl of his hair, his broad shoulders filling out his tuxedo jacket just so, the haunted look in his dear, sweet eyes. It all coalesced into a single image, a single moment, a single man. Harry.
He couldn't be here, not now; this couldn't be happening. Harry was gone, she had left him, had closed the door on anything they could ever have been together. She gulped, desperate for air, desperate to wrap her mind around what she saw.
Across the room Harry's eyes were trained on her; people passed between them, momentarily obscuring her vision, but when they were gone Harry remained, standing by the bar, unmoving, unblinking, staring. At her.
For months she had longed to see him, to reach out and touch him, to fall to her knees at his feet and beg his forgiveness, and he was here. It did not seem possible, did not seem real; for a moment she was certain that she was dreaming, that she would wake to find herself alone in her bed back in her borrowed brownstone, certain that the vision of Harry looking even more handsome than she remembered in his crisp, tailored tux would vanish like a puff of smoke on the wind.
But he did not vanish. He stood there, half hidden around the corner of the bar, his back ramrod straight and his eyes boring into hers, and she could not fathom the expression on his face. Was he pleased to see her? Was he cross? Oh God, she thought, giving a little shudder as the first tendrils of hysteria wrapped themselves around her heart, he must hate me.
For how could he feel anything but hate for her, for the woman who had spurned him, scorned him, left him cold and alone and never gave him any reason why? What must he have felt that day, waking up to find her gone? What must he have thought when he'd learned the horrible truth, learned of the completeness of her desertion? What had he gone through, without her there by his side to guide him, support him, carry him through?
I love you, she thought, the words flitting through the chaos of her mind, an intention unfulfilled. I love you, I love you, I ruined you, I'm sorry-
"Rachel?"
She gave a start at the sound of Charlie's concerned voice and took an involuntary step backwards, her stilettos crunching the glass underfoot.
Ruth.
She was here, Ruth was here, and Harry's breath seemed to freeze in his chest, righteous anger and desperate love rebounding in the frantic clatter of his heart against his ribs. So she made it to New York, after all, he thought in a daze, unwilling even to blink lest he lose sight of her completely. He forgot about the Home Secretary, forgot about Albany, forgot about the man standing beside her with that disconcerted expression on his face, forgot about Jim sitting beside him and asking Hal? You ok? All he saw were her eyes, huge and sad and lovely as he remembered, locked on his own; her hands, trembling as she stared at him; her face, that face he loved so well, frozen in an expression of the same sort of frantic hope and longing that filled him as he hungrily devoured every inch of her with his gaze.
She looked beautiful, his Ruth, beautiful and distant, sad and graceful, as untouchable as the horizon. The dress that had caught his eye earlier in the evening clung to her, emphasized the gentle curves of her body, the smooth paleness of her skin, the shine of her chestnut hair. As he stood, immobilized by her beauty and his own warring emotions, he could not help but remember the feel of her in his arms, could not help but wonder for the thousandth time what he could possibly say to the woman who had owned him so completely, who had broken him so irreversibly.
Part of him wanted to rage at her, to cross the distance between them and look her in the eye as he snarled who the bloody hell do you think you are and what the bloody hell were you thinking? Another part longed to march across the gulf between them, catch her face in his hands, and kiss her until the world made sense again, wanted to crush her against his chest and whisper to her over and over again I love you, I love you, don't leave me here alone, I love you.
Vaguely he wondered about the man beside her, the man who had danced with her, the man who had kissed her. Had she taken a lover, then? It would be nothing new; Ruth was a human being, underneath it all, a woman who needed affection and something solid to ground her, who dreamed of a simple life. Everything about my life was simple, and elegant, for once.
Was her life simple and elegant, again? What would she say if he once more shattered the illusion of her happy partnership, if once again his love took away any hope she had of happiness?
A stream of people passed between them and he lost sight of her for a moment, just an instant, and when she came back into view he saw the man beside her reach for her elbow, his gaze flitting concernedly between Ruth and Harry. He saw the man say something to her, saw her take a step back, a step away from him, and his heart sank in his chest.
There was a look of such desperate terror on her face that it very nearly stopped his heart; what on earth could have frightened her so?
Charlie followed her gaze across the room, and felt his confusion growing. There was nothing over there, except for the bar. A few guests had stopped and turned at the sound of the glass breaking, but they were all focused once more on their own preoccupations. All save one.
He was not a particularly remarkable looking man, and had he not been focused with laser-like intensity on Rachel, Charlie was certain he would overlooked the fellow entirely. He appeared to be in his mid-fifties, balding and somewhat paunchy, though he had something of the predator about him. Dangerous, that's the word, the man looked dangerous, and his eyes were trained on Rachel. There were people moving all around them, passing between his frozen companion and that peculiar, terrible man, but neither Rachel nor the stranger looked away for a second. So intense was their connection that Charlie felt certain a bomb could go off right between them, and neither of them would flinch.
God, you have no idea who this woman is, Charlie thought. Curiosity warred with concern inside him; Rachel seemed scared to death, and she was ignoring the waiter who had come by to clean up the mess, refusing to move or even acknowledge the poor man's existence as she remained stock-still and staring.
"Rachel?" he asked, taking a tentative step toward her, reaching out to touch her lightly, hoping to draw her back into the moment.
She stepped away from him, and the hope seemed to die in his chest. The moment was broken, the invisible chord that had just begun to tighten, just begun to draw him to her, snapped in an instant as the man beside her claimed her attention, and she once again pulled away. It seemed to Harry that he had forever been caught in this dance with Ruth, one foot in and one foot back, never fully committed, never moving in the same direction. For months he had dreamt of her, for months he had imagined her, had longed for her; perhaps this what he needed, this final sign that she would never be his, never truly, never in the way he wanted. She would be a part of him, would be the heart beating in his chest until the end of his days, but he would never be with her, would never mean as much to her as she did to him.
With a weary sigh he lifted one hand, and rubbed it over his face, exhaustion and simple human sorrow overwhelming him. He was certain that when he opened his eyes again she would be gone, disappearing through the doors with her new lover in tow, cementing the utter ruin of his heart.
"Get your bloody hands off me," Ruth growled; she supposed she should have felt guilty, for speaking to Charlie that way, but Harry was here, Harry was here, and she needed to see him, needed to talk to him, needed to know if there was a chance, however small, that he might not hate her, after all. Beside her Charlie stiffened, but he dropped his hand from her elbow, and she spun away from him, her eyes searching frantically for Harry, trying to reestablish the tentative connection they had stumbled upon moments before. Ruth felt herself on the very edge of flying apart, her hands trembling with fear and hope and everything in between as she fought the urge to simply kick off her shoes and run across the room, screaming his name.
Harry.
She breathed a sigh of relieve when her eyes found his again; he was just lowering his hand, had been rubbing his temples in an achingly familiar gesture, a gesture that spoke volumes to her about his current emotional state. He didn't hate her, she realized as looked into his eyes from across the room; if he hated her he would have turned away by now, or worse, would have forced his way towards her and begun to shout. Instead he stood patient and still, waiting for her to come to him, circumspect and hesitant, the way he so often was when it came to matters of the heart. In that moment she realized that everything rested on her shoulders, that if she wanted to speak to him, she would have to be the one to make the grand gesture this time. He had held her, had loved her, had given up everything for her; the least she could do was cross a room to speak to him.
Just one step, she told herself, fighting to contain the shaking of her limbs; just take one step.
She wasn't leaving.
She was walking towards him.
Christ.
It all seemed so surreal, when he opened his eyes once more and found her still locked in this moment with him, saw her say something to her companion that must have been unpleasant indeed, given the way the man jerked his hand back from her arm; not a lover, then, Harry thought, wishing, needing it to be true. Whatever she had to say to him, no matter how terrible, no matter how cruel, he needed to hear it, needed to know for a certainty how she felt, what she was thinking, why. Whatever her intentions, this was the only chance he would ever have to tell her how he felt, what she'd done to him, how he had missed her, how badly he need her, and he had to take it.
He took a deep breath, and waited.
Jim Coaver watched with interest as the woman made her way across the room, her luminous eyes fixed on Harry's face. The last thirty seconds had been enlightening, to say the least; Harry had taken one look at her and vaulted to his feet, rather obviously caught between a desire to run to her and a desire to flee, and the woman for her part had been so shocked to see him that she'd dropped her glass and caused quite a scene. That they knew one another was patently, painfully obvious, but just how well acquainted they were remained to be seen. Something in the way they gazed at one another, something in the woman's face as she made her way toward Harry, every step halting and uncertain, seemed to suggest an…intimate past, and something twigged in the back of Jim's mind.
Long ago, when they had both been young and brave and more brawns than brains, Harry had been something of a ladies' man, a different girl hanging off him every time Jim turned around, and Jim had always quietly resented him for it. When they went their separate ways they remained in touch, and they always made time in their brief conversations to discuss the women in their lives. Jim found Jana, a gorgeous blonde who'd changed his life, settled him down, made him feel like home was a place he wanted to go at the end of the day; Harry, though, Harry had never found a match. Oh, he'd kiss and tell (and tell, and tell), but it was always a different woman, a different name, a different excuse for why things didn't work out. That all changed a few years ago, when suddenly the well of names ran dry, and Harry, rather uncharacteristically, no longer had anything to say on the subject. Until the ugliness with his suspension, Jim had assumed that his friend was just getting older, finally slowing down; but then there was that inquiry a few months back, and a whisper had reached Jim in Langley. Just a whisper, the faintest hint of a suggestion that it was a woman who had finally done in the great Harry Pearce.
He watched this woman walking towards his old friend, and he wondered. She was pretty, in a very subtle, mellow sort of way, with eyes like he'd never seen before, and Jim found himself asking if hers was the sort of face a man like Harry Pearce could throw it all away for.
With a small, commiserating chuckle, Jim turned back to his whiskey, choosing to go against his every instinct as a lifelong spy and give his old friend some privacy. He fully intended to leave them to it, but then he checked his watch, and then he swore.
Just like that, they were standing face to face. Ruth's breaths were sharp and shallow in her chest, and she struggled to keep herself calm, to keep her hands steady. She'd fully expected to never see him again, had finally come to terms with the fact that some wrongs can never be undone, and now here he was, right in front of her, his face stony and unreadable.
She had known this man, once. Had been able to speak to him with just a glance, had been able to reach out her hand and find him there, always, gentle and strong and sure, the rock on which she beached herself in the sea of madness that was their life at MI-5. She had known him, and he had known her, had known when to give her the reigns and let her lead, had known when she needed him to guide her, had known when to give her space and when to push. This man had stood beside her through so much horror, so much grief, and even, once or twice, through a moment of joy. Why then did she feel as if she were looking at a stranger? Why could she not find the words, why could she not just open her bloody mouth and say what she longed to say? I love you. I'm sorry. I love you.
"Harry," she managed finally.
"Harry," she said, in a voice that sounded dangerously close to tears, and just like that he felt his resolve crumble. He had sworn he would be stern, that he would not give in to his desire to hold her, that he would demand an accounting from her, that he would protect his heart. Those vows vanished in an instant as he saw her lower lip tremble, as he watched the fear and the hope and the yearning swirling through her eyes, the same fear, the same hope, the same yearning that pounded inside him. This was Ruth, and no matter what they'd been through, no matter what she'd done, no one had ever known him like her, no one had ever touched him like her, no one had ever come close to her. This was Ruth, standing in front of him, her face as open to him as ever, and in that face he saw none of the callousness, none of the frigidity, none of the anger he had expected.
She still doesn't know, he thought numbly. She still feels guilty, she still thinks that people are going to die because of her. For the first time since she'd left, he found, with stunning clarity, that he understood.
"Ruth," he answered, lifting his hand to touch her but pulling back at the last moment, remembering the man who'd been with her. He didn't entertain any fantasies of taking her back to England with him, didn't believe for a moment that she would be willing to walk away from her life for him (again, a needling voice whispered in the back of his mind), but she had come this far, had taken this risk to speak to him, and he was damned if he was going to let this opportunity pass him by. The words there, just there, on the tip of his tongue, Albany doesn't work, it never worked, please, I love you…
"Harry!" Jim's voice rang out from behind him, and in that moment, Harry could have killed him.
Ruth flinched, shrinking back, drawing in on herself as Jim approached, and Harry had to clasp his hands together behind his back to keep from wrapping his arms around her. Whatever might be happening between them now he was still on operation, in a room full of unfriendlies, with a Deputy Director of the CIA standing by his shoulder; he couldn't afford to give anything away, couldn't afford to advertise his greatest weakness, his greatest strength.
"Sorry to interrupt," Jim said, giving Ruth a quick, charmless grin, "but it's time for us to go."
No, God, please no.
It was just so unfair, just so cruel and wrong and terrible, that he should be here, that he should look at her and say her name with such understanding, such need, only to be taken from her before they had a chance to clear the air between them. Panic gripped her, stuck her tongue to the roof of her mouth, turned her thoughts sluggish and slow.
I have to stop him, I have to. Oh, don't go, please…
The American clapped his hand on Harry's shoulder and jerked his head toward the door, clearly anxious to get going, and Harry took the hint.
"I'm terribly sorry, er…" Harry said to her, his voice trailing off and his eyebrow lifting, and then she understood.
He wanted to know her name. He wanted to find her, after. He wasn't letting her go forever, just letting her go for now; it would have to be enough.
"Rachel," she said finally, shocked by how steady her voice was. "Rachel Wallace. I work as a translator here."
He nodded, gave her a small smile. "Rachel. It was lovely to meet you."
