Harry opened the door and Ruth's face lit up when she saw the tiny blue bundle he carried. "I can't." she said.

"You can. The doctor told me that your tests have come back clean. And he is healthy enough to be held now. You can hold him."

"I don't want to hurt him," Ruth said shaking her head, even as her eyes glazed over with soft happiness. "I can't be the one who hurts him."

"You won't," Harry said. "Take him." Ruth's face split into a truly happy smile as she held her son for the first time.

"He's bigger than I thought," Ruth said happily as the baby settled in her arms. "Oh, he's so beautiful," she added as he opened his eyes and looked at his mother.

"He is," Harry agreed.

"Hi," she cooed over her baby, holding his hand with her own, feeling his fingers delicately, breathing in his wonderful baby smell. "Oh, I am so sorry I missed your first few days. So very sorry."

"He knows you didn't do it on purpose," Harry said stroking his boys head lovingly. "He has your eyes."

"Mm," she said. "He does."

"I know I've been a temperamental B-I-T-C-H," she said not wanting to swear in front of her child. "I just so badly wanted to see him and hold him."

"Ruth, you were going through unimaginable pain. You're stronger than I am." While the baby was in her arms Harry turned her head and kissed her lips.

"Everything will be alright."

"Yes," Ruth said to Joe. "It will."

August 20th

"Okay," Ruth said sitting on the end of the bed, baby monitor in hand. "We are all home and healthy, I am never going to a hospital ever again and, most importantly, Joe is asleep." Ruth smiled and curled up on the bed, extremely tired.

Harry kissed her hair lovingly. "You seem tired," he said.

"Yes, because that makes me feel beautiful and sexy," she said sarcastically, pulling the duvet over herself without even bothering to undress. "I've been in a car crash, recovering from major abdominal surgery and looking after an underweight newborn. I am tired."

"He's not underweight anymore," Harry said happily. "He's a perfectly beautiful and healthy little boy."

"I know that," she said. "He's even more beautiful now he's sleeping through the night. Well, most nights."

"Mm," Harry said, kissing her lips passionately.

"Harry…" she said in between kisses. "Harry…" He unbuttoned her shirt and started to touch her when she rolled away from him "No."

"What's wrong?" Harry asked confused. "You said Joe was asleep."

"He is."

"Then let me love you," he said.

"I can't," she said.

"Why?" he asked, simply wanting her to talk to him.

"I look like I've been gutted, Harry," she said bluntly, shaking her head. "Because of how severe the surgery was to save my life, I have a horrible surgical scar from here," she said taking his hand and placing it just below her heart. "All the way down to here." She moved his hand all the way down her body until it rested between her legs. She let go of him, but he kept his fingers entwined with hers and kissed the back of her hand.

"God, Ruth. You think I care?"

"I don't want you to see me like that," she said shaking her head again. "I'm your wife. I want you to think of me as beautiful and desirable, not picturing me with a knife cutting me open or remembering the car crash, which you will when you see it."

"You know how many scars I have," Harry said.

"Yes, eighty three," she said without even stopping to think about it.

"Alright," he said, surprised that she knew exactly how many he had. "My point is, whenever you touch me or kiss me, you don't concentrate on them. You touch them and you touch me with so much love that I forget they even exist. Let me do the same for you." She didn't say anything but dropped her arms to let him remove the shirt she wore. He unbuttoned it and split the material, her head turned away from him as he did it. He let her avoid his eyes for a minute but no longer. His fingers resting on her stomach over her scar, his other hand made her face him.

"You are beautiful," he said. She closed her eyes sadly. "You are. You are beautiful and intelligent, kind and caring, alive and a fantastic mother to our son. What else would I want in my wife?"

"Someone who loves you?" Ruth suggested with a smile.

"Are you telling me you don't?" he asked, secure enough not to doubt her feelings for him. Not anymore.

"I love you," she said. "You know I am so exhausted that all I can do is lie here."

"I don't mind doing all the work," he said with a smile as she laughed. He kissed her and only pulled away seconds later when she groaned. He wondered if he'd pressed on her injury by mistake but then his ears caught up to his senses. Joe was crying.

"I'll get him," Harry said. "And when I get back I am going to make love to my wife." She couldn't respond before he vanished out of the door. But she was smiling.

Ruth opened the door surprised to see her twenty three year old son there. "Hi Joe," she said, giving him a hug before letting him into her house. "I swear you get taller every time I see you! I wasn't expecting you today, I thought you'd be busy."

"I just wanted to come and make sure you were okay. I know today's always a difficult day for you."

"Thank you," Ruth said, curling up on the sofa.

"And Cara broke up with me."

"Ah," Ruth said smiling. "So that's why you're here."

"Well, talking to my mother always makes me feel better," Joe said with a smile which stopped her heart. It was Harry's smile. "Have you been to see him today?"

"Yes," Ruth said. She had been at the graveyard that morning to talk to Harry. Honestly, now that she lived alone, she was there most mornings. "I miss him."

"I know you do," Joe said. "I'm sorry I don't remember much about him."

"You were only seven when he died," Ruth said shaking her head. "It isn't your fault. Not that I don't wish you could have spent more time with him because I do."

"How did he die mum?"

"He had a heart attack. I've told you this," Ruth said quietly.

"I know its what you told me," Joe said. "But I'm not sure it's the truth."

"I don't understand what you're getting at?" Ruth said confused.

"I've been doing some research," Joe said. "I know what my parents did for a living before I came along. You weren't a research assistant and dad didn't work for a small private security firm behind the scenes. Did he?"

"No," Ruth said quietly.

"You both worked for MI5," Joe said.

"You found that out? God, you really are our son," Ruth said shaking her head, even while she felt a rush of pride in her sons abilities.

"I can top that," Joe said with a small smile. "You were a senior intelligence analyst, one of the top intelligence officers the country had seen in a decade, and dad was your boss, head of Section D, in Thames House. You worked with each other from 2003 to 2011 when you both resigned together."

"How did you find that out?" Ruth asked breathlessly.

"Does it matter?" Joe asked. "Anyway, my question is, did dad have a heart attack? Or was he murdered by one of his many, many enemies he made throughout his career. I need to know."

"I promise, your father died, because of a heart attack," Ruth said. Joe shook his head as if he didn't believe her. "He died on the street while I was at home and you were at school. It was such a shock and so unexpected. He'd been feeling fine and we'd never been happier. So I thought exactly what you're thinking. I had Erin, someone we used to work with, call in a few favours for me. I… went to the morgue and I examined his body. I wanted to be sure… I needed to know there was nothing there. It was horrible, seeing him like that, something I never wanted to do. But I knew that knowing the truth was better than a lifetime of wondering and I couldn't trust anyone to do it for me. I checked everything. There was nothing there. No needle marks, no gunshots, which had worried me and no knife wounds. I did everything I could think of. I had them re-run the blood tests and the toxicology report. Nothing there. He had a heart attack, Joe. I promise you."

"Thank you," he said. "I've been avoiding talking about this for a while now. But I needed to know."

"You can talk about him with me. It doesn't hurt as much anymore. I love him, I still do and I always will, but the pain of not having him here… it lessened over time. So you can talk about him."

"Every time I did when I was younger you cried," Joe said. "So I just stopped asking."

"I hated being away from him," Ruth said. "Without him. I tried to keep myself together but it was hard. Silly little things got to me. I could only ever sleep on my side of the bed. When I go shopping, even now I'll occasionally stop in front of a bottle of whisky, before I remember that there's no one at home to drink it. And I hate whisky. It's a horrible drink. But I did love the way Harry drank it." She smiled in memory. "I wanted you to have a normal childhood, even with a dead father."

"I had a happy childhood," Joe said putting an arm around his mother. "You know that."

"I tried my best," Ruth said with a smile.

"You two worked together for years and years," Joe said quietly. "What took you so long?"

"It was not an easy job," Ruth said honestly. "I never really let myself open up to him. And your father... well he had a tendency to stick is foot in it, just when we were getting back to some normal ground. Did I tell you that he proposed to me in a graveyard, at a funeral once?"

"What was he thinking?" Joe said trying to stop laughing.

"I have no idea," Ruth said, gently touching her engagement ring that she still wore. She hadn't taken it off once in twenty four years. "And the second time, he was in his kitchen when I came in. And he told me how much he loved me and proposed."

"That's romantic," Joe said sarcastically.

"Strangely enough, it was," she said smiling. "At the time he was recovering from slight brain damage. He couldn't say all the words he wanted to. They slipped away from him. But he never tripped over his words that day. Not once, and I was so proud of him for doing that."

"You're smiling," he said. "You never used to smile when you spoke about dad."

"It doesn't hurt so much anymore," Ruth said. "He was quite a few years older than me and I always knew he'd go first."

"You're so strong," he said quietly. "I don't know how you do it."

"I do it because I'm a mother. Mothers do what they have to do."

"Do you want to come with me? To see dad? I'll tell him off for that unromantic proposal he inflicted on you."

Ruth laughed. "I'd love to."

THE END