A/N: I am going out of town for a few days, but I should have a new chapter for y'all by Monday. In the meantime, enjoy!
By all accounts, Harry shouldn't have done it. He shouldn't have given the boy his home address. Will knew his name, had his mobile number, and was even now making his way across London by bus with Harry's home address in a text message on his mobile. To say it was a breach of security would be to make a rather careless understatement. And yet, the boy had asked, and Harry had found himself quite unable to deny him an opportunity to ask the millions of questions that must have been buzzing around his head.
By the time Will arrived, Harry had done a bit of cleaning and put the kettle on and was, at the moment the doorbell rang, standing in front of his kitchen cupboards wondering if there was anything even remotely edible inside for him to offer the boy for lunch. Somehow, Harry didn't think Section X had allowed him time to eat.
"Will," Harry said with a little nod as he opened the door.
Will did not respond; he brushed past Harry and stomped into the house, glowering rather aggressively all the while.
This is not going to be pleasant, Harry thought as he closed and locked the door. What did they tell him? What does he know? Christ, have I cocked it up already?
"Who are you?" Will demanded, rounding on him once they were standing face to face in the foyer. "I mean really, Harry, who the hell are you and who the hell are those people in my house and what the hell happened to my mum?"
"Maybe we should sit down," Harry said evenly, and with that he led the way into his sitting room.
Harry dropped wearily onto his sofa, and Scarlet immediately leapt up to take her place in his lap, giving his hand an affectionate sort of nibble before settling down. He scratched her behind the ears, watching the young man glaring at him from the doorway, and not for the first time he wondered how different his life might have been if he'd chosen a different path. He could have stayed in the Army, and lived out his life in a comfortable routine, with a clearly defined chain of command and an ironclad sense of right and wrong. He could have become a history teacher; he'd entertained the notion for a while, when he was at university. He could have gone into politics, the way Jane wanted him to – then again, perhaps not; just the thought of it made him shudder. The fact of the matter was there were a dozen different career paths he could have chosen, nice, normal occupations that wouldn't have required the secrecy, the lies, the sacrifices he'd damn near grown numb to over his many years of service. It had been years since he'd really thought about just how strange his life was, compared to the average citizen, but talking with Will brought it all back. Brought back memories of lying to his children when they were small, and the way his job ostracized him from them when they were older. Was it worth it? He mused as he regarded Will quietly. Have the victories been worth the price of the defeats? Surely their children deserved better, his and Ruth's; surely they deserved to know their parents fully, to know their foibles and their dreams, to hear their justifications, however feeble they might have been.
"Harry-" Will was about to start in on the whole business again, but Harry raised his hand, asking for quiet.
"Have you ever heard of the Official Secrets Act, Will?" Harry asked him softly.
The young man nodded slowly, a look of horrified comprehension dawning in his eyes.
"There's a copy of it here, on the table," Harry said, motioning towards the stack of papers he'd pulled out of the desk in his office before Will came round. "I can answer your questions, but it needs to be understood that what I tell you can go no further. To speak of this, to anyone, constitutes treason."
"Pull the other one, mate," Will scoffed, shaking his head.
Cheeky sod, Harry thought ruefully. It was a gamble, telling Will the truth, but Harry had a feeling it was the right thing to do. The boy was Ruth's son, for Christ's sake, he deserved to know the truth, but more than that, he was whip smart, photogenic, and had been raised by one of the most intrepid researchers Harry had ever met; God only knew what the boy was capable of, should he decide to go digging. Perhaps a bit of truth, and a healthy dose of fear, might serve a dual purpose. Perhaps it would offer Will some reassurance, and, at the same time, buy his silence. Any good spook knew that every move was a gamble, and the trick was knowing when to bluff, and when to lay the cards on the table. The time had come, Harry thought, to place his bets.
"I'd like you to sign that please, Will," Harry said. "Read it, and remember that there are consequences, should you choose not to keep your silence. And when you're done, I'll tell you the truth."
Truth. It was a powerful word, Harry had learned. People fought for the truth, died for the truth, devoted their lives to finding it, but in his world, truth was what he made it. Being a spook had often required him to adopt a legend, to rehearse it, memorize it until he could recite back the details of his false life with conviction. Spend too long inside a legend, however, and reality began to morph; how many times had he seen it happen to his agents, to himself, watched his own life fading as the lie took root deep within him, changing him, suiting him to its purpose? Truth, lie, right, wrong; none of it mattered, after awhile.
Your name is Harry Pearce, he told himself, as he watched Will pick up the paper, and begin to read. You have two children, and a dog called Scarlet. You work for MI-5, you follow the cricket, and you love a woman called Ruth Evershed. It was an exercise they taught new recruits, during training; recite the details of your legend to yourself in quiet moments, say it over and over so that you can recall it at a moment's notice. Harry had adapted the exercise to suit his own purposes, and often used it to remind himself, not of who was meant to be, but who he was. After all this time, he occasionally needed reminding.
"Have you got a pen?" Will asked him when he'd finished reading.
Harry reached over to the little table beside the sofa, and pulled a pen out of a drawer, handing it off to the boy without comment.
Now, we shall see what we shall see, he thought as Will signed the page.
"Thank you," Harry said when he was done. "You may want to have a seat, this could take some time."
And so Will slumped into an armchair, and sat in rapt silence as Harry began to talk. He explained about Section D, the work they did and his position there, and then he moved on, telling the boy about Ruth's secondment, and how she'd thrived at Thames House. He did not include the details of Cotterdam, or Mace's dogged pursuit of him, or the fact that Ruth had sacrificed herself for Harry's sake; perhaps it was selfish, keeping that part back, but Harry couldn't quite admit to Will that it was his fault the boy had lost his mother. When Harry was finished, he folded his hands together in his lap, and waited for Will to speak.
"She lied to me," Will said softly, disbelievingly.
"She lied to protect you," Harry answered. "She thought you'd be better off, not knowing."
"She lied to me," Will repeated, covering his face with his hands.
At this particular moment, Harry felt himself quite a loss for what to say. He'd thought that perhaps the sheer drama of his story might appease his companion, thought that maybe Will would think it was cool, might be proud of his mother for her courage. The sheer dejection radiating from the armchair in the corner was quite unexpected, and Harry didn't entirely know what to do. He could rally his team in times of crisis, could offer a comforting word in times of grief, could offer sage advice in a moment of doubt, but this was an altogether more complex sort of emotion, the sort of thing he would ordinarily foist off onto Ruth. In the past, she had often picked up the slack for him, in the pastoral care department, as Ros would have put it; when Danny had gone off the deep end, after Zoe's departure, it was Ruth who hauled him back from the brink, not Harry. Ruth would know what to say now, he thought, but Ruth was far, far away, and she'd left the pair of them to muddle through this alone.
"She promised me, when I was younger, that she would never lie to me," Will told him when he'd finally gotten hold of himself. The young man leaned back hard against the chair, as if wishing the cushions would swallow him whole. "She told me the truth about my dad, about…what happened, she never, ever pretended that things were all right when they weren't. I trusted her and she lied to me."
"Would it have changed things, really, if you'd known?" Harry asked softly. He was trying very hard to stay focused on the conversation, and not get sidetracked by all the questions Will's confession had raised in his mind. My dad...what happened…the way he spoke the words was heavy, and awful, and fear gnawed at Harry's heart.
"Of course it would have! I would have been more…I would have asked…" Will was struggling with it, but Harry knew the boy was slowly coming round to the exact realization Harry was hoping for. If Will had known what his mother did for a living, the only change that would have resulted in Will's life would have been a marked increase in the amount of time he spent worrying about her.
"She was brilliant," Harry continued on. "She was brave, and she saved thousands of people's lives. She stood up for what she believed in, and what she did mattered."
"And now she's gone," Will said.
Harry nodded glumly.
Silence reigned between them, as Harry struggled with his own remorse and Will slowly came to grips with this piece of his mother he'd never known before. It must have been a terribly confusing thing, Harry mused, to realize that someone he loved, someone he trusted, someone he thought he knew better than anyone else in the world, could have kept such a secret from him. Considering what Harry had learned about her, in the last twenty-four hours, he rather felt the same.
"Did you love her, Harry?" Will asked him in a quiet voice.
For a moment, Harry forgot to breathe. Did I love her? How could he possibly answer that question, how could Harry say to Will what he'd never confessed to his mother? I loved her, and she was damned for that love, he thought, but surely those words would only wound the boy. Or perhaps not. Perhaps they could find some common ground, given that they had both loved the same woman, albeit in very different ways.
Whatever Will's reasons for asking, Harry never got the chance to answer. His mobile began to ring, and he grimaced as he fished it out of his pocket, dislodging Scarlet and earning himself a disapproving look from the portly little dog in the process.
"Pearce," he barked into the phone. He was almost as thankful for the distraction as he was furious at the interruption.
"Harry, it's Adam." On the other end of the line, his Section Chief sounded tense, and Harry was immediately on high alert, fearing the worst.
"What's happened?" he demanded.
"Harry, I'm sorry, it's…it's Catherine."
Whatever he'd been expecting, it certainly wasn't this. Horror filled him, dread rising up in his chest, choking him, making it difficult to breathe, difficult to think. Please God, not Catherine, too, he thought desperately; his little girl had been in Lebanon for the past few months, and he'd spent many a sleepless night on the Grid browbeating junior technical assistants into tracking her every move, assuring him she was safe and well. It had been several days since he'd last checked up on her, distracted as he'd been by Cotterdam. Had Mace and his cronies cost him his daughter, too? If something had happened to her, if she'd been hurt because his attention was elsewhere, Harry would never forgive himself.
On the other end of the phone, Adam was speaking in clipped, professional sentences, explaining that there had been a bombing in Beirut, and Catherine had almost certainly been present, but they knew no more than that. Harry was on his feet in an instant.
"I'm leaving now. I'll be at RAF Northolt in-" he checked his watch-"half an hour. Get me on a flight, Adam."
Adam started to protest, but Harry had already hung up the phone.
Whatever news Harry had just gotten, it looked to be pretty terrible; his face had gone white as a sheet, and from where he was sat Will could see that his hands were trembling.
"I'm sorry, Will, I have to go," Harry said. Will had gathered as much, from the demand he'd just heard Harry make.
That Harry had turned out to be some sort of government higher-up hadn't surprised Will, not really. It all sort of fit; he carried himself like the sort of man who knew a great many secrets, and who was willing to fight to protect them. It made sense, too, that he was also the sort of man who could just demand to be allowed on to a plane at a moment's notice, and expected it to actually happen. There was something about Harry Pearce, about the way he spoke, that seemed to suggest he wasn't used to being told no.
Whatever disaster he was running off to tend to just now only mildly interested Will; he was much more concerned with learning more about his mum, and all the things she'd never told him, and he was frankly a bit cross that his interrogation of Harry had been cut short.
"Where are you going?" Will asked, rising from his chair to follow Harry, who had rushed from the room and was currently rummaging around in a cupboard.
"Lebanon," Harry grunted as he emerged, clutching a black hold-all.
"When will you be back?" Will demanded. Trust a bloody spook, Will thought, to cut and run right when things get interesting.
"I don't know," Harry sighed. "I've got to go, it's…my daughter, she…I've got to go."
It wasn't the most articulate of sentences, but Will was glad to have at least some explanation of where Harry was rushing off to.
"We'll talk when I get back," Harry said. He turned to make his way to the door, and promptly tripped over his little dog. Swearing, he righted himself at the last moment, and stood staring down at the animal with a grimace on his face. "Actually, Will, could you do me a favor? I need someone to look after Scarlet for a few days, and I haven't got the time to take her anywhere. Could you-?"
The question hung between them for a moment.
Is he serious? Will wondered. Is there really no one else he could ask?
"Yeah, sure, I'd be happy to," he said aloud.
Harry's shoulders sagged with relief. "Thank you. There's a spare key here," he motioned to a little hook by the door, "and the alarm code is 290470. I should only be gone a few days. Help yourself to whatever's in the fridge."
And just like that, Harry was gone, rushing down the front walk and into his car.
Will stood staring after him, mouth agape.
Why the hell is my mum's birthday the code for his alarm?