Frankly there's just no excuse for my tardiness. Well, other than my grieving for Ruth for the past 4 months. So yeah, another chapter, albeit long overdue. Not much left now!

Harry ended up spending the night, although he did have to sneak out halfway just like she'd done days earlier, in order for him not to be spotted by the people watching him. They hadn't discussed the inquiry, and Harry's refusal to fight it any further, which meant that it was still niggling in the back of Ruth's brain. It was all rather distracting, and she found it very difficult to get any work done because of it.

"Are you ok Ruth?" she heard someone say. She looked up and saw Erin standing next to her, looking concerned.

She cleared her throat nervously. "Yes I'm fine. Why, is there something the matter?"

Erin shrugged her shoulders. "No, nothing in particular. It's just that you seem a bit absent minded lately, and I was just wondering if everything was alright."

Ruth thanked her for her concern, and once again reassured the younger woman that there was nothing wrong. This seemed to satisfy the Section Chief's curiosity, and she soon left Ruth alone again in order to update Dimitri on some surveillance routine.

Slowly but surely Ruth had started to appreciate Erin more and more. She hadn't liked her at first, but she now wondered if that might've had anything to do with the fact that she loathed the idea of anyone taking Harry's place. Erin, though young and ambitious, turned out to almost hero-worship Harry, and hadn't thought for a moment that she'd be the one replacing him, even though that was exactly what Ruth had initially suspected her of.

From the moment she had realised that, Ruth had began to treat Erin differently, and had attempted to see her in a different, more objective, light. It had worked, and now they got along just fine. Even Calum seemed less sinister than he had initially appeared to be.

Ruth quickly finished up the last of her day's work, figuring that she was allowed an early night every now and then. She shut down her computer, said goodnight to her colleagues, and quickly left. Luckily no one had noticed the microdot reader she had stuffed into her ridiculously large handbag earlier that day. Taking home such a valuable machine really overstepped the boundary of nicking office supplies, and since she had no idea how to possibly talk herself out of that one, she was very glad that she didn't have to.

Later that night, at home, Ruth prepared to start reading the files Dimitri had given her the day before. Her heart pounding fiercely, feeling as though it would burst out of her chest at any moment, she retrieved the microdot from the pendant and placed it into the reader.

Sifting through the endless files documenting Harry's long and diverse career with MI5 proved a long and arduous task. Many accounts of past operations were boring, some shocking, and others just downright dirty, but intriguing all the same. Especially the files on operations Harry had taken part in during his time in Northern Ireland and Berlin were very interesting to say the least. Ruth had no idea if the inquiry panel had access to all of these. She hoped not, because she knew they'd have a field day if they did.

There was talk of attacks that could have been prevented but weren't, other attacks that were staged to put the blame on the IRA, and even mentions of torture. It wasn't exactly a track record to be proud of, and the more Ruth read about Harry's past, the more she began to understand his reluctance to fight. She knew that he knew he wouldn't stand a chance.

Oddly enough she didn't feel any different about Harry. She had always known that there were some unsavoury bits in his past, and she had never thought anything of it. She knew that the end didn't always justify the means, but she also knew that Harry felt the same, and that some of his actions in his younger years shamed and even repulsed him. She knew that these past actions had shaped him into the person he was know. The whole reason why he was in this situation in the first place was because he no longer wanted to make the impossible decisions, and would rather save the life of one individual than prevent a political scandal. And so he had. He had saved her life and, although she found it difficult to admit it, she was glad he did.

After Ruth had taken notes of everything she thought could be important for the trial, encrypted of course, she took off the necklace and screwed the microdot back into the pendant. Read it, and then destroy it, Dimitri had said, and that's exactly what she was going to do. She put the pendant down on the floor and stamped down on it, repeatedly, with the heel of her boot. The pendant shattered into a million pieces, which she then swept together and threw in the bin.

Just as she was preparing to leave for Harry's place to tell him what she had found out, the phone rang. It was the Home Secretary, bringing bad news.

TBC