It's not twenty minutes later that Ruth shifts for the eighth time on the couch and sighs. She's just not going to get comfortable on the small lump of rock that Harry has in his office. Not with the metal support bar digging into her hip bone and no throw.
"Alright. I give up." she mutters under her breath, pushing herself into a sitting position. "He was right and I was overreacting."
There's no one in the room, she knows this, but she feels the need to acknowledge what the universe is trying to tell her.
That she's being an irrational, over-emotional ingrate.
Feet slipping to the worn carpet, she looks around the darkened room. What she's looking for she's not sure, but she's not ready to crawl back to the master bedroom with her tail between her legs and admit she was wrong. To have the talk that she knows he's going to want to.
It's a functional room. Like his office on the Grid, everything has a purpose and a place. She's avoided the room in the short time she's been staying there; both out of respect and resentment for his job. He's still the man she fell in love with all those months ago and she knows he'll continue to be that man.
But it's because of that that she had to run that cool, summer morning so soon after Harry and her had found their way back together. She knows she'll never go back to the Grid; not after all this; and she's not entirely sure what that will mean for her and Harry.
The Grid and the job is what defined their relationship. Without it, they would never have been.
The metal biting into her right buttocks reminds her that she needs to stop thinking and move. Bending over, she grasps the receiver in her hand before standing. As she turns towards the door, something on the desk by the safe catches her eye. Silently crossing the room, she stops in the orange glow from the outside street lamp and sets the monitor on the wood.
Picking up the frames; the only hint of personal in the room; she stares.
And knows that her thoughts of only moments before were wrong.
Carefully putting the frames back where she found them, she picks up the monitor and crosses to the door. As she pulls it open and steps through the doorway, her eyes are drawn back to the desk and those pictures.
Harry is so much more than the Grid and the job. And so is she.
They just need to learn to exist without it between them.
With a soft smile, she pulls the door shut.
Leaving behind the images of all three of Harry's children together in that tri-frame; each in their infant years; as well as the image of the two of them.
AN: There should be another update later today with the rest of this chapter as long as I finish proofing it; but I thought that this little bit needed a chapter of its own.