Chapter 11

Love is a Sin...

Ruth winced as the cold; tiles came up to meet her faster than she was anticipating.

She was still shaking as her cable ties were removed. She had no idea how long their last 'session' had lasted; it could have been an hour, ten minutes or ten days. She didn't care. It was over. Please God let it be over...

Once again, she had not been physically harmed, none of them had so much as breathed on her; but that had not stopped her from being in pain throughout.

She got shakily to her feet and moved instinctively away from the now closed door. If only to give herself something to do to avoid the rush of memories that were threatening to remind her of the all too recent history contained within these walls. A bowl of fruit and several bottles of water had been left in the corner of the room, looking mockingly like something a visitor would bring to a patient in a hospital. Carefully open one of the bottles and not particularly caring if it was laced with arsenic she took several shaky sips, but found herself choking on it.

She found that it was impossible for her trembling legs to support her and sank back to the floor, attempting to maintain control of herself as she was violently assaulted by a sudden flood of flashbacks.

The door reopened and the dark stranger who had interrogated her entered the room.

"Where is Lucas?" she demanded throatily, despising the way her voice cracked as she spoke.

"Relax, he will be returned to you in due course...Poor thing is in a bit of a state I'm afraid after what you did to him...You may need these." He handed her a bundle of soft white towels before turning wordlessly and leaving her alone once again.

The memories of what had happened to them, what they had done to him, of what she had done to him. She caught herself there, stopping herself from going further, knowing that the words were not true but being unable to prevent them from poisoning her conscience all the same.

She did not have to wait long for the stranger's promise to be fulfilled as the door was opened and Lucas was indeed 'returned to her'. However 'a bit of a state' she found to be a bit of an understatement.

This time soft words and gentle touch were not enough for him to respond to her.

She could see his muscles contracting and shaking in response to whatever Hell he was going through.

Shaking herself and knowing that she had to do something to at least feel as though she was helping, emptied out the bowl of food and brought it closer to them along with several bottles of water, setting them next to the towels and she had been given, crossing her legs and taking several deep breaths to compose herself before beginning.

Attempting to stop her hands from twitching without success, her trembling fingers undid the buttons of Lucas' torn shirt and carefully removed it wincing as it clung desperately to the raw, ragged skin beneath.

Setting the torn fabric aside resolving to soak it afterwards she began by gently wetting one of the towels and beginning to clean the wounds crossing over his back.

After around half-an-hour she saw the skin under her hands crawl as the muscles in his back tensed. He drew a long rattling breath and twitched away from her on instinct.

"Sorry..." she murmured, gently placing a soft hand on his shoulder to reassure him that it was her.

His muscles relaxed somewhat as he took several deep breaths and adjusted to the sudden burst of consciousness that had been thrust upon him. His body jerked again as she continued to clean his injuries.

"Sorry." She winced again,

"It's alright." He replied, huskily, "Thank you." He added weakly,

She continued carefully but as her hands twitched violently she caught one of the rough cuts causing him to hiss in pain.

"They won't stop shaking." She said, withdrawing from him, nervously, after a frantic apology.

"They will." He told her softly, pushing himself up and resting his back against the cold tiles taking her hands in his own for a second before withdrawing them back to himself, breaking the connection.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he murmured,

"Talk about it?" she repeated incredulously. He blinked "Yes why don't we just verbally relive it all?" she snapped, verging on hysteria.

"Why don't we?"

She stared at him, "What?"

"Shut your eyes, go back to the beginning, talk it through."

"Have you completely lost-"

"No. It's better than the alternative. Trust me..."

Watching him cautiously she allowed her eyelids to block out her current view of the world.

"They came into the cell, blindfolded, gagged and bound us..."

They had then been marched into separate rooms and once again, she had been presented with the insufferable interrogator and a laptop screen.

Lucas had been tied once more in the same position as before, stretching the barely healed cuts and splitting several of them open once more; although this time they were told that they could communicate.

"How are you doing Lucas?" the man beside Ruth enquired smoothly.

"Oh everything's just hunky-dory with me..." he snarled in response.

"Very well...It's quite simple Ruth, you answer my questions and we can comfortably move on from this."

"What you'll just let us go?" she snapped with a humourless laugh.

"No, not quite, we still have several more sessions to go until that moment, but you will be able to sleep tonight, in peace."

"Sleep? In peace? So what, we can just relive everything that happens here?" she demanded, shakily,

"If you answer my questions there will be nothing to relive."

"What are you going to do to him when I say no?" she breathed, softly,

"Oh I'm quite sure you'll find out...Now...Why is that ship in Syria?"

"I don't know." She said, closing her eyes, this was true; she had no idea why the ship was there, it was something that had caused an uproar in London and had yet to generate any answers.

She forced herself to face the screen knowing that if she turned away or refused to watch, that whatever they were doing to Lucas would be made worse.

Everything had been eerily similar to their first encounter and she had been sure that the wicked silver dagger had been set to make a return. She had been wrong. This was worse. A thin whip rested in his torturer's hands. The cruel, spiked instrument would have been bad enough on its own but when combined with his existing injuries would be unbearable from the word go.

The man beside her sighed as the whip fell in response to her words and Lucas howled. He had been attempting to avoid reacting so as to spare her but he could not help himself, feeling as though his back was being rent open and branded with hot metal.

They continued for several more questions and more lashes for Lucas as every time Ruth refused to offer an answer and then flinched as Lucas bore the punishment. This time was worse, for both of them. Last time the dagger had continued, uninterrupted, with only the knowledge that it would stop if she answered. This time it felt as though she herself were dealing him every blow as they were performed in an instantaneous response to her words.

Lucas was barely conscious and what could only be described as delirious when her interrogator raised his hand and said silkily,

"A break. For a moment...Really Miss Evershed, while what I've asked you would be useful for me to know, and certainly irritates me to be ignorant about, it is not of vital importance to me, but there is something that I really would like you to answer for me...I asked your friends about it, when I called MI-5 for a cosy chat...I'm allowing them to think on whether or not they want you back but as I know their track record I find it only fair to give you the chance to save yourselves..." He paused there as Ruth felt nausea rising in her throat, knowing that it was about to begin again, "The authorisation codes to allow manual control to the ship, I'll spare you a little, I know that you know, now all I need you to do, is tell me what they are, tell me what they are and this will all be over now."

She shook her head, stomach convulsing as she choked, "No."

Lucas howled in agony and she felt tears falling from her eyes at the noise, feeling responsible.

"As I've said Ruth, this information is very important to me, so I'll ask you again, the authorisation codes..."

She was unable to speak now, shoulders shaking violently, tears falling from her eyes, hand covering her mouth and could only shake her head.

This time the interrogation was not stopped by the sleazy bastard she had grown to despise more than she had ever known possible but was forced to end as Lucas slipped gratefully into unconsciousness, deciding that fighting the inevitable was not worth it, particularly since he could hear Ruth as well as she could hear him.

Resigned to the fact that, even if he had still be conscious and the interrogation could have continued, Ruth herself was in a state that, even had she wanted to, she would not have been able to and decided not to attempt to revive Lucas for some futile continued attempt...

She opened her eyes and found herself holding onto his wrist at little too firmly, her nails digging in to the skin and drawing blood.

To her surprise, it had helped talking it out, whether he had listened or not and she found that her hands were now quite steady.

"Thank you..." she said, quietly, in slight disbelief

"Welcome..." he murmured softly.

"How did you know?"

"It's funny...I had a cell mate in Russia for a little while too...Irony was, he had been a member of the FSB, they thought he had betrayed them, he hadn't, so technically we were two rival spies in a confined space but in prison that doesn't matter too much. Anyway the point is, he had been there for three years over and above me and had suffered about the same amount of torture. Before he explained it, I used to sit and listen to him recounting everything they had done to him in painful detail; so much so that I began to believe that he had been planted in there to torment me, when I finally asked him he told me that it was a coping strategy. You needed something to distract you, to take your mind off it, as ironic as that sounds, it wasn't the fact that you were going back over that in depth; it was the fact that you were going over something in depth; you were forcing yourself to do something. People think that getting over something like this they need to do something, and that's true but physical acts don't mean much, you needed psychologically distracted..."

She nodded, slowly, this made sense, however unpleasant it had been, she now did feel better, "It's almost as though are nightmares are trying to force us into facing whatever it is we run from in reality..." she said, quietly,

"If you want to get poetic about it." He said, the smile turning to a grimace as he stretched the wounds on his back.

"That's going to hurt like Hell in the morning..." she told him softly,

"Yeah." He said, choking a little as he suppressed a laugh,

"Why are they doing this to us Lucas?" she breathed,

"I don't know Ruth...Who can know why anyone does anything? Hate, greed, love."

"People have such poetic thoughts about love. One of the most tragic things in our line of work is knowing the truth..."

"Someone once told me, ' love should be considered as great a sin as wrath or greed, for how many wars have been fought, how many people have died, how many things have been destroyed in the name of love?'"

"It's a cruel world when you know what you're looking at...And these, people, exploit it, exploit human nature, they play on our fears and insecurities and feed off our pain...They told me that they'd spoken to Harry and the others on The Grid...They said they weren't exactly champing at the bit to get us back..."

"Well they would tell you that...Harry could have flown to the moon and back for you, probably would, but it's not exactly in their best interests to tell you that is it?" he reasoned quietly,

"No...But I don't know what's worse, the fact that I believe it could be true, or that I can bring myself to believe that it's true...How many people have I watched die? How many funerals have I attended? How many have I loved and lost to this job and for how long has the machine that is MI-5 paused to consider our loss?"

"I think we all expect that when we sign up Ruth...Most of this job, for me anyway, has been spent in situations that other people could never contemplate, for me, most of it was spent in a Russian prison cell, not something that I would have chosen and not something that I signed up for. If I had known what they would do to me, and how senselessly they would do it, I probably wouldn't have become involved...But in saying that, I have no regrets. None. I love this job, I need this job, it's the only thing that's ever made any sense to me, the only place I've ever been understood...Do you have any regrets?"

"No..." she breathed, "No, I would still do it, really, at the minute...I just hate it..."

"I know...There were times in Russia when I despised it, I despised all of it, I even despised Harry...The people I had worked with for years, in something I had dedicated my life to, I couldn't stand. I thought that Harry had forgotten me as with all of his other problems in his usual evening glass of whiskey, that I was nothing to him. I thought that this country had forgotten me...I then realised the true nature of the beast we are in. I was never forgotten because I was never known; I could never be forgotten by anyone, because no-one knew that I existed. In this job, whether we shuffle off this rock at ninety with our family around us, we crawl through traitor's gate or we die heroes, we are never remembered, never rewarded, never honoured in any way. The only people who will come to our funerals are those who also do not exist, mortal ghosts in a mortal world, a part of their world but never allowed to live in it..."

She nodded in quiet acceptance of his words that rung a little too true in her mind. They sat silently, taking as much comfort in the other's presence as was possible in the dark and in the quiet until they were rudely interrupted.

The stranger who had interrogated them returned to the room and they both flinched, horrified by the idea that they would be tortured once more, mere hours after their last.

"You still will not talk?" he spat at Ruth, his face inches from hers, causing Lucas to subconsciously move his body in front of hers, as she defiantly shook her head, neither of them knowing what was happening,

"Then it may please you to know that thanks to the most recent mistake of your friends, I have found someone who shall make you." He spat violently.

He stormed from the room, slamming the door behind them, his visit apparently serving no purpose other than to take out some strange anger on them.

"What the Hell is he talking about?" Ruth asked, terrified by who he might mean, "It must be one of them, Ros or Harry." She said, petrified,

"No, it can't be, it won't be, they're too careful."

"We were too careful and look where we've bloody ended up!" she screamed at him,

A thin slip of paper was slid under the door at this point. Lucas moved forward, despite being in pain, and picked it up, having a fairly good idea of what it would be, and not wanting Ruth to see it first. He was right when it turned out to be a picture of their latest victim the word 'LEVERAGE' scrawled across their eyes but still horribly familiar to him.

His eyes darted towards Ruth before back to the now shaking image in his hand as shock swept over him and he slid down the wall, shaking his head in disbelief as he terrified Ruth, covering his mouth with his hand as he whispered,

"No..."

A/N: Thanks for reading/reviewing!