When Ruth returned to her quiet little flat in Oxford the cats put on quite a show, mewling and twining themselves around her ankles and overall behaving as if they hadn't seen another living soul in days and were starving half to death, when Ruth knew for a fact that Mary had, at her request, fed them only just that morning. She indulged their pitiful whining for a moment, leaning over and scratching them each gently behind the ears. For the first time in two days, she took a deep, relaxing breath.

Or attempted to, at any rate.

Leaving Harry was the hardest thing she'd ever had to do; she knew this very well, having done it three times now. The first time they'd been pulled apart by circumstances beyond their control, and she'd been able to comfort herself with the memory of his kiss, fierce and wretched in sorrow, with the knowledge that she was leaving to keep him safe. The second time anger had propelled her forward, had made her bold as she sought to make a new life for herself, one far away from their world of shadows and darkness, a life in which she missed him, but was no longer breaking in half beneath the weight of the silence that had fallen between them. This time, though, things were different. This time, it was so much worse than she could ever have anticipated.

She loved him, that mule-stubborn man with the gorgeous eyes. She loved him, but she was terribly afraid, and the same fear that had sent her running back to Oxford still dogged her steps, still lingered on her shoulder, a cross she would bear all the rest of her days. Ruth had stayed in London, had waited for him to return, had tended to his hurts because she loved him, and she knew that if she did not look after him, no one would, least of all Harry himself. Once she was satisfied that he was well, or as well as he could be under the circumstances, she forced herself to turn and leave.

It's for the best, she told herself for the thousandth time. And for the thousandth time, the words failed to reassure her.

What Ruth feared was simply this; no matter how deep the love that bound them together, no matter how involved their history, she was desperately afraid that they simply were not meant to be happy together. They had tried before, and they had failed. Though they had aired their grievances and fallen into one another's arms once more, she could not shake the sense that the same darkness was waiting to swallow them at the first opportunity. And how much worse would it hurt, she wondered, if she allowed herself to rejoin Harry in London, only to wake six months later and find a stranger sleeping beside her? How much worse would it hurt, she wondered, if they found a way to truly be together only to have him taken from her, killed by a bullet or a bomb or some other even more unthinkable horror? Surely it was better for both of them to close that chapter of their lives, to look back fondly on one another, but to remove the power they each held to the wound the other more completely than any weapon yet devised by man. At least, that's what she tried to tell herself.

This argument was not particularly convincing, especially once she found herself curling up to sleep alone beneath her crisp white sheets. When she rolled onto her side and turned to face the empty pillows beside her, imagining the head that could have lain there, that should have lain there, with her always, as they had sworn to one another long ago.

There was no comfort to be found living like this, cold and alone. The idea that she had walked away as much for him as for herself did not soothe the ache in her heart. There in the darkness she thought of Harry, gingerly easing himself into bed, wondering what went wrong, wondering if she'd told him the truth about why she'd left. Ruth had expected some resistance from him, but he had not protested, choosing instead to sit idly by and watch her leave in silence. Perhaps that's what he wanted after all, she told herself as the first tears began to fall.


The next day she rose, dressed in her usual uniform of long skirt and dark cardigan, fed her cats, drank her tea by the window in the kitchen, and set off to give her first lecture of the morning. It was an introductory course on ancient mythologies for undergraduates, most of them cheerful and enthusiastic, if a bit bleary-eyed and unconvinced as to the significance of the material. Most of them thought it was a bit of a lark, all those stories about Zeus descending from Olympus and molesting unsuspecting women who were just trying to have a bath in peace. Her students did not know, could not have known, that Ruth's knowledge of these stories had saved the nation from utter ruin on more than one occasion, and she could not fault them for their ignorance in that regard.

As usual she took up her post at the front of the class, flipping through her notes one final time as the room around her swelled with the buzz of her students, chatting happily away. There was a certain comfort to be found in routine, and she tried to wrap herself up in it this morning. The rows of desks, the brightly colored backpacks, the notebooks, the sea of shining, hungover faces spread out before. She would give her lecture, she would go up to her office, she would respond to a few emails, and then she would have lunch with Mary. There was nothing spectacular about it, but perhaps, with time, this life would prove to be a balm to her weary soul. Then again, perhaps not.

Once she had her thoughts in order, she turned to face them, fully prepared to spend the next hour or so discussing Ovid's Metamorphoses until all their eyes glazed over.

"Good morning," she said, and the room rumbled slightly with her students' response. Ruth smiled, a bit sadly. There was nothing life or death about this, nothing chaotic, nothing dangerous, nothing scary. There was also nothing particularly exciting about it, and not for the first time she found herself wondering if it were possible to die of boredom.

"Right," she said, trying to rally. "Ovid."

She turned to look at the book she held in her hands, fully prepared to dive right into her lecture, but what she found there stopped her short. In her haste to leave the house that morning, she had, somehow, taken the wrong book with her. It was not Metamorphoses she held; it was Amores.

Her heart gave a dangerous little flutter in her chest. Though she could feel the curious stares of her students she found she could not move, could not speak. She simply stared at the book, thinking. Thinking about the man who had given it to her, thinking about the tragedy and the irony and the fallacy of love, thinking about what it meant, to fall so completely for the wrong person. She was thinking about history, about the ties that bind, about the power of fear. And, quite suddenly, she realized something.

Perhaps it was dangerous, to love a man who served the country rather than his own heart. Perhaps it was a gamble, to give all of oneself to another, to allow one's heart to find a home in the fragile hands of another person. Perhaps it hurt, to love. Perhaps all of this was true, but it seemed to her that she had never been given a more precious gift than that of love, and to squander it, to hide it away, to store her heart upon a shelf in the name of keeping it safe, suddenly seemed to Ruth to be the height of folly. Yes, Harry might die. Yes, Harry might one day cease to be the man she loved. But for the last eight years he had remained steady and true, and every atom in her body cried out for him.

The hell with this, she thought.

"Right," she said again, clearing her throat, startled by how raw her own voice sounded. "Actually, we're done for the day. Feel free to stay, if you need the time to study."

The sea of twenty-somethings spread out before her began to sway back and forth uneasily, murmuring softly to one another. She saw one young man leap from his desk and practically run through the door, apparently quite relieved to have been given permission to flee. I bet he didn't do the reading, she thought wildly.

And without another word she gathered up her things and followed him, bolting from the room.


"Miss Bailey?" the security guard said, his voice perplexed and slightly tinny as it echoed through the briefing room.

"Yes?" she asked impatiently. She and Dimitri had been in the middle of interviewing a new candidate to join their team, an agent from Section A who was eager for a secondment. Beth wasn't convinced the young man sitting across from her would be a good fit for the team, but she still didn't appreciate the interruption.

"I apologize, ma'am, it's just…Lady Pearce is here, again."

"Right," Beth said. "Um…send her down, then."

Only the day before Harry had told them that he thought they'd seen the last of Ruth and yet, here she was, storming back onto the Grid. To be quite honest, Beth was rather relieved; she'd never seen Harry looking quite as forlorn as he did when he made that particular announcement.

"Maybe she's left something behind?" Dimitri suggested, reading Beth's confusion in her face.

Like her husband? Beth thought, but she did not voice that particular thought aloud. She rose from her chair, and left Dimitri alone with the new recruit, making her way out onto the Grid to greet Lady Pearce as she came racing through the pods.

Ruth came racing into view, stuttering to a halt there on the threshold by the pods. Her brilliant eyes flitted towards Harry's office, and a dark expression over took her features when she saw that he was not currently in residence.

"Ruth?" Beth asked, taking a tentative step towards her. Ruth seemed to fairly vibrate with nervous energy, and when she turned her gaze onto Beth, Beth saw that her eyes were sort of wild.

"Harry?" Ruth asked. Strange that, Beth thought; though they'd only known one another for a bare two days, Rut had always been very courteous in her dealings with the team. Today, apparently, she did not have time for the niceties.

"He's not in," Beth explained. "The DG got wind of what happened yesterday, and sent him home."

Ruth did not say another word; she simply turned on her heel and dashed off again, leaving Beth, if possible, even more confused than she had been before. Beth just shrugged her shoulders; whatever was going on with Ruth and Harry was certainly none of her business, but she couldn't help hoping that they would sort themselves out. If anyone ever deserved to be happy, she thought, it was the two of them.


"Come on, come on, come on," Ruth chanted quietly to herself, practically dancing on the spot in impatience. She'd taken the train from Oxford to London, a taxi to Thames House and a second one to Harry's, only to arrive and find him not answering the door. Twice already she'd rung the bell, but no answer had come from within. Through the thin curtains on the windows, curtains Ruth herself had picked out years ago, she could see that the house beyond was in darkness.

I suppose that's what I get, she thought glumly, for not calling first.

Ruth heaved a sigh, and sat down on the front step, tucking her skirt beneath her legs. Having made up her mind that leaving Harry was in fact the worst possible choice she could have made, Ruth was resolved to wait as long as was necessary in order to see him again. There was no guarantee that he would be amenable to the idea of them giving it another go; after all, Ruth had left him twice now, and she knew he was not a particularly forgiving man. He couldn't be, in his line of work. Betrayal always hit him hard, and she was under no illusions; she knew that she had betrayed him. That she had done it for love of him, that she had been motivated by a desire to spare them both undue pain, did not seem to her to be a particularly strong argument.

So she waited, thinking about the man she loved, thinking about every mistake they had ever made, every cruel word they had ever spoken to one another. She thought about lazy Sunday mornings, making love in the pre-dawn light; Harry was always rather amorous, first thing in the morning. And when they were finished he would slip downstairs to fix them both a bit of breakfast, bringing her tea in bed as if she were a Queen and not an overworked, underpaid analyst. Many Sundays had passed like that, in a haze of quiet domesticity and the bliss of simply sharing space with one another, and she found herself wishing, with everything she had, for a lifetime of Sundays to spend with him.

As the minutes turned to hours, Ruth's hopes turned to doubts once more. There was no sign of him, and when she did eventually try to ring him, she was disheartened to discover that his mobile had been turned off. Wherever he had gone it was clear that he did not want to be reached, but Ruth could not shake the feeling that he was trying to avoid her specifically.

Maybe it really is too late, she thought as she finally rose, stiff and cold and rather hungry, having sat on his front steps for so long. Maybe some wrongs can't be undone.

With a heavy heart she called for another taxi. It was time for her to go home.