This was so strange. Ruth could not get over how odd this situation was. He was here, in her flat, having tea. She was making tea for him in her flat. They had never just had tea together. Not at her home. She couldn't even recall if he'd been to her home before. Certainly not this one, but perhaps her little house before Cotterdam. She could not quite remember. But she would not ask, because that might be rude. And really, the last thing she wanted was to rehash days gone by. The both of them had moved on, and Ruth wanted to focus on that.

She filled the tray and brought it from the kitchen to the living room. "Sorry to keep you waiting. I hope Smock wasn't too much trouble. He's a bit finicky about new people."

Malcolm looked over to her with a smile. "He's lovely, Ruth. A very sweet boy," he replied, giving the cat a scratch behind the ears.

Smock closed his blue eyes and Ruth could hear him purring from where she sat. She smiled affectionately at her cat and her old friend as she began to pour the tea for them. "I'm so glad he's being nice. He unfortunately attacked a friend of mine a few weeks ago." Ruth still felt bad about Andrew getting scratched like that. But it had given a convenient excuse not to have him over anymore. And he didn't seem to mind since Smock made him a bit nervous.

"Oh dear," Malcolm replied. "I hope she was alright."

"He," Ruth corrected, blushing as she did. "Andrew got scratched rather badly, but I do think it might have been his fault. Smock's been perfectly lovely to everyone else though now I do worry a bit when he meets new people."

Malcolm's heart sank slightly when he heard her mention a man. A man named Andrew. He had hoped that he could play matchmaker for Ruth and Harry. Better than the last time, since he'd only been successful in driving Ruth away. But now if she was seeing someone, it wasn't his place to interfere. "So you're seeing a man named Andrew?"

Ruth immediately regretting saying anything. Oh it was so awkward talking about these things with Malcolm, of all people. "I suppose so. It's…I don't really know. He's just a friend. There's nothing romantic, though I think he's hoping there might be. He's nice enough. And I don't really know many people in London anymore. I'm sure you know the feeling."

He nodded. Yes, he knew the feeling. Harry and Ruth were Malcolm's only living friends. Everyone else they'd worked with was dead now. And Ruth had surely lost many more in those two years on the Grid after Malcolm retired. He could not imagine how she did it, returning after the trauma that brought her back to this country, losing George to a bullet in the back of the head and losing Nico to his family after she'd made him an orphan. But Ruth had always been stronger than anyone ever expected her to be. And she had reason to return, of course. She had Harry. But for the life of him, Malcolm could not understand how she had managed to leave him again after that.

"You may know him," she continued, referencing this Andrew. "He's been with Five for a long time. Andrew Portow?"

If his heart had sunk upon learning Ruth was seeing Andrew and not Harry, he was utterly devastated by knowing it was Andrew Portow. "No, Ruth, you can't…"

She was quite taken aback by that. "I can't what?" she pressed. Who was Malcolm to tell her who she could see!?

Malcolm took a sip of his tea, trying to find his words. He should not be telling her this. He shouldn't be telling anyone this. But he couldn't…he couldn't not tell her. This wasn't just anyone. This was Ruth. Ruth Evershed, back from the dead and back in London and alive and well and now seeing Andrew Portow. "Andrew Portow was with Section X when you had to leave," he began.

"Yes, I know. He's Head of Section X now. I reviewed his file when I first started in my position so I'd know who I was meeting with," she explained.

"Well there's more than that," Malcolm said anxiously.

"Oh?"

"Unfortunately it makes complete sense that he's Section Head now. He's been slimy and ambitious from day one. He led the team that searched your house. And we all know they didn't find anything incriminating because obviously there was nothing to incriminate you."

"Right…"

Malcolm steeled himself. He'd never told anyone this before. "Well, I…I wanted to do what I could for you. I set up a bit of a tracer alert on the MI-5 system. I was able to intercept and review his report before it was submitted to his Section Head. And…oh Ruth, the things he said in that report…"

Ruth frowned. She could not imagine what was getting Malcolm so upset, what Andrew could have possibly said. "What things?"

"There were a few, but the one that stands out to me was when he detailed the contents of your bedroom and listed a number of…well…sexually explicit paraphenalia."

"No I didn't!" Ruth protested in shock.

"I know that. And I know you also did not have coded anarchist materials hidden in the drawers in your kitchen. Which is why I modified the report before it went to the Section Head or DG," Malcolm assured her. "The report that was submitted and reviewed was accurate. It described the contents of your house as having no illicit, illegal, or suspicious characteristics and no connection whatsoever with terrorist activity."

Ruth's head was spinning. If Andrew wrote a false report that was on record at Five, she never would have been allowed back in the country. She never would have been allowed to work back at Five. Harry could pull all the strings he wanted with the Home Secretary after her return, but there was absolutely no way she would have been given any security clearance if those things were in her file, officially dead or not. She also never would have been able to get the job she had now if that sort of thing were associated with her name.

"I wanted to protect your reputation," Malcolm said softly. "But I also knew that there was every change…or maybe not every chance, but I had every hope that you would one day come back. You wouldn't have been able to if those things were in your file."

He'd read her mind. With that first part, at any rate. But what Ruth was more upset to learn was that it was Andrew Portow who had submitted a false report. Andrew had insinuated she had anarchist sympathies, jeopardizing her professional reputation—even though at the time her professional reputation was in tatters based on the lies she had to tell in order to fake her death and go into exile—and calling into doubt all of her loyalty to Five and to the Crown. And worse than that was the aspersions he'd cast on her personal reputation. Falsifying evidence of sexual perversion? Ruth knew how reports went around the Sections at Five. She was absolutely sure that little fact would have spread through the rumor mill like wildfire. And it would have surely gotten back to Harry. Those who knew of her—for lack of a better term—relationship with Harry would have sniggered behind his back. Ruth had always worried back then about undermining his authority, and nothing would have done it as quickly as the gossip of his almost-girlfriend being a deviant. Harry would have refuted it, of course, but at the time, he'd never been in her bedroom. Maybe he would have even believed it. Maybe it would have stuck in the back of his mind during those years she was away.

But come to think of it, why hadn't Harry said anything about this before?

"Why didn't Harry tell me?" she asked. "He saw me with Andrew last week in my office. He got quite upset about it."

I'm sure he did, Malcolm thought to himself. His heart went out to his friend.

"Harry and I have gotten on well recently. Work-wise, anyway. Why didn't he tell me that Andrew put those things in his report? I don't think that's something that would have slipped his mind," Ruth pointed out.

Malcolm gave her a sad smile. "Harry didn't know. I never told a soul about that report until right now. It wasn't the must ethical thing to do, hacking into the Section X system and altering a report. Harry needed deniability in case it ever reflected back on Section D, which it obviously never would. You know I can cover my tracks. But more than that was…" He sighed and confided, "After you left, Ruth, Harry was a mess for months. And I just didn't want to hurt him any further by bringing you up for any reason. I didn't want him to be upset over this strange attack against your character. He would sit in his office and stare out the window to your empty station. He didn't need another reminder of you."

Ruth felt sick with guilt. Harry had loved her. She had known it, known he'd tried to tell her at the docks that last dawn morning when she kissed him goodbye. But it was still so impossible to imagine sometimes that he had loved her and loved her so deeply. Everything that happened after she returned, after George and Nico and before Albany shifted her entire worldview, that had solidified their connection to each other. She knew that. She knew that during those two years, Harry Pearce loved her and wanted to marry her and would have done anything to protect her. And during those two years, she was so broken and confused and convinced beyond all else that she had absolutely no right to let him love her. She had been too afraid to give in to her love for him that first time before Cotterdam stole her away. And when she got back, she was too unworthy of happiness and still and always dead set on protecting him from his own recklessness. She had failed at every turn, she knew. He wanted her and she ran away. And that was the push and pull between them for all those years. Until she had allowed herself to be persuaded to break the cycle. She thought she had. She thought four years would be enough. It wasn't. She still loved him.

But that was not the issue here. The issue was Andrew. Andrew Portow had attempted to submit a false report to his Section Head. He had later become Section Head himself. And he had sat on that very couch in her living room and tried to kiss her. Well, Ruth was glad now that Smock had shredded his arm to bits. Just as Harry had said the day she adopted Smock, animals are very good judges of character.

"That bastard," Ruth muttered half to herself, shaking her head in disbelief.

Malcolm choked slightly on his tea. "I quite agree," he replied quietly.

Ruth took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I certainly won't be seeing him anymore. I don't think he needs to know why. If I mention what his report said, he'll want to know how I know. He might look in the archives and see it was altered. We don't need to get into that. But my friendship with Andrew Portow outside of my position as Foreign Office MI-5 Liaison is over right now."

"Yes, I think that's for the best," Malcolm said.

"Now then, enough of that," Ruth continued briskly. "I want to know all about your retirement. I'm getting closer and closer to that every day, I feel like, and I'll need some inspiration on how to do it properly."

Malcolm smiled. He knew quite well that Ruth was only forty-three and nowhere near retirement, but she was sweet to phrase it that way.

The rest of their tea was a lovely reunion between friends with the promise to do it again sometime soon. Malcolm had the hopes of perhaps inviting both Ruth and Harry out to see him in the country some weekend, perhaps with a little trickery to get them alone together outside of work. But that would have to be scheming for another day. For now, Malcolm just wanted to enjoy her company.