Chapter 14 - One Piece is a Victory

The pen stopped in mid signature, poised over his last name. Harry tilted his head, senses on alert, listening. For what, he did not know. Something was off. He carefully laid the pen down on his desk and sat back in his chair. The springs creaked softly as he considered the source of his unease. It might only be the nudge of instinct warning him to stay on alert about the Chinese, the CIA, indigestion. Whatever it was, he could not remain seated. He needed to move. Rarely did he leave his office without a specific destination in mind, but he felt compelled to walk across the Grid. His journey took him past Ruth's desk. Her chair sat empty. Odd, considering the events that had recently transpired. A twinge of concern ran through him. He suppressed it. No doubt she was somewhere close, diligently ferreting out intelligence. Harry's feet moved of their own recourse, taking him to the entrance of the corridor. He squinted in the dimness, the quality of light in the hall significantly reduced from that of the Grid proper. Any illumination from the recessed sconces was instantly absorbed into the pores of the concrete. It was not a place that invited one to linger. It was a perfunctory passageway meant to carry people from one part of the Grid to another. A linear path to most, but not, as it would appear, to Ruth. Head down, shoulders rising, she walked in one direction and then pivoted in another, pacing from wall to wall, a ball bouncing off of the bumpers of a pinball machine. A buzz of electricity crackled around her. Harry frowned, dismissing the impossible. He could not have heard her agitation in his office. He shook his head and took a wary step.

"Ruth?"

"Oh!" She started at his voice and turned to him. "Is everything alright?"

"I could ask the same of you."

"I'm just finding it hard to settle in one place."

"You've had a bit of a shock."

Harry slowly walked toward her, keeping his voice purposefully low. He had seen her in a similar state, years before. He had been cautious in his approach then, he decided it would be wise to do so now. Even though Ruth's pacing had come to a halt, her body quivered, tuned to a note heard only by her. Hyper-arousal, the by-product of stress. Best not to make any sudden moves. Stopping at what he deemed to be a suitable distance, Harry casually leaned against the wall. He kept his breathing even, hoping a subdued demeanor would serve to calm her. His strategy proved effective; Ruth gravitated towards him, settling into the spot beside him. Her hands, unable to settle, moved from picking at her shirt to pulling on her skirt. Harry put his hands into his trouser pockets, tacitly inviting her to contain her movements. Her hands slowed and came to rest at her side. Though she may have settled on the surface, Harry suspected that inwardly she was still wound like a spring. It was only natural to be on edge after such an experience, he had been in her position many times. Though his method of coping usually involved alcohol and not pacing in a hallway. Ruth was made of a more delicate material than him. He needed to talk her through it. He gave the corridor a quick sweep, gauging the likelihood of any interruptions. The hall remained quiet. Harry spoke softly.

"Why did you go with her?"

"She took my hand."

Ruth answered his question without hesitation, as if accompanying a stranger was the most logical decision. Would she follow anyone who took her hand? Harry's fingers curled around the set of keys kept in his pocket. He could reach out to her right now and take her hand. It wouldn't seem entirely unnatural, it could be interpreted as a sign of support. Would she go with him? Follow him anywhere? He pushed his keys deeper into his pocket.

"You should have refused to go. It was an unnecessary risk."

"What could I do? I didn't have a choice. The CIA were treating Cheng like she was a package. I was all she had."

"It's never wise to get emotionally involved with an asset."

"Well, she's not our asset, is she?" Ruth counted tartly.

Harry kept his voice level. "You know what I mean."

"I can't believe I let go of her hand. Stupid. Stupid. I should have held onto it when we got out of the car. There was just so much noise and confusion."

"You said it yourself; we couldn't have known it was a trap. We were set up by the Chinese."

"I think Beth is kicking herself over Kai."

"Well she should be."

"She's trying her best. How was she to know he was misleading us."

"Are you defending Miss Bailey?" Harry shifted on the wall. "Only a few short weeks ago you wanted to hang her out to dry."

"People can change their minds, Harry."

He looked at her, biting back the urge to ask if she had changed her mind about him. Her eyes danced as they flitted over him, and for a moment he thought that he was the cause of their spark. But he knew better. It was the product of adrenaline. The electric jolt of life that came after a brush with chaos; the exhilaration of cheating death. A flush of pink coloured her cheeks, the lines of her face erased by a heightened vibrancy. He marvelled at it, took a moment to capture the picture in his mind, and filed it away in his memory. His chest expanded, swelling with pride. She was his officer, a product of his making. Her past forays into the field had been fraught with calamity, but on this mission she had risen to the occasion. She had demonstrated ingenuity in finding Amphitrite, remained calm while a CIA officer held a gun to her head, and deftly translated the word quark into Mandarin. He should compliment her on her work, build up her confidence. Her eyes met his and a tiny smile graced her lips. She knew. Her chest moved rapidly with the satisfaction of her achievement and the unspoken approval of her boss. He wondered at what point she would crash.

"I had a meeting with the Home Secretary," said Harry. "The CIA were handling Amphitrite all along. Towers has just decided to share that nugget of information with us now."

"Judicious intelligence sharing."

Harry hummed in agreement, acknowledging her reference to his own caveat about sharing information with politicians. Harry well understood how information travelled both ways, but it irked him when details were not freely shared by the denizens of Whitehall. It undermined national security. It undermined his sense of authority. He abhorred not being in control.

Frustrated that his thoughts had turned to Towers, Harry absently brushed his hand through his hair. His fingers played with the uneven line at the nape of his neck. It needed a trim, but he never had the time for such tonsorial pursuits. It made no matter, there was no one he needed to impress. Ruth's eyes followed the movement of his hand. Aware of her gaze, Harry let his hand rest on the back of his neck. He eyed her curiously, strangely self conscious under her scrutiny. As an experiment, he tilted his head. Ruth mimicked him, tilting her head to one side and raising her hand to the back of her neck. She found an errant strand of hair and twisted it around her finger. Her hair was mussed from her ordeal, beguilingly so, as if she had just come from her bed. He must be careful not to let his thoughts stray into dangerous territory, though it was proving difficult. The high of adrenaline was addictive, it was equally intoxicating to be around. A twinge of jealousy pricked him, envious that she had been in the centre of the action while he sat on the side lines. He wanted to taste the experience, have her share it with him. Was there any reason why more together could not entail other pursuits? An innocent meal perhaps. A dinner in an understated restaurant, free of trappings. Or a drink? He would ask her. When the time was right.

Harry returned his hand to his pocket. He subtly shifted his position against the wall, moving himself closer to her.

"You're very lucky. You put yourself in unnecessary danger."

"I know. After the flash, when the lights went out, I thought I was dead."

"I thought you were dead too," Harry murmured under his breath. Ruth met his eyes, his whispered words audible to her.

At the news of the explosion, Harry had experienced the near approximation of a heart attack. His thoughts had immediately jumped to the worst conclusion. Ruth lay dead, a shattered shell on the cold floor of a car park. Overcoming the initial shock, Harry wasted no time, immediately barking at Tariq to find out what had happened. Thankfully, Lucas had promptly called with an update. Fear and worry had turned to anger. Anger that she had put herself in that position, quickly supplanted by anger at himself. He had sanctioned the mission and allowed her to go undercover as an interpreter to QMK. It was his fault that she had been hijacked by the CIA and dragged into an ambush in an underground car park.

"God, it was loud," Ruth continued. "My ears are still ringing. Not so much from the explosion but from all the car alarms."

Ruth ran a finger over the shell of her ear, massaging tiny circles over the skin. Harry followed her with his eyes, pulling himself back from the hypnotic movement.

"You need to go home and rest."

"I can't do that. We've got to get Cheng back."

"You've been through alot. It never hurts to take a break. Collect one's senses."

"I can still taste metal in my mouth."

On her return to the Grid, Ruth had trailed a cloud of smoke and ammonia. Harry had stood beside her, the familiar scent of danger rising from the fibres of her clothes. Images had surfaced in Harry's memory, darkened alleys, whispered code names, the tap of running footsteps, the remnants of the distant past. A longing for a different time had washed over him. An age when the enemy was known and not hidden behind a circuit board.

As he stood beside Ruth, he noticed that the smell of smoke had diminished. Any residual odour now mingled with the scent he associated with her. Ruth had somehow managed to procure a different set of clothes, an ensemble that he had never seen before. Harry speculated that she may have borrowed them from Beth. It was a shirt of blue denim; he was certain he had one the exact same colour hanging in his closet. And if pressed, he might admit that he may have imagined her in it once or twice. The top few buttons were undone, bordering on provocative. But it was not the state of her buttons that tantalised him the most. It was her necklace; a chain that he had not noticed earlier. A white shard, like the tooth of some prehistoric fish, hung from the links, the tip of the fossil pointing down to her cleavage. She had possessed a similar necklace once, adorned with similar such trinkets. A necklace which had often caused his eyes to stray down to areas forbidden by managerial practices.

Ruth noticed his gaze and nervously raised her hand. "What is it? Is it my lip?" She lightly pressed a finger against her lip.

"No it's fine," he assured her, momentarily mesmerised by her lips. "But you might want to have it seen too."

She nodded. Her eyes moved rapidly, a movie playing in her mind. The muscles of her face fell and her mouth opened with silent realisation. Harry surmised the cause. The dopamine that had coursed through her system during the crisis had melted away, replaced by the acute awareness of what could have happened. Ruth slumped against the wall next to him. The sidelight cast an aura around her, giving her the ephemeral quality of a ghost. She studied her hand, the muscles shaking with shock. Harry edged closer, working up the courage to take it and soothe her. She reached up to the charm on her necklace.

"I could have died."

"But you didn't."

Her body canted toward him, searching for comfort. It would be perfectly within his remit to put his arm around her, a gesture of support for one of his officers. Harry pursed his lips. She was in a vulnerable place; he should tread lightly with any sort of physical contact. Besides, in a hall on the Grid there was no privacy. They would be caught in a compromising position. She would reflect upon it when she was more herself and conclude that the open corridor was no place for affection. It belayed weakness. Harry drove his hands deeper into his pockets.

"Why don't you go back to your desk. I'll see if I can scrounge you up a tea."

"No, it's alright," she declined with a faint smile. She knew he would never make such an offer to anyone else on the Grid. Only her.

"Something a bit stronger perhaps." He gave her a coaxing smile. Fate would damn him for suggesting alcohol as a means of escape, but who could blame him for trying to conscript a companion for his habit.

"I'll just go back and sit down for a moment."

A wise choice, he silently conceded. He pushed himself away from the wall. He would find an opportunity to ask her out for a proper drink. Until that time, he would move heaven and earth to keep her out of harm's way.

.

His breath came in short, staccato bursts. The walk up the stairs required more effort than usual; the exertion causing Harry's heart to thump rapidly in his chest. He paused on a step to collect himself. What on earth was happening to him? A sign of the times, he begrudgingly concluded. Not that he had ever bounded up the stairs, but as with everything else, the task did not come as easily as it once had. At Harry's yearly physical, the doctor had advised him to drink less, exercise more, lose a few stone. If he were to do all that, Harry argued, the medical establishment would be out of a job. Harry had made a few concessions to his health. He had given up tobacco. It had not been a conscious decision. Like his other addictions it had fallen out of favour, resurfacing now and then as a craving but nothing to be acted upon. The occasional cigar at the Club didn't really count in the grand scheme of things. As for exercise, he was too busy. There were days when his only activity consisted of jumping through the hoops of bureaucracy. Admittedly, he should ease up on the drinking but how else was he to get through this bloody job. The only way to stop drinking would be to quit the position, an event which was not in the immediate future. Soon, Harry whispered letting the stairwell in on his plans, soon the day would come when he would resign.

The metal door gave a soft groan as Harry pushed it open. Daylight hit him, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the unaccustomed brightness. He inhaled a deep breath, pulling the fresh air into his overworked lungs. Perhaps that was the solution to his lack of endurance, a taste of the outside world. He stopped when he noticed Ruth standing by the railing. What was she doing up here? There had been no premonition alerting him to her presence this time. Harry felt a pang of disappointment. His senses, along with his stamina, had forsaken him.

Ruth gave no indication that she was aware of his presence. Wrapped in the black folds of her overcoat, she hunched inward, wings pulled around her for protection. A far cry from the manic energy she had displayed earlier in the corridor. Harry crossed and stood beside her, his mind cycling through the reasons for her change in demeanour. Before he could conclude anything, Ruth spoke without looking at him.

"I think I understand why you come up here."

Harry waited, choosing not to prod her analysis of his actions. He was certain he only came to the roof out of habit. Ruth gestured out over the city.

"Up here, you can see everything. This is one building amongst so many. The city goes on and on. It's all about perspective, isn't it?"

Harry tilted his head in agreement. "Are you looking for perspective on something?"

A deep sigh preceded her words. "I just got off the phone with Beth. Kai walked back into the Chinese embassy."

"I suspected he might do as much."

Ruth turned to him, a pointed expression on her face as if he had deliberately withheld his suspicions from her. "How would you know?"

"I only know the unpredictability of the human condition. We can't presume to know what's in another man's mind." He looked at her, recalling the many times he had misread her thinking.

"It doesn't make any sense. We gave him the opportunity to choose freedom but he went right back to the very people who will torture him."

"We gave him an opportunity. It's up to him to decide his own fate."

"Kai is back with the Chinese and Cheng is with the CIA, so basically nothing has changed."

"We're down an asset in the Chinese embassy."

"Kai wasn't really an asset. They were feeding him information. We're back to where we started."

Harry leaned on the railing. Indeed, they were back to where they started. On a rooftop where they had spoken of disparate topics, the finding of bombs and the idea of dinner. He looked out over the city. Perhaps this was the time to ask her out for a drink. Drown her disappointment over human nature in a pint. He rocked on his heels, summoning the courage to voice the invitation, weighing the stakes, the odds of rejection. It had been a long and trying day, surely she would be amenable to such a suggestion. He could feel her shifting beside him. He sensed her turning, her eyes following his gaze out over the skyline.

"Cheng asked if I had any children."

The bottom fell out from Harry's stomach. The window of opportunity crashed closed. Any chance of the conversation moving onto a more congenial topic vanished. Harry braced himself as Ruth continued.

"I told her no."

Harry expelled a low rasp of breath. He had no idea how to wade through the minefield she had just exposed, any misstep on his part would inevitably lead to disaster. In situations like these, he had alway found the best course of action to be silence, He would open up a space for her. If she wanted to reveal her thoughts, he would listen.

"I tell myself that I said I didn't have children because I'm an Intelligence Officer. The first rule is never reveal personal information."

"That's a good instinct to have." It was one of his rules. It had made his professional life easier, sometimes at the cost of his personal one.

"I feel like I betrayed Nico, my entire life on Cyprus. And in doing that I somehow betrayed part of myself."

Still at a loss, Harry remained silent, only giving her a nod of encouragement.

"Have you ever felt that way?" she asked. "Like you have killed off a part of yourself?"

Cut if off, block it out, seal it away. He had done it so many times he wasn't sure if any pieces of his original self remained. There was a kernel buried deep inside him. His salvation. It was a constant battle to protect that one last piece.

"Sometimes it has to be done. As long as you hold onto that one piece. The piece inside you that no one else can touch. It keeps you constant." He had given her the same advice before, he reiterated it. "You have to hold on."

"Hold on," she absently echoed his words. "Cheng said to me if you are valuable enough to someone you can never be free. " She turned her body, drawing herself parallel to Harry's shoulder. "How valuable am I to you, Harry? As an Analyst, as an Intelligence Officer."

It was a leading question. Prudence told him not to engage; that she was fishing for an answer to make a point. He needed to steer her thoughts away from such thinking. "You're not a commodity, Ruth," he told her firmly.

"But I can never be free, can I?" she challenged.

He turned to face her, exasperated by her stubbornness, her inability to move on, her unwillingness to create a future with him. "Some people don't want to be free."

"Is that what you think?" Her voice was rust on metal. "That I'm letting it own me? The loss of George? Nico?"

"That's not what I'm saying." It was, but he would never say it aloud to her.

"You think I want to be held hostage by the past."

Anger flickered in Harry, shortening his breath. Yes, that's exactly what he thought. It was far easier to remain in the past than work towards the future. The muscles of his arms tightened with the electric impulse to grab her and press her against the rail. Voice his thoughts and sear them into her. The iron fretwork was an unreliable safeguard, if it broke they would both tumble over the edge. But it would serve his point, it was precisely where she stood. Couldn't she see how her refusal to deal with the past pushed her toward the edge. How close she was to the same abyss that had swallowed Tom and taken Adam? Harry placed his hand on the railing, grabbing onto the metal for support. The iron grounded him. Anger would only escalate the situation. He searched for words to de-escalate the situation.

"Guilt is a heavy burden; it serves no purpose to carry it."

"Guilt means I have a conscience," she spat, the insinuation being that he did not possess such a redeeming quality.

If Harry had known that her interaction with Cheng would lead to such an unravelling he would never have sanctioned it. Ruth had felt a personal responsibility towards the woman, always a slippery slope with an asset. He had allowed Ruth to oversee the last conversation with the Cheng as a courtesy, an acknowledgement of their connection. It had exposed a crack, he could see it growing. He needed to negate the damage. He needed to remain calm, remember his position as her superior. He summoned his Head of Section voice.

"If you need some time-

"I've dealt with it. I'm…." She inhaled a shaky breath. "I am dealing with it."

Her voice was tight and terse telegraphing that she was not dealing with it, at least not in any manner that was leading to healthy results. Alarm bells sounded. Experience told him that when an officer argued that their psyche was whole, it was usually shattered.

"You don't have to carry this by yourself."

"No," she snapped, a little too quickly. "I thought you would….I thought I could…"

Her thoughts remained incomplete, the sentence left in the air. What would he do? He knew what he wanted to do. If given the chance he would break the chains that held her. But He had no idea how to accomplish such a task. Because when everything was stripped away, there was one inescapable truth; he was part of the problem. A spiraling timeline of love and loss weaving through their lives, tangled in on itself. It would take more than one lifetime to unwind.

The air moved and Ruth shivered, whether from the wind or emotion he could not tell. A broken bird that needed mending. The tools eluded him. All he had was the command of his office.

"It's within my authority to order you to stand down."

"You wouldn't."

"Or you could voluntarily take some time for yourself."

"That's not what I need. You don't understand, I need to work. It's all I have. And if that's all I have…" Her voice cracked with the effort to swallow a sob.

"Ruth…" Harry pleaded. If he was not careful he would lose her as he had lost his other officers. "It's just as you said. We need to put things in perspective."

The words sounded pat to his ears. He suspected that they were of little use, but he had to pull her back from wherever she was going.

"Yes," she agreed flatly. "You're right."

Ruth turned away, leaving Harry a glimpse of her hardened profile. She had not conceded to him. The energy that had fuelled her outrage turned inward. All of his plans to circumvent an argument had produced an unexpected result. Instead of seeing reason, she had closed down. She pulled her black coat tighter around her body, shutting him out. Any further conversation instantly curtailed. He had not solved anything.

Ruth gave him no opportunity to remedy the situation. With a little nod of her head, she walked away, leaving only the lead weight of her silence behind. Harry ran an exhausted hand over his mouth. He wished he had kept it there during the entire conversation, for he feared he had only made the situation worse. He closed his fingers into a fist and tapped it against the railing. If he had taken her hand would she have followed him? His fist grew tighter, holding on to the piece of him, the piece of her. Unwilling to entertain the thought that the only way to hold on would be to let go.