Sorry about the delay in this chapter - it's extra long to make up for the fact that my laptop charger died.
10:
There were four words, in combination with one another, and only four words in the English language that struck absolute terror and panic into the marrow of Harry Pearce's bones. We need to talk. Hardly anything good ever happened after those four words had been introduced.
We need to talk.
I have cancer, Harry.
I'm pregnant, Harry.
I don't remember things like I used to, son – some days, I even forget your name. Silly old bugger, me.
I want a divorce, Harry.
I can't see you again, Harry.
You've made a right bollocks of this, Harry –
Another, funeral, Harry? You do seem to lose your flock like wayward sheep, don't you?
Dad, I'm pregnant.
I got clean, Dad – but… I could relapse at any point in time.
I feel like I'm living in a bubble of sadness and one day, it's going to burst – and I don't want my daughter to see that, Dad. I can't let her see how weak I am. She needs me to be strong, and I can't be because her dad is gone and I'm all alone – except for her. I wake up in the morning and I'm so overwhelmed, I want to do anything to make it stop for just a second so I can breathe – but breathing hurts so much, Dad. It all hurts so much. I just want the pain to stop.
Ruth is, in all probability, alive. We just need to find her, Harry.
Dad, I don't think I can just let you pay for everything – Manhattan real estate is – but – but it's too big, Dad. Too big for the three of us. Maybe we can sublet a few of the rooms so you aren't spending all of your money on the mortgage? I feel terrible, living with my dad, rent-free in one of the most expensive cities on the planet when I'm barely making enough money to catch the subway every day. I guess what I mean is… thank you? For everything. But I feel like I'm taking advantage.
There's a photograph at Gina Hamilton's, showing Ruth Evershed and a baby. We don't know the context and Gina is refusing to divulge the whereabouts of either mother or unknown child – as you well know. Do you need another painkiller? Don't give me that look, Harry – we both know you're not as infallible as you claim to be. The provenance of the photo is unknown; we don't know how long they were in Chile, or even if the child is Ruth's. What we need you to do right now is just relax and do as the doctors say: don't fight them. We will do our best to find out what's going on, Harry, I promise – even if I have to play dirty and call in some favors that I've held off for when the sky is falling in on us. I still feel guilty for my role in forcing her to leave the country, Harry. I don't do guilt very well. It took Andrew to show me that I can do… love and sentimentality and – and even maternal things. I'm still not certain that any of that is a good thing, no matter how much you assure me it is.
Your knee, despite the replacement joint, is never going to heal properly. Your mobility will be adversely affected for the rest of your life, Mr. Pearce. Sorry – Sir Harry. You will need to begin to face the reality that, in a span of time that could be as short as a few months or as long as a few years, you will require a wheelchair to get around. Fortunately, New York is a relatively good city to live in as far as handicap accessibility, and –
Dad, why did you never tell me about Ruth?
Granpa, why are you always so sad? The sunshine is out! The birdies are singin'! You should be happy!
You don't love me. You love her – my mom. It's okay. I understand.
"We need to talk," Ruth repeated, slipping her hand into his as he laid aside the knife he was using to chop vegetables for dinner. "Harry?"
"Never have words ever stirred my fear thus," Harry forced out.
She squeezed his hand and smiled. "No, no – it's nothing bad, Harry. Just important that we talk about it – Catherine's asked if I would and… well, to be fair –"
"Shit, she's knocked up by some shit, isn't she?" Harry muttered.
"No –"
"She goes out a couple of times and comes back pregnant –"
"Harry, don't jump to conclusions," Ruth said firmly, giving him a tender yet firm kiss just to shut him up. He knew that was the intention, but it didn't stop him from feeling the beginnings of what could be arousal – she really had no idea what she did to him. "It's about your chair lift. We just need you to choose a model so we can get the process started – so you aren't wearing yourself down completely just trying to get upstairs to bed."
He was very nearly beginning to shake from the anxiety of the moment, but he clamped down on himself, determined to hide it from her. "Is that all?" Harry said in a deliberately neutral tone. "I thought something had happened or someone else had died or –"
"You're not very good at taking care of yourself," she pointed out gently. "And, I guess, since I'm going to marry you, it's my job to help where I can."
His heart soared up over the fear and anxiety – she still wanted to marry him. Thank god. He didn't know if he could take another blow like… "We need to talk: we shouldn't get married, Harry. You're an old man and I'm not ready to spend the rest of my life with a cripple."
"You still want to get married?" he said softly, trying not to let the hope shine through the crack in his voice that had somehow forced its way out.
She was silent for a long moment, then she whispered, "Of course I do. Did you think – did you really think I was coming to tell you I didn't want to marry you? Oh, Harry. You poor daft old sod." She squeezed his hand again. "I love you, you know. It'll take more than that to get rid of me now."
"Is that a promise?" he murmured.
"I used to think you'd just show up on my doorstep one day and tell me it was time to come home," Ruth said, her voice low and filled with emotion he didn't understand. "I dreamt about it every night for the first three years, prayed to a god I wasn't really certain I believed in anymore that you would come and save me from the hell I was living in. I was a single mother on the run with no one to help, no one to turn to, and I was suicidal and depressed after Hope was born. I wasn't sure I could keep living on air and sunshine and no – no substance, Harry. But I kept it together for Hope's sake, and I buried myself so deep I couldn't come up for air. I couldn't want you if I didn't think about you. I poured everything I had into taking care of her, of making sure that if you did come for us, that you knew that your child was loved and cherished beyond reasonable measure. And now I'm… I'm with you, I can't stop feeling – I can't… it's so much stronger now because it hurt so much, Harry. So, yes, it's a promise. I'm not going anywhere and you're not getting out of marrying me that easily."
He exhaled in a kind of relief; not because of her words so much as… well, he did admit to being a bit of an emotional barbarian. The very idea that she could be in so much pain cut him straight to the soul, but what was left of his heart sang off-key at the very idea that she still loved him enough to feel that much pain in the first place. It was complicated; they were complicated. Something to be unpicked and worked at, something so clearly not set forth in stone, but rather fluidly capable of falling apart without every effort to keep it together. So fragile, so…
"Ruth, promise me you will tell me if you ever feel like that again – like you want to hurt yourself or… or die." His voice was harsher than he meant it to be, rough from holding back his emotions, afraid to show her how much it would destroy him if she were to ever leave him again.
"I will," she promised. "The last time was the night Hope told me about her having been raped. I struggled; but she needed me more than I needed to feel guilty."
That put everything into painful perspective with startling clarity. "Ruth, I – I am so sorry you and Hope have had to suffer through this alone," he whispered. "I am so very sorry I wasn't –"
"How could you have known?" she countered. "You didn't even know we were here. It's not your guilt to bear, Harry. Do you understand? What happened before you came back into our lives is not your fault, and you should feel no guilt over it. That's my cross to bear – that I was unable to protect her. It's my fault and I will spend the rest of my life trying to pick up those pieces." She released his hand, but he kept holding hers tightly. "Harry, let me go –"
"No," he said simply.
"Harry, you need to finish dinner," she reminded him.
"We can eat late," he replied. "Or I'll order in a pizza."
"Harry, you can't just –"
"You can't just take all the blame and walk away with the weight of the world on your shoulders," he snapped. "I did that for how long, and where did it get me, Ruth? A broken marriage, three children who don't understand that I do love them dearly, a swanky house in New York, a knighthood, and an emotional backwater that I'm trying to slog through to get to you – do you understand, even for a moment, that you aren't alone any longer, Ruth? That I am… I am offering myself to you – every part of me, even the bad bits – because neither of us should be alone. We never should have been alone, apart… none of this should have happened. But it did, and I don't want –"
Her fingers curled around his again. "I don't want to be alone anymore," she whispered.
He took a deep breath, then exhaled, trying to calm himself. "You aren't alone," he promised. "And I think that you and Catherine should just decide which lift to get. You'll be far more logical about it than I will be." He smiled tightly. "But… maybe you should make sure it has the capability of supporting a wheelchair in the future if… if my…" He stopped, the shame and pain finally bubbling up. "I'm not going to get better, Ruth. I'm going to end up in a wheelchair. It's sheer stubbornness that's keeping me on my feet and moving right now. I'm sorry, but we're going to be married for… as long as one of us is alive, and you should know the truth."
"I know," she said softly.
"How?"
"Well, obviously, not the severity of it – but that you weren't likely to recover," she said softly. "Jo and Malcolm were really shaken by your condition and I just assumed that they didn't know how bad it really was."
"I'm sorry for lying to you –"
"You didn't."
"I lied by omission."
"And now you've told me the truth and that's not scaring me off," she reminded him gently. "I'm not going anywhere."
Lucy ran into the kitchen, giggling. "Granpa, I'm hungry," she said.
"Well, how about we order a pizza?" Harry suggested, releasing Ruth's hand and reaching for Lucy's instead.
"But we're havin' sketti?" Lucy reminded him. "I want sketti."
"Spaghetti it is," Ruth said. "Harry, do you want me to –"
"No, I'll be fine," he dismissed. "Lucy, why don't you help Ruth make a salad?" he suggested.
"Is Roofth my granny?" Lucy asked.
Harry smiled at Ruth for a moment, then turned his attention to his granddaughter. "Not yet," he said. "But if you ask her very nicely, she might say yes."
Lucy dutifully turned to Ruth and said, "Roofth, will you be my granny and marry my Granpa?"
"I would love to be your granny, sweetheart," Ruth said softly. "And can I tell you a secret?"
"Is it a big secret? Grandpa doesn't know? Grandpa knows all the secrets –"
"It's the biggest secret I know," Ruth said with a small smile that lit up her face. Lucy dropped Harry's hand and went over so Ruth could whisper the secret to her. Lucy's eyes widened and her smile grew. "Now, let's go make that salad, little miss."
"What did you tell her?" Harry asked.
Ruth's smirk was smug. "It's a secret, Harry. You'll have to wait to find out."
"I know a secret you don't know," Lucy said in a sing-song voice as she went to the fridge to get a head of lettuce out of the drawer.
"Insufferable," Harry grumbled, but he was smiling as he did so.
Catherine breezed into the room with a smile on her lips. "What's for dinner?" she asked.
"Sketti!" Lucy crowed excitedly.
A small bit of anxiety still clung on for good measure, but Harry allowed himself to feel for the moment that they had made some kind of a semblance of a family together; yes, they were fractured and flawed, but they were going to make it work. This was going to be his lasting achievement. Not the safety of the Realm, not the stability world politics, but this… his family, sitting down to dinner together.
He looked up to see Hope hovering in the doorway, looking unsure. He beckoned her forward with a smile and said, "Do you want to know how to make an excellent pasta sauce, Hope?" When she nodded, he said, "Never use a recipe – not even a sacred Italian granny's recipe. And always use fresh vegetables. Always. And garlic is something you measure by heart – and by smell." He gently walked her through what he'd done so far, and then took a step back. "Now, you want to watch that for a few minutes so I can sit down?"
Hope nodded. "I can do that, dad," she said softly.
He dropped into a chair next to Catherine at the table, and watched her going over the bills and prioritizing what needed to be paid first. And, for a moment, he thought that this must be what Heaven was like.
They were married at City Hall in a civil service that had been hastily arranged by pulling on many strings. Harry was beaming with joy, pride, and all the things that made him look very smug in spite of himself. Ruth found herself wondering if he'd thought ahead to more practical things or if he was allowing himself to indulge in the moment.
Either way, she was happy – not earth-shatteringly cock-a-hoop over-the-moon, but she was content. Almost everything she'd wanted and dared to hope for was coming to pass, and she was afraid to wish for much more, lest the sky fall on her head.
As they took a cab home, Ruth stared down at the wedding band on her finger, and thought she should probably chide Harry for wasting so much money on her. The ring was hammered rose gold with small but beautiful diamonds inset around the entirety of the band. His ring was a very simple brushed titanium, but he wore it with just as much pride as any man could after being shackled to someone else.
"Are you sure we can afford this ring?" Ruth spoke up softly, twisting her ring around her finger repeatedly, nervously.
His smile faltered, then the grumpy git mask slid back into place. "Would it make a difference if I told you that I've had that ring for over a decade?" he asked tetchily.
"Yes, but… it's frivolous," she sighed. "I don't need big tokens of –"
"I bought it because it reminded me of you," he said quickly, looking away out the window. "Because I needed something to remind me that I was going to find you and – come hell or high water – marry you."
She bit her lip and looked down at her hands. "It's lovely," she said softly, "and I love it."
She looked up when he slid his hand over hers, holding it gently. "I love you, Ruth."
She bit back a smile, then said with a perfectly straight face, "Lady Pearce – I'll have you know, I'm married to a Knight of the Realm."
"Sod him and run away with me," he teased, deadpan.
"I rather like him," she shot back, curling her fingers around his, threading them together. "Have I told you yet how much I love you?"
"It was implied," he replied with a little smirk, his good humor beginning to return.
She leaned over and gave him a kiss that was soft, gentle, and just this side of inappropriate. "It should never be implied," Ruth breathed.
"I think I like how you're thinking…" He paused, then cleared his throat. "Are you all right? I mean, really. I know it hurt you very badly yesterday when they asked you to leave the school."
Ruth shrugged and sighed a little. It had been humiliating; she had spoken to the principal, who had taken the matter to the school board, who had recommended immediate termination of her contract based on the fact that she'd committed identity fraud and had no qualifications at all as Ruth Evershed to continue teaching. After everything she had given, everything she had built for herself, it all tumbled down when they found out she was living under an alias. "I'm fine," she said very quietly.
"Ruth…"
"Harry, do you ever feel like… you've given so much of yourself that there's nothing left?"
"Sometimes."
"I'm fine, really. But I don't know what's going to happen next. I don't have a job, I was living check to check… I don't know what I'm going to do."
"You're going to have breakfast in bed with your husband tomorrow," he said gently. "Might just be toaster pastries, but my plan is to hold you hostage for the next couple of days and after that, we'll talk about money and work and all of the frivolous things like that."
"Not exactly frivolous," she murmured. The cab pulled up outside the brownstone and Harry paid the cabbie, tipping very generously – more than to a fault. Ruth flinched, remembering that she only had about $15 in her account, but she held her tongue. Harry wasn't worried, so neither should she be, right?
He slid out of the car behind her, grunting and struggling to get his bearings. She steadied him and held him tightly, afraid to let go – afraid of being powerless in this new situation they found themselves in, where he was clearly the dominant presence and she was just… fluff.
He let her help him up the steps to the front door, then inside and up to the main floor. He collapsed into his chair, white lines of exhaustion etched into his face. "Do you need anything?" she murmured. "Painkillers? You've pushed it all day."
"Please," he said, not fighting her. When she came back through with a glass of water and his pain pills, he said, "Did I tell you how beautiful you are? How happy I am that you agreed to marry me?"
"Liar," she accused softly without a shred of malice.
"I wouldn't dare," he rejoined with a small smile. "I don't want you to worry about anything for a few days, Ruth – not money, not… what's for dinner, not anything at all."
"That's a tall order, Harry," she said. "Especially when there's so much I need to be worrying about – like Hope's biology study group and Jason Donovan… I can't just turn it off." She sat down on the sofa and watched him take his pill, her brow furrowing. "I've lived my life on the run with her in tow for so long I don't know if I can turn off the instinct to… to just go to ground."
"If you feel you must go to ground, would you please involve me in your decision making so I can at least tag along?" he commented dryly.
"Really?" she chuckled. "You should see some of the places we've had to live in, Harry – you're too posh to lift the toilet lid. It's not easy, uprooting and running and starting over again. And once you've started… it's in your head. You always have to be one step ahead of the people you're trying to avoid. I made that mistake once: I'll never make it again willingly." She reached up and rubbed her cheek, fingertips gliding and catching over the changing textures of her scars. "I was naïve enough to think you might show up and everything would be right with the world again… for about a year. Then I had to make it on my own – I had Hope in tow and everything was so hard."
He was frowning, scowling really, when she looked back up at him. "Everything felt wrong without you there," Harry finally said, breaking the awkward silence between them. "Every day, I wanted to wake up from the nightmare I was living in and have you walk through the pods again. I don't think I ever…" He shook his head and sighed. "No, I'm not going to – not now. It doesn't matter, Ruth," he said firmly, holding his hand up when she would have protested. "I looked for you once in the second year, but you'd already left behind the legends Malcolm crafted for you, so it did me no good. You have no idea how much I needed to know you were alive, if not safe –"
She swallowed hard and mumbled, "I sent a package from Chile before I went to California. To you. Or, rather, to the last home address I had for you."
"You did?"
She nodded, biting her lip nervously. "It was just a bubblemailer with a stuffed penguin in," Ruth murmured. "And Zoe helped me slip a photo of Hope in the gap between the envelope and the bubblewrap."
He stared at her for the longest time, sudden heartbreak coloring his face. "Oh god, I thought that was – I thought it was one of Zoe's girls and I – my god, Ruth, I'm so sorry… I'm so, so sorry –"
"You got it, then?" she said.
"I got it – I had no idea –"
"I tried to tell you we were okay," she whispered. "I should have done more."
"No, darling, you couldn't. Not without risking your safety and Hope's. I should have been less stupid and seen it for what it was, not…" He sighed and flipped down the footrest of the recliner. He stood up with a grunt of pain, but he gestured for her to sit back down. "Do you want a cuppa? I need a sweet tea."
"Harry, you don't have to –"
"Ruth, I've continually made a hash of everything between us for over a decade – the least I can do is make you a cup of tea."
"I'm more used to coffee now," she said with a sad smile. "Tea just wasn't enough with a colicky baby who never did sleep the night through – even now, she wakes up every couple or three hours."
"Then coffee," he said. "I owe you at least a cup of coffee."
"You don't owe me anything," Ruth said.
"But I do, Ruth – you were in exile because of me…"
"I chose to do that," she said, mulishly stubborn. "It was the right thing to do, Harry."
"I don't know if that is true or just wishful thinking," he said. "You've raised our daughter on your own, running like the hounds of Hell are on your heels… I owe you a debt that I can never even begin to repay, Ruth."
She shrugged a little and tried to be cheeky. "Well, you did make a bit of a start on it today, didn't you? Marriage is a big step, Harry."
"Our biggest step was getting past the awkward stage," Harry said softly. "After our first date, I mean."
She blushed and murmured, "You showed up on my doorstep with wine and flowers and were very persuasive."
"I was afraid you would chuck me out into the street."
She shook her head and whispered, "I was already head over heels in love with you – completely inappropriate, mind you – and you were very, very charming that night."
"Three weeks," he said quietly. "We only had three weeks together."
"But now we have the rest of our lives," she pointed out.
A lazy smile graced his lips. "I rather like the sound of that."
"I thought you might," she teased. "Now, about that coffee…?"
"Ah, yes, coffee – I don't know how you take yours…"
"Black, no sugar, no dairy," Ruth replied automatically. "It's the only way to go when you need a desperate fix."
He shuffled into the kitchen and called over his shoulder, "I'm not entirely sure I approve of Hope drinking coffee as young as she is –"
"It's mostly milk," Ruth admitted, following him into the kitchen. "She just wanted to share with me, so I started off just splashing a tiny bit of coffee in a mug of milk."
Harry puttered with the Keurig, then filled the electric kettle with water and got it going. "She's a good kid; you've done a good job with her," he said. "And I'm just mucking it all up. Again."
"It's always just been the two of us against the world," Ruth commented lowly. "It's a huge adjustment to have you in her life – I don't know how well I'd have taken it if I were in her shoes. You are very… forceful."
He flinched. "I don't mean to be overbearing."
"You're very commanding and dominant," she pointed out. "And I'm not. Hope gets away with a lot because I don't have it in my heart to break her spirit like mine was at her age. I want her to know what it's like to be happy before the world shatters her."
"Am I… do I…" He sloshed hot water from the kettle into a mug with two teabags in. "Ruth, did I bully you into marrying me?" The question was small, tiny, frightened. She had never heard him like that and never wanted to hear it again.
"No, of course not," she scoffed. "Harry, you aren't like that – you aren't a bully. You know what you think is best and you know what pressure to apply to get results. Unfortunately, our daughter doesn't respond well to that kind of persuasion. I know you, dear heart, and I know you don't mean to be so brutally forceful as you are most of the time." She came over and stroked his arm gently. "Are you really worried about –"
"I wasn't a good father or a good husband, before," he said in a tone bleak as midwinter. "It took a lot to make that work. I can't guarantee that I'll be any better now." His knuckles were white where they gripped the countertop. "I don't want you and Hope to think that I – "
"I think we judge ourselves much more harshly than anyone else does," Ruth murmured, leaning into his back and holding him around the waist. "I wouldn't have married you if I didn't want to, Harry – and I do, with every fiber of my being, want to be your wife. Your lover. Everything we've not been able to be for so long because I had to leave."
Her coffee finished brewing and he plucked the hot mug from the Keurig and set it on the counter to cool. "Ruth… I'm sorry. For leaving you and Hope out there, alone. For… not trying harder to find you. For not being the best father I can be to our daughter. For… hell, for being a crippled old man. You deserve better than me."
"I don't want anyone but you," Ruth said stubbornly, kissing his shoulder blade. "So you can stop being a moody git now."
"I'm not a moody git," he muttered with a scowl.
She tickled him a little and murmured, "Did you forget your antidepressant this morning?"
"Ha-ha, wifey."
"Mmm, I like that," Ruth purred against his shoulder. "I've waited ages to be called your wife."
The smile returned to his face and voice. "I love you, Ruth."
"And I love you, Harry." She released her hold on him and moved to grab her coffee. "Perfect," she proclaimed. "Nice and dark like my soul."
Harry had just finished plucking the teabags out of his mug when she'd so glibly thrown that out. "You're a fucking angel of light, Ruth," he countered softly, throwing in a couple sugar cubes. "Don't shit a true demon: you're a marshmallow."
She smirked; he didn't need to know that she'd killed two MI-6 officers while escaping custody… If you can't destroy them, fuck them harder than they'll fuck you. For Harry, though, she would be a sweet, fluffy marshmallow.
His sweet, fluffy marshmallow.