For a moment Ruth stood frozen, rooted to the spot as she stared at Harry, and he at her. It had been a long time, such a long time, since last she'd seen him, and though she'd known it would be devastating she was wholly unprepared for the torrent of emotions that gripped her at the sight of his face, worn and weathered with sorrow and the passage of the days. Her eyes roved over his figure, the white shirt he wore open at the collar with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his grey slacks, his strangely casual shoes. She studied his face, the trepidation in his soft, warm eyes, the way his hand twitched down by his side as if he longed to reach out to her, the way he studied her as intently as she studied him. She knew what he'd find as he looked at her, her hair longer than it had been and caught in a messy bun at the nape of her neck, her blue jeans, her black blouse, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and lips. She knew what he saw when he looked at her, but not what he felt.

Was it anything like what she was feeling? Was he half as conflicted as she, torn between longing and fear, wanting to run and wanting to linger, wanting to shout, wanting to weep?

This was a bad idea, she thought suddenly, wildly. I never should have come here. What possible words could she say to him, now, after everything? After she had chosen, time and time again, to leave him, no matter how kind he had been to her, no matter how much he had proven himself willing to sacrifice everything for her sake? And how, how could she possibly ever hope to explain that it had not been a lack of affection that sent her fleeing from his side, but an over abundance of it?

Panic began to set in, manifesting in the trembling of her hands, the racing of her heart, the sharp catch of her breath. Harry could see it, too, she realized, had discerned the course her feverish thoughts had run and even as she took an involuntary step backward he stepped towards her, like dancers standing eight feet apart.

"Ruth," he croaked. His voice was raw, and her heart was raw, everything about this moment tense and painful and sharp as a knife against skin.

"This was a bad idea, Harry," she told him softly.

Across from her he only smiled, sadly.

"Maybe," he said. "But you're here now. Why don't we talk?"

"I don't know what to say."

It was the truth, and she could not have stopped the words leaving her if she tried. Her thoughts were too chaotic for her to fathom, the task of translating the longing of her heart into words he could understand now seeming somehow quite beyond her.

"Tell me about Rachel," he said.

Three years earlier…

"Tell me about Rachel," he said as she lay cocooned in his warmth, her head resting against his chest, his arms wrapped around her, their legs sliding together beneath his duvet. This had been happening more and more frequently of late; they were tracing the threads of the Nightingale conspiracy, and as with each passing day it became more and more clear that no one could be trusted they clung ever more tightly to one another. Even when everything around them had grown murky with betrayal, when even Ros and Lucas were not above suspicion, there was never any doubt in Ruth's mind that she could trust Harry with her whole heart, with every piece of herself, with her very life.

His question was a strange one, but not entirely unexpected. Harry always grew loose-lipped and talkative after sex, dragged his fingertips along the length of her spine and whispered to her words he would never dare voice in the daylight hours, and she loved it, loved knowing that she could lay claim to this soft, gentle piece of him that no one else ever got to see. It had only been a few months since she'd returned to him with a lover and a little boy in tow, having lived the last eleven months under a false name in a little village so far away. To his credit Harry had not pushed her too much, to reveal her feelings on the manner of her return, George's death; they were both of them too raw, too recently wounded, to dwell too long on such matters. Ruth didn't want to think about that now, now when she still faintly ached from the passion of Harry's attentions, when she had, however briefly, found a piece of warmth and peace to cling to, but she did not rebuff him out of hand. This was Harry, she told herself, Harry who would give anything for her, who had been so kind to her, made a place for her upon her return, Harry who loved her, even if he wouldn't say those words, even if she wouldn't let him, when George was only barely cold. This was Harry, who despite the long years of her exile still cared for her so deeply, still opened his arms and his bed to her, still held her like she was precious. He was asking, in his own hesitant way, for her to share herself with him, and she felt she owed him that much, to tell him the truth of the life she'd lived, however briefly, in that sun-drenched paradise.

"Oh, Rachel was very boring," she said. She meant to sound flippant, but the words just came out sad. Rachel, George and Nico had called her, until their mad flight to London, until she'd had to tell them that her name was Ruth, that she was not who she'd said she was. In that moment George had looked at her like he'd never seen her before, and in a way Ruth supposed that was true. Rachel and Ruth were very different women.

"She came to Cyprus because she wanted to live somewhere warm. Her husband had just died, you see, and she was looking for a change."

Beneath her Harry hummed, ducked his head to press a kiss against the top of her hair, his arms tightening their grip, just a little. There was no need to explain why she'd chosen that particular backstory for her legend; Ruth had been grieving the loss of him, the loss of her whole life, and she knew now that he had been grieving, too, had been as miserable without her as she was without him.

"She worked as a medical clerk because she wasn't really qualified to do anything else. She didn't have very many friends, kept to herself, mostly."

Harry kissed her again; when he got started like this, he often couldn't stop. Though he could at times be downright poetic, could rant and rave with Shakespearean eloquence, he was rather crap at talking about his emotions. But Ruth heard the words he could not say, couched in his gentle display of affection; how he grieved to think of her all alone, how it hurt him to think that she had not been able to find friends to support her. She wanted to tell him that this was nothing new, that people had always been something of a mystery to her, that the best friends she had made in her adult life had all been spooks and they were now all dead, with the exception of Harry and Malcolm. She couldn't remember the last time she'd gone out for a meal with a friend, had a phone conversation that did not revolve around terror and politics and the end of the bloody world, but she did not tell Harry this for she felt there was no need to wound him further with thoughts of her woeful social life.

"And George?" he prodded her gently.

Ruth drew in a sharp breath, transported for a moment back to the warehouse, that terrible, fateful day when everything had come crumbling down. He had prompted her in much the same way then, desperate to know how this man had come to share her life, but at the time she had been too terrified, too confused to speak the truth to him while they sat with their hands bound and their fates so uncertain. The last thing she wanted was to speak to Harry about George; she tried her very best, when she was in Harry's bed, to avoid thoughts of George altogether, to keep the guilt and the grief at bay and just be grateful that Harry still cared so deeply for her after everything that had passed between them. But he had asked, and she felt herself bound to answer.

"Oh, Rachel didn't want to see him, at first." It was easier, somehow, to keep talking about Rachel, as if it was someone else's life, someone else's lover. "But he was a doctor at the hospital, and she couldn't avoid him. He was very nice to her. He was the only person who was nice to her. And his wife had died, so he didn't mind so very much that Rachel didn't love him. He didn't love her, either."

But he's dead just the same.

"Sometimes you just need someone," Harry said quietly. "Someone to touch. To remind you that you're alive."

For the first time since this had begun Ruth raised her head, and looked him in the eye.

"Did you find someone, Harry?"

She couldn't say what she wanted his answer to be. Part of her hoped it would be no, that she would find out once and for all that he had been undeterred in his love of her, that he had clung to her memory and remained faithful though he had no way of knowing when - or even if - they would be reunited again. And yet, part of her hoped that he had found some obliging woman, wanted to know that he had not been as terribly lonely as she feared he had been, wanted the relief that would come with knowing she was not the only one who had been unfaithful during their separation. Somehow she felt as if it would make everything all right, if Harry had taken a lover, as if that would level the playing field between them, lessen the weight of her transgression.

"No," he said softly. "There was only one woman I wanted, and I spent my nights missing her."

Present day…

Ruth caught her lip between her teeth at the sound of Harry's question. The memories washed over her, thick and fast; the warmth of his hands, the tender cadence of his voice, the way he comforted her, reassured her, loved her. Somehow the time they'd spent apart had dulled her recollections of him, but it was all rushing back now, the need, the fervent longing he inspired in her. It was hard to reconcile it, the bloom of hope and love they'd cultivated during the early days of their affair, and all the bitterness that came after their tumultuous falling out. But he had asked a question, and perhaps in answering it she might find her way back to level ground.

"Oh, Rachel is very boring," she said.

There was no denying it, the flicker of recognition in Harry's eyes, as he recalled the conversation they'd had a lifetime ago, when they loved each other, when they were solid, when neither of them had ever had cause to doubt the other.

Oh, how things have changed.

"She's a teacher. At the University of Bradford." Harry's lips turned down in the ghost of a frown, and if this conversation had been taking place three years before Ruth might have teased him, just a little, for his Oxbridge snobbery. He was a study in contradictions, was Harry, for while he had spearheaded a campaign to bring in recruits from outside Oxbridge while he was involved in recruitment for Five he still clung to the pride of every old Oxonian. Recruits should be brought in from all quarters, he believed, but nowhere could provide so fine an education as his alma mater. Perhaps he thought that as an old Oxonian herself Bradford was beneath her, but Ruth had chosen it for her own reasons. "English," she added.

"Not Classics?" Harry asked, the frown disappearing as he almost - but not quite - smiled at her.

"They don't offer a Classics degree."

He harrumphed and she let him, for they had gone down this road many times before, lamented the way Ruth's chosen field of study was slowly dying, as interest in the ancient Greeks and Romans faded in favor of computers and chemistry. We need all sorts, Ruth had told him in another life, and he had answered but if we do not know our history we will surely repeat it. The Romans believed their empire could never fall, and the Goths proved just how wrong they were. If it could happen to them it could happen to us. We ought to take heed.

She dwelled on those words, for a moment. That night, three years before, when she had fallen asleep with Harry's around her, she had done so certain that they would never wound one another, that he would always be there for her, as he had been before. In that moment, Ruth had believed they were solid, unshakeable, that they had survived the worst possible calamity and come through it still holding one another's hands. She had not known, then, what horror was waiting for them.

"And Paul?" he asked.

"Why don't we sit down, Harry?"

If this was what he wanted, if he wanted to hash out every little thing that had transpired since she'd left him, Ruth supposed they ought to at least be comfortable. He could ask his questions, and she would answer them, but she had more than a few of her own, and she would have the truth of him before she left this place.

I think this will take quite some time, she told herself.