A/N: apologies for the delay! Real life has grown hectic with the holidays approaching. I likely will not be able to post again until next week, and so I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

I love you, Ruth.

He had gone on speaking after that, but truth be told she hadn't heard him, for the world had tipped perilously under her feet and she had felt herself come completely unravelled at his quiet declaration. For years now she had known, known that he loved her, that she loved him, that they were bound together with ties neither of them could break, no matter how they tried, but this marked the very first time he had told her outright how he cared for her. I love you, he'd said, as easily as if he said it every day, as if she heard it every day. And in a way, she supposed that must have been true, for she had carried the knowledge of his love in her heart for so many years, at times a knife used to wound her, at times the only talisman that kept the dark at bay. He loved her, and he had told her, and now he was watching her, warily, expectantly, as if he feared what might happen next.

His hand still rested against her arm, and her eyes remained locked to his face, unable to look away, her heart pleading with her, begging her to make some sound, to speak to him, to turn and run or fall into his arms but for God's sake, just do something. A single, choked sort of laugh escaped her.

"Bloody hell, Harry," she breathed.

His smile was soft and sad, as at last he let his arm fall to dangle uselessly down by his side.

"Don't tell me you're surprised, Ruth," he answered, not unkindly. "I thought there was nothing you didn't know."

And for the first time that evening, perhaps the first time in years, she looked at him, really looked at him, cast her thoughts back not to the many bitter disappointments, the many silent wounds, the moments of blood-soaked horror, but instead to the moments of quiet contemplation, just like this one, when she had been young and brave and he had been charming and gentle and she had first felt herself begin to fall for him. She let herself see his warm eyes and think not of loss but of the brush of his hand against her skin, let herself see the wrinkles that lined his weary face and remember not the days when he had made decisions that cost people their lives but instead recall the nights when she had traced his features with her fingertips and whispered soft words of affection into the curve of his neck. She let herself remember the first time she'd ever seen him, the span of his shoulders, the set of his mouth, the way even then he set her heart to fluttering. Harry loved her, and he had not traded the fate of the world for her sake, had only torpedoed his own career. Had she not done the same for him, once? Had she not loved him enough, once, to throw her own life away? How could she curse him now for doing that which she herself had done without regret so many years before?

"What about Rebecca?" she found herself wondering aloud as she looked at him. What about her, this woman you've let into your bed? Do you love her, do you care for her, does she think she knows you, as I once did?

A strange look crossed his face.

"What about her?"

"You brought her to Paris, Harry," Ruth pointed out, trying very hard not to think about the man who had ventured to this city by her side, trying not to think about a gentle conversation and the hunger in Harry's eyes when he looked at her, then as now.

"Only because you refused to marry me," came his somewhat forlorn answer.

We couldn't be more together than we are right now, she'd told him once. He'd known what she meant, then, that she could offer him no more than the sneaking about, her warmth beside him as he slept a delightful but occasional occurrence. She'd kept her own house, had slept there alone as often as she ventured to his, never invited him into her sanctuary. It had been foolish of him, at the time, to ask her for more, to ask her to share more with him than she was willing to give, but Harry had never really seen reason when it came to Ruth. She was everything to him, and he wanted everything she had to give and more besides.

As he watched her now, standing along this riverside with the lights of Paris sparkling behind her, he could not help but recall that moment, could not help but recall the way his heart had pounded in that moment, that moment when he had rested his hand against her back and ducked his head to whisper his plea in her hair, that moment when everything had changed. Marry me, Ruth, he had breathed against her skin, thinking only how badly he wanted her, needed her, how beautiful, how wonderful it would be to hold her hand as they strolled along a busy stretch of pavement, to have her on his arm at some flash Home Office do, to go home with her every night, to wake beside her every morning, to dream of retirement and not grimly soldier on until he died at his desk. But Ruth, his Ruth, beautiful and sad, always so sad but never so much as in that moment, had turned him down without hesitation.

There have been thousands of moments…

The memory of her words washed over him, even as it occurred to him that this could have been one of those moments, if only he'd taken the time to whisk her off to Paris as he had always longed to do, if he only he had taken the time to whisper his love for her soft and sweet in her ear, if only he had waited, but he been made impatient by dreams of a future brighter than his present, and pressed his suit too soon. And then they had fallen apart, and she had left him, and the days had dragged on, bleak and relentless.

"Why did you, Ruth?" he asked her then.

There were tears standing in the corners of her eyes, and her brow furrowed in confusion, so he hastened to explain himself.

"Refuse to marry me, I mean."

Oh, he knew the answer to that question already, had heard it from her own lips, but he needed to hear her say it now, now that she had spent so long without him, now that she had been granted the time, the space she once told him she so desperately needed. The moment he'd caught sight of her in his hotel room a strange wild hope had sprung to life in his chest, and he needed to her tell him now for certain that such hope was destined to be disappointed.

"You know why," she breathed, dropping her gaze from his face for the first time in what felt like hours, but had in truth only been a few minutes.

"Ruth-"

"I couldn't marry you, Harry. I couldn't."

"Why not?"

It was foolish, he knew, to press her so. Ruth did not respond well to prodding, at least not when it came to personal matters. Professionally, a bit of goading and a well placed challenge often drew the best results from her, but when it came to matters of the heart she had never appreciated being backed into a corner. But then, Harry had never been one to let things go, and he knew he might not ever be granted another opportunity to speak to her so plainly.

"Because," she said, shifting uneasily, swaying towards him and then back again, worrying the sleeves of the jumper she wore between her fingertips. "Because I…"

Ruth couldn't find the words, but then she did not need to, for Harry had words to spare.

"Because you were scared."

A sharp gasp escaped her, and she looked up at him then, wounded and terrified and ready to run, and he barrelled on, driving his ship into this storm with no thought for consequences.

"And I could understand that, Ruth. If only we could have talked about things, properly, if only you hadn't-"

"You are unbelievable, Harry," she hissed, more furious than scared now that he had goaded her. "Do not try to blame me for-"

"For pulling away from me? For running away, again? For never giving us a chance-"

"I gave you a chance! I was with you, Harry. I was trying so hard-"

"You shut me out," he argued back, feeling his blood begin to rise, his heart pounding, his hands itching to hold her, to sink into her hair and draw her close to him. Perhaps it was strange, the way arguing with her only made him love her more, but an argument now, an honest, open conversation was an improvement on their current standing, as far as he was concerned, given that the last time he'd tried to talk to her about their circumstances they'd both been too reticent, too wounded, to argue their respective cases as clearly as they might otherwise have done. He had fallen in love with her the first time in the midst of an argument, and he felt himself once again in danger of losing himself to her completely.

"Only because you were too proud-"

"Tell me you didn't love me," he cut her off, and it would seem he'd won that round as she fell suddenly quiet, staring up at him with horror in her eyes. "Look at me now, and tell me you didn't love me."

There was a strained, terrible sort of silence in the wake of his command, both of them breathing rather heavily, oblivious to everyone and everything around them. For a year he'd been without her, and for a year he'd been able to think of nothing else save this, finally facing her, facing what they were to one another, what they had done to one another, what they could be, if only they found their way back.

Ruth broke that silence, her shoulders sagging and the words spilling out of her in a voice that dripped with sorrow.

"Of course I loved you, Harry," she told him.

Something about the moment, the fire she'd ignited in his veins, the tempting beauty that was Paris made him bold, and he reached for her then, caught her hip in his hand and stepped up close to her.

"And now, Ruth?"

He was looking down at her, small and forlorn in his arms, the tension that swirled within her palpable at such close range.

Say it, he begged her silently. Just say it.

"Of course I love you," she whispered. "I don't think I'll ever stop."

Thank God.

On instinct he moved, tangling his free hand in her hair and swallowing the sound of her gasp with his own lips. She hesitated, but only for an instant; just as he was about to draw back from her, certain that he had ruined everything between them, she caught his cheeks in her hands the way she had done that day on the docks, pulled him down towards her even as she rose up to meet him. And Harry just smiled, and drowned beneath the waves of his love for her.