A/N: I feel like some of you (you know who you are) are not going to be pleased with this chapter, but I beg your patience.
After, when their need for one another had been sated and Harry had fallen into a deep, blissful sleep, Ruth slipped out from beneath the heavy arm that pinned her to the mattress, and padded silently down the hall to his guest bath. She turned the water as hot as she could stand, and sat on the edge of the tub, waiting for it to fill, thinking hard.
Their dinner with Catherine had gone better than she could have expected, and afterward Harry had been as attentive and utterly thorough in his affections as she had ever known him to be. Her whole body was still tingling from his attentions, her legs still somewhat wobbly and unwilling to hold her upright for more than a moment, but her mind was running a mile a minute. Ruth had been right on the very edge of sleep herself when a strange thought had occurred to her. Tonight marked two weeks, since she had fallen into Harry's bed once again. Over the last fortnight she had stayed over at his home four times, and he'd gone round to hers once; though the circumstances and the quantity of their love making differed from that of their original tryst, the time frame still seemed to her to be rather significant. They'd only managed to survive together for two weeks, the last time, before the differences in their personalities and the bitter truth of their lives pulled them away from one another, and now that they had once again reached this milestone, she wondered when, or if, the other shoe would drop.
He had been rather solicitous towards her, cooking her meals and buying things for the peanut and making room for them in his home, but how long could she expect such behavior to continue? The idea of him denying his own desires and spending all of his energies on serving her made Ruth deeply uncomfortable. She didn't want him to feel as if he owed her such servitude, and she really didn't want him to feel as if he could not speak his mind around her. How long could they possibly hope to survive together, if they were not being honest with one another?
When the bath was ready, Ruth slipped beneath the water, sighing heavily as she felt some of the tension leave her aching muscles. If only her worries could be relieved so easily.
On top of her concerns about Harry and the possible falsehood of his rather indulgent behavior towards her, she was deeply concerned about Lucas. Harry refused to engage her on the topic; he would not argue with her, as he might have done if they were faced with this uncertainty a year ago, before Ros, before the peanut, before they'd ever slept together, but likewise he would not listen to her, and his blatant apathy on the subject left her feeling rather vexed with him. Pregnancy had not dulled her mind (though it had wrought havoc with her emotions), and she keenly felt the sting of his lack of trust in her.
And then, buried beneath her more immediate problems, there were darker things lurking. Already Harry had tried to draw her out of her protective cocoon of privacy, asking about her miscarriage and also, in a way, about George. How much longer would he wait, she wondered, before he began to ask other questions? He had tried once before, to get a straight answer from her with regards to her relationship with Peter, and though he had failed spectacularly at the time, she knew he would eventually try again. And who could blame him, for asking questions about her past? Had she not done the same, the night she'd asked him about Juliet? That was what lovers did; they shared their pasts, their pain, their doubts, shouldered the burden of grief, carried one another through. In his heart Harry was a rather old-fashioned sort, and she knew he would expect such honesty from her, should their relationship continue. And oh, how she dreaded it.
A heart is a heavy burden, she mused. She'd read that in a book once, a children's fantasy novel she'd purchased as a gift for the daughter of an old friend from Oxford. She got bored on the train, riding down to see them, and read it herself before neatly tucking the book back in the fantastically colored gift bag. It was a pleasant way to wile away a few hours on a train, and that one line had stayed with her over the intervening years. Her own heart was a heavy burden indeed, and she wasn't quite sure Harry would be able to stand beneath the weight of it. He had his own burdens to bear.
Around her the water grew tepid, and still she did not move. She was comfortable here, in the darkness, and there was no Harry to hold her down, no hand resting against her stomach, laying claim to the precious burden housed within, no voice whispering darling in her ear while she fretted.
Am I his darling? She wondered. When the word had first passed his lips she'd resolved to speak to him about it the moment Catherine departed, but then he'd distracted her with his hands brushing over her skin, and all the accusations had vanished from her in an instant. It set her ill at ease, that little word. Ruth had never warmed to the language of possession so often passed back and forth between lovers, and diminutives (like the abominable Ruthie) had always set her teeth on edge and raised her ire. She was no man's little woman, no sweetheart, and certainly not a God damn baby; she had walked through hell itself, had faced down death and destruction and the end of the world. She spoke more languages than could be counted on two hands, had hacked foreign intelligence services and come back from the dead, and she had reached this point on her terms, accepting the occasional offer of help, but never allowing something as banal as the desires of her romantic partners to limit her potential. Should Harry ever ask her to step back, should he ever try to assume control of her life, she would fight tooth and nail to reclaim her independence.
But would he ever do such a thing? He was an old-fashioned sort, certainly, but he was Harry, and he had known her first as his employee, a first-rate analyst, a born spook. Surely he would trust her enough not to try to tame her.
If only she knew, if only she could be certain as to his intentions, if only she could see where they were headed. She had not been blessed with the gift of foresight, however, only burdened with an astronomical intelligence and a gift for conjuring up the very worst scenarios, and a deeply ingrained habit of bolting before the fruits of her fears ever ripened. Better to run when things were going well, than linger until they fell apart.
She stayed in the bath until her skin turned soft and wrinkly and goosebumps began to rise on her flesh. Carefully she eased herself up and out of the tub, and made her way back down the hall. The thought of sliding back beneath Harry's arm, submitting to his domination over her, and a truth she could not escape even in sleep, utterly terrified her just now. Moving silent as a mouse she gathered up her clothes, tugged them on over her damp skin, and departed without a word, leaving Harry slumbering peacefully and blissfully unaware. She would call him in the morning, to explain that she just needed some space, that she was feeling claustrophobic and out of sorts. She would try again tomorrow, when the shadows of the night had burned away and the sun had risen, bringing with it the sense of calm she had only recently discovered, and only just this evening lost again.
The morning came, and Ruth rose early, having in truth not slept a wink. The night had never been a good time for her; often her thoughts turned as black as the sky outside her window, and the demons would not be still until the sun rose and banished them back into the ether. Her heart always lifted, at the rising of the sun, and though she was exhausted, she almost felt at peace as she shuffled around her room, dressing quickly in preparation for the task she had set for herself. She could face her life, in the daylight; in the darkness, she only crumbled.
It was Sunday, and the entire team was rostered off the Grid today, Harry included. He was no doubt planning to indulge himself by spending the morning in his favorite armchair, with a cup of strong black coffee and a newspaper. He liked reading the paper, did Harry; though he had never expressed his feelings on the subject to Ruth, she suspected his fondness for that particular medium stemmed less from his Luddite nature and more from the depths of his romantic soul. Reading a newspaper was a tactile, almost antique experience these days, and Harry was something of a relic himself. He took pleasure in his newspaper, and his record collection, and she could not fault him for that, she whose bookshelves burst with ancient volumes collected in secondhand stores and adored for their yellowed pages and distinctive, old-book smell. This was something they shared in common, this quiet, quixotic fondness for the outdated and anachronistic.
Beth was still asleep, and so Ruth moved as quietly as she could, locking the door behind her and going down to her car. Before she pulled away from her building it occurred to her that she had decided to ring Harry first thing in the morning, not wanting to worry him unnecessarily, but the thought of spoiling her rather light-hearted mood by engaging him in a discussion of the various reasons why she had chosen to leave him the night before was deeply unpleasant. Instead she sent him a text message, frowning a little as she did, remembering a time not so very long ago when that simple task would have been quite beyond her. I'm fine. Needed to go home. Will call later. All is well. Message sent, she tucked her mobile back in her bag, and set off for the Grid.
Traffic was almost nonexistent, this early on a Sunday morning, and the security guard who waved her through the metal detectors at Thames House greeted her with a robust and utterly remorseless yawn. The Grid was calm and quiet; not empty, never empty, but certainly less chaotic than when her team was in residence. At any given time there were dozens of operations of varying levels of importance taking place, a bevy of surveillance teams and techies and analysts working round the clock to keep the realm and its inhabitants safe from harm. The forgery suite was reserved for Tariq and his team, however, and since they were currently enjoying a well-earned day of rest, there was no one about to see Ruth slip behind one of the monitors and power up the program that catalogued CCTV feeds from all around the city.
Ruth set to work, humming softly to herself, pulling up the feeds from St Thomas's Hospital last Thursday, and scrolling through until she reached the late afternoon. There were four cameras that offered a view of the entrance and the car park, and Ruth opened all four feeds on one monitor, watching them side-by-side, and waiting for the familiar form of Lucas North to come prowling across them. For nearly an hour she watched those four little windows, but she saw no sign of him. There were a few instants when she thought she might have spotted him, mixed in with a crowd, but the more she tried to enlarge the image the fuzzier it became, and she was not blessed with any certainty.
She sighed, rolled her shoulders, and picked another day, another time, and set to it again.
This sort of work required time and patience; in some instances she had thirty minutes' worth of footage to review, and she could not afford to fast-forward through any of it, less she miss some sign of her quarry in the rush of images on the screen. About three hours into her work, she finally made some progress; she caught sight of Lucas, with his arm around a dark haired woman, exiting the hospital. Lucas was keeping his head down, trying to angle the woman away from the cameras with his body, but unbeknownst to him one of the cameras had been knocked awry on its axis by a furious storm the night before, and Ruth saw him, plain as day, for no more than a second or two. She resisted the urge to throw her hands up in the air and shout in jubilation, instead freezing the image and running off a copy to show to Harry on Monday.
Or, she would have shown it to Harry on Monday, had he not been waiting by the copy machine with the photo in his hands by the time she reached it.
For several seconds they simply stared at one another, Ruth confused and a little bit frightened, Harry visibly angry but trying to keep his temper in check. He had all these little tells, known only to Ruth; there was a certain set to his mouth, a certain tension in his stance, that spoke volumes to her about his current mood.
"Harry?" she said, surprised. "What are you doing here?"
"I might ask you the same," he responded, motioning towards her with the photograph in his hand.
"Harry-"
"I thought I told you that I would handle this, in my own way," he told her in a dangerously quiet voice. She bristled at both his tone and his words; how dare he speak to her in such a way? All the fears that had consumed her the night before, about his wanting to own her, to control her, came barreling back to the surface.
"And how are you handling this?" she asked, not even trying to keep the anger out of her voice. "From where I'm sitting it doesn't look like you're doing anything at all."
He thrust his jaw out, pugnacious as a boxer, and for the first time in months Ruth saw the old Harry, the one who demanded absolute, unquestioning obedience, rather than the one who cooked her dinner and offered to rub her swollen feet.
"It's not your job to question my methods, Ruth," he told her, while she thought oh yes it bloody is, but before she could protest he continued, "you just have to trust me."
"Oh, that's rich, Harry. You want me to trust you, but you won't extend me the same courtesy. How did you even know I would be here today?"
He was clearly thrown by her question, taken aback by the sudden shift in their conversation. Ruth had it in her mind to be worried that Beth might have said something to him, but his lack of a ready answer put those concerns to rest.
"If you must know," he said with a heavy sigh, "I had Tariq run a trace on your mobile."
Rage such as Ruth had not known for months filled her; she fairly trembled with it. That he should be concerned about her, upon waking to find her gone, was certainly understandable, but he had neither called nor texted. He had gone straight to Tariq, evidently trusting the young man enough to spy on Ruth, but not enough to include him in their surveillance of Lucas. It was a breach of privacy of the highest order, and it made Ruth's flesh crawl to think that this man who had already taken so much from her could, at will, track her down and try to bring her to heel. The peanut had never felt like such a heavy burden, buried beneath Ruth's skin, as she did in that moment.
"I don't believe this," she said, taking a step back from him, wary as a deer caught in the gaze of some terrible predator.
"Ruth-"
"How could you?" her tone was venomous, but she would not apologize for it. He did not trust her, might never trust her, would not include her in his schemes, and had betrayed her confidence in him. Every inch of ground they had tentatively gained in the last few months seemed to vanish in an instant, leaving nothing but a vast, empty chasm echoing between them.
"How could you?" he echoed in a soft voice. "How could you leave, and not tell me why?"
Ruth wasn't prepared to have this conversation with him now, not when her heart was breaking and her stomach was roiling. She launched herself forward, snatched the photo from his hand, and started toward the door. In his anger Harry forgot himself, and caught her by the wrist; the touch of his hand, which only the night before had set her heart to pounding with desire, filled her with disgust now, and she wrenched herself away. He let her go, seeming to realize his mistake too late.
"Don't," she said in a voice that was soft but cold. "Don't."
And just like that she left him, her vision clouded by tears of anger and guilt and frustration. He stood alone on the Grid, watching her leave, and for once she had no idea what he was thinking.
A/N: I'm sorry! Please hang in there, we've got a long way to go yet. And, for those of you not howling in rage at the moment, the quote a heart is a heavy burden comes from Howl's Moving Castle, a young adult novel by the fortuitously named Diana Wynne Jones.
