A/N: Holy hell, y'all, this is chapter 40! I can't believe we've made it this far. We've got a ways to go yet, but as always I am grateful to you for sticking with me, and I hope you continue to enjoy this little adventure.
Harry still wasn't speaking, as he let them into his house, as he locked the door behind him, as he leaned down to scratch Scarlet behind her ear. With each passing second Ruth's apprehension only grew; she didn't know what he was thinking, and as always her mind was running wild, imagining horrible scenario after horrible scenario. He wants me gone, wants me off the Grid, he never wants to see me again. Without a word he turned his back on her, and made his way to the kitchen, and Ruth followed along in his footsteps, hanging her head and thinking hard.
There was a chance, however small, that she could salvage this night. There was a chance, if she were willing to take the risk, that she could fix this. Being with Harry would require more from her than she'd ever given to any other lover, and she had to ask herself as she walked through his house if he were worth it. Was he worth the pain of opening old wounds? Was forgiving him now worth the risk of having him betray her again in the future? She thought about the way he held her, thought about the way he looked when he smiled at her, thought about the way she felt when she heard him speaking quietly to the peanut, and found the answer she was seeking. If anyone had ever been worth fighting for, it was Harry Pearce.
She sat at his table unbidden, and discreetly propped her swollen feet up on the chair opposite.
"Are you hungry?" Harry asked from across the room, his voice gruff and rather curt.
"I could eat," she allowed. It was clear he had something on his mind, and she wanted to delay her confession until she heard what he had to say. He could be stubborn as a mule, once he'd made up his mind about something, and she needed to know which Harry she was dealing with tonight. Grid Harry and Home Harry were two different people, in her mind, and they required two different approaches from her.
Harry grunted a bit at her response, and started pulling food out of the cabinets. As she watched him, she wondered why she wasn't angry with him. If anything, seeing him shuffle around the kitchen with his adorable pout firmly in place only filled her with affection. He had come to the appointment, despite their having not really talked to one another for almost a week, and then he had driven her home and offered to cook her supper, and the fact that he was still willing to try, however disgruntled he might be, eased her worries somewhat. One fight, however heated, didn't have to spell the end of things between them, did it? They argued on the Grid fairly regularly, and yet they always managed to work together in the end.
"I'm not going to apologize," he said quietly, his back turned towards her as he stood at the counter chopping up a pile of vegetables.
He had said those words to her before, she realized.
I won't apologize for any of it…I don't regret a moment of it, even knowing how things turned out.
For a moment she was thrown back to that night, when he'd come round to her flat after she'd broken his heart on the rooftop. At the time she'd been so devastated, thinking that they'd thrown away their only chance at being together, and knowing he still felt so strongly about her had only served to hammer home the guilt she felt over how she'd handled things between them. She remembered how his words had filled her with grief then, and pondered how to respond to him now.
A part of her was angry, to hear him say he wasn't sorry for tracing her phone, for using his power to violate her privacy. A larger part of her understood what he truly meant, beneath his rather harsh words. They weren't like other people. Ordinary people, upon finding their lovers gone, might feel confusion or anger. Harry felt only dread, certain that once again someone he loved had been taken from him, ripped violently away, never to return. And in a way he was justified in his paranoia; it had happened too often, over the course of his life. The course of their lives. Ruth saw a dark SUV on the street and her heart rate skyrocketed and her hands started to shake. Harry heard an Irish accent in a pub and had to get up and leave, immediately. These were the invisible scars they bore, hidden beneath the surface of their skin, intangible but very, very real.
"I should have called," she said finally. "I shouldn't have sent a text, I should have thought it through."
I should have remembered what happened the last time, she added silently in her mind. The hours she'd spent tied to Andrew's bannister had faded in her mind, overshadowed by more recent traumas, but she realized with a start that she had never really spoken to Harry about the incident, and she had no idea how much it affected him. She'd assumed he remembered, but maybe she was wrong-
"All I could think about was that day when you were taken, when we almost missed the signs. If it hadn't been for Danny…" Harry's voice was soft, and only grew softer as he spoke, until finally he trailed off completely, unable or unwilling to finish his sentence. That answered that, then; he did remember, and she was right in her interpretation of his mental state. This discovery gave her confidence a little boost; he was still her Harry, and she still knew him just as well as she always had.
There was the sizzling sound of chicken being dropped into a hot pan, and for a time they did not speak, as Harry continued to faff around with supper, and Ruth worried the hem of her blouse between her fingers. The tracking of her mobile was only one cause of their falling out, and she was loath to bring up the other. He was utterly irrational where Lucas was concerned, and she was absolutely bloody furious that he had doubted her professional judgment. The personal was one thing; Ruth was a mess when it came to personal relationships, and she knew it, and did not fault him for pointing it out. Professionally, though, he had always relied on her, and she would not tolerate his distrust of her on the Grid.
Beth had managed to track down Maya Lahan, Lucas's apparent paramour, but they did not have nearly enough information on her, and they would need Harry's approval to find out where she factored into all of this. Ruth would need Harry on her side, in her corner, the way he always had been, but if he was still cross with her for going behind her back, she could not count on his support.
"About Lucas-"
"I don't want to talk about bloody Lucas," he grumbled. She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair in frustration.
"We have to talk about bloody Lucas, because this isn't about him at all, Harry. This is about you not trusting me-"
"This is about me wanting to protect you!" He spun around, eyes flashing, pointing a wooden spoon at her like a dagger. "There are some things I can't tell you, Ruth, and you know that. Not because I don't want to, not because I don't trust you, but because I can't. What's happening with Lucas is one of those things. I appreciate your concerns about him, but-"
"Is he running some sort of shadow op for you?" If Harry wanted to keep interrupting her, he was going to get a taste of his own medicine, she decided. What was it about this man that made her want to slap him and kiss him in almost equal measure? Infuriating and sexy and adorable and powerful and comforting and terrifying; that was Harry Pearce, a study in contradictions, a puzzle she would forever be trying to piece together.
Harry sighed, and turned his attentions back to supper. "No," he said, and by the slump of his shoulders she assumed he was telling the truth.
"You really believe you have this situation in hand?" she asked carefully.
"Yes."
"And you really believe things will go easier if Beth and I steer clear of this?"
"Yes."
"And this has nothing to do with Cotterdam?"
There was a clatter as Harry dropped the bowl he'd been holding. In all the time she'd been back, that word had never once been spoken between them. It was a nightmare, a shadow of a shadow, a pain never to be brought to light again. No one else on the Grid now would knew what it meant, what it had cost them. No one else would ever understand the pain of something wonderful that was never said, of two long years spent in isolation and doubt, of the sacrifices made and the opportunities lost. They did not even want to face it themselves, Harry and Ruth, did not want to admit all the shattered dreams and fractured hopes that was the life they could have had, if it weren't for Cotterdam. In her mind Ruth thought of the word like a curse, heavy and unbreakable, something from one of the ancient Greek tragedies she loved so well.
And yet. Even after ten years of wandering, Odysseus found his way back to Penelope, and even after a decade of waiting for his return, Penelope had not loved another. Perhaps two years was not an insurmountable obstacle.
"Is that what you think?" Harry asked quietly.
"If I'd listened to you then, and given up my investigation into Maudsley, maybe I never would have left. Maybe we would have…" she lost her voice for a moment. That was one maybe she still could not bring herself to speak aloud. "I thought maybe this was your way of shutting me out, keeping me from making the same mistake."
Harry shuffled the food around, filling the pan with vegetables and covering the lot with some sort of sauce. Stir fry, she thought numbly, he's making stir fry.
"In a way, you may be right," he said after a long moment of silence. "I am trying to protect you, Ruth. I am trying to stop you turning your inestimable talents to this particular problem, because I fear the ramifications. But it's not quite the same."
"No?" she pressed, confused. It sounded the same to her.
"This time I know more than you," he said, the corner of his mouth ticking up in a self-deprecating sort of smile. "I don't get to say that often."
He had removed his jacket upon entering the kitchen, but he still wore his tie, and he was fiddling with it absently as he spoke. Ruth was halfway across the kitchen before she realized what she was doing, but once her mind caught up with her feet, she did not stop. This was a delicate dance between them now, each of them trying to be honest while still defending themselves, but she wanted him to know that she wasn't running, this time. And so she kept on walking, until she was stood right in front of him, and she offered him a gentle smile as she reached up to untie his tie.
"I don't like this," she said softly, pulling the soft silk of the tie loose from his collar. She let the tie drop to the floor, and then undid the first two buttons of his shirt. He always said that by the end of the day he hated those bloody buttons, that they made him feel as if he couldn't breathe. "I don't like not knowing, and I don't like the thought of you dealing with this on your own."
Harry's hands came to rest on her hips, holding her close. Her own dropped to his shoulders, squeezing slightly through the soft fabric of his shirt.
"I know," he said gently. "I don't like it, either. We're a team, you and I, and I don't like it when we aren't together."
"But?" she countered, raising an eyebrow at him.
"But," he continued, "this time, I need you to keep out of it."
Ruth felt herself standing at a crossroads. She could take the familiar path, and buck his authority, insist on continuing her efforts to uncover Lucas's secrets. She was an analyst and an intelligence officer, and always in the past she had done whatever it took to find the answers she sought. Alternatively, she could do as he was asking, could trust in him, could allow him to take this risk, and relinquish her control. She wanted to protect him, he wanted to protect her, and someone needed to back down.
It might set a worrying precedent, she supposed, if she gave into his demand now. Ruth had always struggled against her lovers' attempts to exert their control over her, no matter how small the issue at hand; she had always been certain that to give in once was to lose herself completely. But Harry wasn't just her lover, he was her boss, too. He had access to more intel than she could ever dream of, and in just a few short weeks she would be off the Grid completely, maybe forever, and he would have to find a way to carry on without her there to support him.
She sighed, and buried her face in his neck. He held her close to him, all thoughts of their dinner completely forgotten as she grappled with her emotions and he waited for her response.
"Ok," she said finally, her voice no more than a whisper. "Ok."
Harry kissed the top of her head. "I hate to ask this of you. I know it isn't easy."
"Promise me you'll be careful," she said.
"I promise."
They stood thus entwined for several more moments, reveling in their renewed closeness, in the simple domesticity of having resolved this disagreement. Perhaps they would have stood there all night, neither moving an inch, breathing one another in, if Ruth had not noticed something rather unpleasant.
"Harry?" she said softly, and felt his answering hum vibrating through her chest. "Supper's burning."
"Christ!"
Ruth smiled at him fondly as he attempted to rescue their supper; there was much left for them to discuss, tonight, but they'd made a good start.
