Time seemed to move in fits and starts for Ruth these days; there were moments when she'd look up and wonder where on earth her day had gone, wonder how the hours could have slipped away from her so quickly, and there were moments when a single minute seemed to last an eternity. The clock was ticking, however inconsistently it might seem to Ruth, and each passing day drew her nearer to the end of this strange journey she'd begun completely unaware all those months before. She had two weeks left, before she moved her things into Harry's home, before she would take her maternity leave and face the reality of her impending foray into motherhood.
It didn't seem real, didn't seem possible that she should have reached this point already. In the beginning, when she'd agreed to Harry's plan to wait to make up her mind about continuing on with 5, she had believed that there was plenty of time left to make a decision, that she would weigh her options and come up with a solution well before the peanut arrived. Now, though, she was no more certain than she had been before, and she had less time than ever.
Part of her could not believe that she was actually considering coming back to the Grid, and part of her could not believe that she was actually considering leaving. Before the peanut, the Grid had been her home, her whole life, the very center of her universe, with Harry as its nucleus. Now, though, she had her daughter to worry about, and her priorities had shifted, suddenly and profoundly. Whatever she chose, she knew that Harry would stand by her, and she took comfort in that fact.
Whatever she chose, she would be gone for at least six months on leave, and it was high time they started searching for her replacement, temporary or otherwise. It was with this objective in mind that she gathered up the relevant file, and trooped into Harry's office one Monday morning.
He was on the phone, rather predictably, so she folded herself into one of the chairs by his office window, watching him with a little smile on her face. At the moment he was in the midst of a heated debate with the H.S., his brow furrowed slightly as they wrangled; they were in the midst of what felt like a million different operations at once, and despite the relative chaos of life on the Grid at the moment, the H.S. was lobbying for an upgrade of their computer systems. The Americans had some fancy new technology that they proclaimed was unhackable, and in a show of good faith, they wanted to share the fruits of their labor. Converting the almost archaic electronic systems on the Grid would require a complete shutdown of all technical activity for a full day, and Harry was bloody livid at the prospect. Surprisingly, Tariq was on Harry's side, staunchly insisting that he didn't want anyone, particularly not anyone from a foreign government, messing about in his programs.
And so Harry was bickering with the H.S., citing the monumental inconvenience of shutting down the Grid, even for a day, and the disaster inherent in running both the American and British intelligence services on the same system. Computers were not, and never would be, Harry's forte, but he had told Tariq to draw him up a list of talking points, and he was employing them all now while Ruth watched from her perch near the window.
It all reminded her forcefully of one of her earliest cases with Section D, when a young boy with a tragic past and a shocking intellect had nearly brought them all to their knees with a few keystrokes. That operation had been a chance for Ruth to prove her worth, but it had also shown her just how vulnerable they were to those sorts of attacks. Oh, the computer systems had been patched and updated here and there over the years, but due to incessant budget cuts and a high turnover in staff they still weren't quite up to snuff. Privately Ruth thought the American system wasn't such a bad idea, but she understood Harry's concerns, and she had the feeling he was going to be railroaded into it, regardless of how he felt or what she said about the matter. With this in mind, she had rather diplomatically chosen not to discuss her opinions on the issue with him.
"Bloody Americans," Harry grumbled as he hung up the phone and finally turned his attention to her. "What can I do for you, Ruth?"
His eyes softened slightly as he looked at her, and she fought the urge to rise from her seat and go to him, to run her fingers through his hair and tell him everything was going to be all right. Despite the fact that they had discovered a newfound closeness in their personal lives they were for the most part still rather hesitant about open displays of affection on the Grid; such public performances were not in their nature, and she respected his position and his authority too much to go all mushy on him when the others could see.
"We need to talk about hiring my replacement," she said, hating the crestfallen look that overtook his features at her words.
"Ruth-"
"I still haven't decided whether or not I'm coming back," she told him quickly, wanting to offer what little reassurance she could. "Either way, I am taking leave, and you'll need someone to cover for me."
Harry steepled his fingers together on the desk and regarded her warily from across the room. "And I suppose you've taken the liberty of researching possible candidates?"
She grinned at him, a bit sheepishly. Technically it wasn't her call to make, but he was so busy, and so damned stubborn, he never would have made the time to do it on his own. "I have. There's one in particular I think may be a good fit for us." Ruth rose ponderously to her feet, pressing her knuckles absently against the small of her back. She wasn't quite to the ungainly waddling stage, but she was perilously close, and some days her muscles pained her more than others. This was unfortunately one of the more days.
"Her name is Martha Howard. She's an analyst with GCHQ. Last year she was seconded to 6 briefly, but Vauxhall Cross sent her back to Cheltenham after six months. Apparently she took issue with some of their procedures, and rather than correct the problem, they got rid of her."
Harry grunted a bit at that. "So she's a GCHQ rabble-rouser. That sounds familiar." For a moment his eyes sparkled at her, and she had a sudden, very childish urge to stick her tongue out at him.
He was flicking through the file, but she knew he wasn't really reading it, and so she gave him the highlights. "Cambridge grad," Harry rolled his eyes; old prejudices die hard. Ruth was an old Oxonian herself, but she didn't share his complete disdain for Cambridge and everything associated with it. "Speaks six languages, Mandarin and Arabic among them," she continued. "She's done good work, and she's demonstrated an ability to adapt quickly, and a no-nonsense attitude. I'd like to bring her in and have a chat with her, as soon as possible."
At this Harry gave up all pretense of reading the file. "If you think she's a good candidate, then by all means, bring her in. If you want to meet with her this week, though, you'll have to do it yourself, I simply haven't got the time."
"That's not a problem," Ruth assured him, taking the file back from him. For a moment she lingered by his desk; she had nothing more to say on the subject, but she also did not want to leave him just yet. In just two weeks she'd be leaving this place, maybe for good, and the thought left her feeling rather lost. How many times had she stood in this room with him? How many moments of titanic importance had taken place in this very space? How many fleeting touches, how many whispered confessions, how many bombardments of grief and outpourings of joy had they experienced in this tiny room, together? In her mind this office was as much a part of him as were his soft brown eyes and his gentle hands; in this room, he was Sir Harry, the man he had spent decades trying to become, the man she had first fallen in love with. She was going to miss Grid Harry, when she left. Now, though, she had Home Harry to look forward to, and that comforted her somewhat.
He seemed to sense some of her discontent, and he reached out to gently squeeze her hand. "Is there anything else I can do?" he asked, and she knew he wasn't talking about Martha Howard.
"No. It'll be all right, Harry," she told him. She squeezed back, once, and then left him there, her steps heavy and uncertain.
On Wednesday afternoon, Martha Howard stepped foot inside Thames House for the first, and hopefully not last, time in her life. She still couldn't quite believe this was happening. Ruth Evershed of all people had rung her up, and asked her to come down for a chat. Evershed was a bloody legend, at GCHQ; she was one of the success stories, one of the low level analysts whose sheer brilliance had resulted in her being exalted out of the anonymity and ennui of Cheltenham, and catapulted into the glamorous life of a spook. Martha had heard all sorts of things about Ruth Evershed, over the years; her work was infamous, and her achievements nearly unparalleled. Martha had always wanted to meet her, wanted to pick her brain, wanted to find out how the bloody hell she'd done it, and now she finally had her chance.
Security took a long time to process her, double and triple checking her identification until her anxiety reached an almost fever pitch. Martha felt like she was dying in Cheltenham, really, she did. The work was so bloody mind-numbing, and she knew she was meant for more. When she'd finally been granted the secondment to 6, she thought her moment had arrived. Like always, though, she'd put her foot right in it, running afoul of her Section Head almost from her very first day. It wasn't her fault if there were holes in their electronic security any competent hacker could drive a truck through, wasn't her fault if their intelligence cataloguing systems was ancient and completely inefficient, wasn't her fault if no one took her analysis seriously. The rather impolite manner in which she had raised all of these concerns was her fault, and she knew it, and she was determined not to make the same mistake again.
A security guard with a sour demeanor escorted her all the way through Thames House and onto what he referred to as "the Grid", the nerve center at the heart of Britain's counterterrorism services. People and machines bustled all around her, hard at work, and though it was rather loud and rather overwhelming, Martha felt a rush of excitement. The guard pointed out Ruth Evershed to her, and for the first time, she got a good look at the woman who had become something of a role model to her. Ruth was rather pretty, maybe forty years old with soft dark hair and bright, sparkling blue eyes. She was on the phone, chatting away rapidly in French while her fingers all but flew over her keyboard. The security guard caught her eye, and Ruth waved Martha over with a tight little smile.
So this is Section D, Martha thought as she took a seat next to Ruth's desk. It was marvelous, really. Everyone seemed to be doing something terribly important, just now, and she felt rather small and insignificant in comparison. Insignificant, but dreadfully excited. Martha desperately wanted to be a real spy.
Eventually Ruth ended the call, and turned her attention to Martha. Her gaze was rather disconcerting; her eyes were so clear, their color so deep, it seemed she could look straight through a person, and see their very soul.
"I'm so pleased to meet you," Ruth said, rising from her chair and offering her hand in greeting.
Martha froze for a moment. Ruth Evershed was reaching out to shake her hand, the Ruth Evershed, the woman who had died, the woman who had returned, the woman who had managed to escape Cheltenham and live the life that Martha had always dreamed of. Ruth Evershed was actually here, right in front of her, and most surprisingly of all, she was also very pregnant.
Martha had not been expecting that.
"Hi," she said rather inanely, kicking herself the moment the word passed her lips. Ruth smiled at her gently, but before she could say another word, a pretty blonde woman in a very tight black dress and ridiculously high heels came rushing by them with a bevy of armed officers in tow.
"Right, Ruth, I'm off out," the blonde woman called over her shoulder.
"Wait, Beth, one more thing before you go," Ruth said, and the blonde stopped in her tracks. "Don't forget, we need cat food."
Martha watched in confusion as the other woman – Beth – all but rolled her eyes. What the bloody hell?
"Ru-uth," she whined.
"I'm not coming home tonight and we're all out," Ruth said in a very reasonable tone of voice.
"Fine," Beth sighed. "I'll stop at the supermarket."
"Thanks, Beth. Be safe out there. Call if you need me."
"Yes, mum," Beth said with a cheeky grin, and with that she and her team were gone, and Ruth's attention was once more focused on Martha.
"Right, then," Ruth said, but before they got much further, another interruption arrived in the form of a young man with a handsome, earnest face.
"Ruth, have you got-" he started to ask, but the analyst had apparently read his mind, and she lifted a file, seemingly at random, from the chaos on her desk.
"Everything you need to know about your contact is in there. Be careful, Dimitri, this one's a bit touchy."
"Thanks," the young man said, and just like that, he was off like a shot, all but running out the doors.
Martha's head was spinning slightly. So much seemed to be happening all at once, and it seemed to her that Ruth was right at the center of all it.
"Right," Ruth said again, but at that moment, a sharp voice rang out from somewhere behind Martha's shoulder.
"Ruth!" Martha craned her head to look, and found a rather frightening looking man with dark hair and a smoldering gaze striding towards them determinedly.
"Lucas?" Ruth answered.
"I need everything you've got on the Manchester cell," he told her in his eerily quiet voice.
"I emailed you the details this morning," Ruth answered. Tension seemed to crackle in the air between them for a moment before the man nodded and sauntered away, leaving Martha to follow his progress, wondering what the story was behind his fearsome demeanor.
"I'm sorry," Ruth apologized quickly.
"Oh, it's no problem," Martha started to wave the interruptions away, but she quite lost her train of thought as Harry Pearce, the Harry Pearce, emerged from his office and made his way over to them. He was carrying a tie in each hand and wore none around his neck, his brow slightly furrowed as though in confusion.
"Ruth?" he asked softly, holding the ties up as if asking her to tell him which he ought to wear.
"You are kidding," Ruth answered, raising her eyebrow incredulously. Martha watched her in slack-jawed amazement; she never would have imagined an analyst, senior or otherwise, talking to the fabled Head of Section D in such a way.
"Please?" he asked.
Ruth sighed, her lips ticking up in the faintest trace of a fond smile. "The red one," she told him.
"Thank you," he replied, tucking the blue one in his trouser pocket and draping the red one around his neck. Ruth slipped out from behind her desk and took the tie in her own hands, knotting it for him while Martha looked on, desperately confused now.
"Spaghetti Bolognese sound all right, for supper?" Harry asked her in a quiet voice as she straightened his tie. Oh Christ, Martha thought, her cheeks coloring slightly as she recalled Ruth telling one of the other agents, only a moment before, that she wasn't going home tonight. Am I here to replace Harry Pearce's bloody girlfriend?
"That sounds lovely. Now go, play nice with the other children."
He grinned at her. "Yes, mum."
As he walked away Ruth sighed, and slumped her shoulders wearily before turning back to Martha. "All right, Martha, let's-"
"Ruth!" This time the interruption came from a young man hiding behind a bank of computer monitors in a suite of offices just beside Ruth's own desk.
"For God's sake, Tariq!" Ruth shouted back.
"I just need-"
"Here, catch," Ruth cut him off, lifting a small USB device from her desk and tossing it in his general direction. Tariq all but fell off his chair in his scramble to snatch it from the air, but in the end he succeeded without damaging himself or the drive.
Ruth wrapped a gentle hand around Martha's arm, and led her away from the madness that seemed to surround her desk. "Quickly now," Ruth muttered, "before someone else turns up wanting something."
As Martha allowed herself to be all but dragged into a conference room, her mind whirled with everything she'd seen and heard. Nothing she'd been told about this job had really prepared her for the scene she'd just witnessed, and she was feeling daunted at the prospect of coming to work in such a place.
"Right, so, Martha. I see here you've applied for a secondment to 5 a half a dozen times in the last two years," Ruth began once they were settled around the table. She was deeply amused at the introduction to life in Section D that Martha had just received. Such a bombardment of requests and information was not uncommon, on busy days, and if Martha was going to take over for her, she'd need to be able to keep up. "Are you not happy, in Cheltenham?" Ruth continued.
It seemed to her that, like any good analyst, Martha was choosing her words carefully before she spoke. "It's not that I'm unhappy, I just feel that perhaps my talents might be put to better use in other areas," the woman answered finally.
Ruth nodded, and privately, she agreed. There was no need to sit here and go over all of Martha's credentials; that she was smart and capable was given. What Ruth needed to know now was how quickly the woman could think on her feet.
"Martha, I'd like to administer a little test, if you don't mind," she said, leaning back in her chair. The other woman sat up a little straighter, and Ruth noticed a familiar glint in her eyes. Ruth herself had looked that way once, had been young and eager to prove her abilities. Hopefully Martha was up to the task. "Tell me everything you can recall, from what you just witnessed, and what conclusions you've drawn."
Martha closed her eyes for a moment, clearly thinking hard, marshaling her thoughts, and Ruth watched her closely all the while.
"You live with an agent called Beth, and you have a cat, who apparently has run out of food. You're dating Harry Pearce; not married to him, as you're still living with Beth, but you're very close. He's your baby's father?" this last was delivered as a question, but Ruth remained still as a stone, waiting for the rest of it. "You don't trust Lucas, and he knows it. You feel protectively towards Dimitri, perhaps because he's rather young and maybe a bit too naïve. You harbor some good-natured frustration towards Tariq, maybe because he's a bit eager and you've been around too long to put up with his enthusiasm. You've called me here to see if I can replace you while you're on maternity leave. How am I doing?"
Ruth didn't even try to hide her grin. "Martha, I think you're doing rather well."
"So it went well then?" Harry asked her later, as they lay on his sofa together, her feet propped up in his lap and Eine Kliene Nachtmusik floating softly out of his record player. Ruth had been complaining that her feet hurt, and the next thing she knew she was laid back against a pile of pillows, and Harry was treating her to what was, quite simply, the best foot massage she'd ever received. It was difficult to focus on her interview with Martha when his hands on her skin were so distracting, but she tried to rally.
"I think so, yes. I like her. She's rather blunt, but she's very bright, and she's very intuitive. She reads people well. I think that once she gets used to things, she'll do quite well."
Harry grunted. He'd been doing that a lot today, she noticed. "She won't do as well as you," he grumbled.
"You have absolutely no way of knowing that."
It would be hard for him, she knew, to see someone else sitting at her desk, taking her place in briefings. Ruth was finding it rather hard herself, to imagine anyone else doing her job; the Grid was her life, and the team was her family, or they had been, before the peanut, and she couldn't imagine trusting anyone else with their welfare. But the job had to go to someone, and Martha Howard seemed the best candidate for the position. A bit starry-eyed, perhaps, but Ruth had been that way herself, once.
"I trust your judgment," Harry said after a long period of tranquil quiet. "If you think she can do it, we'll bring her on board."
Ruth struggled to pull herself upright, floundering a bit as her bump made even that small maneuver infinitely harder than it had been eight months before. She leaned across the space between them, and kissed him gently. "I may not be on the Grid, Harry," she told him softly, "but I'll be with you here, and so will the peanut. When you need me, I'll still be here."
He wrapped his arms around her, and once more they kissed. They lost themselves in one another, and did not emerge for quite some time.
