A/N: The timeline in 9.7 is a bit blurry (as is so often the case with Spooks) so I have edited it to suit my purposes. I hope you will forgive me.


"Ruth, are you busy? We've got a walk-in downstairs, says he's got some information."

Barely five minutes had passed, between her leaving Harry's office and Dimitri's sudden intrusion into her private misery, and in that short time she'd barely had the opportunity to glance at her letter from Greece. She'd opened the envelope in the relative safety of her desk, a little photo of Nico falling out to land among the detritus of her files. Ruth didn't miss the curious expression that flitted across Martha's face as the woman sat beside her like an over-enthusiastic shadow; Ruth had snatched the photo up as quickly as she could, shoving it back inside the envelope, wishing she could escape this place. The Grid was her home, always had been, always would be, but right at this moment it was suffocating her, memories swaddling her like too-heavy blankets on a hot summer night. And through it all, no time to grieve, no time to rest.

"Since when do we deal with walk-ins?" she asked him, her voice wavering as she tried to catch her breath, tried to marshal her thoughts, tried to assume the same level of calm detachment that served Harry so well in moments like these.

Oh, Harry.

Dimitri explained all about their counsel snooper, while Ruth's shoulders sagged in resignation. She knew all too well just how busy Dimitri was at the moment, and much as she might long to foist the insistent Mr. Deery off on Martha, it was the poor girl's first day on the job, and it just wouldn't be fair, wouldn't be kind, to send her down there all unprepared.

And so Ruth left Martha in Tariq's capable hands, trying to hide her smile as the techie launched into a complex explanation of the Grid's computer systems and Martha's eyes glazed over. That ought to keep her busy for a while, Ruth thought with some satisfaction, and made her way to meet with Mr. Deery.

There was something unsettling about Keith Deery, she decided as she listened to his bumbling explanations. He seemed kind and well-intentioned, but there was something in his eyes, something sad, and broken, and lost, something she recognized all too well.

The background check confirmed it; Deery had lost his wife, and from the looks of things, he'd never quite recovered. Poor sod, Ruth thought sadly, staring at his photo on the computer monitor. Some losses, once felt, can never be overcome; she knew what it was like to be submerged in grief, had felt the teeth of the black dog sinking into her back. That could have been me, she thought, her hand reaching of its own accord to rest atop that dreadful white envelope. Could have been, but wasn't, because her life with George had been a lie, the love she proclaimed to him in the still of the night no more real or lasting than a ring of smoke upon the wind. George had died for that lie, Nico had been orphaned for that lie. A lie she told willingly, for no other reason than that she was lonely, and George was kind. She felt as if she were cursed, destined to bring only pain to those closest to her. Peter had loved her, and his love was not requited, and he had died. George had loved her, and he had died as well.

Her eyes flicked towards Harry's office for a moment, fear rising in her gut. Will I lose him, too? She wondered. It wasn't outside the realm of possibility; his was a dangerous job, and he had more than enough enemies.

"That's what we in the trade call 'an unreliable source'," Dimitri concluded. Ruth tried valiantly to focus on the present, but when she spoke, some of her grief broke through.

"Well, he did lose his wife," she pointed out.

"Eight years ago," Dimitri fired back, as if that explained everything.

"What's the time limit on grief?" she asked him tartly. As if such a thing existed, as if every person recovered the same way; the sheer naivety of Dimitri's attitude left Ruth exhausted.

"What, for normal people? Or for us?"

He has no idea who he's talking to, Ruth realized. Dimitri didn't know, couldn't know, what Ruth had been through upon her return from Cyprus. He had never seen George, had never heard the sound of Ruth's devastated screams, had not held her as she wept and bled in a hospital bed, wishing she could trade places with him. Dimitri was young, and brave, and resilient, and he had not yet learned that some wounds never heal. One day he will. One day this job will take everything he has, and he will be left with nothing but the taste of ashes in his mouth.


She went to him, once her anger had cooled, as ready to share Beth's discoveries as she was loath to face him. For his part Harry stood still a stone, listening to her summary of Beth's surveillance, and the strange trip Lucas had made to Malcolm's home. If her words had any impact on him, his face gave no sign.

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention," he told her when she was done, and his cool words sent a shock of fear up her spine. The American cryptographer was dead, that poor homeless boy was dead, and now Malcolm and his mother had vanished without a trace; why wasn't Harry doing anything?

"Ruth," he sighed, finally, his voice breaking the unbearable tension that had risen between them. He crossed his office, leaning up against the front of desk, his slumping posture putting him nearly on her eye level as she stood before him.

"Some new information has come to light on the Dakar bombing in '95. I want you to collate everything we have on it."

What the bloody hell is this? She wondered, completely lost. They were supposed to be talking about Lucas now, but Harry had got sidetracked somewhere along the way, and she wasn't happy about it. The night before, as he'd fallen asleep in her arms, he'd said that he had so much to tell her. Well, Ruth had unburdened herself. Wasn't it his turn?

It was, but now was neither the time nor the place to press him, she decided. It had been a strange day, and was only getting stranger. Ruth wasn't up to a confrontation with Grid Harry just now; better to wait, let them both cool off, and try again tomorrow. Or maybe tonight; maybe she could go round to his tonight, after work, and curl up beside him on the sofa, his hand resting gently on the swell of her stomach, and ask him for the truth.

"I'll look into it," she said, trying not to sigh. One more thing to add to her ever-growing pile of duties.

"No, just collate the information and give it to Beth."

He seemed determined to confuse her; why ask for her help, only to turn the file over to Beth? If she understood him correctly, he was only asking her to do a bit of data gathering, work any junior analyst could do with one hand tied behind their back. Martha could probably do it, once she learned how to access the internet from a Grid computer.

"Don't you need an analyst on this?" she asked him, equal parts bewildered and frustrated that he should be giving her such a menial task.

"Ruth, our personal situation does not mean you can question everything I ask you to do."

It wasn't like him to be this patronizing, and Ruth hated being left out of his confidence. Always before he had trusted her, implicitly, with all the darkest parts of himself. Why not now?

"No," she allowed. "But it doesn't mean you can freeze me out either."

"You'll be leaving us in just a few days, Ruth. I don't want your attention tied up with this."

She took a step back, keenly feeling the need for some distance between them just now. "Do you really think so little of me, Harry? Of my abilities? I can do this work. Or is this about something else? Are you cross with me about Lucas?"

Harry heaved a great sigh and scrubbed his hands over his face.

"Ruth, look, neither of us are what you would call emotionally forthright. But this morning, when I saw how you reacted to that letter, a lot of things suddenly made sense. I think you still blame me for George. For not protecting the boy. I think you believe that had it come to a choice, I would have let you die too."

His voice was soft, and kind, but it did nothing to calm the frantic stuttering of her heart. Ruth took another step back, and dropped into one of the chairs by his office window. No, they weren't emotionally forthright; their baby was due in just four weeks' time and they spent more nights together than apart in recent weeks and yet they still could not speak aloud their feelings for one another, still struggled to admit the darkest yearnings of their hearts. This confession from Harry, his belief that she blamed him, shocked her to her core. How could he think that, when the truth was that Ruth blamed no one but herself for George's death? How could they have misunderstood one another so completely?

Ruth had never for a moment even considered what Harry might have done, had Mani held that gun to her head instead. In hindsight that was rather remarkable, given the circumstances and the fact that Mani had very nearly killed her, when he realized he was caught. Would Harry have let her die? If the choice had been between watching her die or handing the uranium over to a coalition of terrorists, what would he have done? Two years ago she would have believed, unequivocally, that Harry would have let her die. She would have believed that his own moral code would not allow him to let such a weapon fall into the wrong hands. Now, though, watching him across his office, feeling the weight of their love for one another heavy on the air, she wasn't sure. She didn't want to know the answer, really, and she prayed she'd never have to.

"Harry," she whispered his name on a broken sigh, shocked to find tears gathering at the corners of her eyes.

He was beside her in a moment, clasping one of her hands between his own.

"Do you know what I felt, when Mani brought you into the warehouse that day? I dreamt, for years, about seeing you again, and there you were, in terrible danger, because of me. I would rather die myself than lose you," he told her earnestly, his dark eyes boring into her own. "I would let the whole world burn to save you."

"And you would be wrong," she choked out the words. It would be wrong, to make such a sacrifice in the name of one person, no matter how noble or romantic the sentiment. It wasn't their job to be noble; it was their job to do the unthinkable, to sacrifice everything in the hopes of keeping the world safe from harm. They'd done it often enough, surely Harry would have learned that by now.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe you're not the only one who should think about retiring, once this little one comes along."

She looked up at him sharply, the details of his face blurred through the haze of her tears.

"Do you mean that?" she asked him. He had not made that sacrifice for Jane, or for Catherine, or for Graham; how could she ask that of him now?

"My children need me, all three of them, and I'd quite like to be around to enjoy their company for many years to come. I have become this job, Ruth, but you've shown me that there are some things in life more important than standing on the wall."

She knew she shouldn't have done it; they were in his office, with the blinds open and a clear view of the Grid beyond them, but she couldn't help it. She leaned over, and brushed his lips with her own. They were going to be all right; they were going to be free.


Beth didn't quite know what to make of Harry's request that she find out what Lucas was doing in Dakar, but she did as ordered, dutifully slogging through all the information Ruth had gathered and adding to it as she went. That Lucas had been there was true enough, working as a bartender at a high-end casino, but this was all a matter of record. What did Harry think she was going to find?

It was mind-numbing work, but there was a part of Beth that was distinctly grateful for the relatively boring nature of her findings. If she discovered something truly explosive, it could only be evidence of Lucas's betrayal, and she was terrified of what that might mean.

She worked on it for a full day and into the next before she finally found what she was after; it was an old photo of Lucas from the casino's archive, standing with another a man.

A man with shaggy blonde hair, and a painfully familiar face.

Beth shot out of her chair, scrambling through the papers on her desk until she found the one she wanted before running straight into Harry's office.

"Harry, I've found something," she said in a rush, almost tripping over herself in her haste to show him the photographs.

"What am I looking at?" Harry asked her.

"This is Lucas in Dakar in '95. And this is a composite of a man Lucas was seen meeting in Battersea Park."

"Christ," Harry swore, lifting the composite in his hands.

"Harry?" Beth was utterly bewildered; there was something about Harry's face; he recognized this man, she realized belatedly. All the time she'd wasted trying to hunt him down electronically, and all she needed to do was bring the photograph to Harry. She was kicking herself even as her mind spun into high gear, trying to figure her way out of this mess.

"Where's Lucas?" Harry demanded sharply.

For an instant they just looked at one another, before Beth got hold of herself and bolted from the office, Harry hot on her heels.

Back on the Grid she cast about frantically, but saw no sign of their renegade Section Chief. "Where's Lucas?" she barked, coming to a stop near Ruth's desk, Harry standing just behind her.

"He just left," Ruth answered, her face a picture of confusion.

"Right, all of you, meeting room, now," Harry said darkly.

This is not good, this is so not good, Beth thought.