Chapter 24

All's Well That...

"In a surprising move towards international unity and co-operative peace, the American President, Robert Crowe, who has been in London for four days now along with representatives from eight of the world's leading political figures, has given the surprise announcement today that he will push on with the peace talks despite the shocking attempt on his life yesterday afternoon. Representatives of the well liked American politician have released a statement today claiming that Mr Crowe in no-way wants the unfortunate actions of 'a lone, highly disturbed individual' to threaten the peace they have been working towards during these tal-"

Harry tiredly jabbed at the power button on the remote and the irritatingly perky blonde news reporter was cut off in full flow of how wonderful Robert Crowe was and what a fantastically selfless human being he was.

"Selling religion to the Devil indeed..." he murmured, glancing around at his exhausted team.

For all of his orders about sleeping the day before, none of them had found themselves slipping in to particularly easily, they had been too full of adrenaline and caffeine and their body clocks had been convinced that they would never sleep again had been set to keep them awake constantly. Add onto that the pressures and possibilities that came with Sofia's later talk with Crowe, and they had found the plague of insomnia running rampant through Section D.

As a result the biggest reaction they could muster was annoyance at the shiny faced reporter and how she dared to look so awake at this time in the morning.

"So, until the next tragedy then..." Ros said, blearily, feeling like most of them, at a slight loss as to what they should do now.

"It's looming around the corner, you realise we have to do the reports on this?" Harry said, coating Ros' barbed comments with his usual sunny, uplifting veil of cheery optimism.

Not even the threat of a dirty bomb could have cleared the room as quickly as Harry's mention of every MI-5 officers greatest terror, paperwork. Harry watched with amusement as most of his team headed for the hills citing everything from doctor's appointments to hungry cats, leaving behind a very disgruntled Ros.

"If I get to Hell and find that you're not in it I will be exceptionally pissed." She told him bluntly,

He chuckled and replied, holding the door open for her, "Welcome to Hell..."

Ros began typing up her report, declining Harry's offer both of Scotch and valium, the keys as though every one had offered her personal insult, her stubborn compulsion to avoid leaving things unfinished preventing her from leaving until she had finished the damn thing.

She watched from the corner of her eyes as Ruth hovered outside Harry's office and was torn between shouting at her and telling her to stop bloody dithering and just do whatever it was she was deliberating over, thinking venomously that if Sophie's Choice had featured Ruth, half of the cinema audience would have killed themselves to escape the criminal indecisiveness that plagued that woman, and starting a betting pool among the junior officers to see how long she would stand there before something gave.

Ruth glanced towards Ros and flushed, sensing from her expression the thoughts that were running through her head and turned back to Harry. He was at the step that came immediately before throwing things and banging his head off the walls on the Head of Section D's list of mental breakdowns, nursing a crystal glass and musingly swirling the dregs of the whiskey left at the bottom with an expression that implied he was contemplating attempting to drown himself in their murky depths.

As sparks began flying from Ros' eyes and she began acutely aware that she had been standing in the one spot for so long she was beginning to sink into the floor, she hastily tapped at the door and slid it open with its characteristic hiss.

"How's the Scotch?" she said, stumbling and drawing her a questioning look from him,

"Try it yourself." He said, with a small smile, reaching into the drawer of the desk and withdrawing a second glass, pouring a splash into it, hesitating for a second, wondering how much more his liver could take before it went on strike, deciding he had bloody well earned it and refilling his own glass at the same time.

"That's not what I, I didn't mean Scotch, I wanted you, I wanted to say you, how are you." She said, flustered, before flushing darkly and draining the Scotch in one to cover as he smiled sympathetically.

"I'm fine." He said,

"As is the Scotch." She choked, gagging on the strong spirit, "And you were doing a wonderful impression of not being 'fine' from where I was standing...You'll turn into Ros if you're not careful." She said, shrugging in a defiant 'what the Hell' manner as he offered to top up her glass.

"It's nothing Ruth, really." He said, reassuringly watching as she sipped more delicately at the Scotch now, wincing at the sharp taste, "Where is everyone?"

"Running for cover from the bombardment of paperwork." She said with a small smile, "Tariq's meeting his girlfriend and 'getting laid and hammered' in his own poetic terms, Ros is graciously abandoning the reports and heading home, Lucas has gone to an appointment with physio since your threat of paperwork put the fear of God in him and I have absolutely no idea where Sofia is, except to say that I'm fairly sure she's not here..."

"But you are..." he said, quietly, sipping at his drink,

"Well yes...So are you."

"Indeed..." they both gulped hastily at their drinks, avoiding the others' gaze as the pods outside announced Ros' resignation of defeat to the mighty opponent of stacks of papers.

"Do you think they'll manage to make something of these peace talks?"

"I don't know..." Harry sighed, "I've found with these talks that they often create the monsters they're trying to prevent..."

"Indeed...When one door closes another one opens and all that..." she said quietly, staring into the depths of her glass,

"Quite...Chop off one of their heads this evening, another two will have grown back by morning..."

"We'll be back in the morning too though..." she whispered quietly, placing a hand on his.

"Yes, you will..." he said, draining his glass and standing, she mirrored him, "I'll see you in the morning Ruth..." he said quietly,

"Well...We haven't finished this evening yet..." she said, quietly, the alcohol loosening her tongue as he watched her carefully,

"Very true..."

Sofia collapsed on the cold wooden floor of her apartment, sliding against the breakfast bar, exhausted by the last few days. She had not slept or eaten properly in what felt like months and was drained, physically and emotionally from pretending that she was fine.

She had spent the majority of her time on this operation suppressing every one of her natural instincts, simple things such as colleagues brushing past her took an inordinate amount of effort to deal with, pretending that she had not noticed when her stomach had convulsed, twisting itself into tight knots and forcing an acrid substance into her throat.

She closed her eyes and allowed the floodgates to come down and all the horrors of the last week or so to assault her conscience, the onslaught of memories consuming her entirely. There was no-one here that she had to pretend to be alright for, no-one to watch her, no-one to judge her, no-one to think that she was weak, no-one to witness as she fell apart completely, slumped against the cold stone at her back causing her skin to prickle uncomfortably as the tears that she had refused to shed in front of them fell thick and fast into her lap.

She screamed in pain and frustration and found herself on her feet without ever having given it permission to do so and lashed out at nothing in particular, her hand colliding with some of the delicate plant pots arranged along the window ledge.

After her return from Russia she had lost herself in two things, books and gardening, while they seemed odd choices at first, they made sense to her, her voracious appetite for books had allowed her to function again on an intellectual level, and having something that relied on her for its survival gave her a reason to live. As it was, every Christmas and birthday, Lucas send her some strange exotic seed, all of which were now lying in a confused tangle of broken clay and spilt earth.

She placed her shaking, bleeding hands over her mouth in horror as she saw the ruined remains of the world she had become so immersed in in these last three years, the only thing reminding her that she was alive was now reminding her how broken she was...

Her fingers trembled over Lucas' number on her address book, knowing that she needed help, however much she was loathe to accept it. The phone barely began to ring however when she threw it across the room, causing it to explode against the wall as she curled up in a heap, hugging her knees to her chest as she fell apart...

"We can never know what another human being is thinking. We can make educated guesses based on body language what and how they say things but we can never know.

This is one of the greatest attractions between members of the human race. It draws us to others, mystery and intrigue, the desire for knowledge. Knowledge about one, completely unique individual. We want to know that person.

Intimacy is not just about physical or even emotional closeness. It is about psychological closeness. We want to be inside that person's head, more than we want to be inside their bed. We want them to give us 'access all areas' passes to their minds to allow us to explore every inch of them. We want them to want to tell us everything. We in turn, want to be able to judge them fully and completely, not based on what they willingly reveal to everyone else based on their deepest darkest fears and flaws, all of the things that they are less sure of the insecurities that plague them every day but that they feel they cannot share with anyone else, these we must peel away as we grow closer to reveal the truth below and so, to reveal them.

The eyes are known as the windows to the soul and while this may seem very romantic and poetic and while it may even be true, it is still not particularly helpful.

Our soul or our spirit is just that, it is our essence, a canvas on which we add colour but it is not the colour itself, it is not us, it is not who we are.

Who we are is never fixed, ever changing, altered and defined by our experiences and what we choose to do with them. Who we are is what we know, why we hate and love, what we will fight for and what we will die for how and who we respond to every day. The things that we will only ever experience once whether we wish them to repeat everyday or we wouldn't wish them on our worst enemy. All of these things, and more, make up who we are, that is what makes us unique for no-one can ever have the same experiences as us, and even if they did, they would never react to them in the same way.

This depth and ever-changing complexity cannot be contained within something that is so easily accessible, surely.

If the eyes are the windows to the soul then the soul cannot be who we are. You could never board a train, look at the man sitting opposite you, look into his eyes, into his very sold and then claim to know who he was.

If we could we would all live in a much safer world. We would know when our partner was going to beat on us without ever even going to dinner with them. We would know when we were being lied to, we would never be hurt or manipulated again. We would be able to tell when the man seated at the table, eating and drinking with us, intends to slit our throats to prevent the evolution of something he does not believe in...

What a dull world we would live in. Of course, none of the things that we consider to be evil would be allowed to happen, no-one would rape or murder, and no-one would go to war...But would that then be a world that we wanted to live in? There would be no nothing. The only reason we can have peace is because we know we are not at war. The only reason we do not constantly live in agony is because we know what agony feels like in the first place. We can only be happy if we are not sad, we can only love if we know how to hate, can only live if we know we must die...As human beings, whom, by their very nature, crave knowledge and intrigue, we would be deadened by the fact that nothing interesting would ever happen. If everyone knew everyone else, then we would all do our best to forget, for then, and only then, we would be in a world where we wanted to live...

The exception to this rule is, of course, when some idiotic bastard decides to place himself in the middle of some vital world-saving summit, then I would very much like to be able to look into his eyes and feel instantaneously justified in putting a bullet between them..."

"Elegantly put as ever..." he said with a small smile, watching as she drifted towards him,

"The truth hurts sometimes." She said, settling herself beside him and gently slipping her hand into his. "Coming?" she asked with a small smile,

He smirked softly and brushed his lips against hers in response as they slipped into the bedroom, gently closing the door behind them.

A/N: The ending of this strory sort of crept up on me without me noticing so I hope this was OK as a way to finish it. I'll say a HUGE thank-you to all of my faithful reviewers who've managed to stick with me and all of my crazy ramblings :) I would love it if you could spare the time to drop me a few lines and let me know what you thought of this chapter and the story as a whole. I have an idea in progress for another story which should be up soon following on from this one so if you enjoyed it keep an eye out, as always thanks for reading and reviewing.