Thank you BostonSpooksFan for this idea. Its more of an altered scene than a missing one but I hope it still works.

Ruth stood next to Malcolm on the balcony, overlooking a grey London landscape. She hadn't seen him in so long that in spite of the danger and horrible circumstances she was incredibly pleased to see him.

"How is everyone?" Ruth asked. "Jo, Adam, Zaf. Even Ros. How are they all?" She had purposefully left out the one person she wanted news about the most. She wasn't sure she wanted to know how Harry was managing without her. She wasn't sure which would be worse to hear, that he had been fine without her or that he had actually missed her. Malcolm had looked at his hands, unwilling to be the one to break the news to her. "What is it?" Ruth asked, knowing from his silence that something was wrong.

"Adam and Zaf," Malcolm started. "They…"

"No," Ruth said quietly. He didn't finish his sentence. He didn't need to. "How?" she whispered.

"Adam was blown up by a car bomb," Malcolm said. "It was quick, he wouldn't have felt anything." Ruth closed her eyes, hating that she could so easily imagine her friend being obliterated like that. Adam always had run just a little too close to danger and she wasn't surprised that he had eventually got burnt, but that didn't stop the sadness and the grief she felt. When she felt able to speak she asked the next question that was burning through her mind.

"And Zaf?" Ruth asked.

"Bad," Malcolm said. "It was really bad. He was taken by spy catchers only a few months after you left. He was tortured and after several months imprisonment he died."

"Oh, God no," Ruth said to herself. "Poor Zaf. To die like that. Didn't you try and track him down?"

"We tried," Malcolm said firmly. "Believe me, I spent several sleepless nights on the grid trying to find him, but I couldn't. We couldn't."

"So he died completely alone, in agony," Ruth said. "Thinking no one cared. Thinking no one had remembered him." Malcolm turned to face her and covered her hand with his own to comfort her.

"There was nothing we could do," he said slowly. "But all the effort we put into finding Zaf wasn't completely wasted. It helped us when they took Jo."

Ruth turned to look at him. "No. Don't tell me… Jo died too?"

"No," he reassured her quickly. "They took her and Adam but we managed to get them back fairly quickly. Jo still suffers from trauma from time to time. She took it really badly." Malcolm was not going to tell Ruth the ordeal Jo had suffered at the hands of Boscard. If Jo wanted her to know, she would tell her herself. It was not his place.

They both stayed silent as the minutes rolled by. When Ruth had taken enough time to absorb what Malcolm had told her she asked the question that had been burning through her, ever since she knew she was coming back to London.

"How is he Malcolm?" He didn't need clarification. He knew she was talking about Harry. And he couldn't give her good news. "What's happened?"

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