This chapter has been a nightmare to write; no idea why. As such, it's probably a bit heavy going, sorry, and I'm not sure if it works. Anyway, one more to go after this. Thank you all for R+Ring.

He turned the engine off, thinking the sudden stillness and silence might wake her, but she didn't stir. Tentatively he looped a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

'Ruth?'

He laid his hand on her shoulder. 'Ruth, we're here.'

With a soft moan she turned towards him and her eyes flickered open. Her lips stretched slowly into a smile. 'Oh god, sorry, I was completely out of it.'

Harry, who at that moment would have given his right arm to kiss her, undid his seatbelt. 'Take a moment to come to. I'll just go and stretch my legs.'

Arching her back, she stretched into a yawn. 'No, no, I'm fine.'

They were parked high on a clifftop. A few feet away, a lone bench faced out to sea, which stretched out below, in layers of blue and dancing sunlight, to the far horizon. Ruth caught her breath. 'What a gorgeous view!'

Neither wanting to spoil the moment nor prolong the inevitable, Harry reached reluctantly for his door handle. 'I thought it seemed a good place to talk.'

Her face fell. 'Yes. Yes, you're right.'

They walked in silence over to the bench. He sat down first, not quite in the middle, not quite at the end. She could almost see the tension radiating off him. He sat, back ramrod straight, legs together, hands on thighs, as if posing for the class photograph at school. Only he wasn't smiling, and his eyes were hidden behind the black lenses of his sunglasses. After a moment's hesitation she sat down beside him.

'Okay,' she said. 'Okay. Can I ask one thing? That you just let me speak. No matter how...how shouty or upset I get, or how...whatever... you get, you don't interrupt. Agreed?'

Barely perceptibly, he nodded.

She sat for a moment, her fingers fluttering in her lap, then she burst out, 'You're probably thinking that I was still angry with you about George, about your dragging me back into your grimy little world when I'd finally made a life of my own, but it's not that. Or at least that's only part of it. You made me give a reading at Ros's funeral, Harry. All the colleagues, friends, you hadn't allowed me to grieve, and you made me grieve her. You made me stand up in a church and speak...' she took a deep, shuddering breath, '...for the woman who had not only killed Jo and been culpable in Adam's death, but who, out of sheer malice, out of a wish to get back at you, had ruined my life.'

Behind the black lenses, Harry's eyes briefly closed.

'I know you laughed at my vivid sexual fantasies, as you put it, but had Ros kept her mouth shut, I like to think we'd have got past the dancing around each other bit and got our act together. By-by now, who knows, we could've been married, had-had a baby, even. But Ros deprived us of that, and arguably deprived George of his future and Nico of his father. And what was your response to all of this? What did you do, Harry? Decommission her? Transfer her? Make her life a living hell? No. You made her your sodding section chief!'

Harry's head dropped onto his chest.

'And then,' Ruth leapt to her feet and began pacing, 'after she gets herself blown up, my god, but everyone knows all about it. Everyone knows that Harry Pearce's golden girl has died a hero's death, and bloody hell but you grieved for her. Colin, Danny, Zaf, Jo, even Adam for all I know...water off a duck's back, but Ros...! I mean, for Christ's sake, Harry!'

The hand that rubbed at his forehead was shaking. He watched her for a moment as she walked towards the cliff edge, then hesitantly he stood and followed her.

'Ruth,' he whispered.

As she turned, he reached for her.

'Oh no you don't, Harry Pearce, no you bloody don't!'

As her fists rained on his chest he pulled her into him, and finally the tears began to fall.

Gradually the tears subsided into hiccuping breaths, and then her breathing began to slow.

'Permission to speak?' he asked softly, his head still resting on hers.

She nodded against his chest. 'Mm.'

'I want to make this better, Ruth, but I haven't a bloody clue what to do. I-I'm sorry about the reading; it never crossed my mind that the whole Maudsley affair would still be an issue...'

She pushed out of his arms. 'What?'

'I thought the two of you had made your peace. And anyway, it was Mace I blamed for what happened, not Ros.'

'But...'

'I know, I know.' He sighed. 'And Ros was one of the best field officers I've ever worked with. Throwing her to the wolves in a fit of pique...'

Ruth stared at him, incredulous. 'Fit of pique?'

'...wouldn't have achieved anything. And frankly, I needed her; Section D needed her. Adam was, well, you know the state Adam was in, and I was,' he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, 'not much better, if I'm honest. For all I blame Mace, because I panicked when you were frogmarched off the Grid, because I didn't take the time to think it all through, you had to walk away from your life and everything and everyone you'd ever known, and I...I had to live with that, and with the fact that in all probability I would never see you again.' He wrapped his arms around himself. 'I didn't cope with that very well, and somehow the fact that Ros had set the whole thing in motion...it was irrelevant.'

The eyes boring into his, red-rimmed from crying, gave nothing away.

'And as for the grieving thing...'

'Don't, that was...'

'For whatever reason, perhaps because I was there, because I saw the hotel go up, Ros's death hit me harder than anyone's since...Archie, probably. And on top of everything else, particularly so soon after Adam, it was just the proverbial last straw.' He rubbed at a non-existent speck on his shorts. 'Distraction and denial has always been the best form of therapy for me, Ruth, but for once I didn't want to just pick myself up, pay my respects and move on, like I'd done countless times before.' He chuckled. 'And then you accused me of wallowing in self pity.'

'Oh, Harry.'

'Ruth, I can't undo what's been done, and it seems as if all I ever do is hurt you and upset you and let you down, and while that has never been my intention, I am truly sorry.'

'I know.'

He took in a lungful of air. 'But I can't carry on like this. If there is absolutely no future for us then I need to know.'

'So you can set the transfer wheels in motion?'

He groaned. 'No. That would neither be fair to you nor the section, even if it might be the lesser of two evils for me.'

'Oh, thanks a bunch.'

'Do you think it's easy, Ruth? Seeing the woman I love every day and knowing that not only does she not want to be with me, but that she despises me?'

Ruth's head dropped. 'I don't despise you, Harry. I-I hate some of the decisions you've made, some of the things you've done, but in your shoes, how can I say I would have done any differently?'

'If our roles had been reversed,' he said quietly, 'I'm sure you would have believed me about Maudsley.'

Ruth didn't respond and wearily he walked back to the bench and slumped down, hands dangling between his knees. 'You said you came to fix things. Do you now consider things fixed?'

'Hardly.'

'Well, what would you consider fixed?'

'Our finding a way to work together without constantly locking horns.'

'Really? That's it?' Harry leaned back against the bench. 'Well, I guess that answers my other question.'

Ruth was beginning to get the feeling that her attempt at a rapprochement was rapidly spiralling out of control. Distractedly she rubbed at her forehead. 'Uh, what other question?'

'As to whether you and I have a future. A few moments ago you were talking marriage and babies, now it seems a cordial working relationship is the best I can hope for.'

'What did you expect me to say? Do you really think we can go from your hardly being able to be in the same room as me to wanting to make mad, passionate love to me in the space of a morning?'

'The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive,' he muttered. 'So what are you saying, then? That you do want me? That we need to take things slowly? Because bugger me sideways, Ruth, we really have rushed headlong into this, haven't we?'

She sat down beside him. 'There's no need to be sarcastic.'

Despairing, Harry dragged his palms up and over his head, lacing his fingers at the back of his neck. 'What do you want, Ruth?'

'I don't want this. I hate this...how we are. We're like balls on a pinball board, occasionally ricocheting off each other but in the main bouncing around at opposite ends of the board, with no idea where either of us is going, desperately trying to avoid dropping into oblivion but never actually going anywhere.'

He frowned. 'There's only one ball on a pinball board.'

'My point exactly. This isn't a natural state of affairs...'

'Ruth, we work for the Security Services, not Sainsbury's. The normal rules don't apply.'

'Regardless we can't carry on like this; we're just making each other unhappy.'

'And that's the easiest thing in the world to sort!'

'Is it? Do you really think so?'

'Yes!' His hand reached for hers. 'Ruth, do you love me?'

'You know I do. Always.'

'And do you want us to be together?'

Slowly, she shook her head. 'Too much has happened.'

'And what? Because of the things we've seen, we've done, do you feel we don't deserve to be happy, is that it? Oh god, Ruth, please don't cry.'

Gently he tilted her head up and thumbed away the fresh tears. As their eyes locked he glimpsed the brief but unmistakeable flash of desire.

He swallowed, and heart hammering, bent his head to hers.