Five years later...
In the days after Ros's funeral, Harry found his thoughts drifting more and more to those who had gone before her. Tom, Zoe, Danny, Fiona, Colin, Adam, Zaf, Jo, Malcolm, Ruth…their names and faces danced accusingly in the darkness every time he closed his eyes, half of them dead, every one of them gone. Their shadows followed him everywhere he turned. Echoes of laughter, memories of fond smiles and desperate heartaches washed over him every time he stepped through the pods.
But when he looked around the Grid, he knew that there was not a single person left who remembered Ruth. Which meant there was no one left who remembered Tom, or Zoe, or Danny, or any of the dozen or so others whose names were engraved on the memorial wall downstairs. Only he carried on, only he continued to move through this world, walking the walls and standing guard against a faceless, ever changing evil. Working in the darkness to defend people who would never know his name, never know the sacrifices made, the lives lost to ensure their freedom.
There were new faces everywhere he looked now. His team was good, more than capable, but he couldn't trust them. He wasn't sure he had it in him, any more; to trust, to care, to place his hopes in other people, only to have them taken from him, again and again and again.
They knew it, too, Beth and Lucas and Dimitri. They knew that Harry didn't trust them, and Harry knew they resented him for it.
He left them alone on the Grid late one evening, pouring over charts and bickering, the way they so often did when Harry wasn't around to loom over them like some distant, disapproving father. He'd gone to the Home Office, to give a briefing on their latest disaster.
Beth and Dimitri were in the midst of a heated argument about said disaster, Tariq their unwilling referee, when the call came in from reception.
"What?" Beth snapped into the receiver, still staring daggers at Dimitri.
"We've had walk-in, miss. A lady. She's asking to see Sir Harry, but she won't give us her name. We wouldn't have bothered you, only she gave us a code word. Evershed."
Beth wracked her brain, but the word meant nothing to her. Reluctantly she covered the phone's mouthpiece with her hand and asked Dimitri, "Does the word 'Evershed' mean anything to you?"
Dimitri shook his head.
"Sir Harry left word, miss," the man on the phone rushed on, "if anyone is to ever come here and say that word he wishes to be notified immediately. He said any time, no matter where he is.
Beth stared at the phone in bewilderment. What could possibly mean so much to Harry?
"Where have you put her?" she asked.
"Room three, miss."
"Right," Beth said. "Keep an eye on her, we'll be there in a minute."
"What is it?" Dimitri asked as Beth hung up the phone.
She ignored him, saying instead, "Tariq, can you pull up the cameras for room three, main floor?" She wanted to get a good look at their walk in first. Whoever this woman was, she knew enough to walk right up the steps into Thames House and ask for Harry, and as far as Beth was concerned, that made her dangerous.
"You got it," Tariq said, and a moment later the feed from the holding room filled the monitor in front of him. The three of them crowded around it, staring at the rather plain woman twisting her hands together in her lap as she sat alone on a hard plastic chair.
"Who is she?" Dimitri wondered. Beth was asking herself the same thing. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the woman, aside from her startling grey eyes; she had none of the poise or tension one might expect to see from a fellow spy sitting alone in an MI-5 holding room. She looked frightened, anxious perhaps, but not dangerous in any way.
"No idea," Beth answered, "But I think we need to call Harry."
Dimitri caught her wrist as she reached for the phone. "He said he doesn't want to be disturbed."
"I think he'll want to know about this. I have a bad feeling, Dimitri."
He studied her face for a moment, their argument forgotten. He released her wrist without another word, and she dialed Harry's number, pressing the speaker button so the three of them could hear.
"This better be important," Harry growled into the phone.
Dimitri gave Beth a little nudge, and she answered, "There's a woman here, Harry. A walk-in. She gave the code word 'Evershed'."
There was a pause before he spoke again. "What does she look like?" he asked.
"Dark hair, medium height, light-colored eyes," Dimitri supplied.
"What sort of clothes is she wearing?"
Dimitri and Tariq both turned to Beth, who glared at them for a moment before returning her attention to the woman on the monitor.
"Clothes?" she repeated. "I'm sorry Harry, the only words that come to mind are frumpy bohemian."
There was a long moment of silence, and when next Harry spoke, his breathing was ragged, uneven, and Beth had to stifle a giggle at the sudden image of stately, crotchety old Sir Harry running across the Home Office.
"Bring her to the Grid. Have her wait in my office. I'll be there in ten minutes."
The line went dead.
"Ten minutes? What's he going to do, run all the way from the Home Office to Thames House?" Dimitri asked, incredulous.
Beth shrugged. "Let's go and fetch her, shall we?"
As they made their way towards the holding room, Beth and Dimitri had a hushed, furious argument about who this woman might be, and whether it was wise to do as Harry asked. They never, ever brought an outsider onto the Grid. That was rule number one. But given Harry's mood since her arrival on the Grid some months before, Beth was inclined to do as he asked, however foolish and dangerous it might seem. Dimitri disagreed, but he was powerless to stop her.
The same young man who'd called Beth about the walk-in was standing quietly outside the door to room three.
"Has she been scanned?" Beth asked as they drew level with him.
The guard nodded seriously. "No bugs or weapons. Doesn't even have a cell phone on her."
No cell phone? Who didn't carry a cell phone these days? Beth wondered. The answer of course, was someone who didn't want to be found, and that notion alarmed her.
"We'll take it from here," Dimitri told him, and the man gave them a little nod before setting off back to his desk.
As they stepped into the room the woman vaulted to her feet, her mouth open to speak, but when she caught sight of them she backed away, looking for all the world like some frightened, cornered animal.
"I'll only speak to Harry," she said, holding her hands out in front of her as if to ward off imminent attack. She knows Harry, Beth realized. Who the bloody hell is she?
Dimitri spoke softly, trying not to scare the woman even more. "Harry's on his way. He's asked us to take you to wait in his office."
The dark haired woman considered this for a long moment, during which Beth and Dimitri exchanged a bewildered glance.
"All right," she said finally, walking on leaden feet to pass between them and out into the hallway.
Beth led the way, Dimitri taking up the rear, each of them deeply concerned by the fact that their charge seemed to know precisely where she was going.
They made their way through the halls, to the lifts. Rode silently to the floor that housed Section-D, exited the car. The stranger walked confidently up to the pods, waited precisely the correct amount of time before stepping out onto the Grid. Beth came to stand beside her, watching her face closely as her soft grey eyes scanned the space before her.
"It's like waking from a dream," the woman said softly. She looked so…small, Beth thought, so sad and scared and lonely, her arms wrapped tightly around her middle, isolated from the flurry of activity that surrounded them. There were still quite a few people about, the night shift coming on and taking over, but they moved around the intruder without taking note of her, as if she were a ghost, trapped unseen inside the brick and mortar of Thames House.
Beth opened her mouth to ask what she meant, but she never got the chance.
"Harry's office, then?" the dark haired woman asked. "I suppose you'll have to wait with me." Her grey eyes were fixed on his office, the red paint of the back wall and the empty chair starkly visible through the open blinds of his windows.
"I'm afraid so," Beth answered, and together they set off across the Grid, and once again Beth's suspicions that this woman knew MI-5 far too well for comfort were confirmed. She didn't need to be told where to go, she just went, as if her feet were automatically piloting her down a path she had taken a thousand times before.
Dimitri went back to fill Tariq in on the situation.
Once inside Harry's office the woman gave a great, terrible sigh and eased herself into one of the chairs against the window that looked out onto the Grid. Beth leaned up against the desk, trying to make the movement look casual, but placing herself between the woman and the door, all the same.
"I imagine he's at the Home Office, then?" the woman asked, running a hand over her face as though in exhaustion.
"Who are you?" Beth asked, flushing slightly when she realized she'd spoken her thoughts aloud. The woman gave her a sad little smile.
"Are you planning to tell me your real name?" she asked.
Beth shook her head.
"There you are then."
An awkward silence fell as the woman continued to fidget in her seat. Beth studied her, the sharp lines of her face, the way she couldn't seem to focus her eyes on any one thing but instead shifted her gaze constantly from the floor to the walls to Beth and back again. She was clearly scared out of her mind, but why? And what did it have to do with Harry?
"Is Adam Carter here?" the woman asked suddenly.
Beth shook her head. "I'm sorry, I don't know that name."
Her charge frowned slightly.
"Zaf? That is, Zafar Younis?" Again Beth shook her head.
"Malcolm Wynn- Jones?" Her voice was rising with each question, panic flickering in the depths of her expressive face. Beth wished she had more answers, but her own fear was building as she considered the implications of the names.
"Jo Portman?" she asked, desperate now.
This time Beth had an answer. "Jo died," she said quietly.
"Oh, God," the woman sighed, burying her face in her hands for a moment. "What about Ros Myers?" she asked from behind her fingers, her voice so thick with sorrow that Beth almost felt embarrassed for her.
"Ros as well," Beth answered. Ros and Jo had died before Beth came on the scene, but Lucas and Harry both grieved for them still, she knew, and the gruesome possibility that everyone else the woman had asked after was dead as well reared its ugly head. Did no one make it out of this place alive?
After another silence, the stranger spoke again, lifting her tear-streaked face to gaze directly at Beth.
"Harry told me once, long ago, that we would have time to grieve. I worry that, should the time ever come, I won't even know where to begin."
There was nothing Beth could say to that. It didn't sound like the sort of thing Harry would say. The sentiment was comforting and kind and gentle, and those were not the sort of attributes one associated with Harry Pearce.
"How is he?" the woman asked seriously.
Beth knew exactly who the woman meant, but she decided to ask anyway.
"Who?"
"Harry." There was something about the way the woman said his name that gave Beth pause. Something desperate, intimate, something that made her curiosity rise to an almost intolerable level.
She decided to press her luck, and gave a short, derisive laugh. "Oh, Harry's the same as ever. Cold, bitter, deeply suspicious. We never know what he's thinking, from one moment to the next."
"That's not Harry," the woman said reprovingly, her brow furrowing with worry. "He has to make impossibly difficult choices on an almost daily basis but he's not cold. He believes in what he's doing. He cares for his team. He cares so much." Her voice softened as she spoke of him, and for a moment Beth thought it might be nice to know this fantasy Harry.
The phone on the desk rang, breaking the tension that had begun to build between them, and Beth reached around to answer it. Reception again. She thanked the man on the phone before hanging up and returning her attention once more to the miserable woman in front of her.
"Harry's on his way down," Beth told her.
"Right." The woman rose, her face grimly set as though she'd reached some sort of decision. "Let's meet him, shall we?"
Beth reached out to stop her. "He asked for you to wait in here."
The woman slid away from her grasp. "It's clear you don't trust him, and I've given you no reason to trust me. I would prefer to meet him out there," she nodded toward the open space of the Grid beyond the door, "So you know I'm not trying to hide anything."
Beth had a retort ready, something about how this was MI-5 and everyone had something to hide, but she kept it to herself. The possibility that she might finally learn what the hell this was all about was too tempting. She nodded tersely, and followed the woman back out into the Grid.
Dimitri and Tariq saw them exit the office, and rushed over to where they stood, Beth with her arms crossed in front of her, the stranger worrying with the tie around the waist of her coat, her eyes fixed on the floor.
"What's this?" Dimitri asked.
"Harry's on his way down," Beth told him shortly.
It only took a moment for him to appear, stepping through the pods only to come up short when he caught sight of the woman in front of him. Silence stretched thick between them as they stared at one another, eyes searching each other's faces as though seeing them for the first time. Though Beth couldn't see the woman's face, she imagined there was an expression there much like the one Harry wore, a look of such desperate hope and longing that Beth had to fight the urge to look away. Harry was breathing heavily, and Beth couldn't help but wonder if he had run the whole way, after all.
The sight of her pulled him up short. She stood there, a ghost made flesh, her eyes bright in the artificial light of the Grid. Ruth.
He couldn't think, couldn't breathe. He had been trying to beat back his hopes, certain that it couldn't possibly be her, unwilling to face the devastation that would drown him if he returned to find some other woman in his office, speaking her name. But she was here.
She was here.
"Harry," Ruth said, her voice ragged, on the edge of tears, and the stillness between them shattered.
They did not run, did not fling themselves into one another's arms; they simply walked, slowly, deliberately, until they collided, Harry's arms enfolding her protectively, her face burrowed against his chest as her shoulders began to shake with silent sobs. He stared down at her in wonder, unable to speak. Beth and Dimitri shifted uncomfortably as the intimate scene unfolded before them, unsure if Harry wanted them to stay, unsure if he wanted them to leave.
The moments dragged on unbearably, but finally Harry moved. He gently kissed the top of her head before he caught her chin in his hand, raising her tear-streaked face to gaze once more into her eyes.
He said nothing, but she responded to his question anyway, shifting slightly in his arms to reach into her coat pocket. Beth felt Dimitri tense beside her, ready to spring into action should this scene of sweet reunion turn dangerous, but there was no need. She simply pulled a folded photograph from her pocket, handing it off to Harry who stared at it, dumbfounded.
"What-"
"She's my daughter, Harry," Ruth said, her voice no more than a choked whisper. "She's my daughter, and someone's taken her."
She buried her face once more against his chest, crying audibly now, while Harry stared at the photograph in his hand.
"Harry-" Dimitri started, but Harry cut across him.
"Right, you three," he gestured towards them with the photograph. "Meeting room, five minutes. And rustle up some tea, would you?"
Without another word, he led Ruth back towards the meeting room, his arm still wrapped around her, his eyes still fixed on the photograph Beth and Dimitri had yet to see.
"Tea?" Beth asked, incredulous. "Since when do we have tea for a briefing?"
No one answered her.