A/N – Hello lovely readers, thank you so much for continuing with this story and a heartfelt thanks to those who have taken the time to review. I set out to try and keep it in cannon, so for the tender-hearted there's still time for you to turn back. For the brave, there is one more chapter after this.

The weather, fickle, unpredictable, had changed in the space of an evening. The heat of summer, deciding that its warm embrace was needed elsewhere had left the ball, making room for the swirl of autumn, the wind plucking the leaves from trees. The cool air clung to Harry as he entered through double doors of Thames House, staying with him as he caught the lift, trailing behind as he walked the corridors and finally as he passed through the pods. He walked across the Grid, head down, unwilling to stop until he had reached his desk. He stood in his office, slightly out of breath, trying unsuccessfully to outrun a certain disquiet that he couldn't quite shake. He shrugged his shoulders in his great black overcoat, the weight of the wool making him long for the heat he had so recently cursed.

Before he could take off his coat and settle himself in, Lucas appeared in the doorway, Ruth following closely on his heels. An armful of files hid her body but there was no doubt as to the colour of her outfit. Black, from head to toe. She stood with Lucas on the other side of his desk and he regarded them as he peeled off his gloves.

"Do you have it?"

Ruth dropped the pile of files on the desk, the weight of the papers giving a resounding thud. She withheld one sheet, keeping it in her hand.

"It's all there, the trail from Nightingale to Clarence."

He opened the file, flipping through the first few pages. "Anyone else know?"

"Only us," she replied.

His eyes met hers, the inadvertent double meaning of the question apparent only to them. Her eyes were reassuringly blue, holding his gaze a little longer than strictly necessary. His heart lifted in his chest and then fell back into place. He had left her the previous evening, kissing her goodnight on her doorstep and he desperately wanted to kiss her good morning.

Lucas crossed his arms, seemingly unaware of anything different between his colleagues. "The Prime Minister is slated to make his decision today."

"Any other contenders?" Harry slipped off his overcoat.

"One other." Ruth leant across the desk and extracted a paper. "William Towers. From the other side of the House."

"My enemy's enemy is now my friend, the benefits of a coalition government." Harry scanned the paperwork. "Do we have anything on him?"

"He seems clean."

"Seems?"

"If he's dirty, he's not Nightingale dirty," Lucas assured him.

"I have a meeting DG set with the for nine. Do we have a failsafe should the brass not wish to disturb the waters?"

"I've got a reporter we can that we can leak it to," Ruth assured him.

"I'd best head up." He raised an eyebrow at Lucas. "Care to accompany me?"

"Sure, I'll get my things." Giving a nod, Lucas strode out of the room.

"I'm going to offer him Section Chief." He felt compelled to divulge this to her before asking the man himself as if sharing his plans would somehow bring them closer. An unfinished smile flitted across her face and she quickly looked away. The edges of his unease became sharper. He gathered up the folder. "I don't know how long I'll be upstairs."

"The service for Ros is this afternoon. I don't think we can postpone it again."

He rubbed his fingers over his brow. "Yes, of course. I'll be there. We'll ride up together."

"That's alright, I booked a car for Tariq and myself."

For some reason, the information unsettled him. Did she not want to be in the same car as him? He shrugged off the twinge of insecurity. Perhaps it was better that they not be so entwined at the office. There was a strange tension about her, a stiffness to her shoulders, everything coiled tightly within her small frame. They would have to find a way around this, he could not release it the same way he had done in her kitchen. She had been right, that morning, to ask where they were going, for now, the waters were uncharted and they were sailing without a compass. He looked at her, searching for guidance on how they should proceed. She motioned to his neck.

"Your tie is crooked."

More than anything, he wanted her to close the distance between and straighten his tie, any small act of intimacy to show that what had happened between them had not been a dream. It would not necessarily broadcast to the Grid that they had slept together. Even Connie, traitorous cow that she was, had fussed over him before the Queen's Birthday Honours. If he had not been so desperate for a decent analyst, he would have left her in that forsaken bunker. No new ring on your finger Harry.

"I haven't found one that fits," he murmured, belatedly realising he had said the words aloud. Ruth gave him a curious look. "The tie," he said by way of explanation, knowing that it made no sense.

There was something she wasn't telling him. They had fallen back into the safety of the Grid personas. Section Head and Analyst. He motioned to the paper she was holding.

"What's that?"

He took a step around the desk towards her and she handed the document to him.

"It's from the Met. Single car accident. One fatality."

He scanned the report, his eyes stopping on the name. Vincent Leslie. Shit.

"The IT man from Romaldi's office," she reminded him.

"I remember." His fingers curled on the paper. Did it ever end?

"They found out we were in their servers and they know who let it happen."

"It was filed as an accident." The words sounded hollow even to him.

"You said it yourself; we know what these people are capable of."

"It could very well be a coincidence." He handed the paper back to her.

"There are no coincidences in this business, Harry."

"You can't hold yourself responsible."

He took a step closer, wanting to assure her that it was not her fault, his hand half rising and then falling back to his side.

"He's dead because of what I did." She moved away from him, her face hardening. "Just like-

"Ruth!" His tone was low and harsh, stopping her before she could say the name. His eyes bore into her, willing her to rise above the connection. "This is nothing like that."

As long as he was alive, he had promised himself she would never experience a horror like that day again. He could protect her but he could not take away her guilt, it would always be there, lingering beneath the surface, it only took one scratch to expose the raw nerve. She hid it well, her face falling into the mask she had worn that night at the restaurant. He wanted to pull her to him and tell her not to succumb to a hardened heart. He clenched his hands, resisting the urge to touch her, feeling the sand of their relationship seeping through his fingers. Everything they had built up over the weekend was falling apart. It strengthened his resolve to take her away from that place before they had lost it all together.

She shifted her weight and took a deep breath. "There's more."

There was always more. He didn't want to hear any of it, afraid that it would be yet another pin removed from their fabric that held them together. "Is it pertinent to this?" He tapped the folder. "Can it wait?"

She nodded, fingers running over the edge of the report from the Met.

"I have to go." He didn't want to go. He looked at his watch. "Will you be alright?"

"Yes," she answered, "I'm fine." She turned and walked out of his office.

He looked down at the file folder suppressing the urge to sweep the whole bloody business off his desk and walk out after her. He had to do something to keep her from slipping away. It was time, he could feel it. He gathered up the folder and left his office.

...

The tyres turned in endless revolution, his hands tightly gripping the wheel as he steered the car down the road, heading in a direction that was not his design. He focused his eyes on the horizon, a bank of clouds looming in the distance.

"You're very quiet," Ruth observed.

He nodded, not sparing a glance for his passenger. He would say companion but that privilege had somehow fallen away. She knew why he was quiet; she was the cause of it. The distance between them in the front seat of his car was as wide as any ocean and as impossible to bridge. The silence stretched on, worn and used, the heady crackle of their earlier encounters flattened. He should have done as she suggested and let her catch a ride back into the city with Lucas but he couldn't let her go, not just yet.

"I thought it was a nice service." Her fingers wove in and out of each other, as she fidgeted restlessly, unable to withstand the quiet. "I think funerals are mostly for the living, though. A chance to find that elusive sense of closure. Some people never get that."

He let her comment settle around them, unable to put his thoughts into words, his tongue weighed down by the silence. He had felt strangely calm during the service, sitting in the chapel beside her, an aura of peace surrounding him in the secluded location. Everything had fallen into place. It was true, his timing was off, he could have waited, chosen a more romantic setting but he had been moved, not by the funeral but by her and for once in his life he wanted to give into his feelings, act on them, reveal himself to the only one who had ever truly understood him. It wasn't a notion brought on by a sense of grief or overwrought emotion; he wanted to be the one to write the coda to the last stanza of his life. It had been building in him for years, laying dormant over the time she had been away, each encounter with her over the past week peeling away the layers of his calcified heart. In his mind, they were to come away from that day as one, a future together, say farewell to Ros and the Service and all the ghosts that stood between them. Instead, he was left to wonder about the thousands of opportunities he had missed where she would have been his.

She stretched her leg, her feet disturbing her black satchel that lay on the floor. At one time, it had held such promise, that day on the embankment when he had fixed the strap, catching a glimpse of hope in her eyes. Now, it held proof that no one was to be trusted. If he was to come away with only one thing that day at least she had given him a purpose. He had done it for Adam, he would do it for Ros. Blood for blood

"I'm going away for a few days."

"What?" Her head anxiously swerved towards him. "Where?"

"I can't tell you."

"What if there's fallout from the Nightingale revelations?"

"You have my number. I only turn it off for one reason."

Her eyes closed at the sting of his words, a reminder of what they had shared. He carried on, a coldness stealing about his heart, lacking the will to fight it.

"Lucas and I have made a decision regarding the new hire."

"We don't have to talk about work."

"It's all that I have."

"Oh, Harry." She sighed and turned away from him looking out over the fields as they drove past.

Large swathes of fertile land turned to woods, trees overgrown and crowding the road, giving way to manicured hedgerows. His eyes flitted over the scenery, barely acknowledging the beauty of the landscape. Everything was empty to him. He rubbed his thumb over the top of the steering wheel.

"You said Ros was trying to tell us something? That something was missing from her life. What do you think it was?"

Drops of rain spattered on the windshield and he turned on the wipers, the rhythmic sound of their blades helping to soothe his agitated state. She remained quiet and he thought his question would go unanswered.

"This life," she finally replied, lifting her hand in a gesture to the window. "This pastoral splendor, the ideal we have of England. Peace and tranquility. Living in a bucolic cottage in the country." She shifted in her seat. "I don't think she ever had that. She was shunted around from one diplomatic post to another because of her father. The one home she did have here she had to sell to pay his legal fees."

He thought about her assessment, wondering if it were true of Ros, what it would be like to have such a home. "Is it so wrong to want a life like that?"

"Is that what you want?"

He could feel her eyes on him. Yes, he did want that, with her but it seemed rather futile to say it.

"Haven't you ever thought about it?" he asked, genuinely curious.

"I had it, Harry, it was taken from me."

He gripped the steering wheel, silently cursing how every question lead back to that wound. Was he to be punished for his decisions for the rest of his life, was there no redemption? There were so many days he needed to strike from the ledger of his life so that he would be worthy of her. Her hand lay on the console between them, palm up, silently inviting him. His fingers flexed on the wheel as he quelled the instinct to reach over and take it. His breath caught in his throat and he fought to steady himself, still reeling from the double punch of her rejection and Blake's betrayal. She took her hand away, placing it back on her lap.

"I don't know if we can move on from this, Harry."

Her words hit him in the sternum. "Why do you say that?"

"You said it yourself we can't go back, and now you've gone and accelerated everything."

His chest constricted and a bead of anger formed, the question that he had buried in the back of his mind bursting to the forefront of his consciousness. Why George and not him? Was he so lacking that she wouldn't even consider a life with him? Surely, there was more between them, a bond that stretched across time and distance. To ask those questions would sound petulant; he could not descend to that.

"I didn't ask you on a whim, Ruth. We have a history."

"Oh God, Harry." She tilted her head, looking heavenward. "That's entirely the problem."

As if in response to her words, the sky opened up and the rain fell harder. With a sharp motion, he switched the wipers to a higher setting. The tempo of the blades accelerated, batting the streaming water away.

"You didn't even think about it." His eyes fell to the speedometer watching the needle tick up.

"Why do you do this? Why do you insist on cornering me?"

"When? When did I corner you?"

She opened her mouth and then quickly shut it, biting back her words. He pressed on, his threshold for confrontation much higher than hers.

"You said we were more than words."

"Don't use what I said against me." She shook her head in warning.

"But it's perfectly alright for you to use my words against me?"

"I'm not." She let out an exasperated huff. "It's too soon. We haven't even...

"What?"

She didn't respond.

"What haven't we done, Ruth?"

"Nothing."

He gritted his teeth at that answer; he had heard it too many times from Jane. It signalled an argument that he could not win. What had they not done? For a fleeting second, he closed his eyes. The three words that had circled in his mind for days, years if he was honest with himself, formed on his lips. Say it you fool, say it. He clenched his jaw. To say them now would smack of desperation, he had already laid himself bare before her, he needed to salvage what shreds of dignity he still had left.

The weight of his foot descended on the pedal, and the engine turned over, the motor thrumming beneath him, the one thing he could control. He sped up, riding the bumper of the car ahead of them, swerving out into the other lane and passing the vehicle.

"Slow down, Harry," she pleaded softly.

He couldn't, it wasn't in his nature.

The woods thinned as the side of the road became populated by buildings and houses, the two lanes widening as more traffic joined them. The city, pulling them back into its circling chaos.

When had he ever cornered her? His flexed jaw, remembering their encounters. The kitchenette, the briefing room, her kitchen, the fence they had recently stood against. The only time they had found each other was when she had come to him.

He glanced over at her but she was looking out the passenger side window. Her chest moved with rapid breaths, whether from anger or sadness he couldn't tell.

All too soon, they came upon her street. It held none of its former appeal. Gone was the heady anticipation wrapped in a seductive blanket of humidity. The pavement was slick with rotting leaves, the limbs of the tree black against a grey sky. The temperature of their romance had changed with the weather. He pulled up outside her flat.

"Do you want to come in?" she asked, her eyes searching his face.

He gripped the steering wheel like a lifeline. God yes, he wanted to come inside with her. To push her up against those empty cupboards and plunder her mouth, hoist her onto the counter and take her with the ferocity of his wounded pride, demanding that she come back to him. It would be empty and futile, missing that indefinable element that had sweetened their other encounters.

"I don't think that would be a good idea." He kept his eyes averted, afraid that if he did look at her, he would say yes, that he would once again push too far, too fast.

"Alright." Her response was barely audible. She was hurt. He had hurt her as she had hurt him. They were such poor caretakers of each other's hearts. She drew a shaky breath. "Does this mean...?"

"I don't know," he answered flatly.

She looked upward, biting her lip, words falling hesitantly. "Maybe it would be better if we..."

Her hand rested on the door handle, her body half turned to him, waiting for him to contradict the sentiment that they had ended. If he kissed her, would that heal everything? All he had were actions. He wasn't even entirely sure what had happened between them except that something had been lost. He did not have the words to repair whatever damage he had caused. With no answer forthcoming, she stiffened beside him, her wall rising in protection. His shutters lowered in response, pride unwilling to bend. He looked out into the street.

"Yes, it might be better if we did."

She lifted the handle and slid out of the car. He was prepared for her to slam the door in his face but she closed it with an unexpected gentleness.

He did not wait until she was safely inside her flat but abruptly pulled the car away from the kerb, the tyres screeching from the tightness of the turn. His eyes flickered to the review mirror. Her dark figure stood forlornly on the pavement, watching the car as it drove away. Damn! He hit the steering wheel with a leaded fist. She had warned him; he had overshot and asked too much of her. She was right, how could they go back from this. He closed his eyes suppressing a wave of humiliation. The pain churned in his stomach, hot coals banking into fiery anger. A plan formed. He would avenge Ros, and that would be the last blood on his hands. Except there would be no blood, it would be done neat and well aged. That would be the coda. He would leave, removing himself from Ruth, refusing to be drawn back into her orbit only to be cast out again. He would drive through the night, giving himself no time to think of the taste of her skin and the touch her lips. Punching a button on the console, he opened the window, a gust of wind rushing in, rain splattering his face. He didn't care, all the better to remove the last of her fragrance from his car. Still, he could not breathe, the fresh air was not enough. His fingers scratched at the knot of his tie and he attempted to swallow the lump that had formed in his throat. Cursing in frustration, he pulled the car over, easing out of traffic to the side of the road. He sat with his hands limply on the steering wheel, the engine idling beneath him, the incessant drone of the wiper blades going unheeded. It was useless; her scent was in his pores, she was under his skin. Every breath he took was her. There was only one way he could ever be free.