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A/N: My apologies for the delay, RL has a way of creeping in and leaving little time for anything else. While this chapter contains very little first person H/R, they are dancing along the periphery if you squint, and look closely. Now for the brief explanation: I wanted to explore the idea of a Ruth/Peter/Angela triangle, and flesh out a bit more history than what was offered for each character within the series, while keeping true to the underlying animosity that seemed to simmer between them in 4.10. So, with your kind indulgence, please allow me an imaginative AU digression oft to the left, where all kinds of things unseen and unknown happen. If I got the dates wrong, forgive me, and kindly indulge my overworked brain. Reviews, as always, are welcomed and treasured.
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"Witch Hazel, Witch Hazel
Betrayal, betrayal
One gun on the table
Headshot if you're able
Is this happiness?
Is this happiness?
Is this happiness?
Is this happiness?"
Is this Happiness, Lana Del Rey
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*November, 2003* (and somewhat proceeding, as memories have a habit of)
She watched in silence as the landscape stretched beyond, a wildly uncontrolled pastoral countryside, with eyes more accustomed to structured cityscape, the cacophony and din of such more music than noise. The early morning frost still vaguely visible, had, nevertheless, given way slightly under the bright rays searing through the gathering clouds ahead, catching the light, setting each naturally fecund surface an ethereal shine, undisturbed, fresh and pristine, though slightly less vibrant than when they had traveled this road earlier. Or, maybe it was just the shine of anticipation which had dulled, that which was yet unknown becoming known in short turn, and the knowledge gained surreptitiously tarnishing the hopes one quietly nurtured.
Turing to him, she concentrated on his profile, the curve of his ear lobe, the slight protrusion of his lips that, in this moment, curved slightly upwards, a silent indication he was aware of her scrutiny, though he had not turned towards her, joined his eyes to hers, spoken a word, in fact, since their departure.
"You've missed a spot, love." Reaching across to caress the area just below his jaw that never failed to escape the blade's edge, feeling the corse bristles against her fingertips, tickling the spot just behind his ear that only she knew about. His grin and subsequent squirm to evade further torture, trapping her fingers between his left shoulder and jaw to prevent movement, the steps inherent to a dance they had danced before, a familiar comfort designed to ease tension, balanced and harmoniously in tune, despite the world they find themselves in.
"Your descriptions of them were a tad bit...superficial." And now he did turn, his face bearing something of a grimace akin to Please, not now, and her hand dropped listlessly with a soft thump to her lap, losing the connection, her quiet It's not a criticism, sounded, to her ear, more a plea than declarative statement of fact.
Deep breath, exhaled in frustration, forcefully through his briefly flared nostrils, his lips pursed into a thin line, the visage and sounds emanating off someone attempting patience, and failing miserably. She watched as he drew deep from his flask that had been settled between his legs, filled prior to their departure, a gregarious one for the road by way of explanation to those observing the ritual, and replayed the bullet points of information regarding his family, the precious bits of detail offered in previous conversations, sparse and cautiously meted out, not allowing too much, and in the clinical absence of details, allowing all too much left unsaid. A torturous playground for her inherent imagination.
"My father, David, architect, married to Elizabeth, step-mum, widow of Daniel Evershed, mother of Ruth, stepsister, analyst at Thames." Always the pedestrian, unvarnished facts, distilled down to the barest essentials, the dregs matted against the bottom of a bottle, always spoken in matter of fact tones, bullet points of a subject he found both tiresome and mundane, his ability to comprehend her need to rehearse, her inherent ritual of learning a legend, though seemingly lost to him, easy for her to reconcile. His professional duties, while within the realm of security, never extended beyond who he was, never required he assume an identity, fabricate a life from thin air, manipulate, lie, cajole...kill. She swallowed the lie without difficulty then, and now, despite the voice in her head whispering, there's more, there's always more.
In the beginning, during the first burgeoning moments comprising the tender first blush characteristic of all budding relationships, she had learned quickly that he didn't enjoy the subject of his family. And, after their first night spent together at his, she had noticed but a few select photographs suggesting he'd even possessed a past, a period of life which preceded her presence, a life lived before her. The tells were obvious, even for one who was not as skilled as she. He would adopt a scowl, marring his otherwise handsome face, a thundercloud suddenly forming in an otherwise azure sky, and he would reach for the whisky, adding a healthy dollop to his morning coffee, or tea, predictable as the sun setting, his mood becoming as dark as that tenuous period before an unforeseen eclipse, blinding her to everything in the momentary absence of light as it rolled across his weary face.
She had fallen hard, surprisingly quickly, as she thinks on it now, his secrets held close, his ability to remain distant from her proving seductive in ways she couldn't have imagined, or predicted. Her inability to divine him, the depths of him, remained, to this very moment, an insatiable curiosity to her, fueling her lusts and love in a not disproportionate manner. That he was also employed by the security services was fortunate, as he never asked questions regarding what she did, where she had been. Their long absences from one another were customarily punctuated by smuggled, clandestine messages, fueling her longing for him, their resulting reunions cataclysmic and soul shaking to her, his need not to know forming the foundation on which their entire revolution together was built on. Secret spy lovers, she entertained when daydreaming in his absence, meant to be when laying supine and sated next to him, his seed drying between her thighs, and he, softly snoring, next to her, spent.
Even now, as they make their way homeward to his, she feels the tingle of excitement pulsing within the folds of her sex, the unquenchable thirst to have him inside her, joining them, his violent thrusts into her almost cresting the threshold of pain, her mind blotting out all thoughts save for the feel of him, stretching her beyond limits, his grunted words culminating in a roar of release in her ear, and she bucking with her own, hips bruising as they batter against one another, chasing the wave.
Their sexual encounters became, and remained, tinged with violence, and she found the freedom she felt with him a welcome result. He made love as one would approach a fist fight with a worthy opponent, angry, adrenaline pumping, grabbing and taking, rather than marked by a soft caress, the gentle coaxing with words, and she found she responded in kind, enjoyed the aggressive, combustable nature of it. They fought, they fucked, full stop. She had never been one for fairy tales, gentlemen callers, and the like. She much preferred the full frontal assault of a good and thorough fuck. It had never occurred to her to question the lack of tenderness characteristic of their frequent couplings. Just as it never occurred to her to question his inherent distance, his habitual need to remain just this side of apart in their togetherness. It worked, why fix what isn't broken, she told herself, despite the quiet voice sounding in unguarded moments, but is it unbroken?
Before today, she could, would have easily silenced that voice, just as she had on numerous previous occasions that were sprinkled throughout the months nearing a year they had been together. But for today. The voice, once quiet and subtle, became, after a few short hours of arrival, a screeching din whose constant refrain made her appear, to those observing her, lost in thought, there, but not entirely cognizant, smiling at the appropriate times, but a hollow facsimile, disingenuous in the vein of a poorly selected actor frozen in the midst of soliloquy on stage, the steps known by rote, but the words fluttering away beyond reach.
If forced to choose between the evils of familial revelations, he preferred the topic of his parents, a subject she was slightly more versed in presently, the unsurprising result. He had rarely spoken of her, offering the basic biography, but lacking in embellishments. When she pushed him for more details, denying his right to privacy in the midst of union, she met with nothing short of a brick wall. And if she pushed, recklessly, still further, he had, literally, physically removed himself from her presence on several occasions.
The pictures were the sticking point, that minimal bit of evidence to the contrary one begins to notice when answers have been withheld. That thing that grows with every passing minute from innocuous into a soul crushing unknown which could tear one's life to shreds if it remained unaddressed. The photographs, she had thought to herself with a meditative, caustic regularity, carefully framed and placed within his home did share her between them. In those fresh moments covertly watching, observing the delicate interactions between them, as they performed the ritual of family gatherings, she believed she had discovered the reason, the clamorous din within her head demanding she open her eyes, demanding she acknowledge what she did not care to know, her heart hardening in the face of unsolicited, yet perceived, evidence.
It was his overt gentleness which set her on edge, initially. It was innocent enough to the naked eye, but she was not a run of the mill observer. She was a trained spy, a virtuoso in her chosen craft, her element, the years of experience engrained, managed, nurtured to a polished gleam. He watched her wherever happened to alight, maintaining, perhaps unconsciously, perhaps deliberately, a distance between them of no more than two, maybe three feet, his eyes soft and adoring, so startlingly different from the eyes that looked into hers, distant and hidden.
The resentment that began to build within her, almost immediately, merged effortlessly in to a spike of jealousy tearing through her insides, ripping her open as she watched them speak excitedly with one another, words overlapping the others, laughter and amusement bursting from each, their eyes bright and loving with history, familiarity, in such a way as uncharacteristic of siblings, the tinge of inappropriateness coloring the periphery, though she appeared to be the only person willing to recognize it, and in the recognition, silently wilt in the face of its beaming radiance.
On the few occasions when he had spoken of her, his face did not reflect his affections, his clear adoration so obviously present whilst they had sat around the elaborate dining table, and she surmised it was her proximity now, versus her absence during these limited confessionals which provided the key difference, the heretofore missing element whose presence altered the nature of things thought known. Leaning towards her as she spoke animatedly about something, winking in return as she regaled those present of the mundane nature of her position with public works, her position with GCHQ, and then MI5, a shared secret between only a few present, something that, ironically, brought them closer together, rather than apart.
A light touch on the arm, a quick oh, go on imparted on a giggle, some little known tidbit regarding Diana, used to amuse her, succeeding brilliantly, the laughter tinkling around her ears like shards of glass shattering. She very nearly screamed, her desire to tear the smile from her face overwhelming, her need to break something, anything, coursing poisonously through her veins, and the nails of her right hand drew blood from her palm, staining the linen napkin, monogrammed with what she'd assumed was his family crest, the red drops marring the intricate needlework. As she looks down now, she can see the red crescents scaring her hand, joined with the needlework of previous scarring, crusted dry, telling the story of past jealousies, past resentments, past injustices and perceived slights to her person, all awaiting their time to paid in kind. Had she honestly believed she could change, outrun who she had been, who she was?
When it was time to leave, that tendency for all present to respond to the unspoken undercurrent which heralded the conclusion of family rituals, that moment when I'm so glad I came, lovely to see you did not further evolve into Christ, when will this bloody rite be over, she had offered a perfunctory embrace, as was custom in such matters, the kind which said I'm doing this as is expected, and a slight, brief squeeze before disengaging, stepping back and forgotten, watching at a distance as he approached to make their good byes, watching their eyes make contact, conversing silently as those persons well known to one another develop a gift for. She had never in her life felt such an acute sense of isolation, her limbs frosting over, her eyes sharpening as she observed their parting from one another.
Her ears, hearing the promised we should get togethers in London, have dinner, a drink, the three of us, all posed by her, to him, deftly vocalized for the benefit of their respective parents, though known to her as empty, the customary script of partings remains constant through the years; his returned I'll call you, while grasping her hands, his thumbs brushing the tops of hers; that was the moment she knew, the moment to which the entire occasion would be distilled down, the pinprick found hidden in the center of a wound. Not we'll call you, inclusive of her, but I'll call you, exclusive in all the ways that mattered, his relationship with this woman separate, absolute, his alone. She knew with the certainty the sun would rise tomorrow that they already did see each other in London, knew it for fact, despite his lack of discourse on the matter, his admissions of such as lacking and deliberate as his failure in acknowledging her presence so daily close by.
"Ruth," He'd said it like a prayer, breathed into her ear as they embraced again, "You be careful, yes?" Smiling down at her, his considerable height accentuating her small stature, and her face upturned to his, nodding her ascent, stepping away, their hands joined until stretched to the limits of distance, fingertips dropping away as she exited, taking the path that would lead her to her car, and home.
Turning her gaze from the passenger window, she regarded his profile cautiously, half anticipating what she would learn, half dreading the presence of what she had come to refer to as the smile, that secretive smile which played on his face, curving his full lips slightly at the corners. That smile indicative of thoughts and internal musings, the enigmatical life flourishing within his mind, but separate from her, held tight and guarded, a life he had never, would never, share with her. He had never smiled thus when speaking about her, she knew. She was a spy of the first order, after all. Legendary in her own right, and to her trained eye, her tendency to covertly spy on him having become an obsession of sorts, she now knew instinctively that there was something, something left unspoken, disguised amidst tidbits spoken, his sly smile on the topic of his past, specifically Ruth, becoming an irritating wound, the wood sliver in her palm she couldn't locate and discard. Picking, picking, picking, her mind's penchant for deconstruction, dissemination, a form of self mutilation as the weeks became months spent with him, loving him, adoring him, though she possessed not the whole of him.
"What."
A statement, not a question, his eyes direct, narrowed, preparing for the row, lining up the oft stated denials, the verbal thrust and parry between one wanting to know, and the other straining to hide.
"Nothing." Just let it go, she told herself, silently beseeching herself to maintain her calm disposition, albeit fabricated.
"Ang...don't do this. Not now. We're almost home. Just leave off, yeah?"
"Peter, I'm...I'm just tired." Reopening the crescents newly dried in her palm, an act of self discipline, self restraint. Who is Ruth to you, love? Is she walking the shadows in your head when you are with me? Is she the secret you hold in your shuttered heart?
He had, in the past, though infrequently, mumbled names in his sleep, waking her as she slumbered contentedly curled against him. But it was her name, Ruth, which, before now, was indecipherable to her, a whisper on the air of a darkened room, gone before her sleep deadened brain could comprehend, her body snuggling closer to him even as he struggled to disengage from her naked form, pushing at her to move away, a mumbled can't breathe accompanying his movements, and she abandoned in the too large bed to ignore the implication she was suffocating him with her affections.
She remembered that she had, upon waking, asked after her, this "Ruth" in his dreams, and it stopped him cold as he had crossed the room, his beautifully built frame naked and indiscriminately lit by the shards of early morning light escaping from behind the heavy, drawn curtains of his bedroom. It was early stages, yet, before she had learned not to ask, before recognition of signs became second nature as related to the characteristic and individual idiosyncrasy which blended to form the map of him.
"Where did you hear that name?" He hadn't turned, and, in truth, she was so bemused with the shape and admiration of his bum that she hadn't caught the slight catch in his question, the undercurrent of unexpressed anger at her inquiry.
"Humm? Oh, you were saying it in your sleep." Stretching full length, her sex sated limbs loose and light, eyes closed, missing his face as he turned to regard her, mussed and half asleep in a rumpled bed.
"If I were not a woman so recently, and satisfyingly, fucked, I might be alarmed by my lover whispering another's name whilst he slept." Smiling up at him, drawing her leg out and exposing her arousal, slick and enflamed. It was the first instance of thundercloud she could remember. The closing of his face, his right hand flexing at his side, his sleep clouded eyes sharpening to pinpoints, and then dulling, the change almost too subtle to accurately measure, too exquisitely practiced and understated that she'd thought to have imagined it. But her body, a finely tuned instrument gauging the depths of environments when her eyes could not fully reveal, her body knew she had touched on something which disturbed him deeply, innocently insinuating herself where she was not wanted, his face as placid and still as the surface of an abandoned pond, the life evolving, squirming and flowing repetitively beneath remaining a mystery despite the pristine tranquility above.
"Who is she, this Ruth?" Bringing a finger down to draw along her inner thigh, watching him as he watched her begin to masturbate herself, her fingers glistening, taunting herself, illuminating the path he had only recently begun to acquaint himself with.
"She's my stepsister. And stop that, please. It's...I can't talk about her, and watch you finger fuck yourself simultaneously. Choose one."
She had, climaxing thunderously as he lapped at her folds, biting her clit and pulling with just the amount of pressure necessary to make her come hard enough she feared she might break his nose.
But she couldn't let it go.
"So. Ruth." Tasting herself on his lips and tongue, his chin moist with her juices.
"Really, Angela?" He had abruptly moved away from her then, the places of moist contact between their bodies becoming cold in the absence, the sudden rush of air, and she felt, rather than consciously understood, her misstep. He'd offered nothing further then, save his rapidly retreating frame crossing the threshold of his bathroom, the shower head had shortly come to life as the door closed soundly, resolutely, against her with a backward thrust of his hand. She had lain there, watching patterns of light evolve along the walls and ceiling, the silence of her miscalculation deafening, and he had dressed and left without another word, having washed himself of her scent, her love, while her senses remained evermore immersed in his amongst the tangle of sheets.
And now, as then, with the clouds gathering strength in the horizon in front of them, tumultuous and roiling in the distance, she was incapable of letting it go, her recent observations a physical bile threatening to rise as the silent moments passed between them.
Do you love me as I love you?
Do you love me, do you love me, do you love me?
"Are you close to Ruth?"
"Jesus. Okay, you want to do this? Now? Fine." She knew the signs, knew them well, the path on the map of him well worn with time's passage, her need to know driving him away even as she sought to draw him closer. Can't breathe...
"You never answer the question."
"What bloody question?"
"Were you close? With Ruth?"
"Yes,"
"-And?"
"And what? Jesus Angela, you've been a spook for too bloody fucking long, you know that? Leave off, will you? Just leave the fuck off!"
"Why can't we talk about her? You've pictures of her in yours, I know you talk occasionally, you've had meals in the city. Meals I was not asked to join, by the way."
"How-Are you-Have you been surveilling me? Having me followed!" His eyes wide, his face manifesting shock, anger, disgust, the words and tone, both, a verbal declaration of deeply felt loathing and incredulity.
"What the actual fuck, Angela!"
"What would you have me think! I may have been a spook for too long, but any woman would question your...Your relationship...The nature of it. It's as if she's your-"
"Don't. Seriously, Angela, don't even say it."
His jaw was bunched, set hard, each muscle working to control his temper, visibly detailed and defined, forming the intricate mechanism comprising the muscular landscape beneath his skin. And despite his potent volatility, the warning signs she had learned by rote, incorporated within the framework of her existence, one she could no longer imagine him cast without, she could not, would not, deny herself her right to know, her right to claim him, her right to strike the match and set all aflame.
"-Mistress."
"Fuck." Shaking his head, refusing to look at her, his hands white knuckled on the wheel, his single vulnerable spot exposed, she knew, flayed open, and she with her hands full of salt.
Violently jerking the wheel, skidding to a stop, listing dangerously leftwards, half in and out of a side ditch, her view of such momentarily obscured by the cloud of dirt lifted, catching up with them, and then continuing forward to rest undisturbed again at some distance. Horns blaring, shrieking as they speedily pass, the alarms of unsuspecting others jolted to their senses to avoid contact. He turned his head to face her, his mouth an ugly sneer, biting the words with gritted teeth, his eyes burning into her as a searing flame.
"She. Is. My. Stepsister. Were we close? Yes. Very close, if you must know. She made life at home, with them, tolerable. She was the reason I stayed as long as I did, but not for the reasons your subversive mind has obviously come up with. She was younger, that's all. Are you hearing me? Do you get it? I couldn't leave her with them. Not alone. Got it? Are we clear? She was...God damn you, Angela." His breathing was audible, a ragged intake slicing through the silence between them, cutting into her as a weapon. Squinting through the windshield, his effort to control himself concentrated even to the untrained eye. But this, this, was what she had wanted, was it not? The crack of thunder above made her reflexively jump, as though slapped, the air between them, confined and electric, each staring into the distance ahead, each bracing for what was yet to come.
"You have to understand, okay? Ruth was young. Very young, right?" Picking the words slowly, choosing each with deliberate care, attempting to hide even while divulging. Sighing deeply, the volatile outburst simmering, yet calmer in degree.
"She was wounded, and floundering...and utterly defenseless. I mean, Christ, I'm not judging her, but Elizabeth, for all her denials, she sent her away, far away after her father died. Just left her out there, on her own, no comfort or appropriate mourning period. Just packed her shit, and shipped her off to Paris. She didn't even speak the bloody language! Fast forward three years and Hey, time to come back, Ruth. And, oh, by the way, I've remarried, his name is David, you'll love him. Done and done. She deserved more, I don't know...respect? Care? The fact was, she was too much a reminder of Daniel, her father, and, well, Elizabeth was...poorly equipped."
"She was a bird with a broken wing."
"What?" Uttered after a moment, as though he had only realized they were engaged in conversation, his mind far away, entertained or distracted, she could not clearly fathom. It was enough to know that she did not achieve enough of his attention to surmount the power of her name, the simple mention proving, for his thoughts, enticing in the extreme, a verbal seduction she could not hope to counter.
"A bird. A broken, traumatized bird. You were drawn to protect her, I understand. I do. Really. It's what made you so good at your job. With Diana, I mean, when you were still-She's the same, really."
"No. They are nothing alike." Turing his eyes to her, and her heart bled a bit, his face forming a look of disgust, the idea that she could possibly understand so ludicrous to him he failed in any effort to hide his distain, assuming, that is, he had even bothered. And she had reason to doubt. Now. Now, as her curiosity sat teetering the knife's edge of satisfaction, the feline awaiting her absolute death for having dared.
"Ruth isn't...She's no capacity for guile. She's not...malicious, if I had to assign a characteristic. She doesn't want a life lived on the stage of public scrutiny. She's...self contained, logical...A rational, deep thinker. If they shared any attribute its a higher than average capacity to empathize. In that, they are both extraordinary. She's never lost that. In all these years, it still burns bright within her."
The wry smile decorating his face lent itself to the idea that, though she was certain he would never chose to tell her willingly, there had been plenty in their shared past which would have crushed a lesser woman, this Ruth, whose generosity and empathy had been regaled in the grand halls of Thames House, the Home Office, even into the darkened hallways of Vauxhall. She was not unaware, if she were honest, of her reputation, and had, since that early morning when Peter had shut the door against her, quietly kept tabs on Ruth, the analyst, the woman who, it was whispered, possessed the rarified power to make Harry Pearce suddenly, and without notice, reverse position, reevaluate a corse of action, the understood conscience of The Grid proper.
Ruth had, in her quiet, unassuming way, entranced everyone, and while she herself was not likewise in thrall, she could imagine its effects likened to that feeling while watching a balloon lifting in the air, carried this way and that, unable to look away for fear of losing the thread, the moments of peace conveyed while attentive and enthralled too sweet to maintain distance, your feet moving to follow behind almost unconsciously, too sublime to turn away and disregard as a fluke at best, a fatal popping, and furious plummet waiting to happen, at worst.
She, grudgingly, respected her, and she had had more than passing indiscreet experiences with Harry Pearce. A few crescents in her hand could attest to their past associations. It was no small feat to move and immovable force, and Harry Pearce was a force to be reckoned with, to be certain. That Ruth had this ability was as confounding to many as fascinating, fodder for gossip, speculations ripe and bursting with the juice of misinformation. She had heard all of it, added to her own intelligence pilfering, and knew most of the gossip to be outright falsehoods, the musings of overactive imaginations hungry for the salacious and tawdry. She respected her, and, truth told, would want none other on the other end of reality should she find herself in trouble during an op, unrealistic as that situation would, no doubt, be.
Still, in her deepest musings, knew she would find herself not unhappily bereft of tears should she witness the plummet and subsequent crash as Ruth hit the ground, the balloon once airy and dreamy, shriveled and dull with downward passage, a stain, unidentifiable and forgotten under the soles of passerby, her own the first to leave their mark.
"Look at me." Drawing her back, the force of his voice suggesting he'd had to request her attention more than once, irritated and short.
"Her father's death, you-you simply can't understand the depth of losing a parent, yours are both still alive. But she and I, we had...we had, have, a bond...in that way. She was, God, I'll never forget it, Angela. One bag, that's all she had. After three years, and she came back with exactly what she left with. One bloody bag. She was just stood there, at the door. Waiting, her bag at her side. Waiting to be let in because, well, it wasn't her home, you know? I think she always felt her home had died with her father. She never said, but its the feeling I got." Looking at his hands, the palms upturned, as though the story, the informative pictures of his life were somehow impressed upon them, the answers of a test barely studied for written, longhand, for the inevitable cheat. He had surprised her, providing information on a topic so long withheld, her stomach beginning to churn as she imagined the guillotine's blade dropping another inch on the path to her exposed, feline neck.
"I remember those little knobby knees, and she was thin. I mean, a gust of wind would have taken her away thin, with those blue eyes. Huge. Blue eyes. From her father's side, to hear Elizabeth tell it. Elizabeth, she was, is...well, you saw. She's a beautiful woman. But brittle, that kind of fragile beauty...like crystal, catching the light, refracting colors all around, but kinda, I don't know, lifeless when not the center of it all, in the spotlight, so to speak. You're left just looking, afraid to touch."
Wrinkling his nose in distaste, and she came to understand that while he did not particularly dislike Elizabeth, his affections did not extend much beyond tolerance of her. Neither did he appear to care beyond dutiful observances towards a step mother he had little, if anything, in common outside a spouse and daughter. Watching him as he again drew deeply from his flask, she was captivated by the movements of his throat, as the liquid claimed the path already worn, his Adam's apple rippling along the surface, the recently caressed bristles of his beard gliding effortlessly in companionship. He'll need more before this is done, she silently thought, and her stomach clenched a fraction tighter in answer.
"Ruth had a different kind of beauty. A resiliency in a way, of loyalty and kindness. I'm not describing it well, the picture, the...words." Shaking his head, his jaw clenching, unconsciously grinding against his inability to put into words the pictures floating across his memory, and sighing his defeat.
"Its the kind of beauty that sneaks up on you, and you are just sort of speechless when you realize its been there all along, and you too dazzled by the prisms of light her mother threw off in waves to see it. But our Ruth was beautiful inside, too. You wanted to touch it, that beauty, needed to because...it wan't fragile. It demanded to be touched and shared with those around her, and I remember thinking at the time how sorry I was that I hadn't the chance to know her father because in every way she was different from Elizabeth, she was a living testament, a legacy of sorts, to Daniel."
Daniel Evershed. He was also a secret left undivulged between the two of them, and she felt a minute tinge of guilt presently for her deliberate subterfuge. Ironically, She had heard of him, vaguely. A spark reignited in the recesses of her memory niggling after drawing from Peter the first initial bullet points of family flowcharts in the early stages. Building that spark into a flame, nurturing it patiently, had taken an ungodly, and frequently futile, amount of investigation before she had finally unmasked the diamond intel hiding its glimmer in the dusty stacks of forgotten records by lucky happenstance. Or Fate. Perhaps Fate, how was she to know in the end?
As it stood currently, her frequent past forays and covert ministrations had uncovered enough to learn Daniel Evershed had been one of numerous doctors made to sign the OSA, and was often called upon when an op had gone afoul, leaving the option for hospital effectively eliminated. Some of the names associated with his work were familiar to her, injured agents who served simultaneous to her years of active field service, and she was not altogether surprised to find Harry Pearce's name figured prominently amongst them. Yet, some were simply names on a page followed by a list of fatal injuries too numerous to circumvent, though it was obvious, even as she sat reading, he was a gifted physician.
She'd wondered, at the time, sat cross-legged while the dust of disused files filled her nostrils, if Harry had set his intentions years ago, identifying Ruth, daughter of Daniel, as one to keep an eye on, a legacy to protect, a duty undertaken in gratitude, an act of contrition for a man who had saved his life on what appeared to be more than a few occasions. It became another bit of intel secreted away within the voluminous stacks closely guarded within her mind, pulled out to examine whilst others gossiped openly about the two colleagues, something whose use was yet to be revealed, but present, nonetheless.
If Peter knew Daniel had been associated with Five, or Six for a time, she did not, would not, ever know for a certainty. But, his assessment that Our Ruth was a living legacy to her father was a truer statement than she had any current desire to reveal, to anyone, least which Peter himself. That Our Ruth remained unaware of her father's foray into spy craft was a certainty, though she would be hard pressed to detail the whys and hows she knew if asked. She knew, and that knowledge allowed her an advantage in her mind, that single necessary nugget of intel saved and protected until proving useful, debilitating, damaging to an opponent whilst struggling to regain their legs and balance. Its simply how things are done, she would say. Nothing personal, mind you, so sorry. Secrets never failed to provide effective weaponry, and her ears were trained to capture even the softest of whispered words thought lost on the wind.
"She rarely, if ever, spoke about him." Drawn back from the dusty stacks in her mind, she was both surprised at Peter's willingness to continue, and struck by the wistful look decorating his face as he spoke, the lines somewhat smoothed, the flask, she'd noticed, set aside for the moment.
"I had this picture in my mind, you know? A little girl, with sagging socks, annoyingly underfoot, a pain, an albatross to be saddled with, any negative connotation applied, you know what I mean. We had never met so my imagination was given license to fill in the absent space that would soon become Ruth. An albatross or a haughty, brittle beauty like her mother, those were the front runners, at the time." Chuckling quietly, he had turned to look at her, and she formed her face into a smile, hiding both her apprehension and curiosity in one.
"Curiously, she was nothing of what I'd had imagined. Quite the opposite. I immediately found her contrary to every selfish, preconceived idea I'd deigned to create. Where I thought she would be underfoot, she would be found reading, in a corner, curled contentedly into herself and lost in her world of words. When I assumed she's be haughty, prim and reserved, I'd discovered she had a boisterously raucous laugh that could, when unleashed, shake the walls, and her delight in dark humor has yet to be surpassed by anyone since. She was ribald and sarcastic, dry and witty, and so unfathomably intelligent it was bloody frightening. And she was fun. God, she was so much fun to be around."
"One time, I'll never forget this," His eyes lighting up, bright with amusement and cherished memory, "I'd brought a mate over, some guy, can't remember who just now, but he'd made a pass at her, chatting her up, you know, all hormones and crude suggestion. Anyway, before I could even think to call him on it she'd launched into a dressing down that was just, Jesus, it was the fucking poetry of dressing downs. Seriously, it was magnificent, and all this guy could do...John, I think it was, yeah, that's right, John. All John could do was sit there, all slack jawed, eyes wide. Brilliant, just brilliant." Lowering his voice, adopting a continence in keeping with the John bouncing around his memories, slouching, slack jawed, all languid adolescence in the driver's seat, "I'm in love, mate. That's all he could say. He was, if memory serves, irrevocably, from that moment on, though she never gave him a second glance. Not even once."
"She just had a way about her. Just did." Punctuated with a shrug, the casual nature of it a painful piercing, throbbing in time with the beat of her heart, as if to say, Hey, some things don't require explanation. Some things just are. Best if you stop looking for answers now. Beyond here lies truths to make your blood run cold.
"It went on that way. We were close, yes. I mean, we fought, occasionally, like people confined together in one house do. But, overall, we were...there for one another, good times, or bad. And they got bad. Really bad, if I'm honest." The previous ease which had accompanied his prior revelations began to lose its luster, suddenly, dimmed and tarnished by those thoughts closely associated with really bad, the taste and smell, the ache and fear felt, realized again, beginning to etch itself into the lines materializing on his face anew, his hand reaching, again, for the discarded flask.
"Once, maybe, two or three years after she came home, I can't remember, but around that time our parents were having a bad time of it. Dad drank, and he was a mean drunk, to be honest. He was never physically abusive, but he understood the poison of a well delivered word, verbal taunting, argumentative, you get the idea. We...well...Ruth and I...left one day. Just walked out together. Just to get out of there. Just to breathe. Just to enjoy the silence. Just for a bit. I was...twenty? Yeah, about twenty, which would have made Ruth eighteen. Just turned, now that I think about it. So long ago."
"She was slated to attend Oxford in the fall. Her father's alma matter. So, like I said, I had been sticking around for her, going back a forth between there and home while she was still living there. I think we both felt time getting short, for us, that feeling of watching the way things were becoming the way things will be, like a spectator, not a part, just watching it unfold with nothing to protect yourself. I was already half out the door, like I said, attending Uni, and even though she would arrive in the fall, things just would be different, you know? Changed in a way that couldn't be undone. Like, ummm, losing something, someone you knew one way, and then having to relearn them, it, I don't know...it was a time when both of us felt foreboding. It should have been exciting, leaving the nest, striking out on your own a bit, infrequent visits home with laundry and all the food you could hope to eat, that kind of thing. It wasn't. Not for us. Not then." His hands were gripping the wheel before him, kneading it, and she abhorred the dull tone his voice had adopted. Gone was the light from his eyes, and the mirth in his voice, resuming their state of habitual hibernation, replaced by the drone of keen disillusionment, and a not so subtle avoidance to establish eye contact.
"So, when was this? I must have been home for some break, or another. Christmas, maybe? It was cold, I remember that. Freezing, so it must have been winter break. Anyway, I took one look at her, and knew things at home had deteriorated, and I...I didn't really think much about it. I just grabbed her, and pushed her out the door. Didn't even stop to grab a coat or scarf, just pushed her down the front path to whatever piece of shit car I had borrowed from a mate at the time. We could still hear the row from inside the car. They were really going at it, escalating in volume, some piece of kitchen wear shattering, and a couple of the neighbors had come out."
"God, she absolutely hated that. People talking about them, all of us. The gossip, speculation, you know the shit I'm talking about. Everybody with an opinion, no one living the actual reality. What is it? The well meaning concern of passerby draped in enough schadenfreude to choke a bloody horse. No shortage of that on our street."
"I'd gotten accustomed to it. The gossip, the spectator sport of family discord. Just the same, I'd offered a jaunty little salute in return, the proverbial fuck you and your gossip, and, if you've the time, kindly go bugger yourself. But, then, I was always harder than her. She just shrank further into herself, just...folded in...Made me feel like I was torturing her by remaining in front of the house...Leaving her alone to attend Oxford."
He had begun picking at the leather covering on the steering wheel, worrying the single loose thread, picking at it in the same way he was picking at the loose threads of time, memory, actions and consequences, his abject sorrow at having failed her in some deeply unfathomable way, Our Ruth, evident in his shoulders, slumped against the weight of responsibility.
Its almost here, she had thought, the crux of it, the single piece which put the entire picture to rights, and had reached out for the flask, wanting the crutch, almost annoyed when it conveyed only a few remaining drops. Not even a finger's worth.
"I remember she was crying, but without a sound, just tears rolling down her face. I still feel guilty about that. To this very day. She's never been able to reconcile gossip. Just completely incapable of ignoring it. It gets inside her, you see, and I can't help but think if I had come home sooner, or drove away faster, maybe, maybe...But she'd always disdained it, people talking about her, all of us, the injustice, the untold harm, like a secret that festers. It's the way she's made, I guess."
"Where did you take her?" Picking, picking picking...
"Where? Oh. Just around. For a bit. Nothing...The point is...I'm coming to it. We'd been drinking. Well, I'd been drinking, if I'm totally honest. Quite a lot, actually, and I mustered up the courage to ask her about Daniel. Mostly just to get her onto a topic that she might want to talk about, and off the meditations of our parents that were just crushing her. You know the kind, simple, innocuous, what was he like, what kind of things he liked to do, the easy volley kind of questions. She had been drinking too. I mean, she wasn't nose to nose with me, but she'd passed pissed by the time I thought to ask about him. We ended up in...Anyway...It was like a wave of sobriety smacked me in the face when she turned to look at me, like neither one of us had consumed a single drop before that moment."
"She waited until I was done asking, and then she just turned to me, she looked me dead in the eye and said...Jesus, she said it was her fault he'd died the way he did. In pain, agony really, delirious with fever, all her fault. Well, I made suitable noises about how ridiculous that was, it couldn't possibly be her fault, all slurred and hurried. Totally pointless, mind you. I mean, shit, I had just never imagined that the reason she didn't talk about him was because she had believed, all along, she was responsible for his death. Cancer. It was cancer. It was understood, right? She was barely eighteen, she had her entire life set before her, and this is what was rolling around that intricate mind of hers? I tried, I did. I just wanted her to feel...Loved, or maybe, forgiven?"
"What did you do, Peter."
To her ears it sounded more a statement than query, informed by apprehension and a better than average ability to read between the lines, to line up the words left unspoken, to know without being told she did not want an answer. Her entire body thrummed with anxiety, a throbbing best likened to catching your elbow against a hard surface at just the right spot to leave you overcome with nausea, the urge to vomit keen, but never fully acted upon by your body.
"Do? Nothing. I...I fumbled it, did the wrong thing, said the wrong things, made promises. I...broke us...in a way. She did attend Oxford when the time came, but we had grown rather distant from one another by then. I'd heard through mutual mates she was dating, and I checked out one guy she saw for a while. A writer he was...some sort. I'd heard she broke it off soon after. Never said why as I think on it. I went on into the services, and she moved on to GCHQ. Our parents, they reconciled...somehow, drew closer as the years passed. You'd never know there were bad patches to look at them now." A casual flip of his hand, dismissive, a physical who knows.
"But the distance between Ruth and me, its never really diminished. Ironic, that. I've always thought it was down to that one drunken moment of confession, the kind you can't take back, or forget. Something everybody just prays to forget ever happened. I hope, anyway, that it was that-" The remainder of his thoughts left unspoken, or perhaps simply inaudible against the tumult exploding within her mind, enough, enough, enough.
"That wasn't...isn't...her way. She forgives, in the multitudes, but she will never forget. She's carried that guilt in the same way she carried that single piece of luggage she returned with, nothing altered, added or discarded. Just sat there, next to her knobby little knees."
Bringing his hands to his face, he had covered it entirely from scrutiny, massaging it violently, scrubbing at the memories as one would a stain, seeking to remove, seeking to restore balance and innocence, the way things were versus the way things became, and are.
Innocence, she had thought. That was the description he was struggling to identify. The loss of some measure of innocence. Something had happened, something ugly and subversive had spied them, assessed their vulnerability, and reached in to fondle the intricate surface of their relationship, altering it, tarnishing it so that they were eternally changed from themselves and each other, no longer recognizable.
It was then she knew he mourned her, the loss of her, the picture of who she was he kept safe in the memory box labeled Our Ruth in his head, and that he felt it down to him. It was the place he went to in his mind's eye when his eyes were far away, gazing with furious concentration at the middle space unseen to others. As if to verify her silent musings, he drew to a close, dropping his hands, turning the key to restart the car, capturing her eyes with his, order restored, the blinds once again held firmly in place.
"I'll not spend my life with you apologizing for having any affection for her. I will not do it. Not now, not ever. Do you understand me?"
It was the voice of a stern taskmaster, like her father's, flowing from between the lips of a man she had fallen dangerously in love with. A man who was not hers to claim, unwilling to be hers, and hers alone. A man who was already claimed by another.
"Yes."
It was all she could bring herself to say.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
**November, 2005**
She massaged the scared crescents of her right hand, naming each as her fingertips touched lightly about them, visualizing the faces and circumstances surrounding each burned into her memories, reliving, the rapid succession of fleeting moments, the slights and emotional turmoil best left to the past, but whose frequency to plague her presently had enhanced immeasurably since his death.
She had chosen a corner, darkness blanketing her, but for one shard of light from a street lamp stretching across the room, illuminating a small spot on the shelf in direct line of sight from where she sat, waiting. The picture, half hidden from view, was placed between a stack of hard-backed, thick books whose titles were of no interest to her, and a delicate porcelain figurine of a bird, a Lladro she thought, its surface gleaming despite the artificial, yellowing cast from without. A gift from Peter, she knew, though she had not been present when presented, nor told about the occasion of its purchase. A cat bearing a mottled collection of colors groomed itself methodically, lazily on the back of the love seat, undisturbed by her presence, stopping periodically to look at her, eyes a sharp and powerful green visible at a distance, supine body still as an opossum, and then resuming its natural grooming ritual as though dismissing her out of hand.
How like Ruth, she thought, to be a cat person, and the characteristics she shared with the species were not lost to her; A loner, self contained, indecipherable, the striking eyes hiding the mechanisms within, cold, dismissive, secretive, the tendency to play with prey before striking the fatal blow, once done, padding away silently to nap in the sunshine.
The deepest crescent, the one she caressed presently belonged to him, her love, her other half but for Ruth, and the caress became a picking, as it so often had, her nail digging deeply the folds surrounding familiar to her as she again regarded the picture casting a glow from across the room, a specter that taunted even now, the carcass of a single dried flower, a pressed funeral memento, leaning delicately against the glass encased in frame.
Captured together, candid, unposed, he gazing at her in full grin, she leaning towards him, head cast down slightly, her hair grazing the grin just forming, some secret shared, some comment each were reacting to, individual, and yet still joined in time the way photographs can capture moments otherwise unforeseen, unknown, telling a story without words or script but for your mind's eye coloring the background, the legacy.
They never did have dinner, the three of them, nor get together for drinks, their interactions conducted with propriety as required by family ritual, gatherings both infrequent and blessedly short lived.
Neither did she and Peter broach the subject of Ruth again after that last time, with the thunderous sky cracking and an empty flask discarded between them. She had been angry, seething in truth, that in her inherently feline custom, Ruth appeared to have discarded Peter to lay about the sun and groom herself, her loyalty to a loved sibling allowing only so much, abiding only until she was tired of the game, off in search of better, more amusing prey. When he was summarily dismissed from service duty altogether, health reasons were cited, but everyone understood the euphemism at play, his drinking had become too debilitating, too obvious, not a word from her in support, or protest, distancing herself like a proper little spy, her traitorous nature on full display.
It was she who cradled him when he wept in frustration at his turn in fortune, and disrobed him when too pissed to do it himself, emasculated and infantile. She who collected him from the ever increasing numbers of pubs he began to fill his tedious hours with, regaling anyone who would listen about his position with Diana, that if he had been there she would be alive at that very moment, stepping between when the reasons behind his absence were volleyed, drunken fists and insults erupting with frequency the predictable result. It was she who secreted around back alleys and darkened roads in search of him when his numerous usual haunts failed to produce him. She had conducted herself in abominable fashion, her colleagues whispering concerns, warnings, her own career falling into jeopardy, her skills coming into considerable question.
All down to the grinning woman in the illuminated picture, the one whose beauty made you yearn to touch her, as he had yearned, whose face had revealed nothing as they had lowered him into the ground, not a tear or grimace, stone whilst she herself wailed and wept openly. He carried his guilt over you, and not a single tear for his effort. He lost you both, one to death, and one to time, and neither had wept a single tear for his sacrifice, loyalty and honor.
She heard the shuffling approach, and smiled silently as she recognized the pause as Ruth noticed the fallen slip of paper, lain just outside the door and left, if she were honest, to strike fear, that frozen sliver creeping down your back, settling in one's bladder, overripe, demanding attention, and her smile crept upwards, ever wider in the murky darkness.
She took one last look at the photograph, as Ruth entered, her shallow breathing audible from the entryway, as she prepared herself for what she was to encounter within the thick and darkened depths of her own home, her sanctuary invaded, as she turned the corner and appeared silhouetted in the doorframe, her body a tiny, frightened and defenseless thing to her accustomed eyes.
And so it begins, my love.