A/N: "M" rated theme warning applies. Turn back now if it isn't your thing. Reviews, as always, delight me!

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"Well, if you're tired,

And feelin' so lonely.

You wake up at night,

thinking that only,

If you had somebody.

I'll be somebody,

Somebody to love."

-Somebody to Love, Valerie June

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"You surveilled me? At Uni? YOU WATCHED ME!"

As expected, she jolted and moved, quicker than he'd assumed her capable, nearly losing her hand in the process, and he counter balanced her desire to physically distance herself by tightening his grip, leaning forward, using his strength to force her submission, forcing their hands to his chest, her face only inches from his, her eyes wide with shock, fear, and some mixture of angered incomprehension.

"Ruth, please, I'm trying-"

"To what? Trying to what, exactly? That's a fair step beyond duplicity, Harry! You all but stalked me, tell me you understand that much, at least? Please, tell me you understand that much."

"Of course I do! Bloody hell, Ruth, do you think I actually want to confess this to you? NOW? After...Christ, Ruth I'd sooner tear my eyes out than to see you look at me like that!"

"Like what? Like a person who made love to a man whose just admitted stalking her fifteen years earlier? Who did so because of some clandestine association with her bloody father? Who became some freakish obsession, or, no, even worse, some object, a possession to be captured and manipulated, a flesh and blood, breathing 'precious' tangled up in your failures and need for absolution? Like that, Harry?"

She spat the words at him, eyes blazing in the darkness, the word precious hissed from between clenched teeth, and despite her right to react in such a way, his frustration overtopped itself, and he allowed his inherent malice, his sense of self loathing to color his voice, thrusting his answer back in her face, matching her vehemence with his own. For a moment, one fleeting moment, he wondered if he were deliberately undermining himself by telling her, and the malice within him thrust into overdrive with a requisite ferocious measure of undeniable fact despite him.

"Yes! Exactly like that, Ruth! It wasn't like that! Quit pulling away and listen to me, damn it!"

Releasing her hand, he grabbed her around her upper arms, his fingers sinking deeply into the soft flesh he knew would result in bruised, discolored spots blooming to match and mark her. His shadow acting as hardwired, violently manipulative, his need for her to stay put and listen surmounting his ability to remain rational, remain Henry James Pearce, and not the shell of himself forcing his way, mutated and grasping.

"Whatever happens now, I need you to know it wasn't like that! I...I owed it to your father, don't you see? He saved my life, Ruth! I was compelled to watch over you for that reason alone. No, it doesn't make sense that I felt that towards you, when there were so many others I didn't bother to afford a second thought! And, yes, damn it, I'll admit a fair portion was because you held a fascination in me! God help me, I was caught up in you, but because I wanted to make sure you were...safe, Ruth! I wanted to do that for...I owed that to your father!"

She had pulled herself violently from him, scurrying beyond his reach, and he could feel the doors within her slamming shut against him, both he and his shadow, reverberating in his chest, and the cards began their tumble, slowly wafting, a lazy progress in his mind's eye as they gathered about him, and she, arms enfolding herself, palpating the marks he knew were already manifesting tender.

"It wasn't untoward, Ruth, regardless how it sounds. And I hear how it sounds, believe me, I do. But you were okay, I could see that. Maybe a bit withdrawn to a well trained eye, but still incandescent with health and vitality, even at a distance. You were sitting with someone, side by side. I know now it was Peter, and he had just said something that made you laugh, and I knew you were okay, that your father had done his job well, had instilled in you that fundamental affection that allowed you to navigate the world and still remain entranced by it, the wonder and beauty of it?"

"I might as well confess now that you were, in that moment, beautiful to me, just as you were to anyone happening to pass by. Just as you were to Peter. So, yeah, self serving, but also a well meaning act of...Fine, misappropriated devotion to a man I felt, even then, years later, obligated to. Did it feel wrong at the time? You need me to say it? Right, the answer is no, it felt right, Ruth! What felt wrong, Ruth, was stopping myself after the second time, so if you're going to keep looking at me like that, understand that if nothing else!"

He began to rub his forehead, a placating and self soothing gesture he'd carried with him from childhood, the method by which he organized his furious thoughts into something manageable and comprehensive in times of distress. An obvious tell very few, excepting those closest to him, knew or understood which eventually would have him wrapping his arms around his chest as if holding everything wanting to spill from him secreted inside. He neither wanted to complete the ritual, nor was he capable of stopping the unconscious gathering across his chest, holding himself as he reluctantly divulged additional details quite beyond his ability to stop himself.

"No sense in denying the rest, I guess. You'll have all of it. I can see that, now. The second time I found myself in Oxford proved to be the last time I sought you out, or allowed myself to get that close in proximity, is more accurate. The circumstances were the same, I had an asset that needed tempering. You had cut off all your hair, Ruth. That fantastic dark cascade of yours was gone, and replaced by awkward angles mirrored in your physical presence. I was...I was shocked at the turn...you had taken, and a not so subtle urge to discover why you had...disfigured yourself, why you had lost your shine. You had done something...something my mother had warned me about as a boy, something Jane had done herself, and the idea that you would travel the same path as Jane was unspeakable to me, the idea left me...it left me despondent."

"When I was a boy, God, maybe nine or ten, my mother told me that when a woman finds no alternative means to express, herself, her grief, she will cut her hair off. She confessed to have done that exact thing when something, or someone, she had loved very much was lost to her. I couldn't tell you if it was lost love, or something else, but her only recourse of expression was a terrible act of disfigurement undertaken to express what couldn't be spoken. And Jane, before the depression had taken hold of her, in the beginning stages, I had found her...in our bathroom...and her hair was all around her. I...It was the first time I truly hated her, Ruth. Imagine that for a second. She was silently screaming and all I could do was hate her for her pain and weakness, her need! Her physical presence had become, in my mind, a testament to my failures as a husband, as a father, just another judgement noted, another reason to not bother to try. It was inexcusable, my behavior. It was, I know that now. If I could...I was too young to see past all the hate, Ruth, and the mere memory of that time in my life turns my fucking stomach."

"And there you were, hair shorn, hurt in some manner while I was watching, while I was charged to ensure your safety. I overloaded, all of it rushing at me, and, yes, I was unprepared to manage it. I couldn't...I resolved then to never lay eyes on you again. That day, Ruth, and I never did. Not until that bloody interview. That feeling of being poisonous, I understand that more than I can say, and it honestly breaks my heart a little that you believe it the truth of yourself. But I understand why, Ruth. I do, and if you'd allow me, I would spend the rest of my days trying to take that away, make you understand what a rare and miraculous human being you are. It sounds pathetic, even to my ears, but I can't stand the idea that you think yourself anything other than deserving of companionship, worthy of a love which isn't transient, or subject to extraneous circumstances, something which can only live in your memory, but not experienced eternally. I could never want that for you."

"After that day, I was left to help you the only way I knew how. It was all manner of subterfuge, of course, but I rationalized it easily enough. Your records indicated a talent with languages, puzzles, and I thought a career at GCHQ would allow you to excel and still remain unblemished by the sordid characteristics inherent to the services. And, yes, before you say it, having you at GCHQ allowed for easier surveillance of you. There was that. I admit it, freely, I do. But primary, Ruth, was the idea that you would remain safe, using your talents to great effect, and possibly granted that rare opportunity to find someone like yourself, who would accept you, and make you happy. I wanted...I wanted you to be loved, Ruth, but I also wanted you to be happy, so I thought...GCHQ."

"So, it was me. I was the one who led them to you. You might as well know all of it. I brought you to their attention, a word here into the right ear, a nudge there, and they snapped you up, as I knew they would. In all honesty, I was content to let that rest there. Told myself I was done. But, you applied for secondment, and I realized fairly quickly I had not washed myself entirely clean of you, my feelings of responsibility for you, at least. And here's the punchline; We never would have met had you not done that! And before you fixate on that, and you can stare daggers at me all you want, Ruth, I am categorically, emphatically, most vehemently not suggesting that any of it was your fault! Got that? Not your fault. I'm not blaming, here, I'm simply pointing out a basic, unadulterated fact you appear more than willing to ignore right now."

"I had gotten word that Mace had been sniffing around, and I just about exploded when word came that you had been interviewed and slated to join Vauxhall. Had Jools still been there, and I can't say for a certainty, mind you, but I might have acted differently. But Mace was acting interim, and I knew him to be, without saying too much beyond what is appropriate, dangerously myopic as relates his personal ends. I know, its ironic, but he's much more dangerous that I, Ruth. You are well aware of his reputation, but I've had the unfortunate opportunity to view first hand the methods by which he achieves his goals. There is precious little he won't do, best to leave it at that."

"Given your desire to move beyond GCHQ, it was easy to rationalize my actions. I called in some favors, twisted a few arms, forced an interview with you, and then used Amanda Roke as the branch by which to beat my way towards preventing you from finding yourself across the river. I spent more than a few juicy pieces of Intel to ensure it, and I don't regret their loss. Can't imagine a time when I will, if only because it led us to here, this moment, and I find I wouldn't trade it even if you find yourself needing to walk away from me, Ruth. Oliver Mace would have destroyed you. I couldn't allow that. And he may still, in a week, a month, who fucking knows, the man knows no boundaries, and the list of personal vendettas is growing every god damned day. Now that you know the depth of my...and you should know, as duplicitous as it may have been, it rather scratches the surface of my arsenal, palatable in the face of worse, moldering and rotten. I've managed worse, Ruth. This? Its not even in the top one hundred I'd have to say."

He watched her then, painfully aware she was wound tight, too tight to risk any movement on his part without believing she would violently spring, a would be Jack-in-the-Box wound to the point of breaking, just this side of exploding. He could almost hear the musical notes as the arm tuned, the fun house calliope a cacophony in his head. In a predictably selfish way, he rather hoped she'd give in to the need to come apart, needed the destruction as a means to arm himself, harden himself, remind himself why he had been so long in finding a home, the resulting frustration and disillusion used to fortify himself in the wake of her eventual decision to discard him.

She will make you bleed.

As if reading his thoughts, she whispered the name, Gary, and at first he thought he had spoken out loud. That in his concentration to gird himself against the inevitable, he had forgotten to keep that long ago conversation to himself, another bit of her history secreted from her, held within himself, and divulged unwillingly.

"Gary. I had cut my hair after Gary. When I chose Peter. It was difficult...that time. I felt trapped in a way. I couldn't stand my reflection...in the mirror. Before, there were circumstances which...I could bury them, or reconcile them. But Gary...with Gary, it was a conscious choice, what I did. And my face...in the mirror. It became...his desperation to fix it, determine a way we could stay together, it was bleak and grasping, and I reacted cruelly...said things that would hurt him, leave him with little option outside the one he fought against. I couldn't stand the sight of myself, what I had done, after a time, and I...one morning...I took the shears and cut off my hair. It was to breathe, I think. So that I could breathe. Maybe your mother...I couldn't breathe, is all, and grief takes all forms I've come to find. Do you...do you wish you had asked her? Your mother? Do you regret not asking why?"

"Every day. Actually, no, not exactly that, but I do miss her everyday. I regret the loss of her every day. It wasn't until Jane that I was sorry I never asked, though I fear what I might have done if she were traveling a path similar in any way to Jane's. I'll never know, and it remains something that...stings, the not knowing a particularly suited torture for me. She left behind a blinding hole, a void of unanswered questions and two sons too young to understand why. I can't honestly say which is worse, Ruth, being sent away to grieve alone as you were, or remaining present and subject to a father who would not suffer weakness or grieving of any sort? Both circumstances cut deeply, I'm afraid."

"And this...All this was...I'm to understand it as some display of, what...Obligation to my father? Is that it?"

"Christ, no! Obligation? My God, Ruth...I would never have you believe that. I know I said that I felt an obligation, that's true enough. But Ruth, all of it, every moment, was genuine, as genuine as I'm capable of being. I was, from the start, in love with the idea of you and your father, the image of that relationship so different from my own, the girl who was adored by her father, and given opportunity to know it. I'd not allowed that for Catherine, though the truth is I adored her in no less capacity as your father adored you. The difference was he showed it, had that freedom, took advantage because he could, he knew how, and I had little understanding of how to navigate the same. I felt obligated to the child left behind, the adored replica he had cherished and treasured as much as I felt obligated to him. So yes, but also, in some measure, no."

"Now...now, Ruth, I've a growing affection for the woman the child became which is not the same thing. There is no obligation for me to do so, only that belief that I must because...Christ, because I can't do otherwise. I've tried. So, if you want to call it obligation, then fine, call it that. But the only obligation I'm willing to admit to is that one associated to ensuring your safety, which I'll gladly undertake, and that hope that you will be happy, which I would try to ensure, and regard most welcome."

"Yes, its convoluted and messy, not the stuff of fairy tales, I'll grant you, but you wanted me too, Ruth. You did, and you still do! I want to make you happy, and you are with me. You are, Ruth! Despite the circumstances and the means by which we got here, to this moment, you are happy with me. Never mind my actions, you had no idea, and yet you felt something during that interview, enough to look at my file, enough to surveil me in return, and you could have turned away then, made your decision and calculated your judgements; Yet you are here, and you smell of me and I of you, and I defy you to look at me now and tell me you still don't want me, deny that you feel safe with me. Go on, try. Look me in the eye and deny me, if you can."

"Harry, it can't be real, any of it! Don't you see? It's all so calculated, compromised from the start. You manipulated your end from the start! How can you-"

"Oh, sod that, Ruth! Look me in the eye and tell me it won't break you in two to part from me now! I'd sooner walk into the Thames over there and never return than to hear it, but if you can...If you can, I'll cherish this a precious memory, and never speak of it again. I swear to you now, I'll leave you to your future unblemished. It will tear me up, but I've had a lifetime of overcoming the worst of myself, and the consequences. Before you answer, know this, I've very little ability to manipulate the feelings of others, Ruth. Actions are one thing, but the emotional attachments made between two people are beyond my wheelhouse. I never once manipulated how you felt about me. I never planted that seed. That was you, Ruth. That was you all along. And you are here, with me, now, because you wanted to be. The details are insignificant...Knowing them doesn't change your desire to be here with me other than skewing perspective a bit. And is the result that horrible to accept? Tell me-"

"Stop, Harry! I...You're doing it, you're talking me on side, asking that I just disregard what you've told me? Christ, but you are bloody gifted at that. You almost have me believing it my idea in the first place, to disregard. I said almost! Still, the magnitude Harry? Have you any idea what you've done to me? You're a spook first, Harry! Always! Not the man I...I can't think straight, and your...God, your eyes, Harry, if I let myself I could drown. I have to...I need to think...I need-"

"You need to answer me, Ruth. Before anything else. Don't think, just answer. Tell me, do you still want to be here, with me?"

"Yes, I'm...yes, I do."

"Tell me, do you still feel safe with me, here, now?"

"Yes, Harry."

"Last one, maybe the only one that really matters, Ruth. Tell me, do you still want me?"

She didn't answer right away, and the wait had the unnerving effect of needles on his skin, pricking him as he waited. He watched as she worried her lip, fingers plucking at the hem of her skirt, still crumpled around her, one thigh exposed and excruciatingly pale to his eyes. He wanted to put his hands on her, each finger stretching, elongating with the urge, twitching to force the answer from her by squeezing if need be, again, his innate hardwiring demanding he force his way, become the thing she had reason to fear. She appeared in no rush, meditating her answer, making him wait, refusing to make eye contact and he took her inability as a good sign, contrary as it was. Despite his earlier vow to leave her be if she desired, he couldn't deny himself the urge to manipulate her further with an additional confession designed to leave her little choice but to acknowledge him, the truth of him, the man, and not the shadow, the spook she saw him as.

"Did you know that I had to leave the Grid when word came...That night...At the safe house, when Six tried to assassinate Gary? Well, its true, I did. I honestly couldn't have given two paltry shits about Gary, if he lived or died, but you? Just the words from Malcolm's mouth were enough to set my ears ringing. There's a problem, a shots fired call reported to the plods. The address matches the safe house, Harry. I remember it verbatim. He said it as if it was a question, the idea that something perfectly predictable would happen having escaped him, making him question the reality of it, too. My first thought was of you, Ruth. I had just spoken with you, had requested that you call when you arrived. And you had, you were safe, Zaf was there, and I couldn't wrap my head around what Malcolm was then telling me. I kept thinking I should have kept you with me, taken you to mine, kept you from the middle of it."

"We didn't know anything beyond that, not until Adam arrived, and I can tell you that apart from the birth of my children, they were the longest minutes of my life. It was twenty minutes, and it felt a lifetime inside. When word came that you were alive, shaken, but alive, I...Malcolm had to repeat himself...I couldn't get the idea that I might never see your smile...It was my worst fear realized, Ruth. Someone I cared about, someone who meant something to me coming to harm because of their proximity to me? I had been that way with Jane, and the kids, but to react that way for you...I knew I had crossed a line inside myself I couldn't take back."

"Malcolm had twigged by that point. I know you'll be angry...I know that. I'm sorry, that's my fault, and I'm sorry. I did manage to leave, escape really, for the roof before anyone else picked up on it. Once there...once there, Ruth, I couldn't help it, I vomited, until all I could do was dry heave, on my knees, and I thought if I could just see you...And then I understood why you needed to see Danny because how else could you believe anything? How else could you attempt to get past it, move on? So I just wanted to see you, so I could move again. But I knew, even then, if I was to move on, it would be towards you, not away, and it made me fear for you. It did. The cost of becoming something meaningful to me. When you returned, it was all I could do not to wrap you in my arms. God knows I wanted to, and I have little understanding how I managed not to, but I managed that much."

"I'm telling you this so that you know, regardless your answer, I will never stop wanting you to be safe, nor stop fearing the affection I have for you, and the consequences it may cause. Its ingrained in me now, and there's nothing I can do about that. I wasn't always this way, but I am now, and your answer will have little affect on that. And...something else."

She looked at him then, her face the picture of words unspoken, No more, please, no more, and he rather sympathized her current hesitation to hear anything further. He'd held back precious little in his confession, whether to test her, or inform her he couldn't decide, but were she to turn from him, he could not count himself unaccountable in the result. That he feared she would was a twisting snake in his stomach, stretching and refolding on itself, preparing to swallow him whole. For the second time on this day he heard the voice inside him whisper, In for a penny...

"Later, when you told Gary never to contact you again, do you remember? Well, you left, but I stayed behind. He told me something, something I thought I had kept well hidden, but...hadn't. It...that part...he confessed it in his nature to see the unseen, hear the unspoken, and that he had watched us. Together. Then, he told me you would make me bleed. I let him have the last word, partly because I had effectively stripped him of everything he wanted, but mostly because I knew well enough by that time whatever had been between you was dead in the past. And I think he did too, and, quite likely, why he said it."

"Strangely, it had the opposite of desired effect on me. I had thought I couldn't need you more, but with that warning, that feeling was enhanced, the idea that you had the power to hurt me was oddly appealing because it suggested I could be hurt in that way, after so much time, I could be touched deeply, and harmed. I want you to know that."

"When I told you I felt alive, Ruth, it was only half true. The truth is, with you, I feel not just alive, but a desire to be alive, which is a very different thing, but no less true. I've never risked that, in my history, not even with Jane, risked wanting to be alive, and the vulnerability it creates. But I want it, as I want you. Still."

"You're certain Malcolm knows? There's no...doubt?"

He was a bit taken aback at her question, at first. After a moment, he understood she was taking the revelations in order, her mind picking at each as they were divulged, and it occurred to him then he'd even more to hide regarding that subject than he cared to admit. If there were a God, and he though couldn't believe his mind had taken such an abhorrent digression, he found he would much prefer she advance quickly onto the subject of Gary Hicks, rather than continue meditating the presence of Malcolm in their inner sanctum of two. Questions as to the origins of that he could well do without despite the fact his mind immediately began conjuring images of Ruth's face as she turned from him during the EERE exercise leaving him to his quarantined solitude, then to her furious accusation of cowardice in the aftermath of Fortescue, finally becoming the quietly deadened, You bastard as he revealed his collusion to she and her harried colleagues, the hurt and relief both clear on her pale, drawn face.

She had been watching him carefully, easing herself closer as he meditated his memories, the pictures rolling in his mind's eye, and he could feel the boxes within himself beginning to close, the shadow within stretching itself outward, and electrical current traveling the length of him, and his eyes locked with hers, still guarded, still distant, her face the picture of a press conference worth of questions, and he left vulnerable to her first volley. Nodding affirmatively in answer, he allowed himself to become very still, an animal whose scent had been gaged and identified as vulnerable.

"You...You didn't feel alive with Jane?"

"No. I felt...obligated, ironically. Better I should say adrift. I felt adrift. Apart from both she and the children. They became...Eventually, they became the picture in my head when we were on an op, or more, I don't know, the amalgam of what we were tasked to protect? Over time, as an active agent, we, well all of us, understood that what we were tasked to protect could be destroyed, regardless. You developed internal methods by which to distance yourself, prepare yourself for any eventuality, including fatalities, as a coping mechanism. It was a matter of course. You learned not to care in the extreme, you taught yourself to reveal nothing of your inner vulnerabilities. Jane, and the children, were my greatest vulnerability, yet I could not reveal anything of myself to them in return. My children remain a terrible risk, though they'd likely laugh at the thought."

"If I'm entirely honest, Ruth, I would do it differently if given the chance. I would have married Jane, that's true enough, I did love her. But, I...would not have had children, and that would likely have ended the marriage anyway. Jane was born to be a mother in so many ways, and I was born to excel in a field in which children, loved ones, compromises ability, access. We would have ended badly regardless, is what I'm trying to say, the circumstances may alter with hindsight, but we were not meant to last even as long as we did. I loved her, but not in the manner she needed. I see that now, years later. I loved her the way one loves an idea, an image, and for me that image was normalcy, children being an ingredient to that combination in my head, and me playing a role within, dictated by that image, but at odds with everything I understood to be genuine."

"I'm explaining it badly, I know, but I loved her, at one time, just not enough. If I had loved her more, I would not have been capable of setting her aside as easily, relegating her and the children to something...other...there to be protected, but not cherished and nurtured. When one is young, wrapped in hubris and overreaching self confidence, you can believe a thing admirable, tell yourself you're acting in everyone's best interests. The truth is you're simply constructing lies to swallow, over and again, until you're so full of them the reality of who you are is blindingly obvious, and by that time, you can do more harm than good to adjust. And that belief is still just part of the larger lie. You tell yourself you have time enough to fix it. I agreed to the divorce because I wanted them safe, which still left them at risk, and Jane deserved some happiness after the damage I caused her. I wanted distance, and I got it. More than. Now, years later, I've more distance than I care to measure. Such is the consequence of service to the Crown."

"I think that a bit self serving, Harry. Simplistic, at best. They are your children, not something...other. Even Adam and Fiona managed to provide Wes with some measure of normalcy. Together, their risk was exponentially greater-"

"Did they? Did they really, Ruth? The boy didn't even know his mother's given name. Is that what normal looks like in your estimation? I've no doubt there was love, but it was anything but normal, Ruth. And she's...gone. They spun the wheel, and lost, Ruth. They lost. You know what that feels like, as do I."

"We make decisions, choose a path, and die just the same, either way. Emotionally, I died a long time ago as far as my children are concerned. Catherine herself said as much. I keep them safe, as much as can be done, but I'm dead to them just the same. Your father? He was...alive, Ruth. He wasn't playing at happy families, he didn't adopt some role or artifice. One day I was Harry, the next Giles Farmer, the next, James Henry, but I was never the loving and doting father they needed, and as these others, I fucked around on my wife who never stood a chance from the beginning. When you're a fabricated shell, Ruth, you can do anything, you become the devil driving as easily as the unintended victim simultaneously. Once done, it can't be undone."

"And my father, he...He showed you this?"

"Yes. He was a shining example, and me the tarnished impostor, in so many words. I thought...I thought, for a brief time, I could fix it, but the damage was too great. So, you...well, you became that opportunity, and I wanted to keep you safe as much as my own family. The difference is that they no longer desired the effort, and in their refusals, the fact that you were unaware made it easy, or easier, to exercise the urge to trespass that ground where you allow yourself to be vulnerable enough to care, openly. I know that sounds...ridiculous, but I cared for the first time in a long time, however covertly to you, openly for me."

"As Harry? As Henry James Pearce?"

"Yes, Ruth. No artifice. No legend, or role. As me, always. Just me."

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A/N: What's up with the "Traffic Stats?" As I can't see anyone is reading, owing to some malfunction with site (I hope), reviews are most welcomed if only to let me know I'm not left alone on this ride. I look, of course I do. I'll own it. Venom III, coming in short order, as these confessions do take a bit of time, and do tend towards extended in length. :)