A/N: While there is a canon version of the disciplinary hearing which took place due to Ruth's actions regarding John Fortescue, this chapter takes only a few lines of dialogue from it. Enjoy!

…And while prayer is all very well (and I don't deny that I have often had recourse to it; in this line of work, sometimes one needs all the help one can get), I also have faith in something a bit more immediate, a little more tangible…like the micro-bug I just planted under Ruth's shirt collar as I patted her affectionately on the back. It's a prototype I've been working on – even Colin hasn't seen it, because I carry it with me constantly. It's so small, if it were to fall off its target, it would look more or less (mostly more) like the butterfly clasp from a stud earring. Tiny, innocuous…and with a transmission range that bugs twice its size would envy. Ears only, of course, but the quality of sound is remarkable, if I do say so myself, for a device not much bigger than a grain of rice. Ruth will not be going into the lion's den without backup, if I have any say in it, although I have no idea what I would do if the situation suddenly required intervention.

I know, oh, how well I know, that I am not a courageous man; I don't have Adam's reckless, devil-may-care abandon in the face of danger, nor Tom's self-belief and steadiness, nor yet that practiced self-control and ability to accept high-stakes risk calmly, which makes Harry the head spook. And as for the women in our section – they are all quite, quite terrifying in their fearlessness under fire. I am so ashamed of my quailing heart when compared with this company of warriors. Coupled with my asthma, it's why I'm Section D's mild-mannered Geek-in-Chief (yes, I know they call me that), and not a dashing field operative.

Now, however, is a time for action – and bravery on someone else's behalf is always easier, I find. I slip out the back door of the server room and into one of the labyrinthine back corridors that riddle Thames House like a particularly paranoid rabbit's warren, and pull my mobile phone out of my coat pocket. With a bit of jiggery-pokery, I have found a way to turn the mobile handset into a receiver for the micro-bug, and with a bit more of that tech stuff that I do (as Harry sometimes, rather dismissively, calls my work) I have worked out how to make the bug's transmissions look like nothing more than a standard mobile phone carrier signal. Not completely foolproof, of course, but counter-surveillance would have to know just what to look for – and how can they look for something they don't yet know exists?

I step across the corridor and through a service door that leads to the HVAC plant room for the Grid. I quickly don a tiny pair of canal earphones in order to hear better above the low whumping of the air-conditioning plant, jacking them into the phone just in time to hear Harry instruct Ruth to sit down. I frown – the transmission should be less muffled than this, from Harry's office, but it sounds as if the transmitter is operating right on the edge of its viable range. There's an echoing quality too, as if the bug is capturing sound in a hard-walled space, not the plush surrounds of Harry's office…

"Why are we down here, Harry?"

Silence, broken by the scraping of a chair on concrete.

"Is this some sort of attempt at scaring me into realising how serious this is? "

"I will be asking the questions today, Ruth." Harry's voice, with an edge to it Ruth has never heard – but which I am all too familiar with, from recording countless interrogations with suspected terrorists and other undesirables.

I feel ill as I realise they must be in one of the interview rooms hidden deep within Thames House, all reinforced concrete walls and uncomfortably low temperatures. What the hell does Harry think he is doing? I close my eyes to concentrate more closely on what I'm hearing, and my chronically overactive imagination paints a vivid picture…

Ruth faces Harry across a table welded to the floor, perched on a chair which is deliberately too low and too small. Harry, in overcoat and black gloves, the single overhead light in the room illuminating him from behind, casting a huge shadow towards Ruth, his face immobile as he stares at her. Ruth, nervous, is fiddling with her necklace, perhaps, or turning her bracelet around and around, her blue eyes huge and almost translucent in the harsh light as she tries, and fails, to hold that implacable gaze… I fight back the waves of nausea that are rising within me at this scenario, and listen as if my very life depends on it…

"Do you know why you're here today?" That flat voice, devoid of all expression…I shiver involuntarily.

"Yes, of course I know. I have erred, and now I must repent. Mea culpa." Ruth's voice, lower than usual, but surprisingly steady.

"This would be the second time that your errant ways have come to my attention, Miss Evershed."

More silence.

"Perhaps my faith in you was misplaced, after all. This is a huge breach of trust, Ruth. Of my trust in you as an employee, of the public's trust that the civil servants paid to ensure their security are doing just that, and of Mr…Fortescue's trust that his privacy will not be invaded any more than is strictly necessary by Her Majesty's security services."

A long pause, then Ruth, sounding only slightly contrite, "I'm very sorry, I don't know what came over me. I won't do it again."

"You were very sorry last time too. Oh yes, Tom told me how sorry you were. The question is whether I feel inclined to allow the possibility of there being a next time."

"Yes, I expect that he would have told you. He was very good about it, talked to me on a park bench in the sunlight, and showed a degree of tolerance and understanding which I was very grateful for. I've been one hundred percent loyal to Five ever since. I still don't know why this discussion had to take place in here, without an observer present, either… it's not as if I am a security risk to the nation, after all. I made a mistake, got too nosy about a surveillance subject, saw him twice, nothing happened, end of story." I am surprised at Ruth's tone of voice – far from being meek and mild, or quaking in fear, she is beginning to sound…irritated!

"As to whether you're a security risk or not, I'll be the judge of that."

"Harry, are you seriously sugg…" there's a crackling sound, possibly Ruth's metal hair ornament contacting the bug, then Harry's voice, louder than before, talking over her.

"…question me? Who do you think you are? You're an analyst, your job is to think, to interpret, to predict, not to go mooning after strangers we just happen to have some intel on. What if this had gotten out? Fleet Street would have had a field day, we would all have been put under the microscope, the FoI* lot would have been baying for your blood…it was incredibly selfish, a flagrant breach of protocol, and to top it all off, you dragged Malcolm into it as well."

Silence, during which I can almost hear Ruth thinking as I hold my breath in shock, then she says in a miraculously normal voice, "Malcolm offered to go with me; I hardly think I dragged him into it. And it's not as if we went to some den of iniquity, we went to a church. To sing." Ruth's voice is beginning to rise too…

"Should I be expecting to see some fraternisation request forms on my desk, then? It certainly sounds as if you have been somewhat…socially active…lately. Lunch dates with a surveillance subject, choir outings with Malcolm…what else have you been up to, Ruth?" I can't breathe…we're on dangerously thin ice now. Silence…she's waiting him out, I think in awe.

Harry sighs, a long whooshing noise. "While we're at it, then, about Malcolm" – my heart nearly stops – "be careful, Ruth. I've seen how he looks at you. Be kind to him, won't you? He's made of finer stuff than some of us…" A rustling noise – Ruth, nodding her head, I think dazedly – and then she launches her counter-attack.

"It's this job, Harry, it takes over your life and consumes you, and most of the time we're too busy stopping horrific things from happening to think about ourselves, but every now and then, just for a moment, I recall that I'm more than just another watcher on the wall, and I wonder what it might be like to go out for an evening in pleasant company, or to share a meal with someone who is not my cat…or don't you remember what that's like?" Yes, she is definitely getting annoyed; I marvel at her unforseen courage, even while holding my breath in agonies of suspense.

Harry replies, in a forcedly calm tone of voice. She's getting to him, I realise. Oh, Ruth…

"Regardless of whom you choose to take your meals with, there are certain risks inherent in our work, Ruth, and I have to be certain that you're not going to go off-piste again, if I let you stay on. I can't afford to have an intelligence analyst whose mind is not on the job. If we're not on the ball, people will die…"

I hear a chair scrape back suddenly, then a thudding noise which for one awful moment I think is the sound of a body falling to the floor, before realising it was just the chair, overturning as Ruth gets to her feet precipitately, if the noisy rustling of her clothing is any indication.

"People will die? People will DIE? If we ever look the other way for a single second, then people will die? Well now I understand what drives you, Harry, what an enormous burden must be on your shoulders…the whole weight of the world, and everyone in it. My god, do you think I don't know the risks of this job? Why else do you think I might look for a life outside of Thames House?"

In spite of the seriousness of the circumstances, I can't help but think, She's magnificent, as I listen to Ruth fight like a she-wolf at bay to preserve the status quo for all three of us.

"All I'm saying, Ruth, is that you need to keep your work life and your private life separate. Apart from vetting your fraternisation requests, the Service doesn't care what you get up to when you walk off the Grid." Harry's voice now sounds tight. To anyone else, he would sound angry; but I have been listening to Harry's disembodied voice, in all its timbres and textures, for years, and I can hear the pained frustration behind his deep and measured tones.

"Well I can't, Harry, my work is my life, on or off the Grid. They're inextricably entwined." Ruth, quieter now, but still simmering.

"Un-entwine them, then. It's that simple. Work here, life there." Harry, sounding as if he has had enough now.

A short silence, then Ruth's footsteps, and she says in a tone perhaps more bitter than she intends, "Simple. Yes, it must be simple, if you've been doing it for this long. Or perhaps it's you who are simple, to think that human beings operate like that. And you're a hypocrite, too, telling me off for misusing access to information... damn it, you could have just asked me what was going on, but instead you turned it into an operation…I'll never trust Sam again, you realise, don't you?"

Harry, now using a positively conciliatory tone of voice: "Finished?"

Then Ruth, heatedly," This whole process has been a shambles. I don't know what happened to you, Harry, but you've got a heart of stone, if you think people can just turn their emotions on and off at will." The door slams, and I take my first proper breath in what feels like forever.

And then it occurs to me that I can still hear Harry. The bug must have fallen inside the interview room as Ruth stormed out the door. I can hear him breathing as if he has been running hard, getting himself under control, then he sighs heavily, and says sadly, "Not stone, Ruth. Far from it." There is another, painful sort of noise, like a ragged intake of breath…and then I come out of my spellbound trance, and turn off the receiver.

I have no wish to intrude on Harry's privacy; bugging a conversation between colleagues is bad enough, but I will not torment myself by listening to the sound of Harry's regret. Not when he has just spoken so kindly of me to Ruth, and put me to shame for all the jealous thoughts I have been entertaining towards him recently. His generosity and insight only make it harder for me to admit that he has a connection with Ruth that I will never have – even the few seconds of dead air that I listened to held a charge that spoke of the tension between them, crackling like electricity rising up a Jacob's ladder.

The main thing, though, is that Ruth has managed to deflect Harry's attention away from me – from us – for the time being. I will never cease to be amazed at how a lion's courage can be found in the most unassuming mouse. I have seen it a thousand times before on operations where civilians become unavoidably involved for one reason or another, and must rise to the challenge. Some do so with more success than others, but none has exhibited the sheer audacity I have just witnessed in Ruth as she went on the offensive. To bluff and feint as she did, around an old master like Harry… it was breathtaking, literally.

As I slump in relief against the wall of the plant room, a hundred different thoughts race through my overstimulated brain, but two are uppermost. The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven – my beloved Milton, of course, in reluctant sympathy for Harry – and the other is Ave, Ruth invicta – Hail, unconquered Ruth!

A/N : *FoI – Freedom of Information campaigners.