A/N: This chapter refers to ep 3.6, the Agent X trial, to place it in the canon timeline.

The next few weeks are even more hectic than usual on the Grid, as the matter known to the public as the Agent X affair, and to us as losing Zoe, takes precedence over everything else. Zoe. None of us can quite believe it; she's a magnificent field operative, beautiful in a blonde, willowy, way, clever and perceptive and as brave as a lion, and suddenly, she's gone, thanks to a show trial designed to appease a police force livid at the loss of one of its own, and a public stubbornly calling for greater accountability from Her Majesty's government.

Greater accountability, indeed. How do they expect us to preserve the status quo, day in, day out, if we are forever being scrutinised and called to heel by our political masters? I don't know, I truly don't, how Harry manages to sit in meeting rooms with the grey men of Whitehall, listening to their rhetoric and cant. I couldn't bear it, and am thankful that Harry does not need me to attend the trial. Instead, he takes Ruth, and I don't begrudge him her steady, calming presence and sensible counsel. She's exactly the person I would want at my side under the circumstances. I have to content myself with seeing her very little, over the days of the trial, and then only in company with Harry. She is quiet, but her eyes speak volumes about her fears for Zoe; finally, over a hastily snatched cup of tea in the staff canteen, she tells me that the trial is not going well; Harry is beside himself with worry, and the courtroom is far more hostile than any of us could have anticipated, the visitor's gallery full of the dead police officer's brethren and the tabloid press.

I long to take her hand, lying on the table between us, and tell her that everything will be all right, but I know better than to try and placate her fears with platitudes. Instead, I listen with my whole attention, and as Ruth unburdens herself, I see tiny signs in her – her facial muscles relaxing slightly, her hand unclenching from the fist it has formed as she speaks of Harry's anger with the country which is now condemning Zoe for doing the job she was trained for, her shoulders dropping into a more neutral posture – that talking is helping. I wish there was something more that I could do, but there are limits to what even the most brilliant geek can fix, and rigging a trial is really not my style… All too soon, Harry comes to find her, and she is swept away in his wake, back to Court.

Danny attends the trial too – wild horses wouldn't stop him, and Harry is wise enough not to try. I really feel for Danny; he and Zoe have been inseparable since joining Section D, and their friendship has been inspiring to watch, forged in adversity and intrigue, and only becoming stronger as a result. The last few months, though, have been testing ones for Danny, after Zoe met her…well, significant other, I believe, is the term in common use nowadays. I have known for some time that Danny's interest in her was more than platonic…it takes one to know one, after all, and the air of frustrated sadness which surrounds Danny whenever Zoe mentions her boyfriend is almost palpable. I have to admit, at one point a couple of years back, I took rather a shine to Zoe myself…a short-lived fancy, once I realised that she didn't see me, at all. Oh, she saw Malcolm-the-geek, or Malcolm-the-voice-in-her-comms, all right, but she didn't see me. Her life was so taken up with Danny, and Tom, and Harry, and Adam, and with being in the field, that there didn't seem to be any room for anything or anyone else, until she met her Mr. Right, and her normally bright personality was transformed into an incandescent one. She quite literally glowed with happiness, the morning she told us she was engaged. I am ashamed to say it, but I felt a quite irrational twinge of jealousy at her happy news, and then I saw Ruth's wistful face, looking at the bouquet of orchids which Zoe's intended had sent, and had to turn away, or risk giving myself away altogether. I suspect that my face might have looked rather like Ruth's…

Danny took the news hard, of course, even though he must have known the lie of the land, and Ruth must have guessed what was behind his sudden bitterness and anger. Ruth, with her gift for reading people, has taken it upon herself to keep an eye on him, much (I should think) to Harry's relief. It is one of the reasons, I expect, that he has not been tasked with any field operations, instead spending his days at Court, watching the excruciatingly slow drama of Zoe's trial unfold. Despite Ruth's misgivings, Harry says that he is confident that Zoe will be exonerated; he has spent more time than usual at Whitehall, lobbying the powers that be on her behalf, so when the jury turns in a Guilty verdict, all Hell breaks loose on the Grid, with Harry leading the charge through Hades' gates. I am tasked with hacking the court records to find out the sentencing details, and I reel when I see that she is destined to spend ten of the prime years of her life in the maximum security wing at HM Prison, Durham. Our Zoe, incarcerated with notorious murderesses and IR A bombers…I think Harry may actually have an apoplexy when I tell him, so incoherent with rage is he for a moment. When he finally regains the power of speech, he uses it to unleash a torrent of language the like of which I doubt has rarely been heard outside a barrack-room, before he stalks towards the pods and leaves, calling for a driver as he does so.

I don't know what Harry does next, or whom he threatens, but somehow he brokers a deal, one which will save Zoe from jail, by sending her to the other side of the world, never to see her friends or family again. I trawl the prison records (a vast and depressing task) looking for a scapegoat with a suitably long sentence, who matches Zoe's general physical appearance; and then it is up to Harry and Danny to convince our golden girl to go. For once in his life, Harry fails; all his cajoling and urging amounts to nothing when pitted against her adamantine will. Danny is sent in, face set; and ten minutes later, Zoe is gone, passport in hand, to a new life.

I admire Danny greatly for that selfless act of courage; in saving the woman he loves for the last time, he has lost her forever. I cannot begin to think what it would be like to lose Ruth…she is so much a part of my life, of all our lives, now. I remind myself that she's a backroom worker like me, not a field officer; we stay safe, hidden in surveillance vans and security suites, or burrowed into the vast warren of Thames House. Ruth is not a field spook…it becomes my mantra, whenever I find myself feeling unreasonably anxious at the idea of losing her as Danny has lost Zoe. And yet, once the idea has taken hold, it is not so easily dismissed. Harry wouldn't let anything happen to her, I tell myself, and feel marginally better at that thought. Harry is like the Rock of Gibraltar, where Section D is concerned, a brooding, guarding presence, craggy and enduring, watching over his team, and the country he has given his life in service to, with equal parts of exasperation and acerbity. And affection – somewhere in there, I know there is still a grudging kind of affection for his country, even when it bites the hand that defends it. He's Harry bloody Pearce, after all, and no ordinary mortal.