The Quiet Time

[Aria]

I surprised myself by writing an entry for the Fanfic competition as I haven't written anything creatively since school. So I was even more amazed to realise the muse had not quite left me yet. The result is this Ruth fanfic set after 8.1 and before 8.2. Many thanks go to Tea Lady and JHyde for their suggestions and encouragement. Please review and let me know what you think of the story. Contains spoilers for 8.1.

The Quiet Time

With a frustrated sigh, Ruth switches off the television and throws the remote control onto a nearby table. It lands with a satisfying thud. There is absolutely nothing to watch on TV and to think she has missed British television! As she looks around the small, threadbare living room of the shabby nondescript safe house, she can feel her emotions starting to overwhelm her again. She stands up. I have to keep busy somehow. Maybe cleaning the kitchen and then the bathroom will keep my hands busy and my mind away from.... the events of the past few days. As she walks into the kitchen she hears the rain beating down on the skylight in the hall. It sounds like a torrential downpour, not at all like the beautiful and warm weather they had enjoyed in Cyprus. Don’t go there Ruth. In there, the light is dim and the blackness mirrors the ugliness inside her.

Gathering all the cleaning supplies together, she looks around the cramped kitchen and starts by scrubbing the small gas cooker, which by the look of it hasn’t been cleaned since it had been fitted. The quiet sounds of her breathing are suddenly broken by the ring tone of the mobile phone she was given by Jo, on her last visit. Cleaning her hands, she walks back into the living room and looks at the phone. I don't want to answer but I also don't want someone getting sent round here if I don't. Thankfully it is Jo and not…

“How are you?” Jo asks, concern in her voice.

‘I’m all right. Keeping busy.” She sits slowly down on a threadbare sofa.

“That’s good. Do you need anything?” She hears other voices in the background and wants to ask where Jo is, but she won't. She doesn't want to know that life is still going on for Harry and the others when she is stuck. Stuck in a place and a life she had never expected to come back too.

“Not really.” Even she is surprised by her monosyllabic answers. She can’t seem to bring herself to even put on an act to reassure Jo and the others.

“Shall we meet up for lunch, tomorrow?” There is a definite tension now in Jo’s voice.

“Perhaps in a few days.” I can't see Jo again. Not so soon after everything.

Jo speaks in a rush, “Work on the Grid is slow at the moment, Lucas and Ros are busy with paperwork and I’m going through the vetting report of Malcolm’s replacement.” There are voices in the background, but before she hears anyone she recognizes, Jo's voice breaks in again. "I'll call again soon." I am so glad she didn't mention Harry. Or anyone else.

When she saw Jo, both at the Grid and then later at the safe house, she had been struck by the changes in her friend. Jo was older obviously, than the Jo of Ruth's memories, but she had also lost some spark of innocence that she had possessed before. Ruth remembers fondly the idealistic and untainted younger Jo of happier and simpler times.

She hasn't asked, and Jo hasn’t offered anything about Adam and Zaf. Deep down she knows that something must have happened to them; otherwise they would be on the Grid. If she does not ask, she won’t be told and so she can imagine the best. She desperately wants to believe that Adam has maybe left the service and is somewhere safe with little Wes. (Probably not so little anymore!) Zaf is probably back at Six, or possibly on holiday chatting up unsuspecting females, melting any resistance on their parts with his charm and cheeky smile. He always smiles at pretty girls; he’d said that on the day she had left. Please God, let them both be safe, away from this life.

Nico, thank God, is going back to Cyprus, where he will be safe. As if he could ever feel safe again after being so close to death, so young! He may have not known exactly what was happening, but one day he will put all the pieces together. Sofia, George’s sister, had given her such a look, before shutting the door in her face when she had tried to say goodbye to Nico before his trip home. A look complete of anger, despair and hatred. No-one's ever hated me before but I deserve it. She deserved Sofia and Nico’s rage. It was her fault George was dead; wonderful, kind, funny and generous George, whose only crime had been to befriend a lonely and confused stranger. He had paid for that crime with his life. Her life and Nico’s too was in tatters and she felt so comprehensively guilty. She hadn’t revealed to George the truth about her past and now he was dead because of it. She should have given him the choice, to be with her, or not. She knew the truth was out there, waiting. Biding its time to catch her out. Otherwise she wouldn't have had bags packed and their passports at the ready.


She had tried so hard in the last few days, not to remember her life in Cyprus, but the memories would not be silenced: meeting George for the first time at the hospital they had worked at together. Weeks of exchanging shy smiles whenever they had chanced upon one another before he had hesitatingly asked her for coffee. Meeting Nico, for the first time and being impressed by his intelligence and warmth. Being introduced to Sofia and other members of George and Nico’s family, they had shown such openness and generosity to a friendless stranger. For the first time since childhood she had felt part of a family. She is beginning to forget the little details of that life in Cyprus: the clarity of the sea, “as blue and as fathomless as her eyes”, according to George. The red and orange brilliance of the Cypriot sunset viewed from the balcony of their villa. She can feel the colour slowly haemorrhaging from her life, being replaced by the dullness and greyness and sterility of London. Why else would the slang of 'Blighty' remain, so many years after war?


Realising how late it is, by the sudden chiming of the clock, she stands to make her way upstairs. Not that sleep will soon be forthcoming. As she makes her way to the stairs with the mobile in her hand, it starts to ring. Looking down at the screen, the name Harry is illuminated. This is the fifth time he has rung today and like the previous four times, she presses the end button. She has no desire to speak to or see Harry and his persistent attempts to contact her are just making her angrier with him. How dare he try to speak to me! He has ruined my life. No! Don’t think about Harry. He nearly had Nico killed and George is dead because he had to protect his precious uranium.

Despite her fierce anger, a small voice in her head clamours for attention. You used to admire the fact that Harry wasn’t afraid of taking impossible decisions, sometimes at great cost to himself. That was before, she reminds herself, before she left. Left, such an innocuous word, as if she had gone on holiday or some such thing. Not left everything behind: her job, her friends and family and everything she owned in the world, all to protect the sainted Sir Harry Pearce. Ruth Evershed was dead, buried in some small obscure graveyard in Oxfordshire. Not many people have a chance to view their own obituaries and circle the grammatical and typographical errors.


Unbidden, Harry’s face appears in her mind, recalling the way he had looked on that day by the river and how he had looked in the warehouse earlier. He seems so much more - older, more tired and defeated. A brief flicker of feeling had passed through his eyes when she had called him "a heartless bastard", he had gazed at her with such profound despair, pain and torment. Then he had quickly closed off his emotions, so much so that she still wondered if she hadn't imagined it all. She had hated seeing him so bloody and broken and helpless, like she is inside now. Don't think of Harry! Not think of Harry, who for so long had been the mainstay of her life. Through a kaleidoscope of memories she can see him and her through the years she worked at MI5: meeting him for the first time and his cracking some awful joke that nobody but he had laughed at. Seeing him enter the Grid when she believed he had died a painful and lonely death due to SARIN poisoning. Crying at her desk when she had heard about him being shot by Tom, then seeing him through the hospital door, lying so still. His support and neediness after Danny's death. That charged moment in the corridor after she had stopped Angela Wells. And Havensworth. For a brief moment, it had seemed that everything she had ever wanted in life was possible. Like a deluge the memories overcome her. She has tried so valiantly to put him and her life in England in a box, and to put that box away in a corner of her mind. But it has never worked. He is too ingrained in her heart and because of that she could never forget him. Doesn't really want to forget him: life as Ruth Evershed without Harry Pearce in her life is unthinkable. Ruth can feel the tears streaming down her cheeks. She doesn’t want to cry anymore, but the tears continue to fall as her grief for George, Nico, Harry and herself overwhelms her.


The End