you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy
Ruth & Dimitri, in the wake of S9. Spoilers from S5 onward. Title, epigraph, and end quote from Khalil Gibran's The Prophet (Why, hello, S3!).
Of what can I speak save of that which is even now moving your souls?
+
I
She feels lethargic, and used, and plain angry. The first she can blame on the drugs, but the others need weighing. Harry is silent, in the car ride back to Thames House. (No-one thinks to take her home; she is needed on the grid. She has just been kidnapped and used as leverage, and still she cannot be given a sliver of time.)
She twines her hands, tries looking out the window, but the world seems like a distraction from the strained tension in the vehicle. It feels unbalanced, wrong.
“He couldn't have killed me,” she says to Harry's stern profile.
“Don't be so sure.”
She offers up a smile, like an open hand. “Were you sure? When Tom was pointing a rifle in your face, were you sure he wouldn't deliberately misfire?”
“Tom was unhinged. Desperate.”
“And Lucas isn't? He's angry, Harry.”
“So was Tom.”
“So am I.”
Harry stares at her, hard. She twists the hem of her sweater. “I'm so - and I don't - ” she stumbles; suddenly wonders what it would have been like to actually talk to Lucas, before all this, when Harry was still a bearer of blame for them both. She tried with Tom; made the mistake too soon.
(On the king's head, let all the sorrows lie.)
She didn't understand, or didn't sympathize, then. Leaders weren't supposed to have feelings; in that conversation, all she'd had was a pair of scissors to stab into the wall, a map to put schematics on; it was nothing, worth nothing, and yet it felt so essential. Like it was worth their lives. Like the grid wasn't in lock-down. Like when the power came back on, she wouldn't be the most important person in the room.
A long, stretched silence. “What is this about, Ruth?” Harry asks, slow, unsure of his footing.
She looks out the window.
(What? Seven years and I can't answer that question?)
(Seven years and I can answer it in precise detail.)
There is a beat of time upon her arrival, a pause, like shame. Beth spares a quick glance, Dimitri's eyes trail concern, Tariq bolts from the forgery suite and pulls her into a hug. He is warm bones and shaken relief beneath her hands; his face is sharp against her shoulder.
_
She tries to imagine how it happened; if Harry saw, if it was silent, if there was apology, or - she - she imagines a car alarm, clear cut; her hand covers her mouth, choking.
Tariq is too tentative to stop her leaving. She snaps through the corridor, the foyer, pushing the doors wide. She stops, breathes, huddles against the steps. It's low evening, the sun losing its edge through cloud.
Beth and Dimitri round the corner, and as they draw closer, she sees the slope to their shoulders, heads angled down from the bone marrow sky. Beth moves past, but Dimitri falters, his stride long, hands in his pockets, neck tense.
He draws up close, a sudden warm entity against the dusk, dark, his breath a steady comfort. He stands passive, broad and demure. Her stomach churns against his voice saying her name. “Ruth.”
She presses him with her hands, his palms warm curling around her fingers. “I couldn't go to the roof, I - ”
His face cracks into a smile, raw. She turns her gaze to the mist beading his jacket, a fine embroidery along his shoulders. “It's okay,” he says. He dips his head to look at her; his grip tightens on her hands, thumbs over her knuckles.
“Where's Harry?” she asks.
“He's gone to see Malcolm.” Dimitri seems beautifully composed, considering. She touches the lapel of his jacket, slowly, reaching out and hooking a finger into the fabric.
She nods. “To tell him.” Nods again. “Oh god.” Her voice is pitched, caught in her throat. Her fingers twist into Dimitri's coat, leaning on him.
There's the sound of his heart (rapid, strong, reassuring), and his voice resonating low beneath his sternum. She feels him breathe, say he won't go anywhere; the words make her think of Danny.
+
II
“It's only a gesture, Ruth.”
They are stood in middle of a church, light streaming through the windows and giving the ancient walls a ragged luminousity; George is looking at her, eyes half-expectant, the silver glint of a ring between his fingers.
She doesn't think she wants this. She thinks she feels guilty.
She allows herself to imagine it, for a moment; simple dress, flowers, an unneeded complication. She hates that George smiles when she shakes her head, as though he is sure of her indecisive nature. “We - I can't.”
“You'll think about it,” he says gently. “We need you, Ruthie.”
(What 'you'? Not me.)
She takes the ring, puts it in his palm. She curls his fingers in, presses his hand with hers. “Not now. I can't now.”
A slight defeat seeps into George's eyes, and it takes him a moment to nod. (This is your life, now), she reminds herself. (This man, this good man and his child, this place. This is your life.)
(Or is that an ocean away?)
_
It's raining when he disembarks the ship. He slings the bag on his shoulder, revels, momentarily, in the feel of civilian clothing, of rain pounding against his head; he is still tan from the mid-east sun, still used to desert heat. He pulls his hood up against the wet and the gray and heads away from the docks.
Lucas North is tall, what could be called intimidating, with eyes the colour of sky. (Afghan, if Dimitri wants to be precise, but his teeth grate at the idea of the Helmand province.)
“So,” Dimitri says, coming to stand in front of him. “Is this how everyone's first day starts?”
Lucas gives a sort of defensive half-smile, eyes appraising. “We've never had ex-military before,” he says. “but then, we scouted you.”
“Pick on the civilians, usually?”
“They're the ones who apply.” Lucas shifts uncomfortably, leans on the car. The sound of rain hitting the metal roof is loud between them; Dimitri pretends not to notice the rigid way in which Lucas holds his shoulders against it. “Look, get in, I'm supposed to get you to Thames House before traffic builds up.”
Dimitri smirks, reaching past him to open the door. “Sorry the boat didn't manage to beat the rush,” he says, stooping to climb in the passenger seat.
_
Thames House lies large and foreboding across the river, copper roofs still shining even in dull sun. He hasn't realised how much he missed London, until now; the noise, the smell, the light. It seems faintly ridiculous, to miss the smell of a place, but it is so familiar that it almost feels like an ache in his chest.
“What's it like to be home?” Lucas asks, not taking his eyes from the slow-moving roads. They did hit traffic, after all. Dimitri straightens from where he's been slumped against the window, blinks away sleep.
(Home, home, how valuable it seems, savourable, like a foreign taste on his tongue.)
His eyes find Lucas' profile, the tattoo he can see under the sleeve of his jacket. “How was it for you?” he asks, watching the tendons in Lucas' wrist taut as his grip tightens on the steering wheel. He blinks some, unbalanced; Dimitri opens his mouth to apologise, but Lucas gives his half-smile again.
“They welcomed me with open arms.” There is an edge to his voice that tells Dimitri he's lying; a half-effort, veiled truth. He glances from the road, and his eyes are clear.
They cross Lambeth Bridge. He stops looking.
_
Paul is like a cat, stealthy; he's good on reconnaissance, an able seaman. He's lethal, and dazzling, with enough of a foolhardy streak to be worry-some. It makes him dangerous. It makes him endearing.
_
“Swim, Levendis!”
The boat feels far, far, far, a tiny thing in an open expanse of water. Ocean water bites, numbs, makes him gasp for breath at the shock of it. The voice shouts again, warped by the water clasping at his ears; he dives, stinging at his eyes, swims several metres, comes up for breath.
“Hurry it up!”
He thinks of his childhood need of water, embracing the England that loved the rain. How his parents hated it, his mother afraid for his muddied clothes, as though the damp would never dry from his hair, the mud staying in the lines of his hands, cracking, caked.
His water-logged heart had been content with the river, until he'd discovered the sea. His father, first, described it; fishing villages, and then sailboats, military tankers, cargo ships. The slice of it through his hands, the clarity of it in sun. The power of waves, and their ability to lull. It was in his blood, he'd known. Always there. Always willing to ebb in and out, like the tides.
He dives again, tasting thick salt in his mouth. Salinity tastes sick, oxygen stale in his lungs; he swims until he can't see the bottom anymore, and then climbs to the surface.
He used to sink, daring himself, feeling the cold seep in. He'd liked the silver of air bubbles, against the blackening depths, the pressure in his ears, the burn for oxygen; the first time he'd realised his body had a natural instinct to fight, and that a kick up would take him to the land, and the air, again.
His head breaks the waves, and the boat is there, tipping in the swells. Men squint from on board, and he reaches a hand out, fingers splayed, to theirs.
The water runs down his wrist, in thin droplets, until a teammate hauls him ashore. He rakes air into his lungs; leans against the edge to still his adrenaline-filled limbs.
One of the men stares, open. Dimitri wishes he didn't have Paul's eyes.
_
(“Afghanistan? We've been in this a few months.” Paul's fingers trace his lips, feeling the words. His thumb presses Dimitri's mouth, to stop him speaking.
“They think we're ready; it's fine.” His eyes want reason, something Dimitri isn't secure enough to give. Paul has him pushed up against the wall, cold metal at the hull of the ship, in a furrow where strong daylight pushes strange shadow on the long angles of his face.
“It's not,” Dimitri hisses.
Paul watches him shift, back jarring on the rivets in the metal; his stance is demure, stepping closer. “We're fine, you know? Stop being so tetchy.”
Dimitri presses his palms to either side of Paul's face, feeling the arc of his cheekbones beneath his fingers. “I'm sorry.”
Paul's jaw tenses, flexes with a broad smile, and he brings his lips to Dimitri's. “We'll just be careful, Deo. Like we are now.” Dimitri holds the kiss, quick, feels Paul as a succession of lithe limbs and open breath. “Do you remember Wales?” he asks, holding the back of Paul's neck, stroking down his spine, the weight of his skull heavy on their foreheads.
“There was enough mud to drown in,” Paul murmurs, with a tremour of laughter. “Training in the rain.” His eyes are closed, voice slow. He sounds lazy, and it feels warm, like for a moment they are stood in full sunlight, slanting down, encouraging the kind of relaxation that makes limbs feel weightless. Dimitri sighs.
“Are you going to promise something?” he asks, watching Paul thumb the belt loops of his trousers, impressing indifference. His eyes are languid; he cross-steps, comes to lean on the wall to Dimitri's left. His wrists flex, shrugging, narrow hip shifted out on a bent knee.
“Depends,” he says, his fingers reaching to straighten Dimitri's collar. He's at such an angle that sunlight slashes over his face, picking the bronze from his hair where he moves; it catches his eyes, green flicked down to the floor, the strong curve of his nose. He holds the edge of Dimitri's lapel between his fingers, like a cigarette, and then drops his hand; it hangs, limp, against his hip, all slight bones and muscle. The ship thrums beneath their feet.
“Don't get shot before me.”
Paul looks up at him, a clear gaze crystallized by surprise, and then he breaks into a bright smile. “I could say the same, you know.”
“We'll get shot together,” Dimitri jokes, squinting out through the lattice work to the ocean glinting. A beat, a breath, head tilting right. “You're just - I worry - ”
“No.” Paul cuts him off, sharp. “You don't get to say it, when I see you act on impulse all the time.” His fingers wrap Dimitri's wrist, right around, strong. His eyes have lost their amused edge. “I'm not kidding, Deo.”
Dimitri takes a breath. “Neither am I,” he says, splaying his hand in signal he wants it released. Paul lets go, steps back to the wall.
“Okay,” he says, low. “Good.” His figure slumps, spine slackening.
They are silent for a moment. The engine room keeps a steady beat beneath them, vents hissing. The entire ship buzzes, dips in a swell. “Afghanistan,” he murmurs, twisting his fingers like he can't quite believe it. “Scary place.”
“Terrifying,” Paul says absently, and then he looks over at Dimitri's expression; he registers the worry, and kisses him again, hard, knowing. “You've got guile, Levendis,” he says, taking the other man's hands, holding them in a fist between their two bodies. “Remember that.”)
+
III
The drive home from the grid is slow; Dimitri looks at her intermittently, between gear changes and stoplights, his eyes concerned. Dusk comes early, low and red, showing up shadow in his face, cheekbones high and hollow.
When they get out of central London, she notices the shaking in her hands. It wrenches her stomach, fingers pale in the streetlamps, curled into fists; Dimitri draws to a stop behind the brake lights of the queued cars, and stares at her. His eyes look dark in the dim light, hands tight on the steering wheel. Ruth looks at him, cursory, his face a portrait of something between empathy and frustration.
“Don't worry,” she says quietly, looking out the windscreen as traffic begins to edge forward again.
“I have to,” he says, car rolling further into the city. Ruth curls her fingers into the fabric of her skirt; the indicator ticks loudly in her ears. Dimitri turns down a side street, voice quiet, eyes carefully trained on the road. “I feel like I should,” he says.
_
(Tom Quinn derails. Runs into the ocean, gun in hand. Danny and Zoe take it in stride, but remain quietly imploding, together, sharing their doubtful glances - which, were - they happened before Tom went on the blink. Harry's warned her.
Everyone is cautious; Adam becomes the golden-boy tasked with pulling them all out of their stupor. He does well, where Carmen Joyce is concerned, but Danny clearly misses Tom. Zoe seems far off, sometimes indignant, maybe because of Adam's charm. Slowly, they adapt.
Ruth wonders if, in time, it will really be worth it, the patience. She also wonders if this is a worthwhile way of thinking (No).
They find Tom, as a homeless man; but he goes off the rails again, and Harry has no choice but to decommission him.
No-one has energy to take sides.)
(Zoe becomes Persephone, queen of the underworld. Retreats into it for her wrongdoing, comes out the other side, on another continent. Danny struggles with the loss.)
(Her sobs are a terrible sort of shuffling noise against the still air, above Harry's murmuring, ragged and - mundane, equalling grief - it hurts, hard, in her chest.
“Oh no.” Harry leaves her side, quietly - just - leaves. She unzips the body bag.
It's worse that Danny looks serene; later, Fiona will tell them how angry he was, how justified. Adam looks about ready to collapse from relief, holding Fiona so tight her own tension seems languid.
Ruth spares a glance at Harry; turns back to Danny and cries. She thinks of Zoe's reaction, who doesn't know, she needs to know, she needs - she loved him. It counts for something, in Ruth's mind. It counts for so much.)
She used to think this was the worst thing in the world, that could happen; because it was - friends. She didn't want to see the trauma. She thinks it cruel that it is something which has the nature to create bonds, and so easily breaks them. And then there is no time for it, no percolation, no suspended period; only moving on.
(There will be a time to grieve, Ruth.)
(Grief. What has become of that feeling?)
_
(The anger at Paul's death is substantiated; he gets shot first. There's blood, moats of it in the dust, pooling from his head; the flies find him quick, in the heat, and it's all Dimitri can do not to bend down and close his eyes against the glaring sun. It reflects, glassy, on their lenses. The green is dulled.
Dimitri wraps his fists, wishing for a gun; he smells the salt, the tang of blood lodging deep in his nose, settling.)
Later, years, shot in the arm as captain of a merchant vessel, he might count himself lucky. He might remember he's got guile. He has, after all, just killed a man, with the sharp ties that bind his wrists, and wonders how (when) it became so easy.
+
IV
She sometimes misses living in the house with its stained glass door; the one that Ros came through and forced her to disappear; the one Harry dropped her off at and didn't see her leave again; the one Angela Wells broke into, or where Malcolm posed as her brother and handed her choir music. The one that had been sold, moved on.
She'd fallen in love with its pokey kitchen (the last time she'd been in it, a man had stepped under a train and Harry had offered her tea for the shock); the stained glass reminded her of grand cathedrals, throwing coloured light along the stairs.
Dimitri stands awkward in her hallway, watches her thread the flat keys through her fingers; it is the only sound, for a moment, the soft jingle of metal, and then she registers his voice gently speaking. His hand is on hers, disengaging the keys from her palm.
“Go clean up, Ruth,” he tells her.
She returns to find him leant against the counter, head down, hands over his eyes. He seems startled when she comes in, straightening and folding his arms; she hovers in the doorway, watching him. “Sweet tea,” she murmurs, twisting her hands.
He smiles, gentle optimism, making her momentarily forget the dull ache behind her eyes. “Fixes everything,” he says softly, searching for the mugs. It feels like a vague sort of déjà-vu.
(Sweet tea, that's what you need. Teabags?)
(Top shelf, on the right).
It almost feels like normalcy.
+
V
(You're a born spook, Ruth.)
She doesn't know. He's too close, and she can't think, and when she does go to Angela, and kneels on the floor in a kind of penance, and tells her (lies) - tells her about Peter, Blackpool, (In love with me, always.) it feels terrible. Angela presses down on the trigger, and Ruth thinks, she truly thinks, that she might die, feeling the heaviness of a lie, the strange gratification of going through with it.
It feels outside her nature. Harry is proud.
(You broke her.)
(Maybe I broke me too.)
It becomes her turning point. It's what allows her to get on that boat, take the fall to exile. It's what drives her suspicion over a dead drop, and makes her go to that fruit stand to retrieve it; it's what makes her enter the man's flat not hours after he's thrown himself under a train, and find the note. It's what sets her up, and makes Harry desperate to take the blame for her - but she cannot let him be blind on her behalf.
(Regum Defende, whatever the cost - not for her, no; for her, anything.)
She tells Adam not to tell him. She threatens a woman to keep quiet, acting as Lady Macbeth, and sits with Zaf, waits through the cold hours of dawn. He promises her he'll smile, when he sees her again (an optimistic chance, it turns out.)
Adam tells Harry. Harry comes, with sorry eyes. Makes his own promises.
She takes the passports and runs, because as a spook, it is her only way. She has to; worse that he lets her.
_
Cyprus allows her forget, for two years - but cyclical as it is, there are things which come back; she still keeps passports, as precaution; she cannot fully let it go. She cannot commit to George, because there is something in her that knows, eventually, that permanence will be broken. At an indeterminate point. Sometime, and always the wait - much as she hates it; when one day it becomes worth it, she feels a relief, coiled in the tension: a relief that she can stop waiting.
George dies, and sitting across from Harry when he lets it happen only solidifies her knowing what he will do for her; she hates him (bastard, bastard, bastard), she screams, cries, grieves (is this the time, really? Is this what you promised me?), but she knows, that this is the length he will go.
It angers her, unimaginably.
_
“You will tell me when things are wrong, won't you Ruth?” George's eyes are soft with questioning, his broad palms warm against her face.
(I - I can't. Never. I still live by the rules that their law says I broke.)
She wants to, so desperately, then. She wants it, for Nico, for him, she wants the honesty. Because she - she - does she love them? Has it grown to that sort of difficulty?
George waits, his hands faltering, loosening against her jaw.
“Yes,” she says finally. Barely blinks for the lie. (Harry's face, in hers, corridor light shadowing the smile playing at his lips: Don't you feel proud you told the lie, don't you feel proud?)
She touches her hands to his shoulders. “Yes, I will tell you.” Makes her eyes mean it.
_
(Again, handing her those photos, Harry wants to take the blame. She says she'll deal with it; she stands in a phone box, and dials the scrawled numbers with disquiet. She avoids looking at the picture of Nico. Greek words come, delayed, over the line; she's quick in putting down the phone before she's able to speak, maybe regret it.)
+
VI
“Sleep, if you can.”
Dimitri becomes something entirely impulsive, then. Under the light of her hall he is shadowed, stooped, his eyes black; his concern is George's, the clenched fist at his side Harry's; the lilt in his voice is entirely his own, but the words are someone else's.
(Why won't you sleep, Ruthie?)
Hands at her waist in the dark, cradling her; the smell of ocean against his skin, tossed hands, open palms full of grievances, acceptance that felt warm and forgiving. His breath on her shoulder, or lips at her collarbone, matching the break of the tide. For a moment, he is another dimension; he is Peter, and the pier, and everything she told Angela Wells; he is George again, easy smiles and open arms, Greek vowels in her hair; he is Harry, cool gloved hands against her departing face, frigid water Thames, cold, cold, cold. He is Lucas, in her half-hysteria, whispering, clear eyes fast fading.
(There will be a time to grieve.)
She reaches up and touches Dimitri's cheek, by way of thanks. Her forehead leans on his; he blinks, edges forward, lets a breath escape his mouth. He is regret-fuelled and corporeal, his palms at her shoulders as though to push her away; she feels his fingers web against her shoulder-blades, and she tilts upwards.
They stand, move vaguely in a swaying pattern; her hands hold his jaw, edges tensed on the pads of her thumbs, mouth soft and still against hers.
He murmurs, and George's Greek words merge into his own.
“δεν.” (Don't.)
His eyes are closed, she can tell his eyelashes flicker, spine slack beneath her hands. For a moment, his mouth edges open, head dipping down in a graceful movement; she kisses him once, twice, three times on the mouth, hard, without apology.
She tastes salt on his lips, though she's sure she is the one crying; her hands splay on his neck, feel the taciturn of his breathing. His pulse is sure beneath his jaw.
He breathes in, slow. So slow.
Ready am I to go,
and my eagerness with sails full set awaits the wind.
Only another breath will I breathe in this still air,
only another loving look cast backward,
And then shall I come to you,
a boundless drop to a boundless ocean.
Khalil Gibran; The Prophet
Of what can I speak save of that which is even now moving your souls?
+
I
She feels lethargic, and used, and plain angry. The first she can blame on the drugs, but the others need weighing. Harry is silent, in the car ride back to Thames House. (No-one thinks to take her home; she is needed on the grid. She has just been kidnapped and used as leverage, and still she cannot be given a sliver of time.)
She twines her hands, tries looking out the window, but the world seems like a distraction from the strained tension in the vehicle. It feels unbalanced, wrong.
“He couldn't have killed me,” she says to Harry's stern profile.
“Don't be so sure.”
She offers up a smile, like an open hand. “Were you sure? When Tom was pointing a rifle in your face, were you sure he wouldn't deliberately misfire?”
“Tom was unhinged. Desperate.”
“And Lucas isn't? He's angry, Harry.”
“So was Tom.”
“So am I.”
Harry stares at her, hard. She twists the hem of her sweater. “I'm so - and I don't - ” she stumbles; suddenly wonders what it would have been like to actually talk to Lucas, before all this, when Harry was still a bearer of blame for them both. She tried with Tom; made the mistake too soon.
(On the king's head, let all the sorrows lie.)
She didn't understand, or didn't sympathize, then. Leaders weren't supposed to have feelings; in that conversation, all she'd had was a pair of scissors to stab into the wall, a map to put schematics on; it was nothing, worth nothing, and yet it felt so essential. Like it was worth their lives. Like the grid wasn't in lock-down. Like when the power came back on, she wouldn't be the most important person in the room.
A long, stretched silence. “What is this about, Ruth?” Harry asks, slow, unsure of his footing.
She looks out the window.
(What? Seven years and I can't answer that question?)
(Seven years and I can answer it in precise detail.)
There is a beat of time upon her arrival, a pause, like shame. Beth spares a quick glance, Dimitri's eyes trail concern, Tariq bolts from the forgery suite and pulls her into a hug. He is warm bones and shaken relief beneath her hands; his face is sharp against her shoulder.
_
She tries to imagine how it happened; if Harry saw, if it was silent, if there was apology, or - she - she imagines a car alarm, clear cut; her hand covers her mouth, choking.
Tariq is too tentative to stop her leaving. She snaps through the corridor, the foyer, pushing the doors wide. She stops, breathes, huddles against the steps. It's low evening, the sun losing its edge through cloud.
Beth and Dimitri round the corner, and as they draw closer, she sees the slope to their shoulders, heads angled down from the bone marrow sky. Beth moves past, but Dimitri falters, his stride long, hands in his pockets, neck tense.
He draws up close, a sudden warm entity against the dusk, dark, his breath a steady comfort. He stands passive, broad and demure. Her stomach churns against his voice saying her name. “Ruth.”
She presses him with her hands, his palms warm curling around her fingers. “I couldn't go to the roof, I - ”
His face cracks into a smile, raw. She turns her gaze to the mist beading his jacket, a fine embroidery along his shoulders. “It's okay,” he says. He dips his head to look at her; his grip tightens on her hands, thumbs over her knuckles.
“Where's Harry?” she asks.
“He's gone to see Malcolm.” Dimitri seems beautifully composed, considering. She touches the lapel of his jacket, slowly, reaching out and hooking a finger into the fabric.
She nods. “To tell him.” Nods again. “Oh god.” Her voice is pitched, caught in her throat. Her fingers twist into Dimitri's coat, leaning on him.
There's the sound of his heart (rapid, strong, reassuring), and his voice resonating low beneath his sternum. She feels him breathe, say he won't go anywhere; the words make her think of Danny.
+
II
“It's only a gesture, Ruth.”
They are stood in middle of a church, light streaming through the windows and giving the ancient walls a ragged luminousity; George is looking at her, eyes half-expectant, the silver glint of a ring between his fingers.
She doesn't think she wants this. She thinks she feels guilty.
She allows herself to imagine it, for a moment; simple dress, flowers, an unneeded complication. She hates that George smiles when she shakes her head, as though he is sure of her indecisive nature. “We - I can't.”
“You'll think about it,” he says gently. “We need you, Ruthie.”
(What 'you'? Not me.)
She takes the ring, puts it in his palm. She curls his fingers in, presses his hand with hers. “Not now. I can't now.”
A slight defeat seeps into George's eyes, and it takes him a moment to nod. (This is your life, now), she reminds herself. (This man, this good man and his child, this place. This is your life.)
(Or is that an ocean away?)
_
It's raining when he disembarks the ship. He slings the bag on his shoulder, revels, momentarily, in the feel of civilian clothing, of rain pounding against his head; he is still tan from the mid-east sun, still used to desert heat. He pulls his hood up against the wet and the gray and heads away from the docks.
Lucas North is tall, what could be called intimidating, with eyes the colour of sky. (Afghan, if Dimitri wants to be precise, but his teeth grate at the idea of the Helmand province.)
“So,” Dimitri says, coming to stand in front of him. “Is this how everyone's first day starts?”
Lucas gives a sort of defensive half-smile, eyes appraising. “We've never had ex-military before,” he says. “but then, we scouted you.”
“Pick on the civilians, usually?”
“They're the ones who apply.” Lucas shifts uncomfortably, leans on the car. The sound of rain hitting the metal roof is loud between them; Dimitri pretends not to notice the rigid way in which Lucas holds his shoulders against it. “Look, get in, I'm supposed to get you to Thames House before traffic builds up.”
Dimitri smirks, reaching past him to open the door. “Sorry the boat didn't manage to beat the rush,” he says, stooping to climb in the passenger seat.
_
Thames House lies large and foreboding across the river, copper roofs still shining even in dull sun. He hasn't realised how much he missed London, until now; the noise, the smell, the light. It seems faintly ridiculous, to miss the smell of a place, but it is so familiar that it almost feels like an ache in his chest.
“What's it like to be home?” Lucas asks, not taking his eyes from the slow-moving roads. They did hit traffic, after all. Dimitri straightens from where he's been slumped against the window, blinks away sleep.
(Home, home, how valuable it seems, savourable, like a foreign taste on his tongue.)
His eyes find Lucas' profile, the tattoo he can see under the sleeve of his jacket. “How was it for you?” he asks, watching the tendons in Lucas' wrist taut as his grip tightens on the steering wheel. He blinks some, unbalanced; Dimitri opens his mouth to apologise, but Lucas gives his half-smile again.
“They welcomed me with open arms.” There is an edge to his voice that tells Dimitri he's lying; a half-effort, veiled truth. He glances from the road, and his eyes are clear.
They cross Lambeth Bridge. He stops looking.
_
Paul is like a cat, stealthy; he's good on reconnaissance, an able seaman. He's lethal, and dazzling, with enough of a foolhardy streak to be worry-some. It makes him dangerous. It makes him endearing.
_
“Swim, Levendis!”
The boat feels far, far, far, a tiny thing in an open expanse of water. Ocean water bites, numbs, makes him gasp for breath at the shock of it. The voice shouts again, warped by the water clasping at his ears; he dives, stinging at his eyes, swims several metres, comes up for breath.
“Hurry it up!”
He thinks of his childhood need of water, embracing the England that loved the rain. How his parents hated it, his mother afraid for his muddied clothes, as though the damp would never dry from his hair, the mud staying in the lines of his hands, cracking, caked.
His water-logged heart had been content with the river, until he'd discovered the sea. His father, first, described it; fishing villages, and then sailboats, military tankers, cargo ships. The slice of it through his hands, the clarity of it in sun. The power of waves, and their ability to lull. It was in his blood, he'd known. Always there. Always willing to ebb in and out, like the tides.
He dives again, tasting thick salt in his mouth. Salinity tastes sick, oxygen stale in his lungs; he swims until he can't see the bottom anymore, and then climbs to the surface.
He used to sink, daring himself, feeling the cold seep in. He'd liked the silver of air bubbles, against the blackening depths, the pressure in his ears, the burn for oxygen; the first time he'd realised his body had a natural instinct to fight, and that a kick up would take him to the land, and the air, again.
His head breaks the waves, and the boat is there, tipping in the swells. Men squint from on board, and he reaches a hand out, fingers splayed, to theirs.
The water runs down his wrist, in thin droplets, until a teammate hauls him ashore. He rakes air into his lungs; leans against the edge to still his adrenaline-filled limbs.
One of the men stares, open. Dimitri wishes he didn't have Paul's eyes.
_
(“Afghanistan? We've been in this a few months.” Paul's fingers trace his lips, feeling the words. His thumb presses Dimitri's mouth, to stop him speaking.
“They think we're ready; it's fine.” His eyes want reason, something Dimitri isn't secure enough to give. Paul has him pushed up against the wall, cold metal at the hull of the ship, in a furrow where strong daylight pushes strange shadow on the long angles of his face.
“It's not,” Dimitri hisses.
Paul watches him shift, back jarring on the rivets in the metal; his stance is demure, stepping closer. “We're fine, you know? Stop being so tetchy.”
Dimitri presses his palms to either side of Paul's face, feeling the arc of his cheekbones beneath his fingers. “I'm sorry.”
Paul's jaw tenses, flexes with a broad smile, and he brings his lips to Dimitri's. “We'll just be careful, Deo. Like we are now.” Dimitri holds the kiss, quick, feels Paul as a succession of lithe limbs and open breath. “Do you remember Wales?” he asks, holding the back of Paul's neck, stroking down his spine, the weight of his skull heavy on their foreheads.
“There was enough mud to drown in,” Paul murmurs, with a tremour of laughter. “Training in the rain.” His eyes are closed, voice slow. He sounds lazy, and it feels warm, like for a moment they are stood in full sunlight, slanting down, encouraging the kind of relaxation that makes limbs feel weightless. Dimitri sighs.
“Are you going to promise something?” he asks, watching Paul thumb the belt loops of his trousers, impressing indifference. His eyes are languid; he cross-steps, comes to lean on the wall to Dimitri's left. His wrists flex, shrugging, narrow hip shifted out on a bent knee.
“Depends,” he says, his fingers reaching to straighten Dimitri's collar. He's at such an angle that sunlight slashes over his face, picking the bronze from his hair where he moves; it catches his eyes, green flicked down to the floor, the strong curve of his nose. He holds the edge of Dimitri's lapel between his fingers, like a cigarette, and then drops his hand; it hangs, limp, against his hip, all slight bones and muscle. The ship thrums beneath their feet.
“Don't get shot before me.”
Paul looks up at him, a clear gaze crystallized by surprise, and then he breaks into a bright smile. “I could say the same, you know.”
“We'll get shot together,” Dimitri jokes, squinting out through the lattice work to the ocean glinting. A beat, a breath, head tilting right. “You're just - I worry - ”
“No.” Paul cuts him off, sharp. “You don't get to say it, when I see you act on impulse all the time.” His fingers wrap Dimitri's wrist, right around, strong. His eyes have lost their amused edge. “I'm not kidding, Deo.”
Dimitri takes a breath. “Neither am I,” he says, splaying his hand in signal he wants it released. Paul lets go, steps back to the wall.
“Okay,” he says, low. “Good.” His figure slumps, spine slackening.
They are silent for a moment. The engine room keeps a steady beat beneath them, vents hissing. The entire ship buzzes, dips in a swell. “Afghanistan,” he murmurs, twisting his fingers like he can't quite believe it. “Scary place.”
“Terrifying,” Paul says absently, and then he looks over at Dimitri's expression; he registers the worry, and kisses him again, hard, knowing. “You've got guile, Levendis,” he says, taking the other man's hands, holding them in a fist between their two bodies. “Remember that.”)
+
III
The drive home from the grid is slow; Dimitri looks at her intermittently, between gear changes and stoplights, his eyes concerned. Dusk comes early, low and red, showing up shadow in his face, cheekbones high and hollow.
When they get out of central London, she notices the shaking in her hands. It wrenches her stomach, fingers pale in the streetlamps, curled into fists; Dimitri draws to a stop behind the brake lights of the queued cars, and stares at her. His eyes look dark in the dim light, hands tight on the steering wheel. Ruth looks at him, cursory, his face a portrait of something between empathy and frustration.
“Don't worry,” she says quietly, looking out the windscreen as traffic begins to edge forward again.
“I have to,” he says, car rolling further into the city. Ruth curls her fingers into the fabric of her skirt; the indicator ticks loudly in her ears. Dimitri turns down a side street, voice quiet, eyes carefully trained on the road. “I feel like I should,” he says.
_
(Tom Quinn derails. Runs into the ocean, gun in hand. Danny and Zoe take it in stride, but remain quietly imploding, together, sharing their doubtful glances - which, were - they happened before Tom went on the blink. Harry's warned her.
Everyone is cautious; Adam becomes the golden-boy tasked with pulling them all out of their stupor. He does well, where Carmen Joyce is concerned, but Danny clearly misses Tom. Zoe seems far off, sometimes indignant, maybe because of Adam's charm. Slowly, they adapt.
Ruth wonders if, in time, it will really be worth it, the patience. She also wonders if this is a worthwhile way of thinking (No).
They find Tom, as a homeless man; but he goes off the rails again, and Harry has no choice but to decommission him.
No-one has energy to take sides.)
(Zoe becomes Persephone, queen of the underworld. Retreats into it for her wrongdoing, comes out the other side, on another continent. Danny struggles with the loss.)
(Her sobs are a terrible sort of shuffling noise against the still air, above Harry's murmuring, ragged and - mundane, equalling grief - it hurts, hard, in her chest.
“Oh no.” Harry leaves her side, quietly - just - leaves. She unzips the body bag.
It's worse that Danny looks serene; later, Fiona will tell them how angry he was, how justified. Adam looks about ready to collapse from relief, holding Fiona so tight her own tension seems languid.
Ruth spares a glance at Harry; turns back to Danny and cries. She thinks of Zoe's reaction, who doesn't know, she needs to know, she needs - she loved him. It counts for something, in Ruth's mind. It counts for so much.)
She used to think this was the worst thing in the world, that could happen; because it was - friends. She didn't want to see the trauma. She thinks it cruel that it is something which has the nature to create bonds, and so easily breaks them. And then there is no time for it, no percolation, no suspended period; only moving on.
(There will be a time to grieve, Ruth.)
(Grief. What has become of that feeling?)
_
(The anger at Paul's death is substantiated; he gets shot first. There's blood, moats of it in the dust, pooling from his head; the flies find him quick, in the heat, and it's all Dimitri can do not to bend down and close his eyes against the glaring sun. It reflects, glassy, on their lenses. The green is dulled.
Dimitri wraps his fists, wishing for a gun; he smells the salt, the tang of blood lodging deep in his nose, settling.)
Later, years, shot in the arm as captain of a merchant vessel, he might count himself lucky. He might remember he's got guile. He has, after all, just killed a man, with the sharp ties that bind his wrists, and wonders how (when) it became so easy.
+
IV
She sometimes misses living in the house with its stained glass door; the one that Ros came through and forced her to disappear; the one Harry dropped her off at and didn't see her leave again; the one Angela Wells broke into, or where Malcolm posed as her brother and handed her choir music. The one that had been sold, moved on.
She'd fallen in love with its pokey kitchen (the last time she'd been in it, a man had stepped under a train and Harry had offered her tea for the shock); the stained glass reminded her of grand cathedrals, throwing coloured light along the stairs.
Dimitri stands awkward in her hallway, watches her thread the flat keys through her fingers; it is the only sound, for a moment, the soft jingle of metal, and then she registers his voice gently speaking. His hand is on hers, disengaging the keys from her palm.
“Go clean up, Ruth,” he tells her.
She returns to find him leant against the counter, head down, hands over his eyes. He seems startled when she comes in, straightening and folding his arms; she hovers in the doorway, watching him. “Sweet tea,” she murmurs, twisting her hands.
He smiles, gentle optimism, making her momentarily forget the dull ache behind her eyes. “Fixes everything,” he says softly, searching for the mugs. It feels like a vague sort of déjà-vu.
(Sweet tea, that's what you need. Teabags?)
(Top shelf, on the right).
It almost feels like normalcy.
+
V
(You're a born spook, Ruth.)
She doesn't know. He's too close, and she can't think, and when she does go to Angela, and kneels on the floor in a kind of penance, and tells her (lies) - tells her about Peter, Blackpool, (In love with me, always.) it feels terrible. Angela presses down on the trigger, and Ruth thinks, she truly thinks, that she might die, feeling the heaviness of a lie, the strange gratification of going through with it.
It feels outside her nature. Harry is proud.
(You broke her.)
(Maybe I broke me too.)
It becomes her turning point. It's what allows her to get on that boat, take the fall to exile. It's what drives her suspicion over a dead drop, and makes her go to that fruit stand to retrieve it; it's what makes her enter the man's flat not hours after he's thrown himself under a train, and find the note. It's what sets her up, and makes Harry desperate to take the blame for her - but she cannot let him be blind on her behalf.
(Regum Defende, whatever the cost - not for her, no; for her, anything.)
She tells Adam not to tell him. She threatens a woman to keep quiet, acting as Lady Macbeth, and sits with Zaf, waits through the cold hours of dawn. He promises her he'll smile, when he sees her again (an optimistic chance, it turns out.)
Adam tells Harry. Harry comes, with sorry eyes. Makes his own promises.
She takes the passports and runs, because as a spook, it is her only way. She has to; worse that he lets her.
_
Cyprus allows her forget, for two years - but cyclical as it is, there are things which come back; she still keeps passports, as precaution; she cannot fully let it go. She cannot commit to George, because there is something in her that knows, eventually, that permanence will be broken. At an indeterminate point. Sometime, and always the wait - much as she hates it; when one day it becomes worth it, she feels a relief, coiled in the tension: a relief that she can stop waiting.
George dies, and sitting across from Harry when he lets it happen only solidifies her knowing what he will do for her; she hates him (bastard, bastard, bastard), she screams, cries, grieves (is this the time, really? Is this what you promised me?), but she knows, that this is the length he will go.
It angers her, unimaginably.
_
“You will tell me when things are wrong, won't you Ruth?” George's eyes are soft with questioning, his broad palms warm against her face.
(I - I can't. Never. I still live by the rules that their law says I broke.)
She wants to, so desperately, then. She wants it, for Nico, for him, she wants the honesty. Because she - she - does she love them? Has it grown to that sort of difficulty?
George waits, his hands faltering, loosening against her jaw.
“Yes,” she says finally. Barely blinks for the lie. (Harry's face, in hers, corridor light shadowing the smile playing at his lips: Don't you feel proud you told the lie, don't you feel proud?)
She touches her hands to his shoulders. “Yes, I will tell you.” Makes her eyes mean it.
_
(Again, handing her those photos, Harry wants to take the blame. She says she'll deal with it; she stands in a phone box, and dials the scrawled numbers with disquiet. She avoids looking at the picture of Nico. Greek words come, delayed, over the line; she's quick in putting down the phone before she's able to speak, maybe regret it.)
+
VI
“Sleep, if you can.”
Dimitri becomes something entirely impulsive, then. Under the light of her hall he is shadowed, stooped, his eyes black; his concern is George's, the clenched fist at his side Harry's; the lilt in his voice is entirely his own, but the words are someone else's.
(Why won't you sleep, Ruthie?)
Hands at her waist in the dark, cradling her; the smell of ocean against his skin, tossed hands, open palms full of grievances, acceptance that felt warm and forgiving. His breath on her shoulder, or lips at her collarbone, matching the break of the tide. For a moment, he is another dimension; he is Peter, and the pier, and everything she told Angela Wells; he is George again, easy smiles and open arms, Greek vowels in her hair; he is Harry, cool gloved hands against her departing face, frigid water Thames, cold, cold, cold. He is Lucas, in her half-hysteria, whispering, clear eyes fast fading.
(There will be a time to grieve.)
She reaches up and touches Dimitri's cheek, by way of thanks. Her forehead leans on his; he blinks, edges forward, lets a breath escape his mouth. He is regret-fuelled and corporeal, his palms at her shoulders as though to push her away; she feels his fingers web against her shoulder-blades, and she tilts upwards.
They stand, move vaguely in a swaying pattern; her hands hold his jaw, edges tensed on the pads of her thumbs, mouth soft and still against hers.
He murmurs, and George's Greek words merge into his own.
“δεν.” (Don't.)
His eyes are closed, she can tell his eyelashes flicker, spine slack beneath her hands. For a moment, his mouth edges open, head dipping down in a graceful movement; she kisses him once, twice, three times on the mouth, hard, without apology.
She tastes salt on his lips, though she's sure she is the one crying; her hands splay on his neck, feel the taciturn of his breathing. His pulse is sure beneath his jaw.
He breathes in, slow. So slow.
Ready am I to go,
and my eagerness with sails full set awaits the wind.
Only another breath will I breathe in this still air,
only another loving look cast backward,
And then shall I come to you,
a boundless drop to a boundless ocean.
Khalil Gibran; The Prophet