From S10, but with some differences! Harry has been extradited to the US. Ruth is still working for Towers. Both lost and serving time.

He rubbed his hand across his chin and scratched the beard that was now well established. It was a gesture with no conscious though behind it. Indeed his thoughts, the only free thing remaining to him, were already flying high across an ocean.

He liked to think of her in the house by the sea, though he knew little of it.

He liked to imagine the eclectic, haphazard charm that would have moved in with her.

He liked to see her sitting in the sunshine, happy, reading a book, her fingers fretting at the edge of her skirt.

His own fingers thoughtlessly ran up his face to his eyes and rubbed wearily at them and as they finally fell away the sight of his reality faced him once more.

The bars he was familiar with but the figure on the other side of them was not. There was a cold, hardness in his face, an impassivity that Harry recognised. He knew what it meant ... more questions ... more pain.

Still his thoughts were free and she would help him survive it. Not for the first time.

He considered that at some point his hosts would get bored, or lucky. That he would have served his purpose. They would turn to the next threat and he would be disregarded and forgotten. Left to rot. He probably deserved it.

But at least he hoped she was happy. Alive, happy and valued.

With a life and a home.

The sunshine was warm, not hot; pleasant, not uncomfortable.

She could hear the sound of distant waves shattering on the shale as she held the book in her hand, the wall of the house behind her back. The hem of her skirt was folded through her fingers, as they wound and picked and restlessly fidgeted, the only movement in her still, tranquil garden.

She didn't turn the page, she hadn't for the last hour.

Though her eyes rested upon it, her thoughts were elsewhere… an ocean away.

She had tried to get word to him, to contact him, even with diplomatic influence and the Home Secretary behind her she had failed. He had disappeared into an abyss of disinformation, lost as agency factions fought to get their hands on him, eager for information, vengeance, payback.

A spirit of Atlanticism there was not.

She missed him.

She had never had so much time to herself, so much time to build a home, so much time just to live.

And yet she would swap it all to spend just five more minutes with him.

More to come, if you would like...?