19 June 2012, late evening
Harry's house, London

The car pulled up outside his door and Harry got out wearily with a brief 'Good night' to his driver. The young man watched him walk off with concern. He couldn't help but wonder what Sir Harry did with himself in the evenings, especially after Miss Evershed's death. Not that he'd had a particularly lively social life before, but at least there had always been the promise of one. Now, though, that was all lost. As was a certain spark from Sir Harry who obviously still mourned her deeply. Before, he would sometimes make a caustic or funny comment about something they passed in the street, or about a newspaper headline. He'd occasionally enquire about his drivers' families, and once he even gave the young man a present for his little girl. But not any more. Now, it seemed, all Sir Harry's energy went into self-control, and he seldom showed any emotion. He was a man in emotional lock-down. The young man sighed, put the car into gear and drove away, back to his own life that seemed so much fuller in comparison.

Harry closed his front door behind him with relief. Ever since Ruth's death his house had become a refuge – the only place where he didn't feel under constant scrutiny from well-meaning colleagues. He put down his keys and for the first time that day allowed his thoughts free rein. Three months. Ruth had been dead for three months. He had read somewhere that it took the average person two years to truly get over the death of a loved one. So, one year and nine months to go. He wondered bleakly whether the crushing weight in his chest would be with him for all that time. He wasn't sure he could survive that. Her words came back to him, unbidden: Can't go on, must go on. He grunted irritably and took off his coat. This wasn't helping; he needed to stop thinking about her. It was as he hung up the garment that he became aware that something was different.

There was a subtle change in the density of the molecules in the air, a trace of an unknown smell. Someone was in his house. He hung up his coat slowly, weighing the different options available to him. Leave again quietly, or confront them. That pretty much seemed the only choices. But if someone were here to kill him, he reasoned, they would have shot him the moment he walked through the door. Might as well hear what they want, he decided and strolled into the living area and headed straight for the drinks tray. He poured himself a generous measure, all the time feeling the prickle of the gaze of the intruder between his shoulder blades. Eventually he turned around to find, of all people, Sasha Gavrik once again sitting at his dining table. The man who had stabbed Ruth was sitting in his house and a hot spear of anger momentarily blinded him. It took all his self-control not to let his feelings show, and Harry watched the boy without any flicker of outward emotion as he took a large sip of the Scotch.
"Déjà vu," he commented, to no-one in particular. Except for the gun, he noticed. This time Sasha did not have a gun in his hand.
"Hello, Harry," the Russian said, observing the older man warily as he made his way over and sat opposite him at the table, cognisant of the fury and desolation that had filled those brown eyes the last time he'd looked into them.
"The agreement was that you and Ilya were never to come near me again," Harry said tonelessly. "I told you that if you did, I will kill you."
The matter of fact nature of the statement made it all the more chilling, and Sasha had no doubt that Harry meant it.
He gave a pained smile. "If you did, you would do me a favour. It would be a relief from this torment I have to live with."
Harry's eyes darkened. "I don't give a damn about your torment." He tossed back the rest of the Scotch and looked at Sasha mockingly. "You're in the wrong business if you can't cope with a few deaths."
The callousness of the comment shocked Sasha; made him wonder at the damage the events of that day had done to the man opposite him. He nodded slowly. "I actually agree with you. That's why I no longer work for the FSB. I am not willing to pay the price it asks."
Harry got up and refilled his glass before he sat back down. He didn't offer Sasha any. "That must have disappointed your father," he remarked coldly, and Sasha was reminded that this man had for many years believed that Elena's child was his son. He pushed the thought away and said flatly, "I don't have a father."

Harry's eyes lifted to Sasha then. He couldn't help but feel a flash of kinship, of genuine compassion for Ilya Gavrik – he knew from bitter personal experience the pain of being disowned by one's children. It was something he didn't wish on the man who for so many years he had regarded as a sworn enemy. But before he could dwell on these thoughts, Sasha spoke again.
"I never meant to kill Ruth, Harry-"
The gun being cocked echoed loudly through the sudden silence.
Sasha had no idea where it had come from, but suddenly he found himself staring down the round black hole of a barrel. It was aimed at him unerringly, and he instinctively lifted his hands into the air.
"I'm not interested in your excuses, boy. Get out now," Harry said with deadly intent.
Sasha swallowed hard; the conviction in the eyes behind the gun left him in no doubt that he was on borrowed time.
"All right, I'll go. But before I do, I have something to tell you – something that I know will be of great interest to you."
Harry's finger tightened momentarily on the trigger and the blood drained from Sasha's face. Then Harry took a breath and removed his finger from the trigger. Perhaps it was the naked fear in the young man's expression that swayed him, or perhaps it was his natural curiosity about what Sasha had to say. He didn't particularly care what his motivation was for giving the reprieve.
"Spit it out, then." The gun remained on Sasha unwaveringly.

Sasha cleared his throat nervously. "Just after I took Jim Coaver's laptop from R-, from her, and found out that you were supposedly my father, I was visited by a man. An Englishman. He said he was a former colleague of yours."
Harry tilted his head. "Name?"
Sasha smiled cynically. "He didn't give one, but he said that you had killed his brother many years ago, and that it was payback time."
Harry's interest was now well and truly piqued, despite himself. "What did he want with you?"
Sasha hesitated before he said, "He knew about my mother's involvement with Mikhail Levrov." The Russian shook his head and looked at Harry with a hint of confusion. "He knew everything, Harry."
Harry frowned. "Did he say anything about you being my son, or not as the case may be?"
"…He said my father was a murderer, a bad man. I simply assumed he meant you," Sasha responded candidly, and Harry blinked, surprised by the stab of hurt the words caused.
Sasha continued, "In hindsight, he could also have referred to Ilya."
Unwilling to get further involved in the similarities between himself and Ilya, Harry steered Sasha back to the subject at hand. "What else did this man say?"
"He threatened to expose my mother's activities. He said she would be tried for treason and executed, unless I help him."
"Help him do what, Sasha?"
"He…gave me a syringe. I was to inject you with whatever was in there. You would appear to die, and he would kidnap your 'body' from the morgue and somehow revive you again." Sasha looked at him. "I believed him because I've seen it done."
"So have I," Harry stated, thinking back to Ros.

They sat in silence as Harry processed the information.
"Why didn't you?" he asked eventually.
It took Sasha a moment to understand what Harry was asking. "I was going to, after my-, after Ilya killed my mother. But then…"
"Ruth got in the way," Harry completed for him, his voice hoarse. "So you stabbed her instead."
"I never meant to hurt her!" Sasha's voice was anguished, pleading, but Harry looked away, unwilling to grant the young man absolution quite so cheaply.
Sasha reached across the table with his hands, ignoring the way the gun lifted fractionally to aim at his forehead. "But that's what I'm trying to tell you, Harry. I had the syringe hidden behind that shard of glass, and when she walked into it…"
He watched Harry, who seemed to be struggling with the message the Russian was trying to convey.
"But you did stab her," Harry countered, remembering the vivid red of her blood on his hand.
"Yes, but I'm convinced it couldn't have been a fatal wound. Anatomically it just isn't possible."
Harry smiled bitterly. "Or maybe that's what you want to believe, to assuage your guilt."
Sasha closed his eyes against the pain in Harry's face. He once again lived through that split-second, when everything happened so fast. His surprise that the woman would step in front of Harry, would want to protect such a man. His almost instinctive lunge with the shard and the syringe, his thumb pressing on the plunger. He shook his head and said wearily, "Maybe. But I did inject her." He looked at Harry unwaveringly. "I am one hundred percent sure of that."

Deadly, oppressing silence reigned after Sasha's declaration. He watched Harry carefully, but the face betrayed nothing. The eyes, though… Behind those eyes a tempest raged. Sasha eyed the gun nervously, but it remained rock-steady.
"What are you saying?" Harry asked after an eternity.
"I'm saying that she could be alive, Harry. That's what I came here to tell you."
Easy, Harry reminded himself savagely. You have no reason to trust this boy. He blames you for the death of his mother.
"Even if you're telling the truth, which I'm not convinced of, the syringe would have held enough for a person of my size. The dosage would have killed her anyway."
"…But I did not inject the full dose into her."
"How convenient," Harry snapped, visibly tightening his grip on the gun. It's too good to be true, his rational side told him, valiantly fighting down the part of him that so desperately wanted to believe every word.
Sasha held out his palms placatingly. "I'm going to take something out of my pocket."
He waited until Harry nodded before he carefully reached into his pocket and removed a plastic bag, which he put down on the table between them. Inside was a syringe, half filled with a colourless liquid. And a shard of glass, its tip covered in old blood.

Harry stared at it, unable to comprehend what was happening. Tears sprung to his eyes unbidden and he blinked it away, unwilling to give Sasha the satisfaction of seeing him break down.
"This is a trick," he forced out through tight lips. He lifted the gun slightly. "I think this is your revenge for your mother's death. Why else would you wait three months to tell me this?"
Sasha said calmly, "So shoot me, and then go and do your tests on these." He gestured at the bag and its contents. "Ruth's DNA should be all over the shard." He paused. "And in the tip of the needle."
The fatalism in his voice made Harry hesitate. He studied the boy carefully, but could find no trace that he was lying. But he was Elena's son, after all, and Ilya's. With those genes he should be able to lie beautifully. And yet…
"Why now, Sasha?" Harry asked, his confusion evident.
Sasha closed his eyes and smiled, and for a moment he was beautiful, and Harry was reminded how easily this boy could have been his.
"Because it took me this long to accept what my mother was. And to identify the man who had approached me."
He looked at Harry squarely. "His name is Johnny Marks, and he's somewhere in South America."
Sasha got up, ignoring the gun, or perhaps simply not caring anymore. He stood and looked down at the older man with unhidden compassion. "Goodbye Harry. You won't ever see me again. But I hope that you find her. I hope that with all my heart."
Without another word he walked out of the room and seconds later the front door closed softly behind him, and only then did Harry finally let the gun slip out of his fingers.

tbc