Author's Note: I still do not own anyone or anything in the Spooks world. They are the property of Kudos and the BBC.

This was written for the Songfic Challenge posted at Sakura's forum 'Ideas for RH Fics?'. This is both my first challenge fic and my first songfic and it is in accordance with the following challenge guidelines:

1) It has to be happy (by the end or whatever it's your choice)

2) You have to somehow incorporate lyrics from the song "Strange and Beautiful" by Aqualung.

3) The starting line has to be "She was annoying when he first met her..."

4) It has to be Ruth/Harry!

The title of this piece is taken from the Chambers Brothers' song of the same name.

Assignment: Join the 'Bring Back Ruth' campaign! Details - courtesy of Harrysgirl22 - can be found in the forum 'Best In Show' under the topic 'Postcards'.

Debriefing Protocols: Read, enjoy, review.

Spooks

Time Has Come

By

Laurie

She was annoying when he first met her...

No, annoying was too strong a word. And his reaction to her had not been her fault, he admitted gruffly to himself.

She had been competent - a desirable attribute in an intelligence analyst.

But Harry had become accustomed to far more than mere competence. He had become used to someone who knew exactly what obscure information he needed long before he did and would have it ready and waiting. Who could lay her hands on any document in the known universe. Probably in a few unknown ones, too. She could undoubtedly have located the Holy Grail, given a spare half-hour.

And now her replacement was a statistic that had been moved from the active agents list to the deceased agents list. Yet another file that he signed and closed for the last time. He could barely remember what the girl looked like. Harry picked up the photograph, glanced at it and then placed it back in the file, the buff cover falling into place and blotting from sight the image of the luckless Sally Bernard.

There had been nothing wrong with her. But there had been nothing right with her, either. Sally had done her job and he had tried to refrain from snapping at her when she did not perform the miracles he had become accustomed to. When her features did not conform to the ones that belonged to the woman who should be sitting at that particular desk.

From the start, everything about her had irked him, from her exasperation when he pushed her to work faster to the trainers she wore for cycling.

It was not her fault that she wasn't Ruth, but he had decided to blame her for it anyway.

Poor girl.

He was sorry that she was dead, of course he was. Not just dead - murdered. By a traitor who had tried to frame her for his own deceptions.

Yes, poor girl. She never had a prayer.

And yet...

It was at that point that the guilt kicked in.

That day had been the first time he had been glad Ruth was gone.

She would have been doing the work Sally had, and she would have found whatever it was that had scared Neil enough to commit a brutal murder, and...

Maybe it would not have come to that. Sally had been bright, but Ruth... At her first suspicion she would have come straight to him. But, maybe, that wouldn't have been soon enough.

It was a pointless speculation and he knew it. But he could not stop the feeling of relief. Rather Sally than her. And, so, the guilt.

Harry shook himself mentally and applied himself to the most urgent of the day's electronic communications. It was some moments before he realised that he was absent-mindedly tapping out a tune on his desk. It was something that had been playing on whatever ghastly radio station it was that Mike - his security officer and regular driver - insisted on listening to in the car. Harry had been absorbed in an Eyes Only document at the time, but the song had penetrated to his subconscious.

You'll fall asleep and... I'll enchant you? No. You'll fall asleep and I'll put a spell on you? That sounded right. The waiting is all you can do...

The fact that he was even trying to remember the lyrics was infuriating. Harry threw his pen across the room.

There was a tap at the door to which his only reply was an irritable, 'What?' that would have deterred lesser men. Zaf ambled across to his desk, waving a bunch of files. 'Jo just finished these off - I'm playing messenger for her.'

Jo was out of the cast but her ankle was still giving her grief. She should have been at home, but, as she had pointed out, she could only take so much of looking at Zaf's collection of vintage Guinness posters. She was desk bound until given a clean bill of health, but even hobbling across the Grid to Harry's office was a painful operation. Zaf, playing self-appointed guardian angel, had evidently decided to take pity on her.

Harry made a noncommittal noise and the files were duly placed on his desk. With practised sleight of hand, Zaf pulled a scrap of white from his pocket and put it on top of the files. 'I was asked to pass this on.'

A neatly folded piece of paper, apparently torn out of a notebook. A method of communication beloved of teenagers everywhere, Harry thought. 'What is it?'

Zaf shrugged slightly, one of his quizzical smiles forming at the corners of his mouth. 'I don't know what it says - I promised not to read it.'

He was already at the door before Harry, gingerly, picked the paper up by a corner and started to unfold it. Zaf picked up the file that was closest to hand and, seating himself at his station, pretended to read it. He peered over the top, keen dark eyes fixed on the man in the office. Harry hadn't moved. Zaf began to feel impatient. How long did it take someone to read one side of A5 paper? It wasn't even as if it was a whole side - only a few lines. Then again, it had taken her long enough to write it. Almost as long as it was taking Harry to read the damn thing.

And then he saw it. The softening of that taciturn face.

Jo, looking up, noticed that her flatmate was grinning idiotically to himself. 'What are you so happy about?'

'Hmm?'

She leant forward on her elbows. 'Go on, tell me - I could do with hearing something cheerful.'

Zaf shrugged slightly. 'I... I think I'm just having a good day.'

Zaf hesitated outside the café for approximately fifteen seconds before going in. It was so cold that condensation had formed a near impenetrable fog on the windows, but from what he could see it was a cheerful, welcoming place. A blast of warm air greeted him as he pushed the door open. He ordered a large cafe latte and smiled at the young woman working the machine, who dimpled at his attention. He decided against trying a day-old muffin and took himself and his coffee across to an occupied corner table; there were some free tables, but Zaf was a convivial soul and so he stood in front of the woman currently immersed in a book, one hand already grasping the chair opposite hers.

He put the cup down and said simultaneously, 'Mind if I share your table?'

She started, looked up; and when recognition came her hands gripped her book so tightly the spine threatened to break. 'Wha- You-'

Zaf grinned. 'I'll take that as a yes.'

He sat down and Ruth recovered enough of herself to murmur, 'You can't. Zaf, you can't...'

'Of course I can,' he said smoothly. 'It's easy: you just seat yourself in a chair and then repeatedly raise a cup to your lips, drinking what's inside. And you wouldn't condemn me to drinking alone, would you? It's a dangerous habit to start, apparently.'

She stared down at her hands, knuckles white under the strength of her grasp; she prised her fingers loose and looked up at him again. 'Well, I ... I wouldn't want to be responsible for that.'

They sat in silence for a while.

Her hair fell loose around her face and the surprise of this unexpected meeting had brought a flush of colour to her cheeks.

'Good book?' he enquired easily.

'It's all right. It-it's good to see you, Zaf. Really.'

His eyes wandered over her face. 'It's good to see you, too. You've been all right?'

'Oh...' She sighed. 'Yes, it's been...' Ruth licked her lips. Zaf had always been very easy to talk to, but there were so many barriers now. She shook the hair out of her eyes. 'I've been fine. I-is everyone still... I'm sorry, I shouldn't ask.'

Zaf smiled. 'Everyone still is,' he replied. 'Don't worry.'

There was no point in telling her about the losses of people she had never known. None of that seemed to matter very much at the moment, even to Zaf. He was surprised at how glad he was to see her. She was fidgeting now, hands twisting the paper napkin to shreds; he already knew the question she was building herself up to ask.

'How is...' Her words died away, but the urgency behind them lingered in the air like smoke. Zaf leaned back in his chair.

'If the pool of intelligence analysts were Tokyo, he'd be Godzilla. Chewing them up and spitting them out. I think they're planning on refusing to send any more until he promises to behave like a reasonable human being for at least twenty-four hours.'

Ruth choked on her coffee, her look half-amused, half-chiding. But behind her eyes, at all times, that look of longing.

It was so spectacularly unfair, he thought. Up until the last second, right up to the point when they had, finally, had to admit defeat, Zaf had believed that Harry would be able to pull off some miracle and save her. But this time the labyrinthine conspiracy had been too much to dismantle entirely, even for him. Either Ruth or Harry - an impossible choice that Ruth had finally made.

Afterwards, Zaf had expected their boss to blame himself and Adam for allowing her to go through with it. If Harry had ever thought it he had certainly never shown it. Harry didn't blame either of them, Zaf realised. He blamed them himself. But no matter how many times he played it over in his head he still couldn't find a solution that did not involve imprisonment for one or the other.

Maybe one day he'd work it out.

Maybe they could get Harry to torture a full confession out of Oliver Mace. Everyone would enjoy that. Except Mace, obviously.

Zaf patted his pockets.

'What are you looking for?'

'Paper; do you have any?'

Ruth heaved her bag onto the table and Zaf's dark eyes sparkled with amusement - some things never changed and Ruth Evershed carrying half her life around with her at all times was one of them. She was extremely good at organising other people - and extremely bad at organising herself. A newspaper, a hairbrush, half a chocolate bar, another book... She finally located a ring-bound notepad and handed it to him.

'Pen?'

Eyeliner, a lipstick - apparently she didn't own a make-up bag - a handful of receipts, her phone... 'Pen,' she said triumphantly.

He waited until she had poured her belongings back into her bag and then pushed the notebook and pen across the table towards her. 'Write.'

Ruth stared at him. 'What am I supposed to be writing?'

'You're going to write Harry a note and I'm going to give it to him.'

Her lips parted but no sound came out. And then she shook her head. 'No.'

'Ruth-'

'Zaf, no! I-I can't. There's no point.'

'He hasn't smiled since you left.'

He hated himself for saying it - the sudden pain in her eyes was unbearable. 'It's better if... It will be better for Harry when he just forgets about me.'

Zaf studied her. 'Will you forget about him?'

Everything about her sagged, her eyes falling to the floor. She was starting to withdraw into herself, but Zaf continued mercilessly. 'I'm not trying to pry into your personal life, Ruth, but... But I know what you two meant to each other.' He was aware of the lie - no one, even now, could have guessed at the strength of that fierce devotion they had displayed. But he did know that something like that didn't just disappear.

'People knowing... That's what started all of this,' she murmured. She had picked up the pen, playing with it. Just one more push...

'It doesn't matter now. And no-one will ever know about this, Ruth. Just you and me and Harry. He's not going to tell anyone and neither am I.'

The cap flipped off the pen.

'I... I don't know what to write.'

He tried not to look too exultant. 'Anything. Just a few lines. Or use the whole book-'

'Zaf-'

'A bit of poetry. A limerick - not a dirty one. Unless you want-'

'Zaf!' She was actually laughing. Ruth opened the notebook, rifling through the pages until she found a pristine one that was not only unmarked but bore no other indentations. And then the pen hovered over the surface for a good five minutes. Zaf sighed.

'I'll get more coffee.'

Another day gone, another evening spent at the coffee shop. All day Ruth had felt jittery. She tried to push it out of her head but the scene insisted on playing itself out - Zaf giving the note to Harry, Harry reading it... Every time she looked at her watch she wondered if he had it yet; in the end, she had had to stop looking at her watch.

Ruth opened her book, forcing herself to read the lines but when she came to the end of the paragraph she realised that not a single word had penetrated. She started at the top of the page again, bending the full force of her considerable concentration on it. A figure appeared on the periphery of her vision, standing behind the chair opposite, one hand already on the back. Her lips twitched. 'We can't keep meeting like...' She could feel the colour draining out of her face.

'Hello, Ruth.'

Harry Pearce pulled out the chair and sat down, a sheen of raindrops on his coat. He obviously hadn't bothered with an umbrella. 'Zafar told me I might find you here,' he said, as if their meeting was the most natural thing in the world.

'Don't tell me - you threatened to sack him if he didn't.' She was surprised by how steady her voice sounded.

Harry smiled slightly. 'It didn't even take that - I just told him he'd be working in an all-male environment from now on.'

His deadpan sense of humour was undiminished, at any rate. Her own was, as Harry had observed, gentle; but over the past months there had been times when a witheringly sarcastic line, delivered in mellow tones, would sound in her head as though making up for the absence of the real thing. He looked slightly dishevelled: tie loosened, hair a little rumpled, damp. It suited him. She felt her insides give that familiar lurch and tried to ignore it - no good could come of it.

Harry tilted his head suddenly, listening. I've been trying to be where you are, and I've been secretly falling apart. 'This song is following me,' he informed her gravely. 'What the hell is it, anyway?'

'Aqualung,' she replied, incredulous. 'Strange and Beautiful. How do you-'

'Mike.'

'Ah.'

As if that clarified everything. But he had never had to explain himself much to Ruth.

'I like this song,' she informed him a few moments later. Something about its sweet melancholia appealed to her. He nodded slightly, his eyes never leaving her face. How could he be so calm? she marvelled. Admittedly, Harry had had a lot of practise in maintaining a display of outward calm. Perhaps on the inside his nerves were screaming as loudly as hers; perhaps his heart was also thundering in his chest so hard it was choking him.

'What have you been-'

Ruth shook her head. 'It doesn't matter, Harry.'

'It matters to me.' He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. That cool, level tone had always been more intimidating than a shout.

'Harry, don't, please... Please don't do this.' She could feel her voice starting to break. Ruth had held so many images of him in her head since she had left: pacing in his office; leaning across her desk and murmuring a request for an untraceable piece of information that she had always prided herself on locating, just for him; pouring her another glass of white Burgundy; standing on the quayside, immobile, until the horizon had swallowed up the tiny black dot he had become. That image was the most painful and the sweetest and the one she recalled more than any other. And now they had all been erased by the real presence of the man with the burning eyes sitting opposite her. She wished he would stop looking at her like that.

'I didn't think I'd ever see you again,' she murmured.

'I had to come.' A compulsion that he couldn't fight. Actually, a compulsion that he hadn't even attempted to fight.

Ruth drew in a shuddering breath, her body bracing. 'We can't do this, Harry. You can't be here - it's too risky for you.'

'I don't care.'

'Well you should!' Her eyes flashed with a sudden anger.

'Perhaps.'

She started to move, steeling herself for leaving him; he reached across and placed his hand on hers.

'Ruth, please.' She was frozen, no longer moving, not looking at him. Her fingers were like ice. 'I can't give up on you so easily.'

Ruth's mouth was trembling, her eyes turning from flashing steel to a swimming, watery grey. 'You always were stubborn.'

He smiled. 'Two old mules together.'

A breath, half-laugh and half-sob, broke from her lips. Her lashes were studded with tears. He hated the thought that he could make her cry but she looked radiant with it.

'A little less of the old, if you don't mind.' She didn't try to reclaim her hand.

'I've missed you.'

Ruth glanced at him and nodded, not trusting herself to say anything. When she did, she looked at him firmly. 'You'll have to leave, Harry. Or I will. You know that.'

'No.'

She stared at him. 'They need you, the service needs you and-'

'The whole bloody country - yes, I know how that line of argument goes.' A pause. 'And the head of Section D cannot fraternise with-'

'A dead woman,' she finished calmly. 'And a disgraced one at that.'

'Then why don't we both be someone else? Just for one night why can't we be two strangers who happened to meet in a coffee shop?'

He was in utter seriousness - and he made it sound so easy. It would be so easy, just to give in, to give him what he wanted. What she wanted.

'Strangers...'

'Yes. I'll start you off: It was a dark and stormy night. Or a drizzly night...'

'Harry-'

'Never heard of him. As I was saying - a dark and drizzly night and - oh, I don't know - James, let's say, walks into a coffee shop. He's a television writer.'

'Telev...'

'Children's programmes,' he said promptly.

'This is silly.'

He shrugged. 'Possibly. But it's many years since I've been silly - I might like to see what it's like again before it's too late.'

Harry and silliness were two concepts that did not belong in the same thought; and he pronounced his absurd plan with such gravitas that Ruth laughed in spite of herself. She twisted her hand in his grasp until her fingers laced through his. 'For one night only...'

'For now.'

Exasperation flitted across her expressive face. 'Again, you are being very presumptuous.'

'What do you say?'

She studied the table top for some time, until she must have had every crumb and ring-mark memorised. When she looked up again her eyes were glowing softly. 'Hello, James. My name is Emma.'

He smiled. 'It's very nice to meet you, Emma.'

Fin