Hope in the Day of Torment, Part 1
Fandom: Spooks (BBC)
Rating: T
Timeline: AU to Series 7
Summary: Lucas North goes to visit his ex-wife, but her life is more complicated than either of them knew.
Disclaimer: Spooks and all recognizable characters belong to the BBC and to Kudos Production: I am only borrowing them with no intent to profit.
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In all his time of working for MI-5, Lucas North had never felt less like a spy and more like a stalker than he did at that particular moment. He stood where he'd been standing for the last ten minutes, in the middle of the street in broad daylight, visible from every angle, staring up at the window of the flat where his wife – no, his ex-wife – now lived. If Lina had been looking out of that window, she wouldn't be able to miss seeing him, but apparently, she wasn't looking.
If this had been an operation, Lucas would have been safely hidden inside a van parked just a little way down the street, watching everything on camera. But it wasn't an operation, it was just him, and if he wanted to find out what Lina was doing and if she really were living with someone else, as he'd heard, the best way was to go up and ring the bell. Still, Lucas hesitated. They'd been married once, but it had been eight years since they'd seen each other, three years since she'd divorced him. He couldn't expect her to want to see him as much as he wanted to see her.
Just as he had decided to walk to the door and look at the name by the buzzer, however, the light that were visible in the window went out. Lucas waited, and a minute later, the front door opened. He recognized Lina immediately as she came out, though she had a different hairstyle and was wrapped in a coat he'd never seen before. Unable to stop staring, Lucas watched as she pulled the door shut, drinking in every detail of her appearance and willing her to look up at him. But although Lina began to walk in Lucas' direction, she kept her head bowed and her eyes down in an uncharacteristcally cheerless manner.
Realizing that she could walk right by and never even notice his presence, Lucas swung himself into her path and spoke her name. "Lina."
She glanced up, irritated, and Lucas watched as the surprise on her face gave way to astonishment and disbelief. For a long moment she stood there, all but frozen, with her mouth hanging open just a little and her eyes darting from his face to his chest and back again. Finally, she whispered, "Lucas?"
"Hello, Lina," he said quietly, not daring to smile until he got some kind of signal from her that it would be appropriate.
"Lucas," she said again, and then her shocked expression melted into a big smile and she threw herself at him, crushing him in a hug. "Lucas! Oh, Lucas!"
Lucas hugged back, enjoying the sensation of her body pressed against his and her arms around his back. It was all right, then. He could smile back, and he did so, grinning so broadly that tears came to his eyes. Leaning down, he kissed the top of her head, but that proved to be a mistake. Lina loosened her grip and stared up at him, her smile gone.
"I'm sorry," he said immediately, in Russian. He had always spoken Russian to Lina, to help keep himself fluent. "I forgot –"
"I'm sorry, too," she said, then let go of him and stepped away. "Oh, Lucas, I thought you were dead! You must come in and tell me everything!"
"Weren't you going somewhere?" Lucas asked, indicating her coat.
"Shopping," Lina said with a grimace. "For food, but I can do that anytime. This is much more important!"
She led him to the door of the building, where Lucas managed to get a quick look at the two buzzers, one of which said Barnes, and the other P. Mason, before Lina led him inside and up the stairs to her flat. "Come in, take off your coat, make yourself at home. I'll start some coffee."
The surroundings were different, but Lucas still recognized many of the furnishings from the flat they'd shared when they were married. Lina pointed out the living room and told him to sit down, then hurried into the kitchen. Instead of seating himself on the unfamiliar sofa, however, Lucas wandered around the room, looking at everything. Some of the knick knacks were the same, and some of the stuffed animals on the back of the sofa were old friends, but others were new. Eight years ago, one of their wedding photos had had the place of honour in the middle of the wall. Now, there was a different picture featured, one showing Lina and a man whom Lucas did not know. They looked so happy together that Lucas's heart ached, and he quickly glanced away. There was nothing in the room that had once been his, and Lucas felt as though he had been swept completely out of her life.
Eventually, Lina came into the living room with a tray and set it on the table. Lucas took the seat on the sofa which she indicated, and watched as she arranged everything to her satisfaction.
"What a coincidence. I've got your favourite Russian black bread here," she said. "I found it yesterday in a little shop that I found completely by accident!"
She put the plate in front of him and Lucas looked down at it with loathing. Black bread. Once, it had been a luxury, a special treat, but not since he'd had to eat it twice a day, every day, for eight years.
"No, thank you," he said, struggling to be polite.
Lina's hand hesitated on the handle of the coffee pot and she gawped up at him. "You don't like it anymore?"
"No, I've gone off it now."
As realization dawned, Lina's expression changed suddenly to one of horror. "Oh! I'm so sorry – I never thought! How stupid of me!"
She jumped up, whisking the plate away, and rushed into the kitchen. Lucas heard the sound of various cupboards opening and closing, and when Lina returned, she was carrying a plate with three milk chocolate Hob Nobs.
"I buy these for Nick," she said, and put the plate next to Lucas' saucer. "Thank goodness he didn't eat them all before he left."
Lucas noticed that her voice changed from forced cheer at the beginning of the sentence to naked worry at the end. Something was wrong there, but it wasn't his place to inquire. Instead, he waited until she'd poured coffee for both of them, and asked simply, "Nick?"
"Nicholas Barnes," Lina said. She took a drink of her coffee. "It's a very English name, isn't it, but he is Russian, or half-Russian. His mother was Russian, so he speaks the language perfectly, almost better than English. He is a very nice man, Lucas, but I don't want to talk about him just yet, I want to talk about you. I thought you were dead!"
"I'm still alive." Lucas bit off a small piece of the biscuit and swallowed, playing for time. He didn't know why it was so hard to explain to Lina what had happened. He hadn't had any trouble talking to the psychologists when he'd got back, or to anybody else from MI-5. Then he realized that they'd already known or guessed, and he'd only had to confirm it. In any case, they were used to dealing with that sort of thing. At last, he said cautiously, "I was caught by the Russians."
"But I didn't know that!" Lina exclaimed. "I asked your friend, that Harry Pearce, but he couldn't tell me anything except that you'd disappeared in Moscow. I tried to get information through my work, and through the friend of a friend of a friend, but nobody could find out anything!"
Holding his coffee cup in both hands, Lucas leaned forward. "I'm sorry. Lina, I'm so sorry. I thought of you every day."
Lina gave him a half smile. "I thought of you every day, too, at the beginning."
That phrase stung, even though Lucas had expected something like that. He waited for her to go on.
"Every time the phone rang, or the door bell, I hoped it would be you, but it never was," Lina said. "And I hated it! I hated waiting and not knowing and not being able to find out! And after –"
She stopped suddenly and looked away. Taking a sip of coffee, Lucas waited for her to continue, but when she didn't, he prompted, "After what?"
Lina plucked at the arm of the chair, then sat up again abruptly and blurted out, "After the miscarriage. After I lost your baby."
Lucas almost dropped his cup. "What?"
"I had a miscarriage," she said, looking him directly in the eyes. "About two months after you … disappeared. I'd been looking forward so much to telling you that we were going to have a baby, and I kept waiting for news about you, but they couldn't even tell me if you were alive or dead!"
"Lina, I'm sorry." His mouth spoke those inadequate words again while his mind scrambled to process the information. He'd fathered a child. He'd been a father for a few short weeks, and he hadn't even known. A dull ache formed in his chest that the child hadn't been born and that he hadn't had the chance to try again. "I didn't know."
Lina gave him a quick, brittle smile. "No, of course not. How could you? I didn't even find out I was pregnant until after you left."
She took a big gulp of coffee and put the cup down shakily. "It hurt so much, Lucas. Not the miscarriage itself, not so much, but here, in my heart. I felt so bad! I hated you for not being there, and I hated myself for feeling that way. And at the same time, I was worried about you and what you might be going through, and I wished you were dead. I mean, I hoped for your sake that you were dead and not being tortured. I didn't want to think about them torturing you. I'd just lost a baby, your baby, a part of you, and it was a very emotional time for me. A very painful time. What I think I'm trying to say is, it hurt less if I convinced myself that you were dead."
Pain rolled over him, pain for himself, for feeling rejected, even temporarily, and pain for Lina, for all that she had had to go through alone. Then, almost instantly afterwards, all the anguish was washed away by sympathy and a surge of renewed love. Lucas leaned forward and reached across the table for her hand. "Lina, come here. It's all right."
Lina let him take her hand. "It's not all right. I failed you. I should have kept hoping, but I didn't."
"You just wanted the pain to stop," Lucas said, folding both of his hands around hers. He'd missed the feeling of her skin. "I understand that, Lina."
He heard her sharp intake of breath as she realized how he'd come by that understanding, and she said, "You must hate me."
"No," he said, giving her hand a firm squeeze. "I just wish I'd been there for you."
Lina smiled then, a little. "Oh, Lucas. I wanted to talk about you, but I end up babbling on and on about myself."
"I don't mind," he said, loosening his grip slightly so that he could stroke the back of her hand with his fingers. He thought back over what she'd said, and a question occurred to him. "Did you ever find out if it was a boy or a girl?"
Lina shook her head. "No. I dreamed that it was a girl, though. I would have named her Lucy because it sounds like Lucas, a bit."
"Lucy is a good name," Lucas said, even as sadness washed over him for the girl that would never be.
"I dreamed of her a few times that first year," Lina said, her face softening as she remembered. "Funny, though, I haven't thought of her in ages, but seeing you to-day brought it all back."
"I'm sorry to bring up bad memories," Lucas said, still stroking her hand. He longed to hug her, and had to remind himself that they were divorced. It wouldn’t be appropriate. As though stepping voluntarily under a cold shower, he asked, "So, how did you meet Nick?"
"No, no, I've spoken enough now," Lina said, turning her hand in his so that she could grip his fingers and give them a friendly squeeze. "I don't want to hurt you anymore. Tell me when you got back to England."
"On the third," Lucas said.
"Go on," Lina urged. "How did you get out?"
"Harry negotiated a trade," Lucas reported. "I don't know all the details."
"And even if you knew, you wouldn't be allowed to tell me," Lina stated. "I remember what it was like, all the secrecy."
She pulled her hand away gently and reached with forced nonchalance for her coffee cup. After she'd drank, she put it down. "Where are you staying now?"
"In a safe house at the moment, but I'm moving into a flat in Nunhead soon," Lucas reported. "I'm supposed to be out shopping, too, but I wanted to see you."
They smiled at each other, a gentle moment that was interrupted by a melodious chiming sound.
"Blast," Lina said in English, a word she'd once told Lucas she'd learned from watching All Creatures Great and Small. Watching her stand up and stalk into the hall, Lucas took a larger bite of biscuit and washed it down with the coffee. The low rumble of conversation from the front door suddenly became louder and he heard Lina cry out.
Alarmed, Lucas sprang up, but hadn't even taken two steps when Lina entered the living room again. Her face had turned white with fear and horror, and she was trembling; she held her hands up in the universal gesture of surrender, and there was a man walking directly behind her. As they came in, Lucas saw why Lina looked so frightened. She'd developed a phobia about injuring her back yet again after having had to retire from world-class gymnastics just short of a broken vertebra, and now Lucas could see that the man behind her had jammed a pistol into her spine. Feeling a sickening sense of dread radiate throughout his body, Lucas slowly raised his hands, even before he saw the second man, who was also holding a gun.
Part 2
Rating: T
Timeline: AU to Series 7
Summary: Lucas North goes to visit his ex-wife, but her life is more complicated than either of them knew.
Disclaimer: Spooks and all recognizable characters belong to the BBC and to Kudos Production: I am only borrowing them with no intent to profit.
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In all his time of working for MI-5, Lucas North had never felt less like a spy and more like a stalker than he did at that particular moment. He stood where he'd been standing for the last ten minutes, in the middle of the street in broad daylight, visible from every angle, staring up at the window of the flat where his wife – no, his ex-wife – now lived. If Lina had been looking out of that window, she wouldn't be able to miss seeing him, but apparently, she wasn't looking.
If this had been an operation, Lucas would have been safely hidden inside a van parked just a little way down the street, watching everything on camera. But it wasn't an operation, it was just him, and if he wanted to find out what Lina was doing and if she really were living with someone else, as he'd heard, the best way was to go up and ring the bell. Still, Lucas hesitated. They'd been married once, but it had been eight years since they'd seen each other, three years since she'd divorced him. He couldn't expect her to want to see him as much as he wanted to see her.
Just as he had decided to walk to the door and look at the name by the buzzer, however, the light that were visible in the window went out. Lucas waited, and a minute later, the front door opened. He recognized Lina immediately as she came out, though she had a different hairstyle and was wrapped in a coat he'd never seen before. Unable to stop staring, Lucas watched as she pulled the door shut, drinking in every detail of her appearance and willing her to look up at him. But although Lina began to walk in Lucas' direction, she kept her head bowed and her eyes down in an uncharacteristcally cheerless manner.
Realizing that she could walk right by and never even notice his presence, Lucas swung himself into her path and spoke her name. "Lina."
She glanced up, irritated, and Lucas watched as the surprise on her face gave way to astonishment and disbelief. For a long moment she stood there, all but frozen, with her mouth hanging open just a little and her eyes darting from his face to his chest and back again. Finally, she whispered, "Lucas?"
"Hello, Lina," he said quietly, not daring to smile until he got some kind of signal from her that it would be appropriate.
"Lucas," she said again, and then her shocked expression melted into a big smile and she threw herself at him, crushing him in a hug. "Lucas! Oh, Lucas!"
Lucas hugged back, enjoying the sensation of her body pressed against his and her arms around his back. It was all right, then. He could smile back, and he did so, grinning so broadly that tears came to his eyes. Leaning down, he kissed the top of her head, but that proved to be a mistake. Lina loosened her grip and stared up at him, her smile gone.
"I'm sorry," he said immediately, in Russian. He had always spoken Russian to Lina, to help keep himself fluent. "I forgot –"
"I'm sorry, too," she said, then let go of him and stepped away. "Oh, Lucas, I thought you were dead! You must come in and tell me everything!"
"Weren't you going somewhere?" Lucas asked, indicating her coat.
"Shopping," Lina said with a grimace. "For food, but I can do that anytime. This is much more important!"
She led him to the door of the building, where Lucas managed to get a quick look at the two buzzers, one of which said Barnes, and the other P. Mason, before Lina led him inside and up the stairs to her flat. "Come in, take off your coat, make yourself at home. I'll start some coffee."
The surroundings were different, but Lucas still recognized many of the furnishings from the flat they'd shared when they were married. Lina pointed out the living room and told him to sit down, then hurried into the kitchen. Instead of seating himself on the unfamiliar sofa, however, Lucas wandered around the room, looking at everything. Some of the knick knacks were the same, and some of the stuffed animals on the back of the sofa were old friends, but others were new. Eight years ago, one of their wedding photos had had the place of honour in the middle of the wall. Now, there was a different picture featured, one showing Lina and a man whom Lucas did not know. They looked so happy together that Lucas's heart ached, and he quickly glanced away. There was nothing in the room that had once been his, and Lucas felt as though he had been swept completely out of her life.
Eventually, Lina came into the living room with a tray and set it on the table. Lucas took the seat on the sofa which she indicated, and watched as she arranged everything to her satisfaction.
"What a coincidence. I've got your favourite Russian black bread here," she said. "I found it yesterday in a little shop that I found completely by accident!"
She put the plate in front of him and Lucas looked down at it with loathing. Black bread. Once, it had been a luxury, a special treat, but not since he'd had to eat it twice a day, every day, for eight years.
"No, thank you," he said, struggling to be polite.
Lina's hand hesitated on the handle of the coffee pot and she gawped up at him. "You don't like it anymore?"
"No, I've gone off it now."
As realization dawned, Lina's expression changed suddenly to one of horror. "Oh! I'm so sorry – I never thought! How stupid of me!"
She jumped up, whisking the plate away, and rushed into the kitchen. Lucas heard the sound of various cupboards opening and closing, and when Lina returned, she was carrying a plate with three milk chocolate Hob Nobs.
"I buy these for Nick," she said, and put the plate next to Lucas' saucer. "Thank goodness he didn't eat them all before he left."
Lucas noticed that her voice changed from forced cheer at the beginning of the sentence to naked worry at the end. Something was wrong there, but it wasn't his place to inquire. Instead, he waited until she'd poured coffee for both of them, and asked simply, "Nick?"
"Nicholas Barnes," Lina said. She took a drink of her coffee. "It's a very English name, isn't it, but he is Russian, or half-Russian. His mother was Russian, so he speaks the language perfectly, almost better than English. He is a very nice man, Lucas, but I don't want to talk about him just yet, I want to talk about you. I thought you were dead!"
"I'm still alive." Lucas bit off a small piece of the biscuit and swallowed, playing for time. He didn't know why it was so hard to explain to Lina what had happened. He hadn't had any trouble talking to the psychologists when he'd got back, or to anybody else from MI-5. Then he realized that they'd already known or guessed, and he'd only had to confirm it. In any case, they were used to dealing with that sort of thing. At last, he said cautiously, "I was caught by the Russians."
"But I didn't know that!" Lina exclaimed. "I asked your friend, that Harry Pearce, but he couldn't tell me anything except that you'd disappeared in Moscow. I tried to get information through my work, and through the friend of a friend of a friend, but nobody could find out anything!"
Holding his coffee cup in both hands, Lucas leaned forward. "I'm sorry. Lina, I'm so sorry. I thought of you every day."
Lina gave him a half smile. "I thought of you every day, too, at the beginning."
That phrase stung, even though Lucas had expected something like that. He waited for her to go on.
"Every time the phone rang, or the door bell, I hoped it would be you, but it never was," Lina said. "And I hated it! I hated waiting and not knowing and not being able to find out! And after –"
She stopped suddenly and looked away. Taking a sip of coffee, Lucas waited for her to continue, but when she didn't, he prompted, "After what?"
Lina plucked at the arm of the chair, then sat up again abruptly and blurted out, "After the miscarriage. After I lost your baby."
Lucas almost dropped his cup. "What?"
"I had a miscarriage," she said, looking him directly in the eyes. "About two months after you … disappeared. I'd been looking forward so much to telling you that we were going to have a baby, and I kept waiting for news about you, but they couldn't even tell me if you were alive or dead!"
"Lina, I'm sorry." His mouth spoke those inadequate words again while his mind scrambled to process the information. He'd fathered a child. He'd been a father for a few short weeks, and he hadn't even known. A dull ache formed in his chest that the child hadn't been born and that he hadn't had the chance to try again. "I didn't know."
Lina gave him a quick, brittle smile. "No, of course not. How could you? I didn't even find out I was pregnant until after you left."
She took a big gulp of coffee and put the cup down shakily. "It hurt so much, Lucas. Not the miscarriage itself, not so much, but here, in my heart. I felt so bad! I hated you for not being there, and I hated myself for feeling that way. And at the same time, I was worried about you and what you might be going through, and I wished you were dead. I mean, I hoped for your sake that you were dead and not being tortured. I didn't want to think about them torturing you. I'd just lost a baby, your baby, a part of you, and it was a very emotional time for me. A very painful time. What I think I'm trying to say is, it hurt less if I convinced myself that you were dead."
Pain rolled over him, pain for himself, for feeling rejected, even temporarily, and pain for Lina, for all that she had had to go through alone. Then, almost instantly afterwards, all the anguish was washed away by sympathy and a surge of renewed love. Lucas leaned forward and reached across the table for her hand. "Lina, come here. It's all right."
Lina let him take her hand. "It's not all right. I failed you. I should have kept hoping, but I didn't."
"You just wanted the pain to stop," Lucas said, folding both of his hands around hers. He'd missed the feeling of her skin. "I understand that, Lina."
He heard her sharp intake of breath as she realized how he'd come by that understanding, and she said, "You must hate me."
"No," he said, giving her hand a firm squeeze. "I just wish I'd been there for you."
Lina smiled then, a little. "Oh, Lucas. I wanted to talk about you, but I end up babbling on and on about myself."
"I don't mind," he said, loosening his grip slightly so that he could stroke the back of her hand with his fingers. He thought back over what she'd said, and a question occurred to him. "Did you ever find out if it was a boy or a girl?"
Lina shook her head. "No. I dreamed that it was a girl, though. I would have named her Lucy because it sounds like Lucas, a bit."
"Lucy is a good name," Lucas said, even as sadness washed over him for the girl that would never be.
"I dreamed of her a few times that first year," Lina said, her face softening as she remembered. "Funny, though, I haven't thought of her in ages, but seeing you to-day brought it all back."
"I'm sorry to bring up bad memories," Lucas said, still stroking her hand. He longed to hug her, and had to remind himself that they were divorced. It wouldn’t be appropriate. As though stepping voluntarily under a cold shower, he asked, "So, how did you meet Nick?"
"No, no, I've spoken enough now," Lina said, turning her hand in his so that she could grip his fingers and give them a friendly squeeze. "I don't want to hurt you anymore. Tell me when you got back to England."
"On the third," Lucas said.
"Go on," Lina urged. "How did you get out?"
"Harry negotiated a trade," Lucas reported. "I don't know all the details."
"And even if you knew, you wouldn't be allowed to tell me," Lina stated. "I remember what it was like, all the secrecy."
She pulled her hand away gently and reached with forced nonchalance for her coffee cup. After she'd drank, she put it down. "Where are you staying now?"
"In a safe house at the moment, but I'm moving into a flat in Nunhead soon," Lucas reported. "I'm supposed to be out shopping, too, but I wanted to see you."
They smiled at each other, a gentle moment that was interrupted by a melodious chiming sound.
"Blast," Lina said in English, a word she'd once told Lucas she'd learned from watching All Creatures Great and Small. Watching her stand up and stalk into the hall, Lucas took a larger bite of biscuit and washed it down with the coffee. The low rumble of conversation from the front door suddenly became louder and he heard Lina cry out.
Alarmed, Lucas sprang up, but hadn't even taken two steps when Lina entered the living room again. Her face had turned white with fear and horror, and she was trembling; she held her hands up in the universal gesture of surrender, and there was a man walking directly behind her. As they came in, Lucas saw why Lina looked so frightened. She'd developed a phobia about injuring her back yet again after having had to retire from world-class gymnastics just short of a broken vertebra, and now Lucas could see that the man behind her had jammed a pistol into her spine. Feeling a sickening sense of dread radiate throughout his body, Lucas slowly raised his hands, even before he saw the second man, who was also holding a gun.
Part 2