Fandom: SPOOKS (MI-5)
Pairing: Ruth Evershed / Harry Pearce
Length: one shot (5000 words)
Author on LJ: daygloparker
Author Website: daygloparker’s fic masterlist

Why this must be read:

Harry and Ruth: a not-exactly relationship nine years and several thousand meaningful looks in the making, which the Spooks producers and an awful lot of fanfic writers mined for immense verbiage. And yet it would be a mistake to think that Ruth was only the sum of her relationship to Harry.

This story follows Ruth’s thoughts during her time in Cyprus, back from the early days of Tom Quinn’s team, to her relationship with Georg, to her return to the job at MI-5 cost her so dearly. Like Ruth, the story speaks non-linearly and in parentheticals, yet always gets to the heart of matter. Underneath the MI-5 officer gone to ground, there are all the realizations and emotions simmering away and bubbling up from underneath.

The relationship between Ruth and Harry wasn’t so much about the relationship itself, but each of two of them, and everything about their character and choices that kept them pushing each other away. This story captures that complex dynamic, and Ruth Evershed, exactly.


Excerpt:

When she's alone in the house, Ruth practices.

From the garden to the bedroom: eight seconds. From the kitchen to the bedroom: eleven seconds (because you have to wind around the staircase and, well). Passports, overnight bag in the hall closet; car keys always left in the bowl on the tabletop in the hallway. It's a wonder George never notices all the provisions she's made around the house. Or maybe he has, and it's just another quirky thing about this woman he loves, Ruth. She always parks the car with the driver's side facing the house, and when it tells her it shouldn't matter how he parks it when he takes it out, she wants to shout at him: you have no idea – you have no idea how valuable those few seconds might be one day.

When she's alone in the house, she practices.

One day, it pays off. Ruth pauses for a moment, letting it all come at her for a split second, and then she is gone.

Elocation (or, Exit Us)

Fandom: SPOOKS (MI-5)
Pairing: none
Length: one shot (5000 words)
Author on LJ: lips_r_sealed aka nozenfordaddy
Author Website: tagged fic

At her best, Jo Portman was spunky (and I normally hate spunky); at her worse, I wondered how exactly how much loss and trauma the writers could pile on one character in the name of enormous doe-eyes and suspenseful cliffhangers.

Ultimately, Jo suffered from the fatal Spooks supporting character syndrome of under-development followed by untimely and rather contrived demise. This story postulates a different what-if in which Jo outlives her friends and colleagues in MI-5.

The author really captures Jo’s combination of toughness, idealism, and sheer determination to just keep on going, despite everything, and to stay human throughout it all.

In Memoriam