A/N: Welp, here we go again! I'm playing around a bit with the timeline here, but it's my story, and I'll do what I like. I hope you all will forgive me.

It began rather simply. Beth Bailey, who had been industriously scrubbing her hands clean of the blood and refuse of the last ten years spent working as essentially no more than a mercenary in the darkest corners of the world, was following up on a lead. She'd been working as a member of Section D for nearly two years now, and had come to find her feet in the murky world of counterterrorism. Some days were dull as ditchwater, some days were harrowing, and some days, well, some days were just plain confusing. It began on one of the confusing days.

Dimitri had brought it up in the morning meeting. He had recently been elevated to the post of Section Chief, despite his lack of experience; they were all of them new, and all of them still quietly reeling in the aftermath of Lucas North's spectacular implosion the year before. Without Lucas, they were left badly in need of guidance, and Dimitri had stepped up, taking on more responsibility, and, under Harry's watchful eye, leading them all through the chaos that ensued. He was a nice young man, Dimitri – perhaps a bit too nice at times, Beth thought – and he led the team well. His years spent in the SBS had given him a strength of character as well as of body, and they were all finding him a perfectly capable leader.

On that particular day, in that particular meeting, the subject at hand was a group of religious zealots who had taken up residence in a small private park outside Newbury. What made this particular group of interest to Section D was not just their teachings, archaic and slightly horrifying as they were, but their methods. Apparently, according to Dimitri – whose presentation was backed up by an impressive array of satellite photographs courtesy of Tariq's intrepid snooping – the leader of this particular group was…an odd duck. In the center of the park they had erected a tall, stone column, held together presumably by faith and righteous indignation rather than any sort of sound masonry. Their leader, a man whose name no one seemed to know as yet, had taken up residence atop the pillar. According to Dimitri, he hadn't come down once in the nearly three weeks since surveillance had begun on the site. His followers seemed to view him as something rather like a living saint, his endurance despite the exposure to the elements serving as testament to his faith and holiness.

Beth thought this was all a load of bollocks, and she was more than happy to leave the man standing on his misshapen pile of rocks, shouting at the clouds until he died of thirst, but Dimitri, and Harry as well, seemed to have other ideas.

For all intents and purposes, the words this oddball spewed at his followers seemed to be rooted in the Christian tradition, though presented in a rather appalling way that Beth had never encountered before. His verbal diarrhea had, in recent days, become rather militaristic, and it was this that concerned Dimitri. One lone nut job standing on a pillar in the middle of a forest was not cause for alarm on his own, but the thought of him sending thirty or so absolutely bonkers armed followers out into the world to wreak God only knew what sort of havoc was troubling.

"We need to find out more about who he is, and what his intentions are," Dimitri had said.

And that was how Beth found herself embroiled in the single most embarrassing moment of her professional career to date.

It was decided that it was too risky to send an agent into the park just then; the group was still relatively small, tight-nit and desperately suspicious of strangers. Her team was tasked with gathering information, as much as they could, and to that end Beth corralled one of their overworked and underpaid analysts into scouring the internet, looking for some sort of connection between this particular band of intrepid fanatics (the Newbury Nutters, Tariq called them when Harry wasn't around) and…well, anything really.

The analyst's name was Howard, and he was himself rather unusual, to Beth's mind. He was quiet and withdrawn, and had a tendency to snort when he laughed, like a pig snuffling around for mushrooms. But he had done his job; he told Beth that it appeared that Mr. Head Nutter (damn Tariq, that name's going to stick now) was modeling his peculiar behavior on a small group of early Christians called stylites. Back in the days, he explained, reading from a journal article on the subject he'd found, ascetic men with wild eyes and wild hair would build themselves a pillar and live atop it, some of them for years at a time, preaching the gospel of Christ to groups of the devout who gathered at their feet. Beth wasn't sure who had it worse; her nutter, who would soon found himself faced with the reality of Britain in winter, or those old sods who had been forced to grapple with the reality of living thus exposed in a desert. It made very little sense to her, but she decided to track down the individual who'd written the article that Howard printed and handed off to her, his greasy fingers leaving trails on the paper.

The article had been written, as it happened, by an Oxford lecturer and acclaimed academic. If Beth had been slightly less perturbed by Howard's general slovenliness, or less confused by the idea of a man living for years on top of a pillar in the desert, or less determined to prove to Harry for once and for all that she was a brilliant agent, she might have done a bit more research into her academic before driving to Oxford. As it was, she simply ascertained that the lecturer in question had no criminal record and no connections to any sort of nefarious coalitions of angry old Oxonians hell bent on blowing Cambridge off the face of the planet. Thus assured that this particular academic was nothing more than that, a simple, quiet lady who lived alone with her two cats in a little flat near the university, Beth set off to arrange a meeting, and find out what she could about the men who had so inspired Mr. Head Nutter, and to determine whether or not he was any real threat.

The initial meeting went rather well, Beth thought; though she experienced a few cringe-worthy flashbacks to her own days at school, the lecturer was soft spoken and kind, and agreed to gather together such information as might prove useful to Beth. Of course, Beth lied through her teeth, presenting a fake police badge and saying not a word about the Newbury Nutters. After all, Harry hadn't exactly cleared bringing an expert on board, and Beth wasn't in the habit of giving out her real name and occupation to strangers.

The moment of Beth's complete and utter humiliation came during a briefing the following day, when Harry, like a bear with a sore head, was rumbling mutinously about the end of the world and demanding an update on their every open case. Beth, thinking that she had done quite well in finding someone to assist with the case of the Newbury Nutters, volunteered her latest discovery.

"According to our research, this man," she waved her hand vaguely at the image of the Head Nutter currently displayed on the screen behind Harry's head, "is copying, almost exactly, the work of a group of early Christian monks. I've set up a meeting with an expert in that field, and I'm hoping she'll be able to help us determine what his endgame is."

Harry nodded briefly, opened his mouth to speak, and was abruptly cut off by the buzzing sound of the small intercom nestled in the center of the table. His eyes narrowed, as if the intercom itself was a sentient being and could be dismayed by a single glance, but the device continued to buzz merrily away, untroubled at the prospect of having drawn the boss spook's ire. Good for you, Beth thought glumly. If he looked at me that way, I'd piss myself.

"Yes?" Harry said, having finally ceased his glaring and reached out to take the call.

"Sir Harry, I apologize for the interruption." The young man, presumably one of the security guards upstairs, sounded genuinely contrite; perhaps he had felt the force of Harry's legendary stare through the intercom device. "It's just that…well…Lady Pearce is here to see you, sir."

Beth, Dimitri, and Tariq, as one, dropped their gazes to the table and tried to pretend as if they had suddenly been rendered invisible. Lady Pearce? Beth wondered. Is Harry married? Who would have thought? Certainly not Beth; Beth was all too aware that Harry was the first on the Grid every morning, the last to leave every night. He worked nearly every weekend, smiled infrequently, and had a tendency to scare people, Beth included. During the Lucas North debacle, Beth had been shocked, along with everyone else, to learn that Harry had a daughter; they had only discovered Catherine's existence when Lucas kidnapped her, and held her ransom, demanding that Harry deliver the Albany file to him in exchange for his daughter's life. Though Harry had managed to both save his daughter and keep state secrets out of that traitor's hands, he had also revealed, somewhat hesitantly, that he was unhappily divorced. Is she still Lady Pearce, if they're not married any more? Beth wondered. She didn't think so. But if that were the case, then Harry had to be married to someone else, now, someone he never spoke about and presumably saw but rarely, given his nearly fanatical devotion to his work.

"One moment, please," Harry said gruffly, muting the intrepid security guard and turning the full force of his laser-like gaze on to Beth. She felt that gaze before she saw it; she raised her head, as if Harry possessed some sort of telekinesis, and had simply willed her to move regardless of her own personal desire to sink into the floor.

"Miss Bailey," he said, his voice icy and soft, deceptively low, deceptively calm. "Your expert, what's her name?"

"Evershed," Beth answered, perplexed. Why was Harry asking her that? Why keep his wife waiting just to glean such a small piece of intel from her? "Ruth Evershed," she continued, figuring she might as well give the poor woman's full name.

Harry sighed in a resigned sort of way, and reached for the intercom. "Right, send Lady Pearce down, please. She knows the way."

Does she now? Beth wondered. She'd been working for MI-5 for two years now, and had seen neither hide nor hair of the mysterious Lady Pearce. Did Harry sneak her in late at night after everyone had gone?

"Miss Bailey," Harry was still speaking in that voice that sent chills up and down Beth's spine, so cold and so restrainedly furious was it. "I presume you ran the customary background checks on Ms. Evershed?"

Beth nodded, feeling, if possible, even more confused than before. I don't see what he has to be so cross about, she thought indignantly. Dimitri and Tariq were no help at all; they were each studiously engaged in the exploration of their own fingertips.

"Tell me, Miss Bailey," Christ, but Beth hated it when he called her that. It made her feel like she was back at school, about to be rapped on the knuckles by a smugly superior nun for sneaking cigarettes behind the kitchen. "In the course of your no doubt thorough investigation did it ever come to your attention-" here he paused, as something outside the meeting room caught his eye. Beth turned and saw a petite, dark-haired woman stepping through the pods and onto the Grid. The woman glanced Harry's way, and he lifted his hand and gestured for her to join them in the meeting room. Beth turned back to him, her face white as a sheet, fear rising in her gut. Oh God, he's going to murder me. "Did it ever once come to your attention," he continued through gritted teeth, "that Ruth Evershed is my bloody wife?"