Disclaimer - I do not own Homeland. That pleasure belongs to Showtime. No copyright infringement or money making scheme intended. This is purely for reading enjoyment.
A/N I'm not really happy with the prospect of Carrie giving up baby Brody, but I felt the need to be sympathetic. She deserves it. She didn't leave him to die on his own.
"I think they call it love", that's what Quinn said to her when she admitted she'd kept the baby because she wanted a part of Brody. This hadn't been the plan, Brody wasn't supposed to die. He was supposed to come home, name cleared, not leave her on her own with a kid.
That night at the bar, before they'd decided to warm up the parking lot, she told Brody she hadn't found anything as important as her job. She hadn't, not until him anyway. He made her feel things she'd never felt before. She had been well along the road before she'd realised how hard she'd fallen for him. There was no going back and she hadn't wanted to.
Apparently people now saw him the way she did. All those times they had judged her for loving him and how angry that made her. Now she couldn't care less if they saw him the way she did, she just wanted him back.
"I fucked it up and it would be really sad to see you do the same" Quinn told her when she asked him about his kid.
Fear of fucking it up was exactly what she felt. Sometimes, she hardly remembered to take care of herself. She had needed so badly for Brody's name to be cleared, convinced that would allow them to be together. She felt if he were here, she could be a mum, because she wouldn't be on her own. It would be his second chance, but his name hasn't been cleared and he isn't here.
Maggie seems so certain that Carrie will love her daughter, that once she is born, everything will be ok. Carrie doesn't see how that can be. She doesn't know anything about children. She doesn't want to open her heart to that. She wants to go to Istanbul, run away, get out of this cage, not feel like a trapped animal, the way Body had felt. She wants to take her broken heart, lock it up in a box, surrounded by walls. She wants to go and focus on the cold efficiency of her job, anything that would distract her from the ache in her chest that doesn't want to go away, that's with her every time she breathes. Anything to distract her from the hole in her heart where Brody had lived. She'll be good at her job, cold, robotic and ruthless. It's what she needs.
Her dad hit her with a low blow that was hurting her still. She was going to do to her daughter what her mother had done to her. Brody comforted her as she told him how much it hurt when her mother never contacted her again. What would he think of her abandoning their child? He had loved Issa and had been driven to the brink when he was killed. She hated the thought of him hating her.
She was left on her own with the fear that she would hate her own daughter, hate looking at her, hate her for the reminder she was of what Carrie had lost. What about when she was older and started asking questions about her dad, what the fuck does she tell her about him? What about when she asks why and how he died.
"I convinced him to do this one last thing and he died".
She wasn't just scared, she felt guilt eating away at her. Why had she felt the need to do it, why couldn't having him there have been enough? He wouldn't have agreed to do it for anyone else but her. Would her daughter hate her for that?
They told her she wouldn't have to do it by herself, but they didn't understand. She needed him and she couldn't do this without him. Right now there was only fear and sadness.