Hey, guys :) I just realized it's been over a year since I started this story! I'm the lousiest writer on the face of the earth, I know. I have the whole story outlined, but between moving to another country and starting over in a new university I haven't elaborated it enough to post all the chapters. But I WILL finish the story! Promise!Haha
Also, before you guys continue, let me warn you that my knowledge about the post-9/11 torture controversy is superficial and I'm making some of it up to fit into the timeline of the story. As in the film, the facts are embellished for entertainment purposes :) enjoy!
Day 169
Consciousness seeps into Maya's dream so slowly it takes her a moment to realize she is awake in her bed and not in some twisted fantasy created by her mind where everybody she meets has usama bin laden's face. She rubs her eyes, trying to forget about the recurrent dream that isn't so scary that she cries herself to consciousness but it's unsettling enough to deprive her of a good night's sleep.
The heavy pressure in her chest registers and she looks down to find Dan lying on top of her, his head resting between her breasts, and she carelessly rolls him off of her, not even worried about waking him up after so many nights of waking up to find him wrapped around her with a vice grip. Noises easily wake him up, but she can all but jump into the bed at his side and he won't even move. They'd argued about this, on one of those nights when they're both so stressed out the other can't so much as breathe wrong to start an argument. He'd said he would "sleep on the fucking couch, then" when she said one day he would wake up in the morning to find her dead, suffocated under him. She'd turned her back to him when he grabbed one of his pillows (the whole situation made almost funny since it was his house) and made a show of slamming every door between the bed and the couch. Two hours later she gave up and admitted she couldn't sleep well without the warmth and the pressure of his body wrapped around hers. Resigned, she went to the living room to fetch him, finding him still awake watching some late night news program, led him wordlessly towards the bed, rolling on her stomach and pulling him over her. She was asleep in less than a minute.
Their fights usually have their own pattern: blow up, brood alone, regret fighting, apologize, make up sex. Which is why she is so at a loss as to how to deal with the way he's been treating her recently: While in bed he's been more present than ever, losing himself in sensual explorations of her body until she squirms and begs him to just fuck her already, she realized the other day that they hadn't had an actual conversation in several days. His days at the office were getting longer and longer, even longer than hers. She had no clue what had been keeping him in, and while she reasoned the CIA had other affairs that didn't involve her operation at all, his refusal to talk to her about this new assigned case of his, plus his taciturn behavior towards her, bothered her to no end.
She got up, pushing some shirt of his over her head, and headed for the fridge. Getting back to sleep at 4:30 was wishful thinking, she might as well start her day. She had just opened her fridge to make herself breakfast when she heard shuffling in the bedroom. She waited for him to appear in the corridor, and sure enough, his gaze went directly to the spot at her living room where she usually camped with work until the wee hours of morning.
"I just woke up." He eyed her sleepily, mumbling something that vaguely sounded like 'good' before making his way to her coffee maker. "Go back to bed."
"S'empty." She grinned to herself at his response. Early mornings were his most honest moments, sleepiness melted his icy blue eyes, let her see right through them.
They worked in silence for a while, she could see him making her coffee just the way she liked it. She flipped the last pancake into a plate and drew a smiley face on it with hazelnut spread, putting it beside their mugs on the counter. He smiled, just as she hoped he would, all crinkly eyes and sleep tousled hair, dipping his finger into the spread before swiping it over her bottom lip and kissing her.
She gave up interrogating him for the time being, would rather bask in their happy bubble for a while before they were thrown into the everyday grind of their jobs. They had more time to kill before work than usual anyway, she thought fleetingly as he led her back to the bedroom, breakfast forgotten.
Day 175
Thud. The tennis ball bounced off the wall and back into hands as the dialling tone resonated in his office. He was hoping against hope that he'd get her voicemail, wouldn't have to elaborate. He threw the ball against the wall again, his own private stress reliever. A solo squash match. Thud. The line continued to ring, maybe she'd gone to bed. She had a high stakes meeting in a few hours anyway, director in attendance and all, she'd need the rest. His desk clock read almost 3 am. Thud. The beep of voicemail confirmed his theory - she didn't have a voice greeting announcing this was her phone and please leave a message, none of them did.
"Hey, My, it's me. I'm held up here, don't think I'll be home tonight. See you at the meeting."
He hung up the phone, turning his chair back around to face the research spread around his table. Retracing her steps was easy enough - he was there most of years anyway, and he was the one who trained her - even her way of writing reports sounded like him, it was spooky.
But there was nothing incriminating in the reports, of course. He'd taught her that as well. Even before she came along he could feel the winds shifting: He was there from day one, pulled from an assignment in Palestine to the 9/11 task force. Back then his knowledge about Al Qaeda and the Taliban was purely theoretical, his PhD research having put him in the CIA's radar a few years back, and, most importantly, he had no experience in interrogation. Truthfully, almost none of them did - the CIA was an intelligence gathering agency, after all, but none of that mattered with the deaths of over three thousand americans hanging over their heads. It was a crazy race, but from the start Dan had it clear in his head that one day the dust would settle and what was justifiable back then - encouraged, even - would eventually come back to bite him in the ass. So he covered his basis, and he's taught her to cover hers. Whatever evidence there was against her wasn't in the system - it was alive and breathing - even if with difficulty after so many water-boarding sessions.
He couldn't very well google their locations, of course. Hell, he couldn't even do a legal search in the database. He'd have to go old school, turn files by hand, pay each and every one of them a final visit. Leave no stone unturned.
His duffle was in his backseat, he'd already cashed in some of the vacation days he had pilled up. The biggest problem would be Maya, who wouldn't be convinced by his sudden need to "tend to health issues", and the solution was bitter on his tongue.
The first thing her mind registered was that she was alone in bed. Pawing through his side to find it cold, she finally opened her eyes to the dawn light and fetched her cellphone from the night stand. The fact that he'd left a voice mail didn't lessen her annoyance at him having left her to sleep on her own, tonight of all nights. But she'd deal with that later. Right now, she had some convincing to do.
Maya was fuming. She couldn't remember ever feeling so angered and betrayed. Soft sixty? Soft sixty? The only person she expected to have her back at that goddamn table and she had to sit there and keep a straight face while he said that there was a soft sixty percent chance that their target was in the compound. Had he not been paying attention at all? Did he do this on purpose? Christ, she was such an idiot.
She found him by his car, surrounded by smoke in the glaring mid-morning sun. For once she was glad he always chose the above ground parking lots, so her yells wouldn't resonate on the walls. As she stalked towards him, her mind vaguely registered a cigarette in one hand and a passport in the other, but she only waited until he was whitin earshot to let out her frustration.
"What the fucking were you thinking? Soft sixty?"
"That was my professional assessment."
"You cannot be serious."
"I'm dead serious."
They stared at each other in the empty parking lot. There was a steely determination in his eyes coupled with something else that she couldn't quite place.
"What did you expect me to do?"
"To have my back in there, for starters."
"You have no idea just how much I got your back, Maya."
"Bullshit! You're just like them. Do you think I haven't noticed your condescending looks? Huh? I've been getting them all my life, Dan, and I've proved them wrong every time, just like I will this time."
He took a deep breath and suddenly what she couldn't see before was there, written all over his face: Resignation. Sadness. It hit her like a knife twisting in her heart, why he didn't back her up in the meeting, why he's been so distant, why he wasn't even fighting back now.
She spared him having to say it out loud.
"We're over, Dan."
