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.
Livulmann - Thank you. I'm glad!
A/N Another one to Mike. Thank you for sticking with me everyone. Please R & R.
Mike,
There are days when I resent you completely and there are days when the need for my best friend manages to silence that resentment. Today is one of those days.
I didn't blow up Langley. It's ironic that just when I thought I was starting to get a grip on things, this happens. I can only imagine what you think of me now. I know how it looks, coming after I asked you to take care of them for me. It looks like I was saying goodbye. I wasn't. Jess and I don't fit anymore and you can provide her and the kids with more stability than me. That's all it was.
So if I didn't blow up Langley, what about that video?
Between them Nazir and Walden have done so much damage to me. You're wondering what Walden has to do with it? Everything, Mike, he has everything to do with it. I bet no one's even paying attention to what I say about those kids, are they? For some of them, it will be because their own anger at what I have apparently done is blinding them. For others, they are willingly choosing to ignore it, rather than acknowledge the possibility that we aren't always the good guys. Stick their fingers in their ears and shout about our freedom. Regardles of the stupidty of other people, it's my own that has undone me. I realise now that blowing Walden up when I was supposed to, wouldn't have brought justice for those kids, only more pain and suffering.
I broke, Mike, simple as that. What we were all so adamant we wouldn't do in the face of the enemy. Naive and righteous as we were. It's like Carrie said, they broke me down and rebuilt me as someone else. When that drone killed those kids, I was there to see the pain and grief of their families. I felt the loss as well. I had come to regard Issa as my own. White hot fury burned away inside of me. I was an inferno of raging hot lava bubbling away inside a volcano, waiting to explode. Nazir saw this and decided to use it. Back I would come to get that vile piece of shit Walden and any other involved.
The day Tom shot Elizabeth Gaines is when I was supposed to take Walden and everyone else in that bunker out. I was going to do it, but the vest malfunctioned first time. I thank God for that now, but I'm even more thankful that Dana phoned me, making me promise to come home.
My little girl, with one phone call breaking down all those walls I had built up around me. So much good from one innocent kid. 82 of them Mike, 82 innocent little kids with life ahead of them...just gone because of the cold hearted indifference of that horrible fuck Walden. He probably justified it by telling his conscience, if the fucker even had one, that they'd all grow up to be terrorists anyway. Who is he to decide what they would be? Is it possible they could all grow up to be even bigger monsters than him? He should not have the right to make that decision.
Kids are off limits! Those kids had the right to live! Children are our future, the best of us and when we kill them through our own fear and greed, we deny this fucked up world a chance to better itself for the good of all.