Disclaimer: I do not own Homeland, or any of its characters or plots. All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners.
A mixture of emotions washed over Carrie as she brought her car to a stop in the parking lot of Langley the following morning. Unexpectedly she had slept through the night, feeling Quinn's warm reassuring body beside her, and she thought that she was ready to face whatever feelings going back to work with the Agency could bring. So now it took her off-guard. The scenery had not changed a bit since she had set foot there for the last time nearly three years ago, and as she hopped out and locked her car and started walking towards the main entrance, mixed memories of the different situations she had experimented there began to flood her mind. And the people she had shared those hard experiences with: Estes, Brody, Saul...
She felt her racing heart calming down when a vivid image of Quinn, in that very same parking lot, clearly reluctant to share a cigarette with her when she was pregnant, pushed all the memories away, and she was shyly smiling by the time she reached the information desk. At least all her credentials were ready for her there, she had to give Saul that, and she found herself going through those revolving doors in no time.
As she made her way down the hallway, she could not help but divert her eyes to the memorial wall on her right, quickly searching for Brody's star. Years ago, months after his dead in Iran, Carrie had asked whether, at the upcoming CIA memorial, Brody might be given a star alongside the fallen agents, but Lockhart, Director of the CIA at the time, had refused, invoking that Brody was not a CIA employee and he did not believe that an erstwhile would-be terrorist merited such an honor. Later that night, hours after the ceremony, Carrie had walked through the CIA's halls, approached the memorial wall, and had furtively drawn a star in memory of Brody with a marker pen.
Now all that seemed a lifetime ago. But, incredibly, his handmade star was still there. Apparently no one had noticed it. "Well, that probably means that not too many people do actually look at this wall," Carrie sadly thought, remembering, once more, Farah and the rest of fellow Americans that died during the attack on the embassy in Islamabad.
When she turned her head back to walk to the elevators, Carrie felt her eyes well and did her best to try and keep her tears at bay. She had worked very hard over the last years to bury all those memories from her time in Pakistan under thick layers of guilt and remorse, and she had painfully learnt to live with it. But there were times when those memories hit back at her full force, and this was one of them. Fortunately for her, she rode alone on the elevator and that gave her time to calm down.
Her first stop, before even meeting the team she would be working with, was the HR department. It was not the first time that Carrie had gone over that 'welcome' process over the years, but somehow it all felt new. The truth was that she had never been able to build a full and happy life in between those times, like she had now with Quinn. Plus many young faces inhabited the desks, and she was grateful as that made things easier while she waited to sign her contract and all the paperwork related to it. No questions asked and no greeting people she had not missed at all during the last three years. On the other side, she could not remember signing so many non disclosure and confidential clauses back in the day, but probably that had not changed much and she just did not recall it.
When she finally finished complying with all the requirements from Human Resources, Carrie got to her new desk. She had worked in that room before, with Saul, many years ago, but it was also completely changed. Even the color on the walls had gone from a dull grey to a light blue that reflected the incoming sunlight, making the room look brighter than she remembered it. Her desk lacked any personal objects on it, but she found a yellow post-it note on the keyboard. The message written on it was short, and there was no name on it, yet she recognized the handwriting at once. Saul. "See you at the briefing."
Carrie sighed. Not seeing her former mentor and boss before the rest of the team certainly also made things much easier. She then wondered if he would still be her boss. She had been too focused on holding his treason against him that she had forgotten to ask about the specifics of the job when she had called him to let him know that she was in.
Her doubts were dispelled as soon as all the team gathered in the conference room and Saul got the briefing started. He was obviously in charge of the team, so Carrie would be working under him once more. "Great," she thought to herself, trying to focus on the task at hand instead of who her boss was.
Once the briefing was over, many thoughts filled her mind.
First of all, they really had a lot of work to do. According to what Carrie had just heard, they had made very little progress in the manhunt they were currently conducting both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In fact, they had no intelligence at all regarding the current whereabouts of Haqqani. The last reliable intel had been obtained more than a week before, when a communication alluding to an attack on American soil had been intercepted by CIA operatives in a remote area of Afghanistan. "What the fuck have they been doing all this time? Who do we have on the field?" Carrie wondered.
Second, she really liked the team Saul had put together to track down Haqqani. She had to admit that he had always excelled in choosing the right people for each mission. Aside from three new young analysts whom she had not met before, who seemed to be straight out of college, the rest were seasoned CIA analysts and agents who had been posted in Afghanistan and Pakistan and had a deep knowledge of the region. As a matter of fact, two of them had worked under Carrie when she had been station chief in Kabul (when she became the youngest station chief in CIA history), and they had proved to be very effective and reliable back then, when she had authorized the air strike that successfully destroyed the farmhouse where Haissam Haqqani was supposed to be according to the intelligence they had received from Islamabad. Aayan had been attending a family wedding party at that farm… She immediately tried to distract her mind from those memories as she sat behind her desk.
Carrie spent the rest of the morning catching up with all the information they had gathered so far, trying to look at it with new eyes, and by the time she raised her head from the files it was already time to go. She had never had a part-time job in her life and found it very strange to leave before her colleagues. That afternoon, when Quinn came home and asked her about her first day, she could not find the words to convey the way that she had felt being back. Instead of words, thick and silent tears began to fall down her cheeks and her lips started quivering.
"That bad, uh?" Peter mumbled, pulling her in for a hug. She had been in the kitchen when he had entered the house and had turned to face him as she had heard his question. This was exactly what he had feared about her coming back to the CIA: all the memories, the guilt, the remorse surfacing again and taking a toll on her mental health. He tried to calm down and took a deep breath: they were not there yet. She still had not pronounced a word.
"It wasn't actually bad..." she whispered against his chest, her voice muffled.
He tilted his head back to make eye contact with her, his hand on the back of her head. "It wasn't? So what is it?" Peter asked, confusion written all over his face. He surely had not been expecting that answer.
Carrie shrugged and leant bank on the counter, breaking their embrace and keeping her right hand on his waist. "I mean, it hasn't been a bad day. Spent almost an hour signing fucking papers at HR, then quite a long briefing with the team, quite boring if you ask me... It wasn't bad... but all the emotions when I got through those doors, Quinn, all the memories came back full force..." she trailed off, her eyes bright.
"I'm sorry Carrie, I'm sorry you had to go through all that in your mind again..." he said placing his hand on her neck, and caressing her cheek with his thumb.
"No, it's okay. I'm sure it won't happen tomorrow. It was just going back for the first time, you know?" she explained. "It's the right thing to do, Quinn..." she added when she noticed his brow furrow, her hand still on his waist.
He nodded. "I know. How're things with Saul?" he inquired letting his hand go of her neck and motioning towards one of the stools, where he sat down.
Carrie turned around to face him from the other side of the counter. "I didn't see much of him. Just a quick 'Hello' before the briefing..." During her drive home she had concluded that maybe Saul had been kind enough to let her have some space on her first day, but there was also a possibility that he had been busy somewhere else. "You know, Carrie, not everything revolves around you," she could hear her husband's teasing voice in her mind.
"Any people I know on the team?" Quinn asked, bringing her back to reality..
Carrie smiled. "Yes…" she started saying, but it only took her a second to change her pace. "I'm afraid that's classified, Quinn..." she sighed. It was a strange feeling, not being able to share details about her job with him. "What the fuck? We met working…" she wanted to scream at the realization. Not being able to share with him such an important part of her life had never happened before, as he had always had been by her side since they had met, and she suddenly realized that her new job would definitely make them lose part of their dynamic as a couple. She just hoped they would be able to adjust to it.
"Right..." Peter said. It had not crossed his mind, either. First, he had been too worried thinking about the repercussions that her eventual comeback could have on her health, and then, hiding Adal's threats from her and pretending that he supported her decision one hundred percent. The fact that she would not be able to share anything had been lost on him, and, without knowing that Carrie was having the same thoughts, he wished they would find a way to navigate through that together.
Noticing that it had also taken him by surprise, Carrie sat on a stool beside him. "Agg Quinn, I fucking hate I can´t tell you about it... But you'd be happy to know that there're people on the team that we both like and respect..." she stated, trying to stop him from worrying too much, if that was possible.
"That's great, Carrie..." he managed to mumble, thankful that apparently Saul was still very good at gathering his own team when the mission at hand required it.
But he still looked quite concerned, so Carrie made an effort to cheer him up a bit. "By the way, Lucy and María from the European desk and Erin from RH, the three of them asked about you..." she casually mentioned as she stood up to make a pot of fresh coffee.
Peter's face immediately relaxed, smirking. "You jealous?" he inquired, raising his eyebrows, following her with his blue gaze.
Carrie snorted while she got the coffee machine started. "No, but they were really interested to know what you're up to these days..."
"Did you tell them that I've turned into the perfect husband?" he inquired as he got up and took two mugs from the cabinet, placing them right beside the coffee machine, and reaching out for the sugar bowl.
"No, should I?" she joked, happy to see that bringing up his admirers at Langley had made the trick. But his response was far from she was expecting.
"Nah... I'm sure they are all over me by now..." he cockily said, opening one of the drawers and taking two coffee spoons.
Carrie looked at him. "What? You're so full of yourself..." she laughed.
Peter shrugged. "If you don't believe me, you can ask them, if you want..."
Apparently they had been more than admirers. "Really? The three of them?" Carrie asked. She had always known that he was very well-liked among the female population, even before they had gotten together, which she could not understand at the time, but she had never heard rumors about flings with work colleagues.
Quinn shrugged again, and she could tell that he was blushing. "Not at the same time, though…"
"Okay, Romeo, I got it…" Carrie joked again, suddenly feeling that she did not want to know anything concerning Quinn's love life before he had kissed her by his truck the night of her father's funeral.
That night, when they were in bed reading before going to sleep, Carrie placed her book on her lap and looked at him. Sometimes, when she watched him doing mundane things, like now, she could not believe that he had chosen her to share his life with him. The light blue shirt he was wearing enhanced the color of his eyes, and she did her best not to stare, but as his gaze was fixed on the book, he had probably noticed that she was checking him out-
"Quinn?" she asked in a low voice, in order not to wake up Franny. Her bedroom was across the hall but she seemed to have developed a special skill to hear her parents talking and join them in their room when she was supposed to be asleep.
"Yeah?" he answered, his attention still on the book.
"Brody's star is still on the wall…" Carrie whispered. He had been the only person she had told about it back in the day, when she had appeared on his doorstep that same night after the ceremony, unannounced, and he had held her close on the couch while she cried on his shoulder. During that night, he had felt Franny kicking inside Carrie, and not for the first time he had wished that the child she was expecting was his and not Brody's. He did not know back then that he would raise her daughter as if she were his own blood.
Her words made him forget about his reading and he quickly closed the book, looking at her and searching for any signs of distress. "And how do you feel about it?" Quinn softly inquired.
She sighed. "Happy, because I think he deserves it, and sad, because it seems nobody has taken a close look at that wall for years… How can people forget?" Her lips started quivering and he put his arm on her shoulders, bringing her to rest on his chest. "And she hasn't actually started working…" he thought.
"You promise me that you're gonna keep away all those negative thoughts, please?" Maybe if she managed to navigate through those ideas during her part-time job she would be okay. "After all, she isn't likely to be on the field again. We can make it work until they get that bastard Haqqani." Little did Quinn know back then that Carrie would be in Kabul in a week, and that once there she would have to face new situations for which she was not ready at all.