Auggie woke with a start, and fumbling at his watch, found that it was five thirty. He thought he must have been having a nightmare because his heart was pounding, but he couldn't remember what it was. The uneasy prickling that had disappeared for a few days was back, and he decided that fresh air might calm him down. He was only just getting used to sharing the bed again, and found he rather preferred sleeping by himself.
He was impressed that he managed to feel his way outside without waking her, but he guessed that she had gotten in very late. They usually ate alone on Friday evenings, but there had been another AIDS talk that Piper insisted on going to. He hated the talks but not because they took Piper away until midnight. Hearing about the world's problems reminded him that he was stuck in a tiny village worrying about how the well-diggers were getting on. The last time he'd been, he lay awake almost all night convincing himself not to go home. He'd come here for himself – to find his girlfriend, to take a needed break from his work, to escape the doctors who couldn't quite find a solution. Although self-gratification was an unfamiliar action since Iraq, he'd sworn that he wouldn't just go running back as soon as someone needed him. There were reminders, though, that the world had bigger problems than any he faced: the AIDS conferences; the continued reports of human-rights abuses that the villagers here took as second nature. Auggie secretly hated that all he was doing was teaching two 20 year olds how to use Excel. Parker insisted that his work here was as important as what the CIA did, but he felt like a glorified pawn. He preferred the control of missions, the tangible sense of achievement when another bad guy was locked away.
He slid down the cool wall, and dug his feet into the coarse grit. It still smelled of nighttime; the heat hadn't yet leached the earthen smell out of the walls of the house. His breathing had just begun to quiet when a very, very faint noise tickled the edge of his hearing. Instantly, he was awake. He didn't have to listen again to know that he'd just heard machine-gun fire. It wasn't so much the sound as the feeling that he still remembered from Iraq. He forced down the urge to crouch into fighting position, and struggled to remain calm. This was ridiculous. He hadn't been at war for four years, and here in the middle of a sleepy village with no weapon and absolutely no reason to even need one, his body automatically wanted to attack. Attack what? Bands of fighters at the border? Geez, he was losing it.
Try as he might, though, he couldn't calm down. He wanted – needed – to do something. This wasn't really even about the distant gunfire. That had just been a trigger for the itch that had been at the back of his mind for the past month. His unease was more than just missing Annie – he knew that in coming here he'd just been running away, something he had sworn he wouldn't do anymore after those first horrible months back from Iraq. The trouble was, if he left now, he'd just be running from something else. What was he going to do with Parker?
It was time to talk – really talk – with his best friend.