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 Missing scene – all quotes from The Vest. Claire Danes, Damian Lewis and Mandy P are simply outstanding here. The episode itself was wonderfully written. The dialogue is just outstanding.

Saul as he's putting Carrie's timeline together on the wall.

They had a threat to National Security on the loose and his best agent was disintegrating in front of him. No to hell with that. His daughter was disintegrating in front of him. Panic had threatened to overwhelm him because he hadn't understood what was wrong with her and yet at the back of his mind, where all those doubts are stored until the day they can creep out on you, a door opened but not until Maggie explained it did he have complete clarity. Bipolar. She's Bipolar and she never said a word to him. It hurt him. She should have been able to tell him. He understood why she hadn't, but he should have noticed and been there for her.

No sense. She had made no sense at all. Rambled on at the speed of light, not even pausing for breath and clearly expecting him to know what she was talking about. Expecting him to back her up and he couldn't because he had been in shock. He felt like he was letting her down, but he was at a loss as to how to react and deal with what had been occurring in front of him. He pushed those thoughts away. They would not help him focus on the task at hand. Breathing in heavily to calm himself down, he knew that despite the fact that he was scared and worried for her he still trusted her. There had been times when he noticed little things and ignored them, pushing them away and hoping she was just having an off day. She still got results. He pushed his own fear about her judgment away for now.

Though he could make no sense of them to work out what she meant at the time, her words are burned into his skull as though someone had taken a branding iron to him. He had been of no use at the Hospital to make an attempt at figuring out what she was trying to tell him. Not when he was distraught and blindsided at seeing her like that.

"I'm laser focused on green."

Saul focused his eyes on the green. She'd been all about the green. No other colour was going to cut it at that precise moment. She'd been…well he didn't even know how to describe how she'd been when he pulled a green pen out of his bag.

"Nazir's movements in green, after a fallow yellow always creeping towards purple are methodical, meaningful, momentous and monstrous."

Saul has so many papers and realises now the key is in the colour. Green, the ever so important green came after the yellow, but creeping towards purple. But there's orange, red and blue as well.

"This is red and blue, not red or blue."

Saul looked around and couldn't see it. The piece of paper she had identified as being both. So, how could he tell where it should go? He had to get this right if he wanted to attempt to understand what she was trying to tell him. It's important to her and she thinks it can help stop Tom Walker.

Red. He'd start with red, because red was…red was 2001. He stared at it for a while. There is lots of red. Nazir had been particularly active. He remembered how personally she'd taken 9/11. How they'd missed so much and gotten it so wrong. The horror of watching it unfolding in front of them and the responsibility of not having stopped it, had left its mark on her.

As he worked tiredness did not touch him. He could focus only on the wall as it came together. He worked fast, but carefully. The wall is taking shape in front of him and it is becoming clearer with every red, orange, and green, blue and purple he puts on the wall. It's a timeline of Abu Nazir's activities.

"Abu Nazir has methods and patterns and priorities."

He studies the wall more closely. She'd mentioned yellow. No. Fallow yellow! That had been important to her, but he'd only come across one so far. It is the missing piece of the puzzle. An important period in Abu Nazir's life where he is just seemingly nowhere and doing nothing. Abu Nazir did not just do nothing.

"A single sniper? No! Abu Nazir doesn't do that. He never has, he never will. He goes big, he explodes. He maims on mass. We know that."

They did know that and now was the time to work it out before another attack occurred on American soil.

He heard the sound of her feet on the floor from above him indicating that she was awake and surveyed the wall as he waited for her to come downstairs, hoping that seeing it up there might in some way help her. She is the artist and he has simply put her work on display.