Saul had sent her away, despite her protestations. He'd had her checked over again, just to be sure, and she had hurried away from the medics in case they spotted how much her hands were shaking. She needed to take a pill. The medics hadn't shown any concern, they had so much more on their plate elsewhere. They'd given her some sedatives, told her to rest, gave her the normal spiel about concussion and shock. Saul insisted there was nothing more she could do there, that she'd be of much more use to him once she'd rested. Carrie sensed he was keeping something from her. She felt so guilty, for lying to him about Brody, about where she'd been, for not being there for him during his utter despair. He hugged her tight and said that the fact she was alive was enough for him. She had tried to get him to go home too but he wouldn't come out of that hall, didn't want to leave the bodies. Like he was keeping a vigil over them.
Carrie had done what she was told, for once. She got out of there. Operations officers were now thin on the ground but she needed to get away, just to drown it out, before Brody's name cropped up again and she freaked. She knew it was only a matter of time before Saul realised that Carrie had not been out cold for hours on his office floor after all. He was still in shock at the moment but once he paused to review matters, when he noted that they'd still not turned up any sign of Brody, she knew he'd be at her.
She had spoken to Maggie, assured them she was fine and resisted all calls to go stay at their place. She fobbed her off by saying she was with Saul, helping him through it. Her father had wept. Carrie couldn't get a straight word out of him and she'd cried too. Maggie would have to give him something to make him sleep. Carrie loved them, but she just wanted to be alone right now.
Back at home, she took her pill. And the sedative. She had realised that she couldn't afford to fall to pieces right now. Brody was relying on her. She drew her bedroom curtains, wondered how he was bearing up, all alone and trying to make sense of the past few days.
She reached over and touched the spot on her bed where he had slept, the night he had come to her door and made it clear that he needed her. He intimidated her sometimes, the way he looked right into her eyes, so bold. Like that time in the woods, when he had stood so close she could smell the previous night's liquor on him. "So. Are we going to try this sober?". She hadn't answered him, walking on ahead feeling alarmed and conflicted.
That first night at the cabin had been one thing, one ridiculous thing, but what he had been proposing then was entirely another. Different leagues of inappropriateness.
When she had gone to meet him at the bar it was with the sole objective of talking him into taking the polygraph the next day. But he'd shown another side to himself than the haunted figure in pyjamas she'd been watching on secret camera for days and it had intrigued her. His smile was easy, genuine. Not the false one she'd seen him practise in his bathroom mirror. It started in his eyes, spread all around his face, played on his mouth and even when it had all but passed, she noticed that his eyes still twinkled like the tail of a comet that lingered long after its mass had shot overhead. She hadn't seen that in the grainy footage of the Brody household. She stuck around to see what else he might show her.
It hadn't gone quite to plan. She'd stayed in control, just, despite drinking a gallon of bourbon, gulping at glasses of water from the pitcher on the bar when Brody went to the bathroom, drawing a conspiratorial wink from the bartender. But through the fog of drink, by the time she remembered what she was there to do and had gone for it, slipping him the tip about Hamid's death, it didn't seem to register. Brody was either too drunk or too distracted by what was going to happen next.
She hadn't meant for it to happen but it had. She considered whether it had damaged her position and concluded that the whole surveillance of Brody thing was enough to get her fired anyway, so this last little episode was just a minor detail. Quite an enjoyable detail actually, she smirked, as she reclined on her back seat after he had left her. More enjoyable than the past few risky encounters with men in bars, for sure. And she was something of a connoisseur, so she would know. Nothing that Carrie ever did surprised herself anymore. She was used to it.
But events at the cabin had surprised her. She had surpassed herself this time and gone too far even for her roller-coaster tastes.
She was alone in the woods with a man she suspected of terrorism, she didn't know his true motives and she didn't know if he suspected hers. She had her gun ready, just in case, but still found it perfectly acceptable to do what they did. Jesus.
She had allowed herself a brief secret smile when he had entered the room at Langley, recalling the parking lot incident. Feeling herself start to blush, she checked herself in case Saul noticed. Brody had been so cool during the polygraph test. He aced it. Carrie was flustered, she had been so sure he was guilty and this was her big chance to prove it going up in smoke. Indignant, she threw in the last question about whether he'd been faithful to Jess. He lied in reply. Bare-faced. But the machine didn't blip, even remotely. Maybe he didn't consider last night to have constituted infidelity but Carrie was more liberal than most and she certainly did. Far from accept, as Saul advised, that Brody was innocent and that her suspicion of him had been unfounded, it dawned on Carrie that she was dealing with one serious customer here. It had antagonized her massively.
So how she found herself bringing him to the cabin, screwing him again, she just did not know. She was feeling irresponsible, giving herself over to the tequila and to the way he made her laugh. It was her condition, she told herself. Brody had shrugged off her questions about the polygraph, refused to talk about anything real. They had escaped together, and on some level they were both trying to escape themselves that weekend.
The next day, however, he had suddenly been ready to address certain things and he caught her off guard when he suggested that they could be on to something together. She found herself sharing things with him, taking him to see the waterfall that had previously only belonged to her and Maggie. Telling him about what happened with her translator. What if he was innocent, like Saul said? She could be passing up a rare opportunity of something genuine here because of her hardheaded conviction that she was always right. Sure, he was married and he was a seriously damaged individual...but Carrie had never ever done things simply, so why quibble?
She couldn't believe she was even entertaining it. This guy was the American prisoner of war who had been turned, he had to be.
But she had gone with it, regardless. She kept forgetting what he was supposed to be. Maybe he had, too. That night he had bared his scars to her and when he pulled her towards him she panicked for a moment, wondering what on earth she was doing. He was deadly serious, totally sober. She thought about stopping him, bolting, until his lips found the sweet spot on her throat that made her eyes roll. All reason was lost at that point.
She was not sure that it had ever returned.