But things changed violently the next day.
Brody awoke feeling euphoric, hardly able to wait for the day to begin. He was torn between the desire to go outside and pray discreetly, to give thanks for this new development in his life, or to stay and watch Carrie sleep some more. In the end, he had stayed put, transfixed. The fairy dust that he had first inhaled along with all that bourbon in the bar a couple of nights ago had really taken hold yesterday and he reflected on the fact that he might be falling in love. He raised his eyebrows. This wasn't part of the plan, he had thought to himself.
Once Carrie had woken up too, the situation flipped upside down within a matter of minutes. Was he being paranoid? He had been beset by nightmares again last night, perhaps he still had the jitters. Had he heard her right? He rapidly searched for any conceivable explanation for what she had just said about the tea. There wasn't one. Suddenly, the realization that nothing was as it seemed dawned on him and it shook him to the core. It made his temples pulse and his knees shake. He held on to the bed just to make sure it existed. The utter idiocy of his having been fraternising with a fucking CIA agent on the trail of Abu Nazir hit home. Carrie wasn't just Carrie, just as sure as Brody wasn't really just Brody. Had he been thinking solely with his dick the past few days, or what? The recognition that, actually, it had been a whole lot more than that sunk in, which made it even more unnerving. Of course she seems like she inexplicably knows you, you retard. She does know you. She's been studying you. She probably has a whole dossier on your favourite hot beverages, she knows the side of the bed you sleep on, your dumb sense of humor, maybe even that her biting you in the throes of passion would make you come. "Fuck me.", Brody whispered to himself when Carrie had conveniently ducked outside to look for some wood.
All the feelings of having been blessed, the hope that had crept into Brody over the weekend, suddenly drained out of the pit of his being, leaving behind only bile. How could she do this after they...after he...? He had confronted her on the porch, still half wanting her to convince him that he had it all wrong, so they could go back to how things had been yesterday. She couldn't and when he showed her the gun, she revealed her true colours.
It had shocked him that she knew so much, that she was so close to the truth. Was he really that easy to read? He hadn't thought so until now. She knew things about Isa. The sound of his name made him wince. She was suddenly defiant again, like she had been when she provoked that nazi guy in the bar that time. He challenged her, tossed her the gun. Brody knew he had to dig himself out of this hole, or everything was lost. He told her parts of truths. That he had known Nazir. How he had even come to love him. That he had converted to Islam. About Tom Walker. Some of it threw her, he could tell. It even felt kind of good to say certain things out loud for the first time. But he was careful. It struck him that she couldn't actually have had any hard evidence, or she wouldn't have resorted to this risky live action surveillance. If they had proof, he figured they would have taken him in by now. Or have taken him down. It had become hugely important to him to outsmart her on this, his pride had suffered an enormous dent because of the way she had taken his heart for a ride. He didn't confess to anything crucial. He knew that giving her just enough could explain some of her suspicions and that it might get him off the hook long enough to regroup, to assess the situation. Every way she came at him, he threw her off. Now that they were being up front about things, he felt he could match her.
She was just the same as the rest of them. Just another one of his tormentors. She just employed different methods.
When she had chased him to his car, backtracking wildly, he couldn't understand why. Carrie stood there, visibly upset, almost begging him to believe that she had felt what he had felt this weekend. That it had been real. "Fuck you, Carrie", was his reply. He felt that this summed it up nicely.
That night, back at home, he looked in on Chris, Dana and Jess. They were all sleeping. He felt guilt, but that wasn't why he broke down and cried on the sofa in the dark. He wept because he had been manipulated and tricked and even though he had discovered it it didn't change thing, because his heart had broken. The very second he had dared to connect with the real world again, with life, he had been slapped back down. He'd taken yet another beating. And he had to get back from that. She had induced an almost physical change in him and he needed to reverse it. Quickly. He would need to tap into all his hatred to do so. Luckily there was plenty there to use. He knew that he had sped away from that cabin infinitely more scarred than he had been when he arrived.
And that was how he did it, that was how he motivated himself and justified ruining Carrie's life. She had later apologized for her accusations at the cabin when the finger was firmly pointed at Tom. She had even been prepared for a reconciliation, he suspected, when he visited her house to tell her he was going into politics. But when she threatened to throw things off course again he used his spite at what she had done to him to devastate her right on back.
He would never had thought there could be a way back from that point for them but it had happened and he cherished her all the more for it.
In the weeks that followed the confrontation at the cabin his resolve hardened. He focused on his mission like never before, feeling ever more wronged by the world, ever more detached from other people and ever more indifferent when contemplating his own demise in the interests of a higher purpose. He was a soldier after all, he had prepared himself to lay down his life for the greater good a long time ago. It was just that Nazir had opened his eyes and his allegiances had changed. When he hated her, he thought of Carrie as an enemy target successfully dispatched and when, despite himself, he still felt love, he convinced himself that she had been collateral damage, a necessary casualty.
Yeah, he was a monster. Brody shook his head and leant back against the cabin wall.