It was deathly quiet in the cabin. Brody had forgotten that silence like this was even possible. He had spent the past few weeks in the midst of a waking nightmare, ricocheting between Roya, Nazir, his family and Carrie, feeling like he was careering towards certain disaster but not knowing at which pair of hands it would befall him. At least he now knew the extent of his comeuppance, he could appreciate its full size and shape, he no longer had to lay awake at night with the foreboding sitting cackling on his chest.

Far from proving to be his saviour as he had been coaxed to believe during his arrest, Carrie had just cauterised his autopsy wounds and sent him straight back into battle. Although she professed to care, she refused to relent even though he was clearly falling apart. The operation was paramount and she continued to use every trick in the book to ensure his cooperation. As much as he secretly craved it, Brody resented it, the way she looked at him, the way she touched him when they were alone. She had him over a barrel, she didn't need to flirt with him to make him comply. It insulted him that she would think he was that simple, that malleable. It hurt him to think that she could be callous enough to exploit him, especially when she was claiming to have feelings for him too, to use whatever it was that they had to get the job done.

So Brody tried to keep his emotions in check and shut her down any time she tried to employ any intimacy there was between them. He tried to switch that part of him off. Carrie had lost friends in the ambush at the tailor's shop in Gettysburg and assumed Brody had double-crossed her to Roya the first chance he got. She had burst into his office and let fly at him, all fists and venom, yelling fire. She knocked the air out of his lungs before he had a chance to raise his own arms to fend her off. She let up long enough to hear him denying it and while she paused to decide whether she believed him, she had crumbled in front of him, distraught. Brody reached for her hand slowly and bravely, as if attempting to diffuse a land mine. Eventually she allowed him to draw her near, Brody only taking the final step when he was confident that she wasn't going to erupt again. Every hair on his body stood on end at the proximity with hers. He hoped that she couldn't feel his gooseflesh through his shirt. He told himself that he just needed to do the decent human thing in comforting her. Under no circumstances was he to touch her hair, to wipe her tears away with his thumb or allow this to turn into any kind of caress. He told himself not to look into her eyes. Rather than embrace her, he simply allowed her to stand against him. But when she put her head on his shoulder he instinctively brought his hand up to hold it there, strands of her hair slipping betwixt his fingers and back under his skin like determined golden creepers. You idiot, he thought. He felt like his mind was agile enough to keep up with the twisting, turning games she played but that his fool heart let him down, coming lumbering up behind the rest of him with a much wider turning circle.

He had managed to hold her off until the weekend at the horse farm. Brody was a mess. Carrie seemed to understand how shaken he was feeling, how totally out of his depth he was. He told her about his conversation with Rex, a real war hero, about how he had heaped praise on Brody, mistaking him for the mirage he had projected. Brody realised that if Rex believed in him, if it had been that easy to seem like the person a guy like Rex respected, then why couldn't Brody have just been him? But it was too late. Brody was already too far down this fucked up path, buried in layers of deceit. There wasn't a person on earth he hadn't lied to apart from Nazir and he was now being pushed into betraying him in the hugest way imaginable as well. Carrie understood. She even seemed to regret it as much as he did.

This time when she grabbed his hand he didn't pull away. He didn't hold hers right back but he did make the fatal mistake of taking a step closer, the rest of his body now in league with his heart in betraying him. He was dragged under Carrie's current before his mind had even agreed to surrender. While they kissed, he clutched at her body desperately trying to find some point of reference that was true to hold on to. He couldn't find one. But he couldn't stop himself either, so he just had to give up and go with it. He kissed her for every time he had thought about her since the cabin. He kissed her with all his remorse at having hurt her, with all his hope that she wasn't still playing him. He kissed her with all his sweet relief that she was back in his life. The feeling of her mouth on his made his entire body hum. He felt lightheaded, all his blood rushing south at just the very moment his wits required it. For a few moments, everything died away, all the clamouring voices, the demands, the seasickness. He just felt peace. "Is this for real?", he had asked her. Like he had wanted to ask her in the car after the interrogation. It felt real to him. The way she kissed him, her fingertips on the nape of his neck, brushing his ear, her shallow breathing, the way she pressed against him - it seemed like it was real for her too. But he could not be sure and he couldn't assume. He knew he shouldn't trust her. She appeared as confused as he was, to the point of tears. The faintest glimmer that she might be genuine spurred him on. He kissed her fiercely again, keeping his eyes open this time just in case she did too, trying to catch her out. Not even Carrie could fake this. Brody had been on the cusp, just about to accept the abandon and allow Carrie to dash him against the rocks, to drown him, when that paranoid shriek from deep inside rescued him and dragged him back to the surface. He couldn't afford to indulge when it was taking all he had just to stay alive.

And that's all he had been doing throughout all this, just staying alive, no time to think, just time to dodge the most immediate threat at any given moment. Just like all he had done to get through Iraq was simply not die. It had gone on so long now that he had forgotten that life was supposed to be about anything other than just surviving, scraping by with his nerves shattered but his lungs still full. He had been right when he remembered that these things got progressively worse. It soon reached fever pitch, his ears whistling and his blood boiling from the pressure of it all. Carrie had been there for him. She hadn't saved him completely like he wished she would, she made it clear that there was no way out unless he fashioned it himself. But she was there every time it threatened to overwhelm him, she scraped him off the floor and yanked him down from the ceiling.

Then, that night at the motel she had finally made him believe. Maybe he had just been ready to accept it, too broken now to keep second-guessing her. She didn't have to take the risk in bringing him there but she had done so to give him some room to breathe, some oxygen untainted by panic. She said she could lead him, both of them, out of this. He wanted to hang on to that. The fact that there was an exit, the fact he wasn't on his own. He wanted to hang on to her. He still didn't believe it was possible but he was done thinking now, he was all too happy to let her take the reigns. He just wanted to be told what to do. She mentioned a future for them and it perplexed him on both counts; that there could be a future and that she would want anything to do with him if there was one. After all he had done. After she had seen him for what he was. She promised him that he could still rectify things, he could still wash out these stains. She would help him. It was what he needed to hear. She kissed him to hammer home her point and he pulled her to him in acceptance. He saw no point in holding back any more. They had set the dogs on him, after all. Like when he had kissed her in the woods, he tried to make his actions count. He channeled the thwarted impulses she had extorted from him, every urge he had ignored when she had run her hand up his arm and all his confused frustration from the horse farm into making her come. He fucked her like he had promised himself he would do if he ever got the chance again. For every guilty moment he had spent catching his breath next to Jess with Carrie on his mind. Brody recognised that it was a very male instinct he was acting on, almost to the point that he felt ashamed. But he couldn't stop it. It wasn't in keeping with the solace that she had offered him, the tenderness. Carrie didn't seem to mind anyway, digging her fingernails deep into his back as they held on to each other for dear life.

Later that night she had held him down and showed him that she meant it, too. Tenderly, like he wished he could have been with her earlier if he hadn't have been so pent up. She made love to him. He knew the difference and he felt humbled by her. She evoked all his sensations and emotions from the last time they were together at the cabin, laying them out before them and confirming them as genuine. He liked her taking control. She had even held his wrists above his head at one stage while she leant in to kiss him. She would not let him doubt her. He had wriggled free to hold on to her hips as she rocked him gently, only quickening the pace when she felt that they were both close. She exhaled into his mouth and he swallowed her breath as they kissed, as if she was administering him first aid. He felt like she was dissolving into him, replenishing parts of him that were running dangerously low. She promised him it was real and he believed her.

He decided that if this wasn't true then nothing in this world was, and if that was the case he wanted no part in it anyway.

Let them lock him away. Let them execute him.