Peacetime

by Eyesdown104

Post S2, the first 48hrs after the bomb. Brody, Carrie, Jess, Saul, Dana and Quinn try to make sense of events and come to terms with the attack on the CIA and its impact on their lives. Multi chapter, multi character. Some swearing and adult content. No copyright claimed, no infringement intended.

30. Chapter 30

"However it hurts the least.", he said to her when she had insisted he believe that this wasn't goodbye. Whether he chose to believe that this was the end for them forever or not, it didn't change the gnaw of grief he had felt in that moment. Actually, it hadn't let up since, eating him slowly from the inside out.

Hurting her the least was incompatible with her eventually coming to discover his body mouldering in the cabin, the gun she gave him at his side, her fight still aflame while he had selfishly and cravenly extinguished his own.

He had thrown himself forward, as if in fervent prayer, and used the chalk from Carrie's backpack to etch across a floorboard. He concentrated, tried to make it a work of art, gripping the chalk stick tightly to subdue his shaking hands. He took care to dispense with the uneven staccato capital letters of his own handwriting and tried to make the letters uniform, the lines straight, the curves smooth.

C. O. M. P. L. E. T. E. L. Y.

He reared up on his knees to appraise his work, his little reference to their private mythology. He wondered whether she would ever see it, whether some creature's paws might rub it away, whether she'd snort a laugh and think him lame. He didn't care, it was almost more for his benefit anyway, an affirmation that he would keep going for her, rather than a message to Carrie that he had been there and that he loved her. She already knew, after all.

Brody stalked on through the woods, achieving an almost meditative state through the rhythm of his strides, only the occasional stumble on the uneven ground breaking his focus. He felt better for being mobile again, for being outside, drawing the scent of resin into his nostrils. Putting distance between himself and the darkness he had skirted in the cabin felt cathartic, that he was motoring on and creating space between his body and the mess at Langley made him feel like he still had some say in matters. People should appreciate peacetime while it lasts, he thought.

Brody imagined that every thin sapling he passed represented a millimetre line, with every fat tree trunk marking a centimetre on a ruler pressed against a map that showed the expanse between his current location from Langley and from Iraq.