neverwrongagent | This is spying. Isn't it FUN?

Entry tags:

au,
brody,
rp

This is spying. Isn't it FUN?

Brody attending the meeting Walker had so casually mentioned turned into a three ring circus. More than one person involved was convinced the whole thing was a wild goose chase, including Carrie occasionally. If she hadn't seen Walker as up close and personal as she had when they were first rescued, she could have been convinced. Maybe sending Brody to a regular meeting for returning vets who were also Muslim was just a kind of fuck you from a man who felt he'd been betrayed by a brother soldier. Or it could be something much more sinister. The problem was, no one could really figure out what that sinister was supposed to be. Carrie continued to maintain that Brody had no idea what was going on.

The questions Brody faced right after the meeting ranged from if he knew any of the people there already to how was he planning to overthrow the US government. When the questions headed that way a majority of the time, Carrie called foul and got Brody out of there. With full understanding of the irony involved, they had decided that the cover that would work best with his family was that he was working with other vets on integrating back into the world. Carrie would have felt a lot worse about that if it was just being used to cover up them fucking around. She still felt pretty shitty about it given how much stress it was putting on him.

They took their own cars back to her place. She got there before him and immediately opened a fresh bottle of wine, leaving a full glass on the counter for him, then she went upstairs to change into something decidedly less official looking.

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He shrugged. "لا أدري ما أنا الحبيبة . لا يوجد دليل سهل على هذه الأمور.*" He shifted so that he could look at her, touch her face, and kiss her.

"كيف اعتقد في أي إن شاء الله بعد ما حدث لي ؟ التعذيب والقسوة، على كلا الجانبين، لا سبل ومهام الورع الرجال.**"

(* I do not know what I am, beloved. There is no easy guide for these things. **How could I really believe in any god after what has happened to me? Torture and cruelty, on both sides, are not the ways of godly men.)

That wasn't much of an answer, but she smiled gently for him and kissed him back. Being called beloved in Arabic stung a little now that she was worried, but the touch still felt the same. "ولكن كنت مؤمنا. ما يهم لك.*" She cocked her head. "كنتم دائما؟**"

His Arabic was better than recited, memorized, poetry and soldier boy pidgin would have hinted at, accent aside.

*But you are a believer. That matters to you.
**Were you always?

He shrugged as he laid his head back on her shoulder. "أنا لا أصلي. أنا لم يصلي . أنا لا أطلب من الله . لا أقبل أن الله يتدخل. ولكن هذا لا يعني أن لا أمل أن ما نعانيه هو لن تذهب سدى.*" He tightened his arm around her, retreating into hiding some against her. It didn't stop him from talking. It was as if he was more open the more hidden he became. There was a link there, between his unconscious Arabic and his retreat.

"أنا فقط أريد السلام يا حبيبي . هو طلب ؟ أن كل هذا الهراء?**"

(* I do not pray. I have never prayed. I do not ask for things from God. I do not accept that God would intervene. But that doesn't mean that I don't hope that what we go through is not in vain.
** I just want peace, my love. Is that asking too much? That all this nonsense stop?)

Carrie had only the most casual faiths, attached to no religion. In the loosest terms she might be a deist, if she thought about it at all. Hearing him talk that way, in that language, was getting odder and odder. "كيف نجد السلام والمحبة؟ بالنسبة لي انها تأتي من الحقيقة.*" She swallowed hard at the irony of that when she was still holding back something she'd only hinted at. "ومن لم يسع قط الحقيقة عبثا.**

She petted his hair softly. "لماذا كان من الصعب جدا أن يكون في ذلك الاجتماع؟ يبدو وكأنك قد وجدت أرضية مشتركة.***"

(*How do we find peace, love? For me it comes from truth.

**The truth is never sought in vain.

***Why was it so hard to be in that meeting? Seems like you could have found some common ground.)

He huffed softly, trying to decide what to answer first." كيف يمكنك أن تجد السلام في الحقيقة، عندما كنت تحمل مرة أخرى؟*" It felt antagonistic, which was not his intention at all. He sighed again.

"كان اللقاء الصعب لأن هؤلاء الرجال لا يفهمون. نعم، لقد كانوا هناك. ولكن الآلاف من الناس كانت هناك. نعم، فقد تعرض لصدمة، ولكن الآلاف من الناس لديهم. هم مسلم، ولكن أنا لا. تجربتي لا تزال فريدة من نوعها. وأنه من الصعب، لأنها لا تزال متدينة، رغم ما شاهدوه. وأنا لا."

(*How can you find peace in the truth, when you hold back?
** The meeting was hard because those men do not understand. Yes, they've been there. But thousands of people have been there. Yes, they have been traumatized, but thousands of people have. They are Muslim, but I am not. My experience is still unique. And it is hard, because they are still devout, despite what they have seen. And I am not.

It was an answer to more than the one question. It covered some of her others, but at the same time left her wondering what kind of choices he'd been making that she hadn't seen. "هل يعرف ووكر هذا عنك؟ حول قبولك منهم؟*" Because that would explain, if his partner didn't share the ease with the language and culture, why Walker was trying to implicate Brody. It could be hard to understand seeing the humanity in the culture of one's captors.

(*Does Walker know this about you? About your acceptance of them?)

He nodded slightly. "ربما. ونحن في كثير من الأحيان لا يرى وجها لوجه على أشياء كثيرة، بما في ذلك الأسباب كنا هناك. ربما أن يجعل منه رجلا أفضل من الأول.*"

He followed that up with a grunt and a tightening of his arm. "فمن الصعب، للحفاظ على من يجري غاضب حول كل شيء. ولكن الغضب لا يجدي نفعا. انه من الصعب عدم الصراخ زوجتي أو أطفالي. لأنهم لا يستطيعون فهم."

(*Probably. We frequently did not see eye to eye on many things, including the reasons we were there. Perhaps that makes him a better man than I.

** It is hard, to keep from being angry about it all. But the anger does no good. It's hard not to yell at my wife or my kids. Because they cannot understand.)

She couldn't see how Walker's attitude could make him a better man. It was that kind of thing that kept the fighting she worked so hard to end going on. She shifted a little so he could hold her more comfortably and she gently petted his hair. "أنت رجل جيد، والحب.*"

She held him for a long while, then sighed softly. "وأنها سوف تفهم أبدا. انها ليست خطأهم، لكنهم لا يستطيعون.**"

)*You're a good man, love.
**They'll never understand. It's not their fault, but they can't.)

He shrugged again, but didn't say anything. She might be right, but it felt an awful lot like giving up. Which, if he thought about it, he'd already done. But that wasn't the same as admitting it.

Admitting the situation existed wasn't giving up. Even leaving his wife for real wasn't giving up. It was just change, something he'd already been dealing with for a while.

Finally, she switched back to English, feeling like she'd gotten as much as she was going to out of him in Arabic for the moment. "How many people know how fluent you are?"

He looked at her in confusion. "What?"

She frowned. "Your Arabic's not bad. It's not in your records anywhere." She shrugged slightly. "Of course, neither is your singing. Or juggling."

"My Arabic..." He sighed softly. This was not good. "How long was I using it?"

She touched his cheek lightly. "From the poetry until just now." That meant he was even more comfortable in the language than she thought.

He leaned into her touch with a whimper. "I have not thought in anything else in months. But I have not spoken it since I got out of that hole."

She leaned in, touching her forehead to his. "You have to come home, Nick. Come all the way home." She meant come all the way to her, even though she was as much a part of the hole he'd been in as she was a part of anything else.

He shook his head and closed his eyes. "I can't. It's not finished. I can't come home until it's finished." His hand clenched at his side and he moved away after a moment. "Not until it's done."

She used his movement away as a cover for her own retreat. She slid away from him until they weren't touching at all. Managing not to stare at him took the real effort. "Until what is done?"

A half hour ago she'd been as relaxed as she'd ever been in her life. Relaxed and happy and trusting. Now every nerve jangled with fear and concentration. He could just mean being watched by her team, having to play games with Walker. That would make sense.

He settled on his stomach, looking away from her. He didn't need to be psychic to know he'd lost it all with those words, that she wouldn't trust him anymore. As far as he was concerned, it was what he deserved. He was not trustworthy. He was a failure and a coward, a sympathizer, even after being taken captive. He had no illusions about that. He'd seen it in the eyes of every person at that meeting, in the eyes of all his shadows, in Walker's eyes when they'd spoken, and in Carrie's eyes before he moved away.

"This bullshit war, this bullshit foreign policy."

She'd pulled back but he was still in her bed. There was a gun in a drawer not ten feet from her, but she'd gone nowhere near it. Instead she shifted slowly back to him, hoping that he wouldn't reject her approach, and rested her hand on his back. More than anything she wanted to keep trusting him. She needed to because she'd told everyone he was the innocent party. These things were never clean and simple and she couldn't be that wrong about him.

"That's why you're helping. Right?"

"Is that what I'm doing? I'm helping? With what, exactly? If you're right, it's one guy, maybe a few guys. If you're wrong, it's nothing." He wasn't rejecting her approach, but he was shut down again. And all because he'd been relaxed and let down his guard, and been called on it. It wasn't intentional, it was self-preservation.

"A few guys can do a lot of damage." He knew that as well as she did. She gently rubbed his back, wanting him to come back to her. She felt suddenly alone and uncertain. "We need to understand how it all works."

And part of that, even if she was wrong and there was nothing going on, was understanding the effects on him. Knowing was still the better choice. "Have you told me the truth, Nick? Are we still in this together?" The way she asked it clearly implied that she was with him, that she expected a yes answer.

He turned to look at her, his eyebrow raised in anger. "Have I ever lied to you? You know everything. How can you even ask me that?"

She swallowed hard, that flash of guilt coming back. "I learned as much today as I've known so far. If I didn't believe you, I wouldn't be lying here naked still." She licked her lips. "I'm not sure you believe me about that."

He responded with the last weapon in his arsenal out of frustrated anger. "You're a spy, Carrie. You are in the lying business." He didn't want to believe that she wasn't being truthful, but he was backed into a corner and the statement was the last defense he had.

He turned away, then slipped from the bed. "I'm sorry. That was cruel. I need to go outside. I need..." He shuddered hard, then turned to look at her. "You're a spy, Carrie, and you get to keep doing that. You still have your livelihood." He looked down at his hands. "I'm a killer and I can't even do that anymore."

He grabbed his pants and pulled them on, then headed for the door. With no shirt and no shoes, he couldn't get far.

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