neverwrongagent | We all fall down

Entry tags:

brody,
rp

We all fall down

Carrie would remember the next few days as some of the best of her life. She was living with a man she was more comfortable with than she could have imagined, working together for a common goal. Even the visit with his kids went well. She gave him most of Saturday with just them, showing up at dinner time with pizza and cookies. They played board games and chased around her little house until it was time for him to take them back. Then it all went to hell.

They finally found evidence that Walker had met someone on one of his random seeming runs around the District. Before they could act on it, a series of small bombs took out three Metro buses as they approached the city center. A half dozen people were killed, twice that were injured. Had it been one bomb, it would have been bad enough, but three in a concert was particularly frightening for the city. It also put CIA on high alert. The work they'd been doing before was nothing compared to the sudden anger and frustration everyone showed. Plenty of people looked at Brody, and Carrie, as though they'd done something wrong. Brody should have come forward sooner. Carrie shouldn't have trusted him so much. Maybe if they'd come up for air this wouldn't have happened.

Carrie though all that and more, although she never really blamed Brody. At least, not any more than she blamed any of them for missing it. They'd messed up, not gotten to the answer fast enough. For her, everything else fell away. The work was everything and she spent as many hours as she was allowed at work. She had to be shoehorned out of the building to go home and rest, but when she was there she didn't sleep. She only ate when someone put food in front of her. This was the Carrie Brody had never seen, that her family worried about, that Carrie held on a tight leash.

She paced her dining platform, looking at the notes and schedules she had posted to her wall, sure she was still missing something crucial. She had music playing, the kind of jazz that normally settled her, but it wasn't doing shit and she could feel her skin start to crawl, but she had to work, had to figure out where they'd gone wrong.

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She bore down on him so she could use the extra energy of his last thrusts to push her over the edge. She fell only a few moments after him, groaning his name. More softly, she added the word love, but she didn't specify exactly what is was she loved that much.

He sagged over her, as emotionally drained as he was physically. He felt like maybe he could even sleep a little. With a groan, he found her neck and kissed her lightly. "You too."

It took her a moment, then she whimpered weakly. She meant that as much as anything else. She closed her eyes as she reached up to pet his face. When she thought her voice was worth anything, she got her lips back near his ear. "Always with you. Promise."

He tucked in close to her and let his eyes close. She was about to have deal with him sleeping on her, cause he was not ready to move at all.

She had to chuckle. She wasn't going to ask him to move, not when he felt so good there. Wrapping her arms around him so he wouldn't feel any obligation to move, she closed her eyes and let herself consider sleep.

He finally did move, but it was only to settle better and drift a little deeper. It was the first sleep he'd gotten in days and he was determined to enjoy it.

With his shift, she could get in a comfortable position to watch him sleep. She petted his arm, more for her than for him, and tried to catalog everything about him. She knew he would do better than he expected, but he needed the support.

With a groan, he finally forced himself awake. He opened his eyes to see her still with him and he smiled faintly. "I thought you'd be gone."

She shrugged slightly. "Didn't want to leave without saying good bye." He would have understood, she knew, but she could use the break too and knew the extra time would be good for them both. She touched his cheek. "Have to go soon, though."

He nodded and gave her a very tight, but very brief, hug. "I should follow. See what my test is."

She nodded, then slowly pulled away from him to get her clothes put together. "Probably. They'll want to call you in pretty quickly anyway." She leaned over as she got dressed. "Better if we can face them together."

He stole another kiss, then got dressed himself. After a final kiss, he left first, since he could walk out the front of the hotel.

On his way to the safe house, he stopped to restock his beer supply. He knew he was going to need it.

Carrie took the even longer way around and by the time she got there, impatient didn't even begin to explain how the rest of the team reacted. For her part, Carrie was infinitely more relaxed than she'd been before seeing Brody. That got a fleetingly odd look from Saul.

And then they were all work. The disc had schematics for a bank, information about security, and everything else someone would need to rob it. All of which would have made no sense at all, except that the bank held accounts Homeland was already tracking for suspicious activity. The goal wasn't robbery, but destruction of records and general confusion.

Brody sat in silence for a long time, considering this plan. He knew he was making some of the FBI agents beyond edgy. He didn't care. This wasn't on them. It was on him.

Finally, he nodded. "I'll need two days to prep it. I'll get pictures before I destroy."

There was some disagreement of how long it should take, but most of that centered around unrealistic ideas of what Brody should be able to do on his own. They wanted him to ask more questions, to get more information, but it just wasn't that complex a task for a man as well trained, and theoretically, motivated as he was.

Finally Saul broke in, talking only to Brody. "You sure you're good with this? It's a lot on your shoulders."

Brody glanced at Carrie, then back at Saul. "My being good with this had nothing to do with it. It's not like you can just send a replacement. And it's not like they'll let me just walk away, not now. If I try, my family is dead and you all know it. So, yeah, I'm good with it."

Internally, Carrie's response was much more complex than the slight nod she offered. Guilt over his family for the danger and their relationship mixed with a pride in his strength. And then there was the guilt over having pushed him to be part of this from the get go when he just wanted to go back to his unit.

For Saul's part he was just looking for the pragmatism. He might have felt worse for Brody without the relationship growing between him and Carrie. Or maybe not. He wasn't wasting much time considering that. "Then it's a go."

Brody nodded. "I know you want to keep the card. But I need the info to prep this right. So I need a copy."

It was Atwell who hopped up to give him the original now that he'd made a solid copy. He had checked as carefully as possibly to see if there were marks hidden on the card that might be additional signals. There were none, but still better to keep the original in play.

Carrie shook her head. "We'll make sure you have everything you need."

Brody took the card from Atwell with a smile, then he turned to Carrie. "I need a laptop. Clean. Durable. And clearance to the Quantico Armory." He thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No. I'll get that through DIA. Fewer questions."

She nodded quickly. A laptop was easy enough. She almost wished there was more she could do for him. She didn't like the lack of control or contact she had. "I'll get it to you right away."

And with that, Saul called it quits. Everyone knew their jobs. He nodded to Brody, telling him to head out first. The rest would keep working until long after he was gone.

Brody stood and pocketed the card. Then he touched Carrie's arm on his way out the door. He knew he would need to go over everything again once he was equipped. But for now, he could call his DIA handler and do an initial scout of the bank.

His beer could wait a little while longer.

The call to his handler went as well as could be expected, but he got the clearance he would need. It was only through the possibility of nailing Walker for something big that Brody got what he needed. If this didn't pan out, he was going to end up in a cell in a very dark place.

When he arrived at the bank, it was bustling with pre-closing activity. He would have to come back and scout several more times before he made his play, but this was the perfect first run. He lingered back for a few moments, getting an overview. Then it was to the stand, where he filled out a deposit slip for nothing. In the morning, he would have to come back with something to cash, just to see the teller operations.

All told, he spent half an hour in the bank, then returned to his car. He was on the phone to Carrie right away. "I need a check written to me and drawn on the target bank. I can't get close to the tellers without it."

Carrie left the co-ordinating between agencies to Saul. She was shit at it when she was as invested as she was at the moment. Pretty much the only person she was communicating well with at all was Atwell and that was only because he was too green to know any better. Most people were of the opinion that this was all a perfectly useless dry run, but one or two were pouring over bank records trying to figure out why that bank, what could be so important.

Carrie was increasingly on the dry run team, but that didn't mean she wasn't worried. When she got the call from him, she jumped to get him what he needed. Against wishes from pretty much everyone, she made her way to him to hand deliver it.

The fact that Brody was, basically, planning a bank robbery was not lost on him and it was making him fairly uncomfortable. But he was also still a professional.

When Carrie turned up at his door for the second time in a day, he smiled and welcomed get in. "Please tell me you have something I need."

She beamed at him as she passed. "I'd like to think I always bring something you need." That said, she also had a check for him in an unremarkable amount. "As requested."

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