Brody stared into space, arms crossed tight over his chest, fingers stuffed into his armpits. It was cold and he could see his breath dance in front of his face momentarily when he exhaled. His ass had gone numb from sitting in the same position on the hard floor for so long. He didn't know how long he had been sitting there...he had a watch but he didn't care to look at the time since he knew that the numbers had already lost all their meaning to him. A shaft of blue light was picking its way through the rickety window above his head but he didn't know if it was from the moon or the arrival of another day. His eyes glazed over. Was this lethargy, depression or exhaustion? Shell shock maybe? He had been here before. Time alone, nothing to do but retreat into his mind, into his memories, replaying events and examining the accursed course that had led him to this sorry point. No future to worry about, or even to hope for. This was bleak but far preferable to counting the minutes until the next beating, wondering which would be the next of his bones to snap. There were no jailers here, he told himself. He was safe, for now. She had afforded him that.

He tried to determine the exact moment that he had fallen for her. It was difficult. The first time he ever saw her? In the debrief at Langley? No. His head had still been spinning at that point and it took all his concentration to bat off their questions without digging himself a hole. They weren't trying too hard anyway, most of them. They didn't seem to suspect him of anything, it was as they had said, just a fact finding session on his 'time in captivity'. They had taken care to show deference to the 'war hero'. The phrase had always made him wince when used in connection with himself, although he'd often found it convenient to hide behind. At the debrief, the CIA officers were keen to show concern for all he had been through, and he just had to play the trauma card if things got too hot. Apart from her, that was. She had been more forceful, her questions more aggressive. In retrospect he had realised that she'd been onto him from the off. He had found her annoying, at first suspecting that they'd arranged it all beforehand, agreed to soften him up with a series of fairly benign questions and then got the pretty blonde amongst them to play bad cop and insist he had known Abu Nazir during him time away, just to throw him off balance. But that was just paranoia due to his guilty conscience. There had been no plan, no inkling that he was anything other than what he appeared to be. It was just Carrie, completely correct in her suspicion of him but completely alone. Completely. There was that word again. Estes had shot her down for it during the debrief but Brody had maybe subconsciously registered a note of respect for her, even then. That was his first impression of her. He had arrogantly thought he'd gotten away with it, almost forgotten her until he bumped into her at that church group. Boy, how wrong he was to have dismissed her so easily! He smiled to himself fondly. She was like a dog with a bone.

Perhaps it had been at the church meeting. They had got caught in a storm while they were talking in the parking lot and he hadn't cared a bit. Perhaps the fabled bolt of lightening had struck him right there and he hadn't realised. Something had happened then, he was sure. He had since found out that she had been reeling him in deliberately, pushing the right buttons, establishing a rapport. She had some balls. But despite that, he felt that even if she had been doing it as part of her surveillance of him, something undeniable had passed between them. You can't fake that kind of feeling, can you? He didn't want to believe that she could have manipulated him so easy. But he had probably been ripe for it and she would have known it. Things were dire at home, Jess had issued her ultimatum and Brody had reluctantly turned up to the PTSD support group that night because he knew that if he hadn't shown willing, then the fine thread holding his marriage together would have disintegrated entirely. Even though he had a mission, and still fully intended to complete it at that stage, he craved his family and truly wanted to be with them again in the way he had imagined during all those years in Iraq. But the knowledge of what he now was, what he had vowed to do and the feeling that he could never begin to explain to Jess what had happened to the Brody she'd grown up with kept them apart. They just couldn't connect any more. And he couldn't even bring himself to do the necessary just to let her feel that she'd brought him some comfort, which is all he knew she wanted. She had been patient, she'd been gentle. She had tried sex but he couldn't stand her touching him. He could feel her hands on him, searching for the old Brody, only to find his scars, the sites of his wounds, the parts of him where loose chips of bone now floated under his skin. It was as if she had come to identify his body at the morgue and was caressing his corpse, horrified despite her obvious love for him, only room left for grief. No amount of tenderness or seduction had any effect, one of them always wound up crying. He tried to give her what she wanted but any passion she managed to incite was quickly overtaken by this fury that came out of nowhere and left her feeling like she had been used by a stranger, rather than reunited with her childhood sweetheart, the father of her children. He recognised all this, he knew she had a right to the old Brody. He decided that bit by bit he might eventually reacclimatize to physical intimacy, so he laid close by her in bed, let her rest her head on his chest. Jess slept soundly like this, seemingly satisfied at the little contact he had allowed her but he lay awake, skin crawling. When he awoke with a jolt, covered in sweat and found her to be gone, sobbing in their bathroom or already off making breakfast for the kids, he knew that his dreams of the jailers or of hauling Isa's limp form from underneath smouldering girders had not been just dreams. He couldn't bear hurting her, none of it was her fault. So he took to sleeping on the floor where he couldn't lash out. He was more comfortable there, where he didn't have to worry about mistaking her arm coming to rest on his hip for a jailer shaking him awake and bearing down on him with a club. Brody began to accept that they were lost to one another and concluded that this was just the way he was now, unable to relax in another's company, only ever at peace when he prayed in the garage.

Until that encounter with Carrie at the church. It was just a few minutes but the way she made him feel caught him totally by surprise. She seemed to know where he was coming from without asking him to explain. Of course, she did know where he was coming from, literally. She'd been watching him. That used to make him feel foolish. But it wasn't just that. And then the rain came down and she made to leave and he wanted to chase her, keep her talking. He was attracted to her, sure, but it was more the sudden realisation that being with another person didn't have to be as fraught as every human encounter he'd had since coming home. Brody recalled his feelings from that night and felt sure that, no, he hadn't fallen in love with Carrie in that moment. It had felt special though, like he'd been given a gift. 'Heightened', was the word she had later used to describe that moment in the downpour to him and as soon as she said it he realised that she had felt it too, whatever it was, and he was heartened. She'd given him hope that night, and he hadn't felt that in a long time.