Summary: It's not really a question, the way that she says it. She knows the answer, but she's almost praying for a different one. She doesn't want him to fall into the darkness that she knows is there, even though she has no doubt that he's already almost there. She doesn't really know how far gone he is. Carrie/Brody

Disclaimer: Not mine. All HBO and Showtime's.

Rating: Teen

This is it guys. Last chapter and hopefully it goes alright. I try not to do really long stories because eventually I lose track of everything and it never gets finished and that's just not fair on you guys. Enjoy.

"You can sleep here tonight if you want. I'll set a guest room up." Carrie says.

His eyes move upwards at the offer, locking with her gaze.

"Are you sure? I don't want to intrude… Not that I already haven't already." Brody says while he rubs his arms. He's getting cold and he hasn't quite dried off yet. Now still seems like the perfect time to go home and sort some things out with Jess.

"It's fine Brody, really, I don't mind."

"I'll see what happens."

"Okay," Carrie says. "Feel free to get yourself a drink."

Brody obliges and pours himself several whiskey shots and downs them quickly while she heads off to fix up the guest bedroom. He decides that if he's going to open up to someone tonight it's going to be after a hell of a lot more alcohol. One or two drinks won't do it even though he wants this, because he feels like if he doesn't confide in anyone he might just self-implode. He doesn't even know why he picked Carrie, as she doesn't exactly seem like an obvious choice. No, she doesn't seem like a fucking choice at all. She's a CIA agent, and he's pretty sure she could blab all his perfect little secrets off to someone who has a lot of influence over, well, anyone.

He sits down in the living room with his bottle and a shot glass. He wants this to lead somewhere. It's not like he doesn't love Jessica. He does. He really, truly does, but they don't work. They can't work anymore. He hates waking up in the morning to find the bed deserted, and then to see her minutes later with bruises up her arms. He hates not being able to talk to her, because every time he tries to even talk about something remotely important or personal his throat closes up and the most he can manage is 'I'm fine,' or 'I don't want to talk about it,' when they both know it's not true. He hates having to hide all of his fear from the world, which means that all his anger explodes outwards at his family. He really, really, just doesn't want to hurt her anymore.

And it's not like she didn't cheat on him, right?

Not right. A voice in his head says. Not right. She thought you were dead. Everyone thought you were dead. She waited seven years then moved on to a stable relationship. Wouldn't you have?

Maybe he would have, maybe he wouldn't. He doesn't know anything anymore. Everything is different, everything is strange. His children are strange, and he doesn't know how to talk to them. He knows they're scared of him, and scared of the things he does when he gets angry. He knows Chris is still frightened of when he assaulted the reporter and shot a deer, and there's nothing he can do to take it back. He just hopes they never find out anything else about him.

"Brody?"

He jumps at the word, and realises he's been staring off into the fireplace (which is empty) for quite some time."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." Carrie says, coming to sit next to him on the couch. "I set up the guest room; you can head there any time you want."

"Thankyou." His voice comes out as a slight slur, having gone through a fair amount of whiskey in the period of time she was both setting up the bed, and, as it appears, showering.

"Sorry I took so long, I wanted to get cleaned up after being in the rain for a while. I hope you don't mind."

"'S'Ok. I don't mind being by myself," Brody says as he looks up to her face. "Hey Carrie, I think I'm drunk enough to do some of that real talking I wanted to get done."

Carrie sits, stunned. She didn't think he'd get absolutely plastered in order to talk to her. She didn't really expect him to talk to her at all though, but here he was. The enigma of the man sitting beside her suddenly became her puzzle to solve. Even though she couldn't see through his eyes, she knew she'd get in there soon enough.

"Let's get you to bed. You can lie down and I can sit in the chair in there. It's nicer than here."

"Not without my drink…" Brody mutters, standing up as he grabs his bottle off the small table next to the couch. The light in the room is dull and doesn't help his balance much as he almost falls over. Carrie catches him. "Thank you, Carrie," he says, with a laugh.

They move towards the bedroom and Brody collapses on the bed as soon as it is underneath his legs. He shuffles up and sits back against the bed board while Carrie goes around the room turning off the lamps and turning out the main lights. She opens the window to let the natural light from the moon in, which illuminates most of the room that isn't already lit by the lamp.

"What did you want to talk about?" Carrie asks Brody, watching his face for a reaction.

"Anything. Anything I can talk about. I'm sick of not being able to talk to people about this."

"You could see a counsellor, you know."

"I know. I don't want to. I just want a friend to understand… I was kept there for eight years you know, and it didn't get any better. And I thought once I got home I would be fine, but I'm not. I'm not okay, and I'm nowhere near being okay and there's nothing I can do about it."

"You're talking now."

"I don't even know why I'm talking or what I'm talking about!" I don't know anything anymore – my family, my friends, my job. Everything I knew before I left is gone, and that was all that was keeping me going in that god-forsaken hole in the earth."

Carrie swallows at this information. She's had the same type of experience, where the world she held onto while she was away all but vanished into thin air on her return. It wasn't easy.

"You don't need to understand."

"I do though. I don't understand Jess, and I don't understand my kids. Jess is terrified of me, when I wake up in the middle of the night screaming at her and hurting her. The kids know, but they're too scared to say anything about it. I'm a mess, Carrie. I can't deal with this crap. I just wanted to get back from the war and get back to my life but now I almost wish I was back there because I have no idea what to do anymore."

Carrie doesn't know what to say, so instead she moves up onto the bed beside him.

"Brody, you can do this. You have to do this, for your family. There's nothing else to think about anymore. You lived through the abuse and they didn't break you. They should have, but they didn't.

"They didn't break me. Coming home broke me."

"You're not broken, Brody. You just need time to settle down and get used to living this life. You haven't had a chance to in years."

"…"

"There's nothing else I can say. I did it, so you can do it. That's the truth Brody. You might have been through more horrible things but it's the same circumstance. We can only do what we can with what has been given to us. You've been given a family. Use them."

As Carrie says this, she notices his eyes glazing over, and the eyelids beginning to fall. When she looks back at the bottle of whiskey and notices that it's almost half empty, and that it was full when she took it out of the cupboard for him. As he falls asleep, she takes note of his damp clothing and makes a decision to get him out of it. Thankfully, she still has clothes left over from her previous boyfriend. He is only just alert enough to stop her from taking his pants off for him and rather does it himself, changing into a pair of tracksuit pants. After that effort though, he falls into a deep sleep, leaving Carrie to change him out of his shirt.

She pulls of his shirt and gasps at what she sees for once, in real life. Not just on a fuzzy computer screen, but on his body. She is horrified and takes a step backwards. The scars are huge and they cover most of his torso. That some must have been there for years is just shocking when she sees the sizes of some of them. She grazes her hands along the biggest she can see, which is one that covers almost across his entire chest and spreads several inches wide. There's no end to the amount of scars though, they seem to completely cover him.

It's in that instant that she realises something. Even if what she thinks about him is true, he suffered through a lot to get there, and she can't blame him for that. She can blame him for everything else, and everybody else can too, but in the end he was pulled apart.

And there's not one person she can blame for that that is within reach.

Fin.

Just a few quick notes: I thought that the Carrie/Brody relationship went waaaaaaay too quickly. Initially I was sceptic but The Weekend clinched it for me. They should be together, and I hope, somehow, that they can be. I also heavily sympathise with Brody (if that wasn't obvious enough) that even though he says he wasn't brainwashed, he WAS heavily tortured and screwed up to the point where Nazir 'rescued' him.