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Everyone, thank you so much for your reviews of my first story, 'Maybe…'. You've encouraged me to keep writing, at least one more for this pairing. Story would take place sometime after 'Maybe, For Better Pay.' Some of you will recognize the plotline. Sadly, it's all too true. I want to mention in passing that these little ones, and the ones like them all over the world, are very much in my thoughts. A word of caution to the soft-hearted, can be a little sad. Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, plotlines or episodes – Homeland universe developed by Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon and the real story belongs to Showtime. No profit intended, or copyright infringement. 'Jesus Christ,' she breathed, overwhelmed by the sight. Sirens, police cars, a helicopter, human shouts and cries – nothing around her could break the wall of silence that engulfed her, at this sight. There it was: one hundred thirty little bodies, lined up in shrouds all over the vaulted atrium of the military hospital. Judging from the size, some had been in the tenth or eleventh grade. There were a few larger forms in the mix, adults. Overwhelmingly, though, they were the size of children. Many of their faces were covered, but a few of them had slipped their heads out of the white cloth in transport, and their matted, blood-stained hair lay scattered on the floor, disorganized like spider legs. Carrie swallowed at an oncoming bout of nausea and gulped for air, trying to make it go away. Fuck, the smell didn't help. She had seen lots of bodies, but this… she rubbed her throat with her right hand. Jesus Christ. Other things made it worse. The families, mostly crowding at the edges, not daring to make their way between the corpses. Mothers, curled up on their knees and weeping softly; fathers, and older brothers in military uniform standing erect pretending to be strong. This was the last stop she had needed to make, after asking the questions she needed to ask, seeing the people she needed to see: she thought she would pay her respects. Well, actually, she admitted – giving a quick sniff – looking for Aasar, that was the real reason she was here. Where the fuck did he run off to. She had seen him in the atrium ten minutes before, where he had threatened to seize an SD card off a wandering photojournalist. He had been authoritative and crisp, which was like him, but also bordering on aggressive, which wasn't like him at all. Something about this situation had hit a nerve with him. Probably had to do with the army. When they did that, Carrie observed, the Taliban really stepped on his turf. If he had anything to say about it – and here, he did – there would be no pictures of broken Pakistani families, and there would be a space, here, for men in uniform to shed their tears. Although, Carrie reflected, they could probably use the press. Carrie noticed she was staring into the space he had earlier occupied and she forced herself to turn back towards the rows of bodies. She fidgeted with her headscarf, tightening it around her hair in the hope that no one else would notice her. Maybe she should start counting those shrouds, practice her math skills. God, it was heartbreaking. 'Miss Mathison?' The voice came from behind her. 'You're not fooling anyone with that headscarf,' he said, as she turned to face him. His voice was half-playful, half-impatient, but when she revealed himself to him, concern appeared on his face. 'Carrie, are you all right?' 'Yes, of course, I'm fine.' She straightened herself. 'What's the matter?' He took a step in her direction and leaned in to her a little, the way he did sometimes when he wanted to kiss her neck, something he had a propensity to do in this bizarre, volcanic, hands-above-the-waist relationship that was developing between them. 'You should… wipe your eyes.' Wipe… What the… ? She quickly swept her right hand under her eye, and was shocked to see it come up humid, and smothered in melted brown eyeliner. 'Holy shit.' He raised his eyebrows at that, and didn't know what to say, so he looked away from her, preening on his toes and starting to fold his hands behind his back. She laughed nervously. 'Thanks. That's…. that's not like me at all.' She huffed and blinked her eyes. 'At all.' 'I'm equally upset by this situation,' he said. 'Upset? Yeah, I'm sorry for you too. You must feel like shit.' She looked behind her, to where the press was hovering outside the atrium, wrangling images and questions out of the victims' families. 'You shouldn't have been so tough on that photojournalist. Your country could use some pictorial sympathy from the world.' His mouth pinched a little, and Carrie regretted it. Sympathy wouldn't bring those children back to life and anyway, the press were having a field day, pictures in the atrium or not. 'Right,' she said. 'I'm not going to take much of your time. Unless you want some company?' He raised his eyebrows again, more quickly. 'I wish I had the time.' 'Didn't think so,' she said, hiding her disappointment. 'I came to give you something.' 'You couldn't email it.' She shook her head to say no. 'And it couldn't wait for me to return to Islamabad.' 'Neither. Look, is there a… an office, somewhere we can talk, where there aren't people, journalists, dead kids everywhere?' He glanced around. 'There's the morgue,' he said, quite seriously, 'But that's… I'd say that's off-limits. Or there's a stairwell. Up on the fourth floor, maternity ward. It's probably empty.' She assessed looking at the circles under his eyes that, for him to know the hospital top to bottom, he probably hadn't slept in a good 36 hours. The perks of being the boss in a crisis. If they had been at that stage – and if he had been someone else – she would have liked to ask him for his keys, get his ETA in Islamabad, pour him a glass of wine and a hot bath when he came home and later, cradle him in her arms as he fell asleep. Yeah, good odds of that happening. They were walking and had reached a door painted green at the deep end of a corridor. It was one of those heavy, fireproof metal things that only had a small window at the top, so you could see the flames if the building was on fire. He opened the door for her, and she mouthed a thank you before leading their way up the stairs. Her cue to stop was four floors up, when she saw a sign indicating the exit for the maternity ward. As he caught up with her, she recovered her breath and took stock of her surroundings. She didn't like the fluorescent lighting, but there was some natural light from a window farther up, and this was much cleaner, open, and civilized than any other public place in which they'd met. As he crossed the final handful of stairs, Carrie prepared to give him her missive, opening her coat lapel and retrieving a manila envelope. He stopped at the landing, intrigued, and she held out the parcel with an outstretched arm, inviting him to take it. 'What is this?' he said, as his fingers closed around the edges. 'You can open it. But, I've got to warn you, it's not good news.' His eyes narrowed. 'Must I absolutely see it? I've had a lot of bad news today. I'm not sure I can handle any more.' 'Probably.' She was beginning to feel nervous. 'Would I have access to this, from my staff?' 'No.' He lowered the envelope, eyes narrow with distrust, and Carrie's arms folded of their own accord. 'Ok, it would be hard for you to get, so…' she looked away, a little embarrassed. 'So I took care of it for you.' 'What?' 'Just open it,' she ordered. With a suspicious glance at her, he started to move and walked past her to the foot of the staircase that rose to the next floor, where he paused and rested his foot against the first step. The top of the envelope was unsealed, and he eased his fingers between the two folds, pushing them open and peering inside before retrieving the contents. It was just a few sheets of paper. Carrie carefully controlled her breathing and tried not to watch as his eyes roamed over the readouts. It was lines and lines of numbers, lists of telephone calls. Shooting Carrie a glance, eyes speaking questions, he pulled out his cellular phone and briefly consulted it, eyes halfway on the page. 'Is that…' he paused to look at the page again, and then turned his head to fully confront her. 'That's Tasneem's number. The one she acquired just a few days ago.' 'Yes,' Carrie said, looking at the floor. 'Those are ISI phone records. Where did you get Tasneem's phone records?' he asked, his voice rising. 'Hey. You're upset because you didn't think we had that capability.' 'No,' he retorted. 'What's quite upsetting is what I see.' 'I know.' She breathed in deeply. 'Could you look at the numbers for me. See if you recognize any of them.' 'I don't,' he said. 'But you recognize the area code.' His brow furrowed, and again he turned to his mobile phone, through which he rapidly maneuvered while flipping through the first, then the second page of the phone records. His expression was growing darker, and more inward, with every glance. 'So?' she interrupted. 'What do you say?' He turned fully towards her, bringing the sheets against his shoulder. He must have seen something on his phone to which Carrie wasn't privy, because now he was livid. 'Do you realize what you're accusing my colleague of doing? Do you realize?' 'I'm – what?' she exclaimed. 'First of all, I don't know what you're talking about. All I know is, she called this area code at least six times in the hours leading up to the attack on the school, and then placed a couple calls to Afghanistan! I mean… I have no idea what this means! That's what I'm coming to you for.' 'Bullshit. You think she was involved.' 'At least admit it's a possibility.' His mouth was tightly constricted, and his eyes were flashing. 'You have no idea,' he said, fuming. 'You make my life incredibly difficult. There's a lot of things you don't understand.' 'Like what.' 'Like, too much information. Like, not nosing around. You –' he stepped towards her, breathless and jaw taut. 'I have to be able to give my superior the benefit of the doubt. Things like this -' he said, brandishing the papers - '...mean I can't go to sleep at night.' The papers slapped against the balustrade. Carrie watched him for a moment, silently, and then invited him to talk, gently. 'At least help me out, tell me what you see. Who has she been calling?' 'I don't know,' he said, and it was his honest tone. 'But I'll need to look into it.' He kept glancing at the papers. 'Aasar, I can take those back,' she offered. 'I just wanted you to know, there's something to look into here. You want to know what happened with this attack, you'll need to ask some questions to your boss.' His arms tight, he gripped his fingers around the railing, crumpling the papers. 'The problem is, I can't,' he hissed. 'Why not?' 'I'm way too close to you.' 'Too close for…' Carrie trailed off when she realized it. That gave her a moment, and she discreetly took the papers from him, smoothed them into something resembling a flat shape and folded them into her lapel. In Aasar's position, things were always the roundabout way. He didn't have the privilege of interrogating his boss, especially not based on a tip from the CIA chief about the U.S.'s own intelligence-gathering capacity. That was way up there in terms of raising red flags. Or, she reflected, he always had the option of telling the story upside down: he was running Carrie, she was the fool who gave him the records, and he had, and would continue to, come back into the fold and play Tasneem's game. Carrie knew, or wanted to think, that wasn't what he truly wanted. And, she suspected Aasar liked her, or them, too much to put himself through something so false and explosive between their agencies that it could cost them the relationship. 'If you can't look into it on your own, I'll help you with the investigation,' she volunteered. His face remained sour and he said nothing. 'I know you'll take me up on it eventually, so don't pretend you won't. Just… keep track of what you find. We'll compare notes.' Carrie shifted on her feet, hours of standing up eating at her shoulders, and moved to ease the tension by leaning forward over the railing. Aasar watched her silently, and then mimicked her movement, joining her to her right. Their forearms rested on the cool metal, innocently apart, close enough it would be easy to touch. 'I'm hoping it won't come to that,' he said, referring to her suggestion. 'For once, I'd like the explanation to come from us. It's about time.' He breathed in deeply. 'But I doubt that will happen.' He stopped talking for a moment, tapping his fingers on the railing. 'I know this woman better than you do. I suspect… I suspect she got a tip, and was too proud to ask for help. Or she and the Minister negotiated the number of casualties. It happens.' His voice lowered and he cast his eyes down the stairwell. 'Unfortunately, sometimes families pay with their lives and their lives' hopes.' Carrie watched the worry and powerlessness play over his face, and she found herself biting her lip, starting to remember what she had seen downstairs. 'I don't like the feeling,' he murmured. 'My people's children on the victims list. You were… you lost people in the attack on your embassy,' he said, and their eyes briefly crossed. She nodded quietly and he acknowledged her with a sad half-smile, turning his eyes back to the stairwell. 'You know what failure feels like.' A few seconds later, his hand reached out to graze hers, and at the contact, Carrie's mind suddenly filled with the image of the body bags at the embassy, rows and rows of them under the flag; then it filled with rows and rows of little white ones, never to move again. It was a punch in the gut and out of nowhere, she felt herself choking and gasped for air, leaning over the railing as tears stung the back of her eyes. She held them back as long as she could, trying to keep her hands still as she was hit by image after image - poor, inert, beautiful Fara; Aayan, crumpling at the hand of his own uncle; Brody, hanging from a crane. She hadn't been this panicked in a long time and it was hard to keep her breathing steady and hold back the salty tears that pressed at the corners of her eyes. Please, she thought, don't notice. I'm being so quiet. She must not have, because she felt Aasar's arm move against hers and his hand raise to her temple, where he stroked her upper cheek and smoothed her hair. He had large, squarish hands, and the light touch he left with his thumb and his knuckles felt incredibly intimate. He repeated the gesture, working more slowly, trying to put some order into her hair. Eventually Carrie felt her grief subside and collected herself enough to throw him a calm, grateful glance. She could have given anything for a kiss on her forehead or her temple, but she knew he was being careful, for now anyway. Not letting go of her eyes for long, Aasar turned himself on his feet, to lean against the balustrade with his back. 'I know how you feel,' he said, giving her a compassionate look over his shoulder. 'The young victims and the innocent are the worst. It affects all of us.' His hand had dropped from her cheek and seemed a little aimless, and absent-mindedly, he touched and fiddled with the belt of her coat. 'I'm not a parent, I wouldn't know. But I think the feeling of failure, responsibility, is just as hard on us.' 'You're flattering yourself,' she breathed. 'How so?' 'Come on,' she said, challenging him, but not really convinced, 'You're not the one losing a kid. And you're not the one guarding the army base either.' 'They're the last in line, it's not their job,' he stated. 'That's my job. I'm paid to be the first line of attack, and every single firewall, before the bastards get to them.' Carrie didn't know what to say to that, because she agreed. A moment of silence passed, and their breathing settled into a pattern of quiet. Carrie heard, for the first time again, the faint echoes of the bustle outside. She felt a small tug on her coat belt and saw that Aasar was still fiddling with it, although she suspected he was hardly noticing himself. His eyes, his lips and his hands were the three places where he fidgeted when something preoccupied him. 'Carrie, would you…' his voice was tentative, pensive, and she watched the emotion play itself out in his hand, where his thumb was worrying his other fingers. A few lines were creasing his brow, and his eyes were playing out some kind of argument, moving between the floor and Carrie's face. Eventually, he stood up a little taller and managed to look her in the eye. He took a small breath before speaking. 'Would you spend the night with me. When we're back in Islamabad.' Carrie's heart leapt to her throat, and she knew her doe-like panic made it onto her features. 'You don't—' he started, trying to roll it back. She reached for the hand that was playing with her coat, cutting him off mid-speech. She didn't have an answer, but she didn't want him to say anything else either. This was totally unexpected. Well, relatively. She should have seen it coming – there had certainly been agonizing moments when they kissed – but now that the possibility materialized she wondered if it was a good idea. Plastering, devouring, or exploring each other against the wall in between two arguments, she knew he could handle. He could always attribute it to some flight of fancy, and avoid blaming himself or her later. Asking her like this, admitting he wanted her, that was different. She also admitted to herself it would be different, for her. A good minute had passed and she had not replied. His expression shifted to pain and disappointment, and he tried to swallow some of his pride. 'Never mind,' he said, dropping her hand. 'Forget that I asked.' Carrie opened her mouth to apologize, but felt it wasn't the right moment. She was also still floored by the question. 'You should know, and I've been wanting to tell you,' he said, focusing an earnest, and serious gaze on her. 'You're… You're very beautiful when you let yourself feel.' His eyes were shifting over the angles and curves of her face, making Carrie feel like she was under a microscope. 'That woman right there...' he swallowed. 'That woman is one I would risk making love to.' His eyes continued searching hers and saw only confusion, and he felt pressed to go on. 'I wish she would dare to show herself a little more, when the moment is right,' he said, turning away briefly. 'The world doesn't need that much personal attention from a single person to keep going round. You need to realize that.' Carrie swallowed. So it's about me, she thought, helplessly. I just haven't let go enough, cried enough, admitted I failed enough on the job. God help me. 'Do you understand what I mean?' he asked her, eyes back on her, searching for an answer. 'Yes,' she finally croaked, mouth dry from staying silent for too long. 'It's just…' she huffed, smiling in self-pity. 'Easier said than done.' 'I know. That's something I like about you too.' He sighed, biting his inner cheek. 'Your toughness is part of your charm,' he said, looking around as if checking someone were there. Carrie felt the hesitation growing in her chest, and pushed herself off the railing, arching her back with outstretched arms. 'You know,' she started. 'Maybe we should.' 'Should…' 'Spend the night together. Maybe we should. After all this, I'll admit – I could use it.' He looked ambivalent. 'I didn't mean just once.' She breathed in, sensing blood rising to her cheeks. 'I know.' The was enough to ease the furrows from his brow, and tease a smile onto his lips. He looked at her conspiratorially. 'You should pull up your headscarf when you leave the hospital. People will notice.' 'Afterglow?' 'Before-glow,' he said, grinning. She opened giant eyes, trying to imagine what that meant. She enjoyed seeing a playful expression on his face and tucked her hair behind her ear involuntarily. They exchanged another glance and words passed, unsaid. With a sigh, Aasar pushed himself off the railing, breathed out deeply, and reached his hand into his pocket. He was looking for his phone. 'Right,' he said more seriously. 'I'm going to be discharged, dishonorably, if I don't turn on my phone and start taking calls. Will you allow me?' 'Of course.' She watched him hover between the remnants of mirth and something more serious as he began to work. Curiously, she felt no inclination to interrupt, and instead she spent a moment admiring his figure. The thought of their next meeting was infinitely alluring. Retreating towards the end of the landing, she gave him a little wave. 'I'll let you get back to work,' she called out. 'Get some rest. I need you to be fresh.' His eyes snapped down to hers at that, and she saw a mix of sternness and excitement flash in his gaze. 'Fine,' he said curtly. 'I will.' With a nod and a last glance, and trailing her hand along the railing, Carrie started down the stairwell. It was only a few minutes until she reached the ground floor, where, pulling her scarf around her head, she pulled open the door and retraced her steps to the atrium. Everything was the same. Some of the families had left, replaced by new faces, but the rows of little ones were still there, inert, clouded in white. She noticed that fewer of them had their faces showing and her heart clenched for those that still did, knowing that their parents had yet to find out the worst. The only thing left to do was leave and she wrapped her coat belt tighter around herself, picking up her pace and steeling herself against an oncoming wave of exhaustion. War, she thought bitterly. It could make the most delightful of moments turn to dust. It would suck the life out of you. And yet, she knew how conflict worked in other parts of the world. The Balkans. Iraq. Syria. People under the bombs kept having sex; they deliberately put children into the world, refusing to believe that their offspring would become cannon fodder. Arguably, she had done the same once, because the most genuine things, like love, are often the wildest and the most unexplainable. She knew that in this particular relationship, there would never be a child, probably not even an I love you. But, Carrie confessed, she liked him. A lot. And for that, she owed these poor boys something, and Fara and Aayan too. She reflected that the depth of her relationships to men, especially the kind of men she liked, usually grew with the amount of destruction around her. It was true here too. Aasar would not grow attached to anyone unless that person was desperately needed; she wouldn't either. Likewise, she had no doubt he'd had plenty of fucks, but she doubted he would really expose himself to someone unless he knew they shared his love and respect for human life. She wasn't very good at showing that, it didn't fit with her world. Except when horror stared her the face. When it did, her desperate, tragic love for life reared its head and the people who were there to see it could love her. She sent a parting thought to the souls of the little ones, loathing their killers and their sacrifice, and walked out the door to return to Islamabad. |
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