Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

C interlude 1:

Carrie’s arrival, airfield outside of Moscow

-Carrie’s been in survival mode these past few months, running on pure adrenaline. But suddenly, as soon as the plane hit the tarmac, she feels exhausted. The weight of all she’s been through since arriving to Kabul only three months ago is suddenly crushing her. Every single part of her body aches. She can’t recall a time she’s felt more wrung out. If someone opened her up right now, they’d find nothing inside. But she made it through. She’s alive and still breathing. A fact she has to constantly remind herself.

The plane stops. She unbuckles her seatbelt, slowly rises. She reaches for the solitary black duffel bag next to her, her closest companion that she’s dragged from DC to Israel to Syria and now, finally, to Moscow. Her only earthly belongings at this point, she realizes. She slings it over her shoulder. Takes a deep breath and walks toward the exit of the small military jet.

He’s there waiting for her. Why is she so surprised? She feels like decades have passed since she last saw him. Their rendezvous at Dorit’s house was a month ago, but a lifetime ago for Carrie. He almost looks the same. More relaxed, maybe. He’s holding none of the tension and frenetic energy he hides so well underneath a veneer of nonchalance and easy self-assurance.

Yevgeny is wearing an expensive-looking navy crewneck sweater and dark jeans, leaning against a non-descript car. She knows she looks like shit. It’s been weeks since she’s slept for more than an hour or two, or eaten a proper meal, or showered for that matter. The hypomania that kept her afloat since arriving to Kabul has now dissipated. She feels a deep, chasm-like depression opening up inside her, dragging her down into a vortex of self-loathing, despondency, and grief. But she’s here in Moscow—momentarily safe, for now—a nuclear war averted, her previous life destroyed by her own doing, and man who pushed her to this point standing before her. All realities she can’t quite wrap her mind around.

They briefly lock eyes and nod, the smallest acknowledgement of everything that has transpired between them. Neither says a word. He knows to let the silence linger as if he already knows the sound of his voice would be unbearable to her right now.

He takes her bag.

They don’t exchange a single word during the hour-long drive. She doesn’t know where he’s taking her. She doesn’t particularly care. At some point, Yevgeny reaches for her hand resting on the console, but she puts it in her lap. Any physical contact right now might actually break her. For a fleeting second, he looks hurt, but immediately pulls an indifferent expression. A slight smirk curling at the edge of his mouth. Carrie gazes out the window.

They finally arrive to what looks like a nondescript military base, a GRU training center for new recruits, Yevgeny explains. Her quarters are stark, utilitarian. Grey walls, peeling cheap plaster, a heavy dampness hangs in the air. Carrie drops her bag and takes a seat on her new bed, a rusty metal frame with a thin mattress, if you could even call it that, and a single scratchy blanket. An environment that matches her current state of mind.

She is only half listening when Yevgeny explains the situation. Carrie will stay here for a couple of days or weeks. Yevgeny admits he isn’t sure how long she’ll be here. The GRU and FSB will take turns questioning her, check out her story since she left the asylum. They want to make sure she really did burn everything—her life, her career, every relationship that mattered—all down. She takes it all in silently and nods when he finishes. More silence. Yevgeny conspicuously says nothing about what happens to her, to them, after the interrogations. She tries to locate her feelings for Yevgeny, tries to remember that sudden urgency for his touch, his lips that crept up on her in Pakistan, to no avail.

After several minutes—an hour?—she reaches for her bag and pulls a bottle of Ambien out of it. He stays until she falls asleep, even though she never asked. His long legs folded into the rickety chair next to her bed, an inscrutable expression on his face. ‘What are you thinking?” she wonders before drifting into a dreamless sleep.

Before leaving, he strokes her hair and gently plants a kiss on her head.

Chapter Text

Y interlude 1:

Leaving Carrie’s quarters, he finally lets out the breath he’s been holding since Carrie arrived at the airfield. He’s at a total loss as to what to do next.

Advancing his career has been his one driving motivation for the past twenty years, second only to protecting the interests of his country. These two things mostly overlapped, and he’s never allowed personal matters, with the exception of Simone, enter into his calculations. He had constructed grand plans for himself and his country. He’s a planner, after all, and developing feelings for Carrie was never part of any plan.

Most of his peers would think maintaining a relationship with Carrie would be career suicide, especially now that she’s no longer a useful asset. From the outside, it makes him look soft and vulnerable to have stumbled into an actual relationship with a former American prisoner of war. At the very least, it makes his choices look questionable. Until this point, every choice he made was clear, decisive, and most importantly, rational. Career-wise, Carrie has nothing to offer him.

He could let Carrie go and abandon her to some gruesome fate. He could go back to his grand plans and never look back. And Carrie would be rendered a momentary loss of judgement, a mere blip in an otherwise illustrious career. The GRU could take care of the rest, which in the best-case scenario would be resettlement in some bleak provincial city in Siberia, a grim Soviet-style apartment, teaching English to military recruits, barely eking out an existence. Worst-case scenario: they take away her meds again, put her back in the asylum, hope they can pump out something useful, drain the dregs, so to speak. If it were anyone else, that’s exactly what he would do. Or the GRU could do the more humane thing and simply kill her, make it look like an accident or suicide. Who would miss a disgraced American traitor?

He would. Terribly.

He’s never been one for deep self-introspection, but he feels like he’s groping in the dark when it comes to his feelings for Carrie. He still doesn’t know when his feelings towards her went from a begrudging professional respect for her intellect and tenacity to some deep untapped well of tenderness and affection inside of him. He’s protective of her. Tonight, he wanted nothing more than lay next to her on that rickety bed and hold her. Whisper to her that everything was going to be okay, stroke her face, plant small kisses on her forehead. But his intuition told him to back off. Pushing things now might break both of them right now.

Sometimes, he thinks he might love her.

He came close to loving Simone. He adored Simone, cherished her, but even she was expendable in the end. He admired her sophistication, her quietness, her calculating coolness. Her preternatural ability to stay calm in any situation. She was delicate. He was always so careful with her during sex, afraid he might hurt her. He still dreams about her smooth porcelain skin.

He lavished her with designer clothes and expensive vacations, even back then when he couldn’t afford it. Carrie would never stand to be taken care of in such a way. He remembers Carrie telling him about her brief dalliance with Otto. A “momentary fuckup” were her words. Otto had offered her everything she could ever want, pleaded with her to stay, and she still walked away. What could he possibly offer her?

Simone was like him in so many ways. Carrie was nothing like him, all rough edges and stormy passion, blustering through every situation she finds herself in. They would be horribly unstable together.

He also can’t ignore the possibility that Carrie might only be with him for survival’s sake, clinging to him like a lifesaver. Without him, she’s all alone here. But he’s certain that he could detect any deception, no matter how slight. For a spy, Carrie’s never been a great liar.

Although there was no sign of it today, he thinks there’s still a glimmer of something between them. Something they could nurture together. It’s a distant possibility, but he thinks they could both achieve a version of happiness.

He won’t find someone like her again, that he’s sure of.

As he drives home, Carrie’s words from the shop in Pakistan— “We could do better”— echo in his head over and over again.

Chapter Text

C interlude 2:

-Carrie’s first weeks of interrogation

She never knows when she’ll be called in for an interrogation. She’s been woken up at 3am some nights and left to languish in her room alone for days at a time. She’s asked the same questions over and over again by different GRU and FSB officers. She thinks either the rumors are true, and the two agencies truly do not coordinate with one another, or it’s part of their strategy to break her down, to get her to slip up and reveal that she’s still actively connected to the CIA. She’s not, of course. She has nothing to reveal. She no longer has any secrets to keep.

She still feels just as exhausted as when she arrived several weeks ago. But the numbness is fading away gradually. She’s starting to give a shit about what happens to her and whether she’ll get a say in how the rest of her life will look.

When she’s not being interrogated, she sleeps all day, her body somehow knowing it finally has permission to rest. The combination of deep sleep and mostly empty days allow new memories from the asylum to resurface. Like her brain decided to regain lost territory. Most of them center around the brutal interrogations she endured when she was still half-way lucid, before she lost touch with reality entirely. They—at Yevgeny’s behest—did unspeakable things to her: starvation, sensory deprivation, filling her cell with photos of Franny, shackling her to a chair for weeks, among other things. Everything they could possibly do to accelerate her descent into madness.

Last week, she recognized one of her interrogators from before. He smiled cruelly at her the moment she realized who it was. Most flashbacks leave her curled up in bed all day, knees to her chest and quivering like a wounded animal.

It’s grueling, but necessary work. If she’s to rebuild her life here, then it starts with reclaiming her memories, her story, from the last time she was here.

She reasons that she’s continuing the work she was doing in Germany, albeit without the professional support to ease her through these shocks to the system. In Germany, she could recall only tiny shards of different memories that she tried to painstakingly piece together into something whole and coherent. Now the memories unspool fluidly in front of her. Everything about her new existence feels acrid and raw, but it’s the closest she’s come to feeling like herself in over a year…the first shred of possibility in front of her.

And then there’s Yevgeny.

They’ve reached a tenuous arrangement of sorts. He visits her two or three times a week. He is courteous and patient with her, being careful not to pry into the private world of pain she’s built within these four shoddy walls. For that, she is grateful. He also doesn’t ask about the interrogations. She knows that he is listening in on all of them anyway. There’s no longer a need for any pretense between them. He comes under the guise of bringing her food or coffee because the meals brought to her from canteen are wholly inedible. They always commune outside for what passes as early summer weather in Moscow. It’s Carrie’s flimsy attempt to physically separate what Yevgeny did to her then from what he’s doing for her now.

Lately, he’s been bringing her all sorts of things: new clothes, running shoes, novels, a Russian language book for foreigners. She touches none of it, leaving everything neatly piled up next to the door. In another world, she’d thank him for these small relishes in her otherwise dismal environment. But her head is so full of these fresh memories, pushing her to the edge of a precipice, that she just doesn’t have the capacity to even acknowledge his overtures. If Yevgeny is in anyway perturbed by her outward indifference, he doesn’t show it. She’s grateful for that too, even if she can’t find the words yet to tell him.

One day Yevgeny brings her something she can’t resist: an iPhone preloaded with jazz albums and his number surreptitiously added in the contacts. It’s not the type of jazz she’d normally have the patience for. Too slow for her. Too controlled, too European which seems to defeat the entire point of jazz. Yevgeny’s jazz takes a while for musical phrases and motifs to unfold. There’s less improvisation, but it grows on her.

At one of their lunches, she asks, “Are these your playlists?”

“You’re not the only spy in Moscow who likes jazz,” he replies with a teasing look.

“How did I not know that?” She wonders out loud.

He shrugs and raises his eyebrows, “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

It’s hard to imagine Yevgeny having any interests outside of plotting the decline of America. She can’t help but offer him a small smile.

The next day, she’s splayed across her bed, fully dressed, listening to his jazz and trying to take deep breaths to calm her frayed nerves. It was yet another slow afternoon that trickled by, another hazy day full of unpleasant flashbacks and fitful naps that leave her more tired than before. She keeps wondering why he’s still around.

Her spy instincts tell her this is all a play to keep her cooperating. A steady stream of inducements before they turn the screws on her. Or Yevgeny could be pulling out the old good cop/bad cop routine from before. Maybe they’ll threaten to take away her meds again. Imprison her. Trade her back to the Americans. Force her to become a propaganda tool for the Russian government. All seem more likely than simply letting her go with no strings attached.

She knows he’s holding something back. She sees the want flash across his eyes, even when he’s trying desperately to hide it. In a previous life, she would immediately use this to her advantage, have sex with him, manipulate him into making the interrogations stop, but, in her own way, she’s holding back too.

They’re both so cautious with each other. Every body movement, every glance, every inflection of the voice is carefully calibrated and adjusted, neither wanting to throw chaos into their delicate arrangement. They pull back whenever their conversations threaten to drift to whatever’s next, to Carrie’s messy predicament, who or what was left behind. Unspoken words coat their lips and tongues.

After almost three months, when it seems like they’ve finally run out of questions to ask her, on one of the first true summer days, she surprises herself and texts Yevgeny.

“Let’s go on a walk.”

Chapter Text

Y interlude 2:

He’s watched every single one of her interrogations, mainly to see more of her than out of any professional necessity. Observing from behind the two-way glass, he catches glimpses of the Carrie from their last meeting in the West Bank. She’s focused, but not frantically so. She’s artful, treating her interrogators as if she has cards to play. She has none, of course.

Even at the lowest point in her adult life, she outwits them. Yevgeny realizes the game is nearly up when they bring back one of her old interrogators. A despicable move, but clearly made out of desperation. He sees her entire body shudder with the painful realization. To his surprise, she doesn’t collapse into a panic attack or hysterics. Both would be warranted given what this man did to her.

In the end, he still has to fight vehemently for her, even when it’s clear that Carrie poses no credible threat to Russian intelligence. Suddenly it’s obvious to his superiors that he has no ulterior motives for being kind to Carrie this time around. He has no more plans for her other than to keep her safe from his employer. When he caught wind of a meeting with the American Embassy to discuss handing Carrie over in exchange for a few high-level Russian defectors, he goes ballistic. He threatens to quit on the spot and turn down his promotion and substantial pay raise. To show he really means it, he grounded all of his active operations. His superiors look at him with bewilderment.

He exposes himself to his rivals who’d like nothing more than to see his downfall, but it’s a small price to pay. He knows that, after the intelligence coup he just masterfully orchestrated, he’s indispensable to the GRU. They need him for than he needs them. But it’s clear that he’ll need to keep protecting Carrie, possibly forever. The GRU might agree to his terms—Carrie’s release and granting of political asylum—in principle, but, in practice, they’ll keep harassing and surveilling her. They’ll withhold permission for her to work, travel, or open a bank account, and, effectively make her world as small and contingent as possible. She won’t truly be safe until she’s in his arms and he can watch over her.

On the day she texts him, he wonders what version of Carrie he’ll encounter as he waits for her outside the small overgrown park near the training center. Instead of polite small talk, he hands her a coffee, which she accepts with a soft thank you, her fingers grazing his hand. They walk in silence for a long time, each tending to their thoughts in the waning late afternoon sun. She looks pale and drawn as usual, but he senses a different energy roiling under the surface.

He spies a picnic table up ahead. “Carrie, let’s sit and have a talk.” It looks like the last thing she wants to do, but she obliges him. Sitting across from him, Carrie sips her now cold coffee. Over the next twenty minutes, he explains that the interrogations are officially over, but she’ll have to tread carefully. Her permission to stay here will be provisional at best, subject to regular renewal. He proposes to Carrie that she stay in his parents’ Moscow apartment, who had long since retired to Odessa—at least until she receives her resident permit that will allow her to rent her own apartment. That process could take months, he reminds her. He knows that most of her money was spent on smugglers to get her here. There’s no way she has enough left to live on her own in a city as expensive as Moscow. She’d have the entire place to herself, he offers as if he’s negotiating with her.

She says absolutely nothing, her eyes barely registering him.

He knows not to expect any kind of effusive response from her, but he can’t help but feel hurt by her total disinterest.

“We wouldn’t have to see each other if that’s what you’re wondering,” trying to rouse some, any, kind of reaction from her.

After another impossibly long stretch of silence, she finally speaks: “How do I know the GRU is finished with me? That this isn’t one of your plans?”

“They’re done with you, I swear.”

“What about you? Are you done with me?” She shoots back, her tone laced with bitterness.

“As a source of intelligence, yes, but…”

She cuts him off, “I don’t believe you.”

More silence.

“Well, we’re going to have to find a way to trust each other. You have no one else here,” failing to hide the nasty edge in his voice.

“That’s never happening.”

“If it weren’t for me, you’d be on a plane back to DC facing the death penalty, so a little gratitude would be nice.” He instantly regrets it. He wasn’t planning on telling her about any of the backchanneling he did to free her.

“Well, who put me in this situation in the first place!?” She is actually yelling now.

“You had a choice, Carrie. We both know it.” He says, returning to his calm, even tone.

She has no response, because of course it’s true.

She turns away, her back facing him, and looks like she’s going to get up. This is it. She’ll walk away and he won’t be able to protect her.

Instead, to his surprise, she starts sobbing. She tries to take a deep breath. It’s clear she’s about to lose it. Her resolve from the last several weeks suddenly crumbling in front of him. He instinctively goes to her side, places a hand between her shoulder blades.

“Breathe, Carrie.”

“I can’t….I don’t know what to do,” fat, angry tears rolling down her cheeks.

He doesn’t say anything, just continues to rub her back. He doesn’t really know what to do either.

After several minutes, she calms down. They sit together until it starts to get dark, both meditating on their current predicaments.

He reaches for hand and squeezes it firmly. He shifts his body so he can look directly in her eyes.

“Carrie, we can get through this together. The hard part is over. Take what I’m offering you.”

What else do you have to lose? He thinks, but doesn’t say.

She leans her head onto his shoulder and closes her eyes, more from exhaustion than anything else.

This is as close to a yes as he’s going to get from her.

Chapter Text

C interlude 3:

Carrie’s days are filled with so much waiting—waiting in lines, waiting for signatures, waiting for the metro, waiting for her life to move from being entirely provisional, a life in waiting, to something concrete, something she can grasp onto and steer with her own hands. Yevgeny dispatches an English-speaking colleague to translate for her at the various appointments she needs to get her legal documents. She has to obtain various medical screenings, fingerprints, stamps, certificates, renewals of her initial documents, and even more stamps. All of this necessitates more lines and more waiting, all in cramped government offices flung across this enormous city. The chimes of the Moscow metro have become so familiar to her that she can recite them from memory, even though she doesn’t understand a word. She drowns out all of the unintelligible conversations buzzing around her. Having spent almost her entire professional career deep in the muck of American government bureaucracy, she can wholeheartedly affirm that they have nothing on Russia when it comes to filling out forms.

She finds herself with no energy once again. The entire process enervates her. At least the interrogations were a mental challenge; her current predicament requires a dogged patience that eludes her. Every afternoon she finds herself laying on her couch and staring at the ceiling until Yevgeny comes. Is this what the rest of her life will look like? Waiting in lines and relying on Yevgeny for everything? The prospect of that depresses her.

He comes almost every night after work. Carrie senses that her (?) apartment, located on one of Moscow’s outer rings, is far from wherever Yevgeny calls home. She hates to admit it to herself, but she welcomes his presence. His large body and deep voice filling the space of the small apartment. She’s barely unpacked her meager set of belongings and has hardly ventured beyond the bed and the couch. Yevgeny moves through the space with an intimate familiarity.

She feels herself letting out a deep breath (of anticipation?) when she hears the intercom buzz. He has a key. He could come up when he pleases, but, for whatever reason, waits for her to buzz him in every time. He brings dinner and usually watches her pick at her food for an hour. Her appetite hasn’t returned much.

On weekends, he drags her on long walks through Moscow. He takes her through the city’s many parks, filled with Muscovites soaking up the fleeting warmth of Russian summers. He has encyclopedic knowledge of the historical significance of every building and every statue, of which there are many in Moscow, they pass. Before, she would never tolerate such idle, meandering conversation, but strangely enough, it helps ground her, makes this wholly unfamiliar place more concrete for her.

The light of the late afternoon bleeds into the night. Almost out of habit, they end up walking along the long boulevards of Gorky Park. Whatever they don’t or can’t say to each other, they take out physically, each baiting the other to make the next move. Yevgeny’s fingers lingering on a bare shoulder, her fingers finding a stray hair on his shirt, his arm snaked around her waist as they walk back to the metro, Carrie on her tip toes as she gives a chaste kiss goodnight outside her building. She’s lost score.

Tonight, it occurs to her, not for the first time, just how much he loves his country, and she can’t fault him for that, even if it led him to do heinous things to her. She gets it. She’s done terrible things in the name of her country too. Whoever they are now, however they’re acting towards each other, maybe it’s some twisted form of atonement. By choosing to be gentle with each other, in a way, they’re giving a reprieve to themselves. She tries to not think about it too much.

All of that promising momentum grinds to a halt this week. His touch, his voice feels unbearable to her as another wave of malaise washes over her. Once again, she curls into herself. She holes herself up in the apartment, not showering, not eating, just drowning in her thoughts and memories. She keeps texting Yevgeny all week that she isn’t feeling well and he seems to take Carrie at her word. By mid-morning on Friday, however, Yevgeny is buzzing to be let in. Knowing she can’t prevent him from coming up, she savors her last moments of self-isolation.

Yevgeny strolls in with an overnight bag in hand and a determined look in his eyes.

“Carrie, давай, pack a bag, we’re going to Petersburg.”

Before she even has time to react, he pulls her up to her feet. “What? No. I’m not going with you.”

“Why not? You’ve got something better to do with your time?”

Not having the energy to argue, Carrie stalks off to the bathroom and slams the door.

Yevgeny’s voice muffled through the door: “You need a change in scenery. Is that what you Americans say? Moscow is too humid right now, anyway.”

She splashes some water on her face and rubs her temples. She senses he won’t take no for an answer this time. He’s on a mission. After a few minutes of collecting herself, she goes to the bedroom and starts packing a bag. She strips off the dirty clothes she’s been wearing all week. She might as well play along, she thinks.

Leaning against the doorframe as she pulls a clean shirt over her head, Yevgeny looks on with a smirk. He’s won and he knows it—no barbed words, no tears from her, just resignation.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” he says with a teasing smile.

He takes her bag and leads her out.

Chapter Text

Y interlude 3:

Yevgeny is still in awe that Carrie agreed to come to Petersburg with him with minimal fuss. The the ground has shifted between them. He splurged for a first-class carriage with their own private berths. He’d normally go for the cheapest option, platzkart, purely out of nostalgia from his university years as a broke student.

Carrie is curled up next to him, her head in his lap, reading one of the books he brought her. He can feel how relaxed she is—no tension, just her steady breaths and the occasional shift in position. This might be the calmest he’s ever seen her. He strokes her hair while reading the news on his iPad, a slow warmth spreading through his chest. He feels lucky that she hasn’t completely shut him out yet. There’s still a small opening and he’ll be damned if he won’t try his hardest to pry it open.

They arrive in the mid-afternoon. Carrie had fallen asleep on his lap for the last hour, her back resting against his abdomen. Savoring the slow rise and fall of her chest against him, he imagines wrapping her up fully in his arms.

“Carrie, we’re here,” he softly whispers into her ear. He tucks a stray lock behind her ear as she sleepily sits up. They hold each other’s gazes a moment longer than necessary. Her face looks brighter, more open in the soft afternoon light. He thinks maybe, just maybe, the shroud of melancholy that has weighed her down is slowly lifting. He resists the urge to give her an open-mouthed kiss right then and there.

They take the metro directly from the train station to their hotel. He could easily afford the taxi ride there, of course, but the opulence and grandeur of the Petersburg metro never fails to take his breathe away. He watches Carrie take it all in and can see a glimpse of the wonder he feels every time he comes here.

Carrying her bag, he leads her into a palatial two-bedroom suite at the Four Seasons with a view of St. Isaac’s Cathedral. Carrie can’t help but gasp at the splendor.

Before she can disappear into her room, he says to her: “Meet me in the lobby in 20 minutes. I’m giving you the Petersburg grand tour.”

He quickly changes into shorts and a blue linen button down to match the balmy weather.

Thirty minutes later, Carrie enters the lobby wearing a bright red sleeveless sundress. Her blonde hair is pinned up in a bun with loose strands framing her face. It’s so cheerful and such a departure from her usual monochromatic blue or black attire that he almost doesn’t recognize her.

“Where’d you get that dress?”

“I’m more self-sufficient here than you think,” she counters with a smirk.

Chapter Text

C interlude 4:

They walk and walk for what seems like hours, passing through manicured parks, working-class neighborhoods, the grand boulevard of Nevsky Prospect, across bridges, and alongside canals. She takes none of it in. Yevgeny chimes in occasionally with stories of his past Petersburg escapades from his student days. Most of them seemed to follow the same pattern: hazy summer nights with friends, crammed onto tiny apartment balconies drinking cheap, bitter Sovetskoye champagne, too poor to afford a proper bar outing, the inevitable drunken rush to get home before the bridges were drawn up, the sharp morning fog the next day that could chase away any hangover. She’s not sure if she believes any of his stories. The idea that Yevgeny would relinquish any control, even as a young student, seems improbable.

As they walk, each lost in their thoughts, she grudgingly accepts that this trip was not a bad idea after all. A new environment might be a way for them to both finally cross the lines they had drawn long ago and fiercely maintained ever since. There were glimpses of what it might mean to try and build something with this inscrutable man, but there was nothing more sustained than a brush of a hand or a timid kiss before each of them retreated back to safety. More than anything else that had transpired the last few months, she senses this weekend might actually sweep away the last fragments of her former self that she had tried in desperation to hold on to all this time. But if she is to survive, there could be no more straddling worlds, she comes to realize.

Lost in her thoughts, she doesn’t realize that Yevgeny has led her to the Summer Garden on the banks of the Neva, a small but overmanicured park with enormous tree-lined paths.

“Our last stop for today,” he proclaims.

Yevgeny motions to a parked car and out emerges a man with an enormous picnic basket and blanket. Before taking the supplies, he pulls her close and whispers slyly in her ear, “Now, a proper Pyotr date for us,” a lingering emphasis on us.

Carrie looks away, the tiniest of smiles creeping onto her face. She usually meets his more romantic gestures with a wall of indifference, but this display would make anyone blush, even her.

After Yevgeny finds a secluded spot and arranges everything to his satisfaction, they finally sit down and eat. Carrie feels her whole body relax for the first time in months, temporarily unburdened by the heavy weight of the past and the uncertainty of what is to come.

They talk for hours about everything and nothing, as the sun starts to sink. He recites Russian poetry: Lermontov, Pushkin, Akhmatova, and so on. She understands none of it but indulges him anyway. They don’t dare touch each other for fear of ruining whatever was happening between them. This moment, this breakthrough between them, somehow transcends the need for traditional intimacy. Carrie runs her tongue over her teeth, her whole mouth aching from all the smiling and laughing.

She notices Yevgeny’s laugh lines for the first time too.

She thinks, to passersby, they must look like a couple, awash in the pale light of a Petersburg White Night. Both are laying on their backs, each settled into the gentle quietness between them, Carrie thinks how this weekend has allowed them to inhabit better versions of themselves. No past sins clouding what’s front of them. It’s not lost on her that Yevgeny must also struggle with what he’s done and not done, what was said and left unsaid, although he hides it much better than she does.

Yevgeny abruptly interrupts her thoughts by pulling her up to a sitting position.

“Champagne?” pulling out a bottle of still-chilled Sovetskoye from the basket.

“You’re joking, right?”

“When have you ever seen me joke?” he taunts.

“I don’t dr…I, mean…I haven’t had a drink in over two years.”

He inches closer to her. “You’re stable right now? Psychologically?”

“Matter of opinion,” she responds curtly but not unkindly.

“You have no country to protect, no wars to prevent?” he asks, brushing a piece of grass out of her hair.

“No…not at the moment,” she whispers back.

Yevgeny wordlessly pours each of them a glass.

“Then, we’ll drink to that.”

Some point later, perhaps hours later (time is hard to tell when the sun doesn’t fully set), they are both drinking champagne straight out of the bottle, it tastes better that way, bubblier and colder. She wants the cold inside of her.

Chapter Text

Y interlude 4:

In the taxi ride back to the hotel, with Carrie leaned against him, drunk, scenes from their evening together play in Yevgeny’s head like film reel: Carrie’s champagne flush, her disheveled hair from lying in the grass, the swirl of freckles he touches on her pale shoulders. He can still smell the traces of an illicit cigarette they shared earlier in her hair. He so badly wants to kiss her to see if her lips still taste of champagne.

He hasn’t felt this relaxed since their spontaneous road trip through Afghanistan months earlier. He has no agenda this time, no desire to control the outcome of their interactions, to ensnare her. He doesn’t know what will happen next when they arrive back to the hotel, and he’s okay with that, even with the knowledge that this will be the last time he’ll see her for a few weeks.

Back at the hotel, slightly more sober, they both realize the end of their glorious evening is rapidly upon them. In the elevator, Yevgeny interlaces his fingers with hers and squeezes hard. Squeezing back, Carrie turns to face him with a generous smile and declares plainly: “Today was fun.”

She must have read his surprised reaction as disbelief because she adds, “I mean it…really. You were right about needing a change of scenery, and, well, about everything so far. I’ve hardly been the easiest person to deal with…You’ve been so patient, and I just wanted to say thank you.”

He wasn’t expecting such a forthcoming confession from her. Yevgeny’s mind doesn’t know how to take in this information, but, almost instinctively, pulls her in for a kiss. And just like Kohat, their bodies fit together perfectly, like they’ve been doing this for years. Yevgeny grasps the back of her neck and deepens the kiss. Yevgeny stumbles as he tries to maneuver them out of the elevator, both snorting at his drunken awkwardness.

Yevgeny pushes Carrie against the wall, his tongue probing the inside of Carrie’s mouth, with Carrie reciprocating just as eagerly. He stoops down to kiss her neck, intending to sweep her up in his arms and carry her to his bed. But before he can do so, he freezes. Something feels off. The moment isn’t right for them.

“Carrie?” he whispers in her ear before trailing her jawline with kisses and moving his arms down her torso. “We’ve had a long day. I think we should go to bed.”

Carrie steps back a bit to give them space to look at each other directly. If she’s disappointed, she doesn’t show it. Standing on her tiptoes, she plants one last kiss on his lips. It tastes of champagne.

“Well, you know where to find me if you change your mind,” she says curtly but not unkindly before disappearing into her room.

Yevgeny’s head is throbbing, which is clouding his thoughts. What just happened? He’s never been this unsure of himself. He doesn’t know where to go from here or whether he’ll get another chance like this. He can’t decide if he is a coward or if his usually correct instincts are misdirecting him. He suspects tonight’s hesitancy comes from the realization that he can’t dominate her. Not completely at least. The asylum didn’t. Neither did taking everything away from her and leaving her at his mercy. Deep down he is afraid his need to dominate everything and everyone around him is the driving force of his desire for Carrie. What happens once he does?

Every encounter with her, everything he’s ever said to her since that first acrimonious meeting in prison was supposed to lead to this very moment, but somehow, he never thought it would come to this point: Carrie, here in the flesh, in the room next to his, lucid, and still fighting to survive most days. She didn’t simply go limp and give her life to him like Simone, arguably the easiest choice in front of her. He’d see right through that.

He needs Carrie as she is now, stripped of her nationalism and sense of duty, to see what they could be together. He needs her living each day with that gleam in her eye, that hunger he couldn’t torture out of her. He needs her to come to him for it to feel real, unsure of what it exactly means.

Resigned to their impossible situation, he strips to his boxers and heads to bed. He can’t sleep right away, but instead checks his email and skims a few briefings for his upcoming mission, eventually drifting off into a dreamless sleep.

He awakes suddenly to a dark figure perched at the edge of his bed.

It’s Carrie.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you,” she says without a trace of apology in her voice.

“Can’t sleep either?”

“No, not really. Everything is too big here, too spacious. I don’t like it,” she whispers.

Yevgeny props himself up onto his elbow to take a full look at her. She’s wearing running shorts and an oversized t-shirt and no bra, he can’t help but notice.

“Believe it or not, I miss your parent’s apartment in Moscow.”

Yevgeny offers his hand out to her. “It’s your apartment, Carrie.”

She accepts the invitation to come closer, both sitting up and directly facing each other.

He wordlessly brings a hand to her face as if to make sure she’s real first before gently glides down to her torso, grazing her breasts.

Carrie leans up to kiss him, both awash in the silvery moonlight filtering in.

They’re agonizingly slow with each other. She traces the various scars and marks on his torso with a feathery touch. He does the same careful exploration.

When they’re both ready, he whispers in her ear, “Take off your shirt.”

This time she complies before guiding her down onto the bed.

“Carrie, are you sure about this?”