He hasn't actually heard that one before, but he nods automatically. There's something in her eyes, something important, something mysterious that he could look upon for hours if he could only understand, and instead he's stuck here like an illiterate in a library.

"I'm- fuck." He scratches the back of his head awkwardly. "Do you want to- maybe - get out of here? We're kinda pushing it on our cover right now, maybe we could... do something..."

Raina raises a brow. "And what could we 'do' in the middle of the night in Lahore, Mr Agan?" 

He can remember a time - it wasn't so long ago - when breathing had come easier, when a dark quiet night like this seemed to brim with potential, when he'd saunter in and out of the bowels of the earth unafraid; when he felt powerful instead of clumsy and brave instead of stupid; he remembers their first days here, places loud and dark and drunken enough to forget everything else. 

Or he could just kiss her. 

"I guess not much," he grunts, and turns to go. 

She lunges, perhaps a little too fast, and it's a sure sign of the fact that she's still nervous. Her hand fastens on his wrist. Her fingers are always cold, always cool to the touch, but he runs like a furnace so that's alright.

"You underestimate the South Asian muslims, my friend. There is much to be done in the nights of Lahore."

They move through the inner city to what he knows to be an out-of-use railway station, but every so often, kids of about eighteen seem to be ducking in through the gate. There's little noise he can hear from here, and Raina's dress has given him no indications to where they're going: just a comfortable gharara with a dupatta draped elegantly over her neck.

The modest wear seems almost comical when Carter has seen her in her western gowns for their soirées. She wears both so well that it's difficult to know what she finds most comfortable. 

He's realising now how much he must have stood out. It never bothered him, he just showed up and said what he had to do and never even thought much about what people must think - and they'd mostly just accepted that he was meant to be there somehow. There's a certain way of being obvious that's really quite hard to notice. Now - he doesn't feel right any more, is the thing. 

He focuses on Raina to try to keep it together - the way she walks, dressed that way that looks - he thinks he can kind of see it now, the way everything is a costume for her. 

She leads him, with a warning look to be quiet, to a cavernous space that surely must have been a transport tunnel for railway cargo in and out of the city. Must be they discontinued the use of this line or this station when the East Pakistani government took over.

Where the tracks are, on the very edge of where the platform would be, is a projector showing a film that was incredibly popular in much of India the last few years: Mughal-E-Azam. They have just reached the part where the lovers, Akhbar and Anarkali, have stolen away to spend time together in gossamer-edged bliss in the gardens, in his private rooms, wherever they might steal a moment.

There aren't many young women there, seated on the firm, thin mattresses laid out in rows that they use as seats here, but there's enough couples holding hands and simply... allowed to be, in a way they aren't, usually. There's a few older men, glancing with nostalgia at the young ones, and even one or two older ladies, but no one quite their age. 

Still, they steal into the very back, where a single gadda remains unoccupied. Raina's eyes soften inexplicably as they gaze upon the lovers projected onto the wall of the station platform, and snacks are passed around, but she barely reaches for them. Her pulse jumps in her throat as Salim traces a dove feather down the long, sinuous line of Anarkali's neck, drinking in her scent, and she remembers... She remembers... 

He remembers too. 

He sits slightly awkwardly on the mat - further back, so he can see over the top of her head if she sits down, and he will take some of the snacks for her, for later. 

Instinct tells him again to do something in spite of the crushing paralysing fear- 

And here, in the darkness under the city, where lovers' shadows flicker on the wall behind him, and a doomed love-story plays out in front of him - 

- he's not going to tell her but he's seen it before, he mostly learned languages by watching endless hours of foreign films - 

- he does. 

"Sit down," he says suddenly, firmly and clearly but as gentle as she's ever heard him. 

Her skin is warm under his touch, but he can feel the pounding of her heartbeat. 

She sits, for him. Her legs fold neatly into the cross that everyone here is able to do, and the gadda is just small enough that their knees share a spot of warmth.

Her pulse comes down, but only a little. It's embarrassing how much it's her only tell left. She hates it. Coulson has told her so often that she can't change her humanity, but... she still wishes. 

The scene begins in which Akbar is begged by his wife not to go to war against his son, but her pleas fall on deaf ears. As she begins her soliloquy on the tribulations of maternal love, Raina leans over and murmurs, under the din of the film, "What was it like? Having a mother?" 

He shrugs. "I wouldn't really know. She- died, I guess, when I was really young, I barely remember. Dad doesn't talk about it, like, not at all, nobody does." He shivers a little. "She was - kind of cold." He turns to look at her, leaning a little closer, and his gaze lingers. "What..." he knows he's taking a risk, she never talks about her family - she might - do something - but - 

"What about you? You said - something about your stepdad being a diplomat - but I'm not sure if that was a cover or not."

Two blinks is all the surprise she ever allows herself to show. That he is allowed to glimpse the furrow of her brows, the twitch of her lips as she goes to say something and thinks better of it, is a privilege, in some way. She didn't know he grew up without a mother.

Inexplicably, it makes her sad. He deserved to have a mother. Someone like a mother. 

She jerks out of her thoughts and straight into the present again. Raina could, she realises, shut him off. As she has always done. But this tentative thing between them is starting to unfold, unravel, soften, bloom...

"He was all I ever knew. And he. Was not much."

But she does owe everything to him. And if she doesn't honour those bonds... She'll owe the rest of it to him too.

"But... enough. I left when I could, and neither of us have really needed to look back." Not a lie. Not exactly. 

Well that's ominous. He glances back at the film as he turns it over, and he looks surprised and doesn't bother to hide it.

 She's almost never volunteered anything about herself, never looked anything but uncomfortable when the topic was her, rather than the person she was pretending to be in that moment. 

For a while he hasn't been so sure there was anything at the core of her. It seemed like if you spent long enough wearing masks, maybe that was what you really were - she never really seemed like she was lying, and honestly it creeped him out. 

But then he'd thought different, because nobody could be that annoying just by accident. 

"My dad was- yeah. Great man. Don't know how he did it by himself, really. He just- I mean, it's different now I'm in the family business, you know? Kind of shows how different we are." He's rambling now, and the lady doesn't need to hear that. He crushes down a surge of self-hatred, like he's been wrong ever since - stop thinking about that. The counterinterrogation training does kind of help. "What's the last you heard of him? Your stepdad, I mean."

Raina suppresses a smile. He's an absolutely terrible liar, when it comes down to it. Or maybe he's just terrible at lying to her. She'd like to believe that. 

Again, she remembers that if she doesn't give, she doesn't get. She can pry about his father later. Or ask Sayed to do it.

"He's. Uh. Been away a while. Got caught up abroad somewhere. That was a few years ago," she says evasively. 

His lips quirk a little, and it surprises even himself. It's almost charming now, the way she hides things on instinct. 

"I guess that's the way of things, in our line of work. Not being around a lot, I mean." He scratches the back of his head. "I, uh - is this the kind of caught up where he's - are we looking at extraction here, or..." he trails off. Jesus Christ, he's so nervous around her now, that's never actually happened to him before and he doesn't know how to handle it. 

This time, she can't help but allow herself a smile. What is he going to do, go extract her father himself?

"The kind that... I don't need to know much about. I just know that if he needed me, he would have reached out." That part really is a lie.

His hair is sticking up at the back of his head. She wants to push it down and rearrange it. 

Instead, she turns back to the melodrama of the screen, and the story of a son resenting his father for enforcing duty upon him in favour of love. It's a tale as old as time, but it never gets old. 

Well, yeah? He's got a lot of experience in it. And he's pretty strong. 

She is so incredibly lying to him and she is so incredibly determined to keep doing so and god damn it's getting kind of adorable. 

He glances back at the screen. This one always bothered him. He wouldn't let a girl die for him, or give his dad the satisfaction. Not that Director Agan would ever be that stupid. At the point where you're in a civil war with your own kid, he'd probably say, maybe you can loosen up on your domestic fraternisation policies. Though he never could get dad to take an interest, he struggled enough with English. 

And he hates the way this one ends.

"So what's the part you're not telling me," he murmurs when there's a lull in the action, and risks a crooked teasing smirk.