#Poor SOUSA wondering where his coffee went

[timeguardians]

In the pilot of Agent Carter:

It cracks me up that Peggy takes Daniel Sousa's coffee cup, one that he is still drinking out of, into the board room. Right? She fills it back to the brim and then LEAVES it there.

[sholiofic]

Jack gets amnesia post-s2, maybe an AU version of Song Remains The Same, but take it however you want. Peggy/Daniel + Jack as friendship or full OT3. I just rewatched s1 and imagining s1 Jack waking up to find Peggy and Daniel all emotional over him would be... somewhere between weird and a recipe for lots of ansgty defensive lashing out.

Jack felt like he was struggling through gray molasses, fighting his way toward the light. When he finally managed to open his eyes, everything hurt, including breathing.

For a single panicked instant he thought he was back in the war, he’d taken a hit – but no, the memories came down on him in a cold wave that helped clear some of the cobwebs from his brain. The Navy Cross. The lies. The job at the SSR.

Had he been hurt in the line of duty, then? Everything was strangely hazy. He couldn’t even remember exactly what day it was. Or what month. Just his luck to get shot – or something – after working under Dooley for … a month? Two months?

He blinked blearily at a block of sunshine on the white wall. Definitely in a hospital. Slowly the sound of a rhythmic clicking, that he couldn’t quite place, penetrated his haze. It was coming from beside him – mechanical equipment, he thought at first, but it started and stopped unevenly, and then there was a quiet murmur of, “Oh, bollocks.”

It took him two tries to turn his head to the side; his own weakness astounded and annoyed him. And what he saw then was … the SSR’s glorified secretary?

What the heck.

He just stared at her for a minute, halfway convinced that this was a dream, especially since Marge Carter had her head bent over a snarl of pastel-colored yarn and her face screwed up in a look of frustration.

“How does Rose make it look so easy?” she muttered, trying to untangle the yarn and only snarling it further. 

Well, this was flattering, Jack thought. Maybe Dooley sent her over to keep him company during his convalescence from whatever the hell happened to him.

He cleared his throat.

Carter jerked and looked up, and then an astonishing look came over the face that he’d only ever seen in a handful of expressions, mostly various shades of annoyance and frosty ice queen. Now, out of nowhere, she looked soft, and she looked warm, and she was looking at him like that.

“Jack,” she said, and her voice was warm too. “You’re back with us. How are you feeling?”

Jack stared at her. Definitely a dream, he thought. Or … was this that thing he’d heard about, where nurses during the war fell for their patients? Women were charmed by injured men, he’d heard (though if Carter was that type, you’d think she would’ve fallen hook, line, and sinker for department sad-sack Sousa, and that was never gonna happen).

“Can I bring you anything?” Carter asked. As she spoke, she was busy stuffing things back into the handbag in her lap. Was that a pistol? It got a ball of yarn stuffed on top of it before Jack could get a good look. “A drink of water, perhaps?”

So that was what was going on. Carter went doe-eyed for wounded birds. He was almost disappointed; it should have been flattering to have her getting all dewy at him, but instead he thought that he’d liked her better frosty.

But Jack was nothing if not a smooth operator, and anyway, having a cute dame waiting on him wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to him. He managed to put on the best approximation he could of his usual flirty grin, despite the steel bands around his chest – never let them see you falter. “Water’d be grand, if you don’t mind, sweetheart.”

Carter stopped in the act of trying to cram yarn and needles into her bulging handbag, and gave him a quick, sharp look. “What did you just call me?”

… and as soon as the wounded bird picked itself up and managed to get itself back into the air, the kitten-claws came out. Women were so predictable, really. “Did I forget to say please?” he tried, with a half-hearted bat of his eyes, but he had a feeling it came out more pathetic than intended. Every word he managed to get out seemed to take a too-big bite out of what little energy he had. He felt like absolute shit, his chest hurt like something was clawing it from the inside, and he didn’t have the strength to play the flirting game just to get a damn drink of water. He got so goddamn tired of the games sometimes, tired of himself when he played them, just … tired.

Maybe he really had been on death’s door, if he was having thoughts like this. If there was one thing he hated, it was being honest with himself.

“Oh, Jack,” Carter said, and she let out a laugh that was more of a weird little huff, half laugh and half sigh. He genuinely couldn’t tell if he’d upset her or not, but she abandoned her bulging handbag with yarn trailing out of it, and vanished beyond his field of vision, returning a moment later with a tin cup.

Well, if he’d put her in a snit, at least it wasn’t enough of a snit not to get some nursing out of it. Surprisingly decent nursing. She cupped her hand under his head and held the cup to his lips. True, she spilled a little water down his neck as he sipped, but honestly he hadn’t thought Marge had a nurturing bone in her body. Apparently he’d managed to look miserable enough to bring out a little of the woman in her after all.

When she took the cup away, he managed a grin. “You’re a pretty decent little nurse, you know that, Carter?”

“And you’re worrying me exceedingly,” she said, absently moving the knitting out of her chair so she could sit down. “What do you remember?”

“Hoping you’d tell me that.” He raised an arm, painfully weak, to touch his aching chest, and found thick layers of bandages.

Carter took in a quick breath; it sounded almost pained. “Do you remember any of what happened to you, Jack?”

“Not … exactly,” he admitted, but there was only one plausible conclusion to jump to, from those bandages. “I was shot?” Yes. Yes, that felt right.

“Yes,” Carter said, breaking into a grin. “They said …” She took another breath. “They said there could be some memory loss, some possibility of –” There was the briefest hesitation. “– brain damage. Your heart stopped, Jack.”

“Hell,” he muttered, poking at the bandages. No wonder Dooley thought he warranted a pretty dame fetching and carrying at his bedside. Carter wasn’t even looking at him, staring at the wall and blinking rapidly; just the thought of blood had undone her, apparently. For his part, Jack thought he must be the unluckiest sap in the whole SSR, survived the war without a scratch just to come home and get perforated. “Tell me they caught the guy,” he said.

“They … that is to say, we,” Carter said, looking back at him with a little more steel, and there were those kitten-claws coming out again. “We were hoping you could give us more to go on. We’ve no leads, Jack, and the trail’s growing cold. You don’t remember anything at all?”

Oddly, there was something, or at least there seemed to be, coming out of the gray haze of his thoughts – the flash of a muzzle of a gun. But now that she’d been talking to him and muddling him up, he couldn’t tell if it was real or not. “Wish I could help a pretty lady out,” he said, flashing a smile he didn’t really feel. “But it’s all kind of a blank.”

“Jack,” she said, and there the smile again, almost teasing, though with something uncertain underneath it that seemed to surprise him; it didn’t fit. “You’ve been acting quite odd since you woke up. I do hope being shot hasn’t caused you to fall hopelessly in love with me. Daniel would have to have words with you.”

“Daniel?” For a minute all he could think of was a CO he’d had during the war by that name. Major Daniel Franks. Hell of a bastard too.

Her smile, already tentative around the edges, dropped away completely. “Jack, please tell me you remember Daniel.” She sounded really anxious.

Who the hell was she talking about? Oh, wait a minute. Daniel was Sousa’s first name. Jack tried to think if there were any other Daniels at the SSR, but he couldn’t think of any, and his chest hurt and he was exhausted and he just wanted to not be having this confusing conversation with a woman who couldn’t seem to keep a thought in her head for more than a minute at a time.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “‘Course I remember.” Smiling as he said it, but he’d almost gone on automatic at this point. He just wanted this conversation to be over; he could feel his hands shaking and sweat breaking out on his forehead just from the effort of keeping himself focused on the conversation. Screw waking up to a pretty dame at his bedside; she wasn’t fulfilling her brow-mopping duties at all. Instead she was being weird and prickly, running hot and cold for no apparent reason. Typical dame.

Carter put a hand on his shoulder, but just then, the door opened and – speak of the devil, and also, what the hell – in crutched Sousa. He was moving carefully, carrying a tray with two cups on it, one trailing a teabag.

“Okay, Peg, for starters, records at the hotel are an absolute mess,” he began. “I swear they haven’t got a – What, hey, hello there!”

And he broke out in a beaming grin, while Jack eyed him suspiciously. Why the hell was Sousa playing office coffee boy in his hospital room?

“Daniel,” Carter said gratefully, and oh good, he’d guessed right about the Daniel part. She rose quickly and took the tray. “Thank you. Jack’s awake.”

“Yeah, I got that. How long?” Daniel crutched over, still beaming while Jack continued to give him a nervous look and wonder why the hell Sousa of all people should care if he lived or died.

“Just now,” Peggy said. She set the tray on a table in the corner. “We’ve been having a most interesting conversation, with little enlightenment, however. He doesn’t remember much.”

“Seriously, Peggy, you’re grilling the poor guy the minute he wakes up?” Sousa settled a hand on Jack’s shoulder, and Jack just kept staring while Sousa beamed at him. Dealing with Carter’s wounded-bird womanliness had been a little weird, but he’d had no fucking clue that the same thing happened to guys and frankly he did not like it one bit.

“I was not ‘grilling,’ I was –”

“Interrogating?”

“– having a friendly conversation.”

And now he felt like he’d fallen into an Abbott and Costello routine. Where had all of this patter, this easy banter between the two of them come from? Carter’s eyes sparkled; Sousa was grinning, and he still had his hand on Jack’s shoulder, well beyond the casual pat that should have gone along with visiting an injured coworker in the hospital. This was more like brothers-in-arms, like someone in his unit might have done – and that was a thought that made him try to shove Sousa off.

A ripping pain tore through his chest and his vision whited out for a moment.

He came back to himself with Sousa still gripping his shoulder and Carter crouched on the other side, both of them looking scared to death. Now he just felt like he’d fallen through some kind of a – of a –

– black hole in reality –

… where the hell had that thought come from?

“Jack,” Sousa said with a nervous laugh, “please don’t do that.”

He was too scared and in too much pain to cover anymore, and that was a sign, beyond anything else, of how desperate things were. “Why in the hell are you doing this?” he snapped at them both.

“What?” Sousa said, looking baffled.

Carter’s grip tightened on his other arm. “Jack,” she said, her voice steady and somehow magnetic. “Slow breaths. Stay calm. What’s the year, Jack?”

“1945,” Jack said, staring at her, mesmerized. Distantly he heard Sousa curse softly.

“Very well,” Peggy said, speaking as if to herself, and then her smile firmed and she assumed a more businesslike demeanor. “Very well. Welcome back, Jack. As you no doubt inferred, you’ve been shot, and you’re in Los Angeles.”

“Okay,” Jack said very faintly, staring at her.

“And also,” Peggy added, “it’s 1947.”