Shields and Crutches
A/N: I apologize for misquoting directly from the show. I deleted my DVR copy and I can't find the clip I'm looking for on youtube. Trying to paraphrase.
His crutch was propped against his desk as the undertones of phones ringing, papers shuffling and typewriter keys clacking filled the room. Cigarette smoke and cologne perfumed the air. Daniel was acutely aware that sitting behind him was Agent Carter, not more than twenty feet as he tried to focus on the getting-cold case of Krzeminski's murder.
Suddenly, Thompson's foot caught the crutch as he carelessly passed by on his way to Dooley's office. The steel and wood crutch clattered to the floor in a loud cacophony of noise, immediately disrupting the bustling office atmosphere. Men stopped what they were doing. Phone calls ceased speaking. Typewriters stopped tapping. They all stared at the "peg leg" agent.
Silence filled the room.
Thompson passed on to Dooley's office as if nothing had happened. Sousa's cheeks became red hot, his vision tinting red as he began to lean down and pick up his crutch.
Filing the silent void, the precise click clack of heels occupied his ears as she approached, the only person there to offer assistance. Then her commanding voice joined the sound of her shoes, "Let me get that for you." Bending down gracefully in her tweed skirt and pin striped stockings; she deftly picked up the crutch and set it back to its proper place. Looking around at the room, men still staring, she commented crisply, "Don't you all have something better to do than to ogle a war hero? Or do you wish you were a fraction as brave?"
Eyes averted, voices offered mumbled words of half felt apology and the din of the office returned.
She was about to return to her desk, when he reached out to her hand, touching her briefly. Carter paused, looking down at him with her warm brown eyes. "Thanks." He managed to push out of his cottoned mouth.
A genuine smile perked up her impeccable red lips, "Agent, you are most welcome. I am committed to that last remark. We soldiers must stick together. We are all wounded in some way. Even Steve was." And with that, she returned to her desk and buried herself in files.
Sousa glanced over his shoulder a few times to make sure she wasn't fooling him with her candid statement. Peggy remained, head bowed, brow lightly furrowed, reading files and making some notes. Her coffee colored pin curls waved gently along the profile of her face.
"You gotta thing for Carter?" Krzeminski had asked him roughly, a few nights ago before his murder.
"Nah. You kidding me?" Sousa denied it as they ate their fries and burgers for night shift dinner.
"I'll give you a nickel's worth of free advice." Krzeminski said between bites of greasy hamburger, catsup smeared on his chin, "She ain't trading a red white and blue shield for a crutch."
The memory burned like hot wax; slow and relentless, just like all the peg leg comments and the jokes about how much slower he was than the other agents because of his lost limb.
Sometimes, he did wish he died on the battlefield, a hero, for his country. He didn't ask to be saved. When the chaplain came to administer last rites, Daniel had a vision of his immigrant parents, bowed and grieving in the cemetery. The perfect white stones would be lined up like rays of sunlight streaming like the souls departed to heaven. His mother would be handed his coffin flag and she would be crying, her face hidden by a black veil. His father, his arm around his wife, would be stony faced because he was supposed to be during the playing of Taps and the twenty-one-gun salute. Later at home, his father would cry for his only son he had sent into the fray to defend their new homeland, having left their old one after World War I.
Sousa's parents would collect his death benefit and be useful to his family even in death to keep the little grocery in the Bronx afloat. The Depression had been so hard on his family's business. When the mail trucks came to the front lines, all the other GI's got letters and gifts, but his folks couldn't afford the postage.
It was lonely during the war. But if he had died, he'd be a hero…. Now he was just a cripple. His father had made that clear when he came home.
"Joseph! He's our son! Come home!" his mother had cried, while she hugged Daniel fiercely. She almost nocked him over as he tried to balance on his one leg, the stump of the other still too tender for a prosthesis. The only thing holding him upright were the double arm braces he gripped tightly under his father's burning stare and his pride.
"No. No Maria. He is half a man." The elder Sousa hissed out like a snake, eyes narrowing. Daniel saw the hint of his sister's faces in the windows of their apartment above the storefront. Their expression was part horror, part joy.
Daniel felt the explosion that cost him his leg all over again roaring in his ears. But this time, it was his heart that took the hit.
Inhaling an unsteady breath, he stared holes into his desk top, trying to look normal even while his mind spun a million miles an hour in no particular direction. There was only one person who remotely kept him sane and even then, it was a stretch.
Peggy thought differently than every one else, calling him the "lucky one" after he accidentally walked in on her own painful memory of Steve Rogers' death. He tried to relate to her loss, making a joke out of his ransacked footlocker when he 'miraculously' survived his leg amputation. Peggy had smiled the most melancholy smile he'd ever seen then in a flash it was gone, her flawless façade undisturbed.
What had she meant, 'lucky'? He felt like the world's biggest idiot at that moment. Every once in a while, whispers of his name would drift to him as the other agents made snide comments about him or Carter. It made him want to beat them all with his crutch. Walk a mile in my shoes, morons, he growled internally.
"You gotta thing for Carter?" Krzeminski's voice mocked again.
No. He did not. Carter was a co-worker but the most extraordinary woman he'd ever met. She made the room glow just by walking into it. Her spirit lifted the down trodden and confidence radiated from her like they were Vita Rays bringing every one up from the darkness. No wonder Captain America loved her, he pondered, too afraid to glance behind him at her desk. She's everything he was and then some, he concluded, deciding not to let Agent Carter down by wallowing in self-pity after she salvaged his dignity today.
Yes, they were both allies in this office; warriors unified against the damage the war had done to them, both visible and invisible.
She was his shield and he was her crutch.