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Fanfic advent day 4
Request from Tumblr: I'd really love any alternate-POV snippets for Black Water Rising?
Link to original story: Black Water Rising. This is the Agent Carter one in which they're stuck in an underground Hydra deathtrap that's filling up with water, also the first long fic I wrote in the fandom, after season one.
Since the entire fic is in Peggy's POV, we never got to see the Jack or Daniel scenes when they're not with her. So this is their side of the scene after Peggy leaves them alone, before Jack swims to the hangar, when he tells Daniel the Okinawa story.
This one's a bit interesting because (having written him a lot more by now) I actually no longer think the initial line of dialogue that this missing scene opens with is in character for Jack, but I'm keeping it because it's from the original story and I wanted to tie them together; the first couple of lines here are the last lines Peggy hears as she walks away.
Also posted on Tumblr.
---
"So, Daniel," Jack said, floating just below him. "I'm basically a shit."
"Gee, really?" Daniel glanced up; Peggy was walking away briskly, the bobbing light of her flashlight reflecting across the wet floor until it vanished into the nearest hallway. "I hadn't noticed."
"Ha ha. You're a riot."
Daniel tried to rearrange himself on the floor so he could see through the bars more easily. He couldn't crouch; he had to sit flat on the floor, while water drained around him into Jack's crypt. A ticking clock, counting down.
It occurred to him that just now might be the first time Jack had ever called him by his first name.
"You know, whatever you want to say to me, I dunno if it's worth the time you're wasting here," Daniel said. "Peggy's idea is only going to work if you get moving."
"I know," Jack said through chattering teeth. Floating on his back in the water, he looked like a drowned man already, ghost-pale in the beam of Daniel's flashlight. "But there's something I need to tell you. In case ... you know."
Daniel didn't bother with reassurances or platitudes. They'd both seen combat; they'd both been the recipient of deathbed confessions before. He'd never noticed Jack being especially reticent in front of Peggy, but clearly whatever he had to say was something he didn't want her to know about. Daniel had a feeling he probably didn't want to hear it either -- He got some girl in the family way and he has a kid in England? He's not really Jack Thompson, just a guy in the service who took the real Thompson's credentials -- Okay, the cold was making him loopy now.
But whatever it was that was weighing on Jack's mind, there was really only one thing a guy could do when confronted with that sort of confession. And Daniel's discomfort -- flat on his ass in ice-cold water, muscles cramping with cold, hands chewed to bruised dog meat from the digging he'd been doing -- paled in comparison to his need to bear witness in what might be Jack's final minutes of life.
"I'm listening," he said, when Jack went silent. "Go on."
Jack sucked in a breath. "So, the Navy Cross. The war hero thing. All of that. You know?"
"There's no way I could not know, Jack," Daniel said, and he couldn't stop a short laugh. "You talk about it all the time." Though, come to think of it, it hadn't come up since Dooley died and Jack got the promotion. Maybe all that talk had been less ego than bluster, trying to cement a place for himself among the men in the bullpen. Not that it made it any less annoying --
"It's a lie," Jack said. "It never happened."
The words fell into a sudden silence, broken only by the thousand subtle variations on water splashing, dripping, falling around them, filling up the world, flooding Jack's grave.
"How so?" Daniel said. There was no time to -- react, really; he had to get whatever Jack needed to say out of him, before all their time was gone. "You made it up, never got the award, or what?" He'd met people like that, of course. There were always people who lied about things like that. Flatfeet who served out the war in a Jersey shipyard and then made up a big story about how they ran across two miles of enemy fire, took out a Jerry machine gun and saved their whole squad.
But usually they were pretty easy to spot. Jack was a braggart, but he'd never struck Daniel as that particular type of fraud. And Daniel had seen the Navy Cross; Jack used to show it around.
"The award is real," Jack said. "They pinned it on me and all. It's just that I didn't do what they think I did." He took another deep breath and kicked himself around in the water, maybe trying to see Daniel more clearly, but there was no way he could see him, not from down there. "It was for ... conspicuous heroism in battle. Saved the lives of every man on my team. Except I didn't. What I did was ..."
He paused again. They didn't have time. But Daniel didn't have the heart to do more except carefully prod him along. "What'd you do, Jack?"
"It was on Tsuken Island," Jack said. He was looking at nothing, staring into the dark. Maybe seeing it all over again, the way people did. "In Okinawa. At night. Six enemy soldiers, walking into my camp. I was on night watch, fell asleep, woke up just in time to shoot 'em before they got us. Just one problem. White flag. They were surrendering. I just didn't know it 'til it was too late." He let out a sharp sort of laugh, cracking in the middle from cold, and maybe something else. "Buried the flag. Took the medal. Took the honors. You got anything to say to that, Sousa?"
"I don't know," Daniel said carefully. His mind was blank, his view of Jack tilting, reassessing. "It was ... chaos over there. Things happen."
"That's all you got to say about it? I brought that up in your face all the time. So now you know. The big war hero's a coward. Nothing to say to that? C'mon." Jack's voice had that sharp fighting edge. "You're the expert, right? There's one war hero in here, and it ain't me." His voice cracked. "You're the real deal."
That was what got the anger started, a slow building burn. "For God's sake, Jack, you think getting shot makes me a hero? You were there same as I was. You know what it's like."
The laugh that came out was a shade softer, a little more genuine. Jack swam closer, holding on the bars with a white-knuckled grip. The air space below the grate was nearly gone. "Carter knows," he said quietly, and there was another sideways tilt to the solid floor under Daniel, another surprise. "Didn't mean for her to, but, you know. Carter."
That startled a laugh out of him, too. "Yeah," Daniel said. He didn't know how he felt about this. Didn't know what it meant. "You tell anyone else?" he asked, but he already knew the answer.
"Just you and Carter."
All Daniel said to that, all he really could say, was, "You gotta get going, Jack."
"I know," Jack said through clenched teeth. He turned, kicking himself around in the water. Daniel moved his flashlight beam without really thinking about it to illuminate the water around Jack, picking out the place where the ceiling dipped to meet the water. Maybe there was an inch or two to spare yet. It looked impossible for any man to fit through there.
Jack hung there in the water, visibly bracing himself. Daniel couldn't help wondering how much of his deathbed confession was just stalling. Swimming through those flooded hallways in the dark -- he couldn't even imagine it.
There were a thousand kinds of courage and a thousand kinds of cowardice, and one thing about war was that it made you look into the face of all of them.
"Hey," Daniel said. Before he could come to his senses, he passed the flashlight down through the bars, butt first, the beam skipping off the ceiling. "Take this. I don't know if it'll work for long underwater, but it's gotta be better than nothing."
Jack took the other end of the flashlight automatically, and looked up at him, his face an odd mix of guarded and open. He made a sort of tokenistic shove, trying to push the flashlight back up toward Daniel. "You're wasting it on me."
"Jack, damn it, you know we don't have time to argue about it." Daniel passed the radio down after it. "Take this too. You get trapped somewhere, call us and see if we can guide you."
"It's not going to work," Jack said, looking up at him, three fingers curled around the flashlight and one resting on the radio. "None of this. You know that, right?"
"Not if you don't get moving right now, it won't."
Jack started to say something, shook his head, and jammed the radio into a pocket, under the surface of the water. "Here goes nothing," he murmured, took a deep breath, and dived.
The flashlight's beam was instantly watery and splintered, illuminating, for a moment, the concrete floor under eight or nine feet of water. Jack's legs and feet flashed, and then he was gone under the overhanging ceiling below, and Daniel was sitting alone in darkness growing ever more dense and oppressive as the light faded.
He sat there until the inevitable plunge into absolute darkness -- though whether it was because the waterlogged flashlight had stopped working, or because Jack had turned a corner, he had no way of knowing. Then he felt around for his crutch, braced it on the floor, and levered himself to his feet.
The darkness was very, very ... dark. He had a mental vision of turning the wrong way, putting his leg through the bars of the grate in the floor, and plunging up to his crotch between the bars. Losing the artificial leg, losing the crutch, breaking the other leg ...
Knock it off, Sousa. We've got more than enough trouble without borrowing some.
He felt his way carefully, feeling out with his good foot and sliding the other forward, but he didn't start breathing easier until he felt a wall in front of his groping left hand and knew he was well away from the grate.
He very deliberately didn't think about Jack, except to send a silent hope or maybe a prayer that way. Get out of this, you lying son of a bitch. We'll talk about the rest of it later. Just get out of it so I can chew you out as you so richly deserve.
Just get out of it.
Link to original story: Black Water Rising. This is the Agent Carter one in which they're stuck in an underground Hydra deathtrap that's filling up with water, also the first long fic I wrote in the fandom, after season one.
Since the entire fic is in Peggy's POV, we never got to see the Jack or Daniel scenes when they're not with her. So this is their side of the scene after Peggy leaves them alone, before Jack swims to the hangar, when he tells Daniel the Okinawa story.
This one's a bit interesting because (having written him a lot more by now) I actually no longer think the initial line of dialogue that this missing scene opens with is in character for Jack, but I'm keeping it because it's from the original story and I wanted to tie them together; the first couple of lines here are the last lines Peggy hears as she walks away.
Also posted on Tumblr.
---
"So, Daniel," Jack said, floating just below him. "I'm basically a shit."
"Gee, really?" Daniel glanced up; Peggy was walking away briskly, the bobbing light of her flashlight reflecting across the wet floor until it vanished into the nearest hallway. "I hadn't noticed."
"Ha ha. You're a riot."
Daniel tried to rearrange himself on the floor so he could see through the bars more easily. He couldn't crouch; he had to sit flat on the floor, while water drained around him into Jack's crypt. A ticking clock, counting down.
It occurred to him that just now might be the first time Jack had ever called him by his first name.
"You know, whatever you want to say to me, I dunno if it's worth the time you're wasting here," Daniel said. "Peggy's idea is only going to work if you get moving."
"I know," Jack said through chattering teeth. Floating on his back in the water, he looked like a drowned man already, ghost-pale in the beam of Daniel's flashlight. "But there's something I need to tell you. In case ... you know."
Daniel didn't bother with reassurances or platitudes. They'd both seen combat; they'd both been the recipient of deathbed confessions before. He'd never noticed Jack being especially reticent in front of Peggy, but clearly whatever he had to say was something he didn't want her to know about. Daniel had a feeling he probably didn't want to hear it either -- He got some girl in the family way and he has a kid in England? He's not really Jack Thompson, just a guy in the service who took the real Thompson's credentials -- Okay, the cold was making him loopy now.
But whatever it was that was weighing on Jack's mind, there was really only one thing a guy could do when confronted with that sort of confession. And Daniel's discomfort -- flat on his ass in ice-cold water, muscles cramping with cold, hands chewed to bruised dog meat from the digging he'd been doing -- paled in comparison to his need to bear witness in what might be Jack's final minutes of life.
"I'm listening," he said, when Jack went silent. "Go on."
Jack sucked in a breath. "So, the Navy Cross. The war hero thing. All of that. You know?"
"There's no way I could not know, Jack," Daniel said, and he couldn't stop a short laugh. "You talk about it all the time." Though, come to think of it, it hadn't come up since Dooley died and Jack got the promotion. Maybe all that talk had been less ego than bluster, trying to cement a place for himself among the men in the bullpen. Not that it made it any less annoying --
"It's a lie," Jack said. "It never happened."
The words fell into a sudden silence, broken only by the thousand subtle variations on water splashing, dripping, falling around them, filling up the world, flooding Jack's grave.
"How so?" Daniel said. There was no time to -- react, really; he had to get whatever Jack needed to say out of him, before all their time was gone. "You made it up, never got the award, or what?" He'd met people like that, of course. There were always people who lied about things like that. Flatfeet who served out the war in a Jersey shipyard and then made up a big story about how they ran across two miles of enemy fire, took out a Jerry machine gun and saved their whole squad.
But usually they were pretty easy to spot. Jack was a braggart, but he'd never struck Daniel as that particular type of fraud. And Daniel had seen the Navy Cross; Jack used to show it around.
"The award is real," Jack said. "They pinned it on me and all. It's just that I didn't do what they think I did." He took another deep breath and kicked himself around in the water, maybe trying to see Daniel more clearly, but there was no way he could see him, not from down there. "It was for ... conspicuous heroism in battle. Saved the lives of every man on my team. Except I didn't. What I did was ..."
He paused again. They didn't have time. But Daniel didn't have the heart to do more except carefully prod him along. "What'd you do, Jack?"
"It was on Tsuken Island," Jack said. He was looking at nothing, staring into the dark. Maybe seeing it all over again, the way people did. "In Okinawa. At night. Six enemy soldiers, walking into my camp. I was on night watch, fell asleep, woke up just in time to shoot 'em before they got us. Just one problem. White flag. They were surrendering. I just didn't know it 'til it was too late." He let out a sharp sort of laugh, cracking in the middle from cold, and maybe something else. "Buried the flag. Took the medal. Took the honors. You got anything to say to that, Sousa?"
"I don't know," Daniel said carefully. His mind was blank, his view of Jack tilting, reassessing. "It was ... chaos over there. Things happen."
"That's all you got to say about it? I brought that up in your face all the time. So now you know. The big war hero's a coward. Nothing to say to that? C'mon." Jack's voice had that sharp fighting edge. "You're the expert, right? There's one war hero in here, and it ain't me." His voice cracked. "You're the real deal."
That was what got the anger started, a slow building burn. "For God's sake, Jack, you think getting shot makes me a hero? You were there same as I was. You know what it's like."
The laugh that came out was a shade softer, a little more genuine. Jack swam closer, holding on the bars with a white-knuckled grip. The air space below the grate was nearly gone. "Carter knows," he said quietly, and there was another sideways tilt to the solid floor under Daniel, another surprise. "Didn't mean for her to, but, you know. Carter."
That startled a laugh out of him, too. "Yeah," Daniel said. He didn't know how he felt about this. Didn't know what it meant. "You tell anyone else?" he asked, but he already knew the answer.
"Just you and Carter."
All Daniel said to that, all he really could say, was, "You gotta get going, Jack."
"I know," Jack said through clenched teeth. He turned, kicking himself around in the water. Daniel moved his flashlight beam without really thinking about it to illuminate the water around Jack, picking out the place where the ceiling dipped to meet the water. Maybe there was an inch or two to spare yet. It looked impossible for any man to fit through there.
Jack hung there in the water, visibly bracing himself. Daniel couldn't help wondering how much of his deathbed confession was just stalling. Swimming through those flooded hallways in the dark -- he couldn't even imagine it.
There were a thousand kinds of courage and a thousand kinds of cowardice, and one thing about war was that it made you look into the face of all of them.
"Hey," Daniel said. Before he could come to his senses, he passed the flashlight down through the bars, butt first, the beam skipping off the ceiling. "Take this. I don't know if it'll work for long underwater, but it's gotta be better than nothing."
Jack took the other end of the flashlight automatically, and looked up at him, his face an odd mix of guarded and open. He made a sort of tokenistic shove, trying to push the flashlight back up toward Daniel. "You're wasting it on me."
"Jack, damn it, you know we don't have time to argue about it." Daniel passed the radio down after it. "Take this too. You get trapped somewhere, call us and see if we can guide you."
"It's not going to work," Jack said, looking up at him, three fingers curled around the flashlight and one resting on the radio. "None of this. You know that, right?"
"Not if you don't get moving right now, it won't."
Jack started to say something, shook his head, and jammed the radio into a pocket, under the surface of the water. "Here goes nothing," he murmured, took a deep breath, and dived.
The flashlight's beam was instantly watery and splintered, illuminating, for a moment, the concrete floor under eight or nine feet of water. Jack's legs and feet flashed, and then he was gone under the overhanging ceiling below, and Daniel was sitting alone in darkness growing ever more dense and oppressive as the light faded.
He sat there until the inevitable plunge into absolute darkness -- though whether it was because the waterlogged flashlight had stopped working, or because Jack had turned a corner, he had no way of knowing. Then he felt around for his crutch, braced it on the floor, and levered himself to his feet.
The darkness was very, very ... dark. He had a mental vision of turning the wrong way, putting his leg through the bars of the grate in the floor, and plunging up to his crotch between the bars. Losing the artificial leg, losing the crutch, breaking the other leg ...
Knock it off, Sousa. We've got more than enough trouble without borrowing some.
He felt his way carefully, feeling out with his good foot and sliding the other forward, but he didn't start breathing easier until he felt a wall in front of his groping left hand and knew he was well away from the grate.
He very deliberately didn't think about Jack, except to send a silent hope or maybe a prayer that way. Get out of this, you lying son of a bitch. We'll talk about the rest of it later. Just get out of it so I can chew you out as you so richly deserve.
Just get out of it.
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I love how Daniel understands how important this is that he listen
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I also left a few new comments on the original fic because it’s so good and I wanted to do a reread
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