I kind of had to hand-wave the security requirements of the SSR. Peggy says she works at the phone company and headquarters appears to be hidden. But the agents are arresting people and flashing their badges all over town so I'm not sure how "secret" their organization is. I'm pretending that they all pretend to work at the phone company although it makes no sense. Although why Peggy isn't also known from the newsreels she was in I have no idea. Oh well…

I started it after episode three - prompted by the red white and blue shield for an aluminum crutch line - and added some stuff from later episodes if I felt like it and ignored some other stuff if going back and fitting it in would be too difficult.

I like a tortured soul on my fanfic leading man as much as the next gal, but I wanted to try to do something different with Sousa. He seems well rounded on the show and not a total depressive so I wanted to show him as a more well-balanced guy dealing with his injury in the bast way he knows how. It gets him down sometimes but he's not tortured by it every minute of the day, he's just kind of resigned to it.

XXX

"No girl's gonna trade in a red, white, and blue shield for an aluminum crutch."

Those words had a tendency to clatter about in his brain whenever he thought too hard about Peggy Carter. The fact that they were spoken to him by an inconsiderate buffoon and with the intent to hurt him didn't make them sting any less. Perhaps the fact that the buffoon had died shortly after uttering them made them seem more profound.

Daniel Sousa knew he had been a good looking guy. He'd had half the girls in six city blocks trying to snag his gaze and maybe a little bit more. He'd been a good kid, though, and thought he'd found a great gal. They'd been engaged before the war. He'd given her a ring that had belonged to his grandmother. Sally had said that she would wait - and she had. But what had come back from the war wasn't something that she was willing to marry. She pretended for a while, but she couldn't handle the sight of him in the VA hospital. She'd visited a few times while he was still bed bound. She'd cast a few uncomfortable glances at the blanket on the bed where the outline of his leg should have been but wasn't, but she'd managed to carry on her side of the conversation well enough.

The ill-timed visit where she saw him struggling to learn how to walk again was her last trip to the VA, though. He hadn't seen her since she left the hospital after that visit. The next day he'd received an envelope with the ring and a short note. "I'm sorry. I can't." She certainly didn't beat around the bush. At least she'd had the decency to give him back the ring. Sousa wondered what she would think of him now that the worst part of rehabilitation was over. Considering the scarred stump of what used to be his leg he thought she still might not be so keen on him.

Objectively he knew he looked pretty much the same above the waist - at least when he was fully clothed and sitting down. A little leaner than he had been before the war. When standing he was now off-balance. Constantly slightly left of center. Off-kilter. Crooked. When walking it was worse. He occasionally caught a glimpse of himself in the tall glass windows along the streets and it always made him sigh and look away. He hated the way he lurched around.

If he hated the sight of himself so much, he wondered, why did he insist on doing this every evening? He was ready for bed. He stood there in his undershorts, forcing himself to look at himself in the full length mirror. Some days - good days - he started at the bottom and brought his glance upwards, ending at his unchanged face. On other days when he was feeling sorry for himself he started at the top, figuring that he would leave the worst to last.

Naked above the waist he looked pretty much that how he always had although tilted to the side. He tried to straighten himself up and square his shoulders. There. That was better. His hair was still dark and thick. His chest and upper arms were strong and well defined. He made sure to work out the muscles on his right side so as to keep himself from getting over muscled on the opposite side where he supported himself with his crutch. Below his shorts, however, it all went to hell.

His left leg looked good to him. It matched his torso in muscle tone and mass. The scars on this side were almost hidden under the dark hair of his leg. He could pretend that his left leg was unharmed. His right leg was a different story. He had to force himself to look at it every time. It was shriveled and scarred - at least what was left of it. The shrapnel had torn through his muscle and left his flesh in shreds. They had tried to keep more of it, but after a number of surgeries they'd amputated. What was left was pretty hideous, too, but at least he had his knee. He had fought to keep it - they had seriously considered removing it - but he felt that every inch of his leg that he could keep was a small victory.

Would he ever find someone who didn't care about that? Someone who wouldn't be repulsed by his leg or lack thereof? He'd had a buddy try to cheer him up with a call girl once, but she had accidentally brushed against his prosthetic as he attempted to keep her from groping him and that was the end of that. He hadn't really tried much with the girls after that. Seemed kind of pointless. Sally couldn't handle it and easy women didn't interest him. Best not to risk it going after girls anyway. Do good work for the SSR and keep his evenings to himself. Better than getting his heart stomped on every time some girl decided he wasn't worth the discomfort of dealing with his leg.

Damnit. Why was he being so depressing tonight. Was it Krzeminski's stupid dig about his crutch? Was he just feeling maudlin about the guy's death? He hadn't particularly liked the jerk but he certainly hadn't wanted to see him get killed. He stopped staring at his stupid stump and tried to shake himself out of his funk.

Sousa was generally a pretty content fellow. His had his bad days - sometimes his heart ached so much that he thought it would stop beating, sometimes he woke up in a sweaty panic thinking it was back on the battlefield about to see his buddy step on a landmine, but he managed okay. He'd been joking with Peggy that day he'd found her in the records room. He often did that - made light of his physical problems - to set people at ease. The only thing worse that having a damn peg leg was having people feel sorry for you about it.

He realized that after the war he had actually been pretty lucky - professionally speaking. His personal life was a wreck. His father was ashamed of him and his mother was too timid to talk much to him without permission. But his professional life? It wasn't so bad. He'd been good at puzzles and math when he was in school. He'd planned on using the G.I. bill to go to school to learn a trade, and when he took an aptitude exam he'd been singled out and offered a position at the SSR. He had to admit that it was probably better than repairing engines, which was what he'd thought he'd be doing. Maybe he'd be able to do a little good in the world.

But why the hell couldn't he stop thinking about Peggy? She was making him all introspective and if there was one thing that Sousa knew, it was that no good came of thinking too hard about his life and what could have been.