[Jack Thompson] (The things they don't know about) Miss Tonya

[ 3 3 : a - s e r i e s - o f - t e l e p h o n e - c a l l s ]

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Warnings: Mentions of World War 2, mention of violence and guns, mention of death

Spoilers: Agent Carter Season 1

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Jack really did not feel like going out for a drink after two days in hell and a narrow escape from death, but he also knew that he would not get the rest he so craved if he went home to lay in bed with only his unsettling thoughts and memories to keep him company. Things like that always weighed so much more heavily on his mind late at night, which was why he never minded doing the night shifts, even if he had been working all day too – it was far easier to keep busy.

He and Peggy had just finished delivering their mission report to Chief Dooley and Jack would rather not have to think about the uncomfortable phone call he was going to have to make to Agent Li's family in the morning, so he'd accepted the invitation to the bar from the agents that had been there to greet them as they returned.

"Come on, Carter," he called, as he began walking towards the elevators at the end of the office. He turned, because he knew this would catch her off guard, and he'd be lying if he said he hadn't surprised himself too. Jack wasn't sure what exactly prompted him to finally invite Peggy to join them, and he could tell the surrounding agents were all wondering the same. "I owe you a bourbon." was the excuse he offered to them all, but it more likely had something to do with the confession he'd delivered to her on their way back to New York or what she'd done for him in the middle of that gunfight in Russia.

Jack never liked to admit to being vulnerable, but there really was no other word for how he had been since Li had got hit, and so he felt he had owed Peggy an explanation for his behaviour. Although, now he had the rather discomfiting feeling of being in her debt, as he'd never given Peggy any reason to help or trust him and then – without warning – he had confided in her his biggest secret. The whole thing had him wondering why he'd always been so unjustly unfair to her, never even giving her a chance to prove herself and constantly dismissing her without a second thought, and why he had then found it suddenly so easy to tell her the story that he felt had been suffocating him since the end of the war.

It was this guilt and regret that resulting in him sitting beside Carter in the bar, in a way uncomfortably reminiscent of how they had sat together on the returning plane journey. As it so often did these days, he found his mind drifting to Tonya and he suddenly realised that he might have had a third option on how he could have spent his night after all. Oh well, it was probably too late for that now.

"Don't think I realised quite how close you and the Starks were during the war," Jack started, focusing so much on how he could casually insert Tonya into their conversation that he didn't notice the agent stiffen slightly beside him. "You cropped up in their war records quite a bit, but I just thought it was all standard duty stuff. Is that why you're so adamant that they're not guilty?"

"I know they're not." His eyes met the agent's beside him as she stared back at him levelly, and Jack found it hard not to believe her with her gazing so earnestly. Typically, he was not easily persuaded, but recently he wasn't finding it too difficult to come to that point of view of it all, especially with Tonya standing by that opinion so resolutely – and her influence was certainly a hard one to ignore.

Jack nodded slowly. "Can't be easy seeing your friends' names dragged through the mud as they have been recently."

Peggy eyed Jack with slight suspicion, wondering when he became so sympathetic, but it wasn't the first time he'd surprised her in the last twenty-four hours. "I can tell you, it's not," she paused as she tried to gauge what Jack was getting at, slightly anxious that the stories that had been told over the campfire had revealed more than she would have liked. She took his thoughtful silence to be a contemplative suspicion and she worried that she'd gone too far. "I'm sure it's not easy for them too, but to be honest, I haven't spoken to either of them for a while now." It wasn't actually a complete lie, but she hoped it would throw him off whatever scent he was on.