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Robbie can’t remember the last time he felt so nauseas. Disgusted, sure. In pain, definitely. But being on the precipice of throwing up, skin clammy and ears ringing, it’s been quite a while.
He hasn’t yet found a way to prepare and prevent when he hears over the intercom the dreaded words, “Jumping in three … two … one …”
His stomach lurches as everything in his vision goes blurry. Intellectually, he knows it takes only seconds. He knows that, but from where he’s standing — or sitting — it’s the longest hour of his life. They’ve jumped three times since he was resurrected, and if anything, it only worsens.
He keeps his head against his knees as the ship comes out the other side. His bunk isn’t the most spacious of places, but it’s the one place that he doesn’t have to worry about someone coming across him in the state he’s in now. He’s already an interloper, he doesn’t need mortification, too. What kind of grown man feels like a child with stage fright from a silly little warp drive?
Right as he’s deciding he’ll keep his breakfast down, he discovers that maybe even his bunk isn’t safe, for there’s a knock at the door. The panel to open it is so far away.
“It’s Sousa,” comes the visitor’s voice.
Sousa? The man’s been plenty polite so far, but Robbie’s still amazed by the fact that he was transported here from the 1950s looking not a day over forty. And the crew acts like that’s just another day in the life. Which it must be for them, but Robbie’s playing catchup. Existing as Ghost Rider’s host had been so simple. Hacking and slashing and portaling, most of the time not even aware of what his body is doing. Time travel is beyond him.
He has no real reason to deny Sousa entry, however, so he rises to his feet and holds his hand to the panel.
The agent arrives in his typical business-casual fit (a hard-won upgrade from formal business, Daisy’d said) with a sympathetic smile and a cup of tea.
“That for me?” Robbie asks. He grimaces at the wobble in his voice.
“Yeah. Ginger root.” Sousa hands him the cup, along with most of a sleeve of saltines. “Took me awhile to get the hang of jumping, too.”
Robbie takes a sip of the well-prepared tea and nibbles on a cracker. “You’d think after thirteen years of dimension-hopping I’d be used to this.”
“Different kind of travel. And you’re no longer …”
Robbie waits in mild amusement as Sousa searches for a nice way to put it.
“… enhanced.”
“Possessed,” Robbie corrects. “I sold my soul to the devil, man. You don’t need to talk around it.”
Sousa gives him a self-deprecating smile. “Right. Sorry.”
“Did Daisy send you? No matter how many times I tell that girl not to worry —”
“She does. Don’t I know it.” Sousa helps himself to one of Robbie’s crackers. “No, she didn’t send me. She’s working on tuning static out of the comms system. New solar system, new frequency to figure out. I’ve noticed you’re always in your bunk when we jump and skip lunch, so I made an educated guess.”
Well, that’s better than having his business aired to the entire ship, he supposes. Still, he’d rather not dwell on it. “My brother would have a field day with all that techy stuff. He planned on majoring in computer science.”
Gabe’s face flashes in his head, the way he wears his joy after deciphering some equation or experiment, and the sullen way he gets when he can’t. At least, that’s the way Robbie remembers it. He’s talked to Gabe a couple times since he was brought back, and every time throws him for a loop. When Robbie had left with the Darkhold, Gabe had been a seventeen-year-old kid about to graduate from high school.
Now, he’s a twenty-four-year-old man with two degrees, a steady relationship, and a good job. While Robbie knows Gabe had been excited to see him, there’d been an ensuing awkwardness that Robbie once would have said was unthinkable. He doesn’t begrudge him that, he understands that Gabe must’ve mourned him as dead long ago when it was clear Robbie’s trip to hell wasn’t a short one. Nevertheless, that disconnect feels like a gaping wound.
Once we’re home, everything will be fine, Daisy had encouraged shortly after giving up on the sham of not eavesdropping.
Robbie hopes she’s right. It’d just be helpful to know when that’ll happen. There’s not much Daisy and her team can contribute to Earth’s chaos, or so says Mack — no, Director Mack — and everyone they love are accounted for, so their original cosmic schedule remains the same. His desires are not, unfortunately, high up on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s list of priorities.
“Bright kid,” Sousa says. “Daisy checks in on him every couple months and visits on resupply. They played long-distance Scrabble for awhile until she got tired of losing. It’s Trivial Pursuit now, though I’m not sure who’s —”
“You’ve met him?”
“Oh. No. No, that was something Daisy always wanted to do alone. She just had had a lot to say when she came back.”
Robbie feels some relief at that. He has no ill will towards Sousa, but the idea of Daisy inviting the man into the promise she’d made him, Robbie, sits uneasy in his gut. An uncharitable feeling, perhaps, but Robbie can’t help it.
He takes a generous sip of tea. That, Robbie has no problem with. He says as much, and the compliment lands. Brightly, Sousa replies, “I learned from the best. Agent Peggy Carter didn’t have much tolerance for a bad cup of tea, that’s for damn sure.”
Not for the first time, Robbie marvels at that. It breaks his brain a little to know the man in front of him dated the famed progenitor of S.H.I.E.L.D. simultaneously ten and seventy-five years ago.
“Force of nature, I’ve heard,” Robbie says. There’s not a whole lot of books to read on this ship, but S.H.I.E.L.D.’s history is one of them — protocol, probably, to keep a copy on every vessel — so he’s been left to brush up on the agency’s inception. With a wry smile, he adds, “I think you have a type, Agent Sousa.”
Sousa’s cheeks tinge faintly pink. “Guess I do.”
“Hey, no shade, man. I get it.”
“You, too, huh?”
“Well, I haven’t had anyone follow me up with Captain America, but yeah. You could say that.”
“How it’d end?”
Robbie slowly drains the rest of his tea, buying himself time to beat around the bush. “Uh, I mean, we never dated. It wasn’t the right time, and I don’t know if she felt the same. I thought maybe …” Daisy had seemed receptive back then, almost flirty, even. The memory of being in the control center, fully human for the first time in years, spending his last remaining moments with her, is one he’d kept forefront in his mind as his body hurtled through dimensions and rivers of blood. Not that it meant anything in the end. “It wouldn’t have worked anyway. I had to leave and didn’t know if I’d come back.”
“You’re back now,” Sousa points out. “You could give her a call. She might hold the same torch.”
The idea has crossed his mind no less than a thousand times. But he hasn’t felt any interest from her since he returned, and even if he had, Robbie doesn’t trust that he won’t be snatched up again. That the Rider wasn’t lying about enjoying his new host, that he isn’t merely waiting until Robbie’s settled and happy to take over. More importantly, he wouldn’t want to saddle Daisy with that uncertainty. She deserves a hell of a lot better than that.
She deserves a hell of a lot better than him. Ghost Rider or no Ghost Rider, he’d never match up to the man in front of him. Robbie’s not even sure who he is anymore without the demon.
Which leaves only one answer to Sousa’s optimism: “Unlikely.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
You wouldn’t be if you knew who it was, Robbie doesn’t say. He’d gotten the sense on day two that it wasn’t Sousa who’d brought up the notion about being more compatible as friends than lovers.
He does say, “It is what it is.” He studies Sousa’s earnest face and admits despite himself, “I’m still trying to deal with the whole space and being brought back from the dead thing. I’ve been in crazier situations, but it’s like —”
“— you don’t know what to do with yourself.”
Sousa’s bang on, which brings no comfort. Robbie’s nightmare had been far more public than he’d like, but the rest of it, how it feels to be himself again, what the Rider’s conditions had been, he’d only told one person. “Did Daisy say something to you?”
“No, nothing like that. I can relate, that’s all,” Sousa says. “Not the hell part, obviously. Feeling like an outsider, though? I’ve been there. It’s not easy to be dropped in the middle of a world you weren’t expecting.”
“You seem to be doing fine.”
At least you have a job on this ship, Robbie sulks.
Sousa snorts a laugh. “Daisy thought the same. Between S.H.I.E.L.D. and the SSR, I’ve spent two decades among super spies and dealing with blowhards who like to punch down. I know my way around a poker face.” Sousa puts a hand on Robbie’s shoulder. From someone else, maybe it’d feel patronizing, but Robbie knows the guy’s too genuine for that. “You’ll get there, Robbie. Give yourself time.”
Robbie almost rolls his eyes. Time? Since when? He expects to hear the Rider’s snicker in his head — yet there’s nothing. Not even a whisper. The Rider-voice prickles at the edges, sure. But Robbie’s not an idiot; he can tell the difference between his subconscious and the real deal. If Ghost Rider keeps to his word, then, incredibly, Sousa might be right. Time would be a luxury he’d have.
He’d have choices.
“Tell you what,” Sousa says, either not noticing or courteously not mentioning Robbie’s realization, “I bet Agent Reedy could use a hand down in the mechanic bay. From what I understand, you’re a damn good grease monkey.”
“Yeah, for cars. I don’t have any experience with planes, let alone spaceships.”
“If I could figure out an iPhone, you can figure out a spaceship. Unless Daisy was gassing you up for no reason and you’re worse than a kid in a shop class.”
Robbie scoffs. “Hardly.”
“Great,” Sousa grins with a clap on the back. “I’ll tell Reedy he’s getting a partner.”
Robbie regards Sousa with renewed curiosity. He hadn’t ever envisioned having anything in common with a Greatest Generation Boy Scout, yet here he sits in kindred. From time disorientation down to nausea on space jumps. “Well,” he says, gesturing to the tea and saltines, “thanks for these. And the talk. You’re a good guy, Sousa.”
“As are you.”
Robbie raises an eyebrow. “Did you forget the part where I sold my soul to a demon?”
“No,” says Sousa, “I didn’t.”