Title: Jewels on an Empty Beach
Fandom: Agent Carter
Author: sholio
Word Count: 1400
Pairing: Peggy/Daniel
Content notes: none
Summary: 2x10 tag. Peggy and Daniel in those early hours.




They arrived at the hospital just as the ambulance pulled in. Peggy was already out of the car before Daniel had even brought it to a complete stop.

Jack was chalk-white, and utterly limp as the ambulance crew manhandled him onto a stretcher with a deftness that Peggy recognized from the war. The war is over. We're all supposed to be safe now. Yet of course they weren't; didn't she know that better than anyone? There was blood, so much blood, impossibly vivid, glistening like rubies in the California sunshine.

But his eyelids fluttered, and her breath snagged in her throat. He was still in there somewhere. Still breathing. Still alive.

"Jack," she said, reaching for his hand. "Who did this? Can you speak?"

His fingers were ice-cold in hers, but his hand turned and clasped hers back. She was aware of Daniel at her shoulder, silent and tense.

"Miss, you'll have to leave --"

"Agent," Peggy said harshly. She kept pace with the stretcher -- aware, dimly, of Daniel flashing a badge, but her attention was focused on Jack. Jack, whose blood-flecked lips moved soundlessly, whose glazed eyes focused slowly on her face; she thought he smiled a little. "Jack, it's Peggy, I'm here. Did you see who did this?"

He seemed on the verge of saying something -- then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he spasmed, choking. His hand clutched hers in a convulsive jerk and went limp.

"Miss," someone was saying, insistently. Hands pulled her back. She recognized Daniel's voice, saying her name, and allowed him, and only him, to pull her away.

"You okay?" he asked quietly, and then, when she didn't answer, "Did he say anything?"

"No," she said softly. She looked down at her hand. There was a swatch of blood across her palm, like red paint, and she shivered.

"Hey." Daniel's hand closed over hers, balling up her sticky fingers in his. "Let's go have a look at the hotel room, all right? Whether this was Vernon's guys, or Dottie, or somebody from back East, we'll get 'em."

She nodded, jerking her head up, straightening her back. "Of course we will."


***


There was blood on the carpet in the hotel, so much blood it was hard to believe anyone could have survived such a wound.

But still, it was easier to be here than at the hospital. Easier by far, because here she could lose herself in the job. This was familiar. She knew how to examine a crime scene, and she could think about it in simple, professional terms.

The local police had responded first, but they were glad enough to hand over supervision of the crime scene to the SSR. More agents trickled in steadily, as word spread. Daniel sent most of them downstairs to interview witnesses, leaving the initial, critical examination of the crime scene to himself and Peggy alone. An agent was dispatched to the hospital to provide additional security in case Jack's attacker tried again.

All of this Peggy registered through a glacial calm, while she snapped photos, took prints, examined the doors and windows, even inspected each item in Jack's suitcase.

"I don't see anything missing," she said. "Daniel, do you see anything out of place? You're more familiar with the intimacies of the male wardrobe than I am, as well as which cases he might have been working on."

Daniel let out a soft huff of breath. "You're giving me more credit for knowing the inner workings of -- the New York SSR management than I really deserve."

They were both skirting around saying his name. It was superstitious and silly, and Peggy couldn't make herself stop.

Afternoon turned to golden evening outside the window. Across the city, Jack would be fighting for his life in a hospital operating theatre. Or perhaps he was already dead. Surely someone would notify them, wouldn't they?

"His family," she said, her train of thought jumping from that track to a related one. "Have they been notified?"

"I don't know." Daniel sat on the edge of the bed, stretching out his leg and massaging his thigh. "Peggy, come here and sit down for a minute. We've been over every inch of this room with a fine-toothed comb. There's nothing to find that we haven't found."

"There's always something," she said briskly, going to the window and once again examining the sill for scratches, just in case the assassin had entered that way. "The trail's going cold -- you and I both know the first few hours are critical to an investigation --"

"Peggy." Daniel caught her hand as she passed by the bed. "Peggy, just stop. Stop for a minute, and sit down."

"I appreciate the concern, Daniel, but I'm fine." She untangled her hand, and stared at it for a moment, at the dried blood caught in the creases of her palm. She'd never washed her hands at the hospital. There had been too much to think about then; she'd been caught up in the urgency of the moment.

"Peggy?" Daniel said.

"Let me be, Daniel, please. I need to wash my hands."

The room, at least, had an attached bath; of course Jack would have paid for a room where he wouldn't have to share one. Peggy went inside and closed the door. She turned on the water as hard as she could stand, and scrubbed her hands with the little cake of lilac-scented hand soap.

Her reflection in the mirror looked back at her with a bleak and hollow stare. Perhaps the lipstick could use some touching up, the hair a moment's consideration with a brush, but she didn't look as empty and tired as she felt. She looked ... she looked ...

In the mirror, she watched her face crumple, watched the tears well.

It shocked her. She hadn't cried when Ana was shot, had held it together through all those hours with Mr. Jarvis in the hospital. But everything seemed to fall on her, in this moment. It was only ... she had been so happy.

She wept softly, fighting to breathe through each sob, to be quiet and to keep any accidental sounds hidden by the rush of the water.

If Daniel were going to interrupt her, she expected him to knock, so it came as a shock when the door opened with no warning. "Peggy?" Daniel said quietly.

"A moment, please," she managed, dragging the back of her hand across her eyes and realizing too late that she'd smeared her makeup terribly. "Give me a moment."

"Peggy." He took her wet hand.

This time, she let herself be led from the bath to the bed. The door of the hotel room was closed; it was just the two of them, alone with the accusing bloodstain on the floor. Daniel pushed the suitcase aside to make room for both of them.

She let herself be pulled down to sit next to him, and then she was leaning into him, turning her damp face into his neck. Not because she needed it, not really -- but because he was there, and ... it had been so long since someone had been there.

Daniel cautiously put an arm around her, and she leaned into him, breathing in the smell of his skin.

"You know he's too ornery to die," Daniel murmured into her hair, and she startled herself with a soft laugh, a puff of breath against his neck. "He'll live to be a hundred and five, making our lives difficult the whole time. You know I'm not wrong."

She pressed her lips against his neck, overwhelmed for a moment by everything she couldn't put a voice to -- that she could be so lucky, to have found him, to have found all of them: she'd been blessed with treasure where she had thought to find only sand. And having found it, she would not let it slip through her fingers, as easily as blood-stained water sliding down the drain. Would not.

"He'll be all right," she said against Daniel's neck. "We all will."

"Of course we will."

She pressed her hand against his back, felt his ribs expand as he breathed against her palm.

Daniel sighed into her hair. "Let's stop by the office, drop off the film and evidence for the lab boys to process, then catch something to eat and head over to the hospital, all right?"

He didn't suggest going home.

"I am going to make him pay and pay for frightening us," she informed his shoulder.

He laughed softly, and kissed the top of her head. "And that I can't wait to see."