Peggy Carter caught the small gold object in her hands seconds before it could clink against the ground, staring numbly at the very large, very dark stain of blood coating the ground in front of her.
Morgan.
He had- he'd told her to hang onto it, and he-
He just-
"Bloody hell," she muttered, blinking rapidly, as if that would bring back the corpse she had expected when the good doctor's breathing had stopped.
The whine of plane engines, and shrill scream of dropping bombs, the cries of terror and shock pierced through the city, but in the alleyway, not fifteen feet from what had once been a house, a young woman can only sit and stare at where a dead man should be but isn't.
Her training as an agent of the S.S.R. included expecting the unexpected and rolling with the punches, adjusting to circumstances even if they seemed unlikely or impossible, but this- this was-
He was just gone.
She'd only known the man for half an hour, maybe forty minutes, and he'd saved her life, handed her an obviously precious possession – a watch, her mind supplies dimly – died, and now he was nowhere at all.
"Dammit," she practically snarls, because she doesn't understand a damn thing and the whole city of London has gone to hell, and all she can do is crouch in an alleyway and watch it happen.
Yeah, how about no.
She climbs to her feet, wobbling a bit on unsteady legs, but she steals her nerves and shoves the watch into her pocket, right over her heart.
Henry Morgan had asked her to hold on to it.
It was his last request before he… it was his last request, so she damn well would do it.
Peggy Carter walked out of an alleyway stained with red and smelling of burnt wood, holding a dead man's watch and deciding that men truly had no idea how to explain or ask for things properly.
A/N: Peggy Carter is bae. That is all.
~Persephone
