Just a short follow-up to the first part, "Letting Her In". This time, it's Daniel's turn to be let in. Except, he ends up letting himself in when Peggy is, well, Peggy.

"Peg, are you okay?" Daniel's concerned voice drifted through the room. He frowned as he seized up his wife on the sofa. She had currently tugged her knees close to her chest and she was reading through some mission reports.

"Yes, Daniel, I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?" she asked a little too cheery as she changed positions again, for the seventh time in the ten minutes that Daniel had been watching her. Now she was lying stretched out on her back as Daniel was standing at the bar separating the living room from the kitchen and was drying off some dishes from dinner.

"For one, you've hardly eaten tonight, even though we had beef roast, your favorite. You've also been much quieter than usual, and since you've sat down, you haven't stopped moving around." He paused. "It looks like you're in pain."

Peggy rolled her eyes.

"Nothing I can't handle," she retorted and turned to lie flat on her stomach.

Daniel looked at her exasperatedly.

"Don't. We promised each other we wouldn't do this anymore," he said flatly as he dropped the tea towel on to the counter and made his way over to her.

"Do what?" Peggy said high-pitched without looking at him. Instead, she bit on the back of the pencil she was holding.

"Shutting each other out," Daniel said when arrived at the sofa.

"Talk to me," he added quietly.

Peggy glanced up to him, trying to appear innocent.

"Honestly, Daniel, I'm fine. It's just a little discomfort, nothing more," she replied as she sat back up and leant against the back of the sofa, this time with her feet on the floor. Daniel lowered himself on to the armchair opposite the sofa.

"Where?" he asked. At that, Peggy blushed.

"My… tummy. There's nothing I can do but wait it out. You know, it's… women's pains," she said, not quite meeting his eyes.

Daniel was surprised to see her so embarrassed at the admittance. Usually, Peggy was quite possibly the most pragmatic person he knew, which extended to each of their physicalities. She was never ashamed of any of the things that made her a woman, or of the things that came with being a woman. She lived every aspect of her femininity unapologetically. Seeing her now was very much unlike her usual self.

At the same time, hearing about the source of Peggy's discomfort suddenly made Daniel aware of the fact that it had never been an issue before in their six months of marriage, or any time before that. Sure, there had been nights when their lovemaking had to be delayed because of it, but as far as he knew, Peggy had never experienced pain as part of it. He cleared his throat.

"Okay, is there anything we can do?" he asked, trying to show her that for him, the fact that she was suffering due to her menstrual cycle didn't make him uncomfortable – if that was why she was acting so shy. And it truly didn't. Periods were clearly an everyday occurrence of human nature like eating, drinking, and headaches, and he really didn't understand the fuss so many people made about them, or rather, about not talking about them.

Peggy sighed.

"No. Well, maybe. No," Peggy replied as she shifted uneasily once again.

Daniel leant forward a little.

"That doesn't sound very convincing. Are you sure there isn't anything I can do?" he asked, searching her face. When Peggy didn't reply and bit her lower lip instead, he tried again.

"Look, I don't know anything about what you're going through. But I can see that you're hurting, and I want to do whatever I can to help make it stop," he said intently, fixing her with a steady gaze.

Peggy slightly tilted her head in submission.

"It usually isn't like this. I usually have painkillers with me, and take them at the first sign. It's always fine in those cases. But today I didn't have any painkillers on me, and when I finally got hold of some, the pain was already full-blown," she said, obviously annoyed with herself. "I'm just hoping it'll get better until tomorrow. I need to be able to focus properly when I'm at work."

So that was it. She was annoyed because in that moment, being a woman actually, physically interfered with her work.

Daniel got up and sat next to her on the couch.

"Well, let's see then if there's anything we can do to make it better until tomorrow," he said as he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close.

"Heat sometimes works," Peggy said as she set her jaw.

"That's a start. We have a hot water bottle, would that help?" Daniel offered.

Peggy shrugged.

"Probably," she said with a sigh. "I should just go to bed. I might be able to sleep it off."

Daniel pressed a kiss to her temple.

"Ok, get ready then. I'll make you a hot water bottle in the meantime," he said with a smile.

A quarter of an hour later, Daniel watched as Peggy turned down their bed while he was brushing his teeth. He noticed that every now and then, Peggy would massage her lower back awkwardly, as far as twisting her arms would allow it.

When she had finally settled on to the bed, the hot water bottle pressed to her abdomen as she lay on her side, Daniel laid down facing her. He reached across her hip, and gently began massaging the small of her back.

Peggy's eyelids lowered.

"You don't have to do that," she protested.

"But I want to," Daniel replied calmly. They lay in silence for a few minutes, until Daniel quietly asked, "What does it feel like?"

Peggy looked up at him for a moment, and then closed her eyes tiredly.

"It's not too bad at first. Just a little twinge. That's when I normally take the painkillers." She wriggled her head a bit to get more comfortable.

"Then it just gets more intense as the day progresses, until it feels as if a Gorilla squeezes your insides. Sometimes, I get a headache, too, or I feel nauseous. Exercise often helps, but it didn't today. And you just can't find a position in which it doesn't hurt. It feels like it does stop for two seconds, but then it's back. Imagine your leg cramping, but you can't stretch it to make it better, because, well, there is no direction that you can pull towards," she explained with a sigh.

Daniel just continued massaging her, his gaze trained onto her tired face. Based on his own experiences with phantom pain he knew how horrible it was if there was nothing you could do to find relief. He just wished that he could do more for Peggy.

"And today you didn't have any painkillers with you?" he asked as his palms drew circles on her back and grazed across the scar that her fall at Roxxon had left her with.

"No, I usually keep some in my desk, but I forgot to refill them after last time," Peggy murmured.

"Well, next time, make sure you check my desk as well. I usually have painkillers in there, too," Daniel said, desperate to just somehow make things better for her. "Is it like that for all women? Because if it is, I'm even more impressed with you all than I already am," he asked, half-joking, half-earnest.

"No, some women are apparently very lucky and hardly feel anything at all. And others have it even worse than me. There was one girl at the Griffiths who got terrible migraines and couldn't eat anything for days, let alone leave her room," Peggy replied patiently. She snuggled a little closer to him so that her forehead was almost touching his chin, and reached behind her to guide his hand to what Daniel assumed was the most helpful part of her back, if massaged.

"…T'this nice," she murmured, and her breathing evened out.

Daniel pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead.

"Anything I can do to help," he replied quietly. "We're in this together, remember?"