Beyond Belief
by: ScarecrowsAngel
Summary: Sometimes, the power of true love is unbelievable…
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Amanda and Lee do not belong to me. They belong to Shoot The
Moon, Warner Brothers, but most of all each other. All the other SMK
characters are not mine, either. The story and all other characters do
belong to me, though.
A very big thank you to everyone who sent me feedback so far, and to Laura and Buffy for their suggestions and spell checks.
Feedback: This is the first fanfic I have the courage to submit, so please be
nice, but honest as well. Positive feedback will be gathered in a special folder for enjoyment and encouragement.
e-mail: scarecrowsangel@tiscali.de
Archive: Sure, but please ask first.
Spoilers: One for Nightcrawler
Timeline: About a year after the series ended, marriage is still secret.
Having slept restfully for the first night since arriving in Dallas, Texas a week ago, Lee Stetson opened his eyes feeling refreshed and rested. The thought of returning to his wife today made him even happier. He always missed Amanda so much when she wasn't with him. He felt incomplete without her and he knew she felt the same way. Oh well, at least she had visited him in his dream. Even if that dream had been kind of strange…
Room service had not yet knocked, but he might as well get up. Lee turned over and his gaze fell on the clock.
10:25.
With a hefty curse Lee jumped out of bed, only to sink back again. What did it matter? His plane was due to lift off in five minutes. He would remain calm
and rational. He would take a shower, get dressed…And then reception would get an earful for not waking him on time!
At 10:45 Lee arrived downstairs. The receptionist, a kind elderly man, looked up in surprise. "Mr. Stetson. I thought you were on your way home by now."
"No" Lee grumbled. "Because your room service quite obviously forgot to wake me."
"Forgot to…wait a minute. Kat! Come here!"
A young woman with closely cropped reddish blond hair turned away from the TV standing in the lobby of the small family-owned hotel and approached the reception desk.
"Didn't you knock on the door to 102 this morning? Mr. Stetson here says we forgot to wake him."
Kat shook her head. "No way, since 102 was the only one to be awakened at 6:00. In fact, I got to knock about three times before you answered me – in a very cranky way, I might add."
Now it was Lee's turn to frown. He thought about his dream – Had he called out? "What did I say?" he asked out loud.
"You yelled 'alright' three times and then 'I'm awake'. You sounded as if I had knocked 300 times instead of three."
Lee felt increasingly embarrassed. "In that case I'm sorry. This has been my first night of real sleep for a few days now, and that was a response to a dream I was having." He gave Kat and the receptionist a rueful smile. "I'm
really sorry."
"It's alright" Kat smiled back. "It's good to know that it wasn't really anybody's fault. But to tell you the truth, I'll be glad when our telephone network is back on line. We normally make wakeup-calls – they're much more efficient."
"Speaking of" Lee said, "is there a telephone down here? I need to call a few people – My wife, my boss, you know what I mean."
"Of course, take this one" Kat offered, beckoning to the phone on the desk. "I'll turn down the volume on the TV, then everything should be fine."
Lee gave her a grateful smile and picked up the receiver.
He called Amanda first, but got only her answering machine. So he left her a message and dialled the Agency's number. "Melrose" he heard his Section Chief's voice. He might have been mistaken, but Billy's voice sounded
strained, somehow.
"Billy, it's Stetson." Lee didn't get any further than that. "LEE!" Billy yelled into the phone. "What…How…"
That was not the reaction Lee had expected. "Billy, what's wrong?"
"You're alive!"
"I'm not supposed to be sorry for that, am I?" Lee couldn't quite suppress the sarcasm in his voice. What was going on here?
Suddenly Kat appeared by his side and almost pulled his arm off trying to get his attention. So he didn't hear what Billy said next.
"What is it?" Lee asked the young woman probably a lot harsher than he intended to. Billy's unusual behavior had him on edge. But Kat didn't seem
to notice. He realised that her face had gone deathly pale and her blue eyes were wide open. "What's wrong?"
"You were booked for flight Delta eleven-oh-one to Washington D.C., weren't you?"
Lee confirmed that with a nod.
Kat pointed towards the TV. "Look." CNN was just flashing a Breaking News Story. Kat turned up the volume.
"Once again, flight Delta eleven-oh-one crashed roughly ten minutes after lift-off from Fort Worth Airport, went up in flames almost immediately.
Rescuers have arrived at the scene, but so far it looks like no one survived
the crash. Eye witnesses speak of a gigantic fireball, fire-fighters…"
Lee never really heard the rest. He tried to decide what to do next, but his mind was in turmoil. He remembered Billy on the phone and picked up the receiver which he had dropped in shock. "Billy?"
"I gather by your tone of voice that you got it by now. That's why I was so upset." Billy sounded somewhat calmer now. "I suppose you missed your
flight."
Lee only nodded at first, his eyes still fixed on the TV screen and the blazing wreckage of the plane. The reporter had been right – No one could have
survived this. Then he realised his boss could not see him and added "Yeah,
it's here on TV." Suddenly he became very agitated. "Billy, is Amanda in? I
only got the machine at her house. I need her to know that I'm alive. I don't
want her to know about this crash before she knows that I'm okay!"
By now Billy had regained his composure. "Lee, calm down. I'll look if she's in."
Lee could see Billy in his mind's eye, patching through a call to Mrs. Marston. He knew it didn't really take that long, but to him it seemed like an eternity.
"Sorry," Billy's voice came back on, "she's not here. But then she wasn't
supposed to – she took today off. Just keep on trying to call her, I'll do the same from here."
"Try to find her, Billy." Lee's voice was full of emotion.
"I'll do my best, you know that. You get back here ASAP, you got it?"
"Roger that" Lee confirmed. "See you then. Bye." Lee put the receiver back in place and turned to the receptionist. "I need a cab to Fort Worth."
The old man with the friendly face looked at him. "Don't worry, I'll call one for you. You were lucky to have had that dream, you know."
Lee pondered those words as the receptionist made the call and had to admit to himself that the man was right, but it hadn't been the dream alone. He
normally didn't talk in his sleep, he knew that. What were the odds of him doing it now? And then missing his plane because of it? And what if the phones had been up to full capacity?
Quite a few lucky coincidences indeed.
The cab soon arrived. Lee said his goodbyes and got in. He had tried to reach Amanda again, but once again he only got the machine. At DFW International he tried again, with the same result.
Lee hit the pay phone in frustration. He could fill Amanda's answering machine with message after message, but he never knew if she'd hear them in time. At least he had gotten a ticket for another flight, but it wasn't due to leave for another three hours.
They turned out to be the three longest hours of his life. When he wasn't sitting around worrying, he paced the floor, probably getting on everybody's nerves. He tried to reach Amanda at least ten times and called Billy once again before getting on the plane. Billy was out of the Agency, so it took a while to reach him, but soon he was on his car phone.
Unfortunately Billy hadn't found Amanda. "I even went to her house, but there's no one there. We can only hope that she didn't hear about the crash as of now."
"She'll hear about it as soon as she tries to pick me up from the airport, Billy" Lee suddenly realised.
"The plane was supposed to land at 3:25 p.m., right?"
"Right" Lee confirmed. "But that's a lot of time for things to go wrong. Billy, my flight has been called up. I'll be in Washington by 6:10 p.m.. See you there."
"Safe journey, Lee. Bye."
Things were even worse on the plane – He couldn't pace there. He was so tense that he almost jumped out of his skin whenever someone spoke to him. He had made the four hour flight from Fort Worth to D.C. countless times, but it had never appeared that long to him.
His in-flight dinner remained almost untouched, aside from a few things the man in the neighboring seat asked to have. Lee just couldn't eat a single bite. His thoughts were on just one thing – did Amanda know by now that he had not been killed and that he was on his way to her now?
Once the plane had come to a stop, Lee was the first to exit after almost
forgetting to take his overnight bag. He took the walkway at a run. Panting for breath, not knowing what to expect, he scanned the crowd for a familiar face – ANY familiar face.
His heart skipped a beat when he saw his wife running toward him. He dropped his bag and caught her in a tight embrace.
Lee never felt the crowd hustling and bustling around them. An incredible calm swept through him as he held Amanda close. He felt her trembling and pulled back a little to look at her. Tears were streaming down her cheeks and Lee tightened his arms around her just a little, so he could still gaze into her beautiful dark eyes.
It was only when she wiped his cheeks tenderly that he realised his face was as wet as hers. Neither one cared.
After a few tender kisses, Lee was the first one to find his voice. "I love you, Amanda."
"I love you, Lee. I love you so much. I'm so glad you're okay."
"Well, I'm okay NOW", Lee replied, thinking about how frazzled he had felt only a few minutes ago. "Did Billy find you?"
Amanda nodded. "I went to the Agency. I just couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't quite right. Billy told me you missed your flight, and only then did he mention the plane crash."
"I didn't even know about THAT until I called Billy to tell him I missed my plane. And then suddenly it was on TV." Lee swallowed hard.
Amanda pulled him down to her for another kiss. "Don't think about it. You're alright, that's all that matters. But… How DID you miss your flight in the first place?"
"I overslept – Would you believe it?" Lee chuckled as he bent down to pick up his bag. He placed an arm around Amanda's shoulders and they left the
terminal. "The small hotel I stayed in – They normally have a phone in every room, but their phone system is being upgraded, so they fell back on knocking at your door. But how are they to know if I respond to their knock or talk in my
sleep?" Lee put his bag in the back of Amanda's Wagoneer.
Now it was Amanda's turn to chuckle. "Talk in your sleep?"
Lee nodded. "Oh - You better take me to the Agency first. Billy will no doubt be waiting for my report."
Amanda smiled and shook her head. "He told me to give you his best and said your debriefing could wait until tomorrow. We'll have the evening to ourselves, at least."
Lee smiled gratefully. As soon as they had gotten into the car, he continued his story. "I had this dream where you yelled at me to wake up and you only stopped when I responded. Only I didn't just respond in my dream, but out loud. Amanda, is something wrong?"
Amanda looked at Lee with eyes at least twice their normal size. When he said her name once again, she shook her head as if to clear it. "No, not really. It's just…" With another shake of her head, she started the engine. "Could we make a detour through Arlington before we go to your apartment? I need to get something."
"Of course."
Some time later Lee took a bottle of wine into his living room to find his wife seated on the sofa browsing through a small book bound in blue fabric. He sat down beside her and noticed Amanda's handwriting on the otherwise blank
pages. "What is that?" he asked softly. "Your journal?"
She shook her head. "It's sort of a dream diary. First thing every morning, I write down what I remember. I started it a few weeks ago."
"You've never brought it here before" Lee noted.
"I rarely get a lot of sleep around here, now do I?" Amanda smiled at her husband, then turned serious again and leafed through the pages. "This is the dream I had last night." She handed Lee the book.
"Everything around me is dark. I can't see Lee anywhere, but I yell for
him to wake up as if his life depended on it. Finally I hear him yell
'Alright, alright, alright! I'm awake!' Somehow I know Lee went straight
back to sleep after that, but I don't try to wake him up again. I'm just
silent for a moment, then the alarm interrupts."
Lee was at a total loss for words after having read this. He read the time
Amanda had added to her entry. 7.00 a.m.
"I was supposed to be woken up at 6.00. And according to the woman who tried to do that, that was the exact same thing that I yelled. But how…"
"I woke up this morning" Amanda began, "and from the moment I wrote this down, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong."
Lee looked at the entry again. The time said 8 o'clock, but the plane had crashed much later than that. Amanda had known that something was wrong even before it had happened.
"I kept myself busy all morning running errands, had two hours left until you were supposed to arrive…" Her voice caught, and Lee took her in his arms to comfort her. She paused a few minutes to reassure herself that he was really with her. He did not urge her to go on, and she was immensely grateful for that.
"I decided to kill some time looking for a present for mother's birthday."
Lee couldn't contain a chuckle at that. "That's still two months away!"
Amanda looked into her husband's twinkling hazel eyes. "It's never too early to get started" she smiled. "Anyway, that bad feeling I had all morning just
didn't go away, so I went to a nearby mall for some window shopping to take
my mind off things. And then something caught my eye at a TV and HiFi store – a newscast on a plane crash."
Lee tensed at her words, remembering how HE had found out. "My flight?" he asked.
"I don't know, maybe it was. There was no sound and the pictures didn't have any caption I could see. But at that moment the uneasy feeling I had returned with a vengeance. I knew then that I had to find out if anything really WAS wrong – And where to do that better than at the Agency? That's where Billy found me. He told me that you had missed your flight first thing when he saw me."
"I asked him to do it that way" Lee said. "But I'm sure he would have done it that way anyway."
For a long while Amanda and Lee held each other in silence. Then she put their thoughts into words. "So, what does it mean?"
Lee knew what Amanda meant with that question. There just didn't seem to be an easy answer to it. He rolled everything that had happened and what Amanda had told him around in his mind. Try as he might, he could barely
wrap his mind around the concept.
It DID make some sense, though. Lee thought back to the time Amanda had been kidnapped by Addi Birol. Ever since then he had known they were
connected on a much deeper level. It just had been so simple back then to put
it off as a simple hallucination. That wasn't possible, of course, when that
connection saved your life the way it had done today.
But then again, Amanda HAD saved his life countless times, in more ways than one. Lee decided that this was one of these times. It was certainly not something that could be explained rationally.
"Maybe it's a sign", he mused, "that we really belong with each other. Not that I needed a sign." Lee gave his wife a lopsided grin. "Not any more."
Amanda had obviously come to the same conclusion. They smiled tenderly at each other and moved in for a kiss, gentle at first, but it grew more heated, more passionate…
…and then, the phone rang.
Reflexively, the two of them jumped apart. Lee sighed in frustration. "Story of our life" he grumbled and picked up the phone. "Hello?"
"Hello, Lee, it's Dotty."
Lee smiled when he heard the voice of his mother-in-law. "Hi, Dotty. How are you doing? Amanda's here, if you want to talk to her."
"Actually, it's you I want to speak to. First we got all those messages on our answering machine and we were wondering about them. But then we saw on the news that a plane had crashed near Fort Worth. It was your plane,wasn't it."
It didn't sound like a question and Lee knew Dotty hadn't meant it as one. "Yeah, it was. I was supposed to be on that flight, but I overslept and missed it."
"Oh dear" Dotty sighed. "No wonder you sounded so frantic in those messages you left. Thank God nothing happened to you."
Lee felt warmed to the heart at Dotty's concern for him. Not for the first time he wished he and Amanda could tell their family the truth about their marriage. He loved Amanda's family as if they were his own. He wanted to be a part of their lives and wanted them to be a part of his.
Amanda's mother interrupted his train of thought. "I hope we can expect you for dinner tomorrow?"
"I will be there" Lee promised. "Thank you."
"Good. Now give me Amanda for a moment, please."
Lee handed the receiver to his wife. But not much was spoken between them after that. Amanda merely listened for a moment and then said "I'll tell him. Thank you, Mother. I love you, too. Bye." She put down the receiver.
"Tell me what?" Lee asked curiously.
"Mother told me that the two of us deserved some time together and she would look after the boys until tomorrow. We have this evening and all night. She doesn't expect me back until tomorrow afternoon."
Lee rose, pulled Amanda to her feet, took her in his arms and kissed her tenderly. Then he released her for a moment, checked his answering machine, turned down the volume of his phone and switched on the stereo. "May I have this dance, my lady?" he asked with a bow.
Amanda smiled as she moved closer to him. Forgetting everything else around them, they slowly swayed to the music.
Lee felt happier than he had felt in weeks. Some time alone with his wife was a gift he always cherished, since those times were so few and far between.
But that would change, Lee vowed silently as the two of them shared another tender kiss. He'd make sure of that.
Very soon.
The end