Scars


Disclaimer: If I owned The Hour it would still be continuing on in some form other than fanfiction. But, alas, as it has been cancelled it means that I, indeed, own nothing.

Summary: That scar is just another part of Daddy, a special part that no one else has. Alexander has checked. Bel/Freddie, Future fic - 1965.

Author's Note: There are a multitude of directions to take stories about The Hour given how the series ended (absolute failure of justice that the show was cancelled). This piece is just a brief shot at what I would like to imagine happened after Freddie was found. Rather than making you deduce it here is some background for this work: Freddie did not die from his wounds, he and Camille divorce and Freddie and Bel marry after he is fully healed (1960). In 1962 they welcome their first child, Alexander Rowley Lyon (Bel continues to produce). In 1965 when this takes place, Bel and Freddie have been married for five years and welcome their second child, Eloise "Ellie" Alexis Lyon.


Most of the scars are easy to cover. Suits hide so many scars – where the pin in his shoulder went, the screws in his knee, the pucker across his abdomen where they had to sew his insides back together after his fractured ribs tore at linings and caused massive bleeding. The limp when he walks (especially when it's cold) is unnoticed when he sits behind a desk for the broadcast or stands in one place for an interview. Freddie Lyons looks almost exactly the way he did before. Before he set foot in El Paradis, before he met Kiki and Rosa, before they exposed so much more than scandal and vice. He looks almost exactly the same.

The scar is faint, nearly invisible on television. The partial outline of a man's square ring is forever faintly pink, sitting along the cheekbone a little below the outside corner of his right eye, a constant reminder of what that man tried to do and of what Freddie did do. Freddie wears the thing proudly, refuses to cover it when he goes on the air. It is a scar he earned and a story he tells and he probably thinks it makes him look dashing too.

Even now Bel finds she still gets ill at the sight of it. Not that it makes him any less attractive but because it reminds her exactly how close she came to losing him. How close he came to dying just when they found each other again – honestly and for real. Alexander's toddler's fingers trace over the area slowly, following the lines as exactly as a bairn of three can. To him it's the way he tells it's Daddy who's holding him - in case the sound of his voice and the smell of his skin wasn't enough. It's reassuring to him. That scar is just another part of Daddy, a special part that no one else has. Alexander has checked. She caught her son investigating his Papa Randall's face with small fingers and a serious expression a few months ago. Mr. Brown, bless the man, did not seem to mind. He, in fact, returned Alexander's questioning gaze with a knowing one.

"Certain it's me, Little chap?" Freddie asks as his son's fingers slide back and forth over the mark. After a third trace Alexander nods and wraps his arms around his father's neck happily.

"Daddy!" Freddie shifts his grip slightly; their son is now big enough to bother his pinned shoulder and bad elbow. Bel can tell this by the small motions but she can also tell the Freddie will never turn down holding his boy, pain or no. They've come so far since that scar. That fact is the only thing that can settle her stomach when the horrors get to be too much for her. Freddie didn't die, he came back to her. He came back to her and they are facing this world together – as they should be. They've come so far. Together. And they have farther still to go.

The doctor's just confirmed what she already knew.

She's a bit over a month gone again.