The Hour and its lovely characters do not belong to me. I just move them about sometimes, with my mind.
"a man who had fallen among thieves
lay by the roadside on his back
dressed in fifteenthrate ideas"
The verse rang through Bel's head as she crossed the impossible distance between the door and the park just outside Lime Grove Studios. There was a small crowd gathered around the figure lying prone on the ground. She could see his hand, then his arm, and oh, the blood, oh Freddie no.
"What did he say?"
"It sounded like...'Moneypenny?'"
"No!" Bel gasped as she shoved the man speaking aside. Her eyes flew over Freddie, desperate to take in the damage. It was too much, surely it was too much for one man to take. She fell to her knees and leaned forward. She vaguely heard someone speaking to her, but they were far away and she just needed to know that he was breathing.
She reached for his hand, but pulled back. Was there a part of him that wasn't broken? "Freddie," she said, and her voice seemed loud and harsh to her own ears. "Freddie, please. Please."
There! Had his chest moved? "Money...penny?"
"James!" Without thinking, Bel reached for his hand again and gripped it. If it caused him pain, he gave no indication. He barely moved at all, his chest rising and falling in shallow gasps. "If you-" she couldn't say the word. "Don't you dare, Freddie. Don't you dare."
His eye twitched, the one that wasn't swollen shut, and she realized that he probably couldn't see her. She levered herself up so she was looking down on him.
"There...you are." Bel crouched even lower to catch his words. "My...girl."
"Yes," she said, "I am. Freddie-" Bel wasn't sure what she'd been about to say, but it was cut off by the hands pulling her back, away from Freddie. "No!"
"Bel. The ambulance is here. Bel, they need to take him to hospital." It was Lix, her hands firm on Bel's arms.
Bel looked up and found that the whole of the studio surrounded them. A hand entered her field of vision and she glanced at Hector. He said nothing, merely helped her to her feet when she placed her hand in his. Marnie stood just behind him, her arms wrapped around her midsection, her eyes full of pity.
"Here, Miss Rowley." Sissy pressed a handkerchief into Bel's other hand, but Bel couldn't look away from Freddie. The medics were putting him on a stretcher, and he was so still. His eyes were closed, both of them, and she stared at his chest, but it wasn't moving. She couldn't tell, she couldn't see...
"Bel." Lix, who was still gripping her, gave her shoulders a single shake. Bel realised she'd been repeating the word "No" in a low voice. She pressed the handkerchief to her face and found it wet with tears.
They were loading him into the ambulance. Bel's knees started shaking and she was afraid she might collapse. "Lix."
"Yes." Lix shifted to Bel's side, putting an arm supportively around her. "Get your things, and we'll follow in my car."
"Get my things-" Bel echoed. Had anything ever been so unimportant?
"I'll get them," Sissy volunteered, just as Hector said "I'll drive."
"That's fine," Lix said, apparently to them both.
Soon, reunited with her coat and bag, Bel impatiently slid into the back seat of Hector's car. She'd been just there the night before, and how long ago that seemed! "Does anyone know where they've taken him?"
"Hammersmith," Hector replied.
"Just round the corner," Marnie added, in the tone of one who is trying and failing to sound cheerful.
It was a bit further than that, but Bel held her tongue. They'd be too late, and Freddie would be dead. Freddie would be dead, and Bel would...Bel couldn't think what she'd do. Work, she supposed. She'd live a lifetime of news and no Freddie and then she'd die.
"Stop thinking." Bel glanced at Lix, seated against the opposite window. "Whatever it is you're thinking. No good can come of it."
Sissy, sitting between them, reached out to take Bel's hand. "Sey says he's seen patients on the very brink o' death turn round and thought it had to be the hopes and prayers o' their loved ones that did it."
But all Bel could think was "i put him all into my arms and staggered banged with terror through a million billion trillion stars."
"a man who had fallen among thieves" is a poem by e. e. cummings. After Freddie quoted cummings to Bel in Series 1, I dug out my volume of his work and dove into it. I kept finding verses that made me think of Freddie and Bel, and came across these (both from the same poem) after watching 2x06 last night. This is-tentatively-a little series about their relationship based around cummings' verses. And worry not-cummings wrote some sexy things.