this is set a while after 2x06. in all my visions of the hour's future, freddie is very much alive and i point-blanc refuse to consider any other eventuality so this deals with the fall out of 2x06 for alive!freddie. tw: PTSD themes. I've tried to write this as respectfully as I can without having any personal experience of the subject matter; i'm really, really sorry if i've got things wrong :/ also sorry if this goes OOC in parts, i tried to keep it true to character as much as I could

happy christmas, guys! hope you enjoy part ii as much i enjoyed writing it!

—-

It isn't long before Bel realises the fallout of Freddie's encounter with Cilenti goes beyond his physical scars and injuries.

Neither of them questioned it when Freddie came to stay at hers after he was discharged, or that he now sleeps in her bed with her (not that they're there in their relationship or close to it in Freddie's condition but because Freddie's bed in his own apartment consists of a thin mattress on the floor which would undoubtedly aggravate his injuries.) She likes him being there anyway, it feels… right, and she likes it when she wakes up with him wrapped around her, his nose buried in her hair. She's not sure how to articulate to him that she wants him to stay beyond his recovery.

A week after they begin their new arrangement though, is when it starts. Bel's feet get cold in the middle of the night, and being a fairly light sleeper it wakes her up quickly. She's about to turn over and wake Freddie up to chide him for hogging the blankets but she hears his erratic breathing first and it sets off alarm bells in her head. Bel's barely awake herself but she sits up, and sees Freddie in the dim light from her window. His face is drenched in sweat and screwed up and his body jerks wildly, legs tangled up in the blankets. In the milliseconds it takes for her to comprehend what's happening to him it gets worse. Freddie thrashes violently in the bed, unintelligible cries ripping from his chest.

Bel panics. She doesn't know how to soothe him, how to stop him overexerting his still-taped ribs in his unconscious hell, how to stop his own mind torturing him. She doesn't know how to make Cilenti's beating relinquish its hold on him, she doesn't even know where to begin. But what she does know is Freddie. Working on instinct more than anything else, she pulls him close to her against his struggles, and holds his arms down.

Freddie's eyes snap open, feral and obviously still at the mercy of his subconscious, still shaking desperately and so inexorably distressed that he doesn't seem to know what to do other than to cling on to her. His breathing is choked and wild as his eyes dart around for something familiar.

Bel grabs his hand and holds it to her own cheek until he looks her in the eyes. She presses a fierce kiss to the centre of his palm. "It's okay, it's okay. You're safe, you're okay," she consoles, hoping her voice doesn't betray the fear she feels for him. She can't think of a time being strong was more important.

Pushing Freddie's unruly dark hair off his sticky forehead, she continues to murmur in soft, soothing tones. His breathing begins to regulate until he finally starts crying in her arms. Bel stays silent then, resting her head against his and carding her fingers lightly against his scalp.

It's almost an hour before he calms down enough to fall back into a twitchy, unsettled sleep. Bel's still staring at him when the rising sun lights up the sharp angles of his face.

—-

Bel kind of expects him to bring it up the next morning over breakfast or when she's applying more concealer than usual under her eyes. He doesn't—in fact, he acts so completely normal that she wonders if she imagined the whole thing. He steals a piece of her toast and coats it with vile lime marmalade before she can steal it back (she scowls at him—she only has lime marmalade in her cupboard for him)

Bel lingers in the flat before she goes to work, watching him potter about slowly but with the characteristic restlessness that came with his being cooped up doing nothing all day. As his producer, she practically had to force him to take sickness absence when he left hospital so he could fully recover. He hadn't fully regained the sight in his left eye yet after his optic nerve was almost detached and the stress and strain of a high-pressure job would exacerbate any healing injuries.

For a while, she thinks he's okay after his tumultuous night. Bel tries to kid herself that it was a one-off but deep down she really knows this can't be left to fester. She'll think about how to approach it while she's at work, and then confront him later.

When her cab arrives outside, she leans down to where he's sitting at her table to kiss him —which is, well…it's still strange but it's definitely good-strange. His hand finds the lapels of her coat, bringing her ever-so-slightly closer and deepening the kiss. She indulges for a few perfect seconds, before smiling and pulling back. "Goodbye, James," she says pointedly.

"Boring, Moneypenny," he calls after her. "Very boring!"

—-

Bel doesn't confront him that night. The last few months have compounded the fact that in a choice between a coward and hero, she errs firmly on the side of coward. She's come to realise it's perhaps her biggest character flaw and she resents it bitterly especially as, if the roles were reversed, Freddie would unequivocally help her confront her demons.

Freddie's reluctant to go to sleep that night (tacitly, they both know why) and Bel's too worried about him to relax properly so for about an hour they lie in a tense silence, both pretending to be asleep even though neither of them is fooled by the other's facade. In the end, they both fall asleep around the same time despite both their best attempts to keep their eyes open.

The next thing Bel knows, she's shocked awake by Freddie fighting his way out of the bed, kicking and yelling incoherent words. He almost trips on the blankets that are still entangled with his legs as he bolts out of the room and by the time she catches up with him he's by her front door, trying wrench the lock open by brute force.

"Freddie!" Bel says desperately. He spins on his heel and looks at her with such a look of acute terror in his eyes that it makes her take a shocked step back. She holds her arms up disarmingly. "Freddie, it's me! You're safe, it's just a bad dream, you're okay!"

Saying what he's going through is a 'just bad dream' feels woefully trivial and inadequate and Bel kicks herself for using the term. Freddie backs away and slides down the door, taking in raw, distressed gulps of air in place of a regular breathing pattern. He seems so fragile, huddled against her door frame looking for all the world like every demon in existence was residing inside his head.

Bel approaches him cautiously, a gentle hand outstretched. She lightly touches his arm then tucks herself in next to him on the floor so they're shoulder-to-shoulder. Freddie breathes jaggedly and won't look at her—she suspects he's crying. Bel kisses his shoulder silently, in solidarity.

"It wouldn't-" He pauses, steeling his lips against trembling "-it wouldn't stop. They just kept- kept-…"

Bel watches him, wide-eyed. It's the first time he's spoken of it. She doesn't respond or prompt him to continue for fear of scaring him off talking about it altogether. He puts his head in his hands. "Am just so tired, Moneypenny," he whispers. "So tired…"

Bel won't push him to speak about it, not when he's like this. She has no real idea of how to go about this with him, but she senses forcing him to confront it would do more harm than good. She pushes away the selfish fear of not feeling good enough to help him and wraps an arm around his shoulders. "Come on, James. Heroes need sleep." —-

Freddie is more subdued the next morning, his eyes are faraway and clouded with thoughts when she sits down opposite him at the breakfast. He was awake way before her and she's still a bit edgy from grasping cold bedsheets this morning in a sleepy haze and realising he wasn't beside her. She had only started breathing again when she heard the kettle whistle a second later.

He doesn't attempt to steal her toast this morning—in fact he barely touches his own breakfast, opting instead to just drink coffee and smoke. She wants to berate him; he's skinny enough as it is and he lost weight in hospital because he was on a liquid diet for a while. But she has more important things to worry about.

"Freddie."

He looks up at her and smiles lightly but it doesn't reach his eyes. "Moneypenny."

Bel lights a cigarette before continuing. "The last two nights…" she starts carefully.

"I'm fine," he tells her quickly. Too quickly. "Bad dreams is all."

She takes a drag of her cigarette, pursing her lips unhappily. He's avoiding her eyes, picking at the skin around his spindly fingers. They both know he's lying. Bel lets it go, for now.

—-

Eventually Freddie starts working again, initially for a couple of days each week. Bel could scarcely stop him once his doctor gave the okay —it had been tough enough getting him to take sick leave as long as he had and having him work a few days a week was the best compromise she could get him to agree to. Despite herself, it's not long before she comes to the conclusion it was a good decision; he's happier when he's doing something constructive and it tires him out so much that he falls into deep dreamless sleeps as soon as his head hits the pillow.

Nine times out of ten, it's the days he doesn't work that he wakes up in the night. Whenever she asks, he denies there is any problem and swiftly changes the subject. It's a strange sort of inertia they're stuck in; his caused by repressed fear that materialises in his dreams, hers by her inability to really help him.

One night, Bel has to work late on a day that Freddie's not working (if he were working, he'd hang around in her office with her until she was ready to go; making stupid comments on what she was writing that she'd pretend not to find funny) so she comes home to a dark flat. A glance through the bedroom door tells her that Freddie is already asleep. She isn't tired enough to sleep herself yet, so she strips and runs a bath.

The tension in her muscles unwinds in the hot water—after ten minutes she feels like she's floating. Bel lies perfectly still in the tub until the water starts to feel tepid and her fingertips are pruned. She shivers when she wraps herself in a towel and pulls the plug, watching the water spiral away. After a quick towel-dry, Bel pads softly back to the bedroom, hyperaware of the creaky floorboards in her flat.

Her heart sinks when she sees Freddie sitting up in the bed, hunched over his knees with a hand bunched in his hair. Bel can hear his jagged breathing from the doorway, more panicked than she's heard him in a while. She fears it's because he woke up alone for the first time after a nightmare. Bel sits next to him, curling her fingers around his where they are clawed into the back of his skull and removing them gently.

Freddie looks at her then, and even in the darkness she sees his alarm subside a little. Bel smooths his chaotic shock of black hair down, luxuriating in the feel of silky strands against her fingertips. When her eyes flick back to his, the air between them is suddenly charged very differently. His hand reaches out and touches her face, feather-light and reverent, his thumb brushes her lower lip.

Asked afterwards, Bel wouldn't know who leaned in first or who kissed who first. Later, when she's pinned between his chest and the pillows and sighing his name because his lips are moving along her jaw, it occurs to her vaguely that they are probably doing this for the wrong reasons. But she isn't at all sure what the right reasons are and Freddie kisses like he learnt it in a book. Intelligently, perceptively, but with an ardour she can't imagine any book could teach.

Reason and reasons be damned. Bel rolls over with him so she straddles his hips and he looks at her like she hung the moon.

—-

They're awake when the sun rises. Bel hasn't slept at all tonight. Freddie's playing with a lock of her hair, twisting it lightly around his index finger then letting it fall loose again.

"Freddie?" Bel murmurs. She has nothing to lose.

She can feel his bright eyes fix on her and sees him smile out if the corner of her eye. "Yes, Moneypenny?"

"Tell me about it."

Bel's pretty sure he knows exactly what she's talking about but he still says, "About what?"

"That night. Tell me about it." He shrinks back, becoming guarded and cloudy again. She could almost feel him pulling away from her, locking away his demons so they could haunt him tomorrow night and the next and the next. Bel turns her head so she's looking into his eyes directly. "Does it scare you?" she asks quietly. She knows it does, but she wants to hear it from him.

Freddie doesn't look away, even though it looks like he wants to. He swallows visibly and his answer is barely audible. "Yeah."

"Then tell me," Bel implores softly; her tone of voice belies the passion she puts into the words. She holds his eyes pleadingly and for a moment it looks as though he's about saying something but he looks away, staring at the ceiling again.

First rule of journalism, Bel thinks ruefully. She pulls the blanket up around her bare chest and sits up, wrapping her arms around her knees.

That night…" she starts, having to swallow down emotion at the memory of it. "After the show went out, I- I went back to my office and I thought…I thought you were dead." She stops there, feeling her vivid memories of sobbing for him in her office that night almost overwhelm her. The bed shifts, and she knows he's sat up too. His eyes are soft and sad when she carries on. "I know what I went through and what you went through aren't comparable and I'm not saying they are but… I was scared too, Freddie, and I…"

Bel rubs the stinging moisture from her eyes. Freddie places a lingering kiss on her bare shoulder. Then he takes a deep breath, and begins to talk.