A/N: And here for you, my dear readers, the fourth chapter of this epic tale. Longest chapter yet, and I wrote it all yesterday, some sitting down by the river, which was lovely. Just so you know, the dream was inspired/based on the music video of 'Black Swan Song' by Athlete (which never fails to make me cry) and I have also used lyrics from 'Read my Mind' by The Killers and 'Starlings' by Elbow. They are all great songs, and great bands, so you should check them out, if you want. Thank you so much for the two reviews I have received, would love to hear more, especially any constructive criticism telling me whether the characters are 'in character' as it were.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters or the TV show 'The Hour', more's the pity. Neither do I own Athlete, Elbow or The Killers :(

Enjoy!

Freddie was dreaming. It was a strange dream, even by Freddie's standards, and he had had a lot of strange dreams lately, including one where Ruth and Bel had been tied back to back in a dark, damp room on a cold stone floor, with men in black walking in a neat, clinical circle around them, brandishing whips, and, for some reason, Clarence, sitting in a black throne high up in the far end of the room, cackling wickedly. Of course, Freddie knew why now – his subconscious had been telling him Clarence was the mole and he was obviously feeling guilty about Ruth, about not being able to help her in time. As for Bel...well, Freddie didn't like to go into the reasons why she had appeared in that particular fantasy, apart from, like Ruth, she was a person he cared about very much...

But this dream wasn't quite like that. It was different. Yes, it was strange. But strange and lovely.

He was standing in a sun-dappled forest, in the peak of autumn. He heard the crunch of leaves underfoot from behind him, and turned to see Bel smiling radiantly at him. Light seemed to flow from her eyes and smile as if she were a second sun. She really was divine, thought Freddie. Exquisite. Then she grinned wickedly, like a naughty child, and bent down to pick something up off the forest floor. She threw it at Freddie, laughing as it hit his jacket – it was a conker. Opening his mouth and raising his eyebrows in mock horror and offence, he bent down to pick up another conker, but Bel, giggling madly, had already run off deeper into the woods. Freddie set about chasing her, aiming his conker and hitting her square in the shoulder, turning around to look for another, but as he found one, and stooped to claim his weapon in triumph, he was hit in the back of the head. He straightened up, looking over his shoulder to see her chuckling apologetically behind her hand. That's it, thought Freddie, rubbing his sore head, and soon a full-blown battle was underway, conkers aimed and lobbed, some hitting their mark, some bouncing off trees in the confused flurry of the play fight, some being cunningly avoided, and Bel and Freddie are both running around, chasing and being chased, darting here and there, laughing gleefully like children, and Freddie has never felt so alive, so free...

They collapsed, after a while, onto the leafy floor, exhausted from their exertions. They lay, spread-eagled on their backs, jet black head to dark blonde one, staring up at the green canopy above them, and the brilliant orange and blue sky above that.

Freddie had never felt so at peace, both with the world and himself. He was no longer fighting everything around him, the injustice and the deceitfulness of it all, and he was no longer fighting his feelings. Feelings for...Bel especially. There, he had said it. Or at least allowed himself to think it. At last. Finally. It was now or never, thought Freddie, and instead of feeling nervous and awkward about this thought like he usually would, he drew strength from it.

He raised his hand to point upwards, and tilted his head back to see Bel. Feeling his movement, Bel mirrored him and looked into his eyes, mere inches away from her own.

"What?" she asked.

"Look at the sky," murmured Freddie, and she looked up, following the line of his extended arm and pointing finger.

"It's beautiful,"

"Like it's on fire," agreed Freddie. "Do you think...metaphorically speaking, of course...that it would be possible for that...fire...to burn through the leaves, the branches and the twigs that are blocking our view of the sky, of itself – the true beauty of it? And do you think, if it could, would it reveal something else? Just the natural, normal deep blue of the sky? Or would it be more fire, flames upon flames, the endless fury and desire and passion of all the world..."

"Why, Freddie?" Bel whispered.

"I don't know, Bel," said Freddie, reaching back to touch Bel's hand. "I don't know. Just a thought." He sat up. "What do you think the most beautiful thing in the world is?"

Bel thought for a moment, propping herself up on her elbows and swivelling so her feet were level with Freddie's back, and she was looking at the back of his head. "The sky," she said, smiling, "as you just described it. And..." she paused, hesitating for a moment, "...the stars."

Freddie nodded. "Blazing like rebel diamonds,"

"Cut out of the sun," said Bel slowly, softly, as if they were lyrics to a half-forgotten song, which, once brought to mind, were easily remembered. Freddie nodded, rocking back and forth and smiling, but just when he thought Bel had finished, she whispered, suddenly so close to Freddie that he could feel her breath on her neck, "And the truth. And the way you seek it." She said it so quietly that Freddie had to lean in to hear her, but catching the words, he beamed hugely.

Bel touched his shoulder so he had to turn to face her. "What about you, Freddie?" she asked seriously, all previous playfulness forgotten. "What's the most beautiful thing in the world to you?" He looked deep into her eyes, searching intelligently, imploringly, for the spark, the fire he knew was flickering in his own eyes. Freddie's self-assured, happy grin faded into a small smile reserved only for her, and he whispered, "Guess."

The blazing star fire lit up in Bel's eyes, and suddenly she was kissing him, and he was kissing her, they were kissing, they were spinning and diving like a cloud of starlings...

Then a shot rang out across the forest, breaking the kiss apart. With a gasp, Freddie's head jerked forward then back, feet suddenly hitting the ground, his stomach dropping to join them. He turned around slowly to see Bel lying on the floor, blood pooling around her head like a terrible halo, and Freddie yelled, hoarsely, incoherently, like a wounded animal as he saw the man in black lining up his next shot, aiming at Freddie. He welcomed the bullet into his breast, into his heart, falling backwards into a sea of blissful unconsciousness. The man in black strode over towards the torn couple, to check they were dead, and just before Freddie closed his eyes and lost the beautiful, dreadful world forever, he heard a dull thud as a conker hit the man smack-bang on his head, and the man in black toppled down to the floor, out cold. After the most fleeting of moments, Freddie joined him.

Freddie opened his eyes in panic, yelling "Bel, Bel!" He craned his neck to look at her face, and, feeling her breath on his cheek, relaxed a little. Then he closed his eyes in regret and sighed. No, of course not. Of course it wasn't real. Stupid idea, Freddie. Why would he want it to be real, anyway? He wouldn't. Or at least not that last part. But...

But he wouldn't mind the other part. The part that didn't involve being shot at. Or dying, for that matter. He wouldn't mind being that Freddie; the brave, confident Freddie, the one who wasn't nervous and uncomfortable around love and relationships and women, around one woman in particular...

The one who wasn't afraid of his feelings. Feelings for...God, how weak was he? He still couldn't admit it to himself, even with his arms wrapped around her in a way that would make it obvious to anyone who saw...

Freddie twisted around quickly and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Bel's mother standing over him, for some reason holding the heavy lamp from her bedside table. Freddie didn't know what that was all about. "Er...I'm sorry, I didn't know, I mean...what happened there?" This last was asked as Verda moved to the side, plonking the lamp down on the floor as she did so, revealing the unconscious man in black lying on the floor.

"Shhhh," Verda whispered, "Don't wake her."

"Of course not," said Freddie more quietly, turning back round to look down at Bel's sleeping form, looking very much as if he would like to kiss her had Verda not been there. He faced Verda again to see her smiling knowingly at him. He blushed, embarrassed, before shaking his head as if trying to get rid of a fly, getting back to the matter at hand. "So?" he whispered pointedly, raising his eyebrows at the man on the floor. It had struck him as odd that in his dream, he had fallen unconscious to a man in black slumping unconscious to the floor, and had regained consciousness to see a man in black, slumped unconscious on the floor.

"Oh, he broke in while he thought everyone was asleep; while you two were asleep," she said airily. Freddie just stared, open-mouthed. "Put some poison or something in your wine – don't drink it, by the way – and then opened the fridge and probably poisoned something else, so don't have anything from there, either. I was bloody terrified, of course," she said, waving a nonchalant hand while Freddie looked on in incredulity, "but I kept my nerve, waited till he was in close range, then thwacked him with the lamp."

"It was you!" Freddie exclaimed.

"Well, of course it was, Freddie, dear, who else would it be?"

"So that part was real..." muttered Freddie, ignoring her, "And he tried to poison us, you say?" addressing Verda again.

"Presumably," she said, "he was bending down by the phone wire when I got to him, though..."

"So he tried to kill us in both scenarios, and you took him out...he was taken out by a blow to the head...wait a minute, the phone?" he enquired frenziedly, registering what Bel's mother (Motherpenny, he liked to think of her) had just said.

"Yes," she said exasperatedly, "that's what I just said-"

"So they must've..." Freddie extracted the phone from under the arm of the man and held it to his ear, hearing a click at the end of the line. "Yes, they've – well, he's bugged the phone, which means he can't have tried to poison us, because what would be the point in that?" Freddie was getting very excitable now, as he always did when he was getting to the bottom of something, and with that he was getting louder and louder, despite Verda's half-hearted attempts to hush him, so it was no surprise, really, when Bel stretched, yawned, rolled over, and, trying to blink sleep out of her eyes, said, "Freddie?"

"Ah, you're awake, Moneypenny! Morning! Rise and Shine! Wait, is it...? Yes," he uttered, checking his watch, "1 am. Morning."

"Freddie, it's one in the morning," Bel complained, trying to bury her head into the sofa cushions.

"Yes, yes, we've been through that already, Bel, keep up! Come on, it's time to get up!" he said, yanking Bel's arm to try and pull her up.

"What is the matter with you?" Bel groaned, painstakingly hauling herself into a sitting position, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hands like a tired toddler.

"I'm going back to bed," said Verda, interrupting them. "Don't keep her up too late," she winked at Freddie. He felt himself grow a little hot around the collar.

"Your mother's a little...funny," said Freddie, revolving back round to face Bel on the sofa.

"Yes, well," Bel said drily, leaning forward to light a cigarette, "that's one word for her." Freddie laughed and sat down next to Bel, picking up a cigarette and lighting it from hers.

"So," Bel started again, looking Freddie in the eyes, "what's happened? What's so important you had to wake me up at this...ungodly hour in the middle of a lovely dreamless sleep?" A smile twinkled on her lips.

"Oh, yours was dreamless?" mumbled Freddie.

"Yours wasn't?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Doesn't matter." Freddie shook his head. "No, what does matter is – DON'T DRINK THAT WINE!" Freddie bellowed, causing a disgruntled Verda to shout "Some of us are trying to sleep in here!" from the other room, and Bel to say, surprised, "Gosh, I know it's bad wine, Freddie, but you had no problem drinking it earlier. You were the one who brought it, after all." She had, however, thankfully, put the glass down without taking a sip.

"No, it's not that, it's – he poisoned it," said Freddie, pointed to the unconscious man.

"What?" asked Bel, confused, standing up to take a better look. "Freddie..." she sat down in shock as she saw the man, leaning her head back against the sofa and drawing a hand across her forehead. "You'd better start from the beginning."

As Freddie explained what happened, as best as he could, Bel realised something. "Freddie," she said, "The papers are gone."

"What papers? Oh, the-" comprehension dawned at the same moment as Bel stood up to see if the papers were anywhere else in the room, and discovered the briefcase. "Oh no, they're here, Freddie," she said. "So what were you saying?"

"He poisoned our drink, and something in the fridge, but it couldn't have been poison because afterwards he tapped the phone, and why would you bug somebody you were just going to kill? So it must have been something else."

"Like an amnesia pill, to make us forget about all the papers we had been looking at and working on."

"Because he was obviously going to take them away, show his superior what he had found, then probably burn them, get rid of the evidence. Brilliant, Bel, just brilliant!" she flashed him a smile. "But then why bug the phone? If you don't want us to know you've been here, why bug the phone? Do all that medicine malarkey, make all that effort to stop us remembering anything, then get given away by a click on the end of the line! It just doesn't make any sense!"

"Maybe they thought we wouldn't notice it," suggested Bel.

"Hmmm, maybe," Freddie nodded half-heartedly. "Maybe those pills were so strong they would've made us forget all about the events of the past few months, the conspiracies and the lies."

"Would have," said Bel.

"But Motherpenny got to him first," grinned Freddie.

"Yes she did," said Bel, both proud and embarrassed. "Wait, Motherpenny?" she said, laughing.

"Yes. And?" Freddie shot back defensively.

"Alright, alright," said Bel, raising her hands in defeat, trying to recover from fits of mirth. "So, who did this? Who was he," she nodded to the insensible man in the corner, "working for?"

"Well, it's obvious, isn't it?" said Freddie.

"Enlighten me," Bel countered, smiling indulgently.

"Well, it could have been MI5, but what would they want with our work on the Soviets? They know all this already." Bel nodded, understanding, but said "they might not have wanted it to get out into the public."

"A possibility, Miss Rowley," Freddie accepted, "but I think it must have been the Soviets themselves, Clarence's handler, boss, superior, call him what you want, that's who sent him," he finished, gesturing again to the man in black.

"So they're after us?"

"They're after us." Freddie confirmed. "Or at least, they're after me. I'm the Brightstone, I'm the one Clarence told. Now their intruder's out of the picture, for all they know you have nothing to do with this."

"Freddie..." Bel said, biting her lip.

"No, Bel, this is dangerous, this is too dangerous," he said, thinking of what had happened in the dream. "Don't get involved." He continued rambling on like this until Bel had to shout, "But Freddie, I am involved. Whether you like it or not, I'm involved. I produced the programme that got them all on edge; that caused Clarence to reveal who he was, not to mention the fact that it was my apartment they came to, not yours, my food they dosed, my phone they bugged. And my mother who knocked out their man!"

"That's irrelevant! They followed us, that's why they came here!" protested Freddie, but Bel ignored him.

"And Freddie...if Clarence was half the spy you know he must have been, you know he'll have reported to his superiors how close we are. They'll know you tell me everything, and they know that you'll undoubtedly have told me about Clarence, or will do, which is why they've bugged my phone and tried to make us forget. That's why I'm involved, like it or not."

Her logic hit him like a slap in the face. How right she was. "I'm sorry, Bel," he said very soberly, leaning his head into her shoulder, "I'm sorry. I never meant to bring you into all this."

Wordlessly, Bel rested her head on his, stroking the small of his back consolingly. They stayed like this for a few minutes; it was actually rather peaceful. Then Bel said, "What do we do now?"

"What we do now, Miss Rowley," said Freddie smiling, lifting his head, "is get rid of anything that might be contaminated, make sure he's out for the count," – "There's sleeping pills in the cupboard," – "barricade the door, just in case – don't want your mother breaking any more ornaments – and then go to sleep."

"And in the morning?" she asked.

"In the morning – we do what we have to do. We write that story, and then we run it."

And that's what they did. After all, thought Bel, it wasn't just a job, not to Freddie, at least. Not to her either, in fact. It was a duty.

Please review! :D (Hi Lucy!)