I know this has been thought of before and discussed before and maybe even written before (although if it has, I honestly have no recollection of reading it so if I'm wrong, shoot me a message) but if we can a thousand variations of marriage reveals and babies, we can have one more of this too, right?

"Oh Lee! You're here! Thank goodness!"

Lee lifted his tired eyes from the paperwork in front of him and sighed. Amanda was standing in front of his desk, bouncing on her toes that way she did when she had way too much excess energy.

It wasn't that he wasn't happy to see her; in fact since their huge fight all those weeks ago, he had been putting extra effort into making her feel comfortable around him. He'd called her his partner and damned if he hadn't been doing his best to make up for that stupid argument and the way he'd hurt her feelings. He didn't know if he'd ever get over the sickening feeling he'd experienced when Rollo had made it clear what Sinclair was really up to; he'd had nightmares since then of what might have happened if he hadn't turned around and gone back to her house that night to apologize.

Sure there'd been that setback a few weeks ago, when he'd arrived in Munich and taken his jet-lag exhaustion out on her, but she'd forgiven him, and in the end, their friendship had come out of it stronger than ever, he thought. He'd even asked Billy to assign her to come with him to London. He'd pitched it as another good training exercise, but deep down he knew it was because after two near misses, he'd become nervous about letting her out of his sight.

No, he was very happy that she was still here, bouncing in front of his desk with that eager expression on her face; he just wished it wasn't happening right now when he was exhausted from trying to figure out how a Soviet agent had managed to infiltrate the Fort Madison Defense Complex and set off a bomb, all without ever leaving the sight of the security officers or the colonel he'd tricked into meeting with him. They had Vardosk in custody but they were going to have to release him if they couldn't make the connection soon. Lee had spent half the night in an interrogation room with him and, while carefully never admitting to anything except trespassing and pretending to be someone else, Vardosk had been unable to resist taunting them with little hints that the next part of his scheme would come to fruition in the next few hours. It was a double-edged sword; not only was there likely to be another attack, but if it happened while Vardosk was in custody, it gave him an alibi. Yet if they released him… Lee sighed in frustration again.

Amanda's expression began to change and he realized he'd taken too long to respond and she'd thought the sigh was aimed at her.

"Sorry, Amanda, I was a million miles away there. What can I help you with?"

If his attempt to sound friendly had been forced, it wasn't apparent that Amanda had noticed as her face lit up.

"I had a dream last night!"

He heard the muffled snort of laughter from Duffy's desk as he tried to control his own eyeroll.

"You had a dream?" he repeated in a patient tone.

"Yes! And you were in it!" A louder snort from Duffy, but Amanda was too worked up to notice. "And so were Francine and Mr. Melrose!"

"Why, that sounds positively Wizard of Oz," sniped Francine as she walked up in time to hear the tag end of Amanda's comments. "I know we already have a Scarecrow but I wonder who the rest of us are?" The flash in her eyes suggested that she had heard Duffy's sotto voice offering of "Toto?" from behind her.

"Okay, so you had a dream," Lee interrupted, trying to get everyone back on track. "And why are you telling me about it?"

"Because I think it means something!" Amanda replied. "About our case!" she added.

Lee saw the smile on Francine's face and lifted his hand to stop her from saying whatever little catty remark she was preparing. "Amanda, the Agency doesn't actually consider dreams and soothsaying as a form of intelligence work, you know that, right?"

"I know that!" she exclaimed in a defensive tone. "Of course I know that! But look, have you ever been working on a problem, like really working on it and working on it, and you just can't see a solution and it's making you crazy and you can't think about anything else and then someone says "Just sleep on it" and so you do and then when you wake up, the whole thing makes perfect sense?"

Lee nodded, while Francine looked stunned.

"Okay, yeah, I know what you mean," he answered. "So what was your dream about?"

"Well, you came to my house dressed as a mailman-"

Lee winced at the low laughter that came from the desks around them.

"And you told me I had to go to a sort of training thing for the Agency…"

"What kind of training?" asked Francine. "How to train dust bunnies to perform secret missions? Frump as camouflage?"

"Francine! Can it!" growled Lee just as Amanda said "No, of course not!"

Aware that she had overstepped the boundary of friendly teasing, Francine subsided with a grumpy look.

"So in the dream, I was sent on this training thing and it was really frustrating because I couldn't do any of the things I can normally do. Do you ever have those dreams? Where you should be running but you don't seem to get anywhere? Or you're trying to find your way out of a building and you keep ending up in dead ends?"

Lee nodded.

"Well, it started out as that kind of dream. We were all at this camp in the woods and everyone had these matching tracksuits so it was hard to tell people apart. Even Mr. Melrose and Francine were wearing them."

"Tracksuits? I wouldn't be caught dead in a tracksuit!" exclaimed Francine. "Not even in the woods! And why would I be at a training course? It's ridiculous!"

Amanda gave Lee the tiniest of smiles that said she knew exactly how much she'd gotten under Francine's skin with that one. "You weren't taking the training, Francine," she said patiently. "You and Mr. Melrose were the trainers."

"Well, that's a bit better," huffed Francine.

"And the tracksuits were quite a nice color," Amanda went on. "I didn't even know you could get velour in that color."

"Velour?" screeched Francine. "I would never -"

"Yes we know, Francine," Lee interrupted the oncoming diatribe. "But it was a just a dream, right? No one is suggesting you'd ever really wear a velour tracksuit. Not even in a nice color." He turned his head and gave Amanda a wink. "Okay, so what was I doing in this dream?"

"Oh Scarecrow, as if you have to ask," sniped Francine and Lee gave her a quelling glance.

"You were doing the training with me," said Amanda. At the look of surprise on Lee's face, she hastily went on. "But you weren't really doing the training. You were just pretending to take it so you could spy on the people doing the training."

Lee looked relieved and Amanda stifled a smile.

"Anyway," she continued, "so it started out with things like obstacle courses and zip lines and running and it was all things I'm pretty good at, you know?"

Lee nodded. "I remember. You were great at all that at that survivalist camp."

"Exactly!" said Amanda triumphantly, obviously pleased he remembered. "But when I was doing them, I was always slipping or falling or I couldn't catch my breath. And when I had to do a bootlegger turn, I crashed the car and you know I can do one of those, Lee! Remember when David Benson was going to kill you and I had to get the policeman's attention?"

"Uh huh. I mean, I didn't see it, but the cop told me he'd never known a station wagon could even make a maneuver like that."

Amanda nodded, then kept talking. "And there was a memory test and I knew everything on it, but when Francine called on me, it was like I couldn't even dredge up the right words to describe anything and it was so frustrating!"

"Like our case," Lee commented.

"Exactly!" said Amanda.

By now most of the nearby agents had openly turned their chairs to listen to her animated tale, not even trying to disguise their interest.

"So I kept ruining everything and you were getting mad at me. You know, the way you do when you get frustrated." Amanda missed the little grimace of self-awareness on Lee's face as she continued the story. "But somehow or other, we knew one of the other people on the training was a spy. I mean a spy for the other side, not our side," she added quickly when it looked like both Lee and Francine were about to state the obvious. "So once it was dark, I went to your cabin to talk to you."

"See, I knew it was going to turn out to be one of those dreams," murmured Francine

"And I went over to the bed to wake you up"

"Oh my," said Francine. "We're really going there, are we?"

"But there was a scarecrow in your bed instead of you and then the whole thing blew up!" said Amanda, ignoring her. She threw her hands in the air to simulate the explosion. "From a phosphorous bomb!"

"Vardosk's speciality," said Lee.

Amanda nodded. "And we thought whoever was the spy in the camp was trying to kill you, but then it turned out they were trying to kill me!"

"Why would anyone want to kill you?" asked Lee, intrigued by the wild story despite himself.

"Well, they didn't, not really," admitted Amanda. "They thought I was you!"

"Like Zinoviev again?" asked Lee.

"Sort of, I guess. But mostly because I was so bad at everything in the training that they thought I must be the ringer. Although why they knew there was a ringer there… or why they even wanted to be in the camp… I don't know why any of that happened…" Amanda trailed off, trying to remember. "Oh well, I guess some dreams only make sense when you're in them," she finished. "Anyway, there was a whole bunch of other stuff that happened that didn't make a lot of sense either, but then suddenly I was doing something on a computer and I hit some button and set off alarms and you were all yelling and it was because there wasn't a Delete button like on a normal computer, there was some crazy ERA button that stood for Enter Restricted Area and then I woke up!"

Lee waited for her to keep going, but Amanda just looked at him expectantly.

"So?" he asked. "What does any of that have to do with our case except that you're obviously dreaming about it?"

"Oh! Don't you see?" Amanda was back to bouncing on her toes. "All those things I kept dreaming about with the fake scarecrow and you being a pretend trainee and people thinking I was the ringer and there being a spy in the trainees? It was like a thread I couldn't quite grab until the end! Lee, what if Vardosk had a ringer? And that's how he got into a restricted area?"

"What?' asked Lee in confusion. "How could there be the ringer? Vardosk went in there alone!"

"No, he didn't," said Amanda. "He went in under escort!"

"Okay, yes, he went in under escort, but he was never alone the whole time he was in there! He had someone with him every moment!"

"He had someone with him every moment," she repeated, "but did he have the same someone?"

Francine gave an exasperated sigh. "What does that matter?"

Lee, meanwhile had straightened up and was staring at Amanda intently. "The same someone?"

"No, I mean, yes," said Amanda. "He arrived in a cab and was allowed to drive up the building, right?"

"Yes," Lee scowled. That particular bit of fraudulent ID had led to a lot of retraining across a lot of defense campuses. Vardosk had pretended to be a defense contractor with some new targeting hardware that the army would have loved to get its hands on – if it had actually existed. He'd even left a file of fake technical specifications with the colonel he'd gulled into meeting him.

"And the cameras show him being dropped off at the front entrance, and then a few minutes later, he's approached by an MP and escorted inside."

"Yes."

"And the MP walks him through to Mr. Wilson's office and he spends half an hour there, with Mr. Wilson the whole time and he's never alone until the MP comes back for him and escorts him back outside. And then he's alone until the cab that was waiting for him comes from the parking lot to collect him."

"Amanda, we know all that!" Lee tossed his hands up in exasperation.

"I know, I know," she said soothingly. "But the thing is – where did the MP come from?"

"The MP?" repeated Lee. "Well, they must have been called from the guys at the front gate to come meet him, right?"

"That would be the obvious answer," said Amanda. "But the thing is… where did the MP come from?" She could see Lee's temper rising and rushed on. "Now look, we know all this because of the security cameras, right? We could see the cab arrive, we could see Vardosk being dropped at the door ten seconds later, we could see him waiting by the door and the MP arriving to collect him two minutes later. Another MP comes to the door to let them in. We could see all that, right?"

Lee nodded.

"But why did the first MP come from off camera then? Why didn't they come out the front door? Wouldn't the front gate have called the security desk at the front door?"

Lee's brows twitched together. "Yes, they would have," he said slowly.

"So what if the MP was a ringer?" she asked. "What if that was Pavlovich?"

"Oh my God," Lee stared at her. "It's never occurred to anyone that Pavlovich could be a woman. What made you think of it?"

"Well, it sounds silly but in my dream, the spy turned out to be a woman, and then it just gelled in my head when I woke up – how odd it was the MP was a woman. I mean, not that women don't do those jobs, but it's usually a man, isn't it?"

"But how would they have gotten her in there?" asked Francine, intrigued despite herself.

"She just walked in," said Lee. "Or rather she drove in."

Amanda nodded her head rapidly, smiling that he had seen it too. "The cab driver! We never see the cab driver after he gets dropped off! I mean, she must be on the security footage but of course, we never followed the footage of the cab because why would we?"

"So… they drive in, he waits by the door, Pavlovich parks the cab and changes into an MP uniform…"

"Or probably just takes off a coat or something," interjected Francine, as she began to see what Amanda was saying. "No one would have looked closely at her."

"Right," agreed Lee. "She joins Vardosk at the front and walks in with him without getting a second look because everyone thinks she's been with him the whole time. Then, while he's talking to Wilson, she has free rein to go anywhere she likes and stash the bomb with a timer set to go off after they're long gone!" he looked up at Amanda with a broad grin. "Amanda, that's brilliant!"

"Oh! Thank you!" she blushed at the effusive praise. "But I didn't really do anything! I just… well, I guess I just dreamt it up!" She gave a self-conscious laugh.

"Hold on – we actually interviewed the cabbie after the bombing to see if she'd seen anything!" said Francine, straightening up excitedly. "We know where to find her!" She started to leave, then turned back with a determined expression. "Lee's right, Amanda. I still don't understand the way your mind works, but that was really something." She turned and walked away quickly before Amanda could react.

"Was that almost a compliment from Francine? You are having a good day," chuckled Lee.

"Well, like I said, I didn't real do anything, my subconscious did. But what can I do now?" asked Amanda, eagerly.

"Don't you think you've done enough?" asked Lee with a teasing grin. "You may have just broken the whole case wide open!"

"Is that true?" Billy's voice sounded behind them as he arrived at Lee's desk. "Francine just went past me babbling about the perils of male chauvinism and said she was on her way to get Vardosk's partner?"

"It's true, Amanda's out of the box thinking may have gotten us the break we were looking for!" confirmed Lee with a grin. He quickly outlined Amanda's breakthrough idea, although leaving out the dream sequence that got her there, watching as Billy's smile grew wider and wider.

"Genius, Amanda, just genius," he said when Lee finished.

"Oh Sir, it was nothing," Amanda blushed and ducked her head.

"It wasn't nothing – it was the break we were looking for," Billy corrected her. "And I'll make sure to put a commendation on your file." He gave her another big smile and turned to go back to his office.

"Oh Lee, I feel like such a fraud!" Amanda groaned.

"Why? You did a really great job," Lee replied.

"Mr. Melrose thinks I came to this great idea all by myself but all I really did was fall asleep! What happens when he finds out I just dreamt it up?" Her face took on a panicky expression. "And what if I'm wrong? Maybe the whole thing was just a crazy dream and it didn't mean anything!"

"I doubt that – it all fits together," he said, after considering that for a moment. "And even if you are, it really is a good theory. No matter how you got there, you followed what we knew and saw a new way to look at the facts. That's most of intelligence work in a nutshell."

Amanda's face lit up with a beaming smile. "Well, thank you for saying so, even if that's exaggerating. I have to admit, I was a little nervous to even tell you about it."

Lee raised an eyebrow. "Really? How come?"

"Well, you know how it is with dreams," she said, blush rising in her cheeks again. "When you have a fight with someone and you wake up still angry at them…"

"We had a fight in your dream?" Lee was suddenly very glad Francine had left. He had bad enough memories of that last fight with Amanda without having her adding snarky remarks to this revelation.

"Oh no, not a real fight Not like-" Amanda stopped and bit her lip. "No, you were just… well, you know how I said that I couldn't do anything right? Well, it was just that every time I got something wrong, you always looked so disappointed and you'd do that thing you do."

"What thing?" Lee asked with trepidation.

Amanda let out a long breath through her nose and tightened her lips, along with a slight eyeroll. Lee winced, recognizing himself all too clearly.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I was being a jerk."

"Well, you didn't really do it," said Amanda. "It was just the dream version of you."

"This time maybe, but you wouldn't have dreamed me doing that if I hadn't done it to you in real life," he pointed out.

"But you haven't," she demurred. "Not in a while, anyway," she added as he raised a brow. "I'm sorry – I shouldn't have said anything."

"Tell you what, partner, I won't hold it against you that you dreamt about me being a jerk, if you won't hold it against me that I gave you a reason to. Deal?" He held out his hand.

"Deal." Amanda took his hand and shook it solemnly.

Lee leaned in with a conspiratorial smile. "But maybe next time, don't announce in front of the whole bullpen that you've been having dreams about me?" he teased.

Amanda snorted out a stifled giggle. "But it wasn't just you!" she pointed out, "Mr. Melrose and Francine were in it too!"

"True," he conceded. "But I think I liked it better the first time you told me you had fantasies about secret agents."

Amana blushed. "Used to have," she said.

"Used to have?" he repeated, looking faintly disappointed that she'd been so quick with the correction.

Amanda nodded, pressing her lips together with merriment. "Now I know better," she said.

"You do?" Lee looked crestfallen.

"Yes, now I know you prefer to be called "intelligence agents", she answered.

Before Lee could respond, Francine came running back across the bullpen. "You are not going to believe this! I requested a squad car to go keep an eye on Pavlovich at the address she gave us – and they just caught her loading a bomb into the trunk of her car!"

Lee stood up, excited. "Amanda was right?"

"As much as it pains me to admit it, yes," said Francine. She turned to face Amanda and sighed. "I'll say it again, you have your useful moments."

"You mean, for a housewife?" asked Amanda.

"Actually no," Francine answered. "For once, this wasn't one of your domestic voodoo things. You pieced it together from clues we all should have seen. It was good work, even if your method was… unorthodox." She nodded curtly to show she was done with the topic. "Lee, they're bringing Pavlovich in now. I assume you'll want to be in on the interrogation?"

"Oh yeah," he answered. He turned to Amanda. "Do you want to come play good cop, bad cop again, partner?"

"Oh no," she answered his teasing smile with one of her own. "I think I've contributed as much as I'm likely to on this one. I think Francine would enjoy it more."

"Okay then," he replied. "I'll call you later and let you know how it went." He started to turn away, then swing back. "Amanda? You don't think I still think that, do you? That you're just a housewife?"

"No, I guess I don't," she stammered.

"Then what made you say that just now?"

"I … I don't know," she confessed. "It was something you said in my dream, I think. That I was pretty useful for a housewife."

Lee tilted his head and considered that. "Well, you've always been more than useful, but I guess I haven't always made sure to tell you that."

"It's okay," Amanda waved off his remorse with a wave. "It was probably just part of all my frustration in the dream – it would be pretty silly for me to be upset about something you never really did."

He gave her a rueful look. "I think we both know that I have though," he said. "But in case I haven't told you lately, you really are something."

"Thank you," Amanda ducked her head, acknowledging Lee's version of a compliment.

"I guess I should get going," he said, glancing over to where Francine was waiting by Billy's office door. He started to turn to join them, then turned back with a sudden mischievous grin. "You know there is something else you could help me with."

"Sure," responded Amanda. "What do you need?"

"Well, Christmas is coming up in a few weeks…"

"So I've heard," she said, dryly.

"And I was thinking it would be a good idea to get a nice present for a very special person…" - Amanda held her breath - "…Francine."

"Oh," said Amanda, her excitement subsiding.

Lee leaned in, dimples deepening. "So where do you think I could find her a velour tracksuit?"