A/N: Thanks for reading on. More notes at the end of this chapter. 3

Jerome felt... uncomfortable. He hadn't spoken to Amber in days, and she was due to return to Anubis House that afternoon. After his nighttime visit to the hospital with Trudy, Jerome had not gone back to see Amber. When the rest of the house and her friends went to deliver flowers and cards the following afternoon he couldn't bring himself to go with them. He couldn't get the image of Amber lying in the hospital bed out of his mind, and it was not an experience he wished to relive. He hated hospitals, and had since he was a child.

His first experience with hospitals, at least as far as he could recall, had been at a very young age. It was one of the rare occasions that Jerome could recall his father being present in the Clarke family household. Jerome's sister, Poppy, had barely begun to crawl when a routine visit to the pediatrician had lead to the revelation of leukemia. This lead to many nights of John or Joan Clarke packing up toddler Jerome to stay with his Great Aunt Imelda while they spent nights at Poppy's bedside. Visiting his Aunt Imelda had remained terrifying even long after his baby sister had made a full recovery.

Jerome had kept a small album of photographs from his childhood with him as he'd traveled from school to school. In it was a picture of him sitting on his father's knee while his mother held a tiny Poppy on a hospital bed. Jerome had pulled the album out from it's hiding place under his bed and retraced the details of that photo as soon as he'd returned with Trudy that night. Amber was obviously older than Poppy had been at the time it was taken, and he was fairly certain cancer had not caused her hospitalization, but the photo was hauntingly similar to the mental image of the bubbly blonde lying in her mechanized hospital bed.

Jerome had looked over that photo a number of times in the past few days, but now carefully replaced the photo album in a corner of his wardrobe before deciding to disappear from Anubis House for the rest of the afternoon.

"Alfie, really, I'm going to be fine. You don't have to worry." Amber sat primly at the foot of Jerome's bed while Alfie paced back and forth across the dorm room in front of her.

"But I am so sorry, Amber! I didn't take you seriously, and I should have."

"It's really not your problem, Alfie. We're not together now, and it's not a big deal." If she was being honest she was quite impatient with the clueless boy. She hadn't come to the door to speak to him, but with his roommate. Her gaze was upon the hands in her lap.

"I'll have you back if you like. I can take care of you. Pamper and adore you, just like before," Alfie offered, gesticulating wildly, earnestly searching Amber's face. She sighed before meeting his gaze.

"It's really okay," Amber smiled. "I don't blame you in the slightest. I'll be fine."

"Okay, alright..." The boy seemed to calm down a bit, his circuit of the room slowing. "Well, at least let me do some magic to cheer you up, eh?" He produced a deck of cards with a flourish, grinning widely and waggling his eyebrows.

Amber sighed again, feigned a yawn, then gave Alfie another sympathetic smile. "I really should go back and lie down. You can practice on Jerome and show me later," she hedged. "Where is that twit, anyway?"

Jerome was in the dressage center, riding off his frustrations and insecurities. It had been a while since he'd been to the stables. Though he was no longer on the school's riding team, Ms. Robinson still allowed him to take out the horses when he felt like riding. He was listening to his mp3 player and running Tuxedo through basic dressage tests, and thus did not immediately notice the audience of one he'd accumulated. It was not until he'd dismounted and was leading the Frisian out that he noticed Amber sitting just inside the west gate. He was utterly unprepared for the sight of her.

Jerome stared a moment before the big horse gave him a nudge and he began to walk on. He plucked out his earbuds, loosed the chinstrap of his helmet, nodded to Amber, and lead Tuxedo back to his stall. Amber followed at a distance, perched herself on an empty stall's gate, and watched Jerome untack the large black beast before releasing him into his stall.

Jerome leaned into the horses nose, rubbing affectionately at his neck and whispered, "Wish me strength, Tux" before turning to address his spectator. He smacked the dust from his gloves across the leg of his jodhpurs and addressed Amber. "Welcome back. You look... better." His eyes glanced up the corridor to a group of eighth graders cleaning tack, but Amber didn't seem to mind that there were people about.

"Thank you, I suppose." A quizzical expression came across her face as she wondered whether the pause in Jerome's compliment were particularly flattering. "You look -" she took in his equestrian attire- "fit."

Jerome made a noncommittal sort of hmm, wandered down the corridor, and plucked a carrot from a bucket hung near the tack room door. He was pretending to ignore her, but it was difficult. He broke the carrot into pieces and fed them to Tuxedo from his open palm.

"What were you listening to?" Jerome's eyebrows formed a question mark. Amber nodded toward the mp3 player in his armband. "What's the music?"

"Dubstep?" It came out more like a question than Jerome had meant it to. Amber was still very pale, but her long sleeves and neck scarf hid all evidence of the various medical apparatus she'd been attached to in the hospital. Her lipstick was a little too dark against her lighter shade of pale. She seemed somehow far more delicate than Jerome had ever noticed before.

He offered her a hand down from her somewhat precarious seat. "Dubstep? Really? I've never pictured you as an electronic dance music kind of guy." She accepted his hand. "You seem so top forty."

Jerome screwed up his face in a look of disgust, shaking his head. Anything but top forty, he thought to himself. "No way." He held Amber's hand a few moments longer than necessary as he turned away. She dropped his fingers and followed after him.

A/N: So, admittedly I'm not super thrilled with this installation. It's mostly back story/filler to get us where we're going next. And I promise to make the next bit more interesting. Also, I wanted to incorporate all the equestrian stuff from Jerome's side of the dorm into the story, but it didn't turn out awesome. In the show, a lot of the stuff looks more like classic polo equipment, but I don't know much of anything about polo, so I made Jerome a dressage rider. It's been a long time since I rode dressage or jumping, and I didn't want to bore people to much, so I didn't get into the details of horse care. Don't put your tack away dirty! There probably aren't eight graders to do it for you!
Anyway. Thanks for reading this far. More to come! -the PuffleHuff
P.S.- There is a poll regarding the progress of this fic on my profile. Please check it out!