It was a lucky fall. The explosion launched them both away from the side of the cliff so that they tumbled straight down an aerial path uninterrupted by rocks. Clay was even able to grab hold of Desmond before impact, and they fell together for the last twenty feet or so.

Their luck ran out when they hit the water.

Clay's skin was still searing from the heat of the bomb when the freezing solidity of the river slammed into him, jerking his body violently before dragging him under. Suddenly Desmond's bare torso was slippery and impossible to grip, but Clay focused every ounce of his energy into thrusting his hands underneath the other man's armpits and locking his fists together. He attempted to broaden his back, to act as a shield for Desmond, and struggled to maintain a position where his own frame faced the onrush of dangers as they were swept away downstream.

It was futile. There was no control here, none. Even on the rare occasions when Clay found his head above water, he was too cold to draw breath: his very lungs seemed to have tensed in shock. He was only vaguely aware, through the darkness, that they were moving in one direction, for the river felt like the inside of washing machine and the journey downstream like simply tumbling over and over again in the water. The stretch of river where they had landed was deep, but that didn't last long.

They must have been travelling at a pace somewhere between ten and fifteen miles per hour when Clay hit the first rock. It may not sound all that fast, and if they had been moving in a car then the worst they might have felt would have been a large jolt. Even ten miles an hour is fast enough, however, when there is nothing protecting bare skin but a thin layer of clothing, and the rock against which Clay impacted was jaggd and vicious. He felt the earth-shaking crash of it, then the sensation of the river rolling him over the rock impatiently, and all he could think of was to wrap himself tighter around Desmond, to protect Desmond, to save Desmond.

They hit another rock. And another.

Clay bore the brunt of the first few, but he was unfortunate enough to have his eyes open when he saw Desmond's head slam brutally against a boulder that rose up out of the water like a shark's fin. Clay screamed and water rushed down his throat and into his stomach and lungs. He couldn't tell if Desmond was even still alive, but he maintained his grasp all the same, and after that he simply closed his eyes, breathed when he could, tried and failed to roll with the many punches that nature threw at him, and prayed for it to end soon.

He lost consciousness temporarily, and when he woke he found that the pace of the river had finally slowed to a gentle drift. Clay also realised that his arms were empty, that Desmond was gone, and it was this that jolted him back to reality with a terrifying stab of panic. He lifted his head above the water, amazed that he had the strength to do so until he realised that he was being assisted and there was some kind of platform at the back of his skull, preventing his nose and mouth from slipping back under the water. The material of his shirt was tugged up underneath his arms and he was no longer simply floating along with the river, but being pulled towards the bank. His heels scraped on mud and stone. The moon shone down and coloured the water a ghostly hue, like the River Styx, but Clay was free now, opening and closing his mouth in an attempt to draw breath and clutching at the slippery earth beneath him.

Then he was on his side and puking what felt like gallons of river water and stomach acid that burned his nose and throat upon reemergence. He coughed and then sucked in a huge breath, and wondered how he had ever conceived of taking oxygen for granted before now. Dizziness from suffocation rapidly turned into dizziness from hyperventilation, but Clay did not care one inch so long as he continued to be blessed with these great, generous gulps of air.

"Easy, easy."

Desmond. It was Desmond rubbing his back, holding him on his side until all the water came up, then dragging him further up the bank. The cliffs had given way to green fields coloured grey by the night, and the grass felt warm as though it hadn't yet forgotten the sun's rays. Clay was on his back now and Desmond was leaning over him, drenched from head to toe and shivering violently, with drops of water clinging to his skin and eyelashes and a hundred tiny waterfalls cascading off him.

"Hey," Desmond was saying, his voice stiff from the chattering of his teeth. "I need you to hold still for me, alright? I need to see where you're hurt."

Clay couldn't muster the muscle response required to nod, so he simply lay there as Desmond gently unbuttoned his shirt and slid it off his shoulders, lifting him to free the material that was trapped between him and the ground.

"Here, sit up."

Clay did so and forced himself to keep his eyes open, staring into Desmond's face as he was looked over and analysed. After a second or two, Desmond moved around him, ran his fingers down Clay's back, felt around his skull. There came a soft, almost inaudible hitch of breath.

"What?" Clay could not trust his own senses now - was too cold to feel anything. Desmond didn't say anything in response, which triggered a wave of anxiety. "For God's sake, Desmond, how bad is it?"

Slowly, Desmond came back around, knelt down in front of Clay and continued to stare at his bare skin in disbelief. "It's not. There's nothing. Not a scratch on you."

Clay paused for a beat. "That's fucking impossible. I must have slammed into about a hundred rocks in that river."

"So did I, but you know what? There's not a scratch on me, either. Not even a bruise, look." Desmond picked up Clay's hand and pressed it to his chest, and a minute or so of exploration revealed no gaping wounds or bleeding cuts; the place where Desmond's head should have been nearly torn off his shoulders by the impact of the shark-fin boulder was clean and intact.

Desmond's hand shook as he ran it through the sopping mess of his hair. Finally he asked, "Can you stand? If I help you, can you walk?"

Too weary to answer, Clay tested his muscles gently and found that they still worked. Nodding, he allowed Desmond to pick his arm up and wrap it around his own shoulders, gently lifting Clay to his feet. Desmond was worryingly cold to the touch, but his breath was warm on Clay's cheek as he spoke.

"There's shelter, I can see a building, about fifty feet from here. We need to get under cover or we're both going to freeze to death. Just squeeze my shoulder if you need to rest, yeah?"

Clay did need to rest, twice, before they reached the building that Desmond had promised. During the breaks he knelt on the grass, shaking so hard that his very bones ached and moulding his will to the feel of Desmond's hands on him. He lost consciousness again at one point and when he reopened his eyes they were staggering through the back door of the small, tin-roofed shack, with Desmond calling out into the empty air in vain. Whoever might have built this place and lived here, they were long gone now.

Clay closed his eyes. When he opened them he was curled up on the floor, stark naked and colder than he'd ever been in his entire life. He didn't know how long he lay there before he felt the slide of bare goosefleshed skin against his own and then the heaven of dry material - sacking of some sort. He reached out blindly in the dark, pulled Desmond close, and though it took many minutes they eventually began to warm one another. Stretching into the sun of Desmond, Clay slept.

Beams of light were streaming in through the holes in the wall, and in the time he had been asleep the shack had become unbearably hot and stuffy. Clay pushed himself upright and surveyed his surroundings. The building was approximately the size of a camper van and seemed to have only two rooms and no interior doors. The furniture was gone, and they'd slept on a few layers of cardboard and some newspapers that had been arranged into the form of a bed. There were remnants of a tiled roof left over, but most of it had been replaced with corrugated metal, and the plaster on the walls was cracked and crumbling away in places. Clay recognised the tattered clothes nearby as his own, or what was left of them after the journey downriver, and he pulled them on. Surprisingly, they were completely dry.

Desmond was sitting outside on the grass, warming himself in the sun and looking out over the river. Now that the cold was gone, Clay was able to take stock of just how fantastic he felt: no aches or pains, no cuts or burns from the explosion. Even his sunburn on his arms had faded to a medium-gold colour, and there was no evidence of the fifteen minutes he'd spent stabbing away at his wrists with the blunt end of the pen, save for the memory of it. Desmond, of course, had left his only shirt as a bloody pile on the floor of Clay's cell. His brown skin gleamed healthily under the morning sun, the small white scar from his kidney operation curled against his lower back but no fresh wounds to be seen. His messily-trimmed short hair stuck out where he had slept on it, and when he looked up Clay saw that he was chewing on a twig.

"You know, if you're that hungry we can just order some takeout."

Desmond spat the twig out. "My mouth tastes like ass and I don't have a toothbrush."

Clay grinned a little. "Hi."

"Morning."

He took that as an invitation to join Desmond on the grass but gave the other man space, ensuring that they didn't touch. The connection between them that had been broken ever since their reunion was there in a kind of ghostly form, creeping back but threatening to vanish again at any moment. Desmond was sitting with one leg stretched out, the other bent with the bare sole of his right foot pressed against the inside of his left knee. His hands were slightly behind him on the grass, keeping him upright as he tilted back a little and turned his face upwards to the sky, either unaware of how closely he was being observed, or simply uncaring. Finally, he seemed to grow sick of the silence.

"So. We're not being blown up or drowned right now. I'd say that this is probably a good time to talk, wouldn't you?"

It was a difficult question. If they talked, there was a good chance that it would go very wrong very fast, and one or both of them would end up yelling. On the other hand, there was too much that Clay needed to know. "OK, but if something catches fire then we're taking a rain check."

Desmond nodded. Then he asked, "What the fuck did I put in your arm, Clay?

Of course it would be this question first. Clay hesitated for a moment, trying to think of the best way to sell this to Desmond, a way that would not make him panic. In the end, though, he just decided to tell as much of the truth as he knew. "It's a Piece of Eden. Vidic sent me here to find it. There's not a lot of scripture about it, but it's believed that there was an Assassin once who had it placed around his neck as an amulet when he was near death, and it healed his wounds and allowed him to live on for many years. The day he was separated from it, his wounds came back and he died."

A quick glance at Desmond told Clay that this news had not gone down well, but the younger man managed to maintain most of his composure. "OK. OK, so where did you find this magic feather of yours?"

Clay laughed. "Right in my goddamn cell, hidden in this hole in the wall. Apparently the last known owner was this thief called The Magpie. I'm just guessing here, but if he wound up captured by the Assassins then he probably stashed it there for safekeeping. Maybe he died, maybe he just escaped and never came back for it."

"Maybe he decided it was more trouble than it was worth." Desmond gave an unhappy laugh. "I can't believe this. We know that most people go insane just from fucking touching the Pieces of Eden, and now you've got one of them inside you. And I put it there?" Desmond suddenly jumped up and moved so that he was kneeling directly in front of Clay, staring at him fretfully, angrily. "You should have told me. Jesus, if I'd known, I would have..."

"You would have what? Let me bleed to death?" Clay snapped, feeling his temper rising. "It saved my goddamn life, you idiot. It saved both our lives."

"Are you talking about the river? Because..."

"Yeah, I'm talking about the river! I don't remember much but I do remember grabbing onto you and putting every ounce of energy I had into keeping you alive." Desmond's face softened a little at that, though the concern didn't fade at all, and Clay felt a small but powerful rush of affection for him that he did his best to ignore. "We already know that people were able to exert their will through the Apples, to distort people's minds. I think I must have used the Piece of Eden somehow, expanded its influence to protect you. Look at yourself, look!" Clay slapped Desmond gently on the shoulder with the back of his hand. "You should be dead right now and instead you look like you just got back from the health spa!" He stood up, suddenly desirous of a height advantage.

Desmond followed him stubbornly. "Yes, and that freaks me out! You know as well as I do that these things never come for free. What if..."

"What if nothing!" Clay yelled, infuriated by Desmond's attitude. "I'm alive and you're alive, and that's all that matters." He stopped for a moment and struggled to control his temper, to slow his breathing. "I feel fine. Better than fine, but I promise, hey..." He reached out to touch Desmond's face, but stopped at the angry flinch it elicited. "I promise, if I start feeling messed up in any way, I'll tell you."

At last, Desmond seemed to relax fractionally. "Good. Because we need to be honest with each other, or I don't see us getting through this." He didn't clarify whether he was talking about their lives or their relationship. Looking warily at Clay, he added, "I think it's your turn to ask a question."

There were too many, and the one truly burning question that he had also happened to be the one he was afraid to ask. Clay opted for something a little easier. "What happened to you after the fire? How did you get here? What did your father tell you about me?"

Desmond suddenly drew in a sharp breath, and it was at that moment that Clay realised something: Bill Miles was almost certainly dead. Desmond may have raised the alarm before the bombs fell, but they had both seen the sheer number of people left behind to die in the explosions, and Bill would have been deep inside the main part of the castle. A muscle ticking slowly in his jaw, Desmond swallowed and then answered. "I escaped through the window. I remember waking up and seeing Shaun." His face crumpled at the memory. "He was at the infirmary. God, he looked so shocked to see me awake. Shocked, and kind of happy, I guess. He yelled at me and said that we needed to get going, and then..."

"I know," Clay interrupted, not wanting to force Desmond to relive that part. "How did you escape?"

"Through the window." His breathing was coming a little easier, now that the worst part of the memory was over. "My legs barely worked and I think the Abstergo agents were right behind me but I just kept running, and I found a group of Assassins who'd managed to get away from the fire. We hid in the sewers like rats, and the next morning my ... my dad found us. He looked really beaten down, and he said that America wasn't safe for us any more. We flew out here on a small plane, straight to Masyaf. The Syrian Assassins are supporting the rebels in the war, and there are rumours that Bashar al-Assad might be allied with the Templars, might even be one himself. Then there were the rumours that..."

"That I might be as well." Clay kept his face impassive.

"You disappeared after the fire," Desmond continued, his voice more controlled now as his eyes roved over Clay's face. "No one really liked you, and they needed a scapegoat. You were pretty high on the list of potential traitors anyway, and then someone recovered CCTV footage of you walking into Abstergo HQ."

"What about Rebecca? Is she alive."

"Yeah, she's still in the states. She came to your defence, insisted that you were with her when the fire started. They dismissed that pretty quickly, just said that you could have set a timed explosive, and that it was very convenient that you were in a position to escape when it all went down." Desmond's mouth tightened bitterly. "I told them it was bullshit, of course. I knew that you might decide to betray the Assassins, but you'd never try to kill me. The only time I ever believed it might be true was when..."

"When I told you I'd been working for Abstergo." Clay was no longer angered by Desmond's reaction, nor even by being called a psychopath by the one man who'd always insisted he was sane. None of that had been real: this, the two of them in the grass and under the sun, that was real. "So what about...?"

"Woah, hang on," Desmond reprimanded. "I think it's my turn." His eyes were suddenly hard and defensive, and he began pacing back and forth, swinging his arms a little, looking almost predatory. Finally he bit out the words, "You tried to kill yourself. Not just tried, you nearly succeeded."

It was agonising, but Clay forced himself not to look away from the pain in Desmond's eyes. "That's not a question."

"Why?"

"I told you, I fucking hate fire. I've spent the last couple of weeks imagining what it would be like to burn to death, and I didn't really care for the idea. I'm not suicidal. You have no idea how pissed I got when I thought it was all over."

The angle of Desmond's shoulders fell visibly. "If I ever found you like that again, I don't..."

"You won't."

"Good."

It was Clay's turn, and he felt a sudden urge to skip this final question and simply push Desmond into the grass and consummate their reunion. But he could still sense a wall between them and knew that it was there because of him, because of the guilt gnawing in his chest, and he couldn't not know this.

"How much do you remember?" he said softly, not looking at Desmond, not at first. "From when you were in the coma, I mean?"

The silence that followed the question stretched on for so long that eventually Clay had to give in and glance over, glimpsing a look of extreme vulnerability on Desmond's face. As soon as he fell under observation, he closed his mouth and drew himself back together, adopting a calm tone of voice. "All of it," he said. "I remember all of it, and I know I asked you for complete honesty, so I'm not going to lie to you, but don't make me tell you what it was like."

"Why not?"

"It wouldn't be good for me."

Plan B was to extract the information through his own confession. It wasn't going to be pleasant, but that's why it was Plan B. "I visited you every day, at first," Clay said, forcing himself to keep looking into Desmond's face. "The doctors told me that sometimes coma patients can hear what's going on around them, even if they can't respond to it. I ... I got it into my head that if I said the right thing, used the right combination of words or said them in the right way, that you'd wake up and you'd be yourself again." He shook his head. "It was stupid. I had my head completely up my ass but I was so confident that I could do it. So I talked to you, every day, for at least a couple of hours. Even held your hand, in case you could feel it."

Desmond glanced away, over at the river, then back again so that their eyes met. He didn't say anything, and he didn't appear to be particularly moved by Clay's story. If anything, there was a great deal of tension in his body.

Clay continued. "I really wanted to be all sweet and attentive and patient but..." He took a deep, unstable breath. "I just got really mad instead. I'd be lying in bed at night for hours with my fucking fists clenched, just so angry. I wasn't really used to it, because I'd spent so long just being detached and not caring, but it was like something inside me that just refused to go away. So I'd pick fights with your dad, with the other Assassins, with Shaun, until pretty soon all I'd have to do was walk into a room and people would just leave. Then I'd visit you, figuring that at least I'd be able to calm down if you were there. Except you weren't there, you'd just lie there and you wouldn't fucking respond, no matter what I did or said."

The ghost of that anger was rising up in him now as he relived the memories, and Clay ground his teeth, forcing himself to continue. "I kept coming to see you, and I kept talking to you, but underneath it all was this urge to tear everything to fucking pieces, including us. So I..." Clay finally lowered his head, unable to look at Desmond. "I said ... some awful shit to you, Desmond. Just ... just this really vile stuff, not the truth but what I wished was the truth. I didn't want to be in love with you any more. I wanted to go back to just being me and not caring about anyone else in the world, so I did my best to poison the well and then I left and didn't come back, and three weeks later you were gone."

It felt like an exorcism. Now that it was all said, Clay was gasping for breath, nowhere near brave enough to look at Desmond's face and see his reaction. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the man still standing quietly in the grass, unmoving, his eyes on Clay.

"I know."

Clay looked up sharply.

"The doctors weren't lying. I could hear you, when you spoke to me."

"All of it?"

"All of it."

Clay felt cold all over. "How can you stand to look at me now?"

Desmond stepped forward and gently ran his fingertips up Clay's neck and over his jaw, lifting his head so that they were eye-to-eye. "Because we're stronger than a coma. We're stronger than a few words said in anger. We're stronger than a misunderstanding. I'll always come back to you, just like you always come back for me. That's who we are."

The distance between them closed and just like that they were together again, locked against one another with Desmond's fingers tangling in Clay's hair. The breath left him as he was pushed down onto the grass, and he felt a full-body shiver as Desmond carefully undid the two remaining buttons on his shirt, pulled the material aside and rubbed his face over Clay's torso on the way back up to his mouth, stubble scratching against his skin tantalisingly. Clay wanted this so badly that it hurt, but he was still unsure, still afraid to put his hands on Desmond. When their lips met he whispered, desperately, can I? can I? with his hands hovering just above the bare skin of Desmond's back. Desmond pressed down against him, kissing him and murmuring yes against his mouth.

He could feel the ribs through Desmond's skin now in a way that he never had before, and Clay made a mental note to take him out for dinner, take him to the finest steak restaurant in the world and feed him until the hollow places left behind by the coma disappeared. Otherwise, the path of his spine was just the same as it had always been: dipping down from his shoulders to the shallow counterpoint where his stomach was flat against Clay's own, before rising once more into the curve of his buttocks.

Clay closed his eyes and flexed upwards, gripping a handful of short dark hair and gifting his tongue into the comfort of Desmond's mouth. It occurred to him that after a year and a half they were probably both out of practice, but he had a feeling that they were going to be just fine.