Dedication: To the readers. Every single one of you. It's been amazing how you've all embraced my little story. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update.
A/N: I plan on participating in 2009 NaNoWriMo, so as a warm-up, I am going to try to finish this. There's only a little bit left.

CHAPTER 17:
Our Breaths We Do Hold

Patricia had stayed behind at the ranch instead of going camping. It was the prudent thing to do so that there would be staff behind in case of emergency. She hadn't expected the one that happened to her next.

She was working in her office with her favorite classical music channel playing softly in the background as she caught up on the end of year work. When the phone rang, the sudden sound jolted her in her chair. The coffee she'd been sipping nearly sloshed on her silk blouse.

"Hello," she said breathlessly while patting down her chest with a napkin.

"Thank goodness you were by the phone!" a panicked voice rushed out. "I need you to get up here right away with the van. We have to take Harry to the hospital."

"What's wrong?" she jumped in urgently. Steve's voice on the other end of the line made her apprehensive in a way she hadn't felt in a while.

"He… well, he appears to have his memory back. But it's more than that. He seems sick."

"Right," she said as she mentally switched into action mode. "I'll call ahead to the hospital to make sure the doctor is paged. Are you on the normal trail?"

"Yes. Nearly to the top, actually."

"I'll see you as soon as I can," she said before hanging up, grabbing her purse and running out the door to get one of the ranch's vehicles.

The stunned looks on the students' faces were not something any of the adult staff were used to seeing. The murmurs abounded, but they were quiet behind Umi's cries.

"Clef," she repeated while stroking his wild lavender hair. Tears dampened her cheeks as she waited there beside him on the ground.

"Okay," Steve announced loudly to the gathered crowd. "Patricia is on her way, and we'll be off to the hospital. The rest of you need to get up to the summit if you're going to have this camping weekend."

"But what about him?" asked Will with concern.

"We'll take care of it," Ford placated his student, "but you earned this and should go up and enjoy your camping. You deserve it. You all do."

Will muttered, "I don't know how much I'm going to enjoy it…" only to be cut off by Clef himself speaking again for the first time since his outburst at his flood of memories.

"Go," he rasped with finality. No one here or in Cephiro would have argued with the mage when he took that tone of voice.

A few of the students hesitated, and Jessie jumped in to take charge. She barked out orders and then said as much for herself as well as for the others, "We'd better see you when we get back, or there'll be hell to pay."

Though he was still on the ground, his eyes looked to hers and held her gaze for a long time. It was the only promise he could make, and it was no promise at all.

She blew her whistle, and the parade of campers went back into motion leaving Umi behind with Steve and Clef.

A long awkward silence passed before Ford asked Clef, "Are you comfortable?"

"No," he replied, "but I don't think it can be helped." He closed his eyes against the pain while Umi continued to stroke his hair as she would that of a small child awaiting the night's sleep.

The Water Knight was keeping her secrets to herself, though she had so many questions she wanted to ask him. Firstly, she wanted to know how he'd gotten here! It was no doing of Hikaru's. Umi had seen to that fact right away. It was mystery, though not one as great as the riddle of his feelings for her.

The voice of Steve Ford gently saying her name interrupted her wandering thoughts. He looked at her curiously as if unable to form a basic question about everything that had happened.

"I knew him," she blurted. "I wasn't sure it was him, but it really was."

Sighing, he replied, "Yes, but if you knew him, why weren't you certain?"

She shook her head ruefully. "I was a child, and he looked like one." It wasn't a lie. She was safe so far. Continuing, she added, "People change so much, and it was so far away that I could not be sure if he was who I thought he might have been. As you can see, the past few months, he wasn't able to answer himself even if he'd wanted."

The teacher nodded at the sense of it. He then eyed his watch and his friend, hoping that the other man would be okay. He and Umi were only witnessing Clef's silence and the occasional odd stretching of his fingers as if he were practicing sleight of hand flourishes.

They might as well try to get as comfortable as possible because even in an automobile, it was going to take Patricia a while to get there.

"What do you think will happen to him?" Derrick asked Will as they hiked to the camp.

"He'll go to the hospital," he answered pragmatically, trying to control his own worries after his questions in front of the group.

"No, I mean… will he go back home? Where is home for him? Do you think… Do you think he'll still remember us?"

His uncertainty spilled out quickly, and he was embarrassed at such an outburst. It didn't go well with his tough guy image that he had been trying to cultivate. Derrick knew too well about people he cared for leaving him. If Harry-Clef left, it certainly wouldn't be the first person in his life who left him without a word.

"Won't miss him anyway," he muttered as a defense.

"Nah, me, neither," Will replied while he did one of the easy tricks Harry had taught him. Then he sighed at the lie and concentrated on the hike to the site. The teachers said they only had a mile left until they got where they were going.

When Patricia finally arrived with the ranch's van, she saw Clef sitting up not looking as sick as he had been when he first walked up the hill. But his stillness was scarier than anything she'd ever seen from him in the short time that she had known him. If he had not taken the time to blink, she might have thought him a pale marble statue.

"How are you feeling?" she asked him softly.

Clef looked up at her wryly. "I've had better days."

Nodding she asked him in a whisper, "So what's your name?"

"Clef," he answered and inclined his head like an ancient knight saluting his lady.

"Can you walk?" she asked louder, including Umi and Steve in the conversation.

Jumping to his feet, Ford said, "I'll help you."

"Me, too," Umi replied holding his other side and walking him to the front passenger seat in the van.

"Mrs. Templeton," she said once he was seated, "I'd like to go with you."

"No," Clef told her firmly before Patricia could reply. "Stay here."

"Why?" Umi demanded. "I am the only one who knows you. I've always known you. You need me!"

He dared look at her eyes, a shy fleeting glance. "I… I can't."

Her own eyes narrowed as she looked at him with disgust. The stance she took was reminiscent of one of her fencing poses because she was going in for the attack.

"You yelled at me in front of everyone for having left you, and now you're going to tell me to stay? Men are so stupid!" she growled with clenched fists.

Steve tried to put his hand on her shoulder. "Come on, Umi. Patricia can take it from here, and the orderlies can help her with him in the hospital if she needs it."

She shook his hand off angrily. "No, I need to go with him! Don't you understand?"

"I will come back," Clef breathed with a pained expression. He then turned his face away from Umi and Steve as he fastened his seat-belt.

Patricia gave the pair an apologetic look before starting the ignition and leaving. They watched the van go, and while the dust was still flying from the tires, Umi let out a frustrated cry like a cat yowling in pain.

Patricia and Clef drove to the hospital with only the soft sounds of her favorite channel playing quietly on the radio. The sounds of it were almost drowned by the sounds of the wheels on the gravel. Once they started on the highway to the city, Clef finally spoke up.

"I loved her," he said sounding surprised.

"I know that now," Patricia finally answered.

She was a good counselor, very professional at her work, but he looked at her as the mother of Scott Templeton. "I didn't mean to hurt him, you know. I'm sorry."

Nodding, she acknowledged that she'd heard what he said. It was not clear to him if she'd accepted his apology, but it was really Scott he needed to tell anyway.

"So you know who you are..." she began, hoping he'd take the opportunity to fill in the blanks.

"And I still don't have any idea how I got here," he said while holding his body in an almost grave-like position. "I was at home. And then I wasn't."

"You make it sound like one of the transporter accidents from Star Trek."

He laughed at the thought. "No, not that, but it's as good of an explanation as anything."

Clef thought better of mentioning the likely magical nature of his sudden appearance in March because he'd been on Umi's world enough to know that they didn't believe in real magic. Tricks were enjoyed and relished, but the world shifting power he'd had back in Cephiro would have caused fear in the hearts of many Earthlings.

As he flexed his fingers, he knew that he no longer possessed that same magic here. There wasn't a spark of it within him, and that frightened him more than anything he'd ever known, including having been through a few months of amnesia. No wonder the girls hadn't known a thing of magic when they'd come to his world.

"Clef," Patricia finally asked, the curiosity getting the better of her, "Why did you tell her to stay with the campers? The rest of the team could have made it work without her."

"It's too much for me right now," he said as he turned his blue eyes on her. "All these memories rushing back feels like drowning." And I don't want to show her my weaknesses, he added mentally to himself, remembering a different time in Cephiro where he'd not let her come to his rooms when he'd been put to bed rest.

Patricia took her right hand off the steering wheel and patted him reassuringly on the leg. The rest of the trip to the hospital was made in silence accompanied by the sounds from the classical radio station fading in and out.

Moving faster as a pair than they would have in the group, Umi and Steve made it to the camp just after the tents where pitched and the fires were first lit. There was plenty of time to help with the night time cooking chores and other duties related to making the camping go smoothly.

A few of the students and adults asked questions of Clef, and the few known details were shared. Umi tried to busy herself so as not to think about the situation. She ruefully remembered how it was no different than how she'd paced all over the palace in Cephiro when she'd been so worried before, but that realization didn't stop her from doing it.

Quite softly, Scott came up behind her and cleared his throat before putting his hand on her shoulder in comfort. Turning quickly, she went into his open arms and after a few moments began to cry, drenching his cotton shirt in her hot tears. Meanwhile, Scott held her with the infinite patience that he had often shown with the injured animals in his care.

Umi continued to cry, letting flow some of the aches and mental pain that she had been holding inside her for the few months that the stranger they'd all called Harry had been part of their lives. When she thought of her confusion about whether or not he had been Clef, she bawled even harder. There was something about the whole situation that made her insides scream that it was just not fair. The whole world wasn't fair.

"I know I should have told you sooner…" came the first muffled words when she'd gotten control of herself. In Cephiro, she'd been in much worse situations than this. She had been the Water Knight and was made of much stronger stuff than most people in the world. Ryuuzaki Umi would not let this break her.

Backing away from Scott, she tried again. "I didn't know what to say or if I'd only been imagining things."

He gave her his bandana for a handkerchief. After she wiped her eyes, he encouraged her to continue talking. His green eyes looked to her with such a sweet kindness, she almost couldn't do it.

"Scott, when I saw him at the hospital, he did look familiar to me. I just couldn't be sure because it had been many years ago since I saw him. I dropped hints to ask him, but nothing seemed to work."

He smiled wryly at her. "He's a guy who had amnesia, Umi. Men are dense even during the best of times. Maybe your hints were a little too subtle for him."

With an odd sound that was a hybrid between a hiccup and a laugh, she agreed, "Maybe you're right."

"Is there more?" he asked shrewdly.

After a pause, she admitted, "Yes. I loved him from the bottom of my heart. I loved him, and he never knew because I never told him."

His eyes clouded over in understanding. "We never forget our first love."

Like the water element she once controlled, expressions flowed across her face. Eventually she looked at him with a guilt-ridden expression. "You're absolutely wonderful, you know."

"I know. And yet that's not enough to keep you," he said softly, resigned to his Umi-less fate. "Not enough to stay with me and be mine."

She sighed and walked away into the woods to gather sticks for kindling and to continue being alone with her thoughts.