by Aeryn
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Written On: 11-25-00

Archive: PKElite, PKSP, All others ask first.

Warnings: None at this time.

Disclaimers: Paramount/Viacom owns the rights. I merely give them room to play.

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Harry set the clarinet down on its space on the stand before him and shook his head. Somehow it was still not right. There was some small piece missing that he had not been able to recapture.

This was a piece of music he had originally written ten years previous. Out in the middle of the back end of nowhere. It was a piece of music he had written for love. For ONE love in particular. But now. . . now he could not find the notes which had come so easily then.

He wanted to remember it. He needed to remember it. The one he had written it for had been lost three years ago in some obscure StarFleet mission which Harry did not even dare to allow himself to think about. And now, all he had was the music and the memory. And both, it seemed, were slowly being taken from him by Time.

No! He was not going to let Tom go that easily! He had decided that he was going to sit here and play those same three bars until the rest resurfaced in his mind. Until Time gave up its vice-grip hold on it and surrendered what was his back to him.

Harry took up the clarinet once more and began to play. The same three bars. Again. Again. Again.

The doorbell interrupted his playing. At first, he ignored it. Maven would get it. He was right. It silenced, and the same three bars of the long-forgotten melody rang through the house once more.

"Sir?" Maven's voice.

Harry let the clarinet lower slowly to its perch on the music stand once more and opened his eyes. He knew how they must look to Maven. She had been here through all of it. She had brought the StarFleet messengers into the parlor and sat with him as they had told him that Tom had been lost with the crew of the Lorimar. She had watched as he had slowly drifted into this obsessive need to find the memories he felt he was losing. And she had tried, bless her heart, to help him. But, in the end, it had been only Harry that could help Harry. He would have to find his own way out of this dark place he was building around himself. But she had not abandoned him either.

And now, she was bringing him another messenger. This one was not StarFleet, but he did seem to consider his message urgent. Harry locked eyes with the man.

"Yes?" His voice sounded quiet and hoarse even to him. When had his soft tones become thus?

"I have been asked to bring you a message, Mr. Kim." The man intoned in a quiet manner.

"From?"

The man hesitated. "I'm sorry. I was not given a name. Only the Package. He said you would understand."

The man took from his coat a box. It was not an overly large box. In fact, Harry doubted that it could hold more than a couple of data PADDs. As he withdrew it, the man handed it over the music stand to him. "Please, he said you would understand." He repeated, setting it down and exiting quickly before Harry could either ask any further questions or pay the man for his time.

Maven stood in the doorway watching him for a moment. She seemed to be assessing how he was taking this strange occurrence. After a moment, she left him to his thoughts. But he knew that, should he need her, she would be there in an instant as she always was.

The silvered edges of the box caught the overhead lights, reflecting back to him things both painful and pleasant. Memories of a time seemingly long gone and a place far away. . . and the one man who had made everything worth the pain and struggle.

Tears burned behind his eyes as he reached out one shaky hand and took up the box. A message only he would understand? He slowly lifted the lid and peered into the box's depths.

---

The street was dark, and the building looked as though it had been here since the beginning of time. It had not been here that long, but wars did that to a place. . . made it look and feel older than it was. They did that to people as well, Harry reflected as he stepped into the building and cast his dark eyes around for the signal.

Nothing.

But he was sure he had understood the message correctly. He remembered that. Their signal system. Where was he?

Another cruel joke of Time, he reasoned. Turning, he began to make his exit from the bar, but was intercepted by a tall frame in a long coat. He stopped, hope rising.

He opened his mouth to say something, but was stopped by the man's arms encircling him and pulling him into a tight embrace. Words caught in his throat, and he felt the tears burning behind his eyes again. . . and fall silently. He was here! He had not been lost after all!

A thousand questions crowded his mind. But none of them would move past his thought to his mouth.

And suddenly, he didn't care. It didn't matter how this was possible. Sliding his arms about the taller man, he spun him to the door and led him back to the house. Tom was home! That was, somehow, all that mattered.

---

Tom lay asleep next to him. As always, Harry found himself smiling as he watched his Love sleep. Tom was so cute when he was asleep. Briefly, some part of him wondered if he had fallen asleep at the music stand and was dreaming all of this. But a brush of his hand over Tom's cheek convinced him that he was not. It was real. All of it.

Then something dawned on him, and he smiled to himself even brighter. Sliding gently from underneath Tom's arm, Harry moved to the other side of the room to the stand and took up the clarinet.

The first three bars came out as they always had. But now, the rest of the long-forgotten song joined them. The song he had written for Tom. The song he had not been able to recapture without him.

The last notes floated in the air, and his eyes came open to meet Tom's extraordinary blue ones. Tom also remembered the song. . . and what had followed it the first night Harry had played it for him. That mischievous glint that Harry remembered entered Tom's eyes as he lifted himself from the bed and moved to sweep Harry off of his feet and back to the bed.

This rendering of the Song would be met with the same passion as the first time it had ever been played. Not even Time could dim the fires that burned in the hearts of these two men.

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End