Thank you for the reviews.

God, I remember this chapter. This is where I started to wonder why I wrote this story.

All the bits in italics are flashbacks for this chapter.

God this chapter.

I am sorry. (I will be saying this a lot from here on.)

Can't

To say that the talk with John didn't go well would have been an understatement. It went disastrously. The only good thing of it was that she did get a confession out of him. Whether the confession was worth it, she was still yet to see.

She pulled her coat closer to her as she walked slowly to school. She had left earlier than she usually would have done but didn't want to get to school any earlier. She was trying to avoid the two men in her life at the moment.

The problem was, all she could thinking about what the things that John had said to her.

"Yes! I admit it! It hit him." He shouted at her.

"You had no right."

"He had no right to try and steal my wife away."

"It is only friendship." Clara shouted, feeling her rage fill her up.

"Still. Anyway, he isn't a threat. He just needed to be taught a lesson. You are my wife. You are mine."

"Oh my stars, John. I know that. He knows that. I can be friends with whoever I want without having to get your permission."

Clara started to walk towards the stairs when he grabbed her wrist.

She cried out in pain. "Let me go."

Clara shook her head before pulling the sleeves of her jumper down over her hands. She really needed to find the time to go to the chemists and get some more arnicare. The stuff was magic. Even if it just made the bruises look better than they were.

The problem was, she was now thinking about last night. She knew that she would be thinking about last night all day now. She didn't want to. She just had to hide it. Hide it from the world again. No one else had to know.

"You're hurting me." She said as he pulled her closer to him, tightening his grip on her.

"Do as you are told. Break your friendship with the Doctor. If it is only friendship, it won't matter. I don't want you talking to him again. Do you understand?"

Clara hadn't realised that she had arrived at the school until she was standing in the corridor, the Doctor looking down towards her. He smiled at her but she just couldn't find in herself to smile back. What did she have to smile about?

His smile dropped and was replaced with a look of worry, his eyebrows doing most of the talking. He started to walk towards her.

She just shook her head at him and he stopped. He knew what she meant. She didn't want to. She stared at him before shaking her head at him again and heading towards the staff room.

It hadn't left her mind. It wasn't the first argument not to leave her and she was sure that it wouldn't be the last. She had told Adrian everything that had happened and he just looked more worried than he usually did. Danny had even said the most that he had since John attempted to beat him up. She forgot how much she missed talking to him, like she knew how much she would miss speaking to the Doctor.

It was best for both of them. Not only had she got hurt over it, he had as well. She hadn't meant to drag him into it but he had been, now it was about time she got him out of the hole. He didn't need to be in there with her.

She was glad that the staff room was empty. She took her time to make her tea. She didn't want to go back to her classroom just yet. All the marking she didn't get done last night, because of the argument, was there to be done.

"Clara?" The Doctor said gently.

It still made her jump. In that moment, she had realised that she had been crying. She pulled her jumper down and wiped her eyes with it.

"Doctor."

"You know, pushing me away isn't the thing to do. They may have stayed away and left you alone to burden it all yourself. I'm not. I'm not going to leave you. I'm not staying away."

"For your own well-being you should."

"I am old Clara."

"And that is probably why he doesn't see you as a threat." She paused. "We can't be friends. I am not allowing you to get hurt because of me."

"And you think just you getting hurt is better. Look, we will find a way."

Clara shook her head. "I won't put you through this." She finished stirring her tea before leaving the spoon on the side and leaving for her classroom.

As soon as she sat down, she started crying again. She wanted to shout why it went so wrong, why John had to become the man he was. She knew that this person wasn't John. It was boredom. He wasn't using his brilliant mind and it was just trying to find something else to fill it with.

She would remember the drawings and equations he used to write on little bits of paper when he had his job. His mind never stopping, not for one moment. She would remember waking up in the middle of the night, just to find him downstairs, completing the equation he just couldn't quite solve earlier.

She would be the one to bake and do little things to try and coax him away from his work, even if it was just for a moment.

A wonderful, beautiful mind. And it was being wasted.

Clara wished she could come up with all the answers. She wished that she could help her husband. She wished that she could put that wonderful, beautiful mind to use. She wished that John was the John that she knew and had fallen in love with.

John wasn't John. John was just a man, with great intelligence, being taken over by boredom.

There was no need for the Doctor to get himself involved. There was no need for anyone else to get involved. It was a mess that had happened, and they just needed to finally get it sorted out. Then John would be John again.

It was the little hope that Clara clung onto. John would be John again one day, and hopefully sooner rather than later.