A/N: Another shorter chapter, since we've had a couple longer ones.

Chapter Thirty-Eight: June 1944

It had taken two whole weeks for Clara to feel well enough to return to work, her "touch of the flu" ending up conveniently explaining away her quick loss of weight and an appetite that had yet to fully recover. She had been able to convince John to return to the shipyard that first Wednesday already, but otherwise he hovered around her and clung to her side and made sure the most strenuous thing she had to do was walk to and from the bathroom. He even took his lunch hour to come home and make her more tea, something he never could have done had they still been living in the house on Wissforn or in the school thanks to both locations' distance from the shipyards. It made her feel guilty and wretched, but her protests were always met with an assuring caress and a soft kiss across her lips.

The morning she went back, however, he was on pins and needles the entire day. He was grouchy and irritable to the point of Verity noticing, a feeling which only subsided when he returned home to the smell of dinner cooking and the sight of his wife milling about the kitchen. The veg ended up overcooked, but over-limp carrots and mushy peas was more than payment enough for Clara to slip into her husband's lap and kiss him as he held her thankfully (until the pots began to boil over, at least). They spent that night cuddled close as they went to sleep listening to the neighbor's latest argument.

The weeks slowly began to pass, the couple trying to heal as they went along. Eventually, dawn broke early on a Tuesday morning as Clara blearily woke up to her husband's arm around her hips and his nose buried between her shoulder blades. She wrenched herself free from his grasp and kissed him good morning before shuffling off towards the kitchen. Beans, bacon, sausage, toast, eggs, a large pot of tea, and a fried tomato. John came into the kitchen just as she put the plates down on the table, dressed for work and looking rather confused at the spread.

"What's the occasion?" he asked. She put the teapot on the table and played with his fluff of hair untamed from bedtime before sitting down herself.

"Birthday," she replied plainly. He paused before nodding, raising his mug in a toast before taking the first sip.

"We will make it."

"We'll do her proud."

Clara sipped her tea and began to slowly eat her breakfast. Eventually, she was reduced to poking at her beans before she spoke again, avoiding looking away from her plate.

"John? Can I ask you something?"

"What is it?"

"I was thinking about maybe…" She took another calming sip of her tea and breathed. "What if I don't go back to work after the summer? Would that be alright with you?"

"It's your job; I think that's your decision," John replied. He reached across the table and held Clara's hand. "We'll be fine. Do what you think is right."

"That's the problem: I don't know if it is right or not," she said. She finally looked up at him and smiled weakly. "It's so hard sometimes to get through the week, but the children all love me so much…"

"You have to take care of yourself first before you can take care of others," he mentioned. He let go of her hand and began eating again. "You already do a lot of caring when it comes to me. It's getting to the point where I'm going to have to start introducing you as my carer and not my wife."

"Making up words now?" Clara chuckled, albeit weakly. She glanced across the table at John, who grinned through a mouthful of sausage, and sighed. "I guess I do have to worry about us first…"

"…you first…"

"…me first before the kids. Now that I'm just a regular teacher, even though it's hectic, I don't have nearly as much riding on me now. Everyone has their home to go to and I haven't had to place anyone in…" Trying to think of it made her trail off.

"…three years," John supplied.

"Wow… it's been that long?" She laughed sadly, her gaze out of focus. "They don't need me anymore, do they?"

"It's not that you're not needed, it's not like that," he said. He finished up the last of his breakfast and downed his tea before he stood up and walked around the table to kneel down next to Clara and hold her face in his hands. "You're always needed, but no one can blame you if you think you've given all you can. You can do whatever you want, honest, if that means to stay a teacher for always or quit this year or quit after the war. It doesn't matter to me. Just promise me one thing."

"What…?"

"Don't regret whatever you do. You can balance your lives well, the one at work and the one at home, but I don't want you to look back on these days in twenty years and think them wasted."

"They're not wasted if they're with you," she replied. "It's just… if I don't have point anymore, then what am I still doing where I'm at?"

"Making wee rascals less of pudding brains, giving them a chance in the world." He kissed her gently and traced her cheekbones with his thumbs. "You're making stories to tell our bairns when we finally have them, so that they'll be proud of their mam for being so brave. Their granddad fought twice, their dad fought and built ships, but their mam always has been made of the special stuff."

"Don't talk as if they're going to happen," Clara said quietly. "I told you the results of the tests…"

"…and I still think that doctor is talking out of his pompous arse," John replied. "As far as I know, we'll have children. No matter how we'll have them, we'll have them." He stood back up and left another kiss on her nose, forcing a smile for her. "I have to get ready now, okay?"

She nodded and went through the motions as her husband prepped for another long day at work. Once he was out the door, lunch in-hand and kissed goodbye, Clara began to dig through the bottom of the wardrobe for an old box she had from her office. Notecards bound with a cracking rubber band came out, along with a pencil and sharpener. She brought everything into the kitchen and began to write on the one side of the notecards, arranging them around the table before she had nearly the entire surface covered in paper and wood shavings.

'Age,' said one, as much as it sickened her to see. 'London,' said another. Teaching. Stress. Victoria. Dad. Sterile? Ships vs. Books. Children. The cellar. Gwen and Ruby. Return after summer? Donny and Collette. Given my all. Twenty-eight. Wissforn. War's end? I love you.

She looked at the assortment, definitely a collection of words and phrases that would confuse many people despite making perfect sense to her, and exhaled heavily. These were her cards, where all the thoughts that could fit on the table lie. It was like going to the Promenade with her friends as a girl and finding a tent with an old lady that smelled of too much perfume and wore too much rouge so that they could giggle over their fortunes. Clara fell out of the habit quickly, when the woman repeatedly found little in her future compared to the wealth of things to talk about in her friends' lives. She found that woman was a charlatan and a fraud, conning young women and tourists of their pocket money. This was the true stack of fortune cards before her, not the inverse-whatever and suits of cups and pentacles, and it was here she poured her faith into little scraps of stiff paper.

Clara stared at the cards for a long time, sorting her thoughts and making up her mind. When the timer she had set earlier went off, she left the display and hurried to prepare for her own job. She left the cards on the table to sit and stew while she was at work, glad for the time she had to continue before John came home from the yards.

She was going to figure this out. Her husband could say all the kind words he could think of; the fact of the matter was that they needed a better plan, and she was going to create one even if it took days or weeks to hammer out in the hours between when he left for the day and trudged back in to flop on the couch and nap before dinner. It was going to happen, because they were going to make it.