Clara recovers from the kidnapping attempt and decides to chart her own life course. Richard and Jimmy arrange for a present. Nucky throws a party. Jimmy comes to a realization. Takes places between "Paris Green" and "A Return to Normalcy." Comments are always appreciated!

"James, good, you are here. Two things before we get to work. I'm giving Harrow a bonus for protecting Clara," Nucky informed Jimmy, who nodded in agreement. Richard deserved it, but Jimmy knew Richard would be hesitant to take it.

"Also, I want to give Clara a present. You apparently know how to buy jewelry now. Get her something." Nucky wrote something on the back of a card he picked up off his desk. "Put that with the gift."

Jimmy found Richard coming back from the post office. "Nuck is going to give you money for saving Clara. Don't decide to be noble and refuse it. Clara won't think that money is why you saved her, but she will think you are an idiot if you don't take it. Nuck doesn't know how to...relate. He doesn't know how to thank you for saving his daughter. So that's what the money is for."

"Mmm."

"Also, he told me to buy a present for Clara. Any ideas?"

Richard nodded. "Yes, she wants. A typewriter."

Jimmy stared at his friend before he started laughing. "Hell yes, let's get her a typewriter."

They took typewriter buying very seriously. After a few days, they decided on an Underwood 3-Bank Portable in green. They wait until Clara was having breakfast to sneak into her room and set it up.

Clara hobbled back into her room after breakfast. As she walked, she considered her secret. Unbeknownst to anyone, Richard mailed off a special project for her a few days prior. If her spec manuscript landed her the assignment, she would make enough money to support herself writing. She'd have choices, she thought to herself, including making a life of her choosing.

On her desk, next to her notebooks and pens, was a brand new typewriter. Clara blinked in disbelief-if she got the job, she planned on buying herself a typewriter. As her hands ran over it she noted it was one of the new style ones and in a particularly lovely shade of green. Her father's calling card was propped on the keys. She picked it up. On the back, was written "Much Love, Your Father." She smiled.

"Eddie, who is in with my father?" Clara asked when she made her way around the suite to the office.

"Misters Darmody and Harrow," Eddie responded and was about to tell her he'd announce her when Clara knocked on the office door.

"It's me; I'm coming in," Clara announced. The three men look up, surprised. Clara typically steered clear of the office.

Jimmy evaluated her when she comes in. She looked much, much better than she did in the days after the attack. Her left leg was still badly torn up, the bandages and scrapes visible under her stocking, but she seemed more or less okay. Maybe it didn't impact her to deeply, Jimmy thought.

"I love it!" Clara said excitedly, smiling directly at her father. "I can't believe you knew to get it for me!"

Jimmy caught Richard's eye.

"Well, I wanted you to be happy," Nucky said, hedging his bets. What the hell had James bought her?

"It's just...I've been so lost since my job with the War Department ended. It wasn't the most important work, but it taught me what it was to work. I knew what was to be busy all day, for my days to be full, to really be tired, and feel like I deserved to be tired. My days had purpose. I had money that was mine because I earned it, not because it was given to me. I knew my job would go back to a man when the war ended, and I'm so happy it ended. I just...I didn't want my life to go back to dress fittings and paying social calls and attending luncheons with people who only want me there because I'm your daughter. But it was so easy to fall back into all of that. It was," Clara blinks hard, and her voice cracks, "it was easy to agree to marry a man I can't stand when you asked me to accept him."

Jimmy slipped her a handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket. Finally, he thought; finally, Clara was going to save herself from the entanglement Nucky twisted her into. Jimmy was beginning to be afraid that Clara might actually marry the bastard. Or that the bastard would threaten Clara again, and Richard would end him. Jimmy stood behind her right shoulder, ready to provide support.

Nucky was still holding the pen that had been in his hand when his daughter burst into the room. Out of all the potential complications he had considered when planning his day, his spoiled princess of a daughter interrupting his work to give a speech about the value of a hard day's work and her distaste for a man who is the perfect husband for her had't been non the list.

The way Clara and Jimmy stood before him suddenly made them-the rebellious, headstrong children who let other men's decisions change their lives with that stupid war-look like the kids they weren't far removed from being. He could almost imagine they were there to argue their case about why they thought he should take them to New York for a Giants game, or let them camp overnight on the beach.

"I can't marry him, Father. I can't. I can't bear the thought of him touching me, of having to eat breakfast with him," Clara's voice cracked again, " of listening to him brush his teeth."

"You've had a rough few weeks. It's normal to feel uncertain. Darcy can give you the life you want." Nucky brushed away his daughter's complaints, not hearing her plea for him to save her from ruining her life.

"No, he can't. Any life with Darcy isn't a life I want," Clara insisted.

Nucky sighed. "You are young. You think life is this," he said, gesturing around the suite.

"No, I don't. I don't think that. I don't even think that I want that. I think that I want a life where when my fiance takes my hand, I don't flinch." Clara thought of how her hand fit completely into Richard's, how his hands were so well-kept except for the calloused edges, and compared that to the cold, wet, heavy feeling of Darcy's hands on her. "I want my desire to be an actual person with passions and thoughts and beliefs to be respected, not tolerated at best, or seen as a childish impulse."

Nucky recognized an unwinnable battle. "Fine. I'm not going to force you to marry someone who is destined to make you unhappy."

Clara reached for her father's hand. "Thank you."

When she left the room, Nucky looks at Jimmy. "What did you buy her?"

"A typewriter."

"A typewriter?" Nucky shook his head and got back to work. He should have sent Eddie to buy her a bracelet. A damn typewriter.

Clara called Darcy as soon as she left her father's office. She was going to end it now before her father had second thoughts or anything else happened. Clara wanted her freedom. Looking down at her hand, it occurred to her that she wasn't wearing her engagement ring. Richard had taken it off when he washed the gravel out of her hands weeks ago, and it was still sitting on her bedside table.

"I'm going. To be in, Mmm. The hall," Richard told her when Darcy arrived. Clara nodded and took a deep breath.

"Darcy, I think it's time we admit that we are not well suited for each other and let each other go," Clara told him as she entered the drawing-room, far too anxious to worry about niceties.

"What?"

"I don't wish to marry you. It's time for us to end the engagement."

Darcy crossed the room, and Clara backed up. "Do you think some little city politician's daughter breaks up with me?"

Clara swallowed hard as she fought the instinct to smooth her skirt or pull free a piece of hair. Her hands were shaking, but she didn't want Darcy to see. Suddenly, she could feel O'Bryan's blood blowing across her face.

"Are you. All right?" Richard opened the door.

"Mr. Blaine is just-" Clara began.

Darcy looked over at Richard. "Oh, wonderful. How appropriate. Clara's pet freak creeping at the door." He looked back at Clara. "Is that why you are breaking off with me so that you can whore around with mask man? What's under the mask..."

Richard moved with impressive speed and had the larger Darcy on the ground in seconds. One hand circled Darcy's neck, and with the other, he removed his mask.

"Is this. What you wanted to see?"

Clara went very still. Richard's voice was usually very calm. Now the low growl she's become so accustomed to was full of fury and anger.

"Richard, Darcy isn't worth this," she told him.

"Get off me," Darcy gasped.

"Apologize," Richard ordered.

There's silence before Darcy rasped out, "Sorry."

"No. Apologize. To Clara," Richard repeated in the same furious growl.

Clara approached them and put her hand on Richard's shoulder. "Please let him up. I just want him to leave. I don't care about his apologies. Please." Richard nodded and slowly got up. Clara continued, "Darcy, you need to leave."

Richard walked towards the window.

"Believe me. I can't wait to get out of this nuthouse."

Clara waited until he exited the room before she crossed it. She took a shaky breath before she reached out and touched Richard on the arm. "I'm so sorry that Darcy is an awful person."

"I'm sorry. If I. Scared you," Richard was looking down and his hands twisted together.

"I mean, maybe don't choke every rude person?" Clara said, trying to diffuse the tension between them. "But Darcy deserved it. I knew I wasn't going to be able to marry him because I thought about how you sat with me and held my hand when I had the morphine nightmares. With you, I felt safe. With Darcy," Clara shook her head. "Honestly? I can't even imagine him caring enough to do it. And I haven't even told you thank you. For saving me. For...everything else."

"Mmm." Richard let himself look up briefly. As always, he was searching Clara's face for revulsion, but other than the morning he terrified Emily Schroeder he hadn't seen it.

Suddenly he wanted, badly, to tell her saving her was the only good thing he'd done since he was placed on a transport ship headed to France. Saving her made him think his continued existence wasn't a cruel joke by God. He wanted to tell her that since she and Jimmy burst into his life in Chicago, he didn't go to bed wishing every night that he wouldn't wake up in the morning. That protecting her meant he got to spend time with her, and suddenly there were hundreds of small moments every day where he almost felt happy. Sometimes he actually felt like the person he was and not the monster he became. Even though he knew Clara would never think of him like he sometimes allowed himself to think of her, that having a normal woman like her think of him as a friend was all he can over hope for...most days she smiled at him or seemed genuinely happy to see him and it was enough.

Clara sighed when he looked away again. She let her hands smooth her skirt without thinking about it, mostly because she was fighting the need to step closer to Richard.

"And Richard, you aren't something that would ever give me nightmares. I'm so sorry, that's what you thought." Clara turned to look out the window, because she wasn't sure she could continue if he could see her face. "I wish I could tell you what the nightmare was about, but I can't. I've never...I told Jimmy right when it happened when we children, but I've never," she had to take a big gasping breath to keep herself from crying and turned back to face him, "I've never talked about it since. But it's not...it isn't...I like your face."

Richard stepped back, but Clara stepped forward with him. She brushed back a lock of his hair that came loose in the struggle with Darcy, and Richard went absolutely still. "It's a very nice face that had something excruciating happen to it, which I'm so terribly sorry about."

Her breath was ragged, and she felt Richard turn his his head slightly into her hand. She continued smoothing his hair, and started to take another half-step closer to him.

Jimmy burst through the door and was startled to see Clara stroking Richard's hair. Richard jumped back and Clara looked down at her hand when they noticed him.

Jimmy looked back and forth between them. Jesus Christ, Jimmy thought, he should have seen it before.

"Nuck needs us, Richard."

Richard was sent out to check on a delivery for Mr. White, and when he returned, he was shocked to see people all over the apartment. Some of the people were women. Some were naked. Some are worse than naked-they were wearing corsets made of black leather that left parts of their bodies (the parts people usually keep covered) out. One woman was bent over, her rear end in the face of someone Richard was reasonably certain is a judge.

"Good, you are back. Clara is in her room. Make sure the hallway to her room stays locked," Jimmy told him, while a woman wearing only a negligee clung to his arm.

"What's. This?" Richard asked, looking down at the floor and wringing his cap in his hands.

"Nucky's having a party." Jimmy answered with a grin.

He unlocked the hall door and heard music drifting down the hall from Clara's room.

"It's. Richard. Mmm. Harrow," he gasped out as he knocked.

Clara smiled, always amused at how Richard announced himself like some other Richard ever came to her door, like she wouldn't know his voice, or even the sound of his knock. "Come in."

She was sitting on the floor with a notebook in her lap when he opened her door.

"Ah, your first Enoch Thompson party," she said laughingly when she saw his expression. "Now you understand why I have a phonograph in my room. It's so I can block the sounds." Clara stood up. "I understand if you'd rather be out there. I've lived through these parties locked in this room since I was little, what's one more?"

"Mmm, no," Richard said, terrified at the idea of going back out into the suite. A small voice in his head wandered why he felt less awkward sitting in Clara's room. Clara was lovely, and fancy, and rich. Even before, when he was a real man, Clara would have felt like someone from another galaxy. She smiled up at him, and he let his eye go over the faint dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose, the bright blue of her eyes, and the way her blouse fluttered over her collarbone, and the bit of creamy skin with another light cropping of freckles disappeared down her blouse. He swallowed hard. He couldn't let himself think of Clara like this. She was his friend, she was his employer's daughter, she was Jimmy's sister (more or less).

"Good, then you can have dinner with me," Clara walked out to her balcony and beckoned him to follow.

There were two small tables, one in front of the other.

"See? You get privacy, and I don't have to eat alone." Clara moved to the front table and took the cover off her plate. She knew the situation was fraught. Richard had never eaten in front of her, and she worried about when he did eat. Part of her wanted to tell him she could guess it was messy, but she didn't particularly care. She'd watched the Commodore eat, and it couldn't be as bad as that. Part of her just wanted to tell him as long as she was with him she didn't care about much. Clara took a shaky breath and realized Richard hadn't moved. "Have you eaten?" she asked quietly.

He shook his head.

Clara shrugged. "Then come have dinner with me. I promise I won't turn around unless you say its okay."

He swallowed and moved to the table behind her. Clara was as good as her word, and she didn't turn around. The food smelled good; Clara had ordered pot roast and mashed potatoes, and he could eat both of those things. She'd even ordered peach cobbler, which was his favorite. He wondered if she knew that. It took him a few minutes, but finally he took off the mask and set it on the table before bending his head to pray.

Clara heard the sound of metal on the table but kept staring out into the ocean as she ate her dinner. It was a quiet meal, but she couldn't remember when she'd enjoyed dinner more.


Out in the suite, Nucky motioned to Jimmy. "Did Harrow get back?"

"Yep. I sent him to make sure no one tries to get into Clara's room."

Nucky looked pensive.

"What?" Jimmy finally asked.

"I was thinking that I would never let any bodyguard, except you, get this close to Clara. But with that poor bastard's face, what does it matter?"

Once more, Jimmy wasstruck that Nucky didn't know the two people who he claimed to know best-Jimmy and Clara-at all.