Chapter Five: What Never Happened

Jack had left Clara to her own devices after giving her a rather fastidious tour of the guest bedroom—a lavish personal chamber that included her own bathroom, desk, and walk-in closet. And although the young woman promised their host they'd only be resting for a few hours, she couldn't help but gravitate towards the collection of bath products perched atop the bathroom counter, the scents of lavender and stress relief immediately soothing her. Perhaps a bit of pampering wouldn't hurt.

"I'll be downstairs once you're finished if you still want me to show you my kitchenware," Jack winked before closing the door behind him, the note of finality reassuring Clara that that everything was going to be okay. That she was safe now.

For a good five minutes she couldn't do much else but hold herself together, her arms wrapped around her torso in a self-comforting embrace. She had stared death in the face for the first time in her entire life, and was unsure of how to recover from it. A part of her was truly convinced it had never happened at all. It almost felt like a trick, to hear her own breathing, the beating of her heart as it remained within her rib-cage, the ticking of the clock as time passed. How did life simply go on after a thing like that?

Easy, a voice inside of her said. It's indifferent. No matter what happens or how much you're hurting, time will continue to pass.

It was a truth she had continually reminded herself of from an early age. That life goes on, with or without certain people. This was simply an instance in which Clara was incredibly lucky. If anything had gone differently tonight, if Jack hadn't arrived when he did or if John hadn't held her hand when she so desperately needed it...

No, she told herself, backing up from that ledge. She would not jump into those possibilities, would not consider alternate endings when the actual one was clear and present before her. Jack had saved them, she and John were alive, and that was all that mattered.

Then why aren't you okay?

She dismissed the question with a quick shake of her head, promising herself that a shower was all she needed to relinquish herself from the ever-growing tension that began to build within her chest. It was a long day for her, having been whisked away by a doctor from London, nearly mugged by two Americans, and saved by another all in the span of five hours. And only two days before a potentially life-changing job interview. There was no one in their right mind who could go through that unfazed, Clara convinced herself.

Streams of hot water ran down her back as she showered, the water pressure immaculate to the aching muscles in her shoulders and neck. And when she was done, she wrapped herself in a fluffy white towel, hair dripping as she exited the bathroom to reveal her suitcase and carry-on waiting patiently for her beside the bed. So John had collected them, after all.

Dressing herself in a pair of joggers and a t-shirt, Clara padded downstairs with her laptop in tow, intent on getting some coffee back into her system, and perhaps retrieving the wifi password from Jack in the process. Luckily for her, it was taped onto the fridge, alongside a code that shut off the emergency alarm and a reminder for Jack to pick up teeth-whitening strips from the grocery store. Smirking to herself, she seated herself down at the counter, and logged in without difficulty.

As if by instinct, she began tinkering with 101 Places to See, reviewing her drafts, replying to comments, general upkeep that could have been done later if not for her pressing impatience to connect with the online world again. Bad things seemed to happen when she went off the grid; this past hour was a testament to that. Online was where she felt the safest—if not her own home, a place that was millions of miles and an ocean away. Seeing her website load onto the screen again was the near equivalent to jumping inside of her own bed and snuggling under the sheets.

But just minutes into her reunion with the Internet, a notification appeared in the corner of her screen. It was from Instagram, who had apparently detected her absence in the past day or so and had just now decided to check if she were still alive. Ozzieoswald (Nina's idea—she really ought to have changed it by now), see new posts from suggested users near your location!

Furrowing her brow, she hovered her cursor over the notification, and clicked on it without a moment's thought. The first few accounts she scrolled through were nothing extraordinary: low-res photos of carefree party-goers, roadies posing by the city's preeminent welcome sign (RENO: The Biggest Little City in the World), and several snapshots of unambiguous subjects like mountains and red wine. But it was the last user that caught her attention the most, the one that had her leaning forward in her chair until her nose was a mere inch away from the screen.

Jerking back suddenly, Clara realized what she was doing, and immediately looked over her shoulder, as if expecting someone there to catch her in the moment of instantaneous attraction and curiosity.

"John?" she called out in a level-headed voice. No reply. "Jack?" Nothing from him, either.

Good, she thought to herself. The last thing she needed was for them to think she was stalking.

Especially when her person-of-interest was the doctor that had gotten her here in the first place.

[smithtakespics] Oxford University Medical School | the one in the bow-tie

Of course.

The rate in which Clara's heart was racing outweighed the urge to roll her eyes as she clicked on his username and waited impatiently for the pictures to load, as if she were breaching something she knew she wasn't supposed to. His profile photo was of him wearing chopsticks like they were walrus tusks—an image that was so unprecedented to her that she began to laugh out loud, the grin that accompanied it becoming a permanent asset of her expression as she continued to scroll down. She was met with several outlandish photos of him, none of them particularly cohesive with one another, but each commanding her attention as strongly as the next.

There was one of him and his friends—a man with a kind smile and a red-haired woman who stuck her tongue out at the camera—biking down some treacherous-looking path in the South Downs Way. Another was a blurry picture of him gyrating, a regular necktie wrapped around his head as if he hadn't managed to yank it off entirely. The one she was most keen towards was a selfie he took in front of a mirror wearing his white coat, the caption reading, Amy wrote me a note in my lunch box that told me to have a great first day of clinicals and not to break anything. Perhaps it was the big, kiddish grin on his face, or the refinement of his white coat and purple bow-tie that had her staring at the photo longer than she ought to.

"What'cha looking at?" Jack accused her as he appeared to her immediate left, Clara yelping as she slammed the screen down with a great deal of force.

"Nothing," she told him, suddenly invested in the assortment of novelty drink coasters beside them. The Captain looked at her suggestively.

"I know a guilty conscience when I see one," he replied, bounding around to the other side of the counter. "Is it just me or have I seemed to invite two cyber criminals into my house?"

"Please, the only 'hacking' I did was logging into the wifi," she said with a small smile. "I hope you don't mind."

"I typically don't, unless you're trying to extract from me classified information from Torchwood, because then I'd have to kill you," the Captain warned her dramatically, opening the dish washer before beginning to polish his collection of coffee mugs. "Are you really Clara Oswald? And is your associate really a doctor? John Smith is a rather suspicious name."

"It is, isn't it?" She smirked, hopping off of her bar-stool and handing him the mugs one-by-one. "Well, I don't know enough about my associate to confirm his true identity, but I can say that I'm officially and properly Clara Oswald."

He gave her a look, as if something she said didn't quite add up as he then asked, "So then how do you know the Doctor? Why are you traveling with him anyway?"

The young woman inhaled sharply, pursing her lips as she tried to equivocate the madness of her day so far into words. How could she possibly explain her dilemma to this man without making herself sound utterly credulous? "To answer your first question, I don't. Second question, I'm a writer who really needs to be somewhere at a certain time, so I just sort of...hopped along for the ride." It was a response as frank as it was enlightening to her, a response that posed the the question of whether or not she was in fact too credulous, too naive and trustworthy for her own good.

But Jack only let out a surprised laugh, a glint of admiration in his eyes as he said, "So you're like a hitchhiker, then? Can't say I'm unimpressed."

She wrinkled her nose as she handed him the last mug, the words 'I'm Kind of A Big Deal' printed in bold letters on its polished ceramic face. "I prefer the term 'companion.' I read to him the directions and he gets us there, alive. Dear god, I hope we make it out alive."

"Well then consider me your truest blessing," Jack crooned helpfully, lifting up the cup in thanks before shelving it into one of the many cabinets within the colossal kitchen of Clara's dreams.

She told him the unabridged version of the story as he helped her make coffee from the Keurig, the amount of drink pods he owned outnumbering the amount of coffees Clara would ever drink in her entire life, the events of her day just pooling out of her from some coiled up part of her mind, as if the words were just waiting to be expelled from her like an insipid cough. She told the Captain everything—from her brink-of-tears meltdown in the airport terminal to the terror of having a gun waved in her face—and it was only when she had finished that she realized she was stirring her coffee far more violently than she'd intended.

Settling, she plunked the spoon into the creamy concoction, and handed it to Jack. He accepted it without argument, taking a long and thoughtful sip before speaking again.

"Wow," was the first thing he said, as if it were all still soaking in. "You're really busting your ass to make it to this Wayfarer interview."

Clara groaned, leaning back on the island of the kitchen in complete exhaustion of having to mull over the situation time after time. "It means the world to me," she muttered from behind her hands, the statement more to herself than to him. "It's just, I've waited so long for something like this. I can't miss this opportunity over something so trivial as distance; it's almost mocking. I travel all the time for stars' sake, and nothing like this ever happens!"

"It's a good thing you ran into the Doctor, then," Jack noted, tipping his mug off to the young man upstairs. "And who knows? Say you do make it to New York on time—which you will," he reassured her, upon seeing the traces of worry on her face. "You will have had this crazy, amazing adventure and an even more entertaining story to tell your interviewer. It's the perfect showcase of dedication and wanderlust, Clara Oswald!"

Biting her lip, she slowly nodded along with what he was saying. Her mother always told her that everything happened for a reason, and perhaps this was just one of those reasons. "You're right," she said after a while, sighing in consolation of the Captain's words. "You're absolutely right. Thank you."

"Not a problem," he smiled, nudging her gently with an elbow. "There's no way Wayfarer Industries could reject somebody like you. You're an eleven out of ten! Brains, beauty, and—judging by the way you handled your situation—you've got a little brawn in there too."

If not for that last bit Clara would have burst into a fit of emotional, overwhelming tears. "You do not seriously think that, do you?"

"I'm not the only one," he promised her. She didn't exactly know what he meant by that, but hugged him for it regardless.

"Thank you. Again," she told him, patting him appreciatively on the back. "You have no idea how much I needed that."

"You're welcome," he replied, squeezing her shoulders encouragingly. "Sometimes, all you need is somebody to remind you to give yourself a little more credit. To remind you of what's real and not real."

She nodded into their embrace, his cumulative scent of male hygiene products almost overwhelming as she pulled back and wiped the few tears that had gathered in the corners of her eyes. Never before had she met anyone so straightforward, for he held the kind of honesty that people needed to hear, in times of both good and bad. It was as if the young writer had floated away into the open space of her own mind and was steadily being reeled back into orbit, and she was wholeheartedly grateful for it.

"Okay," Clara breathed, refusing to well up again as she locked her eyes onto the Keurig in a determined glare. "How do we work this thing again?"

He was folding the shirt he wanted to wear tomorrow—a Van Halen v-neck that Amy insisted was made for women—when he heard three sharp raps at the door. "It's open."

"I come bearing gifts," Clara announced upon entering, her elbow pushing the door open fully as she balanced two steaming beverages in each hand. John immediately dropped the band tee to relieve her of them, when she explained, "The one in my left's a coffee, and the right's chamomile. Your pick."

John paused just a few steps before her, his shoulders slumping as he raised a hand to his chin in thought. "I'll take the tea," he finally decided, taking the cup from her before giving himself the chance to reconsider. "I'm hoping to get at least five hours of sleep before heading back out again. How does ten o'clock sound? Is that good?"

Her eyes darted towards the wall clock that hung right above the bed. 4:37 a.m. She was too exhausted to be surprised at how quickly time was running out from underneath them, but understood that if anyone had the right to be tired, it was John. In fact, as she peered across the room from above the lip of her coffee, she could see just how tired he was. Not in the way the shadows pooled around his eyes or how he ran an unsteady hand over his face, but in the way his stare flitted across the room, as if to ask, What next? As if he knew this trip was far from finished, and that he'd just have to keep going. There was no other option.

"Yeah, fine with me," she reassured him, taking a generous sip of her own mug before prodding over towards the bed, where the faded t-shirt lay in a crumpled mess alongside a pair of dark-wash jeans. "Finally decided to ditch the bow-tie and braces then?"

"Hm?" The young doctor's head perked up, as if he didn't fully hear her. "Oh, yeah," a small smile broke out onto his face, the tension and tiredness there softening for a brief moment. "You know, I am capable of wearing other clothes."

The corners of her mouth curved upwards as she raised the warm drink to her lips, sprawling the soft fabric across the mattress with her free hand until the design was fully visible to her. She drew her brows together in fascination. "Did you get to see them live in concert?"

"I did," he spoke with a grin on his face, the kind that carried along a specific set of memories that were uniquely his. "Though not legally. My good friend Amy and I sneaked past security because we couldn't manage to nab tickets on time. Her husband—fiancé at the time—is the most levelheaded person I know and refused to participate in the deed." His eyes glinted as he said this, as if he could see images far beyond Clara's frame of mind. And yet somehow, she understood how powerful those images could be, how transporting they were. It's what made her such a detail-oriented writer.

"Sounds...unlawful," she managed, finding amusement in her own lack of words. "Did you get caught?"

The look he gave her then was answer enough. "Nope. We shared seats with these three Irishmen from Cork, one of them was even kind enough to open my beer with his teeth!" He shook his head, leaning back against the bedpost and folding his arms across this chest. "Lovely man, he was. They were good people."

Clara furrowed her brow as she watched the whimsical emotions pass over the young doctor's face, her mind swarming with her own thoughts—such as if the two friends biking alongside John in that picture were the same two people he discussed with her now, or whether this man was even capable of feeling the tiniest bit of fear or precaution towards his actions, many of which sounded utterly forbidden to her. Was there anything on this earth that he could say no to, or did he feel as if every crazy idea was well within his reach?

"I never got the opportunity to thank you for earlier today," she started, staring into her coffee as if trying to find some sort of gift for him within the concoction of cream and sugar. "What you did back there...I could never imagine what that must've felt like, so I just wanted to let you know that I'm thankful for it. All of it."

She expected his reaction to be anything but the confused stare he gave her in return for her gushing confession. Resting her gaze atop of his in an uncanny sort of anticipation, she watched as he lowered himself down onto the mattress, tossing the Van Halen shirt aside as he asked, "And what exactly did I do to warrant such gratitude?"

Clara scoffed, unaware of the fact that he truly wasn't kidding when he asked that. "Do you not remember what happened to us? John, we were almost mugged."

He nodded slowly, as if waiting for the penny to drop, but it never did. "...yeah, I know," he said plaintively, pulling the shirt into his lap and fiddling with the tag on the collar. "I was there."

It was the way he said it that threw her off-guard, as if the near-robbery they had experienced was as idle as a walk in the park, or a light dinner. And that's what caused the wave of realization to pass over her, one that rang true to the distress knotted deep within her stomach. That this was the reason she wasn't feeling entirely at ease. Because John had flung himself between her and that gun without a moment's hesitation, and thought absolutely nothing of it. He was unafraid, unconvinced that it could do actual damage. And she saw that level of confidence in the absence of trepidation on his face.

The next time she spoke her voice was but a mere mutter. "I don't know whether to hug or swat you."

"Swat me?" Johns eyes widened, his hands on the shirt stilling. "Why on earth would you do that?"

"Because!" she exclaimed, as if her use of punctuation encompassed her entire explanation. "You...you planted yourself in between me and a gun without even batting an eye! You do know that a bullet won't just bounce off of you, right?"

"Well, of course I know that," he replied rather hastily; he had common sense. "I just didn't really think much of it at the time."

"Exactly my point," she stressed, clutching her mug far more tightly than was necessary. "Because you should. You should think about things before you throw yourself in front of them." Perhaps it was the fact that she hadn't gained an ounce of sleep in the past twenty hours, or that her paranoia was reaching a breaking point, but the image of his dead body grappled onto her mind and refused to let go.

John only shook his head, a mixture of bewilderment and disbelief in his eyes as he asked, "So, so what? You'd have rather me stood next to you and have those men point a gun at your chest? What kind of a person would I be if I'd done that?"

A sensible one, she wanted to hiss at him, but knew that he was right. That if he had just stood there and watched her die, he'd never be able to forgive herself. But then again, she could say the same for him.

"I'm not upset over you risking your life for me, John," she said evenly, trying to choose the right words to explain the source of her dismay. "It just...it worries me that you look at life as if it can do nothing to you, as if you can be a hero and walk away completely unscathed." She didn't know if her argument was even valid at that point, of if she was just an emotional and mental wreck, but she pushed forward. "You were so willing to take that bullet for me that it scared me, John. The thought of losing the only person I knew scared me infinitely more than dying ever could."

Her words were raw with the anger in which she said them, her voice but a scratchy plea as he sat there in silence, an unreadable expression on his face. Because yes, he was frustrated with her, unable to understand why she could ever be upset about something that was intended to be good, to be selfless. He didn't see where she was coming from, and that's what frustrated him the most.

"I'm not saying that it was wrong, what you did," she breathed, wanting to take a sip of her coffee, but finding the mug to be empty. She mashed her lips together, unsure of what else to tell him, because in all honesty, she didn't know what she would've wanted to happen. "It just surprised me how little risking your life mattered to you."

Her accusation hit him in a place he hadn't felt in a long time, their intention searing against his ever-growing resentment, trying to uncover what he'd worked so hard to bury beneath the surface of his skin. How was it possible that this woman had accurately determined things about him that many who knew him for years couldn't even see? How was it she was able to look straight through him, as if his self-imposed barriers were nothing to her? She had known him for a good six hours at the least. It was impossible. She was impossible.

But none of those thoughts registered to his face, and if they did, she didn't say anything about it. "You would've been fine on your own," he muttered under his breath, for something told him that it would take more than just a bullet to bring her down. That if he had died right there and then, she'd fought to keep herself alive.

And it was true. She would have. In fact, under the circumstances of that actually happening, she'd derived from her state of panic several plans of escape. Some of them were illogical, such as the one that included her getting back into the TARDIS and running the two convicts over, others were more steadfast, such as acting dead. Acting as if the bullet the man had shot had passed through them both. Just the mere thought of it was enough to make Clara sick.

"No, no I wouldn't have," she said darkly, detesting the amount of faith he had in her. He was a stranger, how could he possibly know? She was never that brave, and was fully convinced that she never would be. "If I had lost you this morning—"

"You'd have had a chance at surviving, and that's all that matters," he interjected, feeling an invisible sort of wall wedge itself between them. It had surprised him, to say the least, at how comfortable he was when talking to her today. Perhaps their difference of opinion was enough to finally make things uncomfortable, like two people who didn't know each other ought to be. "I will go to whatever end to keep the people around me safe, and that's something that will never, ever change."

Clara remained silent for a moment, hugging the mug close to her chest. She was acutely aware of the fact that this was an argument that had no distinct right or wrong, that it would just keep going and going until someone finally gave in, and for once she was willing to be that person. Her mother had always reminded her to work on her stubbornness anyhow, and perhaps it was about time she did.

"Look, I don't know why we're arguing about something that never even happened," John said frankly, running a hand across his face in exhaustion. "It's getting late. You're probably tired."

"Yeah," she nodded, unable to protest against that. "You should get some sleep."

Sniffling, Clara massaged the bridge of her nose as she drifted towards the door, the lack of resolution between them bothering her, but not enough to keep herself fighting as she laid a hand on the doorknob and turned it, about to let herself out before—

"It's only two days," John promised her, still sitting on the edge of the bed, clutching his Van Halen shirt. "Two days, and then I promise to be out of your hair."

She wasn't aware of how much those words hurt her, not because she felt insulted, but because it revealed that John genuinely saw this trip was nothing but an inconvenience to her, a side-step towards her ultimate goal. In some ways it was true, their situation was far from ideal, but not because of him. If anything, he had been the best part about this entire thing.

Though she couldn't find the words, or the strength, to tell him that. At this point, she didn't even trust her own tongue. So she merely nodded in his direction, and closed the door behind her.

A/N: Thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed, followed, and favorited this story so far! This is my last week of school before spring break, so hopefully I'll be able to update more quickly. Next chapter we will receive some much needed background for both John and Clara as they continue to travel across the country, navigating not only the roads but their own relations with one another.

I'm excited to continue sharing this story with you and hope you all have a good week!