*comes out of hiding*

Sorry about leaving everyone hanging after last chapters horrible end. (I never promised this would be a cheerful story)
Anyway I'm back and the end isn't too far off, only a few more chapters to go.

Thank you to everyone who has favorited/followed/reviewed this story. I always love reading all your comments, they make my day :D

Enjoy

~Crash~

Clara swims through a violet sea which stretches out endlessly in every direction. There is nothing beyond the warm hazy water surrounding her. With each stroke she pulls herself forward to what she knows not. The collar around her throat is heavy and slows her down. It drags through the water, a long gray-black line, pulling her towards the bottom.

Steadily Clara sees someone swimming towards her out of the murky darkness. It's a girl with dark hair which floats around her, blocking her face. Another push of the water moves the girl's hair to the side. She is staring at herself. But no, the girl she is swimming towards is not her, she only looks like Clara. She stretches her arm out knowing she needs to reach the girl who shares her face. Darkness rises turning the violet sea black. Their fingers reach for each other…

Clara wakes with a start, lurching upright as the potion wears off. Gasping for breath, her heart beats painfully fast and her whole body aches. She fights to remember what happened, while realizing she's in a bedroom she's never seen before and wearing a rough linen tunic which isn't hers.

The room is small and sparsely furnished. A chest of drawers and a bed that is little more than a cot. The single other item in the room is a chair which is currently occupied by John. He jumps to his feet and rushes to Clara's side the moment her eyes open. Pale and drawn, he seems to have aged overnight. His fingers twitch as if he wants to reach out and touch her, but John keeps his distance.

The previous night returns in a flood of unwanted images, disjointed and blurred with whole sections missing altogether. It's enough to piece together what happened. More than enough.

Clara stares at the shape of her knees under the thin blanket. She doesn't breathe. She doesn't blink. She can't really think.

She was…

Clara can't even say the word in her own mind. She never thought Harold would actually- bile rises in her throat like the scream she's chocking on. Running, crying, bathing in a vat of boiling acid to remove him from her skin, is what she wants to do. To remove her skin. She can't be in it, it's wrong.

Clara doesn't move, she refuses to. If she does then he steals her mind too. He already took her body. It isn't hers anymore. He was inside it, he stole it from her. Clara feels cold and dirty and broken. Her body is cracked porcelain about to crumble apart.

She will not cry.

Less than thirty seconds have passed and the world has changed completely. John is still standing beside the bed watching her helplessly.

"Clara?" he begins hesitantly.

His voice is hardly more than a whisper and she still flinches anyway. Immediately Clara feels horrible. This is John. He got her out of there; she knows he did, though she can't remember more than seeing his face. This is the man she loves, the man who would never hurt her. He saved her and now here she is hurting him.

"I am sorry." He murmurs stepping back before Clara can say anything.

"No." Her voice is hardly audible as the tears she's fighting begin to leak silently down her face. Her fingers reach toward him. "Please."

John is at her side in an instant folding Clara tight against his body. She needs this. Something stable, someone to ground her, prevent her from drowning in her own mind. Pressing her face into the warmth of John's body she fights to suppress the memory of Harold's fingers around her throat. She thanks the universe and any deity out there that she was too far gone to remember the rest.

Oh god what is she going to do? Clara feels a burning hate curl in belly. She isn't going to let him near her again; she is going to make him pay. The anger cuts through the helplessness, it isn't much but she isn't going to drown. Clara will not let him take anything else from her.

Slowly she pulls back from John's tear soaked shirt to look up at his face. His strange old eyes have never been darker or more careworn. She can see the barely contained rage there.

"I should have come sooner. What he did, I should have stopped him. I should have -"

Clara touched his face softly. She doesn't want him to blame himself, she couldn't stand it. "No. You did come." Leaning in to brush his lips with hers softly she whispers, "Thank you."

John turns to stone beneath her hands, his eyes wary. "Love, I can't. You are vulnerable right now."

Clara has the strangest urge to laugh, something she doesn't even know she's capable of anymore. "Damn your honor. Please just kiss me."

It may be months, or years, or never before she's okay again. Before she's the woman she was yesterday morning. But for right now she needs to feel something good, to feel loved and cared for, and worth something. And Clara tries to tell John all that when she presses her lips to his again. Slowly he understands and comes to life under her touch. He kisses her carefully, softly, smoothing over some of the cracked porcelain of her body.

John jerks back as the door crashes open, instinctively shielding Clara with his body. Panic floods her, her mind filled with images of Harold coming back for her. Instead she sees a troop of palace guards rushing the small bedroom. Clara barely has time to react before they are dragging John from her. Ripping him from her arms.

She shrieks like a mad woman trying to reach him as the men pull him struggling from the bed. Another solider grabs her from behind to stop her. "No! Let go of him! Stop!"

Ten men to one, John is quickly subdued and clapped in heavy iron maniacs. There is a bruise already being to form under his left eye. He doesn't react, just keeps his eyes steadily fixed on Clara. She knows John is trying to reassure her, but she's not stupid. They've found them together.

"Sir John Smith, First Knight of the Gray Kingdom, you are hear by charged with treason." Says Angelo, the Captain who first brought Clara to the Violet City. "This treason includes the dishonor of the Crown Princess of the Violet Kingdom and the murder of Prince Harold Saxon of the Gray Court."

John's head snaps up in surprise at his words. "Saxon is dead?"

Angelo continues as if he didn't hear him. "For these crimes only one punishment is fitting: death by the executioner's axe. Now take him away."

Clara screams his name as John is dragged from the room.