"I'm Harmony." As soon as the words have left her mouth, she wants them back. So much for professionalism.
"Call me…Mo," she says, and if she says it a little too quickly and her voice trips a little bit over the nickname she's just invented on the spot, well, university Sophomore Clara Oswald isn't exactly the suspicious type. She's a sweet, trusting little thing, a little bit spunky but not an Amelia, not by a long shot, at least not yet.
"Mo? Seriously? Are you sure you're alright with that?" Clara asks, laughing. And actually, she's not alright with that, not at all. Mo is a ridiculous name, ridiculous enough to draw attention to itself, which is exactly what she's trying to avoid. And Harmony is even worse, for obvious reasons. She'd been planning on calling herself Hannah, a nice, normal name. She'd briefly considered calling herself Harmony, and she'd wanted to, of course, but she'd discarded the idea quickly. Apparently not quickly enough. And now she is going to have to live with being called Mo. The only 'Mo' she'd ever known had been Amy's neighbor's cocker spaniel.
"Yeah," she says, "It's all I've been called for years, I just can't answer to anything else," she lets just a little bit of how upset she really is at that name creep onto her face and out of her mouth with a sigh.
"Right then, well I'm Clara, Clara Oswald."
"See now that is a lovely name. Thanks for the pen Clara Oswald," she says, twirling it between her fingers and grinning.
"Oh no problem, brought that from home. British pen, you know, must have been calling out to your subconscious. Good thing too, this book," she shakes her head at the item lying open in front of her on the table, "incredibly boring," she closes the book with a clap that is just a little too loud in the quiet university library.
"So, my new friend Mo," she continues brightly, smiling and leaning forward, "where are you from?"
She weaves the story of Mo's life to Clara's bright trusting smile, and within an hour they're friends. The have dinner together, laughing and chatting over hamburgers, and when Clara gets a text from her friends to join them at a club downtown, she insists on bringing Mo with her.
"I'm really not the club type, Clara," she insists, pushing at her thick glasses pointedly as they finish paying for their hamburgers and step out into a crisp early autumn evening.
"Me either, that's why you have to come with me, Mo."
"Un-cool people travel in pairs?"
"Birds of a feather, Mo, we have to stick together!" Clara declares, looping her arm through River's.
It's exactly the kind of response she'd wanted, of course, for Clara to think of her that way. She has to shove down a twist of guilt anyway.
The club is too loud and River hangs back with Clara at the bar, watching her slowly nurse the drink a shady looking character down the bar a ways had bought for her. He keeps looking at Clara, and something in his eyes sets off little alarms in River's head. Clara, of course, is oblivious. She's a lightweight too, and there's already a looseness to the way she holds her glass and a slight slur to her words.
"Really Mo, you don't drink? At all?"
"It kills brain cells."
Clara giggles, "You're even more un-cool than me, Mo, I'm going to have to keep you around."
"That sounds like a great basis for our friendship, Clara," River says, jostling the tipsy girl with her shoulder and taking a drink of her coke.
A man comes up and asks Clara to dance, and she's just out of it enough to agree. She follows him to the dance floor, and she's only weaving a bit, turning back to wave at River. She looks incredibly small and somehow even younger against the crowd and the flashing lights. River returns her wave before turning back to the bar, suddenly wishing she could drink. A glass of wine would be wonderful. She picks up Clara's drink, swirling the amber liquid around the bottom of the glass a little regretfully, briefly fantasizing about a Time Lord pregnancy book she'll soon find on the TARDIS, with a line that says something like, "unlike their human counterparts, alcohol is good for the development of baby Time Lords.'"
When she looks up, something is wrong. It takes her just a moment to scan the bar and realize the man who had bought Clara's drink is no longer there. In fact he's nowhere near the bar. Alarms go off in River's head, and she's on her feet, eyes scanning the crowd as she weaves into the throng in the direction she's seen Clara go. She sees the man Clara had gone off with, dancing with a tall blonde, no Clara in sight. Which is bad, very bad.
"Excuse me!" she yells over the music, standing at his shoulder. He doesn't notice, but his partner does, a confused sort of look on her heavily made-up face as she takes in River's out-of-place clothing. She whispers something in his ear and he turns around. He doesn't seem to recognize her.
"My friend, the girl you were dancing with before, where'd she go?"
"Cute little brunette?"
"That's the one."
"Some guy wanted to talk to her, said he was from her school."
Bad. Very bad.
"Did you see where they went?"
"Um, that way I think," he says, pointing off somewhere over her left shoulder.
"Thanks," she tells him, "nice shoes," she tells his partner. They are nice shoes, strappy but with a decently thick heel, good for running. Rivers spares her tennis shoes a brief, regretful glare.
She continues through the crowd in the direction he'd said, and she finds them. He's standing too close, sort of looming, and his hand is on Clara's arm. He turns and starts walking back toward where the more private booths are, taking Clara with him. He's just sitting Clara down, a bit too insistently for comfort, when River catches up.
"There you are! Geez Clara, everyone's looking for you," she says, angling her body so she can see where his hands are at all times. Up-close she likes him even less. His eyes still have that look that had worried her before, and now the way he moves and the set of his shoulders is far too confidant, too trained, and it makes her fingers twitch for her gun.
"Mo!" Clara says, moving to stand up, but the stranger is still too close, and he doesn't move, blocking her from exiting the booth, "Sorry, Mo, this is….." she trails off, and River does her best not to roll her eyes, because really, who wanders off with a man twice her size who hasn't even properly introduced himself?
"Tom," the big man says, eyeing River in the same way she's been eyeing him, "my name's Tom, I've seen Clara around at school."
"So you're a student?
His smile is arrogant, and he's far too bold when he says, "I could be."
"Okay. Clara it's time to go," she says, pushing into his personal space, trying to crowd him away from Clara. For a moment he doesn't move and his hot breath fans across the back of her neck as she picks up Clara's arm and pulls her out of the booth. He doesn't smell right. There's a faint electric smell, and not enough of the earthy, sweaty, humany smell that 21st century toiletries aren't developed enough to cover. She turns to face him, and with a smirk he finally takes a step back, something metallic glittering in his hand.
She takes a moment to commit his face to memory, and then takes Clara's arm and pulls her back toward the bar quickly.
"That guy was kind of creepy wasn't he Mo?" Clara yells in her ear.
"Obviously! Come on Clara, you can't just skip off with some guy you know nothing about! You didn't even know his name!"
"He bought me a drink…"
"I don't care if he saved your bloody life, do not go anywhere with weird men!"
#####
As soon as she has Clara safely secured at the bar with a group of her friends taking a break from dancing, River slips to the edge of the room and circles back toward the booths. She's just in time to see the man who had taken Clara slipping out through a back door. She follows, carefully opening the door and ducking behind some overflowing rubbish bins just outside.
Clara's new friend is talking to someone on what River recognizes immediately is a very fancy, early Time Agency issue communicator.
"-so she was interesting. Oswald though, she didn't have a clue what I was talking about."
He's quiet for a moment, listening.
"…..Of course I got a sample, a piece of hair, but I don't think it'll do any good. I scanned her and, get this, all the readings were inconclusive. She's got to be using bio-dampeners."
There's a longer moment of quiet, and then;
"Should I try to put a tracker on her too? She's probably still here."
There's more silence, and then,
"Right then, understood, I'll let you know how everything goes."
River moves quickly, knowing he'll be turning back to the door, and she needs to be inside, with Clara, by the time he starts looking for them. She'd apparently done enough to arouse his suspicions for one evening.
She slips quietly back into the building, watching the man turn towards the door just as she quietly pulls it closed behind her. She locks it, hoping he'll assume it's an automatic lock, and hurries back toward the bar.
Clara is still there, but her friends are not. River suppresses a flash of frustration, because really, who leaves their drunk friend alone at a bar? Especially Clara, who's already proven she has a tendency to wander off with strangers.
"Clara," she says, coming up next to her, "where did everyone go?"
"Dunno," answers Clara, and now River can see that there's another empty glass in front of her.
"Did you have another drink?"
"…yes."
"Clara, Clara, why are you doing this to yourself?" she asks her, exasperated.
Out of the corner of her eye, she notices the man from outside approaching from the direction of the front entrance. He stops when he sees them.
"Evan bought it for me."
"Evan? Who's Even?" River asks, distracted.
"Have you ever seen that one movie, with the blonde girl who sings and the glass shoes?"
"…Cinderalla?" Over Clara's stooped shoulder she watches him from the corner of her eye, but he doesn't make any attempt to get closer, which means he's either waiting for an opportunity, or he'd been told by his boss not to bother getting any trackers on her. Not that she'd let him.
"That's the one," Clara says.
"Clara, what are you talking about?"
"You know that hot bloke who marries her?"
"…the prince?"
"Yes. That's Evan," and then she starts to tear up, "but I'm not his Snow White," and then she's blubbering, still going on about Evan, and through the tears River gathers that Evan bought her the drink, and then proceeded to run off and snog some girl named Carrie. Or maybe Candy, she can't really tell.
"Okay," River says, "I think it's time to go home."
The strange man doesn't make any move to stop them, and River somehow navigates the public transportation system with Clara, who alternatives between manically happy and weepy every few minutes. At one point, she looks up from River's shoulder and says, "Mo, I think I'm drunk!"
"Really now?"
"I think so, do you think so? I've never been, before," she giggles, and then the giggling turns into tears again, and River rubs her back and watches the city slip by outside the bus window.
"Really," she whispers, "I'm the one who's supposed to be having the mood swings."
Clara manages to direct River to the dorm room where she's staying, and River stays with her, helping her get cleaned up and into pajamas before she crawls into bed.
Clara doesn't have a roommate, but the room has an extra bed, and River settles herself on it, feeling guilty that she won't make it back to Anthony tonight. She can't leave Clara alone like she is though, especially with some unknown time traveling entity apparently taking an interest in her. She also needs to figure out what kind of tracking device the man at the club had planted on her. Pulling her computer out of her pocket, River scans Clara's passed out body, and sure enough, he'd slipped nano-trackers into her blood stream, probably via injection while he was holding onto her arm. They're very good trackers too, transmitting not just her location but everything she says and does as well. The thought of it makes River's skin crawl, and her first thought is to neutralize them immediately. It would be too easy though, for him to find Clara again. Better to wait until Clara's left New York.
Unhappy but resigned River settles onto the extra bed. She checks to make sure that Clara is still very much passed out before tapping against her hip done in a specific pattern to drop the perception field around her abdomen. It's still a rather small bump, but she smiles when she sees it.
"Hello there baby," she whispers, sliding her fingers across her stomach. He's still sleeping, of course. Even through the bio-dampeners she can feel the soft, resting hum of his little mind.
"Since you're asleep, I can tell a story about your Grandma being naughty," she smiles, resting her head back and staring up at the ceiling, remembering.
Rory collapses next to her on the floor of the hotel room, resting his head back against the mattress of the bed.
"Told you this was a bad idea," he says.
"Oh please Rory, don't start," Mels' voice comes out muffled, her head resting against her knees, "it turned out alright in the end."
"Sure," Rory answers, "if by 'alright' you mean, 'avoided getting arrested'."
"I didn't think she'd be such a light weight," Mels says, a rare apology edging her words, "thank you for coming. I know it's far, and, uh, pretty late," she pauses, then continues softly, "you didn't have to come, you know."
"Mels," Rory bumps his shoulder against hers, and Mels turns her resting head to look up at him, "I'll always come."
Behind them Amy lets out a loud, gurgling snore and they dissolve into giggles.