Chapter 5: Never Again

Clara woke in the middle of the night with a jolt. She blinked rapidly as adrenaline spiked in her system, and she stumbled to her feet. Again, she heard the sound that had woken her, loud shouting and banging. She stumbled toward her door, and then stopped when she ran into something solid.

Gwen caught her with two strong hands. "Clara, you need to come with me," she said, and began to pull Clara toward the front of the house.

"Why, what's happening?" Clara demanded as she fumbled with the robe she had managed to snatch from a chair in her room.

"Put these on," Gwen ordered as she shoved a pair of boots at her. In the dim light of the streetlamps streaming into the house, Clara could see her friend's eyes roving the street. "You had an intruder. Owen took care of him, but we have to move. We already have a go bag for you in the car."

Another shot of adrenaline ran through Clara, and she felt the baby girl inside of her kick. "Is it the Silence?"

Gwen nodded as she grabbed the front door handle. She made eye contact with Clara. "Stay here until I tell you to move, and then be quick."

Clara nodded, but otherwise didn't respond as she stared after Gwen with wide eyes. Her breath got caught in her throat as Gwen did a sweep of the front garden and moved toward a car that was already parked in the driveway with her gun in hand.

The Torchwood agent turned back toward Clara. "Now!"

Instantly, her feet were moving, and she hurried to the car as quickly as she could manage, which was no small feat considering she was nearly 36 weeks pregnant. She didn't seem to take a full breath until the car door closed behind her and Gwen came around to the driver's side. Owen was already in the other back passenger's seat.

He turned toward her. "You alright?"

She nodded as Gwen quickly reversed out of the driveway and got them on the road. "Yeah, I think so." She glanced through the back windshield as the little house she had called home for the last nine months began to fade from view. "What did you do with the…?"

Owen shook his head. "Don't worry about him. I took care of it."

Clara felt a little shiver go up her spine. She didn't want to know what that meant. "Where are we going?" she asked instead.

"Owen already called it in, we have another safe house set up for you," Gwen said. "And don't worry about your birth plan, I've already sent a message to your doctor to go to the nearest hospital that's close to the new place. He works for us, so it'll be fine."

Clara nodded and felt a rush of affection. Only Gwen would think of attending to that worry before she could even voice it. "How long until we get there?"

"A while," Owen said. "You might as well go back to sleep."

Clara let out a slow breath and leaned back in her chair. Given how keyed up she was from the whole ordeal, she wasn't sure sleep would come to her, but soon enough she began to drift off.

She woke up to Gwen softly jostling her. "We're here, Clara."

Her eyes fluttered open, and she turned toward her friend. "Where are we?"

"Your new home," Gwen answered. "Best not worry about exactly where yet. We may move you again in the morning."

She nodded and unclipped her seatbelt to stumble to her feet. Light was just beginning to pour over the dirt road she could see that led up to a clearing surrounded by trees. In the middle of the clearing, was a house very similar to the one she had been in before. Even in her foggy state, she could tell this home was much more remote than the other had been.

Clara let Gwen lead her into the house. Owen had already settled on the couch in the small lounge—both his and Gwen's bags tucked underneath an end table next to a modest couch. Clara continued to follow Gwen into the one bedroom in the back.

She let out a slow breath as she sat down on the bed and brought a hand up to cradle her stomach. "I guess we made it, baby girl," she said softly.

"Have you thought up a name yet?" Gwen asked as she set Clara's bag down on a chair.

Clara nodded. "Ellie May. Ellie for my mum and May for Matt's bio-mum. He mentioned to me once that if he ever had a daughter, he'd want to call her May."

"That's lovely," Gwen said with a smile. She nodded back toward the front of the house. "I'm going to make Owen and I something to eat, you want anything?"

"Please."

Gwen nodded and started toward the door.

"Gwen?"

Her friend turned back to face her. "Yes?"

"Do you think—" Clara bit her lip. "Do you think they found me because I went to hospital to see Matt?"

Gwen let out a slow gust of air. "I honestly couldn't say, Clara. It's possible, but we can't know for sure."

"But it's possible."

Gwen's eyes were full of sympathy. "It is."

Clara went quiet and let her eyes fall to the floor. She heard Gwen leave and close the door behind her on the way out to offer her some privacy. After a moment, Clara felt herself begin to shake a little as she started to process everything that had happened during the last eight hours. She pulled in a shaky breath. This was most likely her fault. She just had to act on her impulse to go see him. She'd known it was dangerous for both her and Ellie—and anyone who was protecting them—but she had gone anyway.

Clara felt something shift within her as she thought through how close of a call her bad decision had led to. She couldn't allow herself to do that again; there was too much as stake.

"Never again," she said softly as she rubbed circles around her stomach. "I promise."

It wasn't long after being moved to her new safe house that Ellie arrived.

The whole day was a bit of a blur for Clara. She remembered brushing off the initial contractions she had experienced as being the same Braxton Hicks that she'd been feeling for the last several days. Soon, though, they began to increase in strength, and before she knew it Gwen was driving her to hospital and calling Jack to come as quickly as he could.

She had never been so happy to see his face than when he came through the door straight to her side.

She'd taken his hand gratefully. "You made it."

He nodded. "Of course I did; I wouldn't miss it."

Little miss Ellie May Smith arrived into the world with a full head of hair the same color as Clara's, and eyes that were clearly Matt's. Clara had instantly fallen in love with her the moment the nurse laid her on Clara's chest.

"Oh hello," she had said quietly. "Welcome, little Ellie. I'm sorry your daddy isn't here, but I promise you that he wants to be. We'll go home to him soon."

She looked up at Jack, and smiled at the tear he was furiously trying to wipe away. "She's gorgeous, Clair-bear."

Clara reached out as best she could to squeeze Jack's hand. "Thank you for being here, Jack. I couldn't have done this without you."

He gave her his winning smile and leaned down to kiss her forehead. "Smithy is going to be so happy when he sees you both."

They both looked up when they heard the door to her hospital room open. Clara froze when she saw who entered space.

"What the bloody hell are you doing here?" Jack spat. "Who even let you in?"

Dave Oswald ignored him and instead took a couple hesitant steps into the room. "Hi Clara."

Clara curled Ellie into her chest just a bit tighter. "Answer him, Dave."

Her father flinched at hearing her use his first name instead of dad. "Linda heard that you'd given birth. I just—I wanted to see how you were."

"Clearly I'm fine," Clara answered flatly. "I thought I made it clear the last time we spoke that I didn't want to see you anymore."

Dave shifted uncomfortably on his feet. "I just thought—"

"I think you should leave." Clara didn't want him to finish that sentence. She hated the cold, resigned feeling she had wrapped around her heart, but didn't offer Dave even the smallest amount of sympathy. She knew by now that if she gave him an inch, he'd take a mile.

In her arms, Ellie cooed softly, and that only steeled her resolve.

"If I wasn't clear before," she continued when Dave stayed silent. "I'll make it explicitly clear now. I don't ever want to see or hear from you again. I don't want you to show up anywhere near me, I don't want you to call to check on me, and I never want to hear about you reaching out to my daughter when you think I'm not looking."

Hurt twisted around Dave's features, but he seemed to understand that she wasn't going to budge on this issue. He nodded. "Okay, Clara," he said quietly, and turned back toward the door. "I promise—this will be the last time you ever hear from me."

He paused, as if to give her a chance to change her mind, but when she didn't, he opened the door and exited the room.

Clara let out a slow, relieved breath when the door shut behind him with a soft click. Relief washed over her, and she looked down into her daughter's now sleeping face.

"Never again," she promised softly.

It was in the months that followed that Clara decided it was high time she began learning how to protect both herself and Ellie. Not long before Ellie was three months old, she sat down with Jack. She'd been considering this request for a while now, but her most recent safe house change prompted her into action.

"I want you to train me to be like you," she said to open the subject.

Jack nearly spat out the tea he was drinking. "I'm sorry, what?"

"I want to receive the training you got from Torchwood," Clara stated clearly. "I want to be able to defend myself and Ellie. It would be so much easier, Jack. Then Gwen and Owen could go home and be with their families, rather than stuck here with me indefinitely."

Jack blinked and shook his head. "Clara, they don't mind. It's their job to protect you."

"Then wouldn't it at least be helpful if I could also protect myself? Then they'd just have to worry about Ellie if anything went wrong, rather than the both of us."

Her friend let out a slow, resigned gush of air, and Clara sensed victory was at hand. "Smithy wouldn't like it if he thought you were putting yourself in danger."

"Matt would want me to be able to defend myself and our daughter," Clara pointed out sensibly. "Jack, I'm not asking to be an employed agent, just to have an even playing field."

He studied her face for a moment, and then nodded. "Fine," he said. "We'll start tomorrow. But!" He paused her excited smile with a finger. "If I feel like you're starting to unnecessarily put yourself in compromising situations I'm going to drag you and Ellie to headquarters to keep you there."

Clara lurched to her feet and wrapped her arms around Jack's neck. "You won't regret it, Jack."

"I better not," he muttered as she turned at the sound of Ellie over the baby monitor. "John will kill me if he ever finds out I let you put yourself in danger."

As it would turn out, that defense training would come in handy.

As she had learned and improved upon the skills that Jack, Gwen, and Owen had taught her; Clara had begun to enjoy a bit more freedom. Soon enough, they began to let her out of the house for grocery shopping trips with only Gwen—who would wait out in the car—accompanying her. Clara relished this newfound freedom, as it was the closest she would get to being alone for a long while.

It was on one of these trips that she had run into someone she had hoped she would never see again.

"Well, you're looking well," the voice purred from behind her.

Clara flipped around on her heel with wide eyes as the blood rushed from her face. A few steps behind her, River Song stood with a sly sinister smile.

Her heart started pounding and she felt her hands start to shake as memories rushed forward in her mind. Fear coursed through her as she was temporarily trapped in a flashback to the warehouse, and she looked around the secluded aisle of the store wildly as she searched for Simeon. If River was here, he surely wouldn't be far behind.

And then she shook her head and pulled in a deep breath. She began to engage her five senses in the scene around her to force herself into the present. As part of her training, Jack had connected her to one of Torchwood's psychologists, who had been helping Clara to do trauma therapy she had never even attempted with Dr. Jones. Thankfully, it had been going well, and Clara used the lessons she'd learned in those sessions to remind herself that she wasn't that same scared girl whose traumas had gone unchecked in the years before she met River Song. Nor was she the same woman who had followed River into that warehouse.

Her mind went to Ellie, then, and her heart slowed even further. No, she wasn't that same person at all.

"How did you find me?" she demanded.

"Oh, Clara. Did you really think you could run forever?" River shook her head as she took a step toward her. "Surely you knew that we would find you."

Clara's hand reached back into the pocket that held the knife she always carried. "Don't come any closer," she warned.

River stopped in her tracks and glanced up at the ceiling. "Relax, Clara."

Clara followed her gaze and caught sight of a security camera. She didn't relax, though, instead she took advantage of River's momentary distraction to step back from her. "If you're not here to kill me, then what do you want?"

"I heard you had a daughter," River said. "A lovely little thing named Ellie. Is that right?"

Clara's jaw ticked at the sound of her daughter's name coming from River's mouth. "What do you want, River?" she asked again.

She let out a laugh, but it was anything but warm. "Fine, I'll get to it." Her expression became serious then as she took another step toward Clara. "I want you to stay away from Matt."

Clara blinked. "I—"

"For good," River emphasized. "I think you know as well as I do how much better it would be for him if you allowed him to continue moving on. How much better off he would be without you complicating his life—putting him in the same danger that you're in."

Clara narrowed her eyes. "I think I can decide what's best for Matt and me on my own, thanks."

River regarded her with curiosity. "You're much more…" She glanced Clara up and down in a way that made her shiver. "Well, more, than what you were the last time we met."

Clara kept her spine straight and her eyes fixed on River. "Being on the run will do that to you."

"But you have faith that you'll return to him, don't you," River stated rather than asked. She narrowed her eyes. "Even more so, you think he'll take you back?" She laughed again, and the sound made Clara's heart sink. "Oh, sweet little Clara, did Jack not tell you?"

Her heart squeezed nervously, but she kept her features in a neutral expression. "Tell me what?"

River's eyes flashed mischievously. "Our dear Matthew has moved on—with me."

The blood once again rushed out of Clara's face, and a ringing started in her ears. "What?"

River smirked and began to walk backwards. "That's right, miss Oswald. Did Matt never tell you? He and I have history. One that predates his time with you." She chuckled and spun around on her heel. "And one that will go on now that you're out of his life, it seems. So!" She looked over her shoulder at Clara. "Stay away from him, and I won't tell Simeon how I found you. Deal?"

She didn't give Clara a chance to respond before she disappeared.