AN: Sorry you guys, but the thing is term has started again so I don't know how often updates are gonna be. I'm gonna try to be as regular as possible but I really have no idea what it'll be like, just to warn you. However the sparse, unpredictableness will only last til like this time in March, so only two months. And anyway it's a lot of fun chapters I have ahead. These mob ones are especially fun.

The Driver's Seat

Jenny

It was well and truly night when they left Kitty Winthrop's apartment building, almost chased out by the old woman who had somehow put together that a 5'1" blonde English girl was actually a mobster. Jenny, irked by this, put her hands in the pockets of Clara's borrowed leather jacket and skulked down the pavement, casting a meek glare at the building as it slid away into the evening fog.

"How'd she know I'm an O'Hara?" Jenny questioned, not really expecting an answer. So she turned to Clara herself and asked outright if she looked like a nefarious criminal.

"You don't look remotely nefarious, Jen. It's very misleading," Clara joked, then her tone turned somewhat sultry, "You're definitely nefarious, in all the right ways. And she probably just can't tell the difference all that well between an English accent and an Irish accent. You know that Esther can never tell the difference between my accent and Sally's." Jenny could hardly tell the difference, but Clara always maintained that there was a very distinct one and 'I aren't no toff.' Jenny never asked what that meant. Clara was on her right, and Jenny paused while they were walking down the rather empty street back towards the Porsche. Lucky Kitty worked in one of Viola's establishments; she knew where it was.

"You and I should hold hands more," she declared.

"Well we can't hold hands now, I'm on your right, that's your bad thumb," Clara pointed out, stopping walking as well, and Jenny pouted slightly.

"I know. I can't wait for it to heal. Martha refused me any of Oswin's Miracle Medicine, you know. Said suffering with it will help define my sense of self-preservation – as if a lunatic snapping my thumb off was because of me being reckless," Jenny complained about it to Clara, who had heard this sorry story a dozen times before, and still listened carefully whenever Jenny got to whining.

"Just don't think about it so much and the time will fly by. And, meanwhile, you have an excuse to stay with me," Clara said, "Besides, you have your hands in your pockets, how am I supposed to take one of them, hmm?" Jenny wasn't sure if Clara was entirely aware of what she was doing, but as she spoke she put her hands on Jenny's waist, as if to pull her closer, right there in the New Orleans open. "Anyway, it is still 1948. I'm still wary of if being openly gay is as good of an idea as you think it is."

"Are you joking? You basically have your arms wrapped around me," Jenny pointed out. She still had her hands in her jacket pockets, but Clara's hands were, by this point, touching, around the small of Jenny's back. Clara seemed alarmed at the way she had moved without noticing.

"Oh, god – sorry," Clara abruptly apologised, trying to free Jenny from her grip. It was getting chilly and a thick fog was rolling in.

"Don't move," Jenny said, and Clara froze, hands on Jenny's hips, as Jenny leant in to kiss her.

Very loud, foreign swearing made them remember themselves – Clara, mostly – and they paused when they were about to touch, both glancing down the street, the way they were heading, Clara still holding her. Jenny frowned, but was finding it tricky to see through the fog. Eventually, though, she made out two shadowy figures wearing expensive suits, long coats and fancy hats, and noticed, when one of them made a move to do something to the buckle of his belt briefly, that he was carrying a piece. They were very involved with an object down the street, about as involved as Jenny would like to be with her girlfriend, and she made a start when she realised the flashy, red Porsche was the thing captivating them.

"Uh-oh," she breathed.

"What's the matter?" Clara asked softly, but when Jenny began to move towards the two men, Clara's hands slid away from her waist uselessly.

"They're Scarpellis," Jenny replied briefly, when she realised they were speaking to each other very quickly and in Italian.

Clara nearly shouted, "They're what!?" though, by this point, she was pretty clear on who the Scarpellis were and why Scarpellis lurking around an O'Hara-controlled neighbourhood was very bad indeed.

"Didn't you hear what Viola said? She said the car's hot. Seamus said Johnny stole Big Sal's 'fancy new wheels.' That total – gave us a car to drive that she stole from the don of the Italian mafia! That's just like her," she grumbled.

"Shit – then what're we gonna do? Don't they know you, aren't you an infamous criminal mastermind?"

"Aren't I what? Clara, I used to brew moonshine and play the fiddle," Jenny hissed, "No they don't know me. Look, it'll be fine, if worse comes to worst… well, I doubt they have any stakes, and I've got Aphra." She shrugged and made to approach them again, ignoring Clara's meek and desperate suggestion that they walk all the way to the Green Bayou (which was at least five miles away on the edge of the swamp and would take nearly two hours.) "Hey! What do you think you're doing to that car?" Jenny shouted at them in Italian. And Clara's jaw dropped – Jenny didn't think she'd ever seen Clara Ravenwood look so gay as she stared at her in that instant.

"This car is property of Salvatore Scarpelli – and you'd do best to forget you ever saw us and it."

"That car belongs to the owner of the laundromat down the street!" Jenny protested fluently, "He's had it for months, keeps it clean – washes it with his own spit, so I heard; I see him do it, every day, I live in the block just two blocks away after the other block. You know, the block by First – you know first?" she babbled as she got closer to them.

"What're you talking about, blocks? Do you even know who Big Sal is?"

"Big Sal – Big Sal! He says Big Sal!" she said to Clara, but Clara was just staring, "Of course I know Big Sal. Runs the laundromat. Or – launders. Launders something, what does he launder…" she was right in front of them now, Clara still completely enthralled by her capacity to speak another language so easily, "Money!" she declared in English.

"Wait a minute – you ain't no American."

"I know that broad, Tony," said the other one to the leaner of the two – Tony, "Seen her around when I was younger, looks the same then as she did now. The dame works for O'Hara!"

"Sonofabitch!" Tony exclaimed, but it was too late. Jenny slammed the base of her left palm into his face, his nose to be precise, and it snapped beneath the force. They all heard the crack. He was left swearing with blood streaming down his face and messing up his nice Italian suit. As the second mobster went to pull out his gun, in a truly comical fashion Jenny kicked Tony in his gut and sent him crashing backwards into his partner, throwing the pair of them to the floor. Immediately she rifled through her pockets and dragged out her screwdriver to unlock the door, ordering Clara to go around to the passenger side before they got up.

They managed to get into the Porsche in about five seconds, before the Italian Mafiosos even knew what had hit them. Jenny started the engine and heard the Scarpellis outside shout that they had to get back to their car to have any chance of catching the Porsche.

"They won't shoot us through the window, they won't want to wreck Sal's car," Jenny explained to Clara, then she floored the accelerator right away.

"Can you even use the gearstick with your hand the way it is!?" Clara exclaimed as they in their stolen sports car tore away down the street – in the opposite direction, Jenny knew, to the Green Bayou.

"Gearsticks are for cowards," Jenny answered.

"Oh my god – we're actually gonna die," Clara panicked. There was a bang, a gunshot, from behind them. Jenny saw the bullet strike the road in front of them and bounce off somewhere.

"I thought you said they wouldn't shoot it!"

"Well I guess they think I'm more valuable to Viola than this car is to Big Sal – I'm practically the O'Hara consigliere," Jenny said, then she slammed the brakes and the car whirled on a ninety-degree angle and they shot off again down a new road, the Italians drifting just behind. Their car was fast, too, sleek and black and designed for this sort of work. A real muscle car. "Icing me would be the perfect way to get even for Carlito."

"Will you stop speaking like one of them!?" Clara shouted.

"I didn't want to say murder!" Jenny argued. A bullet shot out the back window and Jenny steered them into the oncoming lane, trying to ignore Clara's screaming. She thought it best not to mention that the bullet itself was lodged in the headboard of her chair; she didn't think Clara would be very pleased to hear that. Jenny threaded the needle down the middle of the busy street for a few hundred yards, ducking and weaving in and out of the two lanes of traffic while cars honked their horns and flashed their lights and veered out of the way. All the while the mobsters chasing them kept shooting wildly, bullets hiding the body of the Porsche.

"You know I was never in a car chase with your father!" Clara yelled.

"I like to keep things fresh," Jenny argued, "It'll be good for our relationship!"

"I didn't realise you getting your head blown off would be good for our bloody relationship!"

"Won't you calm down?" Jenny turned to her.

"Keep your eyes on the road!" Clara shouted, and when Jenny looked back they were heading straight for an enormous lorry honking its horn, the beast unable to get out of the way in time. So Jenny had to swerve violently and turn left into a narrow alley with a flight of concrete stairs at the other end, flooring the gas pedal. The muscle car didn't have enough torque to make the same sharp turn, nor was it quite thin enough to slide through.

As she drove up the stairs at nothing less than seventy she heard Tony and his bigger friend yelling they had to go around, one of them saying he knew a way to cut through a backyard to get to them. The stairs acted like a ramp and they got a few seconds of airtime. Jenny turned right when they got onto the next street.

"Why do you keep driving on the wrong side of the road!?" Clara demanded as they wove in and out of the traffic, Jenny still sticking mostly to the left.

"It's like a game of chicken," Jenny said, "They'll be coming this way in their muscle car-"

"They'll what!? Why are you driving towards them!?"

"The time it takes for them to turn around in the middle of all this chaos will give us a chance to slip away!" Jenny said, "Listen to me, Clara Ravenwood, you're the love of my life and I'm not going to put you or me in any unnecessary danger! Now, I didn't want to have to use them, but there's a box of .38s in that bag my mother gave me and I need you to get them."

"What did you say!?"

"Bullets, Clara! .38s! In the bag! So I can shoot out their tyres!"

"I meant the part where you said I'm the love of your life!"

"Pay attention! I need to load the gun!" Jenny said, shaking her head, keeping her eyes on all the traffic. The heavy fog wasn't helping, either. As Clara made a fumble in the foot well for the leather shoulder-bag, headlights followed by whole cars and trucks appeared out of nowhere opposite them in the oncoming lane. But she was a fighter pilot, for crying out loud, evading people on the road, where they could only come out of horizontal directions, was far easier than getting involved in an outer space dogfight. In those you couldn't even tell which way was up, no gravity at all, people coming from above and below as well as front and back. Clara finally found the bullets.

"I don't like guns, you know," she said.

"I've been alive for two-hundred years and I've never missed a shot, if I want to hit their tyres then their tyres are all I'll hit, don't worry," Jenny assured her, trying to keep a softer tone of voice, which was very tricky when she was having to shout over the thunderous engine of a 1940s sports car. Quickly she pulled Aphra the Revolver out of the back of her jeans where she'd been keeping it – just hidden by the bottom of Clara's borrowed jacket – and flicked it so that the cylinder fell open again.

"What – you want me to load it now?"

"Clara! Guns don't kill people! People kill people! I swear to you I am not going to kill anybody, now please load her before they show up!" Clara did as Jenny begged her to, though somewhat reluctantly, and she fumbled with the bullets a few times like they were liable to explode in her hands. Clearly somebody had never been brought up around live ammunition…

Out of the fog the yelling of Tony reached them again, quickly followed by the big Italian muscle car swerving through the gloom right ahead. The entire world slowed down; Jenny grabbed the revolver from Clara and, passing it into her left hand, ordered Clara to take the wheel. With her elbow she smashed the window apart and hauled her whole self halfway out of it, taking off the safety catch.

"What are you doing!?" Clara screamed.

"Keep the wheel steady! Turn left when I tell you to!" Jenny shouted over the wind, taking careful aim with the revolver as Tony did the same thing. But along with being a dab hand at shooting bullets, Jenny Harkness was also very adept at dodging them. And nobody could match her when it came to aim.

"Left!? The proper lane is on the right!"

"I SAID LEFT!" Jenny fired the gun. "NOW!" Clara veered left as the front-right tyre of the muscle car blew up, sending it spiralling in another direction. Tony fired too but shot out the window of a house on the side of the road, missing their stolen Porsche by a mile. Jenny clung to the top of the car while Clara did exactly what she asked. They were heading right for a garden fence once Jenny slid back in through the window, not knowing if the Scarpellis would be able to pursue them properly now. She could have shot out a vital part of the engine if she knew the mechanical layout of the Oldsmobile they were driving.

Heading for the fence, Jenny floored it, and they crashed through the wood and into somebody's garden, tearing down a washing line as she did, but she didn't let up on the gas. She knew where they were, and soon enough these gardens would back onto an underpass they could drive beneath to get onto the highway.

"These are peoples' gardens!"

"They can plant the flowers again!" Jenny argued, but the Scarpellis would easily be able to follow them by the chaos they left in their wake. And they did, too, even with their busted tyre, veering left and right, the Scarpelli car was still right on them. If she hadn't renounced swearing when she had last regenerated, Jenny would be able to think of a whole lot of very colourful phrases.

Things had changed since Jenny had left in the autumn of 1939, though. The highway above was still there, but underneath it had since flooded and morphed into a swampy little river, crested by thick mud on either side. They were heading straight down a hill towards this green, algae-covered water.

"Uh-oh."

"What!? Uh-oh!? What do you mean, 'uh-oh'!?" Clara demanded. Jenny looked around desperately, keeping her foot to the floor on the accelerator, and finally noticed through the fog and the dark that the river bank around this marsh was not, in fact, a river bank, but rather a raised, concrete levee. It must be a flood-risk zone – then again, practically all of Louisiana was a flood-risk zone. "What is that!? You can't just drive into it!"

"I'm going to drive over it," Jenny said, "Just hold on. I'm an amazing driver." She thought, just before they shot over the levee-cum-ramp, that Clara swore. But Clara swearing turned into Clara screaming very quickly. The levee worked very well as a ramp, in fact, as they soared over it in the high-speed Porsche. Glancing in the rear view mirror, Jenny saw the Scarpellis chase them down the hills and through the gardens while they were almost suspended in the air. The only thing was, the Scarpellis didn't make the jump over the new shred of river. Their Oldsmobile wasn't as fast as the O'Hara Porsche, and whichever one of them was driving wasn't pressing the accelerator. He chickened out of the pursuit too late to prevent both of them flying up into the air before sinking like a lead balloon into the river. It wasn't deep enough to drown them, but it was deep enough to wreck the engine.

The Porsche hit the opposite levee in the middle and jerked violently – the suspension was dire. They were going fast enough that the momentum, Jenny finally taking her foot off the pedal, to just be carried a way up the other hill. She saw the two Italian mobsters scramble to get out of the car, wading into the middle of the dirty water. They went to draw their guns and began shooting wildly at the Porsche, but she had turned right to head back towards the road onto the highway, the underpass casting a dark shadow over everything. Her left arm felt strangely hot.

"I told you," Jenny said when they were safe and sound barrelling down the highway a few minutes later, cold air getting in through the two broken windows, the hood of the Porsche thoroughly dented and scuffed from crashing through a dozen fences, "I'm an amazing driver. Not a scratch on us."

"You're bleeding," Clara told her a little monotonously.

"What?" Jenny asked.

"I can smell it, your arm." Jenny glanced down at her left arm, where that hot feeling had been, and saw that she was bleeding.

"Ah, that's fine. It's a flesh wound, just nicked me. Barely hurts."

"Martha's right," Clara sighed, "You really do have terrible self-preservation instincts."

Jenny beamed, "Thanks."

"It wasn't a compliment…"