A/N: We finally get a shootout, Harrow making an incredible shot, general heroism, and hurt/comfort. Following along in the series? The events take place during Paris Green

"I'm not sitting in the back seat."

Richard wants to argue with her, but she's the other Clara this afternoon. Other Clara terrifies him. Other Clara wears expensive clothes. She goes to hotels for luncheons and stands in groups of women dressed just like her, and they laugh in a way that doesn't seem quite real. She looks like someone from a moving picture. She stands differently. She talks differently. "I'm your driver. You should. Sit in the back."

"You are driving me. You are not a driver. There's a difference. If I were driving, would you sit in the backseat?" He knows there's a logical fallacy in her reasoning, but it seems altogether safer to get her in the car and off the street. He helps her into the car and flinches slightly at the feel of her hand against his fingers. When she moves her hand, he misses it.

"That was a complete waste of my afternoon. Real things are happening in the world, women getting the vote, a presidential election, European refugees. Still, I'm supposed to spend my afternoon listening to people complain about the servant problem? I could have spent the afternoon writing."

"Mmm, why. Do you. Do it?"

"Well, it was my bridal luncheon, so I rather had to show up." Richard's hands tighten on the wheel as the vision of red finger marks on her arm swims in front of his eye. "Of course, I didn't have one real friend there. Just a lot of people currying favor with my father."

If someone asked Clara to explain how Richard would maneuver them into the house, she wouldn't be able to. It was something akin to participating in a square dance, but there was no music, your partner had a gun, rarely touched you, and seemed to think assassins were hiding in the azalea bushes.

He pushed her back behind him as soon as they crossed the threshold. She knew why in a flash. The house was deathly silent and still. No one could be in it.

Clara looks into the living room. No toys, no blankets, no sign anyone lived there at all, except for a letter propped on the mantle.

They stare at each other. "I think this moment of domestic bliss has concluded. Do you want to tell my father, or should I?"

Within two hours, they are moved back into the Ritz-Carlton. Eddie assigns Richard the small box room next to Clara's room, and the men move in the bed Clara bought for Margaret's house.

Clara lays in her bed that night, trying to read This Side of Paradise, but her mind wanders to the fact Richard is on the other side of the wall. She still tries to focus before realizing reading is a lost cause at the moment. She gets up, sits on the floor, and starts tapping on the wall.

Richard is lying on his bed, enjoying the freedom that is removing his mask when he hears tapping on the wall separating his makeshift room from Clara's. He bounds out of bed, thinking she's calling for help, but then he recognizes the pattern. It sounds like morse code. It takes him a second to realize she's tapping out hello over and over again on the wall. He doesn't know what to do at first. Then he has to think about how to tap out his answer.

'I am here' is what he finally decides on.

There's silence from her side for a moment, and then the tapping begins again.

'I am glad.' Long after the tapping stops and he imagines Clara is asleep in her bed, he looks at the square of plaster and wonders why.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Hey, you," Jimmy says as he walks into the drawing-room.

"Hey, you." Clara answers. Jimmy hands her his cigarette after she responds, and she takes a long drag. "How are Angela and Tommy? I haven't seen them since I've been under Ritz-arrest."

"Tommy's great." Clara worries about the gap in the answer. She also worries about the fact Jimmy's eyes look like blue glass. They could be a doll's eyes. There's nothing behind them.

"Could they come here for a visit?" she asks.

"Okay, sure," he answers distractedly. Clara sighs because it's clear he's lost interest in speaking with her. She wonders when Jimmy started treating her like a nuisance.

"Richard, you and I are on Nucky this afternoon. Ted O'Bryan is going to cover Clara."

Richard says nothing but he doesn't like this change in procedure. Ted O'Bryan isn't careful. The man doesn't think (although, sometimes, Richard wonders if Jimmy thinks before working a job even though he feels a stab of disloyalty when he considers it). Richard needs this job, though, so he doesn't argue.

He, Jimmy, and Nucky leave the hotel by the door to South Iowa Street, where Thompson's limo is parked. In the lobby, Richard watches Clara and O'Bryan go out of the main street door to Pacific Avenue. She had needed to go to the library. He remembers her saying earlier in the day. It is a twenty-minute walk.

Richard's eye never stops moving. Something is bothering him. O'Bryan let Clara walk to his left, which meant she was on the street side. Not safe. Not what his mind is telling him he's missing, though.

Clara is thinking about what she needs from the library. She's also out of paper, so she needs to stop at Woolworth's. The one on Ocean Avenue near the library, she decides, because the one on the Boardwalk carries more tourist gear, and won't necessarily have the things on her list.

A car drives into the curb facing the wrong way. She sees the face of a kid in the window, and then O'Bryan, who was walking slightly ahead of her, no longer has a head. She blinks as a fine red mist settles on her face.

Before she can scream, a thick hand clamps down on her mouth and nose. Another arm snakes around her waist and tries to lift her off the ground. She slams her heel down on the top of his foot (a trick Jimmy taught her when they wrestled as kids), which causes him to loosen his grasp enough that she can bite his fingers.

"Richard?" Jimmy asks, confused as to why the man is staring down the street.

"Cover Thompson," Richard growls as loudly as he can before he pulls out his Colt. He knows what he heard.

Clara draws in every bit of breath she can. Richard had been in the lobby; she could now only pray he was still around the corner and not already in the car. She screams his name as loud as she can, terror evident in her voice. The man is trying to get her to the car. She kicks wildly, pushing off against the car with one leg. The kid she saw in the window grabs her other leg.

He's running before she stops. Jimmy and Nucky, not already aware that something seemed amiss, are a few steps behind.

When Richard turns the corner, his mind puts together a field map. O'Bryan's body. A large man is holding Clara with a gun in his hand, but not at her head. Her leg held by someone standing behind the car door.

She sees him, but he forces himself to ignore the terrified look on her face. She's just another form. She has to be. He does register that she stops flailing.

He stops running and crouches while raising the gun. He wants to go straight through the man's eye. He can't risk a cheek shot, to close to Clara's head. Must be a kill shot. Lessens the chance the man can pull the trigger on the gun held at Clara's side.

The sound of this one shot rings through the sunny afternoon. It's a clean shot. Unfortunately, Clara freezing when she saw Richard's gun means she's off-balance, so the man falls and the person in the car doesn't let go of her leg she hits the ground hard. The car takes off, and she's going across the sidewalk. Richard prepares to shoot again to stop the vehicle, but there's no clear to shot to take. As he nears, the person in the car lets go, and she falls to the pavement. She's trying to push herself up when he gets to her, but something is wrong with her left arm.

He recognizes the look in her eyes and on her face. Trauma. Terror. She's going into shock. At first, she stares blankly at him when he gets to her, but when he leans down over her he whispers "Trust me," and looks her straight in the eye, she nods and throws her uninjured arm around his neck. He lifts her and runs for the side door. He's watching everyone and sees no apparent threat. He'll have to utilize the elevator. Eight floors are too much to carry Clara, which takes both arms. The first part of his mission accomplished, neutralizing the immediate threat, his next stage is to get her to safety.

Nucky and Jimmy round the corner of the block just in time to see Richard lifting Clara. Jimmy takes careful aim at the speeding car, but only succeeds in destroying the back window. Watching Clara let Harrow help her reminds Nucky of his daughter's words from a few weeks ago ("If something happens, the children's survival could depend on their willingness to go to him," she said, standing in Margaret's bedroom wearing those ridiculous Oriental pajamas.) His ever-practical princess, she knew befriending the bodyguard could pay dividends.

Meanwhile, two dead bodies lay on the sidewalk. Clara's purse sits in a pool of blood.

Jimmy stands over the dead gangster, considering the placement of the bullet and the circumstances of the shot. "I could have never made that shot, Nuck. If Richard hasn't been here..." Jimmy let his voice trail off. "Look, he put the bullet in as straight of the scumbag's eye as possible to keep it away from Clara. And he couldn't shoot at the car, because Clara was within inches of going under the wheels as it is."

"My daughter, James. They went after my daughter."

"I need. To put you, hmm, down," Richard tells her when they near the elevator. Her hands are still clinging to his shirt. He gently pulls her away and props her up against the wall, noticing she can't put weight on one leg. He pulls his Colt and sweeps the room while waiting for the staff elevator to open, terrifying the operator when it does.

"Take us. To her floor," he orders, picking Clara back up.

The elevator operator put the required key in the eighth-floor slot and didn't speak a word. The princess of the Boardwalk covered in blood and clinging to her weird mask-wearing bodyguard was just another day at work at the Atlantic City Ritz-Carlton.

Richard carries her into her bedroom, grabbing the quilt at the foot of her bed to wrap around her. She's shaking. Suddenly, he had an image of Clara leaning in front of him, telling him it was going okay while rubbing his hands.

"It's going. Hmm. To be okay. I'll be right back." He dashes to the hallway to the bar cart, grabbing one of the sodas Eddie keeps on the cart for a mixer. Out of habit, he grabs a straw. When he comes back to the bedroom to hand it to her, her hands are shaking too hard to hold the bottle.

When Nucky and Jimmy walk in, they see Richard carefully holding the bottle so Clara can drink. Nucky is horrified at her condition. Her face is covered in blood. Her's, or O'Bryan's he's not sure.

"Are you all right?" Jimmy asks her. Clara nods, not trusting herself to speak.

"She needs a doctor. She can't put. Weight. On her left leg. Mmm. Something is wrong with her shoulder. She hit her head. Mmm. Could be a concussion." Most words he'd ever heard the masked man speak at one time, Nucky thought to himself.

"Harrow, you saved my daughter today. I won't forget it. I'm sending for the doctor."

"Stay with her, please," Jimmy asked, but before he followed Nucky, he watched Harrow. Richard's actions in planning the shot, the way he retrieved Clara, the way he assessed her injuries... Clara wasn't going to be the only traumatized by today. Jimmy'd bet money that mentally, Richard had returned to the battlefield.

"I can feel his blood on my face," Clara whispers when they are alone. Richard nods, and goes into her bathroom, bringing back towels and the white metal first aid kit from the shelf.

Richard gently wipes the cloth across her face. Usually, he can't bring himself to look at Clara directly in the face. Now, though, he has to, because he also can't bear for her face to be covered in gore. It's the same feeling he had when her skirt brushed the case with the dead German's sniper mask. He needs to believe there's something whole and untarnished left.

Suddenly, he has a flash of the boy he was before the war. The boy who preferred his drawing pencils to his pistol, who loved Tom Swift books, whose talent at sharpshooting was pure happenstance and only developed past raw talent because his sister, Emma, loved shooting so much. Sometimes, when Clara's treating him like a normal person, he can almost feel that boy inside him. The idea he might not be dead inside is far more terrifying than the idea that he is.

When the doctor comes, Richard steps outside. He considers that few kills have ever given him the satisfaction of destroying the man terrorizing Clara. The rest of the d'Allessio family must die. Clara is an innocent, not a soldier. Having to shoot so near her, knowing that if he miscalculated, Clara died, made it hard to breathe.

He hears her scream. At first, he thinks he's just reliving the feeling of standing outside and hearing her cry for help moments after he heard the sound of a gun with a silencer. Then he realizes she's screaming for him now.

She's standing, wobbling, in the corner. Her ankle is wrapped, and some of the worst of the scrapes are wearing bandages. The doctor and nurse are standing in front of her.

"Get back," Richard growls. They instinctively get out of his way.

Clara reaches out with her right hand for his arm to steady herself. "They say my shoulder is dislocated. They tried to hold me down," her whispers are desperate. He looks at her left arm hanging and knows they are right. He also remembers Clara being held down by the d'Allessio and knows why she's scared.

"I know they have to do it, but...can you do it?" She's fighting back the tears. "I just need it to be someone I know won't hurt me."

Richard nods. A memory of a nurse with soft dark hair and a British accent who held his hand and told him stories about growing up in Yorkshire every time they debrided his face floats in front of him.

"Fine," the doctor answers when Richard tells him of Clara's plan, "but you can't let her move."

He steels himself to touch her. This is different from carrying her. She stands facing him, balanced on one leg as he wraps his left arm around her so that her right arm is trapped. She lays her head against his shoulder, and he feels her eyelashes moving against his neck. His other hand moves to hold her head still, which really means he's cupping her head in his hand. He makes sure that her face is against his good side. It feels like he's embracing the woman he's closest to.

The memory of the way her breath caught when she rubbed his hands, after his face scared little Emily Schroeder, when Clara realized how close he was to her comes back to him. No decent woman could stand to be near him for long. He still can't resist smoothing her hair back. She whispers, thank you. He tries to feel nothing, but the feel of her hair against his hand, her torso pressed against his, makes him think of the dream of Odette on the beach. The doctor makes quick work of putting her shoulder back in place; Clara screams in real agony, but then it's over, and she's sagging against him, and he isn't sure what to do.

It's why he doesn't realize what the doctor is doing until its too late until the needle has already pierced Clara's skin.

Morphine. Richard doubts he would have lived without it, but when he thinks back to the dreams and terrors he had while medicated, he knows he would have picked death. The combination of terror and the drug is disastrous. The doctor finally leaves, and Richard knows he has to prepare her.

"They. Mmm. Gave you morphine. It's going to make you have. Strange dreams," Clara nods her understanding, her eyelids already growing heavy.

Suddenly, her hand reaches out to grab his as her eyes cloud over. Clara is well aware of the subject matter of her upcoming nightmares.

"Stay." She's out within minutes. The fallout from the earlier adrenaline rush, the activity of the afternoon, the emotional upheaval caused by having her close, and then finally the pure comfort of her hand in his in the calm bedroom lull him to sleep soon after.

When he wakes up, he's first aware of the feeling of warm flesh against his hand. For so long, no one touched him. Then he hears soft cries.

"His face, Daddy, his face!" she crying on the bed. Richard snatches his hand back and stands up and leaves her room. From down the hall, he hears Jimmy on the phone. He waits until Jimmy ends the phone call.

"Hmm. Clara. Is. Having nightmares. Morphine. I'm making. Them. Worse." Each word is a struggle when he first wakes up, but the effort is made worse by the confirmation that the girl who sunnily declared herself his friend minutes after seeing him without the mask finds him the same nightmare fuel as everyone else does.

Jimmy stares. He thinks about Clara throwing her arm around Richard. Clara, who holds herself at a complete reserve with almost everyone, but was talking to Richard about her writing minutes after meeting him. Who tracked Richard down on the Boardwalk the day they arrived from Chicago because she was afraid he would be thirsty and hungry. Who, according to Nucky, made the Schroeder family and Nucky himself accept Richard by sheer force of will. He somehow doubts Richard is influencing her morphine-induced nightmares. He remembers the meat of his morphine dreams all too well.

"Come with me," Jimmy orders as he heads down the hallway.

The covers are thrown back, and Clara's moving around on the bed. Fucking morphine, Jimmy thinks. He sits next to her and carefully touches her face. "Clara, wake up. It's me."

"Jimmy," she says, sounding on the edge of tears. "Where's Richard?" Jimmy looks up at the masked man, still standing in the hallway.

"Richard thinks he's scaring you."

Clara shakes her head. "No. Oh. Oh, Jimmy. It's because I keep seeing his face when I close my eyes. And his hand. I can't stop seeing it." There's a faint edge of hysteria in her voice. Jimmy closes his eyes. Of course.

"Rich, she's not talking about you. Clara, are you talking about Richard?"

"He said he wouldn't leave, Jimmy."

"I'm. Here." Richard says from the hallway.

"I can't stop seeing it. The blanket moves, and his hand falls out," Clara continues.

Damn it, Jimmy thinks. He climbs on the bed next to her, like he did when they were children.

"Remember when we were kids, and the Boardwalk didn't go all the way out. We would build a camp. We'd take peanuts..." Jimmy hopes like hell this works to move Clara to all the times they created their own world on a quiet Atlantic City Beach, away from the horrors of their little lives.