TW: Canonical suicide attempt and mental health issues abound. This is a very sad chapter.

He'd become so accustomed to the light that when the darkness fell again he'd forgotten how to live in it. At first, it seeped in through the edges, until finally the darkness infected the brightest parts of his life. The darkness was always there, of course. Sometimes it was pitch blackness and all-encompassing. It had been that way after the war. The darkness lay so heavy over his father's farm in Plover that he thought it would suffocate him. He hadn't known until he got home, until Emma stopped giving him so much morphine that he wasn't even able to think, how much of the light in Plover emanated from his mother. The house was sad and quiet and colder without her presence. His family was quieter and colder. Even Sampson seemed sadder.

It was better that his mother died before she had to see him like he was. Or at least that's what he told himself. It's what he told Clara. How much better was it that she died thinking of him as her handsome son, the boy whom she loved for his impractical dreaminess, which was so much like her own? How much better was it that she never knew that his face became that of a monster and that his soul followed suit? The truth was, though, he lay in his childhood bed and wanted his mother. Instead, it was just Sampson who laid on the foot of the bed, or it was until Emma would run him out, saying dogs didn't belong in the bedroom. He missed Sampson's wet, heavy breathing noises when he was gone.

Emma took good care of him. She was kind and efficient and didn't treat him any differently than she would have before the war. He appreciated it. Richard knew that his mother wouldn't have been able to be so practical. She would have cried. She would have broken down. Sometimes he thinks she would have kept going until she broke through his walls and made him feel something. Instead, the darkness devoured him, and he was comforted by the lack of feeling it offered. He didn't have to look at his sister and see her confusion as to why he wasn't the brother she grew up with.

The darkness was easier to bear in Chicago. Maybe, he'd later think, because he didn't expect any light there. He was prepared to live in the darkness. He grew accustomed to people not looking at him, and to living a life where no one ever touched him. Even the doctors and nurses at the veterans' hospital seemed to go out of their way not to touch him, or to do so as little as possible. How could he blame them?

When choices were offered that would consign him to deeper levels of the dark, he took them. He later would pray they were the right choices, but in the end, his ticket to hell was already stamped with the blood of German farm boys he picked off from atop a tree, so what did it really matter?

And then Jimmy, and then Odette, and then Clara. Jimmy shook his hand, patted him on the back, acted like he was another man friend. Then Jimmy paid Odette. Richard no longer had to fear being asked about his sexual history. It was now verifiable. He could say her name, name a place, say exactly what occurred. And Odette seemed like a miracle. She touched him. She touched him in all the ways that felt like they came out of a half-remembered dream, and in ways he never even dreamed possible. Maybe even better, she let him touch her. Not only was he starved for the feel of people touching him, but he was starved for the feeling of touching other people. He was still dreaming of Odette when Clara stumbled into Jimmy's bordello bedroom.

Clara. Clara was sunshine, although he knew she would laugh if he told her so and tell him only he thought she was nice. Clara, like his mother, made everything warmer. It felt like she aimed light at him until he started to notice the darkness receding slightly.

Still, the darkness found a way.

"Mmm. In your book. Ruth. Seemed a lot like you," Richard said as they went for a drive.

"If you think you influenced Tom Cameron, you did. Girls should know that there are men in the world who are supportive of their dreams and ambitions. It's...revelatory."

His hands want to wring against each other, but they have to settle for moving against the steering wheel.

"That's not. It. Mmm. Ruth almost. Died. A lot. And when the man grabbed her. And almost pushed her. Off a ledge."

Clara set her hand on top of his. "Mr. Stratemeyer gives me an outline with all the major events of the book. All of the attempts on Ruth's life-the purposeful ones and the accidental ones-were his idea, not mine. I just fleshed them out. It helped that I know what it feels like to be vulnerable in that manner, but I didn't write those scenes because what happened weighs on me."

He doesn't quite believe her. Clara doesn't lie, exactly, but she shades the truth sometimes. "Not ever?"

"I had a few dreams where I wasn't able to get the man to loosen his grip long enough for me to scream for you," Clara has to clear her throat to continue. "But once you ran around that corner, I knew I was safe. I knew you'd save me. I don't like people to grab me from behind, but other than..."

She laid her head against his arm, and he doesn't tell her that he had to blank out her face when he made that shot. It was the only way he could do it, it was the only way he could shoot so close to her head. He doesn't tell her that he had dreams for weeks afterward where he didn't hear her scream, and got in the car with her father and Jimmy, unknowingly leaving her to her fate. The idea that Clara could be screaming in terror, thinking he would save her and he wouldn't hear her still haunted him.

That night, though, the darkness had a new dream for him.

He sees the glint off the fender of the Buick, but doesn't register that it's headed the wrong way down the one-way street, just like he didn't realize it in life. He hears the silencer shot that killed O'Bryan. He starts running, yelling for Jimmy to cover Nucky. He hears Clara screaming his name. He turns the corner and sees her being held. He steadies the gun, ready to take his shot. But his hand flexes and the bullet cheats slightly left. Instead of striking the d'Alessio hired gun, it hits Clara. Under the eye. Through the cheek. When he gets to her she's barely alive, and she's looking up at him with blood pouring across her face, not understanding why he shot her. He wakes up screaming.

And then the darkness knows. It knows Clara is his soft spot. She begins appearing in other dreams.

It's the dream, the dream the predates Odette. It's the dream that made him hesitant to take the personality assessment the veteran's hospital asked him to complete, the one that led to meeting Jimmy. He's hurt. His face is unbearably hot, and the field hospital is in chaos. Suddenly, there's a girl with him. She's blind, and her eyes are bandaged. It's from mustard gas. He doesn't know why an American girl was near enough the front line to get gassed. What he does know is the nice nurse, the one with the English accent who would tell him stories about growing up in Yorkshire with her sisters when the doctors debrided his face, gave the girl morphine enough for both of them and told her to take care of him. Outside the war raged, and when his dreams started she woke him by stroking his hair and telling him stories about mermaids. She climbs up on the gurney with him when the sounds of battle draw closer. Suddenly, he hears the shelling and throws them both under a nearby table right before the room explodes around them.

Just a dream just a dream just a dream he repeats to himself.

It never felt like a dream. They knew they are going to die. They were young, and inexperienced, and bandaged, but it was the first time he'd ever touched a woman's breast. It was the first time he'd ever felt the inside of a woman's leg slide along the outside of his own. It was the first time he'd ever felt a woman's hand close around him. And so on.

But it never happened. Just a dream just a dream just a dream said doctors nurses Emma. The dream of a dying boy who regretted never being with a woman, that's all. The dreams morphine gives a brain overwhelmed by trauma and pain and horror.

Being with Odette cured him of the dream. She was so different from the dream girl. The way she closed her hand around him, the way she showed him how to touch her, it was all so different. He finally accepted that the girl under the table was just the product of an inexperienced boy's dying dreams.

The night Clara told him to unbutton her dress, the night she laid back across his lap with her serious eyes looking up at him as he pulled the front of her dress down, the night she awkwardly closed her hand around him for the first time and he realized the difference between a young woman with limited experience and someone experienced like Odette? The darkness sensed his nascent happiness, it understood the potential for confusion, and the dream started to wind back up.

In the moment, it didn't matter at all. Although he'd tried not to think about Clara in that way, for so long she'd starred in his dreams and fantasies. So for her breath to be warm against his bad cheek and her other arm wrapped around his neck and her bare chest pressed against his side as she clumsily tried to figure out his rhythm? It was more than enough.

Weeks later the darkness began to torture him. Clara, with her dress unbuttoned, laying in rubble under that table. The darkness began to blend memories of Clara, his flesh and blood girl he dreamed about for so long, with the dream girl whom he had only wished to be flesh and blood. Slowly his memories of being with Clara were tainted. The chickenpox scar under the left breast, Clara or the dream? (Clara. He had to check multiple times to be sure.)

Then the darkness increased its torture. In his dreams, he'd relive his kills. He shoots the d'Alessio boy and Clara is sitting on the cot behind the boy yelling at Richard to stop. He turns around in that Chicago apartment to put away his Enfield and Clara is sitting on the bed, her face cut like Pearl's. He's in a tree and Clara's standing in no man's land, watching him cut down Germans. She begs him not to pull the trigger, but he does anyway. She's still standing there when the Germans shell the tree, and she disappears into a blast of light. The darkness starts with kill one and moves on through his latest, kill sixty-four, and inserts Clara watching into all of them.

The darkness doesn't manage to ruin his time with Clara. When he's awake, he tells himself they are just dreams. Clara's real, and he's slowly began to trust that what's between them is real. He still worries that one day she'll realize what he is and will leave, but for now, she smiles and whispers she wants him. That's all that matters. He's no longer starving for someone to touch his shoulder or wondering if anyone woman will ever take his arm.

They are laying on a blanket in the woods, dressed, holding hands and he's enjoying the simplicity of just being with her when she props up on her elbow. From the look in her eyes he knew wasn't going to like what she was going to say.

"My friend Rose, whom I met in boarding school?" Clara asked him. He remembered Clara talking about her. Nucky had made her go to some fancy boarding school for two years 'My father was under the impression that I was going to fit in with those people' she'd said bitterly when she told him about it. Rose and Romola were her only two friends from the period.

"She's coming back to America because her sister is marrying a man from San Francisco. The wedding is going to be at their grandmother's cottage on Rhode Island. She's asked me to meet them in New York and then go up for the wedding. I'm going to be gone three weeks. I'll miss you terribly, but I need a break from Atlantic City."

A dim room. Clara looking unbelievably lovely. He couldn't even look right at her. Earlier, they had danced and he thought about kissing her (later, he would find out only the arrival of her uncle and aunt stopped her from kissing him). Gillian Darmody had whispered into his ear that Clara's friendship was charity and she was using him to avoid sex, and then Clara asked 'You left home, you left Chicago, would you leave Atlantic City with me?' and he told her no.

Part of him still thinks he should have grabbed her hand and taken her away from her father and Jimmy's war. She was so vulnerable, and he still believed that no one was thinking about her best interest (including him, because he knows his love is selfish. A better man would let her go and let her find someone capable of happiness). He can't let go of his fear that she's going to end up being collateral damage, and he can tell that the fighting is wearing on her. Just like it's wearing on Jimmy, but Jimmy at least gets to make choices. Clara's being held hostage by other people's poor decision making. Maybe they should all leave.

"You could come up for a couple of days, or even just to retrieve me. Rose's mother is darling, and she'd love to meet you," Clara said.

He shakes his head. These people thought Clara wasn't fancy enough-what hope did he have?

That's when the darkness realized it needn't only torture him while he slept. Instead, it could whisper while he was awake. It started by asking what did he think a Wisconsin farm boy was doing with an East Coast princess? How could he possibly provide for Clara? He'd seen her attempt at making a bed. How could he expect Clara Thompson to sweep a floor or light a stove? How could he keep her happy? Did he really think that Clara would have children with him? At some point, wasn't Clara going to want someone who could sit at a dinner table with her?

The night before she leaves, he can tell that she knows something is wrong. She's trying to figure it out. He doesn't want her worrying while she should be having fun with her friends. So he pushes out the whispers and just enjoys one last evening with her. When they get back to the Ritz, he kisses her hard and deep, like he fears its the last time he'll ever get to touch her.

"I'll be back the Sunday night before Memorial Day because my father asked I be at the dedication for the War Memorial."

He brushes a stray curl away from her forehead. "I'll. See you. There."

Clara's eyebrows knit together over her eyes, and she runs her hand across the right side of his face. "Promise?" she said seriously.

"I promise."

After Clara leaves, the whispering gets worse. And then the darkness starts seeking new victims. Tommy is playing on the floor, and he wants Richard to play with him. Angela and Jimmy are in the kitchen, and Richard's pretending he doesn't hear them fighting. Tommy has always seemed genuinely fond of him, in the same breezy manner as Jimmy and Clara where they never seemed bothered by the mask or his face. Was it being raised on the Boardwalk, with freak shows on every corner, that inoculated them against the horror of his face? In their minds, was he just another oddity like Alligator Boy? (Suddenly, Clara's voice cuts through the whispers and he can hear her say with perfect seriousness 'Do you know how many freaks I've met? Countless. Do you know how many I've had feelings for? One. You.'). He wants to play with the boy as Capone did, casually romping on the floor. He was once a boy who romped on the floor, so it shouldn't be difficult, but it is. He and Tommy finally fall into a game of soldier, which is when Tommy sits on the floor and puts his hands over his head.

The darkness smiles.

He's no longer standing in the sunroom; he's standing in a Philadelphia storefront, and the youngest d'Alessio is fumbling with a gun and putting his hands up. Richard has to wait for him to stop moving so he can ensure a clean kill.

Jimmy has to call his name several times to get him back to the sunroom.

The darkness is relentless. He dreams the same dream all night. For nights on end. When he aims, it's the d'Alessio boy. When he fires, it's Tommy.

Angela helps, but then Angela hurts. He hasn't even told Clara as much about Emma and why he left home as he ends up telling Angela. When he takes his mask, Angela's reaction isn't Jimmy and Clara's-a flash of recognition, he finally thinks. That's how Jimmy and Clara looked at him the first time they each saw him. Like they recognized something in him as something in themselves. Angela just looks sad for him, and then interested in the technicalities of his face as she sketches.

He loves Jimmy and Clara. Differently, of course, but still. But since the morning in New York, he's felt a kinship with Angela. They are each a quiet person in love with a prince and princess. 'Suddenly they are Prince James and Princess Clara of the Boardwalk, and I wonder how Jimmy and I ever ended up together' Angela whispered in his ear the night of Nucky's party, as they sat quietly on the sofa and Jimmy and Clara acted like they were, indeed, the beloved royal children of the Boardwalk as they spun around entertaining Nucky's guests.

She gives him the sketch, and he realizes he's eager to see what he looks like through someone else's eyes. It's not like he's going to have his picture made with his mask off. He only knows what he sees in the mirror, what he sees reflected in the few faces of the people who see him without the mask (Jimmy's ouch, Clara's rapid blink, Emily Schroeder's screams, Blaine's fear and disgust, Angela's calm sadness). Then he sees, and it feels like someone has reached up and ripped all the skin from his bones. He's just...exposed. All the pain and fear he feels is there on the paper. Is that what people see?

The darkness begins to roar. It's a constant onslaught of 'you shouldn't exist' and 'monster' and 'broken' and 'heartless' and 'coward'. Then it starts using the voices of people he loves. His mother whispers that she despairs of his lack of integrity. His father tells him a man is nothing without honor. Emma says he's a coward. Jimmy yells they both should have died in the trench. Angela looks at him and quietly calls him a freak. And Clara calls him a monster over, and over, and over, and over.

In this middle of this, the Commodore has a stroke. It's not that he likes or trusts the Commodore ('I despise him, and I don't trust him...please be careful...the Commodore... there's no limit to his depravity' Clara had whispered as they walked across the Boardwalk arm in arm), but things are worse once he's out of commission. Gillian Darmody starts sitting in on meetings, and Richard knows whatever she's whispering into Jimmy's ear isn't helping anything.

He catches Sherriff Thompson looking at him. It was Clara's Uncle Eli who walked in on them at Babette's before the ball began. They weren't doing anything, but he knows that they probably didn't look innocent either. But Eli never said anything, and Clara said once that Eli had a better idea of who she was as a person than her own father did.

Jimmy is a good leader, Richard believes, but he's better with other people guiding the way. Richard would help, helps where he can, but this mission is so muddled he doesn't understand what the parameters for victory are. Every day is a new problem, a new decision, a new caper. Why the butcher, he wanted to ask Jimmy. The man was obviously dangerous and needed careful handling. Why add an extra level of complexity?