Author's Note: Trigger Warnings for Canonical Mentions of Suicide, Incest, and Molestation

New York City June 1918

"I'm beginning to regret my decision to go," Clara told Angela while Angela slipped more of Tommy's belongings into a box." Tommy just started walking, and now I'm going to miss his first birthday. He'll be talking in complete sentences and have a favorite chop suey order by the time I get back."

"You've been plotting to get yourself to Europe since the moment I met you," Angela said, pushing down her anxiety about leaving the little world they had made on the Upper East Side and moving to Atlantic City while Clara steamed across the ocean. "There's no way you aren't going to go."

"Thank goodness Daddy is such a relentless social climber. The letter from Rose's mother, telling him how much they hoped he'd let me come to Europe and how I could spend my leaves at their manor house was like catnip. He couldn't resist. The fact that they've allowed Rose to work as a nurse on the front lines also helped, although he's still made me swear to stay away from France. I'm fairly certain Daddy's busy planning my marriage to the eldest son of a duke, and how he'll spend the rest of his life talking about his daughter, the Duchess of A Drafty Old Castle."

Angela laughed. "You're horrid. Your father loves you."

Clara smiled a little sadly. "He does love me. But Daddy... he's like a gambler, the kind who can't stop gambling."

Angela looked up at her, puzzled.

"The casino, sometimes Daddy would take us and I'd sit and watch people gamble. Some people gamble because they were having a night out and it was a fun thing to do, some people gamble to show off to their friends, but some people gamble because they couldn't not gamble. They were incapable of not making a bet. Daddy's incapable of not seeing the world by what advantages are available to him. So, yes, he loves me, but he's planned my entire life by what advantages I can bring him. When I was little, my mother and I made him look like a dependable family man. Then I was the motherless daughter holding her brave father's hand, which bought him votes. Sending me to Foxcroft brought a new echelon of people into his social circle, and gave me entry into social levels that he can't reach. Even working at the War Department, he pulled strings and found me a job where I meet people he considers desirable. Uncle Eli says he talks in hushed tones about letting me leave school and work for the good of the country when that's not anything like what he thinks. I know he basically smacks his lips when he thinks about marrying me off, to someone who will raise Nucky Thompson's profile, or bring him new political contacts, or get him written about in the society pages of the New York Times."

"What advantage does looking after Tommy and I offer Nucky?" Angela asked quietly.

It puts Jimmy in Daddy's debt, Clara thought with a flash of clarity. We won't be children when this over, and Daddy's still furious with Jimmy. He'd like Jimmy to feel indebted.

"Daddy takes his responsibilities very seriously," Clara answered.

Princeton July 1921

Clara woke up with the side of her face pressed against the floor and her blue knit sailors dress clinging to her body. She peered at the clock on the mantel and saw it wasn't quite midnight. Some days last years, Clara thought. It was just that morning she'd bathed, dressed in this blue dress she now never wanted to wear again and went with her father and Margaret to retrieve Emily from the hospital. It was just after lunch that Richard appeared in Margaret's foyer and said he loved her, that he needed her.

You were right, Angela, Clara thought. You'll be pinning flowers in my hair for my wedding. A wave of grief slammed against her so hard her body clenched in pain. It was selfish grief, she knew, but it still sliced against her with razor-sharp blows. Who was she going to tell about Richard in that foyer, who was going to celebrate when her Bobbsey Twin book was published, who would she giggle with over red wine or whiskey sours? Who knew all her little secrets?

"She was so beautiful," Jimmy said blearily.

Clara rolled over so she could see him. He was lying on his stomach with an empty whiskey bottle so near his mouth it made her think of Tommy as a baby, when he'd fall asleep with a bottle on the pillow next to him. She blinked at the idea of Angela being beautiful in the past tense.

"When I met her, she had these long brown curls, and she was just the sweetest person I'd ever known. I hurt her so much. I was the worst thing that ever happened to her."

Tell him that's not true, Clara thought, her urge to fix things for Jimmy rising. "She loved you," was what she landed on. Clara's mind fixated on the that it was their fault Angela was dead.

I promised to take care of her, Clara remembered. I failed. We failed.

"Being back here, it's like I can feel her, like she was before the war."

"Like she was when she was scared and told your she was going to have a baby and you responded by joining the Army and not speaking to her or even writing her for a little over three years?"

"Fuck you, Clara," Jimmy hissed and then turned away from her. She heard the sound of paper rustling.

Clara pounced and landed with a thud on top of Jimmy.

"God damn it, Clara, get off me."

"What the fuck, Jimmy? Remember Tommy? This is how you make it up to Angela for what we did to her, by crawling into some drugged out numbness?"

He grabbed her arm and twisted with a quick move, which resulted in Clara with her back on the floor and Jimmy looming over her.

It was the way her bright eyes looked up at him, with her fair hair falling over her cheek and her chest rising with rapid breaths. For a moment, he forgot it was Clara underneath him. For a moment, her hair took on a reddish hue, her freckles disappeared, and he didn't see his sister.

For the first time in their lives, Clara wasn't safe locked in a room with Jimmy, because for the first time, he didn't see her.

He saw his mother.

Atlantic City: November 1918

Angela startled awake, her head feeling like a drum was beating inside of it. She and Clara had finished off a bottle of red wine after Tommy went to sleep. Clara had fallen asleep in the bed next to her, but now Angela was alone. Rubbing her eyes, she saw Clara was sitting on the floor next to Tommy's cot, rubbing his back.

"Is he okay?" Angela whispered when she crawled to the end of the bed.

"He woke up, so I rubbed his back until he fell back asleep," Clara whispered back.

The moonlight streamed over Clara's face, and Angela desperately wanted her pencils. When Clara stepped off the train two days ago, Angela had been taken back by how different she looked from the young woman who left in June. The apple-cheeked fullness was gone from her face, the circles under her eyes were so dark they looked like bruises, and she'd clearly lost a lot of weight.

With the moonlight casting shadows, Clara looked even thinner and more delicate. Her clavicle was worrying visible under the open neck of her pajama top, and Angela imagined her skeleton was noticeably visible under the thin skin of her face. It was only two years since Clara had walked into that Princeton diner, but suddenly she looked at least ten years older.

"I'll put the kettle on," Angela said quietly. While she waited for the kettle to boil, she sliced bread and spread jam across it.

Clara sipped the tea and toyed with the bread. Angela tried to remember if she'd seen Clara take more than a bite or two since she'd been back.

"What happened?" Angela finally asked.

"It's not like I was in the trenches or anything," Clara answered.

No, Angela thought, but something happened. It was written in the darkness in Clara's eyes.

"You know, that day I found myself following you back to Atlantic City, I was in your room thinking, what have I done. I barely knew Jimmy, and I didn't know you at all. And then I saw Seventeen on your bookshelf, picked it up, and thought, this girl has terrible taste in books. But then you came back into the room, asked what I thought about living in New York, and asked if I had read that book because it was hard to believe the same man who wrote The Turmoil wrote that tripe. I knew any girl who hated Seventeen was a girl I'd get along well with."

"Well, and after living with you, my taste in art definitely improved. I didn't understand futurism at all until you took me to every exhibit in the city," Clara answered with a smile. "We had fun, didn't we?"

Angela covered Clara's hand with her own. "Clara, I never was in one place long enough to make a real friend, not one like you."

"You, Rose and Romola are the only real girl friends I've ever had," Clara said quietly. "And as close as I am with them..."

They sat quietly as the first light of day started filtering through the kitchen window.

Clara took a deep breath. She carefully chose her words, because, as the pain in her heart knew all too well, what she experienced wasn't a patch on what Jimmy experienced. The place where warmth used to live in her soul felt barren, so what was Jimmy going through? How could she add to Angela's worry?

"We were setting up a communication station and temporary headquarters in an area with a field hospital. The end of the war," Clara swallowed, "it was just...relentless. The Huns knew they were losing, but they wouldn't stop. They attacked the hospital." She stopped talking.

Angela felt all the empty spaces were the words Clara should be speaking but wasn't. "Is there something else?"

Clara pulled her hand away. "It's foolish."

"You aren't a foolish person," Angela thought for a moment. "A man?" she asked softly, watching Clara's hands destroy the toast into crumbs." You fell in love?"

"I always thought falling in love would be ball breakfasts and walking through the moonlight and kissing in the rain," Clara whispered.

"You were with him?"

Clara nodded without looking up.

Angela exhaled deeply. Suddenly, she was seized with the desire to tell Clara about Mary, to tell Clara how desperately lonely she had been after Clara climbed the gangway of the ship that was going to take her on a grand adventure in Europe. Angela decamped to a small apartment in a city she'd barely seen. Gillian, Jimmy's mother, who looked like an older sister, was the only person she knew. Gillian had limited patience for a messy baby, and the lonely girl her son had knocked up. And then she had taken Tommy into the photography studio to have his picture made and fell into conversation about the elements of composition in photographs with the pretty assistant.

Mary. Suddenly her life had new purpose, new meaning. Conversations with someone who cared about art, about creativity gave new depth to her days. Going to bed with Jimmy was terrific, but with Mary, it was even better. Mary knew exactly how to use her hands and mouth to play Angela's body like a violin. It was a level of connection and pleasure beyond anything Angela ever knew. As soon as Mary left, Angela started counting the moments until they could see each other again.

"Is there any chance?" Angela asked, seized with worry.

Clara shook her head. "I've had my monthly since then."

Good, Angela thought. Clara was strong. She would survive a broken heart. An out of wedlock child was harder to overcome.

"There's no chance?"

Clara shook her head again. They continued to sit quietly in the gentle morning light, Angela noting subconsciously how her kitchen looked as the day slowly broke over Atlantic City.

"Where is Jimmy?" Angela asked suddenly.

At Walter Reed, Clara thought, he almost died, the doctor's saved his leg only by the miracle of modern science. I don't know that he'll ever walk again. I don't know that he'll ever break through the shell of his anger. It's why I accepted the job in D.C., so I can go visit.

"Waiting for transport back to the States like everyone else," Clara responded, keeping her promise to her oldest love and breaking one to her dearest friend.

Princeton: July 1919

For one wild moment, Clara thought Jimmy was going to kiss her. Was that lust in his eyes, she thought, shock freezing her in place for a moment, and then she felt him growing against her the top of her thigh.

"Jimmy, stop! Get off me!"

He stared at her blankly, and Clara's stomach soured with fear and confusion. "It's me, Jimmy! It's Clara! It's me, Clara!"

Clara, he thought, her terrified face coming back into focus. Oh, damn, Clara. He rolled off and fought the urge to vomit.

Clara scrambled to her feet and moved across the room.

"I was happy, Clara. I had Angela. I liked school. And then Ma came."

Oh no, Clara thought, no. In her wild anger and hurt that night at Babette's, she had hissed at Richard 'he is extraordinarily loyal to the woman he beds.' She had known in her soul, she had worried, she had thought, but she hadn't known for sure. Not until now.

"Jimmy, I'm so sorry," she breathed out. She meant she was sorry it happened. She meant she was sorry she had mocked him.

"There was this professor, I really liked him. When Ma came, we went to this party and she said he did things to her. He didn't realize she was my mother, he..."

He didn't do it, Clara instinctively thought. Gillian couldn't bear to see Jimmy flourishing away from her, in a world where she would never have a place.

"I'd introduced Ma and Angela, and she kept asking if I loved that skinny girl..."

A ghost of a smile crossed over Clara's face. Gillian's jealousy. "Gillian's always been jealous of anyone you cared about." She's been jealous of me since I was probably still inside my mother's body. But when my breasts came in? Clara shuddered at the memories.

"She said how lonely she was, Clara, that she was the loneliest person in the world."

Of course she said that, Clara thought. She's always made her happiness, her contentment your job in life. You should have stayed in the Army. You should have stayed away from Atlantic City, from her, from us.

"She was really drunk, and I was just helping her, and then Clara, somehow I was, I was, and she's my mother.."

"No," Clara said, crossing the room and grabbing Jimmy's hands. "She's your mother, you are her child. It's not your fault, Jimmy, she was always, even when we were children she would..." Clara grasped for the ability to put into words what she had known since childhood. "She didn't behave like a mother would."

"Was that the only time?" Clara asked, remembering their childhood, remembering Gillian's jealousy, how she needed to own Jimmy, to always be the first thing in his life, the first in his heart, the first...

"Jimmy," she asked again. "Was that the only time?"

He shook his head slowly.

Atlantic City: December 1919

How many times had she attended her father's parties at Babette's, she wondered as she stood on the balcony and watched the party her father had thrown to welcome her home spin? He'd started teaching her how to plan them when she was ten or so, her first task using her convent school handwriting to address envelopes. Clara smoothed the blue satin underdress under the spiky, black velvet vest that covered the dress's top. It was like the war never happened, because the party certainly never stopped.

"Having a good time, kiddo?" Nucky asked. He had been watching her all night. He had fucking known that he shouldn't let her go to Europe. She'd looked skeletal and haunted when she'd returned last year. Clara always looked like Mabel, but in those horrible days she'd looked like Mabel towards the end. Nucky pushed the thought away. Clara was a Thompson. She'd survived that girlish foolishness, and look at her now. Healthy and wearing a beautiful Worth evening gown, looking like the princess she was. Oh, she was quieter and less spirited than she had been at eighteen, but that was just maturity. She had grown up.

It's how he knew he had made the right decision.

"It's a lovely party, Daddy, thank you." Clara took a deep breath. "We need to talk about Jimmy."

Nucky gritted his teeth. "James made his decisions. Now it's time for you to make yours."

Clara didn't say anything. What decisions? The men were back, she'd lost her job with the War Department and moved back from D.C. There wasn't much she'd remember fondly from the last year. Jimmy's pain and fury, her own numb darkness...and then the nights in her room, where she started writing a novel about pirates that was absolutely terrible as an attempt to stave off the nightmares from her childhood that had returned in the aftermath of Europe. Writing that awful book made her write other things, though, and she'd sold her first article in October. She knew she didn't want to stop writing. She knew her father wasn't going to be happy. He wanted her to be the society girl he'd raised her to be now that she was back.

"Did you meet Darcy Blaine?" Nucky asked

Clara thought back over everyone she had met. Ah, she thought, the good looking young man who was spent a few minutes chatting with her talking only about himself and the things he owned.

"Yes."

Nucky's eyes narrowed. Clara was so different, what was wrong with her? It came to him like a revelation.

"There was someone during the war?"

Clara's cheeks flamed, and she wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Who?" Nucky asked. "Who was it?"

Clara didn't answer. There's no way to explain it, Daddy, she thought, the memories she'd worked hard to push down threatening to bubble back up. "It's not like I had a real war, it's not like what Jimmy went through," Clara half-whispered, barely aware she'd spoken.

"You've seen James," Nucky breathed out. Damn it, he thought. After all these years, after he impregnated Angela and had Tommy to look after, now was when James breached the childhood bond between he and Clara?

Clara's hands traced the handkerchief hem of the vest. "He's been at Walter Reed since January. Rather, he was. He was discharged a couple of weeks ago and disappeared. But Angela and Tommy are here, he'll come home soon enough."

God damn James, Nucky thought. "You've known where James was this whole time?"

Clara bit her lip and nodded.

Now he was confident he was doing the right thing. "I know what I'd like for you to give me for Christmas."

"Okay," Clara asked, a little thrown by the quick change of topic. "What is it?"

"Darcy Blaine is going to ask you to marry him. You are going to accept."

Clara half-laughed out of shock. "What? We've barely exchanged a hundred words."

"He's the son of one of the most powerful political families in the state, Clara." My world is going to change, Nucky thought. You'll be better off away from me, in a family with their own estates, before Prohibition changes everything. Before James comes back.

"I can't marry someone I don't love," Clara said, horrified.