Work Text:
It actually happened, but it wasn’t Franklin. It was another sorcerer in disguise (Stygyro).
But yeah, it totally happened, poor Stephen.
And yes, Stephen and Clea were indeed dating during that period.
What happens is that Clea’s existence and life concepts are way different than ours. She travels time, she travels through universes and spends time with whoever she wants until that person dies (she basically never ages). Basically, she probably was already used at doing that even before meeting Stephen, it is normal to her.
So we can say that’s her life style. It is not because she’s bad intentioned or anything. If Stephen didn’t get the power of never aging, probably it wouldn’t be any different. She would spend Stephen’s life time with him and when he died she would just move on.
Clea is a very independent character who has her own life style. It is almost as if she had a different culture when it came to relationships.
Her personality is one of the reasons of why Stephen loves her, that’s the Clea he likes and that would hardly change.
She’s free, even if she loves him, even if she marries him, she’s free to travel in time and space and live as many lives as she wishes with whoever she wants. She’s a living being way above the “existence” we know, so we can’t actually judge her for that.
It is amazing how the writers were ahead of their time when they wrote this. It might be hard for us to understand the differences between Clea (alien, doesn’t age, can travel through time and space) and our social patterns.