Chapter Text
Author's Note: This is the sequel to Out Of The Darkness. The reading order so far for all of my Flynn/Clara fiction is: And She Was Not An Adventure, Plato's Step-Daughter, A Christmas Clara, Sure As Sin, Once Upon A Dime, Reap The Whirlwind, Out Of The Darkness, and And Into The Light. Each new Flynn/Clara story will include an updated reading order.
Do Not Be Deceived
The clippings book glided gracefully around Clara's head, before settling onto her outstretched palm, flexing its binding like wings.
"Aliens?" Eve said sceptically, pulling a pained face.
"I swear that thing used me as a toilet the other day," Ezekiel said, glaring at the clippings book. "As I was saying though," he continued, flapping the crumpled piece of newspaper in his hand, "yes, aliens! Really and truly!"
"Flynn still hasn't phoned," Jenkins said to Clara, ignoring Ezekiel and Eve. "Everything alright in that rather insane quarter?"
"He's... busy," Clara said carefully, careful to keep her gaze fixed upon the clippings book. Flynn's visits to her windowsill had become infrequent; his phone calls and messages losing their intimate edge, becoming businesslike to the point of brusqueness. She supposed the honeymoon period was over, but she knew deep down it was more than that. Something had changed between them, and Flynn didn't want to face it, keeping his distance instead, maintaining the illusion that everything was as it should be.
"And then I zapped that genie back into its bottle," Cassandra boasted as she came in, Jacob looking suitably admiring as he held the door open for her.
After the House of Refuge, Cassandra had started embarking on her own undercover missions, going behind Eve's back with Jenkins's full permission. She had what the others didn't, a strange tenacity united with a formidable almost abstract intelligence, and being Jenkins's favorite only fuelled her rebellion. Her health was fading, but her star wasn't. Cassandra didn't see why she should stop or be left behind, and so she left the others behind instead, pushing herself to the edge of existence.
"As I was saying, aliens," Ezekiel said loudly, picking up the threads of their conversation again.
"What aliens?" Jacob asked, confused.
"Aliens don't exist," Jenkins said abruptly.
"Minotaurs, haunted houses, Santa Claus," Eve reeled off, "yes, but UFOs? Don't be silly."
"Ha-ha," Jenkins said dourly. "You're quite the whiplash wit, Colonel Baird."
"A UFO nut goes missing in a town where strange lights have been reported," Ezekiel read out from the newspaper article the clippings book had left under Clara's pillow, rather like the tooth fairy, but not as profitable. "U-F-O," he spelled out, shaking his head at Jenkins's woeful ignorance.
"Do not be deceived by any physical manifestation you may encounter," Jenkins reprimanded, "there's absolutely no UFOs."
"The only people I know that believe in UFOs are the same ones who think Elvis was the shooter on the grassy knoll," Jacob said cryptically, watching as the clippings book left Clara's hand, flying to its perch instead.
"Current estimates put the number of habitable planets in our galaxy at 11 billion," Cassandra said, folding her arms across her chest, "so it's highly unlikely that we are the only intelligent life in this universe."
"Is that including Ezekiel?" Eve said, Jacob repressing a grin.
"Stop stealing my lines," Jenkins said, spinning the globe. "Now begone!"
Lord I don't know which way I am going
Which way the river gonna flow
It's just seems that upstream, I keep rowing
Still got such a long way to go...