Chapter Three: The Patron Saint of Soufflés

Clara was arrested by John's taste in music, a strange assortment of catchy baselines and guitar riffs that she found herself humming to miles after they had ended.

His phone was connected to the car's Bluetooth speaker system, playlists of alternative rock, mixes of seventies'-eighties' tunes, and the occasional Beatles anthem keeping them awake as they began their drive out East. He offered to let her choose at one point, but she declined, insisting that Muse was far superior to anything she could ever suggest.

In truth, her preference—which primarily consisted of indie pop and show-tunes—would probably never appeal to the man, or so Clara had assumed as she jotted down an outline for the culinary article she was working on. 101 Places to See had no real schedule to it, though inconsistency was her biggest pet peeve, and the lack of connection didn't quite hit her until she tried to refresh her business e-mail for the third time in a row without success.

It's only two days, she scolded herself, pulling her legs up onto the seat as she tried to finish her notes. It never quite dawned on her just how much of her time was spent online—even when she was back home, she had cellular data to rely on—but now, the plug had truly been pulled. There was nothing else to fill the void except the company of the man beside her and the ability of her pen to produce some decent work.

Don't be such a wuss, Clara.

"So what exactly is it you do?" John asked curiously after he had finished a rather bodacious rendition of Baby, I Love Your Way by Big Mountain, traces of the reggae melody fading into gradual silence. Clara let out a hum of amusement as she wrapped her sweater around herself, taking a sip of her iced coffee and prying another graham cracker from the box that sat between them.

"I write," she said simply, breaking the piece in two and popping the smaller half into her mouth. John smirked at her, as if suddenly faced with an equation he now had the pleasure of solving.

"Yes, but what? Are you a journalist? Novelist? What about you is so special that Wayfarer Industries wants you on their side?"

"Trust me, it's nothing as scholarly as a journalist," Clara promised him. She took pride in what she did, cherished every moment she spent in cities far from where she came from, but when it whittled down to an actual job description, she found herself drawing a blank. "I travel places, I write about what I experience, and I...post it online."

"So you're a blogger, then?"

"You could say that," she replied, though the title hardly encompassed the magnitude of what she did. "Though it's not as straightforward, I think. I tell people that I write because it's what you would normally think a blogger to do. But it's so much more than that, you see; it's promotion, advertisement, it's taking the world and trying to fit it into two-thousand words or less, whilst trying to pass of as incredibly cool."

John laughed, reaching for his own iced coffee before saying, "Well, I think you're incredibly cool already, so I'd say you're doing a fine job." He took a swig from the glass bottle, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before asking, "And traveling—do you have anyone who goes with you? A friend or a colleague?"

Clara shook her head, doodling a flower in the corner of her notebook. "No, not really. I do most of my traveling alone, though I do go on holidays with my dad every now and then." She smiled, looking down at the silver ring on her finger. "He always told me of the adventures he went on with my mum. I suppose it's what inspired me to start."

"It's a great big world out there," John said with a flicker of acclaim in his eyes, training them on the dark road ahead. "And you're trying to conquer it all, how 'bout that."

"I wouldn't say conquer, more so...admire from a distance," Clara mused, leaning her head on the window as she watched the cars pass them by. "It all goes by rather quickly, like a slideshow. Cities flash and go, and then you hop on a plane and it's off to the next place."

"Sounds awfully busy," he observed. "How do you find time to visit with friends?"

"I don't as much anymore," she admitted, furrowing her brow. Nina had been one of the only constants following her university years, and even then the two friends found it difficult to keep in touch, with Clara being everywhere at once. "Actually, I should be asking you that, Doctor Smith, with your four years of graduate school and whatnot."

"Bah," John dismissed the thought with a shake of his head, flicking the quiff of brown hair out of his eyes. "I may be a half-decent doctor, Miss Oswald, but I can assure you, I was not the best student."

Clara laughed. "What? So you partied?"

He tore his gaze off the road to smile at her. "Didn't you?"

"No!" she shook her head, baffled by the mere idea of it. "My weekends consisted of revision, eating bagels, and watching Friends on a loop until Netflix asked if I was still watching." She was neither shy nor anti-social in school, conversations came as naturally as they went, but she just never gravitated towards a large group of people. Instead, she chose to live vicariously through the experiences of others, and that was perfectly fine with her.

"I don't believe that for a second," John insisted, lowering the music. "You're a travel blogger! You're supposed to get into these crazy conundrums, jump into ravines with nothing but your socks on."

"I would never do that," Clara said flatly, wrinkling her nose at how specific his example was. Seconds passed before her eyes widened considerably. "Oh my god. You've done that, haven't you?"

"Guilty as charged," John admitted, though his expression held no remorse. "I was in Jamaica, actually. They've got phenomenal breadfruit over there! Tastes nothing like bread."

"You're insane." She shook her head, the corners of her lips curving into a smile. "Absolutely insane."

"And you're not insane enough!"

Clara detected a sort of passion in his voice, as if he wanted her to risk her life for the sake of having a good story to tell. And it made her realize just how audacious this man really was, the doctor who partied throughout graduate school, went skinny-dipping in ravines, and just decided to drive across the country in a span of two days for a friend's birthday party. He was completely mad.

She didn't need to be reckless in order to have a good time. After all, she was the most maternal out of her group of friends, 'the responsible one,' as Nina dubbed it.

"Okay then," she told him, capping her pen and setting it dutifully in her lap. "List off some things, and I'll tell you whether I've done them or not."

"...alright," he nodded, eyes gleaming with the challenge. "Scuba-diving. Have you ever done that before?"

"Yes, actually. I was on a Caribbean cruise with my flatmate, practically forced me to get in or else she'd dump my bag into the pool."

"She sounds lovely," John said with a wry smile, tapping thoughtfully on the steering wheel. "Sung at a karaoke bar?"

"Dear god no," she insisted, cringing just at the mere idea of it. The most she'd ever done was play a mouse in a school production of Cinderella, and even then she had scurried off-stage and was properly sick for the entirety of it. She dreaded that day and everything about it, and turned the color of a beet whenever it was revisited at family gatherings.

"Not your thing then, okay," he chuckled as he ran a hand through his long hair, which seemed to naturally gravitate into a wave situated just above his eyes. "Ever been to a karaoke bar?"

"Yes, and it was horrendous," Clara admitted, recalling the night through strange scents and overall feelings of discomfort. "This bloke spilled red wine down my top. Never been back since."

The man beside her grimaced, taking a conscious sip of his coffee. "Did he at least apologize?"

"No," Clara snorted. "I doubt he even remembers." She had never fully recovered from that night, from the way the man's eyes had widened as she flicked drops of Cabernet from the flounce sleeves of her white blouse, a favorite of hers that was now an eternal shade of wine-stained pink. "Called me Clarissa," she added mournfully.

With the intention of averting any more painful memories, John proposed they play another game, like 'I Spy,' or a heated round of '20 Questions.' Clara, unsure of how to take the suggestion, insisted that he come up with another example. There had to be something in that mind of his, something that proved to him that she had a sense of adventure that was just as substantial as whatever the hell he did in his free time. John contemplated his choice for a little over a minute, fingers drumming absentmindedly on the steering wheel as Bono sang to them fervidly through the speaker system.

"Ever gotten a parking ticket before?" he asked, Clara promptly smacking him in the shoulder with her notebook. John jerked back from the strike, his hands veering the car to the left as he sputtered, "Oi! What was that for?"

"You think I'm just some goody saint, don't you?"

"No!" John protested, though his denial was utterly transparent. The young woman beside him sighed, folding her arms across her chest. His next few words came out in a jumbled rush. "I don't, I promise! It's just that...you're young! Shouldn't you be doing, you know...young things with...with young people-?"

"What, like you for instance?" Down boy, she wanted to tell him, but refrained, as the need to justify herself was much stronger. "I'll have you know that I do plenty of fun, exciting things within the perimeters of my own comfort zone."

The man in the driver's seat sat quietly for a moment, his gaze leveled, as if he'd never heard of such a thing. In fact, the young medical student found the writer to be so intriguing that it baffled him to think that she considered herself so reserved, and so utterly content with it. Life to him was a pool with no bottom to it, and she found peace sitting at its very edge, the water lapping at her ankles. Admiring from a distance, as she had phrased it.

"Alright then, what kind of fun, exciting things?" he found himself challenging her, Clara's mouth twisting in thought. There were a myriad of things she could have said: wandering about in museums for hours on end, visiting bookstores and conversing with the clerk about her most recent purchase, traveling until her brain was filled to the brim with memories. Instead, what came out of her mouth was something she hadn't done in years, and frankly, wasn't quite good at to begin with.

"...baking soufflés?"

"Soufflés," he repeated, lips curving into an admirable smile. "Clara Oswald, the patron saint of soufflés."

She forgot to mention the part in which she was utterly rubbish at it. "It's not such a bad idea, actually. We should make it canon."

"I'll write to the pope immediately," John promised her.

Their lack of sleep had them giggling like children at the idea, the young traveler insisting that she'd cheat the system by being the first saint to be canonized without having died first. "I'll go into hiding, become a nun or something and dedicate the rest of my life towards penance for my fraudulent vocation to the sainthood."

"But what of the bakers?" the doctor narrated theatrically, advocating for the deflated, burnt delicacies. "Their prayers will remained unanswered!"

Her face was beginning to grow sore from grinning too much. "Well, they won't know that, will they?"

Perhaps it was the zenith of their caffeinated frenzy, but Clara had never felt this way when talking to someone before. It was like watching a book adaptation play out on screen; she knew what she was in for, knew it was something good, and found herself smiling at every imaginative notion that fell from John's mouth. At this hour in the morning, all worries of traveling with him, all anxieties of making her interview on time, disintegrated into a state of mind she never wanted to relinquish.

They reached Sacramento but an hour later, darkened outlines of concentrated city skyscrapers dotting the horizon until the horizon itself was beneath their feet. The TARDIS rumbled over building blocks of highway as they passed through California's capital without so much as a word, for the silence was enough to contain their awe. John had purposefully taken heed of the road signs, allowing them to direct him and his companion towards the Tower Bridge.

The Tower Bridge linked West Sacramento to its adjacent county in the East, its steel skeleton running across several hundred feet of river, the two travelers staring out into black waters as John drove though it, watching as beams of light and steel flitted past their windows. Nighttime had turned the structure into a throbbing vein of early morning drivers, its yellow glow illuminating the shadows like a candle did a dark room. There was something strangely intimate about the cars that passed them at this hour, and he suddenly wondered where they were coming from, where they were headed. Were they doctors relieving themselves from a late-night shift at the hospital, or designated drivers pooling their friends back home? Or were they like them—weary strangers just trying to make it to a certain place at a certain time? The thought stuck with him as they rode across the bridge, his eyes slowly drifting towards Clara, gauging her reaction.

If anything, it relieved him to see that she was finally beginning to look relaxed. For the past several miles, her shoulders had been tense, her gaze constantly flicking towards the time, as if daring it to advance by the minute, a hint of dread deepening in her eyes whenever it did. He wanted to get to New York just as much as she did, and she had every right to fret about the situation she was thrown into—but not at the expense of her mind. The doctor was well accustomed to that level of stress; in a way, it was similar to holding one's breath, anticipating the worst. And he didn't want her to feel that. It didn't sit well with him at all.

Which is precisely why, when they had reached the end of the bridge, John grabbed his phone from the cup holder and announced, "We need a theme song."

Her eyebrows raised. The gesture was typically followed by a question; he had learned that in the past hour. "A what?"

"You heard me, a theme song. For the road trip! Something that you'll listen to for years to come and think, 'Oh, yeah! I did that; I traveled the country with some daft bloke in a bow-tie and survived!' Granted, we haven't gotten there yet—" He could feel a glare press itself into the side of his cheek. "—kidding! I'm a skilled driver, I promise!" To prove himself, he let go of the wheel and managed to keep the car in its lane for a solid five seconds. "See? No hands!"

"Do that again and I promise to chuck this out the window," Clara warned him, snatching the box of graham crackers that lay half-eaten on the console between them, though he could tell that she was enjoying this. Smirking to himself, he thumbed through his lists of songs, trying to find one suitable enough to encompass the two days of the trip that hadn't happened yet. How could he choose? It was almost as if he were predicting the future.

"Why don't you let fate decide?" she suggested after a while. "Put your music on shuffle. The first song that plays, that's our theme song, and we can't do anything about it."

He snapped his fingers and pointed in her direction, relinquishing the steering wheel completely for the second time that night. Clara gave him a look. "I like your way of thinking, Saint Oswald."

Her nose wrinkled. "Please don't call me that."

"It's either that or Soufflé Girl," he said, plopping his phone back into the cup holder as it decided upon which song to play.

"Fine, but only under the agreement that I call you Chin Boy for the remainder of the trip," she said behind a mouthful of graham cracker.

John's jaw dropped at her comment, the spark in her eyes indicating that she had been meaning to bring it up for a while now, but the look quickly fell from her face as their song began to blare through the speaker system. John's frown slowly turned into a grin so wide it could almost compensate for the complete shock on Clara's face as she took his phone into her small hands. There was no need to check; she knew what it was from the moment it began, but a part of her couldn't quite believe it as she pressed the home button and—

"Seriously?" she yelled over the loud electric keyboard as it echoed throughout the TARDIS in vehement waves. "I Ran?"

John bopped his head to the guitar track, hands drumming on the console, for he clearly found it to be the best thing ever. Staring intently into Clara's eyes, he sang, "I walk along the avenue, I never thought I'd meet a girl like yooouuu, meet a girl like yooouuu!"

Mashing her lips together, she asked, "Can I retract my previous statement—?"

"With auburn hair and tawny eyes—it's A Flock of Seagulls!" he cried jovially.

"Precisely my point!"

"The kind of eyes that hypnotize me throuuugghh—come on Clara. You know the words, you know you do," he was grinning at her now as the song careened into its unmistakable chorus. She shook her head. There was no way she was singing in front of this man. Not only was she embarrassed—"And I raan, I ran so far awaayy,"—but she couldn't sing to save her life— "I just raan, I ran all night and daayy..."

Which is why he was surprised when Clara muttered, very quietly under her breath, "...I couldn't get away."

He cheered in triumph, a laugh rumbling though him that was so buoyant that it began to make Clara laugh, too. There was something about his voice that made her move in rhythm to the tune he carried—dancing, it's called dancing, she told herself—the way it filled every syllable with purpose, the kind of singing that didn't need to be on key to be good. He was doing everything that would make any other person seem daft: the expressions, the air-guitar, but he made it seem effortless, as if he were trying to impress her by looking absolutely ridiculous. And it was working, although Clara herself couldn't recognize it.

Because after all, life was a pool with no bottom to it, and John Smith was fully intent on pulling her in.

Two hours later, his eyelids began to seep heavily to a close, the road before him blurring in and out as he tried to latch onto every smidgen of caffeine left in his system. It had never really hit him before, the isolation of being on the road this early in the morning. The city-like rush of the highway had long since dried into a double-lane road that lay flat on the baked earth as far as the eye could see, which wasn't very far, to his dismay. Their only guidance was the headlights of the TARDIS, a white cone that made every dotted line wink at them as they passed. John shook his head to wake himself up.

Clara looked up from the passenger seat, her book laying in her lap as she read. Tired, but not exactly sleepy, she was beyond headaches at this point as she turned off the flashlight on his phone and asked, "You okay over there?"

"Yeah," he reassured her, though the word was half-yawned. "Actually, maybe not. I'm fading. Every time I blink, it's a dream."

"Three hours of driving can do that to a person," she admitted, frowning at the empty bottles of iced coffee that clattered in their cup holders. "Well, we've made it this far. Want to take the next exit and find a coffee shop, nap in the parking lot for a bit?"

He blinked, his eyes watering. "But what about your interview? We haven't got much time—"

"A nap won't hurt," she promised him, closing the book and sitting up in her seat. "And you can't drool all over the seat-belt either; this is a rental car."

A lazy smile tugged at the corners of his lips. It was a sight she hadn't expected to become so familiar with so soon.

Using the turn signal despite being the only car on the road, John did as she suggested and pulled off the highway at the nearest exit, satisfied that they had at least managed to get out of California. They had crossed the border a few miles back, a sign greeting them with, 'Welcome to Nevada: The Silver State.' He'd been here once before; it was summer holiday and he and a few friends had spontaneously booked a flight to Sin City, their money and sobriety depleting over the course of two nights. He didn't remember much of that trip, come to think of it. What happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas, after all.

But as they diverted farther from the highway, what he had expected to be a run-off-the-mill town actually turned out to be a small city, the neon lights of Nevada buildings beckoning them forward, the road becoming more even, like it had been paved over in the last year. It was a hidden little city, tucked between the mountains, an island of industrialization in a sea of arid land.

"Did we pass a sign on the way in?" he asked Clara as they passed between the city's vibrant colors of pink and green and blue, hotels and casinos lining the street like businessmen intent on making them a promising offer. She furrowed her brow and looked around them for any indication of where they were, but found only bright marquees and lines for jaunty night clubs, with the occasional parking garage. Where were they?

"I don't think so," she replied, feeling the city's pulse beneath her skin in the way its lights danced across the hood of the car, the worn structures of the buildings upheld by the lively spirit of its people. This city was tiny, but it was very much alive. And Clara certainly wanted to find out it's name. "Are you sure we're not lost?"

"Positive," he replied, much too quickly for her liking. "I'm just going to park so we can find out where we are..."

Nodding her head, Clara fiddled with the ring on her finger. "Okay, I'll just look up some directions on your phone. I'm still set on finding a decent coffee shop." A Starbucks, at the least, she bargained with herself as John found a space in a particularly darkened area of the street, where a boarded-up building sat dilapidated beyond a diamond-wired fence, the revelry of the city laying but a few hundred feet away. Thankful that they had at least found someplace quiet, Clara pressed the home button on John's phone, but it didn't turn on. She held down the power button. Nothing. It was dead.

The TARDIS put in park mode, John sat back and took a long, deep breath, eyes flitting towards the young woman beside him, the dark screen in her hands. "Ah. Brilliant," he chuckled, hands massaging his face. Dropping them into his lap for the first time since San Francisco, he asked, "Have you got a portable charger?"

"It's in my suitcase," she told him tiredly, rotating the phone between her hands as if she could somehow bring it back to life without having to stand. The car was dark, and their parking space was far from the warm glow of the streetlamps. She could only discern the outline of his face, the prominent cheekbones, the jutted chin she had made fun of just hours ago. If anything, it was the perfect place for him to gain a few hours of shut eye, without the harsh lights of the strange, nameless city they had stumbled upon. But coffee was still a priority, no questions asked.

"I'll go get it," Clara followed up after a minute, hand hovering over the door handle for a moment before she pulled it and stepped out of the car, her muscles aching at the sudden movement. Extending her arms towards the inky black sky, she stretched, popping her back before making her way to the trunk of the car. Stepping onto the sidewalk, she then realized just how cold it was, rows of goosebumps appearing on her skin as she nestled into her threadbare sweater.

Skies, it's dark out here, she thought to herself as she tried to locate the button to the trunk, fingers searching blindly for it as they traced patterns across the vehicle's cold exterior. She could hardly even see her own hand, and when she blinked, she saw little difference between her surroundings and the back of her eyelids. The noise of the nameless city was now distant in comparison to the pressing silence, for Clara could detect every nuance of sound, her ears picking up on every detail in the absence of light.

So when she heard a pair of boots on the sidewalk, she immediately looked over her shoulder, eyes searching the shadows for a visual to accompany the noise, but they found none. Squinting, she drew her hand from the TARDIS and slowly turned around to face the darkness of the street, towards that sound of the stranger drawing themselves nearer by the second. Funny how she no longer considered the man inside the vehicle to be one, for it was all relative now.

Probably just some drunkard, she told herself, unsure of what to feel as her eyes made out a figure in the nearby distance, except it wasn't as charismatic as a big chin or a pair of cheekbones. No, this one was different. Taller. Frightening even. A chill ran down her spine, and Clara shivered, though it had little to do with the cold air as the figure she spotted at the mouth of the nearest alleyway suddenly divided into two.

There were two of them.

And one, she soon found out as they approached her, was holding a gun in his left pocket.

A/N: A bit of a cliffhanger for you all there! Reviews are always appreciated, and if you're just now joining us on the trip, thank you so much for doing so and I hope you enjoy! I'm very excited for this next chapter, for our travelers may or may not run into a familiar face from the series... ;)