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Title: Fealty
Author: Rivka T
Fandom: Smallville
Rating: PG
Summary: Nemo fuit repente turpissimus. Or, "I will never become my father. I would never sacrifice you or anybody I cared about to bring him down."
Spoilers through Crisis.
Notes: This was started midway through S3. It was supposed to be about Lex's relationships with women, mostly nonsexual, and indirectly about his relationships with Clark and Lionel, the only men in his life who've made an impression. I wish I'd managed to finish it over the summer, but events have moved on so that I'd have to reconceive a lot of the planned plot, and I just don't have the energy.
After Clark finished explaining his latest misadventure and his latest girlfriend, he headed back home and Lex returned to his computer. There'd been nothing to be done about the hole in the LuthorCorp elevator car, but Lex had succeeded in creating an image of Clark and his latest sweetheart leaving the car just before it mysteriously crashed, merging seamlessly into the actual footage from the security camera in the elevator bay where they'd appeared.
Had Clark been too shaken to notice that there was more than one camera in the building? Or had he not known what to do that wouldn't be confirmation of *something*? Clearly, he had no idea that Lex knew enough to help him out. Lex wasn't even sure that Clark understood that the "accident" could not possibly have been accidental. In any event, there was now confirmation for the story Clark and his friend had told the LuthorCorp security team, and that would have to suffice.
Lex had also altered the recording from the elevator to make it seem as if whatever happened to the cables also took out the camera. Now, only Lex could watch Clark turn to the lens and stare at it until the image shorted out. Melted, the tests said. Again, there was nothing Lex could do to keep that physical evidence from his father. Molly wasn't yet ready to be used on people. She hadn't volunteered to do it when she helped him with the hacking, and Lex was patient, even if it did leave his father in possession of more data.
It was enough to have changed the recordings so that Clark was a little distanced from the mystery; perhaps it could all be blamed on Alicia.
He played the files again, starting from when Clark and Alicia had been deftly separated from the group, making a note to himself to figure out what Lionel had on the economics teacher, and half-wondering what an economics teacher could have to hide. He watched Clark's uncomfortable but unmistakeable flirting, turning in the elevator to surprise (not fear, Clark had nothing to fear from a forty-story drop), turning immediately to concern for secrecy and thus guaranteeing the imminent demise of the security camera. Clark looked into the lens as if he were looking through to Lex's soul.
That intense gaze, those destroying eyes – it was a perfect moment of Clark. It would have been ideal for his closed room, but Lex hadn't used that room since he'd found Lionel's little monitor up in a dark corner.
Watching that recording made it easy to believe that Clark had invited Alicia's attentions: he'd been a shy hero-god saving her life. And then begging her to keep his secret. She *knew*, she'd seen what Clark did to stop the elevator's fall -- Lex was sure of that. Clark was all temptation and no honesty, but at least he'd prized Alicia's life over his secret.
He'd probably do the same for Lex. The thought of arranging a test had occurred to him, but Lex wasn't confident enough to try. He'd been hurt too many ways already in the past few years.
He remembered the purity of his initial obsession. If he'd been a tad more bold, he could have turned up in Clark's bed just like Alicia. Seeing them in the elevator, he could imagine Alicia surprising Clark, rubbing against him, pulling his shirt up awkwardly, reluctant to interrupt the kiss. Clark's eyes would widen, then slip closed as he was lost to her, his hands coming up to cup her breasts, falling back against the mattress –
Yes, Jonathan Kent's interruption would surely have posed an obstacle even for Lex, he realized, opening his eyes and pushing the fantasy aside.
****
Lex squared his shoulders and walked back into Belle Reve. He kept his face blank, even when one staff member poked another and jerked a thumb at him. It didn't seem familiar, the pallid blues and greens sliding off his mind without triggering a single memory.
The visitors' room was slightly brighter, though the table and chairs were still bolted to the floor. Lex didn't sit. He didn't want to touch any more of the place than he had to.
The girl who was led in was a blurred and damaged version of the one he'd seen on the LuthorCorp camera. She looked around with dull desperation, her eyes barely registering his presence as she trudged to a chair and sat down.
Lex moved around the table as the orderly left, crouching a few feet away from Alicia so that he could be at her level. Her still-lovely hair hid her face from him as she stared at her hands, rocking slightly.
"Alicia," he said. She twitched. "Alicia, my name is Lex Luthor. I'm here to talk to you."
She turned her head. "Why?"
"Because I think you and I have a lot in common." He smiled at her, the soft and open one that had come much more easily to him since his own sojourn in Belle Reve.
It worked; her chin came up, her eyes focused, and her mouth moved towards a smile.
Lex had an affinity for the wounded birds of the world. He wanted to shelter them, so long as they'd accept his protection.
"I don't like it here," Alicia admitted, and Lex turned his attention entirely to her.
"We'll have to see what we can do about that," he said, reaching out to brush his fingers across her cheek. "First, I want to know a little more about you."
****
Lex stopped by the Talon, checking to make sure Adam hadn't returned. Lana reported no sightings, looking up at him with the huge shining eyes that could make any man a hero, if he wanted to be. He told her he'd send someone to make sure all of Adam's things were gone.
Lana rubbed her hands on her upper arms as if she were cold, looking off into the distance, surely thinking about Adam and loss. Even in her pearl-buttoned pink cardigan, she reminded Lex of water, a still pond in fall. Deeper than she looked, but colder. "Thanks, Lex. I really appreciate it."
"What's a business partner for?" he asked easily. "Have you seen Clark?"
Lana frowned. "Just this morning at school. Should I tell him you're looking for him?"
Lex shook his head. "I'll drop in at the farm later." He turned the conversation to financial matters. Lana was sensitized to investigations into Clark's life right now, still raw from Adam.
She had coffee the way he liked it waiting for him to take when he left. Lana was a much better manager than she was a waitress. He was glad he'd taken the chance on her.
****
Martha came to the door when Lex knocked. "Hello, Lex," she said, opening it and ushering him in. "Clark is at the hospital. He insisted on going there with Jonathan for his check-up."
Lex looked at her tight, worried face, her tense shoulders, her worn-gingham eyes. "You know, I can have any specialist in the world brought here. I would do anything in my power to help your family."
She smiled gratefully, but was that a flash of guilt? Or did the senior Kents, so sure in their righteousness, not feel guilt? No, they must, for Clark to be able to bear it so proudly. "Thank you, Lex. I hope things will be back to normal soon. Sometimes there's nothing anyone can do but wait and pray."
Lex nodded. Martha Kent meant well, but that was a philosophy for the powerless.
He didn't ask her if there was anything else he could do. Like the deed to the farm, his gifts had to be surprises in order to be accepted. He'd bring the specialists in regardless – Martha hadn't refused the offer, he noted. She was a pragmatist, and she knew what money was worth.
They chatted for a few more minutes, local politics and the non-lethal antics of Clark's classmates, and then Lex excused himself. He'd wanted to see her, not Clark, this time. He'd get Clark later, when Jonathan was better, but Martha needed him now. All Clark's energy was focused on his father, so he didn't see that his mother was shaking apart inside, holding herself together only because Clark and Jonathan required her.
It was too bad the Kents would never allow him to send a housekeeper or field hand onto the property. He'd have to content himself with flowers and chocolates to ease some of the pressure.
****
Molly's face showed honest pleasure, Lex was fairly sure. He reached out, hugging her to him. Her body was already changing, hardening, giving her the kind of control over the physical world that she previously only enjoyed in digital life.
Also, she smelled good.
He released her and stepped back. "You're looking well, Molly."
She smiled and pushed her glasses further up on her nose. "So are you, but you knew that."
"I did. I just wanted to stop by, make sure you have everything you need."
She glanced around, at the room full of screens and silvery-gray metal. "It's wonderful, Lex. I've been working on a voice-recognition algorithm –" she reached out and tugged him towards one of the larger computers – "here, take a look."
Lex followed, letting her excited explanations wash over him, looking at her fondly more than at the screen. Molly reminded him that his inner geek wasn't all that inner. And, of course, she smelled good.
****
Clark didn't respect him. And, really, why should he? Lex had accepted too many lies, backed down too many times, for Clark to see him as a strong, worthy friend.
Lex had been hung up on the puzzle of Clark Kent so long that he'd lost the overall outline, befuddled by the individual odd-looking pieces. As with many problems, it made sense to turn his attention to something else, let what he knew percolate in the back of his mind, and wait for the solution to bubble to consciousness.
There was certainly plenty of other work. He needed to reestablish his power base. Molly, Lana and Chloe were good for his ego, but not yet the army he needed. No, not an army. He needed believers. He needed – trust.
Could there be loyalty without trust? It was a mistake to conceive of "trust" as a single entity. Lex could trust Clark to save his life, and Clark could trust Lex to offer material help when he needed it. Lex could trust Martha to offer sympathy, and Martha could trust him to preserve the farm against all comers. Lana would look to him for safety, Molly to share his fascination with the wonders of science, Chloe to seek to share the truth. As long as he kept up his end of the bargain, they would be trustworthy.
One thing Lex had learned from being a Luthor: People remembered one failure long after a dozen successes. He'd already failed enough for a lifetime.
****
The guardhouse called to say that Clark was on the way to the main house. It wasn't ironic that Clark was getting smarter about concealment while Lex was getting smarter about ferreting out the truth. It was a natural progression for both of them. They were helping each other, improving their skills against the world, scrimmaging almost. In that sense, it wasn't all that important which of them fooled the other. What was important was the real game, the one with Lionel and all the rest of the people out to get Lex and Clark both.
The realization made Lex feel warm, tender towards Clark – not paternal, never that, for a thousand reasons, but almost brotherly, agape mixed in with the eros.
His face must have shown enough of this when Clark arrived at the office door that Clark stopped a few steps in, his serious expression dissolving into an answering smile as brilliant as an arc light. He was wearing a royal blue shirt untucked over hard-worked jeans.
"Hey, Lex."
"Hello, Clark. What can I do for you?" Lex pushed away his laptop and folded his arms on the glass desk in front of him.
Clark stepped forward, unslinging his backpack from one shoulder and putting it down beside a chair. Lex waved a hand, and Clark sat down, obviously trying to gather his thoughts.
"How do you know if you're not in love any more?"
Lex's back stiffened. "I'm not sure I can give you any good advice on that," he said carefully. "I'm more familiar with extortion and seduction. What makes you ask?"
Clark looked over Lex's shoulder, at the stained glass turned bloody by the setting sun. "I was in love with Lana. I know that. And every time I look at her, it hurts. But – it hurts like something's gone, like it's not coming back."
Ah, loss. Lex understood that. Lacing his hands together on the table in front of him, he leaned forward. "Sometimes the things you feel the most are the ones most easily broken. They're so dependent on the innocence of that first rush of emotion. Whether she disappointed you, or you think you disappointed her, the result is the same: It's not like it was. You have to decide if you want to build a new foundation, or if the ground is inevitably contaminated by what went before."
"You make it sound – I don't want to always be the guy who runs away." Clark's hands twisted in his lap. Lex imagined them punching through solid metal, doors, cars. He had a report on Morgan Edge's car --
"But you don't want to be the guy who stands still while the rest of the world moves, either."
Clark smiled unhappily. "I guess not."
"Actions and emotions aren't separate, Clark. What you do influences how you feel. If you think you're pining after her, you'll stay that way. If I were you, I'd try to get closer – or farther away."
****
Dr. Tang hadn't been nice to him – Lex thought she might be constitutionally incapable of niceness – but she had at least been polite at the end. Small victories.
She hadn't known the source of the platelets, except that they came from whole blood with unique properties. Lex had seen whole blood with unique properties before, out of Helen's office. Dr. Tang had informed him that Morgan Edge had possessed a different sample of the same blood.
And one of Edge's minions had died in the Kent barn at about the time Edge was delivering the blood to his father and Dr. Tang.
It was too bad, Lex thought, that he couldn't trust his father as far as he could remember him. He had the strong feeling that together they had about ninety percent of the necessary fragments.
Still, Lex was acquiring more information about the underlying picture by the day. It was a challenge.
It was also a pity that Dr. Tang had died, and clearly his father's fault for rushing her. Lex believed that she hadn't wanted to start on humans so soon, if only because she was so obviously a failure-hating perfectionist. His father had, as usual, pushed too hard. He thought that if his tools broke, they just proved their lack of worth, but you wouldn't blame a pair of scissors for being unable to knock down a wall. His father lacked respect for the inherent capabilities of people, the things they could do if you let them work with their strengths.
So much wasted potential.
Dr. Tang didn't have any family in the States, but Lex made sure that she had a real gravestone in the main Metropolis cemetary. He would have sent money to her family, but North Korea didn't approve of American dollars; the best thing he could do for Dr. Tang's family was to forget she ever existed.
The best he could do for himself was to save himself from her fate.
****
Don't turn this around on me, Clark had said. Right, because only one of them had been trespassing – or eavesdropping, or lipreading through the walls. Lex wasn't quite clear on that, and Alicia had been of limited assistance on the issue of Clark's expanded senses. Lex had been there legitimately, even if the lab itself wasn't a legitimate project, while Clark –
At least Clark had come to him for help with Adam and the special formula, showing that their bond was still in place. Clark understood that strength and speed weren't always better than money and influence.
Nor did Lex blame Clark for running off to save Lana from Adam while Lex was being arrested for murder. Saving Lana was a noble endeavor, and one entirely suited to Clark's talents, while Clark had nothing to say that would have kept Lex out of handcuffs. Also, Clark's abrupt departure, while just out of sight of the policemen, had been duly noted by the security cameras, whose testimony was now stored in as safe a place as Lex could manage. It was cumulative evidence, but Lex liked the reassurance that he'd made the right connections.
Lex hadn't been arrested in – well, never, as an adult. It had been an unpalatable experience, for all that he'd kept his expression unworried.
Only slightly less unpalatable than turning on his father.
It wasn't a betrayal. Trust was a precondition for betrayal.
Lionel could have had anyone's name forged on those memos. Hell, he could have ensured that Dr. Tang, now even less able to defend herself, had been blamed for everything. It wasn't sloppy; his father was rarely sloppy. It was, however, gratuitous and insulting.
His father didn't respect him. And, really, why should he? Lex had fallen for too many lies, caved in to pressure too many times, for his father to see him as a strong, worthy son.
Lex knew it was another game. His father was too enamored of the idea of testing to failure, which only made sense if one expected to produce later models from the same production line – and from what Lex had seen of Emily Dinsmore, that wasn't out of the question in his father's mind. Lex, on the other hand, had no intention of being the one used up to set the tolerances for his father's other heirs.
His research suggested that Mr. Dinsmore was still an employee of LuthorCorp, albeit under a byzantine chain of title and a slightly different name. And his daughter –
Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive, Hamlet said, mad north-northwest. Lex couldn't afford to seem mad any more. He was running out of chances for public redemption. But he had to investigate further, without the aid of a devoted mother, without the comfort of a father-ghost, and certainly without the blatancy of a riddle play.
He wondered whether it would make sense to cast Lana as Ophelia. Somehow, though, he thought Lana hardier than that singing nymph. Although, if Clark was Laertes the moralist, that was the kind of family dynamic to which he could really relate.
If Lex had to bet, he would put his money on Lana surviving all the rest of them. She knew how to bend, how to submit herself to get indulgence and protection. If Lex and Clark disappeared, she'd miss them, but she wouldn't let her grief get in the way of finding a new patron.
Maybe his father was right. Maybe survival was the only law, and Lana the pinnacle of human evolution. There was a concept in game theory, the Prisoner's Dilemma. Two suspects are separated, each offered the same deal: if you inform on the other guy and he stays mum, you go free and he serves ten years. If you both stay silent, you each do two years; if you both talk, you each do twenty. What's a man to do in that situation? If the other suspect is trustworthy, your best strategy is to stay silent, but then you can be played for a chump. Successful betrayal is your best bet – but if you both think that way, you both lose.
That's why they called it a dilemma.
It would have been nice to talk to Clark about the welter of changes in his life, the new stresses of pretending that everything was all right while targeting his father, but Lex recognized this desire as a weakness. He hadn't had any true confidantes before Clark since Pamela left, and it was silly to pine after what you couldn't get.
Especially when there was so much in the world that you could.
****
One thing Lex didn't like about all the Kewatche myths – they were all fathers and sons. Never mothers and sisters, and only the occasional wife like an afterthought. As if half the human race was excluded from mythical status, doomed to the ordinariness of living and breeding and dying. He wondered what the women thought about Numan and Seget. Did they curse them both, looking at the destruction their sky-spanning battles caused? Surely each one of them had a mother who thought *her* son, her bright light, was the hero.
There was one researcher at Met U who thought that the caves told only half the story. That women's magic had been just as powerful, but had not been recorded, women not being so well-supplied with braggarts from within their own ranks as men. She was trying to recover the women's stories, reconstructing them from the half-remembered tales passed down through the generations, diluted with each repetition in the modern world.
His father was funding the cave research, and Lex wasn't yet in a position to oust him from that, but there were other programs he could fund in the Native American Studies department.
****
Lex's mother had been dead for half his life.
He couldn't say why that fact disturbed him so much. It didn't change anything. It was just inexorable time, the same thing that made the lilies he left at her memorial sag and fade after a few days.
After his visit to the cemetary, where the ground was still disturbed from the removal of his prematurely installed monument, Lex headed back to Smallville and the Talon. Lana's smooth calm was just what he needed now.
He should have known that Clark would be there, too, still sniffing around her like a puppy who scented the crumbs of some treat in her pocket. He wasn't in the best mood for Clark, who these days necessitated some preparation.
He smiled at Clark, took the coffee that Lana handed him, and headed to a back nook, two tables away from the nearest patrons, a mother and daughter pair who were discussing prom dresses.
Less than a minute after he sat down, Clark joined him. "Hey, Lex," he said, pulling out a chair and sitting down at a ninety degree angle from Lex, so Lex could still see out into the rest of the shop.
"Hello, Clark. What can I do for you?"
Clark blinked, looking surprised. "Why – I was just wondering how you were doing. We haven't gotten to talk much since – you know."
"Since I nearly got arrested?" Lex suggested.
Clark smiled nervously. "Yeah. Is everything okay with that?"
Lex looked down and found that his cup was empty. He rolled the coffee stirrer between his fingers. "I'm handling it."
The FBI had assigned him a bright young agent, sadly bearing little resemblance to Dana Scully, but otherwise competent and dedicated. She had arranged for the covert copying of LuthorCorp files identified by Lex, while another bright young thing from the Justice Department evaluated the materials and decided what else she would need to make her case for violations of the Food and Drug Act, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, the Robinson-Patman Act, the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, export control regulations, the Sherman Act, the National Labor Relations Act, et cetera or possibly ad infinitum.
At one point Lex had asked her if it wouldn't be simpler to identify those portions of the U.S. Code LuthorCorp *hadn't* violated. "Well," she'd said, smiling up at him – they'd developed a real rapport during their late nights – "I don't think there's a big problem with trademark counterfeiting."
"That's a load off my mind," he'd teased back. When he'd held out her coat for her to slip into that night, she'd given him a look that invited fraternization. He'd pretended not to notice. Sex was too volatile, too likely to lull him into complacency, too helpful to Lionel's defense attorney if it ever came to a trial. She liked him well enough regardless.
Clark was saying something. Lex shook off his reverie and paid attention.
[have to do something about Clark smooshing Lex up against a car and ripping off his shirt]
****
Lex returned to consciousness in a flood of terror that diminished only slightly when he realized that he was in his own bed. The noise was simply his secure cellphone. Still holding the gun he'd grabbed from under the pillow, he used his right hand to snag the phone and bring it to his ear.
"Yes?"
"Lex?" Chloe Sullivan said.
"What is it?" he asked, satisfied that none of the residual fear reached his voice.
"I need – I need to see you." Now he could tell that she was scared, terrified even.
"Can you get out of your house?"
She drew a shallow, rattling breath. "Yeah."
He couldn't see her in the mansion because of the surveillance. The Torch offices would have been ludicrous, the Talon uncertain.
"Meet me in the Kent barn in twenty minutes."
****
Nemo fuit repente turpissimus: no man becomes a villain all at once
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Author: Rivka T
Fandom: Smallville
Rating: PG
Summary: Nemo fuit repente turpissimus. Or, "I will never become my father. I would never sacrifice you or anybody I cared about to bring him down."
Spoilers through Crisis.
Notes: This was started midway through S3. It was supposed to be about Lex's relationships with women, mostly nonsexual, and indirectly about his relationships with Clark and Lionel, the only men in his life who've made an impression. I wish I'd managed to finish it over the summer, but events have moved on so that I'd have to reconceive a lot of the planned plot, and I just don't have the energy.
After Clark finished explaining his latest misadventure and his latest girlfriend, he headed back home and Lex returned to his computer. There'd been nothing to be done about the hole in the LuthorCorp elevator car, but Lex had succeeded in creating an image of Clark and his latest sweetheart leaving the car just before it mysteriously crashed, merging seamlessly into the actual footage from the security camera in the elevator bay where they'd appeared.
Had Clark been too shaken to notice that there was more than one camera in the building? Or had he not known what to do that wouldn't be confirmation of *something*? Clearly, he had no idea that Lex knew enough to help him out. Lex wasn't even sure that Clark understood that the "accident" could not possibly have been accidental. In any event, there was now confirmation for the story Clark and his friend had told the LuthorCorp security team, and that would have to suffice.
Lex had also altered the recording from the elevator to make it seem as if whatever happened to the cables also took out the camera. Now, only Lex could watch Clark turn to the lens and stare at it until the image shorted out. Melted, the tests said. Again, there was nothing Lex could do to keep that physical evidence from his father. Molly wasn't yet ready to be used on people. She hadn't volunteered to do it when she helped him with the hacking, and Lex was patient, even if it did leave his father in possession of more data.
It was enough to have changed the recordings so that Clark was a little distanced from the mystery; perhaps it could all be blamed on Alicia.
He played the files again, starting from when Clark and Alicia had been deftly separated from the group, making a note to himself to figure out what Lionel had on the economics teacher, and half-wondering what an economics teacher could have to hide. He watched Clark's uncomfortable but unmistakeable flirting, turning in the elevator to surprise (not fear, Clark had nothing to fear from a forty-story drop), turning immediately to concern for secrecy and thus guaranteeing the imminent demise of the security camera. Clark looked into the lens as if he were looking through to Lex's soul.
That intense gaze, those destroying eyes – it was a perfect moment of Clark. It would have been ideal for his closed room, but Lex hadn't used that room since he'd found Lionel's little monitor up in a dark corner.
Watching that recording made it easy to believe that Clark had invited Alicia's attentions: he'd been a shy hero-god saving her life. And then begging her to keep his secret. She *knew*, she'd seen what Clark did to stop the elevator's fall -- Lex was sure of that. Clark was all temptation and no honesty, but at least he'd prized Alicia's life over his secret.
He'd probably do the same for Lex. The thought of arranging a test had occurred to him, but Lex wasn't confident enough to try. He'd been hurt too many ways already in the past few years.
He remembered the purity of his initial obsession. If he'd been a tad more bold, he could have turned up in Clark's bed just like Alicia. Seeing them in the elevator, he could imagine Alicia surprising Clark, rubbing against him, pulling his shirt up awkwardly, reluctant to interrupt the kiss. Clark's eyes would widen, then slip closed as he was lost to her, his hands coming up to cup her breasts, falling back against the mattress –
Yes, Jonathan Kent's interruption would surely have posed an obstacle even for Lex, he realized, opening his eyes and pushing the fantasy aside.
****
Lex squared his shoulders and walked back into Belle Reve. He kept his face blank, even when one staff member poked another and jerked a thumb at him. It didn't seem familiar, the pallid blues and greens sliding off his mind without triggering a single memory.
The visitors' room was slightly brighter, though the table and chairs were still bolted to the floor. Lex didn't sit. He didn't want to touch any more of the place than he had to.
The girl who was led in was a blurred and damaged version of the one he'd seen on the LuthorCorp camera. She looked around with dull desperation, her eyes barely registering his presence as she trudged to a chair and sat down.
Lex moved around the table as the orderly left, crouching a few feet away from Alicia so that he could be at her level. Her still-lovely hair hid her face from him as she stared at her hands, rocking slightly.
"Alicia," he said. She twitched. "Alicia, my name is Lex Luthor. I'm here to talk to you."
She turned her head. "Why?"
"Because I think you and I have a lot in common." He smiled at her, the soft and open one that had come much more easily to him since his own sojourn in Belle Reve.
It worked; her chin came up, her eyes focused, and her mouth moved towards a smile.
Lex had an affinity for the wounded birds of the world. He wanted to shelter them, so long as they'd accept his protection.
"I don't like it here," Alicia admitted, and Lex turned his attention entirely to her.
"We'll have to see what we can do about that," he said, reaching out to brush his fingers across her cheek. "First, I want to know a little more about you."
****
Lex stopped by the Talon, checking to make sure Adam hadn't returned. Lana reported no sightings, looking up at him with the huge shining eyes that could make any man a hero, if he wanted to be. He told her he'd send someone to make sure all of Adam's things were gone.
Lana rubbed her hands on her upper arms as if she were cold, looking off into the distance, surely thinking about Adam and loss. Even in her pearl-buttoned pink cardigan, she reminded Lex of water, a still pond in fall. Deeper than she looked, but colder. "Thanks, Lex. I really appreciate it."
"What's a business partner for?" he asked easily. "Have you seen Clark?"
Lana frowned. "Just this morning at school. Should I tell him you're looking for him?"
Lex shook his head. "I'll drop in at the farm later." He turned the conversation to financial matters. Lana was sensitized to investigations into Clark's life right now, still raw from Adam.
She had coffee the way he liked it waiting for him to take when he left. Lana was a much better manager than she was a waitress. He was glad he'd taken the chance on her.
****
Martha came to the door when Lex knocked. "Hello, Lex," she said, opening it and ushering him in. "Clark is at the hospital. He insisted on going there with Jonathan for his check-up."
Lex looked at her tight, worried face, her tense shoulders, her worn-gingham eyes. "You know, I can have any specialist in the world brought here. I would do anything in my power to help your family."
She smiled gratefully, but was that a flash of guilt? Or did the senior Kents, so sure in their righteousness, not feel guilt? No, they must, for Clark to be able to bear it so proudly. "Thank you, Lex. I hope things will be back to normal soon. Sometimes there's nothing anyone can do but wait and pray."
Lex nodded. Martha Kent meant well, but that was a philosophy for the powerless.
He didn't ask her if there was anything else he could do. Like the deed to the farm, his gifts had to be surprises in order to be accepted. He'd bring the specialists in regardless – Martha hadn't refused the offer, he noted. She was a pragmatist, and she knew what money was worth.
They chatted for a few more minutes, local politics and the non-lethal antics of Clark's classmates, and then Lex excused himself. He'd wanted to see her, not Clark, this time. He'd get Clark later, when Jonathan was better, but Martha needed him now. All Clark's energy was focused on his father, so he didn't see that his mother was shaking apart inside, holding herself together only because Clark and Jonathan required her.
It was too bad the Kents would never allow him to send a housekeeper or field hand onto the property. He'd have to content himself with flowers and chocolates to ease some of the pressure.
****
Molly's face showed honest pleasure, Lex was fairly sure. He reached out, hugging her to him. Her body was already changing, hardening, giving her the kind of control over the physical world that she previously only enjoyed in digital life.
Also, she smelled good.
He released her and stepped back. "You're looking well, Molly."
She smiled and pushed her glasses further up on her nose. "So are you, but you knew that."
"I did. I just wanted to stop by, make sure you have everything you need."
She glanced around, at the room full of screens and silvery-gray metal. "It's wonderful, Lex. I've been working on a voice-recognition algorithm –" she reached out and tugged him towards one of the larger computers – "here, take a look."
Lex followed, letting her excited explanations wash over him, looking at her fondly more than at the screen. Molly reminded him that his inner geek wasn't all that inner. And, of course, she smelled good.
****
Clark didn't respect him. And, really, why should he? Lex had accepted too many lies, backed down too many times, for Clark to see him as a strong, worthy friend.
Lex had been hung up on the puzzle of Clark Kent so long that he'd lost the overall outline, befuddled by the individual odd-looking pieces. As with many problems, it made sense to turn his attention to something else, let what he knew percolate in the back of his mind, and wait for the solution to bubble to consciousness.
There was certainly plenty of other work. He needed to reestablish his power base. Molly, Lana and Chloe were good for his ego, but not yet the army he needed. No, not an army. He needed believers. He needed – trust.
Could there be loyalty without trust? It was a mistake to conceive of "trust" as a single entity. Lex could trust Clark to save his life, and Clark could trust Lex to offer material help when he needed it. Lex could trust Martha to offer sympathy, and Martha could trust him to preserve the farm against all comers. Lana would look to him for safety, Molly to share his fascination with the wonders of science, Chloe to seek to share the truth. As long as he kept up his end of the bargain, they would be trustworthy.
One thing Lex had learned from being a Luthor: People remembered one failure long after a dozen successes. He'd already failed enough for a lifetime.
****
The guardhouse called to say that Clark was on the way to the main house. It wasn't ironic that Clark was getting smarter about concealment while Lex was getting smarter about ferreting out the truth. It was a natural progression for both of them. They were helping each other, improving their skills against the world, scrimmaging almost. In that sense, it wasn't all that important which of them fooled the other. What was important was the real game, the one with Lionel and all the rest of the people out to get Lex and Clark both.
The realization made Lex feel warm, tender towards Clark – not paternal, never that, for a thousand reasons, but almost brotherly, agape mixed in with the eros.
His face must have shown enough of this when Clark arrived at the office door that Clark stopped a few steps in, his serious expression dissolving into an answering smile as brilliant as an arc light. He was wearing a royal blue shirt untucked over hard-worked jeans.
"Hey, Lex."
"Hello, Clark. What can I do for you?" Lex pushed away his laptop and folded his arms on the glass desk in front of him.
Clark stepped forward, unslinging his backpack from one shoulder and putting it down beside a chair. Lex waved a hand, and Clark sat down, obviously trying to gather his thoughts.
"How do you know if you're not in love any more?"
Lex's back stiffened. "I'm not sure I can give you any good advice on that," he said carefully. "I'm more familiar with extortion and seduction. What makes you ask?"
Clark looked over Lex's shoulder, at the stained glass turned bloody by the setting sun. "I was in love with Lana. I know that. And every time I look at her, it hurts. But – it hurts like something's gone, like it's not coming back."
Ah, loss. Lex understood that. Lacing his hands together on the table in front of him, he leaned forward. "Sometimes the things you feel the most are the ones most easily broken. They're so dependent on the innocence of that first rush of emotion. Whether she disappointed you, or you think you disappointed her, the result is the same: It's not like it was. You have to decide if you want to build a new foundation, or if the ground is inevitably contaminated by what went before."
"You make it sound – I don't want to always be the guy who runs away." Clark's hands twisted in his lap. Lex imagined them punching through solid metal, doors, cars. He had a report on Morgan Edge's car --
"But you don't want to be the guy who stands still while the rest of the world moves, either."
Clark smiled unhappily. "I guess not."
"Actions and emotions aren't separate, Clark. What you do influences how you feel. If you think you're pining after her, you'll stay that way. If I were you, I'd try to get closer – or farther away."
****
Dr. Tang hadn't been nice to him – Lex thought she might be constitutionally incapable of niceness – but she had at least been polite at the end. Small victories.
She hadn't known the source of the platelets, except that they came from whole blood with unique properties. Lex had seen whole blood with unique properties before, out of Helen's office. Dr. Tang had informed him that Morgan Edge had possessed a different sample of the same blood.
And one of Edge's minions had died in the Kent barn at about the time Edge was delivering the blood to his father and Dr. Tang.
It was too bad, Lex thought, that he couldn't trust his father as far as he could remember him. He had the strong feeling that together they had about ninety percent of the necessary fragments.
Still, Lex was acquiring more information about the underlying picture by the day. It was a challenge.
It was also a pity that Dr. Tang had died, and clearly his father's fault for rushing her. Lex believed that she hadn't wanted to start on humans so soon, if only because she was so obviously a failure-hating perfectionist. His father had, as usual, pushed too hard. He thought that if his tools broke, they just proved their lack of worth, but you wouldn't blame a pair of scissors for being unable to knock down a wall. His father lacked respect for the inherent capabilities of people, the things they could do if you let them work with their strengths.
So much wasted potential.
Dr. Tang didn't have any family in the States, but Lex made sure that she had a real gravestone in the main Metropolis cemetary. He would have sent money to her family, but North Korea didn't approve of American dollars; the best thing he could do for Dr. Tang's family was to forget she ever existed.
The best he could do for himself was to save himself from her fate.
****
Don't turn this around on me, Clark had said. Right, because only one of them had been trespassing – or eavesdropping, or lipreading through the walls. Lex wasn't quite clear on that, and Alicia had been of limited assistance on the issue of Clark's expanded senses. Lex had been there legitimately, even if the lab itself wasn't a legitimate project, while Clark –
At least Clark had come to him for help with Adam and the special formula, showing that their bond was still in place. Clark understood that strength and speed weren't always better than money and influence.
Nor did Lex blame Clark for running off to save Lana from Adam while Lex was being arrested for murder. Saving Lana was a noble endeavor, and one entirely suited to Clark's talents, while Clark had nothing to say that would have kept Lex out of handcuffs. Also, Clark's abrupt departure, while just out of sight of the policemen, had been duly noted by the security cameras, whose testimony was now stored in as safe a place as Lex could manage. It was cumulative evidence, but Lex liked the reassurance that he'd made the right connections.
Lex hadn't been arrested in – well, never, as an adult. It had been an unpalatable experience, for all that he'd kept his expression unworried.
Only slightly less unpalatable than turning on his father.
It wasn't a betrayal. Trust was a precondition for betrayal.
Lionel could have had anyone's name forged on those memos. Hell, he could have ensured that Dr. Tang, now even less able to defend herself, had been blamed for everything. It wasn't sloppy; his father was rarely sloppy. It was, however, gratuitous and insulting.
His father didn't respect him. And, really, why should he? Lex had fallen for too many lies, caved in to pressure too many times, for his father to see him as a strong, worthy son.
Lex knew it was another game. His father was too enamored of the idea of testing to failure, which only made sense if one expected to produce later models from the same production line – and from what Lex had seen of Emily Dinsmore, that wasn't out of the question in his father's mind. Lex, on the other hand, had no intention of being the one used up to set the tolerances for his father's other heirs.
His research suggested that Mr. Dinsmore was still an employee of LuthorCorp, albeit under a byzantine chain of title and a slightly different name. And his daughter –
Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive, Hamlet said, mad north-northwest. Lex couldn't afford to seem mad any more. He was running out of chances for public redemption. But he had to investigate further, without the aid of a devoted mother, without the comfort of a father-ghost, and certainly without the blatancy of a riddle play.
He wondered whether it would make sense to cast Lana as Ophelia. Somehow, though, he thought Lana hardier than that singing nymph. Although, if Clark was Laertes the moralist, that was the kind of family dynamic to which he could really relate.
If Lex had to bet, he would put his money on Lana surviving all the rest of them. She knew how to bend, how to submit herself to get indulgence and protection. If Lex and Clark disappeared, she'd miss them, but she wouldn't let her grief get in the way of finding a new patron.
Maybe his father was right. Maybe survival was the only law, and Lana the pinnacle of human evolution. There was a concept in game theory, the Prisoner's Dilemma. Two suspects are separated, each offered the same deal: if you inform on the other guy and he stays mum, you go free and he serves ten years. If you both stay silent, you each do two years; if you both talk, you each do twenty. What's a man to do in that situation? If the other suspect is trustworthy, your best strategy is to stay silent, but then you can be played for a chump. Successful betrayal is your best bet – but if you both think that way, you both lose.
That's why they called it a dilemma.
It would have been nice to talk to Clark about the welter of changes in his life, the new stresses of pretending that everything was all right while targeting his father, but Lex recognized this desire as a weakness. He hadn't had any true confidantes before Clark since Pamela left, and it was silly to pine after what you couldn't get.
Especially when there was so much in the world that you could.
****
One thing Lex didn't like about all the Kewatche myths – they were all fathers and sons. Never mothers and sisters, and only the occasional wife like an afterthought. As if half the human race was excluded from mythical status, doomed to the ordinariness of living and breeding and dying. He wondered what the women thought about Numan and Seget. Did they curse them both, looking at the destruction their sky-spanning battles caused? Surely each one of them had a mother who thought *her* son, her bright light, was the hero.
There was one researcher at Met U who thought that the caves told only half the story. That women's magic had been just as powerful, but had not been recorded, women not being so well-supplied with braggarts from within their own ranks as men. She was trying to recover the women's stories, reconstructing them from the half-remembered tales passed down through the generations, diluted with each repetition in the modern world.
His father was funding the cave research, and Lex wasn't yet in a position to oust him from that, but there were other programs he could fund in the Native American Studies department.
****
Lex's mother had been dead for half his life.
He couldn't say why that fact disturbed him so much. It didn't change anything. It was just inexorable time, the same thing that made the lilies he left at her memorial sag and fade after a few days.
After his visit to the cemetary, where the ground was still disturbed from the removal of his prematurely installed monument, Lex headed back to Smallville and the Talon. Lana's smooth calm was just what he needed now.
He should have known that Clark would be there, too, still sniffing around her like a puppy who scented the crumbs of some treat in her pocket. He wasn't in the best mood for Clark, who these days necessitated some preparation.
He smiled at Clark, took the coffee that Lana handed him, and headed to a back nook, two tables away from the nearest patrons, a mother and daughter pair who were discussing prom dresses.
Less than a minute after he sat down, Clark joined him. "Hey, Lex," he said, pulling out a chair and sitting down at a ninety degree angle from Lex, so Lex could still see out into the rest of the shop.
"Hello, Clark. What can I do for you?"
Clark blinked, looking surprised. "Why – I was just wondering how you were doing. We haven't gotten to talk much since – you know."
"Since I nearly got arrested?" Lex suggested.
Clark smiled nervously. "Yeah. Is everything okay with that?"
Lex looked down and found that his cup was empty. He rolled the coffee stirrer between his fingers. "I'm handling it."
The FBI had assigned him a bright young agent, sadly bearing little resemblance to Dana Scully, but otherwise competent and dedicated. She had arranged for the covert copying of LuthorCorp files identified by Lex, while another bright young thing from the Justice Department evaluated the materials and decided what else she would need to make her case for violations of the Food and Drug Act, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, the Robinson-Patman Act, the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, export control regulations, the Sherman Act, the National Labor Relations Act, et cetera or possibly ad infinitum.
At one point Lex had asked her if it wouldn't be simpler to identify those portions of the U.S. Code LuthorCorp *hadn't* violated. "Well," she'd said, smiling up at him – they'd developed a real rapport during their late nights – "I don't think there's a big problem with trademark counterfeiting."
"That's a load off my mind," he'd teased back. When he'd held out her coat for her to slip into that night, she'd given him a look that invited fraternization. He'd pretended not to notice. Sex was too volatile, too likely to lull him into complacency, too helpful to Lionel's defense attorney if it ever came to a trial. She liked him well enough regardless.
Clark was saying something. Lex shook off his reverie and paid attention.
[have to do something about Clark smooshing Lex up against a car and ripping off his shirt]
****
Lex returned to consciousness in a flood of terror that diminished only slightly when he realized that he was in his own bed. The noise was simply his secure cellphone. Still holding the gun he'd grabbed from under the pillow, he used his right hand to snag the phone and bring it to his ear.
"Yes?"
"Lex?" Chloe Sullivan said.
"What is it?" he asked, satisfied that none of the residual fear reached his voice.
"I need – I need to see you." Now he could tell that she was scared, terrified even.
"Can you get out of your house?"
She drew a shallow, rattling breath. "Yeah."
He couldn't see her in the mansion because of the surveillance. The Torch offices would have been ludicrous, the Talon uncertain.
"Meet me in the Kent barn in twenty minutes."
****
Nemo fuit repente turpissimus: no man becomes a villain all at once
New moodtheme courtesy of
amandajane5 -- thanks!
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