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When Clark was hurting he tended to seek solace with the dead. There’s something about graveyards that he just found comforting. A morbid part of him thought that that’s because by all rights he belonged in one.
Most people would assume that if Clark was going to spend time looking for encouragement at a gravesite he would pay a visit to Jonathon or Jor-El. Most people were idiots. Jonathan and Jor-El were both far too judgmental for their memories to provide any semblance of comfort or reassurance. So no, Clark didn’t head to Smallville or the Fortress of Solitude when he needs a father’s comfort. His destination was instead a neatly manicured plot on the edge of Metropolis.
There are two people who know where he goes. Ironically enough, both of them have the initials LL. Those two people who hold such diametrically opposite roles in his life, know him so very well. Sometimes even better than Clark knows himself.
It is because they know him so well that Clark is unsurprised when he hears the sound of footsteps approaching behind where he stands in a Metropolis cemetery, white rose clutched in his fist. He had been fighting Lex that day. It hadn’t been a hard fight physically speaking, but emotionally, it was exhausting. Fights with Lex always were.
He doesn’t acknowledge the visitor. The heartbeat tells him who it is. If they want to speak they will.
“He loved you, you know.” The way he never loved me hangs unspoken between them.
“I know.” Clark stares resolutely forward. As long as he doesn’t look back, doesn’t meet the eyes of the other man, he can pretend that they’re still young, still friends, still the closest thing that each has to a brother. “I think I always knew. I just refused to accept it until…”
“Until it was too late.” Lex moves up to stand beside him. Clark still refuses to look, but he can feel the waves of exhaustion rolling off the other man. Maybe he finds their fights as draining as Cark does.
“Yeah.” Clark feels the familiar guilt well up. “I told myself he was just trying to win points with my mom.”
“Martha is pretty awesome.” Lex interjects and for one second it feels like they’re kids again.
“Yeah,” Clark agrees. “She is.” And she had loved Lex too. Still does. Sometimes she still rants at Pa’s grave about all the ways he screwed up with that relationship. Not that Clark officially knows that, but well, super-hearing. It’s not like he means to listen in, but keeping a part of his attention focused on his loved-ones at all time long since ceased to be a voluntary action. He hears their heartbeats every second of every day. That this reflex developed only after they lost Lionel is something Clark isn’t sure he’ll ever forgive himself for.
Lex’s attention shifts back to the grave. “He really loved her,” Clark could almost call the tone in Lex’s voice, wonder. “I didn’t even know he was capable of loving someone like that.” Clark hears the silent Or at all, but doesn’t comment. Lex is right after all. Clark hadn’t thought Lionel capable of love either until after Lionel had shown it in the most dramatic way possible.
The silence drags between them, until at last Lex speaks again, “You didn’t deserve him.” The bitterness in Lex’s voice is palpable. And far, far too familiar. “But then, neither did I. I didn’t deserve what he was, and you didn’t deserve what he became.”
“You’re right.” Clark says. It’s nothing he hasn’t thought himself, after all. “You should have had the Lionel I had. And I should have recognized and appreciated it when I had it.”
“No shit.” Lex snorted. “I would have killed to have him be the kind of father to me that he was to you.” He sighed. “In the end though, I suppose we’re both what he made us. He was our father after all.” That seems to be all the other man has to say, as he silently turns to leave the graveyard
“Yes,” Clark whispers once the footsteps had faded enough that he can be reasonably certain that Lex can’t hear. “He was our father. Or at least, he should have been.”