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Clara feels a twinge in her neck as her pulse leaps - the soft pressure of Lex’s brown fingers against the well of her throat makes her inhale sharply through her nose, and she gets a potent whiff of shea butter and expensive hand cream, warm skin and spicy cologne. Lex snorts in a gentle puff of delectably warm breath, redoubles her efforts.
“I can’t believe you still can’t tie one of these on your own,” she says, her deep voice scintillating, smoky in its softness.
Clara swallows thickly. The bob of her throat makes Lex’s glossy acrylics brush her skin.
“Just can’t seem to get the hang of it. I guess most girls don’t wear bowties.”
“Marlene Deitrich,” Lex says, drawing the slick silk over and under itself. “Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford... The rest of their little sewing circle. On you, I admit, it’s a bit closer to Nutty Professor, but…” She raises an eyebrow. “I think if you suddenly grew a fashion sense I’d assume the real you had been abducted by aliens.”
This was a bad idea.
Clara ducks back just as Lex finishes tugging the knot snug, flashes her a smile she hopes doesn’t look guilty.
“Thanks,” she says, tugging her suit jacket straight and glancing at herself in Lex’s full length mirror. She pats her pockets for her cue cards. She feels Lex’s hand on her upper arm.
“You realize this is just the rehearsal,” Lex says.
“I know,” Clara says, still incapable of looking her in the eye. “I just… I want it to go perfectly.”
Lex says nothing. She squeezes her arm, and Clara struggles to breathe as the feeling of Lex’s clever fingers curling against her bicep makes her knees go weak and her head spin. She feels her hand slide away, listens to her slow retreat from the room, high heels muffled by the carpet. The door to the guestroom slides shut, but Clara can still feel Lex’s touch lingering on her skin like a phantom, smell her on the air.
She looks at herself in the mirror and sees a gigantic, gangly child in a rented suit, all broad shoulders and barrel chest and untameable curls. She looks down at her cue cards and finds that her sweaty palms have left them slightly damp. Ink is rubbing off on her fingers. The only truly perfect part of her is the dark blue bowtie Lex looped around her neck, crisp at the edges and perfectly straight.
Her heart’s beating in triple time. She’s pouring cold sweat into her rented suit. If she didn’t know better, she’d think she was the one getting married.
The thought makes her feel even sicker.
“This is a bad idea,” she murmurs to herself.
There’s a knock on the door.
“Clara?” Her father’s voice. “You alright in there?”
“Coming,” she says, before she has the chance to think better of it. And then what choice does she have?
(Could dive out the window. Could run for the hills. Could go downstairs and - in front of all these lovely people - pick Lex Luthor up, cradle her in her arms, and run away with her, never to return.)
She opens the door. Jonathan takes one look at her face and raises his eyebrows.
“You’re pale as a sheet,” he says.
“I’m fine,” Clara lies. Because what’s one more? The truth, as ever, has arrived far too late to be welcome.
Lex leans over to kiss the soft round of Helen’s shoulder beside the silk strap of her dress and allows herself permission to breathe. This is what it feels like she reminds herself; this is the process. With one hand, she releases Clara Josephine Kent to the swirling miasmic ether from which she first arrived; with the other hand, she cups Helen Bryce’s chest, feeling her even heartbeat against her palm.
Helen tips her gaze towards her as she applies her lipstick - a rich autumn red that Lex wants to kiss away.
“Isn’t it supposed to be bad luck for me to see you before the wedding?”
Lex runs her finger slowly up Helen’s arm, leaning in to kiss the shell of her ear. “If bad luck were enough to frighten you off, I think you’d have run away home a long time ago.”
Helen tips her head and smiles, reaching up to take Lex’s hand, knitting their fingers together. Lex ignores the way her heart pangs looking down at them: so slight and demure, no blunted nails or calluses from farmwork. She presses her nose into Helen’s hair and tries to be in this moment, with this woman she loves - instead of lost in pointless daydreams, aching for things that will never be.
“I can’t wait for tomorrow,” Helen murmurs. “I can’t wait to be your wife.”
Lex smiles and she means it. The courts won’t honor it - there’s nowhere in this country that will consider them legally married. But what does it matter? She looks into the mirror on Helen’s vanity, and she sees the two of them, and she loves the picture they make. She loves the soft scent of Helen’s perfume, the steadiness of her doctor’s hands, the resolute, calm kindness of her.
This is never going to work.
She’s able to muscle back the grimace - the galloping panic, the sinking sense of dread - from decades of practice. She feels an involuntary tug towards her office, the box that rests in its hidden compartment, the vial of blood within whispering to her through the walls.
Helen feels her shifting unease. She turns her head.
“...something’s on your mind.”
Lex drums her tongue against her teeth, flashes a smile not nearly as sincere as the one before.
“Call me paranoid,” she says. She affects a font of earnest concern. “Any word from hospital security?”
It’s Helen’s turn to mask the way her smile recedes. She turns back to the mirror.
“Nothing yet,” she says.
Lex hums noncommittally. Her thoughts are shades of red.
She tries to remind herself she’s committed to this course of action. Loving someone has always only ever made it impossible for her to let well enough alone. But then, that’s the price of lying to her; Helen ought to know it by now, and Clara too.
She will know the truth. One way or another. It’s her one last gift to herself - before she gives up Clara for good.
The toast is good. Clara’s pretty sure, at least - she feels entirely out of her body through the whole thing. People laugh at the appropriate times. Lex’s eyes stay trained on her, even though her arm stays wrapped around Helen.
“I've been looking through every book from Socrates to Shakespeare, trying to find someone who could put into words the way Lex and Helen feel about each other.” She’d tried AskJeeves and Yahoo Answers, too. Ultimately, the only book in the Smallville Public Library she’d been able to find on homosexuality that didn’t instantly scream call the priest had been The Color Purple... which hadn’t been particularly helpful either.
“But what I realized is, there are no words for it.” Oh there are. None that are acceptable in polite society. She’s heard Rush Limbaugh list off a few. She’s heard the pastor list off a few more. None that she’d ever say, none that she’s ever heard anyone she respects say. But then, she hasn’t heard anyone she really respects say much of anything on the subject. That’s why she’s currently speaking to a crowd of ten. “And when you have it... you trust it, and you believe in it.”
It really does feel like she’s going to be sick.
She’s pretty sure Lex thinks she’s homophobic. Or, if she isn’t, that she’s so naive that she can’t even fathom what it is two adult women would even do together. And she can. Fathom it.
What she can’t fathom is why all she can feel when she looks at Helen and Lex is a searing, potent jealousy.
“When you have what they have, you take a chance on it. You're willing to sacrifice anything to keep it no matter what the cost.”
She’s not sure how she’s managing to make this speech sound like anything other than complete and total horseshit. When has she ever really trusted anyone, the way Lex clearly trusts Helen? When has she ever been willing to take the chance Lex is taking right now? Sacrifice what Lex is sacrificing?
(But she could, she thinks. She could do it for Lex. Take one last chance to say what she should have said last year - what she should’ve said every time Lex asked gently and in earnest.)
(She could.)
But she doesn’t. Instead, she lifts her glass of sparkling apple cider.
“To Helen and Lex,” she says, like the lying coward she is. And all around her people smile. Glasses clink. She watches as Lex turns to Helen and smiles an impossibly fond smile, and kisses her with a slow tenderness that makes Clara feel like she’s turning to stone.
She sees Martha’s brow twinge up in knowing concern. She shakes her head, waves her off, but it feels like if she doesn’t get out of this room, she’s going to self-destruct.
“I need some air,” she says, and walks out of the room like if she does it fast enough, she’ll be able to outpace the dawning horror of what’s happening. As she’s crossing the threshold, she feels her feet catch on the air as her body tries to take her up up and away from all of this. She manages to plant them firmly on the ground, but doesn’t manage to decide where exactly she’s going, and so ends up wandering aimlessly, trying to escape the ringing ache in her chest, and the clanging of wedding bells in her ears.
“Clara?”
Martha’d pointed her this way. Clara had left right after her speech, she’d said, with a headache. Lex’s heels click along the waxed hardwood floors, and she hears rustling, movement behind her office door. Pushes it open, heart in her throat.
But when she does, she finds something worse than Clara standing over the evidence of her final betrayal: her father.
He turns to her, and smiles like the Devil Himself.
“Lex. There you are.”
He’s been careful to conceal his searching, but Lex sees the signs a less paranoid person might miss: the antiques shifted slightly to the left, the books shifted to the right. The pictures slightly askew, her desk drawers ever so slightly ajar. Lex widens her stance, keeps her hands free. When dealing with a venomous snake, best practice is to keep your eyes on it and walk backwards, slowly.
But she has no intention of ceding any more ground to him. Not tonight. Perhaps never again.
“Let me guess,” she says. “Someone misplaced your invitation.”
“Only because you never sent one,” Lionel says.
“What do you want?”
“What every father wants when his little girl is about to get married,” he says, smooth and sweet as honey. He emerges from behind the desk with his hands upturned. “To help her realize she’s making a terrible mistake.”
“I think I’ve made it very clear you’re not welcome here.”
“Lex,” Lionel says, tutting his tongue. “This is my estate. You live here on my charity.”
Lex scoffs. “On your orders.”
“And now, in defiance of them. Lex. You ought to listen to me. I’ve come to warn you.”
“And you were… what? Looking for a pen?” Lex nods to her desk, the disturbed papers, the obvious signs of attempted subterfuge.
Lionel narrows his eyes. “Your public reputation can’t survive the type of scrutiny this sham marriage will drum up. If you aren’t brought up on sodomy charges by the end of the night--”
“Your pet sheriff will probably be out of a job,” Lex finishes.
Lionel narrows his eyes. “Lex. Be reasonable. When I agreed to allow you to… change yourself--” He pauses to look her up and down. “--we did so with an agreement of absolute secrecy. Those secrets of yesteryear won’t survive the light of day. ...and neither will your friend.”
Lex feels her blood turn ice cold.
“Where is little Clara Kent?” Lionel asks. “A bold decision to invite her in at a time like this - when you have everything you need to learn the truth about her once and for all.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lex says, and she forces her voice and her gaze to be steady. But her hand is a fist by her side.
Lionel hums and nods in a parody of thoughtfulness. “...did they happen to recover whatever it was that was stolen from your fiancee’s office?”
Lex’s breath catches in her throat. Lionel holds her captive in his gaze.
“Lex,” he says, low and even. “You’re losing out on the chance to come to me willingly. This little dalliance won’t survive public scrutiny, and even if it does it will cost you what you actually want. Sooner or later, you’re going to remember who you really are. This could be easy. Work with me, and you can have what you really want.”
“And what do you imagine that is, Dad?”
“Power.”
“Try freedom,” Lex snaps.
“Answers,” Lionel says, infuriatingly blithe. “That’s what you really prize above all else, sweetheart. And I respect that. Nothing can ever really distract you from pursuing the truth. And once you own that… you control everything.”
“I own the truth and you own me. That’s a cute gimmick.” She leans her weight into her heels, glowering. “Too bad I’ve outgrown it.”
She hears footsteps coming down the hallway: short and clipped, kitten heels. Helen. She stands very still, refusing to give. But it doesn’t matter, she can tell. He smiles, finally, like he’s won, and glides past her.
“Another time,” he says, like this isn’t over.
Lex hears him slide through the door - hears Helen pause on sight of him, then hurry into the office.
“Lex?”
Lex’s back is to her. She stares through the stained glass without seeing it, her heart thudding in her chest. She needs to leave this room - walk out and mingle with what few friends she's managed to collect in this podunk town who didn't spit on her when she offered an invitation: Gabe Sullivan and his daughter will no doubt be lingering politely; Principal Reynolds will wait until they've had an opportunity to talk before taking his leave; Clara and her parents will no doubt make their excuses in due time. She should be out among them. It's her party, and a small one at that.
But she can't think about entertaining with the lingering stench of Lionel's accusations clouding her mind.
He was here for Clara - for her blood. He knows. He knows her secret, knows what she is, what she can do, and but for the security of the hidden panel in her bookshelf, he’d have all the concrete proof he needs.
Helen crosses the room to her, puts a careful hand on her back. Helen, who makes her want to be better - who makes her want to be good. Who by all accounts has done her best to keep the Kents and their secrets as safe and sound as Lex would have in her place; who never asks that Lex be different, only that she be honest.
Helen, whose stubborn integrity is the final hurdle to Lex knowing what she needs to know - what she deserves to know; to stamping out the lie that’s kept her wounded heart bleeding like stigmata for the better part of two years. Better people have tried to make her good. Stronger hands have tried to shape her.
“Is everything alright? Did he hurt you?”
Lex turns and kisses her like she has something to prove - pulls her in by the wrist and kisses that sweet waxy lipstick off her mouth, devours her like Helen is hers and only hers… and she is, isn’t she? Something good Lex can have when all this is over. It’s just one last thing before she can stop searching for the smell of hay on Helen’s skin and for calluses on her hands, just one last thing before she finally stops wishing she could taste summer and apple pie on her tongue, and feel the slight rasp of windchap on her lips.
All she needs from Clara is her secrets, she tells herself.
After that, it’ll all be over. After that, she’ll remember how to breathe again.
Clara’s walking down the long, gravel-packed drive to the road, letting the air cool her hot cheeks, when she hears the rolling wheels of a limousine pulling up beside her. She turns her head as Lionel slides the window down.
“Ms. Kent,” he says. “On your way home? Why don't I give you a ride?”
“I’m good, thanks.” Clara thrusts her hands deeper into her pockets, stomach heavy with distaste. It’s always a fight to even be polite to Lionel Luthor. “Just taking a walk, I’m gonna circle back.” She swallows, rocking on her heels as she contemplates switching direction right now. “Didn’t realize you’d be here.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it.”
“Seems like Lex would rather you did.”
Clara chances a glance at Lionel’s face. Smiles disarmingly. She watches Lionel’s face pinch before he manages a polite smile back, clearly annoyed by the indignity of having to talk to her through the open window.
“It’s alright. I realize this must be a difficult night for you.”
“I mean, I don’t exactly love public speaking.”
“I mean that it must be very difficult to see her choose someone else.”
All at once, the sheen of confidence she’s wearing evaporates.
“What?”
It comes out breathless, aching, and Clara regrets it - regrets that she can’t better restrain the way his words undo her, rip open the fissure in her chest to release the flock of desperate what ifs. She reaches to adjust her bow tie like a totem of Lex’s protection, swallowing thickly. And Lionel, the predator, watches it all with open satisfaction.
Clara attempts disaffection. Clears her throat. “It’s not like that.”
“Oh, I'm sure you wish it weren't,” Lionel coos, insultingly. “And really I should be warning you away - think of your poor parents. But I realize the effect Lex has on… impressionable young women like yourself. Really, I’ve always admired the way you’ve stuck to your principles in spite of her. But you must realize now that she’s been toying with you. She can’t help it, I’m afraid.”
He’s lying, obviously; she knows that. Lex hasn’t been toying with her. Lex? Lex who frets, who worries like a hen, who’s always checking up on her and helping her in wonderful, impossible ways? Lex, who’s committed felonies just because Clara’s asked her to? Lex, who’s always too damn curious for her own good? Who comes to Clara to confess the smallest and most understandable of sins like a devotee to a priest, who accepts Clara’s ugliest acts and meanest days with infinite forgiveness? Lex, who charges into danger to protect Clara and her friends even though her body is breakable and beautifully human, and Clara’s isn’t?
Lex, who’s marrying another woman in just a few short hours, and wants Clara to stand beside her on the dais and watch.
Clara wants to speak up, defend her. But she knows it won’t matter - protecting Lex from Lionel is like trying to protect the sand from the sea. She needs to learn to start submitting to the inevitable.
Clara and Lionel aren’t so different, after all. Liars, both.
“If that’s really what she’s like, I can see who she gets it from.”
Lionel’s expression pinches again, like he’s surprised she still has the gall to try to wound him.
“Your loyalty to her is admirable,” he says. “But - and, Clara? I tell you this as a friend of your mother’s - deeply unwise.”
“My mother’s got plenty of friends. You’re not one of them.”
She chooses then to spin on her heel, walking back towards the manor. But his words worm into her, squirming beneath her skin. In her mind, she feels his lies taking shape, forming into a Lex she doesn’t know, and she needs to see the real thing, hear her voice, let it banish the imposter.
The halls of the manor are empty - she can hear laughter and voices from the reception, feel the warmth of it mere feet from her. But somehow, the house still feels haunted and desolate, the dark stone seeming to drink the happiness from the air. She pushes her hand back through her hair. Without meaning to, she finds herself following a steady tempo she recognizes intimately. It isn’t until she’s standing at the door to Lex’s office that she realizes what it must be.
How long, she wonders, has she been listening to Lex’s heartbeat from afar? Why does she recognize that sound almost before she recognizes the sound of Chloe’s laughter, her parents murmuring voices?
The door is slightly ajar. She thinks nothing of pushing it open, feels relief catch at the edge of her mind.
But then, before it can really take root, she sees the figures silhouetted against the red of the stained glass; sees Lex kissing Helen like a lover, the quicksilver flash of tongue over lips, the tender way she caresses her, holds Helen’s body to hers. She feels a lurching vertigo, a sick twist of envy and half-aborted lust. And she’s filled once more with the overpowering urge to run.
She sees Lex pull away from Helen, begin to turn her head, and the urge overtakes her. Anywhere - she needs to be anywhere but here, suddenly. It feels like the walls are closing in around her, it feels like her ribs are closing like talons around her heart. She moves fast, frantic, heart pounding, rips open the first door she sees in spite of the angry shout of the lock, and slams it shut behind her. She presses her back flat against it and tries to get her breath back.
Her best friend is marrying someone else. She knows that. She knew it when she came here. She’s known it for weeks now.
So why does it feel like she’s going to throw up?
She’s still panting when she opens her eyes. Her heart’s beating so loud and so fast that she can’t hear anything but the thud of it in her ears. The door she tore through opens to a short staircase leading down into a room she's never seen before. She stumbles down the steps in a daze.
Then, she sees the Porsche, haloed in the blue light of the screens. The rows of obelisks adorned with Kryptonian artifacts. The pictures of her, and her parents.
Suddenly, she can’t hear anything but a dull ringing. Can’t feel anything but a spreading numbness in her forehead, a leaden weight in her limbs.
She moves slowly, taking it in: the car. The artifacts. The computer simulation of the accident playing over and over, like a nightmare on rerun. The flattened bullets, suspended in air. A Nicodemus flower. Drawings from the Kawatche caves. One of the adrenaline parasites in a jar.
It feels like something vital inside her pops, and begins spilling its putrid ichor through her. She’s breathing shallow, feeling empty.
There’s the slightest shift in the air of the room. Lex’s voice, soft and strangled.
“Clara.”
Time stands still between them. Clara feels like Orpheus, standing at the threshold of Hades. But the one who’s deceived her isn’t the god of death this time, but the woman she loves.
… the woman she loves.
Her whole life is here - opened up here like a crime scene, a fetal pig on a dissection table. The imposter Lex who Lionel conjured in her mind is rapidly becoming undivorcible from the woman standing behind her: Lex, the wan light and her shadow, deep and stretching longer and longer, enveloping everything in its path. Sewn to her skin.
“I talked to your dad,” Clara says. Her voice rasps in her throat. Less than an hour ago she was giving Lex’s wedding toast.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Lex says.
“Funny. He said the same thing about you.”
Lex won’t come down the stairs. Clara wonders if she’s afraid.
She should be afraid. Clara balls her hands into fists. She’s right to be afraid. Clara could tear her in half. Some part of her wants to. Fire is starting to roar behind her eyes as she looks around and sees Lex’s cutting fingers on every piece of her secret, burrowing into her life like a botfly.
“You did this,” she says. “You… I told you to leave it alone, over and over.” She swallows thick, choking up the words like river water. She remembers Lex’s lips on hers, remembers breathing life into her, and wonders if that was a mistake all along. “You made a project out of invading my privacy.”
Lex is silent, and Clara can’t bear it any more - she turns, ready to hurt her, to wound Lex the way this has wounded her. She expects sorrow, guilt, shock, surrender.
She doesn’t find it. Lex is standing on the steps looking cold and composed, punishing in her beauty.
“I begged you,” Lex says through her teeth. She takes one step down the stairs, then another, then another, each one puncturing the silence, each hammering a stake into Clara’s heart. “I pleaded. I told you I knew. That I’d do anything to protect you. And over and over, you threw it back in my face.”
“It wasn’t your business,” Clara says, and it comes out hoarse, like she’s going to cry. “You want me to trust you, and then-- then you do this!” She flings her arms wide. “Do you have any idea-- My parents warned me not to trust you, not to let you close to us, they warned me about what you were capable of--”
“Are you seriously so naive that you think I don’t know when I’m being lied to by a seventeen-year-old?” Lex scoffs out a cruel sounding laugh. “Clara. You’re not exactly a criminal mastermind. I know when I’m being messed around. Manipulated. Used. I don’t tolerate people lying to me. You know that.”
“I’m your best friend!”
“And even you can’t resist the temptation. Can you?” They’re on even footing now, Lex pacing forward slow, a threatening aura around her shoulders. “It’s funny - you’re nothing like him, but you do remind me of my father every now and again. Dangling affection and approval out in front of me, yanking it away any time I get close. I could play nice for a hundred thousand years and never earn your trust.”
Clara throws her shoulders out broad, refusing to be intimidated. “How could I ever trust you when you do things like this?!”
Lex narrows her eyes and leans in close, and for the first time, Clara realizes that she’s finally taller than Lex is, that even in heels, she has to look up to meet Clara’s gaze.
“Why should I respect the privacy of someone who only ever lies to me?” Her nostrils flare. “If you won’t tell me the truth, then I’ll find it myself.”
“I haven’t told you the truth because you haven’t earned it,” Clara snaps.
Lex hisses through her teeth. “Because you’ve made earning your trust impossible.”
Clara stands there, glaring down at her, and it occurs to her that these may be the last words she and Lex ever say to each other - that this may be the cataclysmic end to a friendship that was supposed to be the stuff of legends.
“Is that why you chose her?” she asks, and she can barely breathe when she says it. “Is that why you decided you wouldn’t trust me with any of your secrets? Until…” She gags on the words. “...until it was too late for me to do anything about it?”
Lex stares at her for a moment, coiled and strained. When she speaks, it’s so quiet, no one could possibly hear her but Clara.
“...I can’t love someone who won’t trust me.”
Clara inhales and it feels jagged.
When she runs, the world goes to honeyed slow motion. She doesn’t dare look at Lex’s face again. She doesn’t think she’ll be able to hold back the fire behind her eyes if she does.
Lex closes the door to her obsession in a fugue state. The lock is broken. She doesn’t care. Her entire body feels numb, like it's being piloted by someone else.
She walks back out to the reception. She thanks her few guests in a daze. Martha asks after Clara and she puts on a charming smile and says, “I think she headed home. I offered her a ride, but she insisted on walking.” Martha smiles back and nods, says that’s just like her, and it is, isn’t it? Clara Kent, like Elizabeth Bennet, enjoys walking. But then so would Lex if she could run faster than the speed of sound.
Principal Reynolds shakes her hand in a way that’s almost business-like until he gives it a fatherly squeeze. He tells her he’s glad to see her finding her way. Gabe Sullivan thanks her for inviting him and assures her that this year at the plant is going to be their best yet. Helen’s cousins and friends from out of town deliver kind, meaningless platitudes of their own. She doesn’t remember what she says to any of them, if anything.
It’s only as she’s walking upstairs that she realizes Helen is nowhere to be seen. Panic hits her dully in the chest, but she can’t seem to move any faster.
She opens the door to her office. Walks in. Closes it.
The box is sitting on her desk. Helen leans against it, arms folded. She looks up at her slowly.
Lex swallows the bitter taste lurking on the back of her tongue. She presses a hand to her stomach, running her thumb along the laces of her corset-style top. Then, she puts her hands in her pockets.
“...Clara found the room,” she says, for no reason in particular.
“I heard.” Helen’s voice is quiet. Sad. Lex can’t hold her gaze.
“I need you to understand,” Lex begins. But then she stops. She can’t think of what she needs Helen to understand - she’s not sure she understands any of this herself. “...I never meant to be this way,” she ends up saying, which is - unfortunately - the truth.
“I know.”
“I’ve been trying to change,” Lex says, and her voice just keeps unraveling, winding thinner and thinner. “But Clara’s…” She pauses, mouth hanging open, working futilely. “...Clara--”
“Clara Kent is something very special,” Helen says. “So special that you don’t have a word for it. That you obsess over it, singularly.”
Lex looks up almost involuntarily. Helen sits there, looking at her, rapturously beautiful as always, sheathed in wine red - kind and soft even in her sternness. Lex finally notices that her ring finger is bare, and it almost snaps her in half.
“It’s not healthy, Lex. When you showed me the room… I found a way to move past it. I knew what an act of trust it was. And I knew what you’d been through. I mean, I've met your father. Hypervigilance has kept you alive.” Her lips tighten just slightly. “But obsession can be a replacement for addiction. And I can’t see you like that again.” She turns, gestures with one hand to the box. “I can’t see you… reduced to this. Violating my trust, ruining your closest relationships… because you can’t let this go.”
It feels like someone else is using Lex’s lungs. Forcing her heart to beat. She hangs her head, and wishes desperately for a bump of cocaine. Remembers when she and Helen first met, years ago in the waiting room of the Metropolis General ER: her, still in boy mode, strung out and vicious, ready to hurt anyone with the gall to force her to come in direct contact with reality. Helen, trying as she always does to teach her civility.
“...I’m sorry. For what it’s worth.”
Helen nods, a bitter twist to her lips.
"Lex… An apology is a promise that you won’t do it again.” She shakes her head a little. “And I don’t think I believe that. I don’t think you can help yourself where she’s concerned. ...I think I should’ve realized that a lot sooner.”
Lex’s head and chest is filled with the blistering ache of longing - for what, she’s not sure. She feels herself moving, crossing the room to the desk. She rounds it, checks the cryptographic number sequencer on her belt, and keys in the passcode. It opens, and the vial of blood slides out in a plume of carbon dioxide. It’s so cold it burns to touch. When she hands it to Helen, their fingers brush, and that burns too. Helen watches her all the while.
“...I’m taking this back to the hospital,” she says. “And then I’m going to go stay with my cousin in Granville. I want you to have my stuff to me in a few days.”
Lex nods without looking her in the eye. She knows this part. She’s done this part plenty of times.
“Helen,” she says, and then there’s movement on the CCTV screens on her desk. A distant crash from downstairs. She looks down, and sees men in tactical gear moving silently through her foyer.
Lionel.
She looks at the screens. Looks at Helen. Looks at the blood.
“...get to the garage,” she says, and then she’s closing the box, moving it back over to the bookshelf. “Take my car. Head to the Kent’s. Do not stop. If they manage to pull you over, destroy the vial. I don’t care how. Do not let it fall into their hands for any reason.” If she can time this right… She positions the box, slides it into the compartment but doesn’t close it. She needs them to think they’ve caught her in the act.
When she glances back, Helen’s frozen, staring at the screens.
“Helen,” Lex barks. “Now.”
Helen looks up, and Lex sees the fear in her eyes.
“What’s going to happen to you?”
Lex can’t resist that cough of bitter laughter that jolts out of her. “Who cares?”
Helen stares at her for a moment. For just a second, Lex wonders if she’s about to lurch forward for one last kiss. They don’t have that kind of time. She sees the first goon mounting the stairs.
“Helen,” she says, unable to contain her desperation. “If I’ve ever meant anything to you - please don’t let a single, selfish act of obsession be the thing that condemns Clara Kent to my father's tender mercies.”
Helen stares at her another moment longer. Then, Lex sees her hand close around the vial - she kicks off her shoes and runs in her bare feet to the door, and out of sight down the hall.
Good girl, Lex thinks, and not a second later a booted foot crashes into the wood, and she does her best impression of a deer in headlights.
Stevens sees the garage door open. Watches a silver Lamborghini tear out into the country night, engine roaring. Puts his fingers to the radio in his ear.
“Let her go,” says the boss. “We have what we came for.”
Stevens turns and sees his team dragging the Luthor girl down the steps, bloodied and boneless. McDaniels has his hand securely on the package, a wooden box clearly fitted with some kind of numerical passcode. He tuts his tongue. Rich girls always go down so easy.
Clara’s resting her head on the arm of the sofa in the loft when she hears the car on the drive, gravel pinging off the too-low suspension. The sweat’s still cooling on her skin - her ankles hang off the end of the couch, her suit jacket cast off. She’s gripping her bow tie in her fist, clenched tight for so long her knuckles ache. When she sits up, she tries to let it go, throw it away. But she can’t. She gets up even though her body feels heavy with dread. This time, she’s not going to run. She’ll pick Lex up and throw her as far as she can, damn the consequences.
The screendoor of the house opens, and Martha comes out in her housecoat with Jonathan close behind. Clara’s fist curls tighter. She hasn’t told them what happened - begged off with her so-called headache when they came up to check on her. But Martha sees her face, and Clara sees her motherly intuition clue her in.
“Clara? Sweetheart, what’s going on?”
She plants herself in the middle of the driveway, staring into the oncoming headlights. They’re distant now, but they’re coming closer. She knows the kind of enemy Lex can be. And they must be enemies now, after all that. She knows she said things she’ll regret later. But she doesn’t regret them yet.
Lex wants the truth? Wants it more than she wants to be her friend? Wants it enough to close her heart to her, to choose someone else to spend her life with? Fine, then. Let her hit her again at sixty miles per hour. This time, Clara’s not saving her - not from herself, not from the consequences of her own actions. Jonathan was right all along, she thinks, silk tie in her fist: Lex is dangerous. She doesn’t know how to care about anyone but herself.
The cool autumn air tastes unbearably clean when she breathes it in. She’s expecting the Porsche - the zombie car Clara now realizes Lex invoked like a poltergeist to haunt her with the memory of how they first met in a vicious form of passive aggression. But as the car skids to a stop in front of her, wheels scraping against the gravel, the gleaming headlights are square, not round. And when the door flings open, the person who steps out is wearing red, not black - the lines of her are soft, not sharp and cunning. The light doesn’t cut across the arrogant curve of her skull, or light on her dark skin like a pearl. She wears Lex’s long coat, but not with Lex’s unmistakable panache. And she clearly isn’t here to gloat, or declare war.
Helen crosses into the path of the headlights, breathing hard, her feet bare.
“Dr. Bryce?” her mother calls. Clara hears Martha and Jonathan coming down the steps, jogging out to meet them. But Helen looks only at her as she reaches into the pocket of Lex’s coat and holds out a vial in both hands, like a sacramental offering.
“She told me to get this to you at any cost,” she says, and Clara feels all the festering hatred in her collapse, give beneath her feet.
“Where is she?”
Helen opens her mouth, but her words come out all jumbled up. “Her father-- there were-- he sent a team. She thinks he knows, she thought… she gave herself up. Sent me here.”
Jonathan reaches them first, takes the vial, swears.
“What is it?” Martha asks.
“It’s your blood,” Jonathan says, looking at Clara.
Clara sees her mother’s face go slack with horror.
“Jonathan,” she whispers, and the two of them share a look. Turn to Helen, who nods like she’s read their mind.
“We couldn’t let him gain access to the one piece of concrete proof we have.”
“‘We’?” Jonathan says.
“Where is she?” Clara says again.
Helen looks at her and seems to lose her ability to speak again.
“She knew it was the only way to protect you,” she says, finally.
“Where. Is. She?”
Helen shakes her head a little. “I couldn’t stay - my best guess is the airfield. We had a private plane chartered to take us on our honeymoon, if he were going to get her out without drawing attention--”
“Now, hold on a second,” Jonathan growls. “This is Lex Luthor we’re talking about - the same Lex Luthor who stole this in the first place. Right?”
And of course it is the same Lex Luthor, Clara wants to say. The same Lex Luthor who has a secret room in her house dedicated to enshrining every piece of Clara that she’s ever wanted to hide from the world. The same Lex Luthor who stood in front of her in that room and refused to apologize, told Clara it was her fault for pushing her to it in the first place. The same Lex Luthor who can be as cruel as she is kind, as wicked as she is wise, as stupid as she is brilliant.
The same Lex Luthor whose clever fingers tied her bow tie while murmuring about Marlene Dietrich and the Nutty Professor. The same Lex who’s bargained with killers for her mother’s safety, flown in doctors from Metropolis to look after her father, moved heaven and earth to shield Pete and Chloe from the consequences of their own decisions. The same Lex who's killed for her. The same Lex who once walked into a hostage situation and leveraged herself for Clara’s safety… and who just moments ago did it all over again.
“I’m going,” she says, and she doesn’t wait to hear her father’s disapproval, her mother’s concern. She doesn’t politely pretend for Helen’s sake it isn’t out of love.
It is. And the second she tears out onto the road, wind whipping past her head, she can feel it, riding high and painful in her chest.
Lex’s head lolls against the leather as she slowly swims back into consciousness. She smells Clive Christian cologne and hears the pop of a champagne cork. A bruise throbs against her temple, cupping her orbital bone. Another sits heavy along her swollen lip. She runs her tongue over her teeth and tastes copper.
“Mom was right,” she sighs. “You really do know how to treat a lady.”
“Lex,” Lionel tuts. “Don’t be crass.”
Lex forces herself to open her eyes as the plane rumbles and shudders through a bit of turbulence. The overhead lights are unbearable. Lionel’s lounging in the seat across from her, running his hands gluttonously over the keypad of the wooden box that, not an hour ago, held proof of sentient life in the universe. Lex doesn’t allow her face to spoil the surprise.
“This should be a happy occasion,” Lionel tells her. “The two of us, united at last.”
“Is that what this is? No wonder I feel nauseous.” Lex lets her head sag forward - it feels so heavy. She regrets it as the blood rushes to her face. It sets the bruises there on fire, reinvigorates a nosebleed she wasn’t aware she had. She dabs at it gingerly with her thumb.
“That so-called sense of humor of yours is going to get you into trouble someday.”
“Promises, promises.” Lex feels slightly drunk on the pain - the bruises on her face have nothing on the heavy ache in her chest. Her heart is an anchor dragging her down, leaden like the armor of St. George, and just as full of poison. Maybe that’s what draws the meteor rocks to her: like recognizing like; one radioactive toxin seeking another.
“Lex.” Lionel’s putting on his patronizing sneer. She must really look pathetic. “Come now. Don’t be stubborn. I realize it must be hard to set aside your pride. But this is for the best. In just a few hours, we’ll be in Washington, D.C. There are several military contractors who are ready to shell out trillions for just what we’ve gathered so far.”
“So that’s your plan?” Lex asks. “Sell her to the highest bidder?” And as she says it, she realizes she really is nauseous. How could she be this reckless? This self-absorbed, this obsessed? Helen was right. Unearthing Clara’s secret really is just a new addiction to replace the void cocaine left in her life, to fill the vast chasm of grief that’s yawned open through every day since she came to Smallville. She knew what she was risking, but she’d convinced herself she could protect Clara from all this if only she knew everything, if only she got there first. Instead, she’d practically handed her to him on a silver platter.
“Sweetheart, really. Don’t be simple. It doesn’t become you. This is going to make LuthorCorp a world power. Whether or not she realizes it, Clara Kent belongs to us now - they’ll only be paying to lease her.”
Lex lifts her head to glower at him, her whole body burning. “You don’t think that’s sick?”
He gives her a pitying look. “I think that’s business. It’s time for the world to awaken to a new order - where you and I hold the leash of their new god.”
She watches him as he reaches and turns the box towards her. He places the cryptographic sequencer on the table between them. The plane shivers and rocks like a boat on a stormy sea.
Of course he’s going to make her do it. Lionel always did enjoy the poetry of a moment.
“Now. Why don’t you do the honors?”
Lex looks right at him. She’s never been so happy to obey.
The box chirps. The compartment opens. A residual cloud of carbon dioxide steams out. Lionel stares down at it like he’s waiting for the punchline. Anticipation becomes confusion becomes dismay becomes a towering fury.
“...Lex. What have you done?”
Lex whips her arm. The wooden box crashes into the wall. Lionel’s hand closes on her throat before she can get any further. She sees his teeth gnash - Saturn, ready to devour his child.
“You never did have any sense of vision,” Lionel hisses. “You could never understand what was truly important.” Lex throws her arm forward, pinning it across his chest, but Lionel’s grip is punishing, and she’s weak from the concussion. Her vision starts to tunnel as she struggles for air, Lionel’s hand circling her throat, squeezing tighter and tighter, until her lungs are burning.
Her heart’s beating like hummingbird wings - animal fear lights up the back of her brain as she struggles to get free. But in the tiny part of her mind that still functions, she thinks Lionel is wrong. She thinks she does know what’s important; not what’s good, perhaps, not what’s right, or moral. She isn’t the good person Helen could’ve made her into. She isn’t the good person Clara deserves. But she does know what’s important. That knowledge lurks in the marrow of her bones, and if there’s any justice in the universe, that most important of things is safe now, far away and out of reach of anyone like her, or her father.
Her vision is tunneling and her mind is going weak when the plane begins to buck and shy - there’s a deafening shriek of metal, and then her ears pop as the cabin pressure goes in a single instant with all the explosive power of a bomb. Lionel is thrown from her, and the world goes dizzy and strange. Champagne and furniture hurls itself around the cabin like it's caught in a tornado. Wind tears at her mouth and eyes, roars in her ears.
Lex has never considered herself particularly religious, but she remembers, in one of her earliest memories, thinking she saw an angel. It was right after the meteor shower, and through the haze of the all-consuming fever that had taken her hair, she’d felt an angel descend on a shaft of golden light to caress her cheek. And as she’s coughing gracelessly against the feeling of Lionel’s hands around her throat, gasping for air even as its ripped out of her mouth, vision swimming, she feels it happen again; strong arms encircle her, cradle her against a barrel chest, and then she’s flying back out of the cabin of plane, wind whipping around her. Reality seems to retreat and she thinks, If death is always going to feel this right, maybe I’ll embrace it.
She feels absolutely delirious as she looks up into Clara’s face, brown cheeks flushed, dark curls wild and windswept. The wind stops roaring quite so loud as they fall back into the open air, although there is a patter of rain, and the roar of a storm encircling them. Lex has no idea if any of this is really happening, or if these are the last deranged hallucinations of her dying mind.
“You’re flying,” she says, dumbly.
“Don’t remind me,” Clara gasps. She grips Lex tighter, like she’s scared she’s about to drop her, and her grip is so strong that the mere sensation of it gives Lex goosebumps.
“How?”
“I don’t know,” Clara says, breathing hard, and the quiet settling in around them makes all of this feel more real, somehow. Lex doesn’t dare look down. She smells smoke and jet fuel. She feels her heart beating like crazy, feels the first brush of raindrops on her head. “I just… I heard you. You were in trouble, and I--” She bites her lip. “I didn’t want the last words I ever said to you to be…”
Lex looks at her, watches her face work through residual anger and sadness and fear, and it’s all too much - she reaches for her and the second her hand cups Clara’s cheek, she feels her go utterly still, wide-eyed and sweet.
“I lied,” Lex says, and for some reason, right here, right now, everything seems crystal clear. “It didn’t matter if you didn’t trust me. I've always loved you. I think I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you.”
Clara blinks, and Lex doesn’t think the wet gleam in her eyes is from the rain.
“You could’ve died. You could’ve died trying to protect me--”
Lex shakes her head. “Gladly.”
Clara laughs, and it’s thick and aching. “Idiot. I’m indestructible.”
“I figured.”
“You figured. Of course you did.”
“You’re worth it,” Lex says, and she can’t seem to remember why she ever refused to say this out loud.
Clara gasps out a soft, wounded sound. “...how are you so smart and so stupid at the same time?”
“I contain multitudes.” Lex’s head lolls, her jaw going slack - ah. Maybe it’s the concussion making her feel this stupid. “And I’m sorry.”
“Lex.” Clara’s breathless. “Ask me. Just one more time.”
Lex lifts her head, feeling beaten and bruised. She wonders if her father’s dead, if the plane is crashing somewhere inhabited, if she’s going to see the wreckage of her life decorating the news once again come morning. Clara’s arms are tight and strong around her, and her skin is as warm as afternoon sunlight, and she smells like hay and canned peaches and farmgirl. She’s hanging in midair like she belongs there. She tore the door off a 747 like it was a can of anchovies.
“Clara,” she murmurs. “Are you in love with me?”
Clara chokes out a little sob, nodding before the words are even all the way out of her mouth. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I am.”
Lex hums meditatively, trying to give the moment the seriousness it deserves, even as the anchor in her chest begins to lose its weight.
“Clara,” she says, half in an impossible dream. “Do aliens kiss?”
Clara’s answer is a hand wrapped tenderly behind her head, strong, calloused fingers pressing gently to the sensitive skin of her scalp, chapped lips pressing to hers. She tastes like apples freckled by the sun, like river water and ozone, like promises. Like apologies. Like trust rightly earned.
Lex thinks she may never come down.