Tobywolf13
10-11-2007, 05:30 PM
Set during Fierce but includes spoilers from up to Action, I believe...
Conv ersations with Honest People
Clark had never been happier in his entire life. The night he came home after facing off with Fine in the fortress to find his mother alive and well, that afternoon a few weeks a go in the morgue when Chloe had woken up shouting for him, even the moment when he finally heard his birth name. All of these moments paled in comparison to how overwhelmingly happy he was in this moment. Lana was alive. She was alive and she was sitting on his sofa, telling him about how she’d been working so hard and selflessly to protect him.
It warmed something inside of him that he had no words for.
“Lana,” He said, taking her hands in his own. “Chloe’s going to be so happy to know you’re alive. We all are.”
Lana frowned and looked down at her lap and Clark was confused by her dour turn of mood. “She can’t know.”
“What?”
Lana stood up and started to pace. “Chloe can’t know I’m back yet and neither can Lois.”
“But they went to your funeral. They cried about it and everything. You should have seen how upset Chloe was when she heard the news.” He was growing more confused by the minute. Chloe and Lana were like sisters. He couldn’t imagine the girl he loved not wanting to relieve her “sister’s” pain.
“Look, Clark,” Lana said, twisting the ring on her left finger. “I committed a serious crime when I faked my death.”
He nodded. “I know. I get it. It was fraud and that’s bad and everything, but we can fix that. Maybe if you come out and then go to the police and explain how afraid for your life you were from Lex, they’ll understand. I mean, they had enough to hold him without bail. It’s obvious you felt like you had no choice.”
Lana frowned and kept up her frantic pace. “I know they had that phone conversation with Lex hitting me and threatening me because I’m the source that snuck it off to them.”
He felt his jaw drop. That didn’t make any sense. Getting their fight to the police didn’t have anything to do with her escaping from Lex’s grasp. But it did have everything to do with… “You set him up, didn’t you?”
“Well I didn’t want him to hit me. I was just trying to rile him up enough to threaten to kill me.” She said rubbing her cheek and blinking her wide, luminous eyes at him.
Clark swallowed. She did look so upset, and he hated to see her in pain. Maybe he did need to hear her out on all of this after all. “Lana,” he said, his voice quiet and steady, “What exactly did you do? I need to know everything if I’m going to help you.”
She nodded and sat back down on the couch next to him. “I baited him in his office where I knew our conversation would be on tape and then I had it delivered anonymously to the police by a source I hired. I wanted to frame Lex for it. He’s an evil man, Clark. He hurts people all the time and he hurt me.”
He nodded, thinking about Bart, A.C., Victor and the people suffering in 33.1, thinking most especially about the Sullivans. “He does do that. How did he hurt you, though? I knew you didn’t love him, but Lionel threatened you into the marriage to help with the spying effort. I thought Lex loved you and the baby.”
Her lips curled back in a snarl. “There never was a baby. He was pumping me full of hormones the entire time to trick me into marrying him. He violated me.”
Clark felt that simple flash of hate again but fought it back. He’d almost killed Lex and Lionel a few weeks ago just from listening to Lana ahead of reason. If he’d succeeded in killing Lionel, he’d have eliminated his…Jor-El’s oracle. Besides, he didn’t want to kill anyone. Hate might be clean but living with those kind of consequences, knowing how badly he failed his parents by doing that, well that was filthy. “Lana, how do you know?”
“After the meteor freak hit me and I was getting a check-up, the doctor made a snide comment about me dosing myself with hormones in order to bag myself a billionaire. He implied I was nothing more than a gold digger!”
“But did you ever have any proof that Lex was the one who did it? I mean, Lex does experiment on people. We both know about 33.1 by now, but this seems even a little beyond him. Is it possible that Lionel did it? A baby would have made you even more willing to accept Lex’s proposal and to marry him. Lionel really wanted his spy and he wanted her very badly. He would have done anything to get you by Lex’s side.”
Lana shook her head. “I know Lex did it.”
“Do you have proof? One evil billionaire with limitless resources and shady doctors could have faked it just as well as his son.”
“You’re not listening, Clark. I thought Lex hurt me and I needed to get away from him so I framed him.”
Clark scooted just an inch or two back from her. Despite his super hearing, he was having a hard time following her end of the conversation. “I thought you just faked your death.”
“No, I framed him. The whole taped conversation was a part of that and so was the dead body.”
Clark nodded thoughtfully. “I was going to ask. I did ask, in fact, but you brushed it off. How could the police have identified a body AND had DNA samples if you escaped? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It wasn’t me. Lex cloned me and was holding the clone at Reeve’s Damn with all those weird soldiers of his. I broke into the facility and stole the clone back and then rigged my car to explode with it in it and with Lionel watching so I’d have a witness.”
Now Clark was getting that familiar vertigo he always did when talking to Chloe in her exposition mode. “Wait, you knew about Lex’s army? More than just the vague Ares stuff you gave me?”
She nodded. “After that stuff with Ares, I listened even harder and followed him to Reeve’s. I found a whole cloned army and, for lack of a better word, myself.”
“How long did you know?”
“What?” She asked, blinking in confusion.
“It was several weeks between that super soldier Ares fiasco and your ‘death.’”
“So?”
“So you somehow were able to sneak into Lex’s lab without getting caught and come face to face with proof of illicit human cloning. In fact, you were even able to steal back your own clone.”
“And so?”
“Lana,” he continued, “Do you know what you could have done?”
“What?”
“You could have gone to Lionel or to the cops with your proof of what Lex was doing. If you showed up with your own clone in tow, they’d have to have believed you. Hell, you know Chloe and Lois both have vendettas against Lex and are both working for two of the biggest papers in the country. You could have gone to them. With that story splashed across the front page, Lex would have gone to jail forever for his crimes against humanity.”
“I guess.”
“You guess? Chloe, the Green Arrow, and I have been working for months to get any solid evidence against Lex and you had the Holy Grail and you blew it up. Why would you do that?”
“I told you. Lex hurt me first so I wanted to frame him.”
“You think Lex hurt you first.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Since when are you a member of the Lex Luthor fan club?”
“I’m not, but I am a believer in truth and justice and in America you don’t take the law into your own hands and you have to have proof. That’s how the rules work.”
“I don’t need to follow the rules. I’m better than that.”
“None of us are better than that.”
She tilted her head at him quizzically. “You are.”
“No, I’m really not. My powers mean I have a lot more strictures on what I can do than anybody. Just because I could kill someone doesn’t mean I’d ever do it and I have to be extremely careful not to get tempted because it would be so easy.” He blushed at that last part and looked away, ashamed for trying to murder Lionel and Lex in the space of the same day.
Now that he thought about it, he really didn’t think much at all when Lana was concerned. Or act that much like a hero for that matter.
“I still can’t believe you framed Lex. I mean, Lana, murder is a capital crime. Don’t get me wrong. Lex has committed tons of crimes he should go to jail for, but he didn’t deserve to die for murdering you when you were up walking and talking.”
“He wasn’t ever going to go to jail for good or get the death penalty and we know that. Luthors always snake their way out of things.”
“Yeah, they do.” Clark said, his tone hardening as he remembered that Lana was still technically married to Lex and still very much a Luthor.
Oblivious to his insinuations, Lana continued. “Besides, that wasn’t my plan. I was waiting for him to follow me to Shanghai so I could kill him myself. You can’t prosecute a dead person after all.” Shocked beyond belief at her admission, Clark stood up from the couch. He was so keyed up that he slipped accidentally into superspeed and was standing by the television set before Lana could blink. She gave a little yelp when her eyes finally caught up with him. “Jesus, Clark, you gave me a heart attack.”
“You were going to kill Lex?”
“I didn’t actually do it. Lex came to China, we talked, I backed down, and he let me come back to Smallville so I could start over with you.”
Twenty minutes ago that sentence without the rest of the context would have made him blissfully happy, but now it mostly made him sick. “You were going to kill somebody.”
“Lex.” Lana hissed. “He’s a bad man. Besides, I know you were going to kill Lionel for me, probably should have, but I couldn’t give you enough of a push.”
Clark’s mouth hang open. “Lionel did everything wrong, but his motives were in the right place. He was trying to help us both and without you being in the right place, without you knowing about Ares, Lois would be dead right now, so, in a way, he was right. It doesn’t excuse what he did, but he’s an ally…or was. No one’s sure where he is now.”
“Oh, I do. He’s in a cabin in the Smallville woods by Reeve’s Dam being tortured by one of my assistants.”
If Lana had come back fluent in Chinese, Clark wouldn’t have been more shocked. “Are you kidding me?”
Lana, frustrated by his own anger, stood up and stalked over to him. “What’s your problem?”
“I repeat: Are you kidding me? Lionel---as much as I hate that it’s true, believe me I do---is both my mother’s friend and an ally. I need him. Besides, you can’t torture people any more than you can frame them for murder to try to shoot them or commit fraud or any of this. It’s all very wrong.”
“How’s it different? Lionel hurt me too and I would have had my revenge on him, if you’d just gone ahead and killed him. What’s the bonus in having a superpowered boyfriend if he doesn’t do things for you.”
“I was wrong. I was so wrong. I let me anger get the better of me and that never should have happened, but are you even listening to yourself. Just because people hurt you, doesn’t mean you can commit crimes and get them back. You just can’t. It’s not right. That’s how Lex thinks.”
“I’m nothing like Lex.” She gritted out through clenched teeth.
Actually, Clark was beginning to realize she was worse. Lex was forming an army to take down his enemies, at least it was leading to a direct confrontation. Lana was skulking and sneaking and stabbing people in the back. It was cowardly on top of evil. “Lex is obsessed with protecting himself from the dangerous meteor mutants and from an alien threat. I kind of almost get that. If I’d seen Zod and Fine and the others and didn’t know they were the only ones coming, I’d be terrified about a wide scale invasion too.”
Actually, Clark still wasn’t sure about Jor-El’s motives after all this time and was even less confident in Kara. On odd numbered days of the month he wasn’t a hundred percent sure he or his cousin wouldn’t pull a “rule them with strength” coup d’etat.
“And he set up an evil lab and tortures people.”
“Yeah he does do that and he’s trying to get revenge or fight off or whatever these enemies that don’t exist. Lex has fallen so far because he’s taken the law into his own hands and stopped seeing the boundaries. You’ve done the exact same thing but on a smaller scale.”
She glared at him. “I can’t believe you’re saying this.”
“I can’t believe the things you’re saying either.”
She shook her head, long hair falling in her face. Her anger had caused her to purse her lips and squint up her features, and she looked anything but pretty then. “And I can’t believe how ungrateful you are.”
“Me? I’m ungrateful?” He asked, throwing his hands in the air.
“Yes, you really are. I love you. I sacrificed my happiness and married that monster for you and even knowing what I do about you, I still love you.”
Clark stumbled back a little as if she’d pulled Kryptonite on him. “ Knowing what you do? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know how badly Zod abused me and what happened with the other people from the ship. I know you’re still you, I get that, really I do, but it doesn’t leave me jumping for joy that you’re in anyway like those people either.” She stuttered over people and Clark had the distinct impression that she’d been tempted to say things instead.
He sighed and ran a hand through his bangs. “If it makes you feel better, I’m not overly fond of them either and we’re nothing alike.”
“Everything you can do is still a little overwhelming. You can’t deny that, and it’s not like knowing you came in the first meteor shower makes me happy either. My parents died in that shower. Part of your stupid planet killed them.”
He bent his head low and shuffled his feet then. “And everyone up until that point that I’d ever met, everyone just like me, who’d ever be like me died too. My parents, my grandparents and cousins and everyone else…” Save Kara, but he didn’t feel much like sharing about her yet, “…died. I lost everything and, as bad as it sucked, what happened couldn’t have been stopped. It was the fallout from a war. I’m so sorry it happened and you have no idea how much I wish I could take it back. How much I wish you hadn’t lost your parents, or Lex hadn’t gotten sick, or all those people hadn’t been infected. But I can’t change that.”
“I know and I forgive you, but this is hard. I’m still trying to reconcile everything I know about you, about Krypton, about my parents’ death and the people from the ship and everything and I can’t help wanting to blame someone.”
Someone actually meant one Clark Kent, but that was neither here nor there. Even if she still and after eighteen years weren’t suffering from severe trauma from her parents’ accident, Clark knew that they could never have a relationship, and this time it had nothing to do with his secrets and everything to do with hers. She was an awful, selfish person who went out of her way to hurt others.
She was everything he was struggling not to be.
He couldn’t live with someone like that, let alone love her.
Hell, he couldn’t let Kara within a hundred yards of someone so amoral and ruthless. A superpowered demi-god should not adopt Lana Lang as their role model.
“I can’t do this. Lana you can’t live here. First of all, taking you in would be harboring a felon and that’s both wrong and something I can’t afford to do. It would ruin my mother’s career if it got out for one thing. For another, I’ve taken in a cousin of mine and I can’t set poor examples for her. I just can’t. Honestly, I think it’s best if you turn yourself in.” He shrugged and threw her words back at her. “You’re still Lex’s wife. I don’t think you’ll go to jail. After all, Luthors snake their way out of everything.”
“How dare you,” she spat as she reared back to slap him.
He snatched her hand out of the air in superspeed. “You don’t want to do that. You’ll end up in traction.”
“I forgot,” She said, pulling her arm back, after he’d released it. “Fine then. This is it, Clark, if I go out that door, I’m never coming back. I’ll go back on the run with Lex’s money to Asia or wherever but you won’t be getting a second chance, not ever.”
Clenching his jaw, he replied. “Good.” Then, he paused, playing the sentence back over in his mind. “Wait? Take Lex’s money?”
“I might have embezzled ten million dollars, but it’s not like I didn’t earn it and we never had a prenup.”
Clark shook his head in disgust. “I’m not even surprised at this point. Lana, turn yourself in now. Beg the mercy of the court or whatever. Don’t go on the run with stolen money and don’t add obstructing justice to the long list of crimes you’ve committed. Just don’t.”
“Why do you even care?”
“Because I’m going to have to go to the police with everything I know as soon as you leave or else I’m still an accomplice and because it’s the right thing to do and I wish you were capable of understanding that.”
“And I thought you loved me.” Her lower lip wibbled then and she blinked her luminous eyes at him one more time but her hold over him was broken. He wasn’t falling for her passive-aggressive ******** again.
“I loved the girl next door who rode the horses at our farm. I can’t love an attempted murderess, an embezzler, and a girl who doesn’t want anything more than vengeance.”
“Fine.” She yelled gathering up her purse and starting for the door.
But Clark wasn’t done yet. “This is why I couldn’t tell Chloe. You were trying to buy time to cover up your crimes so you could get away with it. This was never about you being scared or trying to clear your name. It was about you trying to get your way.”
“Chloe’s always been trouble.” Lana said, her hand resting on the front door’s handle. “She’s the one who encouraged me to sleep with Lex in the first place when I begged her for advice. The only good thing she ever did for me was help me figure out about your powers.”
“She told you?” Clark asked, shock creeping over him. Never in a million years could he even believe that Chloe would share his secret, not even with Lana. If it came down to choosing between the two of them, he always assumed Chloe would choose him over Lana. In fact, he’d staked his life and safety (and now Kara’s life and safety) and that feeling.
Lana shook her head. “Of course she didn’t. Even after all my suspicions with Linda Lake, despite all my pain, all the pain you put me through, she wouldn’t tell. But she helped out anyway.”
Sometimes things just clicked in his brain. It always happened with math and, sometimes, as with Kara’s ship’s frequency, it happened with his heroing. “The wine cellar. You locked Chloe in there on purpose. I thought I heard a third heart beat but I thought I was just being paranoid, what with using my powers in the middle of the head of 33.1’s camera-infested house. Jesus, what if I’d gotten caught on tape.”
“Didn’t stop you from using your powers anyway.” She snapped.
He blushed. He was really bad about the covert stuff. Something that Chloe ragged him about constantly, especially following him blurring in or out of the DP bullpen. “Okay, so I wasn’t thinking. I should have just gone to the kitchen staff or something.”
“Besides, it worked out fine. You didn’t get caught and I finally got your secret.”
“And you put Chloe and me in danger to do that and you didn’t even care.” He laughed bitterly. “You know why Lex and I finally stopped even trying to be friends?”
“No and I don’t really care, neither of you are exactly my favorite people right now.”
“Well you’re gonna hear it. Lex let the Belle Reeve escapees loose on the farm. You know, the ones that held you and my parents captive and tried to kill all of you? He hurt my family, put the people I cared about in danger just to get at my secret.” He snorted and walked over to the door, throwing it open with so much force that one of the hinges tore. “You really should try and beg him to take you back. You two deserve each other. Now go and do yourself a favor.”
“Offering advice now?”
“Oh you should take this: turn yourself in.”
“I’m not doing it.”
“Then run.” He said, waiting for her to step over the threshold and blessfully out of his home and his life. “Because I’m going to the police and then I am going to give an interview with this reporter I know over at The Planet about the real Mrs. Luthor. Good-bye, Lana.” He said, slamming the door in her face.
Pulling out his cell phone, he dialed a number he knew by heart and called at least five times a day. After the second ring, a familiar voice echoed in his ears. “Yeah, hey Chlo. You know how you were having trouble with your editor? Well I have a story for you. Even you, Miss Curator of the Wall of Weird, are never going to believe this. Can you meet me at the Smallville Police Station in an hour? I promise. It’ll definitely be worth your time.”
Conv ersations with Honest People
Clark had never been happier in his entire life. The night he came home after facing off with Fine in the fortress to find his mother alive and well, that afternoon a few weeks a go in the morgue when Chloe had woken up shouting for him, even the moment when he finally heard his birth name. All of these moments paled in comparison to how overwhelmingly happy he was in this moment. Lana was alive. She was alive and she was sitting on his sofa, telling him about how she’d been working so hard and selflessly to protect him.
It warmed something inside of him that he had no words for.
“Lana,” He said, taking her hands in his own. “Chloe’s going to be so happy to know you’re alive. We all are.”
Lana frowned and looked down at her lap and Clark was confused by her dour turn of mood. “She can’t know.”
“What?”
Lana stood up and started to pace. “Chloe can’t know I’m back yet and neither can Lois.”
“But they went to your funeral. They cried about it and everything. You should have seen how upset Chloe was when she heard the news.” He was growing more confused by the minute. Chloe and Lana were like sisters. He couldn’t imagine the girl he loved not wanting to relieve her “sister’s” pain.
“Look, Clark,” Lana said, twisting the ring on her left finger. “I committed a serious crime when I faked my death.”
He nodded. “I know. I get it. It was fraud and that’s bad and everything, but we can fix that. Maybe if you come out and then go to the police and explain how afraid for your life you were from Lex, they’ll understand. I mean, they had enough to hold him without bail. It’s obvious you felt like you had no choice.”
Lana frowned and kept up her frantic pace. “I know they had that phone conversation with Lex hitting me and threatening me because I’m the source that snuck it off to them.”
He felt his jaw drop. That didn’t make any sense. Getting their fight to the police didn’t have anything to do with her escaping from Lex’s grasp. But it did have everything to do with… “You set him up, didn’t you?”
“Well I didn’t want him to hit me. I was just trying to rile him up enough to threaten to kill me.” She said rubbing her cheek and blinking her wide, luminous eyes at him.
Clark swallowed. She did look so upset, and he hated to see her in pain. Maybe he did need to hear her out on all of this after all. “Lana,” he said, his voice quiet and steady, “What exactly did you do? I need to know everything if I’m going to help you.”
She nodded and sat back down on the couch next to him. “I baited him in his office where I knew our conversation would be on tape and then I had it delivered anonymously to the police by a source I hired. I wanted to frame Lex for it. He’s an evil man, Clark. He hurts people all the time and he hurt me.”
He nodded, thinking about Bart, A.C., Victor and the people suffering in 33.1, thinking most especially about the Sullivans. “He does do that. How did he hurt you, though? I knew you didn’t love him, but Lionel threatened you into the marriage to help with the spying effort. I thought Lex loved you and the baby.”
Her lips curled back in a snarl. “There never was a baby. He was pumping me full of hormones the entire time to trick me into marrying him. He violated me.”
Clark felt that simple flash of hate again but fought it back. He’d almost killed Lex and Lionel a few weeks ago just from listening to Lana ahead of reason. If he’d succeeded in killing Lionel, he’d have eliminated his…Jor-El’s oracle. Besides, he didn’t want to kill anyone. Hate might be clean but living with those kind of consequences, knowing how badly he failed his parents by doing that, well that was filthy. “Lana, how do you know?”
“After the meteor freak hit me and I was getting a check-up, the doctor made a snide comment about me dosing myself with hormones in order to bag myself a billionaire. He implied I was nothing more than a gold digger!”
“But did you ever have any proof that Lex was the one who did it? I mean, Lex does experiment on people. We both know about 33.1 by now, but this seems even a little beyond him. Is it possible that Lionel did it? A baby would have made you even more willing to accept Lex’s proposal and to marry him. Lionel really wanted his spy and he wanted her very badly. He would have done anything to get you by Lex’s side.”
Lana shook her head. “I know Lex did it.”
“Do you have proof? One evil billionaire with limitless resources and shady doctors could have faked it just as well as his son.”
“You’re not listening, Clark. I thought Lex hurt me and I needed to get away from him so I framed him.”
Clark scooted just an inch or two back from her. Despite his super hearing, he was having a hard time following her end of the conversation. “I thought you just faked your death.”
“No, I framed him. The whole taped conversation was a part of that and so was the dead body.”
Clark nodded thoughtfully. “I was going to ask. I did ask, in fact, but you brushed it off. How could the police have identified a body AND had DNA samples if you escaped? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It wasn’t me. Lex cloned me and was holding the clone at Reeve’s Damn with all those weird soldiers of his. I broke into the facility and stole the clone back and then rigged my car to explode with it in it and with Lionel watching so I’d have a witness.”
Now Clark was getting that familiar vertigo he always did when talking to Chloe in her exposition mode. “Wait, you knew about Lex’s army? More than just the vague Ares stuff you gave me?”
She nodded. “After that stuff with Ares, I listened even harder and followed him to Reeve’s. I found a whole cloned army and, for lack of a better word, myself.”
“How long did you know?”
“What?” She asked, blinking in confusion.
“It was several weeks between that super soldier Ares fiasco and your ‘death.’”
“So?”
“So you somehow were able to sneak into Lex’s lab without getting caught and come face to face with proof of illicit human cloning. In fact, you were even able to steal back your own clone.”
“And so?”
“Lana,” he continued, “Do you know what you could have done?”
“What?”
“You could have gone to Lionel or to the cops with your proof of what Lex was doing. If you showed up with your own clone in tow, they’d have to have believed you. Hell, you know Chloe and Lois both have vendettas against Lex and are both working for two of the biggest papers in the country. You could have gone to them. With that story splashed across the front page, Lex would have gone to jail forever for his crimes against humanity.”
“I guess.”
“You guess? Chloe, the Green Arrow, and I have been working for months to get any solid evidence against Lex and you had the Holy Grail and you blew it up. Why would you do that?”
“I told you. Lex hurt me first so I wanted to frame him.”
“You think Lex hurt you first.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Since when are you a member of the Lex Luthor fan club?”
“I’m not, but I am a believer in truth and justice and in America you don’t take the law into your own hands and you have to have proof. That’s how the rules work.”
“I don’t need to follow the rules. I’m better than that.”
“None of us are better than that.”
She tilted her head at him quizzically. “You are.”
“No, I’m really not. My powers mean I have a lot more strictures on what I can do than anybody. Just because I could kill someone doesn’t mean I’d ever do it and I have to be extremely careful not to get tempted because it would be so easy.” He blushed at that last part and looked away, ashamed for trying to murder Lionel and Lex in the space of the same day.
Now that he thought about it, he really didn’t think much at all when Lana was concerned. Or act that much like a hero for that matter.
“I still can’t believe you framed Lex. I mean, Lana, murder is a capital crime. Don’t get me wrong. Lex has committed tons of crimes he should go to jail for, but he didn’t deserve to die for murdering you when you were up walking and talking.”
“He wasn’t ever going to go to jail for good or get the death penalty and we know that. Luthors always snake their way out of things.”
“Yeah, they do.” Clark said, his tone hardening as he remembered that Lana was still technically married to Lex and still very much a Luthor.
Oblivious to his insinuations, Lana continued. “Besides, that wasn’t my plan. I was waiting for him to follow me to Shanghai so I could kill him myself. You can’t prosecute a dead person after all.” Shocked beyond belief at her admission, Clark stood up from the couch. He was so keyed up that he slipped accidentally into superspeed and was standing by the television set before Lana could blink. She gave a little yelp when her eyes finally caught up with him. “Jesus, Clark, you gave me a heart attack.”
“You were going to kill Lex?”
“I didn’t actually do it. Lex came to China, we talked, I backed down, and he let me come back to Smallville so I could start over with you.”
Twenty minutes ago that sentence without the rest of the context would have made him blissfully happy, but now it mostly made him sick. “You were going to kill somebody.”
“Lex.” Lana hissed. “He’s a bad man. Besides, I know you were going to kill Lionel for me, probably should have, but I couldn’t give you enough of a push.”
Clark’s mouth hang open. “Lionel did everything wrong, but his motives were in the right place. He was trying to help us both and without you being in the right place, without you knowing about Ares, Lois would be dead right now, so, in a way, he was right. It doesn’t excuse what he did, but he’s an ally…or was. No one’s sure where he is now.”
“Oh, I do. He’s in a cabin in the Smallville woods by Reeve’s Dam being tortured by one of my assistants.”
If Lana had come back fluent in Chinese, Clark wouldn’t have been more shocked. “Are you kidding me?”
Lana, frustrated by his own anger, stood up and stalked over to him. “What’s your problem?”
“I repeat: Are you kidding me? Lionel---as much as I hate that it’s true, believe me I do---is both my mother’s friend and an ally. I need him. Besides, you can’t torture people any more than you can frame them for murder to try to shoot them or commit fraud or any of this. It’s all very wrong.”
“How’s it different? Lionel hurt me too and I would have had my revenge on him, if you’d just gone ahead and killed him. What’s the bonus in having a superpowered boyfriend if he doesn’t do things for you.”
“I was wrong. I was so wrong. I let me anger get the better of me and that never should have happened, but are you even listening to yourself. Just because people hurt you, doesn’t mean you can commit crimes and get them back. You just can’t. It’s not right. That’s how Lex thinks.”
“I’m nothing like Lex.” She gritted out through clenched teeth.
Actually, Clark was beginning to realize she was worse. Lex was forming an army to take down his enemies, at least it was leading to a direct confrontation. Lana was skulking and sneaking and stabbing people in the back. It was cowardly on top of evil. “Lex is obsessed with protecting himself from the dangerous meteor mutants and from an alien threat. I kind of almost get that. If I’d seen Zod and Fine and the others and didn’t know they were the only ones coming, I’d be terrified about a wide scale invasion too.”
Actually, Clark still wasn’t sure about Jor-El’s motives after all this time and was even less confident in Kara. On odd numbered days of the month he wasn’t a hundred percent sure he or his cousin wouldn’t pull a “rule them with strength” coup d’etat.
“And he set up an evil lab and tortures people.”
“Yeah he does do that and he’s trying to get revenge or fight off or whatever these enemies that don’t exist. Lex has fallen so far because he’s taken the law into his own hands and stopped seeing the boundaries. You’ve done the exact same thing but on a smaller scale.”
She glared at him. “I can’t believe you’re saying this.”
“I can’t believe the things you’re saying either.”
She shook her head, long hair falling in her face. Her anger had caused her to purse her lips and squint up her features, and she looked anything but pretty then. “And I can’t believe how ungrateful you are.”
“Me? I’m ungrateful?” He asked, throwing his hands in the air.
“Yes, you really are. I love you. I sacrificed my happiness and married that monster for you and even knowing what I do about you, I still love you.”
Clark stumbled back a little as if she’d pulled Kryptonite on him. “ Knowing what you do? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know how badly Zod abused me and what happened with the other people from the ship. I know you’re still you, I get that, really I do, but it doesn’t leave me jumping for joy that you’re in anyway like those people either.” She stuttered over people and Clark had the distinct impression that she’d been tempted to say things instead.
He sighed and ran a hand through his bangs. “If it makes you feel better, I’m not overly fond of them either and we’re nothing alike.”
“Everything you can do is still a little overwhelming. You can’t deny that, and it’s not like knowing you came in the first meteor shower makes me happy either. My parents died in that shower. Part of your stupid planet killed them.”
He bent his head low and shuffled his feet then. “And everyone up until that point that I’d ever met, everyone just like me, who’d ever be like me died too. My parents, my grandparents and cousins and everyone else…” Save Kara, but he didn’t feel much like sharing about her yet, “…died. I lost everything and, as bad as it sucked, what happened couldn’t have been stopped. It was the fallout from a war. I’m so sorry it happened and you have no idea how much I wish I could take it back. How much I wish you hadn’t lost your parents, or Lex hadn’t gotten sick, or all those people hadn’t been infected. But I can’t change that.”
“I know and I forgive you, but this is hard. I’m still trying to reconcile everything I know about you, about Krypton, about my parents’ death and the people from the ship and everything and I can’t help wanting to blame someone.”
Someone actually meant one Clark Kent, but that was neither here nor there. Even if she still and after eighteen years weren’t suffering from severe trauma from her parents’ accident, Clark knew that they could never have a relationship, and this time it had nothing to do with his secrets and everything to do with hers. She was an awful, selfish person who went out of her way to hurt others.
She was everything he was struggling not to be.
He couldn’t live with someone like that, let alone love her.
Hell, he couldn’t let Kara within a hundred yards of someone so amoral and ruthless. A superpowered demi-god should not adopt Lana Lang as their role model.
“I can’t do this. Lana you can’t live here. First of all, taking you in would be harboring a felon and that’s both wrong and something I can’t afford to do. It would ruin my mother’s career if it got out for one thing. For another, I’ve taken in a cousin of mine and I can’t set poor examples for her. I just can’t. Honestly, I think it’s best if you turn yourself in.” He shrugged and threw her words back at her. “You’re still Lex’s wife. I don’t think you’ll go to jail. After all, Luthors snake their way out of everything.”
“How dare you,” she spat as she reared back to slap him.
He snatched her hand out of the air in superspeed. “You don’t want to do that. You’ll end up in traction.”
“I forgot,” She said, pulling her arm back, after he’d released it. “Fine then. This is it, Clark, if I go out that door, I’m never coming back. I’ll go back on the run with Lex’s money to Asia or wherever but you won’t be getting a second chance, not ever.”
Clenching his jaw, he replied. “Good.” Then, he paused, playing the sentence back over in his mind. “Wait? Take Lex’s money?”
“I might have embezzled ten million dollars, but it’s not like I didn’t earn it and we never had a prenup.”
Clark shook his head in disgust. “I’m not even surprised at this point. Lana, turn yourself in now. Beg the mercy of the court or whatever. Don’t go on the run with stolen money and don’t add obstructing justice to the long list of crimes you’ve committed. Just don’t.”
“Why do you even care?”
“Because I’m going to have to go to the police with everything I know as soon as you leave or else I’m still an accomplice and because it’s the right thing to do and I wish you were capable of understanding that.”
“And I thought you loved me.” Her lower lip wibbled then and she blinked her luminous eyes at him one more time but her hold over him was broken. He wasn’t falling for her passive-aggressive ******** again.
“I loved the girl next door who rode the horses at our farm. I can’t love an attempted murderess, an embezzler, and a girl who doesn’t want anything more than vengeance.”
“Fine.” She yelled gathering up her purse and starting for the door.
But Clark wasn’t done yet. “This is why I couldn’t tell Chloe. You were trying to buy time to cover up your crimes so you could get away with it. This was never about you being scared or trying to clear your name. It was about you trying to get your way.”
“Chloe’s always been trouble.” Lana said, her hand resting on the front door’s handle. “She’s the one who encouraged me to sleep with Lex in the first place when I begged her for advice. The only good thing she ever did for me was help me figure out about your powers.”
“She told you?” Clark asked, shock creeping over him. Never in a million years could he even believe that Chloe would share his secret, not even with Lana. If it came down to choosing between the two of them, he always assumed Chloe would choose him over Lana. In fact, he’d staked his life and safety (and now Kara’s life and safety) and that feeling.
Lana shook her head. “Of course she didn’t. Even after all my suspicions with Linda Lake, despite all my pain, all the pain you put me through, she wouldn’t tell. But she helped out anyway.”
Sometimes things just clicked in his brain. It always happened with math and, sometimes, as with Kara’s ship’s frequency, it happened with his heroing. “The wine cellar. You locked Chloe in there on purpose. I thought I heard a third heart beat but I thought I was just being paranoid, what with using my powers in the middle of the head of 33.1’s camera-infested house. Jesus, what if I’d gotten caught on tape.”
“Didn’t stop you from using your powers anyway.” She snapped.
He blushed. He was really bad about the covert stuff. Something that Chloe ragged him about constantly, especially following him blurring in or out of the DP bullpen. “Okay, so I wasn’t thinking. I should have just gone to the kitchen staff or something.”
“Besides, it worked out fine. You didn’t get caught and I finally got your secret.”
“And you put Chloe and me in danger to do that and you didn’t even care.” He laughed bitterly. “You know why Lex and I finally stopped even trying to be friends?”
“No and I don’t really care, neither of you are exactly my favorite people right now.”
“Well you’re gonna hear it. Lex let the Belle Reeve escapees loose on the farm. You know, the ones that held you and my parents captive and tried to kill all of you? He hurt my family, put the people I cared about in danger just to get at my secret.” He snorted and walked over to the door, throwing it open with so much force that one of the hinges tore. “You really should try and beg him to take you back. You two deserve each other. Now go and do yourself a favor.”
“Offering advice now?”
“Oh you should take this: turn yourself in.”
“I’m not doing it.”
“Then run.” He said, waiting for her to step over the threshold and blessfully out of his home and his life. “Because I’m going to the police and then I am going to give an interview with this reporter I know over at The Planet about the real Mrs. Luthor. Good-bye, Lana.” He said, slamming the door in her face.
Pulling out his cell phone, he dialed a number he knew by heart and called at least five times a day. After the second ring, a familiar voice echoed in his ears. “Yeah, hey Chlo. You know how you were having trouble with your editor? Well I have a story for you. Even you, Miss Curator of the Wall of Weird, are never going to believe this. Can you meet me at the Smallville Police Station in an hour? I promise. It’ll definitely be worth your time.”