A/N: I don't own any of this.

I'm new to Smallville and am only just getting started on Season Four now. I know what's coming for Clark and Lex and yet I can't seem to stop myself.

This is meant as a sort of fill-in for Covenant, the last episode in Season Three.

Requiem

"This friendship is over."

It was a long drive back to the mansion from the Metropolis courthouse, but Lex made it all in silence. He played no music, took no cell phone calls, and shed no tears.

It was somehow appropriate that these two things should come together, his greatest victory and such unfathomable loss. He might have liked to glory over the afternoon's events, the long-sought final triumph over his father; but Clark's last words to him echoed in his mind, blotting out all other thoughts. Where he had anticipated pride and relief, there was only horror. Over … over … over his thoughts turned, and with each repetition the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach only intensified.

How could it be over?

In some part of his mind he knew he had betrayed Clark's trust. However unintentionally, he had done it. But he hadn't lied to Clark either, and therein lay the unfairness of it all.

Yes, the room – he knew how it looked. He had known all along how it looked, and yet truth be told, he had been absolutely powerless to stop himself. That fact goaded him more than any other: Lex Luthor, he of the indomitable will, had lost his self-control.

But in the end he had come to his senses and regained his self-mastery. Did that count for nothing?

It had taken nothing more than the gentle constant of Clark's friendship to make Lex realize the irrational nature of his research, and more importantly, what he stood to lose. And so he had stopped investigating the Kents and instead turned the focus of his inquiry inwards, trying to draw from it all some lesson about himself. If he could isolate that which made him vunerable to this manic drive to know and possess – his father's one legacy, a relentless sense of entitlement – perhaps he could turn the direction of his own destiny. Perhaps he could learn to choose his own path.

These had been his intentions. They may have been selfish, but they were honest. And even now, he felt sure that if he'd been given a chance to explain, he could have made Clark see.

But Clark had been so angry.

Lex was used to seeing Clark's emotions; they were written boldly across his remarkable, beautiful, open face. He was used to Clark's conflict, his excitement, his determinedness, his heartbreak. But he had never seen him angry.

Lex's own history was full of pitilessness and rejection. He was almost numb to it by now. But Clark's filled him with utter despair.

As the road finally bent towards Smallville, he toyed briefly with the idea of taking another drive over Loeb bridge. It would be easy enough, and this time there would be no Clark to pull him from the water.

But no – that would be too maudlin, and he was embarrassed enough as it was.

There was nowhere else to go but home, and soon he was hurtling up the mansion's circular drive. And as he threw the Porsche roughly into Park, he knew there was nowhere else to go from there but the third floor of the East Wing.

-

His first impulse was to smash the room to pieces. The poker from the study fireplace might do, or his heavy desk chair, or failing these his own two fists. He wanted to do it; the physical act of destruction might bring some relief.

But he couldn't.

It was all evidence of his crime, to be used against him in the court of his best friend's heart. But he couldn't bring himself to destroy it. He hadn't been able to all those months ago, when he'd called off his PI's and locked the door with his own hand. He couldn't then, and so he couldn't now.

At some point Lex's secret had changed. It had started as a curiosity, an amusing riddle with which to occupy his empty hours. He'd imagined Clark's surprise when he told him he had it all figured out, and his relief at no longer needing to be so constantly on his guard. It would be a moment of clarity and closeness; Lex had dreamed of the hours they'd spend delving deeper into each others' confidence once all secrets between them were swept away.

But Clark's reaction had been quite the opposite; he had pulled away from Lex's questions, closed himself off, become evasive.

Lex was not used to being denied anything. It rankled him. Soon intrigue gave way to obsession and Lex was pacing his room of evidence instead of daydreaming of communion; but still Clark remained just beyond the reach of his fingertips. Lex sometimes wondered if it was deliberate, that Clark intentionally led them in this game of cat-and-mouse. The thought hurt him, made him angry, and bolstered what he thought was his right to continue his inquiries.

He'd learned nothing. If anything, that frustration made it smart all the worse: he'd chanced everything and yet still had no answers. The investigation had unfolded like a maze; each turn revealed only more questions.

After Belle Reve, he had more questions than he knew what to do with. And he had learned more in Summerholt's memory tank than he had ever been able to admit aloud.

He had done this because he wanted to know Clark Kent. Not just as friends know friends in their casual, passing way … but profoundly, as well as he knew himself, even in the darkest corners where he seldom shone a light in fear of what lurked there. But Clark seemed to be afraid of nothing, and in his understanding Lex felt sure that he could finally be safe. He wanted no space between them, no barriers to the intimacy they might share, nothing to hold them back or keep them apart.

He wanted Clark. All of him – his hidden truths, his implausible goodness, his very soul and the breathtaking body that contained it. And if he could have him in that way, Lex too could let fall all his secrets, all his darkness, and what was left of his own heart. They would be like brothers – no, closer – like halves of the same whole. They would possess each other utterly.

The thought brought Lex great pleasure … and great peace. And though the more cynical part of his mind knew it was foolish, he had believed that someday this might be possible. If he had to wait months or years … Lex Luthor could be patient, very patient indeed.

He had locked the door to this room because he knew in some way that it was wrong to keep it. He had gone about it all the wrong way; love could not be pieced together like a puzzle or assembled from a disjointed collection of artifacts, no matter how striking that collection might look displayed behind lucite and under eerie light. When he'd realized this, he knew also that he should not keep these things – but he could not let them go either. This room had been a part of him for too long; and in some way, these things were all he had of Clark.

Lex was a collector. He needed his treasures, priceless pieces to place upon his shelves and trail his fingers over in wonder and reverence. These mementos served him as friendship and love might serve other people; they eased his searing loneliness.

So he could not destroy the room. Not until he could replace these small, petty things with the true prize.

But now it seemed these small, petty things were all he had left.

Lex had only gotten as far as the threshold. He opened the door and gazed upon the display before him, but he could not bring himself to step inside. His mind still rang with Clark's last words, and he found he could not take them with him into that room – if until now it had been a shrine, those words would make it a tomb.

At this moment Lex wanted more than anything to touch the things in that room, to press his burning cheek to the photo of Clark that hung on the wall, backlit and ghostly in the blue light. But going into that room now would be as good as admitting that it was over.

Lex set his jaw, arranging his face into its studied neutral stare. He could not, would not allow himself to believe that it was over. There had to be a way.

If there was a way, he would find it.

But right now …

… oh, the hell with it. Right now he would just indulge his misery.

With great consciousness of his own self-posession, Lex turned, shut and locked the door and descended the steps to his study. Each motion was careful, precise, a model study in control. He was, in a way, proud of himself – placid on the surface, even though inside he was shaking.

A glass of brandy would surely steady his nerves.