Title: The Impossible Journey

Content: Chlex

Spoilers: Up to season 7 "Persona". About part way through that episode I'm going to veer away from canon and then the world is my oyster! (In case you need a season 7 refresher, check here - Season 7 Episode Summaries: - http : / smallville. wikia. com/ wiki/ Season_7 (remove spaces))

Disclaimer: Smallville and all its characters are owned by people who are not me. No profit is made and no infringement is intended.

Story contains: Angst, pregnancy, talk of abortion, and some dark themes.

Prologue

Lex Luthor felt the terrible weight of guilt push down on his shoulders. Even though "Grant Gabriel" was a clone of his brother, he had truly thought of him as Julian; had cherished having his brother back, even in a manner that nature hadn't intended.

He gripped the glass in his hand tighter as the terrible words of his scientists played once more in his mind.

"The subject is destabilizing at a far more rapid rate than any before."

His jaw clenched against the pain of losing his brother all over again. He tried to follow the lead of the doctors, to think of the man he'd called brother as merely a subject, but he couldn't. He'd allowed his perceived success to lull him into a false sense of security and had opened his heart because he'd thought that it was finally safe to do so.

He still didn't understand. The latest attempt at correcting the tragedy that had stolen his brother's life had been going perfectly. From the very beginning his team of scientists had assured him that they'd finally managed to master the process and eliminate the problems that had plagued their previous attempts. But somehow, without warning, there had been a massive breakdown on a cellular level.

Sadly, it hadn't even been Julian to come to him once he'd started to feel ill. No, Lionel had been the one to talk to him, asking Lex to save his brother despite the fact that Julian had eschewed a relationship with him once he'd learned that he had been created in a lab. Pain had surged through him at the knowledge that he would lose his brother once more.

But in the stillness of the night, Lex could admit that wasn't the only thing that had tortured him. The fact that Julian had turned to Lionel and, more so, that Lionel had accepted him so easily tore at the very heart of Lex's deepest traumas and insecurities.

Still, he couldn't turn his brother away, not after a so many years of wishing that he'd been able to save that small baby's life. And he'd done everything that he could – tests, drugs, treatments that the FDA wasn't even aware of, let alone had given their approval. But nothing had worked, and eight days ago Julian Luthor had once again died.

Setting down his now empty glass, he turned his attention back to the file on his desk. His brother had been right about the tight rein he had kept on him. Lex knew it was overbearing even for him, but he'd worked so hard and had yearned so long to have Julian back that he couldn't stand not knowing what was going on with him all of the time. He'd needed to know that he was safe, that he was happy, and that he was kept in the dark about his origins.

It was that obsessive surveillance that had alerted him to the fact that his brother was seeing Lois Lane. It was also what had provided him with the pictures that he was currently studying – photographs of Grant Gabriel in his office at The Daily Planet in the midst of a surprisingly carnal encounter. It wasn't overwhelmingly astonishing given that he was dating one of the paper's employees. What had been quite shocking, indeed, was the fact that the passionate embrace was not with that particular woman, but with her cousin, Chloe Sullivan.

The minute that he'd seen them originally, he'd known that something was wrong. He knew that Chloe had walked in on Lois kissing his brother in his office, and her face in the pictures he had of that incident had confirmed that she was not supportive of her cousin being romantically involved with her boss. And that combined with Chloe's boundless loyalty to the people that she loved meant that her interlude with her chief editor had most certainly been prompted by something other than attraction.

Lex had used the surveillance of his brother to trace his movements of that evening back to a coffee shop near the Planet where he was almost certain that he had been infected with something. It had been about thirty minutes later that Julian had been exhibiting uncharacteristic behavior. And while he didn't have that kind of invasive information about Chloe, the security footage had shown her entering her workplace for the late shift with a cup of coffee from that same shop. It was not long after that the two had engaged in their rather wild meeting.

Although he had dispatched men to attempt to learn what had affected the two, they'd had no success. However, they had managed to report back with a number of similar stories about erratic behavior that night. Lex had lived in Smallville long enough to understand that within a certain radius of the tiny town these happenings were more than commonplace. Especially as Clark had begun to spend more and more time in the city.

But with the lack of information as to the cause, the fact that it had no lasting effects, and the mutually agreed upon return to the status quo by both parties involved, Lex had let the incident go. Until tonight.

Setting down the pictures, Lex picked up the paper that he had read well over a dozen times in the past few hours. It was from Metropolis General's ER concerning the very same blonde in the pictures. Ever since he'd learned of the fact that Chloe was among the meteor infected, he'd had her name added to the list of those flagged to alert his team should they appear in any of the hospitals in Metropolis or the surrounding areas.

Apparently a fainting spell preceded by a bout of vomiting had led her cousin to insist that she visit the emergency room. It had taken very little time for them to identify the source of her supposed illness. Chloe Sullivan was pregnant. And given that she had broken up with the young photographer she'd been seeing three and a half months previous and she was approximately two months along – a time line that fit perfectly with her startling night with his brother – Lex felt safe in his conclusion that the child she was carrying was a Luthor. After all, Chloe was not one for casual flings, which was why the incident with Julian had been such a noteworthy anomaly.

And if all of that hadn't been enough to convince him that the matter required his utmost attention, there was the fact that his men, in a rare burst of usefulness, had discreetly offered very attractive compensation to some of the staff that had dealt with Chloe for information about her time there. The addition to the bank account of the attending nurse had been well worth the sum to learn of a small but crucial piece of conversation between Chloe and her cousin. The woman had been unashamed of her eavesdropping and more than eager to share the gossip worthy fact that her patient had responded to the brunette's strident questioning with the news that she would not be informing her ex-boyfriend of her pregnancy because it was not his child.

And though his source had stressed the near despondency of her charge Lex couldn't help but feel an equal measure of euphoria. He'd lost his brother as a child and then again as an adult and the pain had been nearly crippling both times at his failure to save Julian. But now it seemed that a part of him could live on.

The first thing he'd done upon receiving the report was to send it to the team of scientists who had, despite their ineffectual efforts, amassed a vast amount of information on the process of cloning. Although they had been quite cautious after the recent death of their last attempt at recreating Julian Luthor, they had speculated that his brother's genetic material combined with that of a healthy young woman and developed through the far more stable process of a natural pregnancy might very well prove to be the missing piece of the puzzle that they'd worked so hard to solve.

And though Lex knew that it wouldn't be a carbon copy of Julian, he felt that it might even be better. For now he would have the chance to start at the beginning; to correct every mistake and experience every milestone. Instead of a fictitious life implanted by indifferent scientists, he would be able to be there to help create the memories that would shape the child his brother had so cruelly been denied. Of course it wouldn't be easy; he and Chloe had taken bad blood to new heights.

But none of that could diminish his joy at this development. Whatever their issues they would soon be resolved, one way or another. He'd allow nothing less. And whether or not Chloe was pleased with his new and significant presence in her Clark dominated world, she really had no choice but to accept it. Because there was no escaping that she had, with one chance encounter, become the most important person in his life.

TBC