A/N: And we're back. A day early! (Wanted to keep to Wednesdays as the post day, but didn't want to wait until a week into April. Besides, the queue is ready to go)

Chapter 33 - Spiral

The darkness should have taken over.

Some part of Lex had always expected that this is how he would end. He would kill his father, and his inner darkness would take him over, and he would become exactly what everyone in the world expected him to be. Everyone except the people who thought they knew him well—his highest-level managers, and Pamela, and Clark.

But Lex hadn't exactly killed his father. It would have been different if he'd pulled a trigger or lost control of his fists. It was asinine that there was a difference just because the murder had been by inaction. Morally, there was no difference at all in his mine. Still, it affected Lex differently.

A part of him had actually believed he would be able to move on after this. Pretend he hadn't seen his father in danger, pretend he hadn't heard his cries for help. Attend his funeral—plan it, really—and mourn his death. He should have known it would be impossible.

Instead, he spiraled into himself. Found a room in the mansion he'd never furnished or found a purpose for, disappeared into a liquor bottle. He kept his phone with him, but only responded to messages from the hotel where Pamela was staying, to confirm payment on the bills. He ignored her messages. He would never be able to look her in the eye again. As for Clark . . . Lex couldn't even think about Clark.

He didn't eat. He barely slept, and he didn't look at the time—it might have been hours that passed, or it might have been days. His staff took care of his household around him. He could hear them, but he didn't go out to talk to them. Pamela left a couple of messages, but other than that, Lex's phone remained silent. The town was busy recovering from the devastation. Even the plant wouldn't be running until the town got back on its feet—and the maintenance crew would work with or without his direction.

No one would miss him.

All things considered, the tornado wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Clark's parents had managed to get down into their storm cellar early on, all of Clark's friends had sheltered at the school, and Lana didn't suspect that he'd been the one who had saved her life after she'd gone off to wish Whitney well.

The one thing that was killing Clark was not being able to tell Lana that he had been the one to save her. She was half-convinced she had seen him flying toward her when she was in her car, and Clark remembered all too well what Lex had said about making people think they were going crazy. He was pretty sure it wouldn't be a problem for her—she'd been through a traumatic enough ordeal that that would probably be at the forefront of her mind, if not Whitney's departure—but the guilt still ate away at the pit of his stomach. He looked forward to talking with Lex about it.

In the midst of cleaning up after the crisis, helping his mom look after the people who were shaken but not injured badly enough to be in a hospital, it was a few days before Clark thought to check in on Lex. By that time, he'd missed a couple of their usual meetings, although they hadn't talked about if and how the "internship" schedule might change during the summer. Clark called Lex a couple of times, at the mansion and on his cell phone, but Lex never replied, so Clark just assumed he was busy. He figured he'd check in on him if he hadn't heard anything in a couple of weeks.

But then an unfamiliar number called Clark's cell. He frowned and picked it up. "Hello?"

A woman's voice. "Hi, is this Clark?"

"Yes, who's this?"

"It's Pamela Jenkins. I was wondering if you'd heard from Lex."

Clark swallowed hard. "Um, not . . . not since the tornado. I thought he was staying with you."

"He sent me to a safer place when the storm warning came in. I haven't heard from him since then."

Clark shouldn't have made assumptions. He should have gone to the mansion right away. "Do you think he's . . ."

"Oh, he's alive. He's been making the payments on my hotel room via phone, but he hasn't called me or responded to my messages."

"I'm going to go check on him." If he was ignoring Pamela, that was more than just Lex being busy.

"Thanks, Clark. Let me know what you find out."

Clark sped over to the mansion. He was immediately impressed by the overall lack of damage, but then it occurred to him that Lex probably had staff members whose responded to this kind of this with immediate cleanup and repairs.

Lex wasn't in the study, and he wasn't in his room. Clark had to make his way through half the labyrinth that was the mansion before he found Lex, holed up in an empty little room on the ground floor. He sat on the floor against a wall, holding an empty liquor bottle, but by the looks of it, it had been empty for a long while. The look in Lex's eye was haunted, and certainly sober. His clothes were wrinkled, like he hadn't changed in a couple of days. Dried blood covered half of his face, his eyes were swollen with deep circles under them, and his reddish-brown stubble reminded Clark that it was only his head that had gone bald—he still had to shave his face, and he hadn't in days.

Clark had never seen Lex like this before. Not even close. It was almost hard to believe it really was him. Clark cleared his throat. "Lex, what happened?"

Lex blinked a couple of times, his eyes wandering up to meet Clark's.

Clark came to sit beside Lex, though Lex shrank away from him, almost cringing. "What's wrong?"

"I killed him. I killed him . . ."

"Killed who?"

"It's my fault . . . I killed him . . ."

Clark shook his head. "Lex, you're not making any sense."

"Just go, Clark. Leave me."

"When's the last time you ate?" Clark pressed the back of his hand to Lex's forehead, and then to the side of his neck, the way he'd seen his mother do to his father when he was feverish. Lex didn't feel any warmer than usual—if anything, he was cold—but his heart was racing. "Lex, I think I need to call you a doctor."

"No. No doctors."

"You're in shock."

"I deserve worse."

"Lex, what are you talking about?"

Lex hung his head. "You're going to leave me as soon as you know."

Maybe Lex wasn't as sober as Clark had thought. "I'm not going to leave you. Just tell me what's bothering you."

Lex squeezed his eyes shut.

Clark sighed. "Listen. I'm going to get you something to eat, I'm going to get you patched up a little, and you're going to tell me what happened. Okay?"

Lex shook his head, but Clark ignored him. He went over to one of the kitchens, made a sandwich, and wrapped it up in a napkin. Then he grabbed some first aid supplies and wet a washcloth in one of the bathrooms. It took him a few tries to find his way back to the room where Lex was, but when he found it, he saw that Lex hadn't moved at all.

"Okay, here you go." Clark set down the food and supplies. Lex didn't move at all, so Clark frowned and knelt down in front of Lex with the washcloth. "Um, I dunno if it's okay if I . . ."

No response.

"Okay." Clark held Lex's head still with his left hand and scrubbed the dried blood away with the washcloth in his right hand. The source of the blood turned out to be a small but fairly deep cut over Lex's eyebrow, which began to bleed afresh when Clark scrubbed over it, though Lex didn't react aside from a soft hiss. Clark covered it over with a small bandage, figuring a doctor could do better once Clark could convince Lex to start talking. "Now eat."

It took a little prompting, but Lex finally picked up the sandwich Clark had brought. He ate about half of it before he set it down and refused to pick it back up again, but it seemed to do him some good—there was a bit more color in his cheeks, and he was sitting up straighter.

"You're too kind to me," Lex said softly.

"You want to tell me what happened?"

"I wasn't going to tell you. I was going to pretend the whole thing hadn't happened, try to move on with my life. Told myself it was better this way, that life would be easier."

"You . . . killed someone, and you were going to cover it up?" The question sounded both more and less accusatory than Clark had wanted. Murder was a serious charge, but Lex was seriously terrified.

"My father was trapped under a column. A section of the ceiling was about to fall on him, and he called out to me for help."

"And . . . you saved him, right?"

Lex said nothing. He just looked down at his hands.

"Lex. You saved him. Didn't you?"

Lex's eyes closed again.

"Lex!" Clark tapped on his cheek, but with his frustration his fingers may have landed with a bit too much force. Lex's eyes snapped open. "You saved your father. Right?"

"No."

Clark's heart sank into his stomach. "You let him die."

Lex sat up straighter, grabbing onto Clark's arm. "You should have heard him before the tornado hit. We were arguing about the plant, and about the town, and he had just promised to bury me and everyone who took my side. I couldn't risk . . . couldn't take the chance . . . if he ever found out about you . . ." Lex's eyes shone.

Clark swallowed. "You think he'd experiment on me?"

"I think he'd turn you into a weapon. He'd find your weakness, he'd . . . Clark, he'd rule the world with you."

"But . . . he doesn't know my secret."

"Not yet, but he suspects. He's asked about you a couple of times. He suspects you're the reason I'm staying in Smallville and refusing to go back to Metropolis."

"Okay, okay," Clark said. "Let me think about this."

Clark stood and began to pace. He couldn't let Lex think this was okay. He'd abandoned his father to die. But he'd been doing it to try to protect Clark and his secret. Clark couldn't imagine leaving his father to die, but he also couldn't imagine having someone like Lionel as a father. Lex had hinted a few times that his father had abused him, and Clark had an idea of how much influence Lionel could have. He'd also started to learn how powerful he himself was, how dangerous his own secrets were.

Clark still believed that leaving Lionel to die was wrong, but he knew why Lex had done it. And it was clearly tearing him apart. If, somehow, Clark had ever ended up in the same situation as Lex was in now, he knew he would have been able to talk to his parents about it, and they would have helped. They might have been incredibly upset with him, they might have punished him, but at the end of the day, they would be on his side.

Lex didn't have a mother to talk to, and he certainly couldn't talk to Lionel. But he did have someone.

"Okay." Clark sat down beside Lex. "I don't know how to help you, Lex, but . . . you confessed to me. You trust me."

Lex nodded.

"I think you should talk to Pamela."

Lex's eyes fell closed again. "She'll be ashamed of me."

"Maybe. But your father scared her for a long time, too, right? Maybe she'll have some idea what to do. She's really worried about you."

Lex sighed. "I don't know if I can."

"But you will?"

"I'll try. For you."

Clark nodded. "And once that's done, you can brainstorm ways to protect me."

"Protect you?"

"Yeah. You said your father might be on to me."

"But he's gone now," Lex said. "He can't hurt you."

Clark's eyes widened. Lex didn't know.

"Clark? What's wrong?"

"Lex . . . your father is alive."

A/N: Just wanted to let you know, I've added a few extra bits of detail throughout this story to help with pacing, mostly canonical scenes that I should have included for the sake of clarity and foreshadowing. The story will 100% make sense without them, but if you're curious (or if you're in the habit of downloading everything you read and want the latest version), the additions are in chapters 6, 12, 16, 20, 22, 27, and 28.