"An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come."
-Victor Hugo

Lex truly had been as happy as he seemed. The past few days he'd felt like the kid he was, instead of the shark-in-a-suit his father had moulded him into. And you have to understand that after so many years in such a role, that was really saying something.

 Monday morning his father had had his assistant call him.

 "Mr Luthor, your father wished to remind you to contact him concerning the, ah, matter you last discussed."

God, Lex had thought listening to the wording, and the hint of curiosity in the woman's voice  How paranoid is this guy he thinks some mole of Rosenberg's could be inside LuthorCorp, listening in?

 "Mr Luthor?", the trained-to-be-calm-and-courteous voice chirruped down the line.

Lex had glanced around his empty study and found himself wondering what class Clark was in right now….Suddenly smiling and finding himself entirely uninterested in this conversation, he spoke smoothly back.

 "Oh of course…if you'd been kind enough to take down this message we can sort this out right now if you'd like".

 In fact she was sure Mr Luthor, that is, the senior Mr Luthor of course, would be very happy with a quick response indeed.

Lex could hear the relief in her words. Guess the old man was more desperate for this information than he'd let on.

"Then please tell my father, that I'm very much obliged for his tampering with my guest-list, that I had a wonderful evening with the lady in question, but that I'm afraid the topic of her father's business completely slipped my mind. It really was the strangest thing. In fact, I think it might be better if he took matters such as this into his own hands in future. All this grasping at the proverbial straws is just a tad too degrading for my tastes. In fact, just tell the son-of-a-bitch to do his own dirty work in future. Okay ?"

 A very hesitant and choked-sounding ' yes' was all he needed to hear before he hung up.

He'd sat there for a moment, letting the significance of what he'd just done sink in. It came with an awful feeling of unease. But the thought of his father's face when the poor girl passed on the message was enough to make the new, free, and love-struck Lex Luthor burst out laughing.

 - - -

  He hadn't told any of that to Clark. Ella….was a complication the two of them didn't need right now. Another one was Clark's secret.

 He knew he had one. He knew it from going over in his mind all the past questions and suspicions he'd had ,before the time of Clark's injury at the hands of that freak who'd apparently hurled him on top of a car with inhuman strength….that time when Lex had yielded to common sense, to the pain in Clark's eyes, and to the burning need for one honest friend he could trust in his life.

 But now he was looking out for it again – any hesitancy in Clark's answers, any occasion where he'd started to say something then seemed to be correcting himself in time. Any time he caught a flash of uncertainty on Clark's features, as if unsure whether Lex had just caught him doing something wrong…

 There had been more than a couple of instances of all these things this past week. It seemed the closer Lex watched, and the more relaxed Clark became - and certainly the more frantic the arranging of schedules to try and sneak some time together each day- the more Lex seemed to see.

 Or, perhaps it had always been there, and he just had never spent so much time with Clark before in one week.

  Either way, he was watching now, and though he managed to ignore these things when they happened and to merely enjoy Clark's company, whenever he was sitting here in this empty house, he would feel the ache in his heart …the ache that cried that Clark was hiding something incredible, and something Lex's mind couldn't comprehend.

 He didn't want to put words to his fears – that just made him sound crazy, even to himself.

And yet, there was something. Unless he really was loosing his mind…

 Now, even as Clark too sat on the school bleachers musing over the past week, Lex sat at his desk and buried his head in his hands, stifling a groan.

You know what this is about don't you? , his common sense pointed out . There's an explanation which you're afraid of, but deep down it's the answer you want isn't it? For your own selfish reasons you're hoping for something absolutely ridiculous and incredible. Its all so dramatic and angst-ridden. Why can't you just be as content as you pretend to be to Clark?

 Oh man, the answer to that question could take up about fifty sessions with a shrink.

 But yes, he had been, in the back of his mind, reaching for something…And after days of re-thinking over all the time he'd known the Kents and their son, and of all the strange things Smallville had thrown at him since he'd returned here, Lex believed stronger than ever before that Clark's secret, and his own destiny (not to mention some deep and long-repressed mental scars) were linked; linked by this place, this quaint little town…and the one thing that made it completely unique from anywhere else on this planet.

  Sitting up in his seat he sighed and held the object in his hand up to the noon-day light.

The meteor rock shone bright, true, and an unearthly green.

 

TBC

R/R folks!