Part 2

His footsteps echoed through the silent corridors. Lex Luthor stepped before a heavily secured room and entered a series of keys into the small digitized screen installed on the wall. B L I S S 5 1 8.

Three beeps and the doors yawned open, admitting him into the black embrace. "Bliss Sequence Number 518 engaging," came the subtle voice of the machine. The room was suddenly flooded by blinding lights, which steadily grew dimmer until it captured the essence of natural sunlight.

The window at the end of the room overlooked the view of Smallville the way it was in the castle. Lex nodded at the sight in front of him. It was exactly the small activity room he and Chloe fixed up back home. Suddenly, the room was flooded by small boys and girls playing around. Lex grimaced at the noise of little children not even remotely related to him. He scanned the crowd of mothers and brothers and sisters until his gaze rested on the blonde woman at the end of a long table, holding a chubby baby in her arms.

She looked up at him and waved him over. "Papa," she called him. Lex's heart warmed at the sight. He approached the two, whose faces were rosy from the warmth of the candlelight. "Help us blow Alec's birthday candle!"

He strode over to them, his legs carrying him quickly to their side. Lex took the rather heavy one-year-old from Chloe's arms and kissed the top of his head. "My big man can't blow his birthday candle yet?"

The children around them, whom his wife had insisted they invite to the party, sang a chorus of the birthday song. He was delighted to hear Chloe's laughter as she urged their son to blow the cake. In the end, Lex was the one who had to put out the flame.

"Happy birthday, Alec!" she greeted, kissing both their son and her husband.

He drew her into a hug, so that he can hold his entire family at the same time. Lex whispered quietly into her ear. "When are these people going to leave?"

Chloe grinned at him, knowing how much he hated having their home invaded by all these people. She patted his arm and assured him that soon they would be alone. "It's Alec's party, Lex. Let them play."

"Not like Alec is going to remember any of them. Or even need to. They'll remember him."

"Oh you are not raising my son to be a snob, Lex," she warned.

He pulled her to where their son's nanny was waiting. He handed Alec over to the nanny. "We'll be back soon, okay?"

"Of course, sir," the nanny said courteously, already playing with the youngest Luthor.

Chloe looked on with jealousy. She hated having people other than herself and Lex interacting so closely with their son. "Lex..."

"Shhhh." He propelled her towards the door. "I need to ask you something first. We'll get Alec later."

When they were outside the activity room, Chloe looked up at her husband. "What is this about, Lex?"

"Well," he told her, "it's November. I was just wondering where I should book us for Christmas. New Zealand? Paris? You want to drop by Edinburgh again?"

There was a distinct twinkle in her eye as she laid her arms on his shoulders. "I want to be in paradise."

He nodded. "The tropics then. I can do that."

"No Lex!" Chloe chuckled. "I mean let's stay here. You and me and Alec just here for Christmas. That's my paradise."

"I can do that too." He leaned down to kiss her, pressing her firmly against the door. When he was about to brush his lips with hers, her image flickered in his arms, and the lights flickered dimly before vanishing completely. He was standing alone in the cold, dark and empty room.

Lex whirled angrily towards the door as it opened. His executive assistant stepped inside, almost curled into himself with fear. Lex could still smell Chloe, feel their baby in his arms, remember the way her form was sandwiched between him and the door. He was a hairsbreadth away from tasting her lips again.

"Wasn't I clear about the fact that nobody is supposed to interrupt Bliss?" he bit out.

The assistant jerked his head twice in agreement. He held up an obviously trembling hand. "Yes, sir. I apologize, Mr. Luthor. We couldn't hold it up any longer. We had a power drain."

"Fire the staff taking care of it."

"Sir."

"Tell the com lab to prepare. I'm coming up." With that, Lex Luthor left the pitch black room and headed for the elevator, hearing his assistant's frantic radio message to the floor below them.

Lex was quiet on the brief ride. Purposefully, he entered the computer lab. The employees immediately rose to attention at his presence. "I was testing Bliss #518 a while ago."

The head programmer nodded anxiously. "How was it, sir? No problems I hope."

"You hope," he said without inflection. "It was fine. I didn't get to finish it because of the idiots working at the energy department of this building. I'll try it again tonight. But I want you to do a bit of tinkering." The programmer nodded, already opening the program on the screen. Lex Luthor sat on one of the chairs. "Make her hair longer, about two more inches." The programmer quickly worked on the numbers and symbols running up his screen. "And my wife doesn't wear lilac. I want to smell ylang-ylang, Mr. Lee. That's the bottle of perfume I gave her last. That's it," he said abruptly.

The programmer nodded and set about changing the program.

"Create a new sequence for me," Lex commanded. Hurriedly, the man opened a blank file. "Christmas in the castle. Back home in Smallville. Just my family."

"Your father, sir?"

"My family, Mr. Lee," Lex emphasized. "Myself. Chloe. Alec. Put a tree in the living room. I want you to create me a large holoware, Mr. Lee. I want to be able to move about the entire castle. Fill it with decorations. Don't forget the fireplace, and the stockings. The works, Mr. Lee. I will be consulting with more details as I think of them."

Lex promptly stood up and didn't meet the man's eyes. He was an employee, paid to work for him. Lex hated the way the man seemed to look at him with pity whenever he stated the details of the holowares he needed created. He went to his own office to find his assistant waiting inside. "Leave." The simple word set the man scurrying away.

He opened a private door that only he knew of. Even the one specialist he had visiting regularly knew nothing about the existence of that way from his office.

Lex stepped into the cold room he had installed to be linked directly to his office. He drew his jacket tightly around his body and walked over to the long box sitting at the center. He ran his hand over the frosted surface of the mirror and peered down at the face inside. What would it be like to sleep so deeply and so still?

Lex stepped backwards and released the button beside him. With a loud hissing sound, the cover lifted and he walked over closer to Chloe's form. The small sensors attached to her temples were almost completely covered by her hair. He touched her cheek briefly and brushed his lips to hers. It felt so pleasant to him the way he still mildly felt her breath against his lips.

"I apologize for leaving so early and so abruptly, Chloe. I have fools working for me. At least here in Metropolis. Don't worry about a thing. I've sent some of the best people to Smallville. We'll be with each other again soon. If they can extract enough to use for the shot. You'll be back, Chloe. I promised you I wouldn't give up. You'll be back."

He pushed the button on the control panel once more and allowed the top to cover her. He had been warned that he couldn't expose her out for too long. Once again, Lex held his hand over the glass. "I'm having the Christmas you want prepared, Chloe."

Exhausted and cold, Lex Luthor retreated to his office and took a CD from his drawer, labeled Bliss #001. He inserted it in his pc and sat back, watching.

"Lex, wake up!" Chloe shook him heavily from the nightmare. "Lex!"

He reared up from the bed and saw his wife, looking anxious and very pregnant. He laid his hand on her stomach and felt the child kick. He gripped her close to him, so tight that she started to complain. "It was just a dream," he murmured. "It was just a dream."

"Oh Lex. You had a nightmare? What was it about?"

He could chuckle now. It didn't really happen. Chloe was his wife now, and they were warm and safe in the castle, with their son sleeping inside her, tucked under her heart where he thrived. He leaned at the headboard of the bed and drew her with him. She sprawled over his body.

"It was raining. It was the worst rain. We were driving home." She nodded, urging him to continue. "It was after you told me about the baby, Chloe."

"After we had dinner at the Kent Farm."

"Yeah. We were passing by that pile of meteor rocks down at the bend," he told her. "And then this flash of lightning hit it. And this green light exploded right there. It was on your side of the car. We were thrown. Clark... Clark was sent by Martha and Jonathan to check on us. He saved me. But he couldn't save you, Chloe. We saw you lying there, surrounded by all those glowing rocks. And he wouldn't even go to you! I tried, but my leg was broken from the impact. And Clark... he just sat there being afraid. I watched you knowing you were bleeding to death out there, exposed to who knows what kind of radiation, and he just sat there!"

She was silent for the longest time. And then she took a deep breath. Chloe crawled up over him and placed a kiss on the side of his mouth. "That's really terrifying," she said. "But it didn't happen, Lex. We went home and we made love. Then we got married and here we are, just a couple of months away from being parents!"

"Yeah," he whispered. "I love my life," he said, wrapping his arms around his wife.

Lex turned off the monitor and placed the cd back into the case. He slipped the holoware back to his drawer and leaned his head back, his eyes tightly closed. After a while, he brushed at the moisture that seeped out of his eyelids.

Two years tomorrow. Gabe Sullivan would visit an empty grave in Smallville with his daughter's friends. He wondered how long it would take Clark to find enough courage to use his x-ray vision and find that there was no one in there. It was, after all, the source of all the animosity that existed now between him and his friend.

"I couldn't let go of life support. Why couldn't they accept that?"

Clark had argued, speaking for himself, for Mr. Sullivan, even for Pete and for Lana. They would not understand Lex's insistence on keeping her with them. With all the callow naiveté, Clark had said, "You're not prolonging her life, Lex. This is prolonging her death!"

So he had been forced to pull a very Luthor trick. And he fooled them all into believing that Lex Luthor accepted the loss and let his fiance go. A closed casket due to the effects of the meteor rocks. Even Clark did not dare to come close.

And two years to the day, only Lex Luthor knew that Chloe Sullivan was alive.

Only Lex Luthor would push life to the limits, and laugh at death in the face. Because in a week's time, and millions of dollars' worth of research and meteor rock studies, Lex Luthor had found the way to jar his fiancé awake.