Lana had just finished brushing her hair when she heard angry voices. Lex was one of the shouters, and that meant, well, it meant that at least one piece of furniture was doomed. Jonathan Kent was the other, and while she hadn't seen him furious before, she could guess that meekness wasn't part of his usual response.

"He is a danger, to himself and to everybody around him!" Lex was pacing angrily and Jonathan Kent was standing absolutely still. "In normal surroundings, he'd be a walking time bomb!"

"He's capable of learning differently. He won't have to interact with anybody but Martha and me, until he's gotten adjusted."

"And if they come after him? It's hardly the work of a genius to figure out that if he got out of the building, he'd likely go to you."

"Are you saying I can't protect my family?"

Lex's anger seemed to have gone beyond shouting. He turned and smiled thinly, mockingly. "If you hadn't been riding my coat tails, you wouldn't have seen him again." Jonathan seemed almost ready to choke and Lex continued in the silence. "In the Cal Tech labs, he'd be in good hands and under my protection. He'd be safe and *real* scientists would have access to him."

"Handing him over to be studied worked so well the last time, is that it? Or is it that if they cashed in on him, you want to, too? It didn't take long for you to get greedy, too!"

"Mr. Kent, I would not let anything harm him. My decisions about him have been sounder than yours, all things considered."

Neither of the men had noticed Lana and seeing that they likely wouldn't respond to reason for quite a while, she went to look for Clark himself. He should have some voice in the matter, though she had to admit she shared Lex's doubts about his ability to cope with everyday life. But couldn't there be some compromise?

After a few moment's exploration, she found Clark in his bedroom. She realized with a pang that he was huddled in on himself the way he had when he had first seen and remembered the Kents, but couldn't understand his own reactions, let alone the situation itself. It was easy, when he wasn't right there, to see him as a danger to be neutralized or a problem to be solved, but when she looked at him now, all she could see was a boy probably not that much older than herself, immensely powerful but at the same time, profoundly vulnerable. He looked up and saw her.

"Hi," she said, then wondered how long she might have had to work to find a lamer thing to say. Following just her instinct, she sat on the bed near him. "How're you doing?" Immediately, she grumbled to herself that she'd found an answer to her own question about finding something lamer.

She'd never seen a face so candid. He'd probably never been allowed to hide a single emotion or thought, and as clearly as if they were labeled, she watched confusion, fear, and misery each mold his expression. "I...I...they've taken everything that was inside me, and now...there's nothing," he said, haltingly, raising and lowering his eyes as if he were begging for understanding but unable to hope to find it. "I'm all...all empty."

His hand under hers was warm and he stared at her with astonished gratitude. "It's only natural, Clark."

"I don't...even if they...even if they were just using me, I...they were the only...they were the only *world* I had." He shook his head dismally. "It was a lie, but it was the lie I...it was truth to me for so long."

Tears welled in her eyes as she remembered the huge vacuum her parents' death had left. Not just the lack of their presence, but of everything their presence brought, most of all, security. She, at least, had had Nell then, as well as fellow victims of the tragedy and people around her who cared. What he was going through made that seem miniscule, as trivial as a paper cut compared to an amputation. She struggled to find the types of words that had slowly helped her fill the void. "We'll help you, Clark. And your...your parents love you. They came all this way to find you and help you."

He shook his head again. "No, they don't. They...they don't know me. They don't know all the things I did."

"Clark, they weren't your fault! It would be like blaming a kid who was never taught to read for being illiterate! You did...well, you did things, but you didn't cause them."

"Even if that's true, they still...they loved me when I...before I..."

She couldn't help but reach to him then, and with the same abandon as when he finally sought the Kents' embrace, he almost seemed to throw himself into the tentative opening of her arms. "Shhhh...shhhh...you'll be all right...I promise...shhh...it won't happen again..." He pressed his face into her shoulder as if he were trying to hide, like a child, and she found herself alternating between stroking his hair and brushing it with her lips. As she moved her hand up and down his back, soothingly, she felt a moment of awareness of him as something far from a child, and felt her touch change, too, as the strokes of her hand changed into caresses and her lips became aware of the softness of his hair. He turned his face slightly as if he, too, had become aware of the change, and she tightened her hold, almost as uncertain as he about what was happening.

****

Lex ruefully wished that he could bottle whatever it was that had enabled Martha to make him and, he suspected, Jonathan as well, feel like they had been squabbling children. Probably it was the way she waited until they had both shouted themselves almost hoarse, and then spoken quietly and firmly. Clark was in no emotional condition to be examined or observed by anyone and they could surely keep him isolated someplace else, with them to watch over him and see when and how he'd be ready to return to the real world he'd known only for a few days. The idea of shutting him in another lab was inhuman, that of bringing him back to the farm as if he'd been on a long camping trip was dangerously naive.

The phone buzzed the two quick rings indicating a call from the front desk. "Mr. Luthor, your father is here."

Just when things seemed simpler. "Tell him I'll come down." He hung up quickly, just as the man started to answer, and strode to the door. "My father's coming. I'm going to head him off. I wouldn't trust him with Clark under any circumstances."

The elevator had never seemed to take as long as it did then, even though it was the express for the top five floors. It took its time coming up, dawdled about opening and lingered while closing, then seemed to consider before beginning a leisurely journey back down. He hissed in frustration when he finally arrived and his father was nowhere in sight. "Mr. Luthor, he went up already, I tried to te--" Lex didn't even bother berating the doorman but stepped back into the elevator, pounding at the button.

The tableau he saw as he re-entered the penthouse seemed as artificial and as exaggerated as the finale to a badly-acted play. Lionel was sprawled on the ground, eyes closed, bright red blood spreading from a gash on his forehead. Martha Kent was kneeling next to him while Jonathan Kent stood protectively in front of Clark. The boy looked stunned and Lana was holding his arm, comfortingly, the other arm wrapped about him.

He felt himself freeze as though he were suddenly thrust into the play, then the inertia released his limbs. He almost stumbled as he crouched next to his father. It didn't look that bad, not really. He must have been knocked down against the corner of the glass table. Scalp cuts bleed easily, he knew that. Martha looked at him with horrified eyes and he tentatively reached to touch the injury.

It felt like touching a cracked egg and feeling the membrane and shell collapse. With an inarticulate sound of protest, he shook the blood from his fingers and pressed them to Lionel's throat, then, not finding the pulse, his wrist. The only thing he felt was the pounding of his own heart, as if it were an animal throwing itself against the bars of a cage.

"What happened?" he demanded. Loss gripped him with implacable hands.

"It...Clark didn't know what he was doing. Your father startled him, scared him. He...Clark..."

"Clark killed him." A strangely calm hate compressed all his other emotions, holding them down thrashing, powerlessly as he finished her sentence. "Very...convenient for Clark."

"Lex!" That was Lana. Her voice and even her body seemed as distant as if he were peering through a telescope. Clark was gripping her arm like a drowning man would a lifeline.

"Very convenient," he repeated, and felt as though everything about him, except for the motionless dead, was spinning away at impossible, vertiginous speeds.

****

AN:

Uhm. The Muse all but smacked me when I tried a happy ending. I tried another and then she dragged me here.

I guess this note is something of an apology, something of an expression of hope that not everything with the seeds of tragedy need become those tragedies, despite what seems to have permeated this story's ending.

As Deanine commented, now would be a good time to feel as though the actions of a few corrupt but powerful individuals don't necessarily bring about more corruption and tragedy.

I have the privilege of knowing and loving friends whose very lives are of service to the values of humanity and civilization, as well as the privilege of being able to work among those who have been given the opportunity to earn their living that way as well. But I know how circumstance has sheltered my life and how the same forces of circumstance--or sometimes heroic choice--has exposed so many others to unfathomable darkness in nearly every moment.

While there might be good yet to emerge from today's tragedies, it takes hope to believe it to be possible, to be tangible, let alone to be inevitable, in the face of so much that defies humanity, the goodness that lies in so many faiths, and civilization itself. It takes even more hope, and more than hope, to fight for those causes at often tremendous cost.

There are many who have entered or been thrust into the midst of the most profound darkness, wherever it may come, and with an even deeper courage, carried light with them. A light may illuminate darkness but no darkness can completely annihilate their light.