Part 6

Had any woman ever felt the paralyzing pain of watching lucid eyes haze, a cherubic face sink and cherry red lips pale? Was there a texture more appalling than the papery roughness that accompanied the graying of healthy, rosy skin? For Chloe, only a thin line kept her at the edge of sanity. Had she not had the promise of Lex's confident, comfortable security to look forward to, finding out the truth would have been her death sentence.

"Hey princess," she said softly, when she saw her daughter's lashes flutter.

Lena turned her head towards the source of the familiar voice. "Mommy, I wanna go home."

Her baby girl's wide eyes were slanted, which obviously meant that she was still sleepy. "Aren't you tired, Lena?"

Lena nodded, crumpling the hair tucked under her head. "But I just went to sleep. I don't wanna go back to sleep. I want my bed, mommy. The sheets are starchy. Daddy says princesses don't sleep on starchy sheets."

It sounded like it came straight out of her husband's book on what his family deserved. Lex had always been a stickler for giving Chloe and Lena the best. "I want to go home too, baby. Right now, though, we have to wait for the doctor. We'll see if he can make you feel better. I don't like seeing you sick," Chloe explained.

"Daddy can fix me," Lena suggested, then promptly yawned.

Chloe allowed herself to smile. She stood and kissed Lena's nose. "Look who doesn't want to go to sleep. Why don't you rest, sweetheart? When you wake up, daddy's gonna be here."

"Daddy's working abroad, mommy."

"But daddies come home for their princesses, Lena. Always."

The thought was satisfying to the little girl. She grinned and rolled to lay on her side. "I hope he got me a t-shirt," she murmured, before finally falling asleep.

She must have been watching the rise and fall of her daughter's chest for a while. Chloe did not hear the door open or Lex's footsteps approaching her. She started when she felt the hand close around her shoulder. Chloe shot up from her seat and threw her arms around her husband.

"Oh God! Lex!"

"Ssshhh." Lex embraced his wife and closed his eyes, breathing in the smell of home, the way he always did after he had been away. He drowned in her scent, like there was no tomorrow. Since he first fell in love until this very moment, his love for her only escalated.After satisfying every empty portion of his heart, he opened his eyes. His gaze wandered to the girl who lay sleeping on the bed.

Lex gently extricated themselves from the embrace, and held Chloe a few inches away so he could look at her. He reached up to wipe the tears from her cheeks. Then he leaned down to kiss the moisture away from her lashes.

"Don't cry, Chloe," he said softly.

Chloe shook her head, tears spilling still. "She's all we have."

"Nothing will happen to Lena," he said assertively.

The girl on the bed turned to lie on her back. Lex glanced back at his daughter and propelled his wife out of the room.

Now, away from her child and from the burden of having to pretend that all was well, Chloe allowed herself to go. Her knees weakened and her arms trembled. Lex's hands around her elbows were the only reason she did not fall into a heap on the floor. She could only be helpless when Lex was around. At that moment, she belatedly realized, she needed to be weak. She needed to be taken care of.

"Nothing will happen to Lena, Chloe," Lex said, determination apparent in his voice. "I promise you."

Chloe nodded. She badly needed to believe him. "Okay," she gasped. "Did you talk to her doctor?"

"On the way here," he informed her. "I'll be having a team from Metropolis transferred here. We will have all possible treatments done for her, Chloe." Lex cupped Chloe's chin with his hand and said, "Look at me." When she did, he continued, "I'll be handling all of the arrangements for her therapy. I just need you to do one thing for me."

She was so caught up by the challenge in her husband's gaze. "What?"

"Tell yourself that nothing's wrong."

Chloe's lips parted. "I can't do that. My entire body is shaking. I dread every minute that's going to come because I don't know if anything will change in Lena's situation."

"That's not going to help Lena, Chlo. If you really want to make her better then you have to make Lena believe that nothing's wrong."

Finally, Chloe nodded in agreement. Lex embraced her. "I don't know how I would get through this, Lex."

"We stay together," was his answer. "We can get through anything together."

She raised her head to kiss her husband on the lips and patted his chest through his shirt. "Come on, Lex. Let's go into Lena's room. I want her to see us both when she wakes up."

"You go ahead," he told her. "I'll speak with the hospital administrators. "We will need a private area for the length of Lena's stay."

"Okay. But hurry. Lena misses you."

"I will." Lex took her hand and raised it to his lips. "If she wakes up before I get back there, tell her daddy is going to make sure everything will be fit for a princess when we go back here."

And so when they did, it was. A small wing of the community hospital was turned into a haven for the Luthors. Furnishings were shipped from Metropolis, and hospital rooms were turned into temporary living rooms, dining rooms, playrooms. The young girl may have contracted a disease that forcibly took other girls like her away from their homes for weeks and months at a time. Since she was Lena Luthor though, she would have her home with her wherever treatment was possible.

For the next months, Lena went through a barrage of therapy with her mother at her side. For the next months, Lex Luthor buried himself in research about his daughter's illness. If Lex Luthor traveled at all, he traveled to universities and research laboratories, wooing medical researchers and practitioners. The family signed up for one treatment after another, expensive medicines, rare injections, long therapies. The whirlwind only served to remind Chloe of the same barrage she and Lex went through to reach their dream.

And now that dream lay, her bedsheet crushed in her fisted hand, screaming because a popular doctor was injecting a potent drug into her vein. Chloe had held Lena while the little girl threw up amber fluid into a stainless basin. Chloe had wiped down her daughter while Lena burned with a fever that combated the effects of therapy. Chloe had waited at one end of a radiation machine while her daugher was passed through it.

Chloe held her daughter's limp body when Lena no longer had the strength to complain, when Lena no longer had tears or a voice with which she could express her pain. It was Chloe who gave in and painted her five-year-old's nails pink because she did not want Lena to see them turning into a sickly shade.

"Mommy, am I still princess?"

Chloe's immediate answer was 'yes.' She turned around to tell that to her daughter when she saw the clump of hair that stood starkly against the white sheet. She drank in Lena's appearance, from the hollowed cheeks to the sunken eyes, from the protruding clavicle until the evident bones of her kneecaps.

"I don't look like a princess anymore."

And this was something that she could not handle. No matter if she promised Lex that she would always insist to her daughter that nothing was wrong. Damn Lex for leaving when Lena was going to ask this. He knew how to deal with this. Chloe could barely make it through a bedtime reading session without choking. Lena asked this from Lex before. Chloe took a page from husband's book.

She returned the question to Lena. "Do you feel like a princess?" And even then, as the words left her mouth, Chloe knew that she was only insulting her and her daughter by asking that. The answer to the question they both experienced every day.

Lena's lower lip trembled. She looked down at her painted hands and clutched her blanket.

"You don't have to answer that, baby." Chloe sat beside her daughter on the bed. She kicked off her shoes and lay down beside Lena.

When Lena fell asleep, Chloe stayed in bed, holding her, until Lex stepped into the room. She watched him brush his fingers against Lena's cheek. Then, Lex kissed the girl on her forehead. Finally, his gaze went to Chloe's face. He nodded at his wife.

"We have to talk," Chloe mouthed. She slid out of bed and slipped on a pair of slippers from the closet. Chloe padded out of the room and waited for Lex to follow her into their makeshift living room.

Lex smiled down at Chloe, and leaned down to kiss her. Before his lips touched hers, Chloe turned her head so that he would only kisss her cheek. It was then that his smile vanished. "I haven't seen Lena since this morning, Chloe. I'd hoped to stay with her tonight. What is this about?"

She had not been strong since Lena got sick. She had to take control now. Chloe owed this to her daughter. "We have to stop this, Lex."

Lex's brows furrowed. "Stop what?"

"Haven't you seen your daughter lately?" Chloe asked in disbelief.

"I was going to do that remember?" he replied, his voice hard as flint.

"Lex, we have to stop all the treatments!" she finally burst out.

There was silence.

It may have been only a few minutes; it could have been days. It did not really matter because her husband's face had frozen at her words.

"What?" The restraint in his voice was visible through the hard lock of his jaw and the veins in his neck.

"No more, Lex. We're killing her every day with pain..."

Chloe's gaze dropped. She could not meet his eyes. In them she saw confusion, betrayal, hurt... hatred.

"Do you know what you're asking me to agree to?" he said needlessly.

And so their world stopped rotating. Chloe could hear her every heartbeat throb in her ears.

"I'm asking you to love her enough to stop."

Lex's nostrils flared. Slowly, he shook his head. "Don't tell me about love, Chloe, not when it concerns our daughter. I'm not the one bent on letting her die."

She swallowed to moisten her throat, and it hurt. It hurt. "You're not here to see her in pain," she threw back at him. "You don't hear her cry. You're not the one stuck here wishing you take on all the hurt because the person you love most in the whole world is suffering!"

And then he grabbed her arm and shook her, so hard that her teeth rattled and her brain shook. "You don't think I know how hard this is? Do you think I'm out there scouring the world for help just because I don't want to see her?" Lex hissed at her. He squeezed her arm so tight that she finally cried out. Lex let go and stepped back. He looked at the dark bruises that already then formed on her skin. "I promised myself I would never stay away from this. Not after my mom!"

"Then why do you stay away and leave me here?" she demanded. "We have all the doctors and all the drugs and all the godforsaken machines it would take to prolong Lena's agony!"

"Because I know there's more out there!" Lex cried. "They can all say there's nothing else, but somewhere, Chloe, somewhere in the far reaches of the world there's a cure for her. I'm going to find it!"

"Can't you stop?" she asked softly, defeated. Chloe ran her fingers through her hair. "Can't you stop for just a little while and stay with us?"

Lex took deep breaths, silent. "I can't look at you," he said slowly.

Chloe stood stunned, shell-shocked at his words. She did not move an inch when he turned around left the room. She sucked in a breath of air, but still she felt suffocated. He had voiced it out. Finally, Lex had named the nameless cloud that hung above her since Lena's illness. All the drugs, all the therapy, all the medical nonsense she had been fed in their quest for her baby girl had contaminated her womb and settled on Lena. The doctors had discounted the possibility, but Chloe knew that this was the payment. She and Lex were never supposed to have Lena. She only insisted on it, stubbornly held on to the hope of a child.

She killed her baby girl.

Chloe tried to stand up, placed her hands flat on the floor and pushed herself up to no avail. And so she stayed in that position until the door opened again. It was her husband, haggard, pale, his eyes red-rimmed. He walked into the room, as if he lost the most important battle of his life.

Lex did not look at her. For a moment, Chloe wondered if he knew she was still there. He collapsed into one of the armchairs and rested his head back.

"You won."

She started at his words. It had been so silent for so long that she did not expect a voice. Chloe watched her husband, who did not even look at her.

"You won."

In almost a whisper, she asked, "What did I win, Lex?"

"Have you seen her arms?"

"The tracks, the needle marks, the black spots..." she enumerated.

"Have you seen her cheeks?"

Silence.

"Have you seen her eyes?"

Silence.

"Have you seen all her beautiful hair?"

Silence.

"She woke up when I kissed her. Lena asked me if she was still a princess. I told her she would always be my princess." He sat up and looked her straight in the eye. "She asked me," and his voice broke, "if she would still be my princess even when she's in heaven."

A stifled sob. Chloe covered her face with her hands.

"Angels visit her in her dreams, Chlo," Lex said in wonder. "She said she doesn't want us to try to fix her anymore."

This was what she had asked him for. Hearing those words from him, Chloe felt herself grow cold all over. Muscles in her entire body contracted in spasm she could not manage. She felt Lex stand over her, then kneel before her. His embrace around her was warm and tight. Chloe raised her face and received his kiss.

"We'll see this through together," he repeated his promise. "We can see this through together."

"Okay."

"Then after the funeral, Chlo," he continued, "we'll sign the divorce papers."

She closed her eyes against the torrent of tears, and did not dispute his words.