Title: Pretense

Author: Mitch

Series: Part 5

Rating: R

Pairing: Clark/Lex

Category: Angst/Drama

Feedback: It's like eating a crunchy Peep the week after Easter. (Which means it's a good thing.) Please review. :)

**********

The only sound was that of forks clinking against plates as Jonathan and Clark ravenously shoveled food into their mouths. Martha sat sipping her coffee, her appetite not allowing for much else of late, and recalled dimly how that sound used to make her skin crawl.

"Slow down," she used to say, "your food isn't going anywhere. If you aren't careful, you'll crack the china." It was always delivered in a loving tone however, and Clark and his father always replied to her admonitions with the blank stare only hungry and overworked men are capable of giving.

That'll teach me, she would think, for trying to teach dining etiquette to a farmer and his son.

But today, the clinking wasn't coming from a farmer and his son savoring a home-cooked meal after a hard day of work, so much as a farmer and his son trying desperately to fill the ever-increasing silence that seemed to be swallowing the house whole. And instead of being humorously perturbed by the racket, Martha relished it. Anything besides the paranoid rantings of her own mind, which plagued her endlessly over the last year and a half, was a welcome change.

It astonished her to see how quickly her husband and son fell back into their old rhythm. The three of them had only been back together as a family for about a week, and already Clark and Jonathan had perfected their synchronized science of eating. Together, the clicks and scrapes of their forks reminded Martha of the rhythm of some long-forgotten nursery rhyme, and they stopped at regular intervals to take a loud swallow of water, always together. She often used to laugh out loud at this, not just at the mere sight of it, but at the fact that they clearly had no idea they were doing it. Sometimes Clark is more like Jonathan than Jonathan himself, she used to think.

She thought back to the day one week earlier when she had picked up Clark at the airport. She nearly smothered him with her joyful tears and while he didn't show much emotion of his own, he allowed her to dote. Lex remained a few feet away, out of respect for the reunion she guessed, and spoke only when she guided Clark into the car and shut the door.

"My lawyers are finishing up a few things, just some legal formalities. You can pick up Mr. Kent in the morning."

She tried to thank him, but the lump in her throat threatened to burst into full-blown tears, and she settled for gently touching his face. Such unconditional generosity was rare, especially from a Luthor, and she was unspeakably grateful.

For the first few days back with her family, she felt happy and whole. None of them were overly talkative, but that wasn't surprising, and knowing that it was all behind them was all that mattered. But thinking it was behind them was a huge error in judgment on Martha's part. The ranting inside her head was definitely gone, but something even darker had taken its place.

Only now, as she sat at the dinner table, listening to the sonata of clicks, scrapes, and gulps, did she begin to understand what it was. Guilt. She had let Jonathan stay behind bars for what seemed like an eternity. She had let him stay there under the pretense that she and Lex were doing everything in their power to get him out. Even now, she let Jonathan hold onto that pretense, knowing that the truth would crush him. She told Clark the same story on the drive home, not realizing he already knew the truth. And the harder she tried to justify these lies, telling herself it was for the sake of her child, the heavier the guilt became, like a stubborn, immovable weight that had planted itself inside of her and refused to let go.

Going through the motions, Jonathan thought. The phrase had never been more accurate. Eat, sleep, work on the farm. He winced at the thought of the farm.

Upon returning home, the first thing he had done was run to Clark, openly crying in front of his son for the first time in his life. As soon as he regained his composure, they had gone to the loft to catch up. Jonathan gazed at the farm through the opening in the wall as they exchanged heavily edited stories about their time apart.

During one of Martha's visits to the prison, she had mentioned that Lex hired workers to take care of everything until Jonathan could get back home.

"Tell him to forget it. I do not want him spoiling my crops with his filthy experimental fertilizer. It's my farm and I don't want him near it."

"Jonathan, I can't take care of it by myself, and it's our only source of income. Would you rather I get a job substitute teaching and sit by as everything we've worked for goes to waste?"

In the end, he had agreed... reluctantly. But as he looked out from the loft, what he saw sickened him. He had expected his animals to be dead or dying and his fields full of freakishly large tomatoes or radioactive corn. What he saw was the exact opposite. His animals were in perfect health. Well-fed but not overweight, producing milk and eggs beautifully. His crop was immaculate. Perfect shining rows of corn, not a rotten fruit or vegetable in sight, and even a small extension had been added to Martha's garden.

In short, the place looked better than it ever had, and he couldn't stand it. He remembered standing back each day after an honest day's work and looking proudly over his creation, his contribution, his little corner of the earth. This farm existed because of his own blood, sweat, and tears, and to watch someone- a Luthor, no less- walk in and outdo him with no more than a wad of bills and a confident smile made him positively ill.

But as he sat, eating his dinner, he tried to console himself with the knowledge that at least Martha was being taken care of, and at least they were all together now. Something about all of this was rubbing him the wrong way, something that he felt would have been obvious, had he the courage to face it, but he chose to turn his back on that train of thought. Sometimes the anticipation of a crash was worse than the crash itself, and as much as it pained him, he made a conscious decision to remain ignorant.

Clark was the glue holding this delicate creation together. He was the only one who knew the whole story, and he and Lex were the only ones who knew that he knew. He felt he should be saying something, perhaps acting as the dutiful son and trying to bring his family back to normalcy through idle chatter and stupid jokes. Or, perhaps, blurt every nauseating detail of the tale he'd been told by Lex, if not to clear the air, then to at least shatter their ridiculous façade of renewed domestic bliss. But all he could do was eat, and not necessarily for the sake of filling up the silence, although that was part of it.

In the week that he'd been home, or more appropriately, the week that he'd been away from the meteor rock, he felt his body coming back to life. When Lex had tossed it out the window, Clark's immediate pain had disappeared, but as the days went by, he understood that the less prominent effects on his body and mind were wearing off much more slowly. Not surprising after a ye--

Shit. He'd put an adamant Do Not Enter sign on that part of his memory, and somehow he kept wandering back there.

Shifting back to his previous thoughts, he felt his body waking up after what he thought of as a painfully long winter, and food had never tasted so good.

But even when he had the presence of mind to speak, there wasn't much to say. He could hardly look at his parents, as the new wrinkles on their faces betrayed the year of hell they had just been through. He, himself, was having a hard time accepting the knowledge that over a year of his own life had gone by without much more than a few warped memories and an unsettling hardness to show for it. Still, he felt paragraphs upon paragraphs always at the tip of his tongue, swimming through his mind, begging to be uttered in any order. But all he ever did was think about these words, and even when he had the courage to say something relevant, it came out sounding redundant.

Besides, his mother had made the game she was playing very clear on the way home from the airport. As soon as they had driven away from Lex, Clark took a deep breath, prepared to let every detail of what had happened pour out. He even had a fresh well of tears in his eyes, not only because of the story he wanted to tell, but thinking about the inevitable moment when Martha would park the car on the side of the road and comfort him with her loving embrace and maybe a few tears of her own. He'd seen the way she touched Lex before she got in the car, and he had become very possessive. She was his mother and it was his turn to melt down, and damn it, he was just about to show her how wrong she was about Lex Fucking Luthor!

"Mom, I--"

"Honey, everything is going to be okay. Lex and I have been having regular meetings with his lawyer and we finally came up with a plan to get your dad cleared. Isn't that wonderful? You and your father are coming home at the same time! I can't believe I ever doubted Lex. He really is one of the most generous people I..."

She continued her praise as Clark tuned her out. She doesn't know that I know! His tears started to burn his eyes as his vulnerability turned to rage. She has no idea about the rock. She just figures Lex was keeping this from me. My mother is keeping secrets from me with Lex Luthor!

What upset him the most wasn't the manufactured tone of her voice. That we to be expected. She was lying after all. Even the lies themselves weren't the most painful factor, though they were a very close second. What made his heart thump and his temples scream was that the tone she used when speaking of Lex was absolutely genuine. She adored Lex. She held him on a pedestal after all she believe he'd done for Clark. As sick as it made him, he could hear in her voice that she was beginning to think of Lex as a second son.

So does that make me guilty of incest, or does it even count when your adopted?

God! The bitterness of his thoughts were as horrifying as the memory of that night. But once he felt himself snap, there as no turning back. If this was the way Martha Kent wanted to play it, Clark would follow suit. Let her have her precious Lex. Let her believe he was the savior of their family, and that she'd gotten away with her lies. He was tired of being the peacemaker, and as of that moment, he gave up the position permanently. He let her believe that he had spent a happy little vacation in Seattle, never mind the blatant rift that had formed between him and the rest of the world.

And so they sat. A family reunited at long last, contentedly sharing a warm dinner, each willing to put a lid on the past, each knowing that it was probably going to blow up in their faces eventually, and somehow remaining silent.

Click, clink, scrape. Slurp, swish, gulp.

**********

"I'm worried about you, Lex."

He nearly choked on his coffee. Certainly he must be hearing things. He had expected rants, tirades, curses, maybe even physical violence. He had prepared himself for this moment, understanding and accepting each and every hideous scenario, half-expecting a mixture of several of them. He had actually set himself up for it, refusing his initial instinct to run away, to hide out, knowing that he deserved to be ripped to shreds by the woman he had come to think of as a dear friend.

And on this beautiful summer day of mid-June, as Martha Kent delivered his produce for the week, every scenario he had concocted for this confrontation (and even a few he'd overlooked) was knocked flat on its ass by the obvious concern in her voice, so sincere it was painful.

"Um... what?"

"Well, look at you. You're pale, you have bags under your eyes, and I can smell the alcohol on your breath from down the street." She sat down on the couch next to him and felt his forehead, startling him so badly that he had to put his mug down on the coffee table to prevent himself from dropping it. "Have you even been to sleep?"

"I... uh..."

"I knew it. Clark is going through the very same thing. He won't even lie down anymore. He just goes out to the loft and looks through his telescope for hours on end."

Clark. A rational sentence finally congealed in Lex's head and he spit it out before it had a chance to get away. "H-how is Clark?"

"Oh, he's quiet, but I suppose that's to be expected. I know he's just as grateful as I am that we're all together again. He's just missed so much, he'll need time to adjust." She continued on with the speed of a woman trying to convince herself and everyone around her that everything is absolutely, positively finer than fine. "Speaking of which, he registered for summer school. If he sticks with it, and takes a few extra courses once school starts, he should be all caught up by December. You know, if I'd known things would drag on for so long, I'd have asked you to hire a private tutor for him while he was away." She giggled nervously.

What the fuck? Not only did she completely skip over the details of Clarks time away, she was making jokes about it! Bad jokes. My God, she doesn't know! Clark hasn't told her anything! He was doubtful of this epiphany, but the mere fact that he was lacking a second asshole this far into the conversation was absolute proof that Martha didn't know a thing about what really happened.

But why? Clark had murder in his eyes when Lex told him everything and rightly so. What could possibly have made him stay quiet? While his broken heart wanted desperately to believe that maybe Clark understood his motives and forgave him, his mind knew better. Martha's hereto unbroken stream of chatter cut into his reverie.

"...so if he comes to you, just let him believe it. I can't stand lying to him, but the truth would hurt him much more."

"The truth? I'm sorry, what were you saying?"

"About Jonathan. I said Clark thinks we've been trying to get his father out of jail all this time, and I want it to stay that way. He just wouldn't understand."

And there you have it. On the private jet ride back to the Metropolis airport, Clark had said nothing to Lex. The few times they made eye contact, Clark looked as though he had to physically restrain himself form attacking. Lex left him and went to the sleeping quarters of the immense plane. Curled up tightly on the satin sheets, he cried hard into a pillow. Clark was his life. Clark was the reason he still had his life. He remembered all the awkward and endearing smiles the young man had always given him, and knew they would be forever replaced by the enraged contempt that now inhabited that beautiful face.

On top of that, he knew Clark would spill every word of what happened, not only shutting him out of Martha's good graces, but surely incurring Jonathan's wrath in the form of a bullet. Or ten.

Only now, things were different. Martha lied to Clark, and Clark knew it. So he opted to lie right back. Out of spite? No. Lex knew Clark and he didn't have a spiteful bone in his body. Well, maybe after all he'd been through, one or two spiteful bones. But that wasn't the reason. It just didn't make sense.

"...and he's going to be a senior this year and when I think of him graduating and getting his diploma, I know that you're the one I have to thank, and Lex, you're so, and I love, and you are..."

Martha's tone became frighteningly sincere for the second time as she cupped Lex's face, hardly able to finish one praise before starting the next.

It's because of me. Lex and Martha had become astoundingly close as only sharing a difficult situation can do to two people. He became another son that she just happened to miss out on raising, and she became another mom that he just happened to miss out on getting raised by. Clark must have seen her inability to mention Lex's name without becoming choked up with gratitude, and with love, and chose to remain silent. Certainly not out of any kindness to Lex. Not at all. But out of a deep-rooted love for his mother (that he probably didn't even realize was still there) and the need to see her happy, even under dishonest circumstances. After all of her suffering, the truth about Lex would kill her.

Soon, tears were in Lex's eyes as well. He truly loved this woman, and was so happy that she didn't completely despise him. He hugged her, resting his face on her shoulder and his tears matured to sobs as he smelled the fresh scent of the farm on her. The scent he associated with Clark, the scent that remained in his memory long after sending the sweet boy away. Perhaps a small piece of that sweetness remained. Lex couldn't live with himself knowing that he'd spoiled such innocence, and took comfort from the idea that the old Clark might not be totally lost.

**********

"Fuck," Clark muttered under his breath.

"I beg your pardon?" Obviously not quietly enough.

"Nothing, Dad."

"It sure didn't sound like nothing," Jonathan said reprovingly.

"Dad, I'm sorry! That's the second board I've broken in ten minutes! It just slipped out, okay?!"

"Whoa! Clark, calm down, it's okay. Just don't curse in front of your mother, all right? And maybe I should take over with the fence."

"No, I got it."

"Really, Clark. I'm just about finished with--"

"I said I got it!"

Jonathan blinked in surprise and Clark's expression softened. "Sorry, Dad. I... that storm is coming in quick and I think I have a better chance of..." He trailed off.

"No, you're right, son. It's best to have it finished before it rains."

Clark turned back to his work as Jonathan baled the last of the hay and headed back to the house for a shower. He startled Martha as he burst through the door and didn't even look in her direction when she asked if he was okay.

"Fine." He jogged up the stairs leaving his wife with her mouth hanging open.

When he got to the master bedroom, he paused as he noticed the framed picture of the three of them on his nightstand. They all looked so happy, so untainted. He studied Clark's smile with a pang in his chest as he thought of the profanity escaping those lips. It wasn't the first time it had happened, but until that day, he had forced himself to ignore it.

Now he knew something was off. They had been back together for several weeks, and the "period of readjustment" excuse was wearing pretty thin. He didn't expect things to be completely back to normal immediately, but Clark wasn't even making progress. He was moving backwards for God's sake!

Often, Jonathan would stand at the door of the loft, unbeknownst to Clark, and watch his son gaze into the night sky. Sometimes, the younger Kent looked through the telescope, others, he just stared into the darkness, almost like he wanted to fall into it.

There had always been a longing in Clark's eyes, a sadness that Jonathan and Martha couldn't erase. He wanted to know about his biological parents, and that was perfectly understandable. But the look in Clark's eyes now, not to mention the endless hours he spent in his Fortress of Solitude, revealed a much deeper pain, a hunger that chilled Jonathan to the bone. Clark was... incomplete. Like a vital part of his existence had been ripped away, and his remaining half was fighting desperately to get it back.

Soft thunder rumbled overhead, reminding Jonathan about the fence. He looked out his bedroom window and saw Clark pushing in the last few nails with his thumb. He finished just as a car drove up the road behind him and pulled into the driveway.

The two passengers of the car, silent until now, exchanged an anxious glance.

"Do you think he'll be... different?"

"I don't know. I guess he'd have to be. Come on, we can't put it off anymore."

Clark turned around as the car doors slammed shut, and blinked several times, convinced he was hallucinating.

"Chloe? Pete!" Chloe waved nervously as she and Pete continued their tentative approach. Clark started toward them at an equally cautious pace.

"Clark..." Chloe's tearful voice broke the trance, and the three of them started on a dead run, furious with the gap that had separated them for so long and eager to close it at last. They met in the middle of the yard, Pete and Chloe slamming into Clark's chest as his long arms easily enfolded them both in a fierce embrace. They stood that way for several minutes, each of them holding tight and sobbing.

They didn't see Jonathan peering down from the bedroom window with tears in his eyes. They didn't see Martha watching through the screen door, laughing and crying at the same time.

And they didn't see the long, black telephoto lens sticking out of the cornstalks across the street, snapping picture after picture.