Evergreen

Part 4

The noise was like short, constant bursts of thunder. Lex Luthor looked up the shy and watched the steady descent of the aircraft. That bore Bruce Wayne, he was certain--Bruce Wayne come to lay claim over the crash site that Lex had scoured for a full twenty hours before Wayne arrived. Yet when Wayne sets foot on the site, he was certain Wayne would be the only victim of a tragic loss. He had perfected grief over the years of course. Wayne was going to be the portrait of a man who had lost his all; Lex, a cold-hearted observer.

It was nothing short of a scene from a movie. Wayne could not wait until landing to turn the place outside down. Thirty more feet up in the air, the aircraft opened and in full black rescue gear, Bruce Wayne jumped out. With no word to anyone else, Bruce began his search.

Lex was certain that Wayne had seen him. He sat on that small chair he brought for comfort and watched in the remaining hours before darkness fell as Wayne toiled. As the sky began to weep under the blanketing night, Lex heard the call of Bruce's team, who followed soon as their small plane landed, for him stop for rest.

Lex recognized what slim chance he had to fall asleep with the Gotham men hollering the way they did. He poured a cup of coffee and walked over to Wayne, then extended it to him.

Bruce turned to Lex and took the cup.

"Sit for a while," Lex told him.

"She loves coffee," mentioned Bruce.

The words put Lex on alert. He was certain about what the statement signaled. He would nip it in the bud. "You won't get me to reminisce about her."

With a long weighing look, Bruce then shook his head at Lex. "That is the difference between you and me. I will never be afraid to talk about what I feel for her." With a self-satisfied claim, he continued, "She is my fiance after all."

Lex sighed and stared into fire. When it came to Chloe Bruce seemed to be so very young. He almost wanted to protect Bruce from the reality of who this woman was, whom he placed so high on a pedestal.

"You should go back to Metropolis," Bruce advised the now silent man. He focused on the same portion of the fire as Lex, in time to see a piece of wood collapse and send sparks flying up. "There's nothing here for you."

"Maybe I want to find my wife."

Bruce slowly turned his head and stared at Lex.

"Are you even surprised?" Lex asks. "She'd fooled you once."

"I don't believe you."

Lex's lips quirked in amusement and recollection. "Half of the Luthor fortune, down the drain because of this." From his breast pocket, Lex drew out a worn picture and handed it to Bruce by holding it over the fire between two fingers. Bruce took the wedding picture between his steady hands. Eyes evergreen like the ones he remembered starkly even while he tried to forget. Triumph in Luthor's grin, immortalized on film. "She had access to everything. She's the best. You wouldn't even know that she's gutted you until you've seen your blood pooled on the floor. That's Chloe Luthor."

Bruce winced at the name. "You've turned her into that. Chloe loved me more than life itself," Bruce defended. "Maybe that's what your marriage didn't have. That's what our relationship is based on."

"Tell me, Bruce," Lex demanded, his eyebrows arched, "about the solid foundation of your relationship."

Bruce put down the coffee cup.

"The only thing that brought you together was her desire to take something from you -- for me."

Bruce leapt onto Lex and gripped his collar.

"Deny it," Lex urged him. "Deny it, Wayne. Go ahead."

Bruce Wayne let go of him and settled back on his seat. "Don't presume to know what she and I had," he said roughly, only half recognizing that he had first been guilty of the same. "I will not allow a criminal like you to speak so little of something you've never experienced." Then, something occurred to him regarding how ill Lex spoke of his wife. "Why are you even here?"

He walked away from Lex. Before he dropped out of earshot, Bruce heard Lex's reply, "I want to know that she's really dead. I want to see her corpse."

Closure would end both of their gut-twisting desires--one to get reasons and an apology, another to have a goodbye and a reaffirmation of love.

Lex looked back at the crash site. His thoughts drifted back to her, as if they really strayed away. Did it truly hurt that he remembered best a night of making love that had quickly turned into a contest? He smiled fondly at the memory, because Chloe had been moody the afternoon before. He had found her later in their library with a stack of books lined up like a wall against him. He had reached for her but she moved away.

"I'm reading, Lex. It's shameful how much of these I don't know."

"You're right. Knowledge is power."

"All right. Now will you please leave me alone?"

"Not quite."

Lex brushed his lips against her temple, and Chloe turned her face away. "What is the matter with you, Lex?"

"That's not the right question," he informed her matter-of-factly. "The question is, Chloe, what's the matter with you?"

"Look, Lex, I'm busy okay? Writers have to read too, you know."

Lex had then smirked in appreciation of a temperamental Chloe who needed to be wooed. "I bet you wouldn't take a wager that you can ask me anything in that book you're holding now and I can answer within thirty seconds."

She did not move at first, but he could easily tell that he had peaked her interest. Chloe slowly flipped through the pages, most likely searching through the pages for an item worthy of Lex Luthor's wager. "Fifty?" she asked.

"What do I need money for?" was his answer.

"Then what?"

"Your top."

For the first time since he came in, a smile graced Chloe's face at the recognition of his intent. "I'll take the same."

"One on one?" he offered.

With a tentative bite of her lower lip, Chloe nodded. "Which monarch was singlehandedly responsible for the English circuit courts?"

Without batting an eyelash, Lex replied, "Henry II." He had held out his hand waiting for Chloe to hand him her top. Once he had it,he tossed it to a far corner of the room, where it dropped half over a potted plant.

"God, Lex, you could have at least aimed for the chair."

His answer was simply, "Where was Rameses I's mummy found in the 20th century?"

It took her two seconds to answer. "Niagara Falls."

"What was the hesitation for, Chloe?" he asked as he unbuttoned his shirt and dropped it on the floor.

"I knew it was the answer, but I had to ask myself twice before I could say it."

"That's why you'll lose," he pointed out. "In the most important decisions, it's pointless to weigh things over and over. Go with your instinct. It's a gamble."

"Don't teach me how to play my game. Now," she asked, "in a series of four related poems by Wordsworth, he talks about a girl he loved and left. Who is this character that when he returned to her, she was dying?"

"Good work, Chloe," he granted, "but not good enough. You know I inherited my father's passion for poetry."

"Just say the name, Lex."

"Lucy," he pronounced. "Which by the way is a wonderful name for a baby girl."

"Lex," she chuckled, as she shrugged out of her pants, "we've been seeing each other for four months. Is this really the time to start freaking me out?"

"What was the name of Siegfried's wife?"

"Roy?" she joked. Lex arched his brows. "You're talking about Norse mythology, right?" He nodded. "His wife is Brunhild, Queen of Iceland."

Lex grinned. "Will it be the bra or the panties?"

Chloe's lips parted. "I was right!"

Lex reached out and pushed three books off the pile. He took one book and handed it to her. "Siegfried was in love with Brunhild. She loved him so much she was willing to die with him."

"I rest my case."

"Love doesn't mean she was his wife," Lex pointed out. "He was married to Krimhild while under a love spell."

When what he said teased some memory in her mind, she tried half-heartedly, "What if my definition of my marriage is not by law but by heart?" Chloe then chuckled. "Who am I kidding right?" Slowly, she reached back and unclasped her bra. Then she tossed it to him. It fell over his shoulder, and Lex allowed it to remain there.

"I'm very warm with all these clothes on," he said roughly, although he was then staring at the pale flesh she revealed. "Hit me where it hurts, Chloe."

"Fine. What is the name of the lead male character in The O.C. played by Benjamin McKenzie?"

Lex let out a hearty laugh. "Now you're playing!"

Chloe grinned and stood up, then walked towards him and straddled his thighs. "But I don't want to play anymore," she whispered, then bent down to kiss him straight on the lips. "I want you, Lex."

They had made love that night, countless times in the study. The books had fallen around them. In the end they lay on the carpet with Chloe's back to Lex. He raised himself on one elbow and traced a line on Chloe's skin from her shoulder to her knuckles.

"Are you feeling better now?" he had asked.

"Much," she sighed in satisfaction.

"What had you so riled up anyway? You're my problem-solver. I'm not used to inventing something to do to get you out of that mood."

"I was just thinking of everything I have to learn, how much I have to improve on," she told him. "My job offer finally came from the Washington Post. I've been waiting for that for ages."

He sat up and stared down at her. "What?"

"The Post, Lex!" she exclaimed as she lay flat on her back. Chloe reached out her hand to touch his stomach. "You of all people understad career goals. Aren't you happy for me?"

He caught her hand, and brought it up to his lips. "The Post is great and everything," he said, "but can it compare to the LuthorCorp Quarterly?"

"You're kidding if you think I'll trade this job to editing your company newsletter."

"And if I told you it comes with perks?"

She smiled and sat up. "Lex, you know I can't stay. I have to do this for me."

"If you think I would lose the best girlfriend I ever had, you must be insane," he said quietly. "You need movement? Change? Let's move in together."

Chloe suddenly laughed. "You think I'll stay so we can move in?"

"Will you stay if we got married?"

Chloe mouth dropped open. "Are you serious?"

Lex smiled at the memory. Even now, here in the darkness of the crash site, he felt the thrill of winning her over a tempting job in a state where everything that mattered to a journalist seemed to happen. She chose her over the White House, over the United Nations, over meeting a man whose passion for news and current events matched hers. Chloe became completely his in much more than being her first. He glanced over to where Bruce Wayne stood staring at remnants of the plane. That man had won deals over him but Lex had the confidence of knowing Bruce would never have her the way he did--so completely, against the odds.

How long he sat there, staring at his wife's lover stare at charred remains that most likely contained Chloe's ashes as well, Lex did not know. It was only when Bruce's figure finally turned around and looked at him that Lex realized that time must have passed quickly. He saw that look on Bruce's face, so ashen and mournful, his eyes red-rimmed.

Lex stood up when Bruce started walking towards the tent that his team had set up. When he emerged again, he had amazingly enough, as if they had not been in that heat for so long a time, a bouquet of flowers as fresh as if they had just been picked. Bruce lay the flower on the edge of the site.

The answer came by way of an old man who approached Bruce. Since he had not been part of Bruce's team of rescue workers, Lex assumed that the man had only just arrived with the flowers. Lex went up to them and he heard the last of their conversation. When the man Bruce had called Alfred vanished into camp, Lex nodded towards the flowers.

"She loved tulips best," Lex began.

"I thought you didn't reminisce."

"I thought I'd get onboard or else I'd seem like a cold-hearted bastard."

Bruce shook his head. "She loved all types of flowers. That's why she adored the Wayne estate."

"You were bachelor. Don't tell me the Wayne estate had a flower garden."

Wayne smiled faintly. "I cheated. When I saw how delighted she was with the flowers I gave her on our first date..."

Chloe and Lex's first date was up against a club alley wall.

"...I told her I had a flower garden. Then I called Alfred to get six gardeners out there and work on one."

"How much is missing?" Lex asked.

Bruce frowned. He did not deny it because Lex was too intelligent to be lied to. "I don't care. The entire Wayne fortune could disappear and I wouldn't care."

Lex smirked. "How stupid are you? She did the same thing to me, Wayne."

"Deep down I will always believe she's alive unless I have her heart on my palm and feel that it's not beating. Until that happens, I will always know there's an explanation to what she did."

Lex could not believe what he heard. "You're not even mad that she made a fool out of you. She took your money to her grave," he spat out, glaring at the charred remains of the plane.

"She had reasons that she'll tell me about when she comes home."

They were the last words that Bruce ever uttered to Lex Luthor. The next day, even before dawn broke, Lex was on his way back to Smallville, the entire flight thinking how envious he was of Bruce Wayne's blissful stupidity.

Oh to be so lost in the deceitful tangled vines in the forest of her green eyes.

tbc